Talk the Talk

About this time two years ago I attempted a blog post in Norwegian, and I feel it’s only fair that I try to write, now, in the language with which I’m surrounded. It’s a teenager and southern and urban patois that I will inevitably blunder through.

So, imma tell u ppl about teaching at my school. You gone listen, kay?

RBG walks in. She got kicked out of another trailer into mine and she wants to hang out so she goes what up to everyone but I tell her sit down quiet and she’s so mad, she goes you so aggie, this class’s jacked up but my kids defend me: “you don’t dis on Ms. W,” and they say I’m like that lady in Freedom Writers and I’m like, “preach! … only you know all white people don’t look the same, right?” and they go, “yeah, Ms. W, we cool.” And the other kid’s still bugging out so my kids mutter, “you THOT, you so ratchet!“ Except the one kid who is so over me today because I made her put her Takis away. And one of my kids make a threat at the newcomer which I don’t allow because that’s flexin and I’m not like that, school rules for everyone. Plus nobody gets jumped on my watch. Well, nobody gets jumped on my watch no mo.

How many of you are on Urbandic right now?

The linguistic richness with which I am surrounded gives my brain a little happy buzz, now that I’ve got some basic beginner fluency down. I’d missed trying to operate in two languages at once (Canada didn’t count—Toronto had nothing good to say, anyways), and this satisfies the itch.

Kids made dating profiles for Henry VIII, to find him a wife after he divorced Catherine of Aragon. My favorite? How they responded to his “perfect date” in Ms. Congeniality-style innocence.

King Henry’s Favorite Date:

• 10/22/87
• Any day exept Monday (sic)

Or, alternatively:

• Long walks so I can lose weight

Today my lesson plan wasn’t as tight or exciting as I would have wished. Kids asked me questions in my second block that I didn’t know the answer to. Links were tentative. But, in all three classes, students were happy and polite. The atmosphere felt safe. Every child did what they had to do, knowing that something better is coming tomorrow. This is such a basic thing to have in a classroom—safe, happy children—yet after last semester, it feels like a major accomplishment.

In other news, at the staff meeting an administrator called all us who work in mobile classrooms, "you in the trailer park." It’s finally official. I teach in a trailer park.

Let Our Voices Be Heard

Finding Answers

Today was one of those stellar days when everything goes right. Even watching a kid get led out in handcuffs two doors down and getting stuck in lockdown during my planning period couldn’t dampen the mood.

My students are learning about the Protestant Reformation, and in conversation with one of the cool admins yesterday (he’s totally cool. He wears one of those little European hats and has a supply of checkered scarves), he gave me permission to let the kids create a “95 Theses” of our school, as long as we focused on policies and not people. All my blocks rose to the occasion, but it was 3^rd period that got into elongated debates on the nature of school rules. Two students fresh back from suspension were particularly vocal, and the debates were so coherent that I told the class, if we finished early, we could march down to the front office and hang it on Mr. B’s door.

The kids were all aghast. “Won’t we get in trouble, Ms. W?”

Using QR codes to find the answers to the questions. Many were
hidden deviously throughout the classroom. Truth is,
teachers like to play even more than students do.

“Nah, if anyone gets in trouble, it will be me.” I told them I talked to him yesterday, and he’d be cool with it. They aren’t as savvy about coolness as I am, especially in adults. So, sure enough, the kids were baller committed and focused on their work. They were scanning QR codes throughout the classroom (I put some on the ceiling, too, and told them this was the ONE time they were allowed to stand on the furniture) on a scavenger hunt about the methods of the Counter Reformation, and raced all over to access the web pages and videos and Prezis that answered their 5 questions so they could be the team to win (first to the Inquisition gets chocolate!).  

Student John Hancocking the 95 Theses.

When they finished, they looked up at me with big pleading eyes. “Now?”

“Okay.” So we marched down the quad behind our big piece of butcher paper proclaiming the school’s 30 Theses. I stopped them before the administration building and hushed them all. Like little angels, they tiptoed in and taped the 30 theses to Mr. B’s door, and tiptoed out to the startled looks of another principal and the office staff. As we left, I saw the principal move over to check out the poster on the door. He leaned over by the revised school motto they’d written, right above their signatures: LET OUR VOICES BE HEARD! Preach.

