Can I Hold the Snowflake?

“What’s the bond for murder?”

“If you raised a monkey so that you loved it, and it turned insane and started attacking you, would you shoot it?”

"If a mother fed her child drugs, it would be illegal, so isn't it exactly the same for a pregnant woman?"

 

“Can I leave my fake crack in your desk drawer until tomorrow when we do our drug talk show?”

“I guess you have never seen my stab wounds before. I only show them sometimes. They’re ugly, right?”

"What's the difference between immoral and illegal?"

"How many times can I take my midterm? Can I take it until I get it all right?"

“Have you ever tried drugs?”

“Can I hold the plastic snowflake? I’m too hot.” 

"Um, in this David Reimer study, why were the doctors even anywhere near there? Oh, what's circumcision?"

"Did you change the position of the skeleton on your desk? I like it when you leave him the way I left him, dancing." 

"Are you one of the teachers volunteering to get a pie in the face?"

At this last question, I raised my eyes expressively to the heavens. “My dear fellow, you are not in my class! How come you are always wandering around in here during transitions?”

“I like it in here.”

Me too, child. In this room, questions seem to festoon the walls and curiosity drapes the ceiling, buoyed by the paper brains that drift across the roof tiles. I’m rarely needed except as a sort of focus for the questions, an anchoring center to which students can toss in their thoughts in order to receive approbation to continue their quest (or, in the case of the monkey scenario creator, an affirmation that that is a ridiculous question and he would be much better off completing his role play on narcotics). Sometimes I ask them my own questions, but they're rarely as good as the ones the kids come up with on their own. After all, what's the difference between a duck? 

Resilience

At a recent staff meeting, one of the teachers said that he tries to counsel every child who comes his way. While I think there's a big difference between professional therapy and the conversations I conduct, it left me reflecting on my own skills at helping my kids cope. I've grown much more comfortable with the variety of issues that come into my classroom, shouldered by children whose resilience leaves me reeling. 

Some students write me notes on the bottom of their tests, where I leave a space for "student-teacher communication." This is one way I keep track of who is freaked out about failing in another class, whose due date is approaching, who thinks they should have studied more but couldn't because they had to live with their cousins for a few days while their parents try to find housing, and who just likes to draw robots on the page. Sometimes I draw robots back. Usually I put a smiley face and few encouraging words. But occasionally I approach them at lunch or before class has started, and we have long conversations about the difficulties with which they're dealing-- difficulties with which I cannot pretend I have ever had to cope.

Some students come to tutoring, where they look up from the concept they're struggling with to tell me that I was right, it was good advice not to seek vengeance on their friend, they ended up straight after all. Some spend the whole tutoring session asking me for college advice, until they drop their essay on cognitive development and we sit together to outline their admissions essay on "why they want to go to the U of X." 

Some students drop bombs in their papers, nonchalantly sharing episodes of violence they've survived, or family members who didn't, in essays meant to be about the influence of society upon behavior or the vividness of memory under times of stress. In my follow-ups I'm always astounded by the degree of vitality the students exhibit. It reminds me of the first student with PTSD I ever taught, who wrote in a poem, "I don't want to survive. I want to live."

Some students approach me purely for reassurance, as an adult who can affirm their worth. Today a student asked if she could speak with me privately. She had been offered an opportunity that her family had laughed at, saying, "people like us don't get that." She was the only one she knew offered it. What did I think? 

"Who are people like us?" I probed. 

"Hispanic," she answered. I pointed out that shouldn't be a factor-- shouldn't stop her, for an instant, because not only was it not true, but if it had been, well, she ought to be the one to change it.

"Well, I mean, also, only rich people. We're not high-class." 

"Having money doesn't matter. Having dignity matters. Treating other people right matters. And you said this is based on character... well, you have more character than just about every other person you've met." Possibly too much character, she worried. I grinned and replied she might have to tone it down a notch. But stay true to her self, ya know?

At lunch Friday, one of my old students came up to find out how I was doing. He is a gentleman on a soul-search. As another child ran past us, splashing us with a puddle and then calling back something rude to our startled 'hey!'s, he shook his head at what he called the state of his generation. He's been reading a lot lately, he says, and he's intrigued by Buddhism. It's a philosophy, not a religion, and his friends don't understand that; they joke that he'll become a monk. But he thinks it helps him with compassion. 

Our conversation was punctuated by quick greetings, as every student that passed us into the lunchroom stopped to dap up before they entered. The variety of students that saluted him speak more for his compassion than anything he's read about. He could teach Buddha a few things, most likely. 

