The Next "Survivor" Show

Have you heard about the next planned "Survivor" show?

Three businessmen and three businesswomen will be dropped in an elementary school classroom for 6 weeks.

Each business person will be provided with a copy of his/her school district's curriculum, and a class of 28 students.

Each class will have five learning-disabled children, three with ADD, one gifted child, and two who speak limited English. Three will be labeled with severe behavior problems.

Each business person must complete lesson plans at least 3 days in advance with annotations for curriculum objectives and modify, organize, or create materials accordingly.

They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent conferences.

They must also supervise recess and monitor the hallways. In addition, they will complete drills for fire, tornadoes, and shooting attacks.

They must attend 100 hours of workshops, faculty meetings, union meetings, and curriculum development meetings.

They must also tutor those students who are behind and strive to get their 2 non-English speaking children proficient enough to take the TAKS tests.

If they are sick or having a bad day, they must not let it show. Each day they must incorporate reading, writing, math, science, and social studies into their program.

They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment at all times.

The business people will only have access to the golf course on the weekends, but on their new salary they will not be able to afford it anyway.

There will be no access to vendors who want to take them out to lunch, and lunch will be limited to 30 minutes. On days when they do not have recess duty, the business people will be permitted to use the staff restroom as long as another survival candidate is supervising their class.

They will be provided with two, 40-minute planning periods per week while their students are at activity classes. If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials at this time.

The business people must continually advance their education on their own time, and pay for this advanced training themselves. This can be accomplished by moonlighting at a second job or marrying someone with money.

The winner will be allowed to return to his or her job.