Insightful Additions: A Good Thing

It’s a new semester, a new start, and I finally feel like I’m not swept off my feet in the classroom any more. Outside the classroom is a different matter; I’d forgotten how time-consuming the start of semester is. There are 93 new names to learn, 93 new parents to call, 93 diagnostic reading and 93 writing tests to grade and plug into data charts for TFA and the administration, 93 student surveys to memorize (H plays in the band, R doesn’t like to read aloud), and most dauntingly, 93 student relationships to build back up from the ground.

My trailer. Sorry, I mean "mobile classroom."

I didn’t realize until the first day of class how utterly cold it would feel to stare at 35 brand new faces and wonder where my kids were and how they were coping. It wasn’t just the freezing weather seeping in from the frigid floor of the trailer that drove me into the copy room to warm my arms above the laminating machine like a teacher-hobo. It was the need for companionship with people who I already know, who don’t stare at me like a stranger whose every move is scary.

The last day with my old class particularly exacerbated that feeling. I’d come in after administering an exam and they’d all cheered when I entered—one vivacious troublemaker sprang up and throttled me with a hug, she was so glad to see me back. I sat on the desks in back letting an ELL train me in Spanish while another two drew me cartoons to hang on my wall. I engaged three students in a conversation about the latest reading for my masters’ class on “Diverse Learners.” They agreed that the text’s comments on African-American and Asian eye contact avoidance and Latino proximity were purely stereotypes (I liked hearing them because between us we were a White woman, an African American young man, a Latina young woman, and a Vietnamese young woman). Their comfort and insight was a far cry from the wary, silent faces confronting me on my second first day of school.

But starting over isn’t all bad. I know where we’re going in history, now, and have a much better grasp on the techniques that work. Saying “student-centered learning” is all very well, but one has to see the messes that result when it’s not done to really be a disciple. I’m also much quicker on identifying misbehavior and reacting to it. Used to be, as long as a kid was quiet, I had no idea they weren’t working. Used to be, a kid would do something egregiously violent or rude and I would stare at them thinking, “oh, I get it, this is what this year will be like” until something prodded me into furious retort. Now my reactions are much faster and more even. Students know they’ll get moved for continuous talking because I did it on the first and second day. I’ve had to send two students out—one for refusing to take his hat off and the other for the N-word in a friendly fashion—but nobody has yet had a serious breach of classroom culture and we’re building an environment that feels safe, bit by bit.

Also, those you hate, but I prefer the first alternative.

I’m also very carefully crafting students whom I identified as possible troublemakers into positive members of the class from the get-go. The student who left class rather than move his seat now sits front-and-center, so that I can rap his desk whenever he puts his head down, and make deals with him about turning off the heat if he finishes some of his work (just take the hoody off, man, and you’ll cool off!). I’m convinced he’s not going to be allowed to slide. Now I just have to convince him. There’s another student who tried to throw me off balance the first day by rudely interrupting to ask why my lips were purple (purple lips, bane of the cold white person) and I gushed at her, thanking her for her caring and compassion, joking about how bloody freezing I was, and moving past the moment so swiftly she just had time to look startled before plunging back into taking notes. Labeled mature and considerate, she’s living up to it so far. Maybe it’s who she always was. It helps that her best friend is one of the best workers in the class.

I'm that scumbag teacher =)

A third student is possibly a troublemaker who has been trying, unsuccessfully, to get away with everything she can. But when she ignored the directions on creating topic sentences (this semester I’m teaching writing from the first sentence down) and did something different that produced a lot of garbled text, I laughed, called her an over-achiever for writing so much, and set her straight. Half an hour later she was up at my desk as the other kids left for lunch to tell me that social studies was her strongest subject. I can tell, I responded.