Pygmalion

Three more precious letters from my last block to run the letters-to-teachers exercise:

·      Dear Ms. W, I really thank you for the opportunity for me to learn in this class. Last year, I took this class and I failed it. I didn’t have the motivati

Huh. Seems ironic that you trickled off there.

·      Dear Ms. W, I am a student in your class. I am a good student. I love coming to your class. I love the way you teach, I think you’re a good teacher. I have a “B” in your class. Well, anyways, I am Cherokee Indian, White (not a lot), and Black. When I come to school I want to learn something but these kids distract the teachers so much the teachers just stop teaching and that makes me upset because I told myself I set a goal to have As and Bs this semester but I just get so distracted. From, yours, you know who. I do. I only have so many students who would write this one, and the rest signed their name.

·      To the teachers. I wish you all didn’t exist. 

               He didn’t sign his name either, but like the above, he didn’t need to. I know who you are. I know where you sit. I know how to get you to work, too.

Your teacher is not impressed

My kids wrote dialogues imagining a conversation between Leonardo Da Vinci and the Mona Lisa. About half of them reinvented Pygmalion without knowing it. One of them took it to really inappropriate levels:

Mona Lisa: I want you. I need some d***.

Da Vinci: You got a condom?

Etc.

Still, it is another Pygmalion. Crass, crass, crass, but Pygmalion nonetheless. He told me he was making it funny, and checked that he wouldn’t get in trouble before he turned it in because parts were inappropriate—when I checked his writing there was just one f-bomb, nothing like this. I told him to bleep out the bad words, but he seems to have added a bit. And now I get to introduce him to the concept of vulgarity in all its Georgeliotian glory.

If You Chill I Chill

From the mouths of babes come words of weirdness:

Life Ass A Knight

In a student essay: “…I want to fight for my village. And that is life ass a knight.”

---

One of my students from last semester who always chills in my room before school starts asked me a question today:

--Ms. W, can I set you up on a blind date?

--No. (Are you crazy?)

--But you’d have such cute mixed-race babies!

--Oh, in that case… still no. (But how tempting).

---

Perhaps I need to fig-leaf them

Pictures of Michelangelo and Donatello’s statues of David are up on the board. Students are mostly over the fact of nude statues. But, as I suddenly pause in the middle of a sentence, I hear from the back of the room, a quiet conversation not meant to be overheard: “—mine’s bigger.” 

---

Ran my activity where students write letters to their teachers again. A few wrote to me, most to other teachers. Some gems:

·  Dear Teacher, I am Black America, who is loud and all about my work. But I know you don’t believe I’m all about my work because I’m black. Not trying to be racist. If you chill I chill bow I’m out.

·      Yall need to help me cause I am not that smart. All yall need to help all the new Hispanic people that come you all think they know English.

·      Math is so hard to me, it is like mowing a lawn for thousands of hours all day and all night. Amen. And now I'm offering math tutoring after school...

·      I don’t think I’m being treated as an equal. Sometimes the class is dead and not hype.

·      From a student who has come to my class exactly twice: I’m a slow learner, and most teachers won’t help me catch up. That’s all that’s needed. May I suggest an additional necessity? Attendance.

·      Dear Ms. W, I’m feeling okay with this class. I like to have little brakes (to stoke your little engine?).  I like that the class be interesting.

·      From a Spanish-speaker: My teacher is beautiful. Hola, miss w! Aww, hola!

·      Ms. W, I like your loud voice when you speak to the class. Well, phew!

·      From one student: hola maestra!

buenos dias yo no mucho ingles y pues solo ce espanol espero que me entien aunque cena un poquito yo quisiera aprender mas el ingles me gusta mucho el ingles y pues quiero aprender lo mas porque me cuesta mucho y pues quiero saber los dos lenguages a unque uno ya loce muy bien y es el espanol pero el ingles me cuesta y solo heso nada mas y me gusta mucho

ok, es bonito y pues si aprendo mas ingles ba hacer mejor.

okay bye.

(Because the point of this exercise is getting yourself and identity across to your teacher, I told certain students they could write in Spanish. Google translate says this one wants to learn English. Teacher says, “awww!”)