Inside the lunchroom, my old ESL co-teacher approached me with something she had to share. Her class had just spontaneously started to speak of their journeys-- the harrowing paths they'd taken to come to America. They told of watching people die, of surviving without food, of crossing country after country to reach refuge. She was deeply touched as she recounted some of the stories.

As we looked around the lunchroom, we saw students laughing goofily, some deeply immersed in conversation, others reading or plugged into headphones. You could never tell their stories from their faces. The sadness and violence they may have experienced was dropped for the moment, replaced by chicken nuggets and friends. I watched them chatter and chirrup and realized that it doesn't matter how skillfully I respond to them; they are gloriously, vibrantly, resilient, and their ability to plunge on into friendship and learning and success makes the world ever-beautiful. 

To Learn To Love To Learn

Tonight, I ran into the dusk. Around me, the gloaming gathered itself about pear blossoms looming delicately out of the evening. I hadn’t had time to run in a whole week, and as I ran, I tried to make sense of the motivation that drives me out of the comfort of my books into the pastel evening. I’m training for my second half marathon, but I run for something else, for some principle that I hold tight to my chest and just as suddenly release to chase after powerfully. A thought that motivation is a mere will-o-the wisp we seek to capture sends me laughing as I sprint after it. I ponder the chimerical nature of my students' motivation. Can I capture it for them? Or is that, by the very nature of the quest, impossible? 

This past quarter has breezed by. Our classes are delightfully curious, passionately opinionated, and sometimes downright silly. Today one of my freshmen told me, as we discussed possible college destinations for him: “I can’t go to Clemson. I’m allergic to South Carolina. I break out in tickets.” Since he doesn’t yet have a driver’s license, this is fairly predictable. I think he’ll get over it by senior year. But I wonder what license I can give him that will drive him to succeed in school, to inspire him beyond mere compliance interrupted by comedy.

Tomorrow we expect showers of midterms with a chance of unit 3 retesting. This whole week has been one of my favorite lessons of the year: I set up stations and give kids their progress reports, and then watch them roll. Do they need to re-loop the concept of validity? That’s station one—take your pick of artistic rendering, problem-solving experimental design, or literacy-and-response GO’s. Do they want to focus on the levels of motivation? Station three, and kahoot.it! No selfies with the i-pads, if you please.

The unfortunate kind of inspiration I tend to come out with
when put on the spot. 

As students review, I call each up to my desk individually, for an end-of-quarter conference. The conversations are thought-provoking. Psychology is many students’ favorite class, for reasons varying from “everybody be like, chill in here” to “I’ve decided I’m majoring in psychology in college.”

An interesting phenomenon happened again and again, until I caught on. Among my slew of questions is, “what would you change about this class? What do more of, or less of?” intended to be followed by, “what will you do differently to improve next quarter?” But students tended to jump straight into that at the first question. My slackers hung their heads sheepishly, saying, “I’d do more of my concept cards,” or, “I’ll spend less time talking with my friends.” Nobody had any suggestions to make about changing the class dynamics—it was all about their own personal actions.

This is my dream. This last quarter that I have, this precious final three months, I want to work on the self-motivation and self-monitoring, the metacognitive awareness, from which sprouts success. My students, as my TFA coach has pointed out, are highly invested in me. But important as relationship-building is, if this is all that I have done, I am a failure. Next year I’ll be an ocean away from them, and I have three months to learn the real task of teaching: to inspire my students to learn to love to learn.

The Point of It All

Today I organized my first award ceremony. The assistant principal had a genius idea—line up all the teachers on the stage, and as the kids go up to get the certificate, they high-five all the teachers.

It was incredible. A huge swell of good feeling, of recognizing the top kids at the school, those who had been nominated for academics or for character or for growth, acted like an enormous stimulant. There were kids who got all three of the possible awards, and each time they circled back into the line the auditorium exploded with cheers. Cheering on kids I knew, some I didn’t, and personally high-fiving them as they walked across the stage was one of the best highs I’ve h

ad as a teacher.

Setting it up was pretty easy, as once we’d decided that we wanted an award ceremony, a whole bunch of teachers chipped in. Some donated food, others did the complicated work of merging nominated students onto award certificates, and still others lined up the children in the hallway in alphabetical order (no mean feat). It had been depressing when, soliciting teachers personally for award nominations, numerous teachers said they couldn’t think of a single child who deserved an award, but the teachers who came through far outweighed those who have been broken by the brutal realities of our school. As I ran like a maniac between lines of children in the hallway and lines of teachers in the foyer, my own students laughed at my organizational obsessiveness. They’ve been doing that a lot lately.

