OrNaw

Today I went to verify my rosters before final exams. As I walked into the testing center, the testing coordinator groaned.

“You have more students than any other teacher. This is going to take forever. Buckle up.”

Maybe I'll ditch my crowded classroom and move to China.
... ornaw.

What?! I’m glad I only found that out with six days left of school. It does confer a nice distinction.

This article says that teachers spend, on average, $500 of their own money on school supplies for their students.

Sounds a bit low. My kids really breeze through pencils.

The kids are writing skits for trials-- they're all putting various violent groups (IRA, Tamil Tigers, Weathermen Underground, ANC, etc) on trial, and the jury (the rest of the class) must vote on whether it's terrorism or freedom fighting. I introduced it with the line "You guys will have to decide, are they terrorists ornaw?" and the classes went crazy each time. It's so easy to make them happy. Our new class logo: #terrorismOrNaw?

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Some days, I just don’t know what to say to my kids. I usually end up with "oh."

One of my students who has struggled with motivation and behavior all semester has really been on point the past few weeks, and scored above an 80 on his last test. We’ve been getting along—he answers me with more than a grunt, and favors the class discussion with insights and grins. Yesterday I asked him, towards the end of class, what he’d be doing this summer.

“Going to see my mother. In Puerto Rico.”

“Puerto Rico! Cool.”

“Or Connecticut. I’m not sure which.”

“Oh.”

“She has breast cancer.”

“Oh… how is she doing?”

“Stage three.” Jesus. What… why? Remember, you don’t like me. You don’t share with me.

“You know, they’re getting a lot better at treating it. I hope she’s okay. I’m glad you get to see her.”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen her in seven years.” Oh.

Me with confiscated chocolate

A girl’s mom came in to watch her behavior during fourth block today. I had no head’s up, so when I saw the young woman walk in beside her daughter, I asked, “hi, can I help you?” rather interrogatively. I thought it was a student skipping to be with her friend. Eek. In honor of the watching mom, my kids put on an all-out freak show of misbehavior. One student came in and promptly lay facedown on the floor in the front of the class. He scampered up as soon as I took out my computer to get a picture. Glorious. I'm turning into one of my kids-- don't deal with it, photograph it. On the bright side, I now possess a jumbo chocolate bar previously used for hitting people, and a new phone that is well-tested in the art of selfies. Just kidding. I gave them back. But next time I hawk them on the school black market… gotta pay for those $500 of school supplies somehow. I'd probably get more for the chocolate than the phone, the way those move around.