So bit by bit, piece by piece, I’m trying to make the classroom much safer and more comfortable than it was last semester. I don’t want any of my kids scared of other kids. I’m also back on my rounds of soliciting parent involvement. Some sound desperate and hopeless from the get-go, but other I really hit it off with, and we can spend awhile on the phone talking about how to get their kid to be as successful as possible. I like having the good conversations as early as possible, because they usually end the way this one did:

Me: Hi, I’m calling to introduce myself. I also want to let you know, your son already has such insightful additions to classroom discussions.

Mom: Is that a good thing?

Me: Yes! He’s got a really rational way of looking at things. I’m not surprised if he ends up being one of the top students in the class.

Mom: Oh! When you called I thought for sure he’d got in trouble. He always is.

Me: (inner monologue: What? Not this kid!) Nope. Not this semester. Not this class.

Mom: Oh, thanks! You can call back any time.

Me: Sure will.

Seriously debating whether I'm wearing a toga
tomorrow. Still undecided. 

Tuesday we had a fire drill, and I spent the frigid time outside screaming in my mind because most of my kids clearly have no coats. When we came back inside, we played a Roman Republic game in which kids were randomly assigned different roles: patricians, plebeians (which they quickly shortened to “plebs”. Either they’re uncannily familiar with 1984 or it’s just common slang). They had to elect senators, respond to situations such as broken roads, slave revolts, an emperor’s rise, and debate how to handle invasions (Rome fell regardless of their choices, of course). I thought my third block wouldn’t have time to finish because an announcement for early dismissal came on, but they begged me to keep going and adorably stayed late from the lunch they were meant to hustle to so that they could finish. I’m beginning, already, to get attached to these kids.

Take Two

We’ve had a rough week of exams. One proctor listed all the misdeeds of a class down the hall on her roster, and our whole trailer park has been cracking up over it for the past few days. The entire roster is scrawled over with a record of curse words, disrespect, and weird test violations. The four funniest, against a backdrop of more egregious violations:

--Student fell out of seat intentionally

--Student pulled out and ate Bojangles in the middle of the exam

--Student threw Bojangles biscuit in the middle of exam

--Whole class started singing “Hammer Time” in the middle of the exam

My students were marginally better-behaved; tomorrow I test the ten out of 100+ who were either absent, suspended, or sent out for bad behavior during their proper testing slots. I’m nervous about getting their grades back from the state. A science teacher received hers back and had 2 passes out of a class of 23 students, and 3 passes out of 25. Right on average for our school, apparently.

Check yourself, Shakespeare

Now I’m prepping for Thursday, when the new semester starts and 100 brand new students walk through the door. This semester I’m reorganizing. I’ve completely reset the way I want my classroom to run, and am painstakingly shaking up my lesson plans so that they’re more focused, engaging, and rigorous. Mostly I’m completely rewriting the whole plan. But when I find something that worked last semester, I tweak it and leave it in. Reviewing stuff over and over has led to some weird changes in my curriculum, especially my Julius Caesar skits. Let’s see how good your pop culture trivia is.

Caesar: I’m sorry that people are jealous of me. I can’t help it that I’m popular.

(At breakfast) 

Calpurnia: Caesar, please don’t go out today! It’s the ides of March! Eat some toast, instead.

Caesar: Is butter a carb?   

Brutus: I’ll do it. I’ll help protect Rome from Caesar!

Cassius: Good. You’re part of our group, now.

Casca: On Wednesdays, we wear pink.

This is my school, every day. Why aren't we in a movie?

Caesar: Yonder Cassius has a lean and hungry look. Brutus: That’s why his hair is so big. It’s full of secrets.

Antony: Friends, Romans, and Countrymen, lend me your ears.

Citizen: He doesn’t even go here!

Octavius: I just killed four of the enemy!

Antony: Four for you, Octavius! You go, Octavius!

Do I spend too much time with 14 year-olds? Probably.

And here’s to a marginally more entertaining semester than last!