Today, each block stopped to have a long discussion before we could go on with humanism. True to form, second block wanted to discuss whether I'd kicked the trashcan over on purpose. Umm, no. Third block needed to have a long debate about whether students should learn vocational subjects or become Renaissance men. Um, yes! Five points to you, third block. You go, third block! And fourth block really needed to get the matter of whether Tupac is alive or dead cleared up. That's the last time I run a comparison of his lyrics and Machiavelli's theories. Oh, fourth block, you make me laugh. 

By the way, I’m reading Waverly, and Scott has the same criticisms to make of education then as we do now: “The history of England is now reduced to a game at cards, the problems of mathematics to puzzles and riddles, and the doctrines of arithmetic may, we are assured, be sufficiently acquired by spending a few hours a week at a new and complicated edition of the Royal Game of the Goose.” Sound legit.

Finished Medieval Manors:

Manor with Feudal Contract

I Wandered Into Heaven

Medieval Manor in the Making

So there’s this place. It’s five minutes from my school, and from the outside it looks like a warehouse. From the inside, it looks like an Alice-in-Wonderland-Dr. Seuss mash-up. The corridors are unexpectedly filled with big red booths, antique-looking wooden tables and crazily spaced chairs. A room with large checkered black-and-white-tile floor boasts a cluster of chandeliers. The pianos ranged around the walls stand sentinel over coveys of sofas, grouped cunningly for gossip or the lone armchair awaiting its napper. The kitchen is just short of industrial, but with the feel of a classroom to its arrangement. Enormous paintings, each one unique but all framed alike, and all larger than me, adorn the walls at regular intervals. A peek into the door to the left shows a gym—to the right is an art studio. It twists into room after room, nook after nook, all startlingly equipped with whatever a person could dream of for learning, socializing, or entertainment. As a crew of gangly teenagers peeled off into the different doorways, pausing to nod or shake my hand, I decided to call it heaven.

How’d I find it? I followed a student.

Yesterday one of my students stayed for tutoring. He completed a project on the Middle Ages and then asked for a ride to his gym. I tagged another teacher to accompany us, and we drove him to a building near our school that looks like a warehouse.

They seem to have taken defense to heart...

“Do you want to meet my coach?” he asked me. I checked that the other teacher had time, and we went inside. We followed him from room to room, marveling at the beauty and size of the space. It’s a gigantic gamehouse for teenagers, but in ways that clearly train them for the world. By the time I shook his coach’s hand, I was speechless with admiration. If all my kids had places like this to go to, I wouldn’t worry about them after the bell rings. (Turns out, it’s called 2xSalt Ministry, a Christian outreach community center. Cool).

Today was a short day—we got hit by the snow around 11 am. Students were building beautiful models of Medieval manors, and then drawing up contracts in their groups between the lord and his vassals. They were delightful as they worked, especially after yesterday’s chaos (teachers were trading students as though they were playing cards, trying to get our classes to settle, but nothing took). We listened to some light Medieval choral chants and drum beats as they worked.

All the elements of a manor, including Crayola

As I drove home, I saw one of my students from last semester trying to cross the road, hunched into his jacket beneath the onslaught of snow. He’s a massive football player, and even though I usually pass him walking home through all sorts of weather, something ate at me when I saw his huge frame curled in on itself like a vulnerable child in the snow. I swung my car around and stopped to give him a lift home. Don’t tell admin. We’re not supposed to give our students rides alone.

Tomorrow is a snow day. Which means…

PJs.

Hot chocolate.

Snow hike.

Plan, grade, write, call parents, apply… knock off my to-do list.

And, REAAAAAAD! Oh, joyous joyous snow days.

Church or Chabad?

Last week was good. Friday finished strong. My second block attended a cultural dance performance and promised to teach me the Nay Nay. My third block created brilliant slideshows on the events of the Middle Ages. It was the perfect lesson plan: utilized technology (21^st century citizenship for the win), allowed student choice in which event they wanted to present, involved student interaction as they commented on each others’ videos, and was SIOP-friendly because it allowed my Spanish-speakers to create brilliant slideshows that the whole class could watch because of the beauties of Google translate. Cries of "ewww" filled the classroom as students found pictures of the Black Death. My MTLD visited and got this quote from a student: “I like this class because Ms. W’s really nice, but also weird. I like that.” Thank goodness; I don’t know what I’d do if she didn’t like that I’m weird.

