A Day in the Life of Mr. Z, Teacher of the (Near-)Future
The world is on fire...can we put it out in time?
Meet Mr. Z, a teacher whose experiences are on the cutting edge of capitalist-fueled collapse. Speaking to himself from slightly ahead of us in time, he offers us a glimpse of our collective futures. This series follows his misadventures through a world where the floor is always falling out beneath him.
Through him, we’ll see that seeds of the oh-so-distant-seeming future exist right here in the present—and usually the past, too. The question is not whether or not we live in a fascist, dystopian society. Instead, we need to look deep inside ourselves and ask: how far are we willing to let this thing go on for?
That said, enough of my rambling. If you want to join me on this journey into the future, then let’s both shut up and let Mr. Z take it from here. Today, he’ll tell you all about how his day went…
It’s March 2024.
My bike got stolen. Again. I do my usual walk-through of the blocks near my building. I find my bike two corners away, leaning against a tree. After checking it over I find out I’m lucky today—no stolen parts.
“Why do people even do this?” I mutter as I roll out in front of an abandoned school, closed by the district for chronic low enrollment after the principal was murdered.
But there’s no time to think about that, I’ve got shit to do. If I didn’t want to have my staff bathroom pass revoked, I needed to get to the school building at least an hour and a half early. Thirty minutes of that are silly, useless, annoying—but mandatory—meetings to ‘lift’ morale. Ms. Doddson, the Assistant Principal, leads us in a clapping exercise that I still don’t understand. As usual, we slog through an icebreaker activity that drags on for almost twenty minutes. I duck into the break room after five minutes. Inside, the flickering fluorescent light illuminates two of my coworkers talking shit by the greasy microwave beyond the card table. One is Vera, the other Jones.
“Hey Z,” Jones says.
“Hey y’all,” I pause, “glad I’m not the only one hiding out here.”
Jones rolls her eyes, “I’m not just going to let them rifle through my bag-”
“Seriously,” Vera snaps, her voice rising, “so tired of that bullshit.”
I put a finger to my lips, “did you bring any lit today?”
Jones nods, “we both already stashed ours behind the false-”
“Let’s be careful now,” I raise my hands, motioning for her to stop, “we don’t know what devices are in here. I’m glad we’re good for inspection.”
“Sorry,” she whispers. We switch the topic and try to pass the time.
The admin team takes staff attendance before releasing us to our classrooms, inspecting our clothes and rifling through our backpacks for union materials. Sometimes, they don’t look in this room.
Mr. Gale, the company man on the administration team, struts into the break room. We all freeze. A shiver runs up my spine. He’s a tall man with a massive mustache and a broad chest that blocks the door.
“You three almost missed the inspection,” he says with an irritated—but somehow still cheery—tone in his deep, booming voice. I purse my lips and prepare to say what’s stewing in my mind, but Jones nudges me with her elbow, and I surrender my backpack.
We run late. Like always.
I race to the printing room where five paper jams snip away little bits of my time. The English Language Arts stuff printed out just fine, and I even read through the ELA story of the day in detail, but the newspaper article investigation guides got gnarled up over and over again until the printer gave up and died. I’d have to abandon social studies today, again.
“I wish I could roll this printer into traffic,” I grumble to myself. The 5th grade math and science teacher overhears me as he slices a sheet of paper with that one type of machine I always forget the name of. I startle at the noise.
“I’ll be your accomplice if you be the ringleader,” he says with a smile and a laugh. We run upstairs together, juggling piles of paper, hands-on materials, and our laptops—which makes me feel like I’m a waiter again—where we part ways with an elbow bump.
Back in my classroom I staple packets and sort them by subject until I morph into a one man assembly line. All the while, I play music from my work laptop so I don’t lose my mind.
One sheet, two sheets, three sheets, staple. One sheet, two sheets, three sheets, staple. One sheet, two sheets, three sheets, staple. I have almost 90 students between my two classes, so I’ve got to keep it moving. Two years ago, when I started, I only had 50 students—I’m nostalgic now, but I remember complaining about our class sizes then, too. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I run packets out to each desk, remembering to deliver the right ones based on reading level, math level, special education status, data summaries, testing scores, behavior issues, and Family Involvement Score.
I have ten spare minutes before the school day begins.
