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 [ ARCHIVE ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=16)

#  I Have to Leave LAUSD … Teaching Ate Me Alive

![](https://www.citywatchla.com/images/stories/Sep-2012/cw1075f.png)

FIRST PERSON - It wasn’t one single incident that made me quit teaching in a public middle school. It was the steady, moldy accumulation of dehumanizing, lifeless, squalid misadventures of which I was a part. Like that time with “Carlos,” to pick an incident more or less at random.

I can’t even remember what it was that happened between Carlos and me. Anger, impatience, frustration, stupidity — and that was just me. Probably just another student who categorically refused to do as he was perfectly reasonably asked — open a book, pick up a pencil, hand in homework — or a teacher’s ineffectual attempts to come up with any good reason at all to learn the Pythagorean Theorem, or some such timeless knowledge.

Written by Peter Hirzel.

September 17 2012

OK! Let’s say you have a ladder leaning against a wall. Suffice to say, our “conversation” ended without closure. But, evidently I said something that upset Carlos.

***([The Rest of Peter Hirzel’s Salon column here)](http://www.salon.com/writer/peter_hirzel/)***

(Peter Hirzel is a teacher and artist in Los Angeles. This piece was posted first at [salon.com](http://salon.com). Salon features such notable writers as Joan Walsh, David Sirota, Mary Elizabeth Williams and more.)
-cw

Tags: Peter Hirzel, LAUSD, LA schools, Los Angeles, education, teaching

CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 75
Pub: Sept 18, 2012

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