Mischief Managed

My co-teacher and I walked into our Israeli classroom in Yad Mordechai this morning full of purpose. We set up the tables, organized the materials, and hung posters on the walls. At 8:30 sharp, exactly when we were meant to begin teaching, a teacher in the school’s summer camp came in and asked us to switch rooms, since we’ll have fewer students with her.

I taught my co-teacher the word “leezrom” and we flowed with it. As we were moving our stuff, a tall kid came into the classroom. I’d been keeping kids out of it until we moved, but he insisted. He dumped his bag on the desk.

“This is our classroom,” he told me in Hebrew.

“Sure, we’re moving. Can you wait outside until we move everything?”

“No. This is my classroom.”

“Okay, great. Here—this box—it goes in the room over there.” I watched as he instantly changed from confrontational to helpful (he was in charge of a box!) and ordered the smaller kids out of his way as he moved. Our classroom quickly got shifted, and I thanked him with a pump of joy at how quickly I’d remembered my TFA classroom management style—turn the tough kids into the helpers.

In our classroom, there were no students. I peeked into the class nearby and asked the school liaison… “Um, where are our kids?”

“They’re late. They’re coming from far away.”

“Okay.”

We waited, Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” playing on repeat, colored paper on each desk.

Two girls peered hesitantly into the classroom. One of them was covered in tears.

“I don’t speak English,” she told me in Hebrew.

“Not yet,” I responded to her in English, with elaborate pantomime, and finally eked out an understanding nod and a smile.

Signing our class rules

The kids eventually all showed up. We introduced ourselves and then had them create name tags, line up alphabetically by first name, share their favorites/ families/cities in response to my co-teacher's introduction, create a classroom set of rules to sign, make flags representing themselves, play around-the-world with colors, and finally ended by teaching them cheers that they had to use while in a balloon race (fill the balloon with air, let it out and see if it gets farther than your friend, and the two kids who cheered the loudest from each team get to go next).

There were many moments when the students declared that they didn’t understand anything, but we plunged ahead. I proximitied the heck out of the kids, used my quietest commanding teacher voice, and they haven’t yet gotten sick of bang-snap-clap as an attention getter.

The classroom has a strong core of serious, sweet learners. There are also some boisterous girls who protest in Hebrew at the top of their lungs that they can’t speak English, and quiet girls who refuse to. But both groups participated and got into the lesson eventually. Harder were two boys in the middle of the class who refused to participate most of the time. They took their phones out, and took pictures of the girls presenting, who protested. I ended up hauling one of them out for a private conversation. I made sure he knew it wasn’t because he was bad—he was important, and we couldn’t start class without him, so he couldn’t be on his phone. He came back into class and almost won the around the world game, so I’ve got hope.

At the end of the day, we let the kids out early-- the liaison teacher made a mistake about when the buses would pick up. Two of our students, including the one who'd walked in teary eyed, came back into the class from the playground. 

"We liked the class today. It was fun. It's boring now, outside. Can we write on the board?" 

"Can you do  it in English?"

They could, indeed. 

Tomorrow, we’ve got a seating chart—it’s a tiny room, so we experimented a bit before coming up with L-shaped clusters. But because there were only two disruptive kids, our first day of class mostly flowed. It was exhilarating to return to a class that needs behavior management, but dang—sixth grade is exhausting. I’ll be happy to return to my thoughtful, motivated high schoolers who can self-manage their behavior at the end of the summer. And I now understand the Israeli students so. Much. Better.

 

So to all y’all of my alumni who came to graduation and looked goggle-eyed when I told you I’d be teaching in the periphery: Guess what? Mischief managed. Um... so far.