My Teacher is OLD

I rather typically adore my students. They are hilarious little bundles of personality, and they’re getting more comfortable in their own skins. As their comfort levels grow, so does the chatting, and classroom management gets harder, but it’s worth it for these gems:

Me: It’s hard to remember your age because it changes every year.

Kid: It is when you get old.

Me: So the inside is the dividend and you divide it by the divisor

Whole class: Ms. W, Ms. W! It’s pronounced ‘di-vie-sor’, not ‘di-ve-sor’

Me: Contemplating a good hard head knock against the whiteboard

Kid: (in a stage whisper) She doesn’t even like math. She told me during lunch.

Kid wrote today: I text with my selfphone.

Kid: I’m going to tape firecrackers to my sister’s bike on the fourth of July.

Me: I’ll stay off your dark side.

Other kid: And off his bike.

A kid narrated his own behavior during breakfast this morning, complete with sing-song monotone (that is a true paradox and this is only funny if you’ve heard TFAers narrating behavior all over the place the last three weeks): I'm raising my hand, I'm sitting in my chair!

Adorable.

Wednesday in honor of Kafka’s birthday a roach crawled along the wall of the classroom while I was teaching. The kids all volunteered to kill it, but I decided to delegate to my CMA, who happened to be observing. There’s a funny spot on the observation video where a kid calmly raises his hand to tell me, “Ms. W., it’s a roach,” and then we see about five hands go up asking, “can I kill it? Pick me, pick me! Punch it!”

Wednesday was possibly the best lesson I’ve taught yet. I modeled finding the variable for them, released them gradually with the steps, allowed them to do their (differentiated) worksheets, and then set up a contest with each member of a team doing one step. They were solidly engaged throughout, and working with the concept in comfort. Whee for learning how to teach!

On the eve of the fourth I chilled with friends and saw fireworks from afar; on the fourth itself we all went to a baseball game between the Tulsa Drillers and the San Antonio somethings, complete with fireworks. Teach for Americans celebrated American independence in style.

On a darker note: At a recent diversity dialogue, I (in the interest of vulnerability, transparency, and all the other TFA buzzwords) suggested that perhaps the reason I, though frustrated with my current inability to teach our learning delayed student, am not frantically nor desperately searching for ways to get him to learn, is because he’s white. I can look at him and think complacently that at least I’m not racist. But I’m betting it doesn’t matter much to him why his three teachers aren’t bothered to find a way to get him to learn; as far as he’s concerned, class is a lost cause. One more week to figure out a way to calibrate my class so he learns something.