The message I should probably be sharing

Students' Last Questions:

Students’ Last Questions:

1. When was the first war? When were the first two people?
2. What country is the most known for killings? Dunno? North Korea?
3. Why did we not learn about South America? Because the curriculum is racist.
4. Was Blackbeard’s beard really smoking? Just ?
5. How does different money work? Civics and Economics, 11^th grade
6. (From one of my smart-smart-smart students) Why did the Congress of Vienna want to turn the clock back in Europe instead of letting people change how Europe will be like? Ooh, you so smart!
7. Why did they kill Martin Luther King? King family thinks it was a gov. conspiracy
8. What is the worst thing that ever happened in history? What do you think?
9. No questions my mind is completely blank I just want to go over the terrorist thing. P. 486
10. What happened in history before the 1^st end of the world? Huh?
11. What was the Native Americans doing while the holocaust was going on? Mostly living on sucky reservations because their genocide had already happened
12. What were people thinking when they went through tragedies? Read!
13. How can we know what is true or false about the past? Lies My Teacher Told Me
14. From both my biggest troublemaker and my most earnest student, in rather different forms (in the tradition of the Four Sons): Why do we need to learn history? When will I use this? Only those who know history can make history. (My most earnest student thought that was brilliant. My biggest troublemaker was skipping).

Today was the last day of the semester. True to form, my second block had two students slapping each other around over a pencil, my third block studiously prepared for their exam, and my fourth block broke into a dance which hopefully I will remember forever. Five of my third block girls stayed in my trailer to eat lunch with me and talk about intersectionality. Well, they didn’t call it that, but the conversation wound such fascinating curves around race, class, and gender that I figured it counts as a case study for a graduate women’s studies course. They asked if they can come eat with me next semester, and I promised them they can—I’m going to miss those students. I wrote them all goodbye/goodluck notes, and I was touched to see one student who had come in from Turning Point Academy midway through the semester with an eye-rolling problem that crippled her learning, tuck it carefully into the plastic of her binder and grin at me before returning to her practice test.

When my students bling it out

After school ended I wove my way through the police cars that were zooming around campus (you can tell when there’s been a fight on campus because a dozen police cars ruin the grass and the administrators stand around on the quad looking important) to student services to talk to someone from the courts about one of my students who is going to LIFT academy and GAP—Gang Awareness and Prevention program—and ankle-braceleted to make sure he does both. I walked out feeling my soul turn a delicate azure. But it was nothing that sharpening a few hundred number two pencils couldn’t cure. That’s right, teachers do their own test prep. And now, to find the perfect historic movie or documentary for after my kids finish testing. Recommendations welcome.

Teachers' Lunch

(Written with the permission of the teachers. As remembered)

Scene: Friday lunch in Mr. B’s room. Mr. B is sitting behind his desk, casually chatting with a student who is trying to get recovery work on the last day of the semester. Ms. W comes dashing in.

Me (Ms. W): EWWWEEWeeewwwww! Do you have hand sanitizer?

B: No.

W dashes out. Then returns sedately with lunch in hand a few minutes later and sits on a student desk to eat. Mr. S comes in.

S: Do you have hand sanitizer? W and B shake their heads no. S leaves.

Mr. B: to student --so what I hear you saying is that you want makeup work so you can recover the 23 days you missed of class, but you waited until the last day of the semester to ask for it.

W snorts into her sandwich.

Student: No, well, yeah, but look, can you give me some work to make up?

B: I’m looking at your attendance records, and it says here you missed my class 24 days, and math only 14. So that tells me you were skipping my class. You like me less than your math teacher?

Student starts blustering. Mr. S returns and joins W in lunch, sitting properly in the seat and spreading out his lunch foods across the desk. His sweater exudes teacherhood. Probably his students think he’s a sexy fox for pulling off that sweater.

W: I just touched a half-smoked blunt. I mean, there was a joint on the floor of my room and I had to pick it up and throw it away. It must’ve fallen out of a kid’s pocket. Am I supposed to report that or something? I don’t know whose it was. S shrugs.

