Shame on them there going to rot in hell

I received the following response to the test question, “Are you a Humanist? Why or why not? Use the quotes from Humanists below (at least three) to support your answer.”

I would have to say yes I am because I’m a Cathlic and I go to church and I serve for the lord some people don’t even believe in church (shame on them there going to rot in hell). But anyways yea I love getting good expecting the good and being good because guess what, good will cum right back to you and me.

Oh my, oh my, oh my, where to start? Firstly, let’s define Humanism again. Then let’s talk about damning people to hell on your history tests. And definitely need a quick aside on how to spell “come” without getting into serious trouble. 

My mother says I’m becoming ever more like Anne of Green Gables, quoting my students’ papers in letters to the world. I can’t pretend I don’t model my life after her somewhat intentionally, but it’s nice to get confirmation. “Those whom the gods wish to punish, they make a country schoolmarm.” Except now it’s, “Those whom the gods wish to punish, they make an urban schoolmarm.”

While tutoring at the International House this evening, I realized that my tutee is picking up on my accent—he read “about” with Canadian intonation three times. Whoops. Aboot that—not exactly how you pronounce it down here, bro.

We were covering adjectives, and he pointed to the last picture, changing the names to his own and mine. “I am poor. You are rich.” I laughed ruefully. Were the last only so. But then, it made me think about the ways he automatically made assumptions, and how in some degree they are true—whatever I am right now, I come from rich, from the children of immigrants who made it comfortably into the professional American dream. As the grandchild of immigrants, I’m free to relax and indulge myself in a profession where, to paraphrase another teacher, “instead of money, we’re paid in pats on the back by anyone who meets us.”

This semester is muuuuch more fun than last. However, I think I’m still experiencing residual stress from the bad habit I started in summer Institute. I bought a mouth guard in January to protect my teeth from nighttime grinding, and this week I bit through it. The horrors of Institute reverberate in my dreams for months… oh I do not envy this year’s batch of incoming TFAers and the identity defacement and indignities they will undergo! TFA hazing is much, much worse than anything a frat does. But the payoff is much, much better.

Three students stayed in at lunch to study. They win school.

A student told me she didn’t like that we spent yesterday talking about race. It reminded her of bullying, she said. An interesting association. But she’s no longer bullied. A friend near her agreed that teachers never do anything about it. I said to tell me if it happened again, and told them about the time last semester I staked out the lunchroom with the security guard I’m pals with to protect a student of mine. But if they tell me and I can’t do anything, I’m going to feel utterly… the same as usual. Because I see so much around me about which I can’t do anything.

This morning, I rounded a corner of the corridor and saw a child lying on the ground. As I watched, an adult pulled her upright to sit against the wall, and she moved a bit while being pulled up. Walking away from the vestiges of that fight left me shivering. It took all the charm of my three classes to get me happy again. I walked to my trailer feeling grimly that our students are up against so much, history is simply irrelevant to them.

It was just like this

Yesterday, while one student showed me pictures of herself in her quinceanera dress, another told me she couldn’t have one—they spent the money on her brother’s legal defense, and then he was deported anyways. Another student sold answers to her Greece test because money was tight in the family. A fourth is worried about her grandmother dying without money to visit her or a passport to see her before she goes. When students are working through that, or lying in a hallway with several adults hovering around them, how much can we possibly do for them? So when one student who’d been perfectly happy all morning suddenly decided she didn’t like her poster and threw it on the floor cursing, and another who’s self-described as a “sunny personality” got nastily disrespectful when told to get off her desk, I thought of how angry they must be, of how little coping mechanism they must have for the truly enormous things they’re confronted with at such a young age, and sighed and helped them get back on task while asking if this was really the best way to deal with what they had. Left them to think about it. Feeling enormously powerless against the difficulties of, well, life. But further determined to give them a safe happy place in school. I just wish it could be always…