This morning, I looked up from helping a student and broke off mid-sentence. My entire class was staring at me, silently. They looked like a pet when it’s made a mess on the carpet. I scanned the room, but everything was fine. Except that they were still staring at me. So I casually dropped down into a chair to see if being out of their eye level would change things. Nope—they were still staring at me.

“Ha, okay, guys, what did you do?”  No answer. I became painfully aware of the way my hair was sticking up on one side of my head. I smoothed it down. They still stared.

Slowly, I moved to the front of the classroom, subtly checking that all my buttons were buttoned, my zippers zipped. They were. But still they stared. Just as casually, I opened the door and walked out. Don’t get me wrong—having my students’ full attention is a blessing I usually crave. But their concentrated stares were disconcerting. I had my next-door neighbor teacher check me over—was I missing anything? Did I have marker on my face? No.

When I returned, every single kid had their heads down on their desk. So I sat down and laughed, and laughed, and laughed until I cried and they had picked their heads up to join me. “Psych!” They were so proud of themselves. They told me they had “reset our class norms.” Yuh-huh, okay, kiddos. Okay. So I gave them their next challenge—how can you reset the norms in our whole school? We’re still pondering what we want the norm to be.

My blog has been suffering, lately. You can't write good copy about awesome students. The stories are less impressive, the emotions, though still enthrallingly strong, are no longer violent, and the foreign factor disappears. Students who are winning awards and playing with their teacher in class don't quite have the same valence as students who throw desks or end up in jail. The thing is, it's the same kids. I've just learned how to access their awesome. The brilliance that they hold inside of themselves, the silliness and depth of compassion and thinking, is beginning to be seen. I walk through my classroom thinking that I have to stop, wait, treasure every second; classes go too quickly, and my time with these students is limited. We're already halfway through the semester now-- I have only one more quarter at my school. 

Lately, my kids have me on an Anthony Hamilton kick. This, today, watching kids gang up on their teacher in class, and swagger across a stage because they are AWESOME—this is the point of it all. 

Human Sacrifice

My God,

There is nothing I would not give You right now,

Nothing I would not offer up in humble, grateful sacrifice.

No, it’s quite the opposite—

There is nothing I would give You.

Everything I have is from You,

To give it back would be a poor return.

Instead, I will exhilarate in life,

And spin along its fiery path

In the dance of universal compassion.

When Students Take On Teachers...

Today, my second block was out to get me, in the best of ways. 

We were learning about classical conditioning. As I moved through the classroom, helping students with their work, I noticed one of the class prodigies, Jose, moving smoothly clockwise to my movement so that he could speak with each cluster of desks as my back was turned. I made sure to give him space; if he was up to something, it was bound to be good. Just yesterday I got him with a prank (see below), and so I was ready to see some payback.

Sure enough, each person, after he visited them, raised their hands to get my attention—and then snapped. I wanted to jump up and down with glee, but after a bit, reflected that I couldn’t let it go too far—I really didn’t want them snapping at me all week to get my attention. So I went up to the board and wrote:

Aim: Condition Ms. W to come when we snap

Unconditioned stimulus: Raise hand

Unconditioned response: W comes over (well, technically this is a pre-existing condition)

Conditioned stimulus: Snap

Conditioned response: W comes over

Saw this while at a traffic light. RAM pride!

The kids were both impressed and chagrined that I figured it out. But I can’t tell you how much more impressed I am with them. After offering six different classes fifty points of extra credit if they can condition me, they’re the first who took me up on it. It didn’t work, but I gave them 10 points and 20 to the ringleader. If they can do it so it works, they’ll get their 50. They’re in “challenge accepted” mode.

Even my least motivated block rolled well today. The kids replicated various experiments that they’ll have to know for their exam, performing them on each other, and the class was a happy, busy place. Even the typically slacking kids got their evaluation paragraphs written. At the end, I wrote a note home for a student who is typically the class clown, praising her for getting everything done today, and then staying after to help her pregnant friend and to clean up the classroom. She skipped out happily with the note clutched in her hand. So easy to make kids happy.

Yesterday I brought in hamentaschen for my colleagues and students. Unable to pronounce the word, one class dubbed them "Hum-hums." It's the urban dictionary version of hamentaschen. 

In the spirit of Purim, I played a little prank on that genius-child from before. He keeps his notebook in a little desk drawer at the front of the classroom. So I stopped at the dollar store and found a huge plastic tarantula which I placed in the desk. It was fun to watch him leap back when he opened it. But I can be pretty sure that since classical conditioning didn’t work as payback, something else is coming soon. Maybe I shouldn't teach them about compliance techniques...