My 4^th block finished their religion posters, spawning such gorgeous statements as “Abraham was a Jewlism.” I guess. We received the suspension list for this week, and 9 of the 25 are my students. It makes me wonder why they’re all suspended…  some I haven’t even met yet.

Today I accompanied a friend to the Park Church, an enormous, historic, mostly African American Baptist church. My Masters class on diversity required having a minority experience, preferably immersing yourself in the culture of your students, so this seemed right on point. And it was; before church started I ran into one of my students from last semester! I was so pleased I got flustered, but she was so proud to introduce me to her mother and siblings that I quickly conquered it.

The Park Church

The church service was utterly and completely different, and yet absolutely the same in essentials. It was powerful. Very interactive. And the MUSIC! Loud and large and beautifully inspiring, with everyone swaying and clapping throughout, myself uncertain of whether I should clap or sway or what but trying to keep my foot-tapping unobtrusive. We high-fived each other throughout the service, hugging and shaking hands and telling each other, “You’ll get through this” as the pastor exhorted us. Two adorable little babies were dedicated and introduced to the church. Weirdest to me were the two movie screens up top on which we could watch the choir and on which they showed movies of Lena Horne doing Civil Rights work and then of a little girl who decided to sell her own paintings so that she could buy supplies for the homeless. It made sense in a church that size, but I kept having the sense that they were breaking their Shabbat with technology. The service was entirely inspiration-focused, and it gave me a heady, breathless feeling. The sermon applied perfectly to anyone going through TFA; about working through storms with faith even when you think you’re walking with G-d and He's abandoned you.

It was when I got home that I ran into trouble. I started to write my paper on my “minority experience” and found that it had been, on the whole, too pleasant. I’d felt too comfortable. Perhaps it was because I went with a friend, perhaps it was because I ran into a student, perhaps it was because everyone at the service was so friendly and the ideas so recognizably fitting. But I experience more discomfort in a regular Shabbat at chabad than I did this morning at church. Here, I was the only white person and the only Jew in a room of several hundred, but the first difference was something I am every day and the second so profound that I couldn’t feel an outsider—I was too far outside to even compare. It’s when I walk into a shul where I don’t recognize the tefillot, where my clothing is analyzed as modest or immodest or amodest, where pro-Israel sentiment is taken to racist extremes, that I shiver and cringe and feel the decided tick of otherness in my brain. I’m not sure what to write in my paper. Perhaps that otherness is a discomfort that comes from almost belonging, not from touring other cultures. Either way, it's a challenge to face. In the words of the pastor this morning: G-d shows His power through the storm. 

Teachers Are Soooo Sexy

Bumped into two of my students after school yesterday, walking hand-in-hand. They’re in two different classes of mine, and I was so pleased that two of my best students are dating that I was totally awkward about it.

“Oh! Yes! Are you two dating, or just doing a weird handholding thing?” (Because who wouldn’t want to share that with their new teacher?)

Sheepish grins. “Don’t tell, okay?”

“Okay!” Little dance in my head. Sometimes my most promising students get into really bad relationships, and end up suspended or dropped out just because of bad influences. Hence the joy, and awkwardness, when two of my high-flyers are together.

Another awkward scenario from today:

In 4^th block, students were working in groups on projects. I moved around the room, guiding and answering questions and chatting to build up the relationships that will keep these kids going when other motivation fails. As I walked, one group beckoned me towards their corner. A student whom I find adorable with his mini mohawk and high-pitched voice took the lead:

“Ms. W, are you, like, single?”

Raised eyebrow. “Is that connected to the development of Buddhism?”

“No, like, are you married?”

“Nope, I’m not married.”

 

Dunno about you all, but this is totally my pose during INM.
I find it promotes student engagement.

They digested that information, and then pursued it further.

“Do you know Ms. J from English and Ms. LB from science?” Affirmative nod. “They’re single too.”

“Are you trying to set us up?” They all cracked up. “Thought not. Good. Now back to work.”

As I moved away, I heard the ringleader whisper: “teachers are sooo sexy.” I fled across the classroom as his friends pummeled him on the arm—“du-ude, she was still behind you!” “She could hear you!” I know I’m supposed to put on a stern face and go “inappropriate!” in an angry voice, but I was so torn between laughter and squealing “ewwww, gross!” that I just couldn’t muster it up. 

The boy did speak truth: Teachers are sooo sexy.  Just not to ninth graders, we hope.