This is truly lucky.
After a little bit of lounging among the cushions in the comfort corner, I notice a hole in the wall. Shit.
There aren’t any operating maintenance companies left in this area, since none of them can afford the rent anymore. So, it’s on us.
I get the saw, the spare plaster, and the caulk from my cabinets.
At least I got three minutes of relaxation. I wipe the sweat off my face.
The building is already 80 degrees.
My kids come into the classroom as I don my mask. All forty of them eat the shitty school breakfasts—including me. A loaf of bread costs thirty dollars at the Price Rite of all places, and my salary after taxes is still $39,000. So, yes, I eat this slop. Today it’s soggy biscuit-like bread coated in a layer of orange cheese, which smells like plastic, and topped with an amalgamated meat patty—one that leaches and reabsorbs its own grease when pressed. Mine is next to my laptop at the desk I share with two other teachers. I count myself among the truly blessed, though, because my homeroom fifth graders are still delightful goofballs - somehow.
Some of the kids startle when gunfire crackles a few blocks away—most just continue talking or gaming or reading. A faint boom pauses everyone for a moment, but there’s no time for me or my students to find out from where or from what.
We hammer through a shared class reading of the story of the day. My kids whip, fumble, and sift through the words on their packet pages, passing them from one student to another in a smooth chain. Ms. Doddson comes in for an unannounced observation.
The empty pit in my stomach sinks (Dammit, I left breakfast just sitting next to my work station again), and a brief spell of vertigo fixes me to a spot right between Erin and Latanya.
“Good morning Ms. Doddson!”
The kids echo my greeting in unison.
She waves hello and shuffles to the back of the classroom.
“Are you okay, Mr. Z?” Erin asks.
My lizard brain puts her on hold as I inspect my classroom for a few seconds, then I nod. I’m lucky for the second time today: my objective is written on the board, the students have all their materials out, and we were doing the writing activity I’d put in the school’s one-size-fits-all lesson plan.
Admins in charter schools strip points off your evaluation score for each ‘degree’ of deviation away from your planned lesson, and everyone knows our pay can be docked if we don’t meet our Individual Improvement Plans in our Professional Portfolios. It’s a shame, they all swore the Supreme Court couldn’t possibly uphold a law allowing employers to do that. No one wanted to think about how the court had just overturned abortion and every other right the year prior.
I take a deep breath and refocus myself. Good timing; some of the kids are finishing up and I lose points if I don’t ‘extend’ their learning with some other activity. Having them read a book isn’t ‘integrated with objectives’ enough, apparently. Guess I’ll just get them on the goddamned Computer Administered Knowledge Transmission Process for Career Readiness and Success (CAKTPCRS) system.
Fifteen minutes later, she leaves.
“Close the computers,” I breathe out.
Class ends with a discussion, and then it’s time for my next section. For some reason, they jam 45 kids in this damn room everyday, so I squeeze between some desks as the kids greet me, nearly knocking supplies from my arms.
“Knock it off,” I say. Everyone stops.
They’re crazy but know not to play around with me. Except this one kid. This one fucking kid. He hits a classmate over the head with his umbrella and tries to swing his chair at me. I catch it and pull it out of his arms. Behavioral Support has only got one person for the whole school, so I don’t even try to call them.
It’s 85 degrees inside.
I go back to teaching once I have the kid in this room's comfort corner. It’s better not to remove the kids from class, anyways. We get through this lesson without any more trouble. The kids in this class love popcorn reading, and the story of the day is about dinosaurs, so they can’t get enough. They like making the motion of throwing a ball when ‘passing’ the reader role from themselves to others. Sometimes, this job isn’t so bad.
I grind through my planning period. Most of it is spent on a flurry of busy work that I need to do each day to keep admin off my back, surrounded by silent teachers at scattered desks: there’s the Smiling Friends behavior management platform, where I log all the good and bad behaviors of the students; don’t forget the slew of emails from admin, which always seem to be inviting us to meetings that would take up our planning periods (I was hiding out from one of these now), lunch breaks, and last bits of mental well-being; then, grading—every new curriculum from the management company hired by the school required more of it. Blood from a stone. Some teachers sigh with relief when the lunch bell rings and start talking or go to grab their lunches, but many keep working.
