I'm About To Eat My Own Elbow

            It was while sitting in a lecture on cultural responsiveness, watching my true identity dissolve into a puddle of white privilege that smelled surprisingly like Elmer’s glue, that I realized I haven’t blogged in awhile and sought to remedy the situation. Of course, it’s no good now; anything I write will smack of loathing for the organization that can put me through this mind-numbing torture. My thoughts the past half hour have gone something like this: “wait, did I just get more racist? How can I tell? Hang on, maybe it’s localized to small parts of my body. Maybe just my elbow is racist. Or my thumb. I have to gnaw it off. Now. Before it spreads.”

            Instead of digesting my own organs, I will blog to relieve the mind-numbing tedium of required professional development.

Morgan Freeman knows. Today, when my IB students questioned how I
knew where to find research studies which they couldn't find, I told them,
in Morgan Freeman's voice, "I'm known to locate certain things from
time to time." They loved it.

            For the past twelve hours, I have been either at school, in a faculty meeting, or embroiled in this cultural responsiveness training. I have two more hours with TFA and it’s anyone’s guess whether I will make it through without being kicked out of the program. I have so far shouted out “Democrat!” in response to a question about Barack Obama’s ethnicity, stuck up the wrong finger when we were asked to raise one to show whether we had a talking buddy, told everyone in my vicinity that nationality is a construct just like race and clearly the speaker’s question is a trick, and am currently tossing balled-up pieces of my nametag at my friend. They aren’t reaching him. I’m a rotten shot, though I practiced with my favorite blerds yesterday during our trashketball review for our test.

            Other things I’ve accomplished recently: played therapist to several distraught students, wiped out an ant infestation, engaged in college guidance for my favorite undocumented student, called 63 parents to let them know their darling offspring spend an hour and half with me a day and are they sure they feel okay with that, graded something on the order of 1,200 pieces of paper, created a bomb-diggity lesson plan on the brain for tomorrow (brain hats! Brain hats and neuron-firing games and homunculus man races), and given show-and-tell on Judaism in the world history classes.

            If you had three minutes to explain your religion, what would you say? My spiel went like this, based on what I knew they’d be interested in:

            Same G-d, just the first half of the bible, Jesus was a cool guy but I don’t believe in his divinity. Every 25 hours I shut down for the Sabbath—no work, no electricity, no driving, just food, prayer, friends, reading, and long walks. And yes, I see your hands and I know your question, my grandparents survived the Holocaust but most of my great-great relatives were murdered, so I’m pretty much a walking miracle.  Questions?”

            They loved it. Perhaps every piece of content should be delivered by an authentic example who elevator-pitches it in three minutes and then leaves while they’re still off their seats with questions.

            After school, lots of people pop in and out of my trailer from the district—heating and cooling people, plumbers, internet and technology experts, etc—the whole gamut of people it takes to keep my trailer just barely operating. Usually I offer them some of the candy I’ve saved as a treat for my kids, and we banter a bit about the weather and such. Sometimes we go a bit deeper. Recently one person explained to me why our education system is suffering:

            “We need to bring that whoop ass back.”

            “Excuse me?”

            “Can’t hit the kids anymore. That’s the problem.”

            “Well, most of them are big enough to hit back. So I don’t think it would work.”

            We amicably agreed to disagree, swore eternal friendship over a can of tepid coke and a water bottle, and left it at thinking each other hopeless with children.

            Besides that, things are calm in the world of second-year teaching. Not one student has thrown a major fit yet, they generally do their work, and on the whole, we have a rollicking time exploring psychology together. I’m afraid it makes for much less interesting stories, but a much better educational environment. If anything changes, I’ll keep you posted. Until then, we have a nervous system and endocrine system to memorize and lots of sensory tricks to play on students in order to get them thinking about biology’s effect upon behavior. So long!