A sign hangs from two crooked pushpins above the door: “Self-care is a MUST.”
“Z, you heard?” asks Mr. Gorki, the third grade teacher.
“Heard what?”
A drained expression sits on his face, “AmazonEd might buy this place from the school board.”
Ms. Rivers, the sixth grade math teacher, chimes in: “You think the school board’ll really sell?”
“Enrollment’s fallen enough and the budget deficit has gotten so bad they just might,” I answer.
“You don’t seem surprised,” Gorki says.
I chuckle, “why would I be? Amazon’s been buying up dozens of charters like this one.” People insisted that law would never pass. The Supreme Court was obviously no help, either.
Rivers pushes her food away, “but how does that solve the problems at this school?”
“It doesn’t. But we’re not profitable anymore. Thing is, we’re a much smaller business risk to Amazon than to the current school board since Amazon thrives off under staffing. They can hire better union busting consultants, too, so I bet they sell and move onto greener pastures.”
“We should make a betting pool as a staff,” Mr. Bell, Kindergarten through second grade math teacher, says—a grin spreading on his face.
“You must think I got money,” I say, flashing him a smile.
Before we know it, the bell rings; it’s back to work. I'm with my homeroom, once again, this time for social studies. Except, I don’t have anything for them to do. The company that manages the school for the board doesn’t have any social studies curriculum materials to give us, which I guess is their way of making up for dumping hundreds of English Language Arts textbooks and workbooks on the teachers. How many of them have gotten lost by this point? I stand at the front of the room, wondering what to do. Huge sheets of paper, covered in marker explaining writing skills, displaying timelines, and outlining math strategies on the wall wriggle in the breeze from a box fan, little trails of dust clinging to the frame. Razor-thin beams of sunlight slip through the gaps in the blinds that serve as our armor against the day’s heat. Feet scuffle here and there on the concrete floors.
“Well, scholars, how does movie day sound?”
Several kids burst out into cheers.
“Can we watch Encanto?” Harriet, a joyful girl with box braids that stretch down to her knees, asks.
“You know I can’t afford Disney+.”
She lowers her head and voice a little, “okay.”
“I’m sorry, Harriet, but we can watch something else that’s fun. Who has nominations?”
I slog through more busy work from behind my desk until it’s time to switch classes again. All the while, Shrek plays in the background off my personal laptop. The school didn’t give us work laptops this year.
My last class, with the other fifth grade section, still has work to do from two days earlier. That’s because they like to run around and conjure up drama in the afternoons. Another convoluted chain of events that started on the newest copycat of TikTok and ended in a nuclear meltdown is on today’s menu—Kayla and Sean sputtering and crying on the floor, desk legs jammed centimeters from their faces. I once again find myself pulling kids aside to ask them questions, lecture them, or both.
“There’s no reason for this to disrupt everyone else’s lesson,” I boom at the class after comforting Sean, “the rest of you, keep doing your work.”
A hand goes up. It’s Maurice. I already know what he’ll ask.
“Yes?”
“What are we supposed to do again?”
I stare at him for a few seconds. A sheaf of crumpled papers falls out of his desk and fans out across the floor. By now, I’ve explained these directions three times in the last hour and six times in the last two class meetings. One of his classmates picks up the slack and starts reminding him, so I walk away to work with as many of the other kids in the room as I can.
Half a lesson later, I’m helping the parents pick up the kids while some of them curse us out.
Two more hours of busy work later, I step outside with my bike to head home. There must be another record-breaking wildfire across the country in California—or Colorado, or Oregon, or Montana, or Alaska, or Arizona, and so on—because the sky is a hazy brown. The sun burns red through a thickening layer of smoke clouds, the angry and unblinking eye of a vengeful celestial giant. I pull out my heavy duty mask, check my tire pressure, and start the journey home.
I’m just glad I got used to the masks during the height of the pandemic. All in all, today’s been lucky. I needed it.
Till next time,
Mr. Z., Teacher of the (Near)-Future
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Loooove the addition of the pictures. :) Can't wait to read more Mr. Z!
The best thing about this story is that's it's not even that far out there. I'd even call it "social fiction"—like "science fiction" but more focused on extending the social trends we see in our present into the near-future, including how technology is used to control and structure social change.