B to student: And you only missed gym and conditioning a combined 6 times! So what happened that you went to those classes and not mine?

Students shifts uneasily. W whispers to S: do you think we should leave? S shrugs.

B: Unless you had TEN doctor’s appointments all during my class. Is that it? Is that what I missed?

Student: Yeah, see, doctor’s appointments. I sprained my leg. Yeah, I broke my leg. I broke a bone in my leg. That’s it, there was a bone in my leg that was sticking out. So that’s why I missed.

B: So you broke your leg and attended gym but not history?

Student: Well, yeah, see, I had to do the physical conditioning. Yeah, the physical therapy. That was gym.

B: And the mental exercise was just too much for you?

W exits trailer to heave with laughter outside in the rain. Waits until student exits and she can congratulate him on his bullshitting before ducking back inside. Ms. R joins from across the way with her lunch. B is telling S (a Spanish teacher) that his kids taught him some Spanish today. He tries it out on us and then quizzes S on Spanish words.

S: Can I teach you something dirty?

W: Yeah!

B: That sounded really… dirty.

R: I’d never have expected it of you. I mean, look at your sweater.

S: I teach my kids dirty words.

W: One of my kids was running toward the board for our review game and his pants fell down.

R: Anybody want the candy I bought for my kids? They don't deserve it yet.

Bell. Scene.

P.S. These people are the reason I’m still here to tell these stories.

Preach it!

Somebody left a stack of change in the homework turn-in bin. Either the kids are tipping me now, or they’re conducting drug deals on a very small scale.

The nice thing about high school students is that they haven't
arrived at this point yet. Though today I had two conversations--
one after intercepting a note between two of my sweetest students
that went, "you don't need to ask her if you look like a hoe
because you are beautiful and confident and smart and nothing
anybody says should make you doubt that and hoe is a
disempowering word to use," and the other was a response to
"I can use that word [the n word] because I'm black" which went, "not
in this class you can't"-- in which I definitely made my preferences
clear to students.

We studied apartheid, and every single one of my classes had a long conversation at the get-go about names and labels, because “African-American” doesn’t work if we’re not talking about Americans. So we moved through “black” and “white,” “Caucasian” and “South African,” and “people of color” as a catchall… every student had a reason they liked or disliked a different term, so the conversations were lively.

What fascinated me was how some students, when talking about black people during apartheid, said “we,” while others said “them.” I guess it’s a good way to tell whether race or nationality is more salient to them. One entire class identified so completely that they all said “we.” As a particularly articulate student rose to read his essay on apartheid, exhorting us to forget race and focus on the inside of people, the class began interjecting a chorus of respectful “preach it!”s after each sentence. He rose into a delicious crescendo of brotherhood and good feeling that left the whole class struck silent after he’d finished. “It shouldn’t be about skin color. We all come from the same place, we all have the same blood under our skin. We shouldn’t care about anything but who a person is.” Preach it!

In a HBTSPD meeting today, we covered the same reflection that I’d done yesterday in a meeting with my TFAMTLD. So I figured I could be a little flip with my answers:

Do you develop daily lessons that are directly linked to the standards for your course?

No. No, I meticulously plan lessons linked to standards for other courses.

Do your lesson plans include questions and tasks that require students to use higher-order thinking skills?

Yes. Students must build a life-size statue of Ghengis Khan out of toothpicks for their end-of-term project.

How often do you use your voice to maintain authority AND convey caring for students?

Mostly I just wag my tail.

Then I crumpled up the reflection and wrote this blog post. It's becoming catharsis at the end of my day, when I'm trapped in meetings that are sucking the marrow from my mind.

I don’t think the authorities appreciate my sense of humor. But I don’t know why; if my kids answered questions like that, I’d give them extra credit for spicing up my grading. I wonder why my kids don’t present that kind of chutzpah—my high school papers were full of it, and they certainly have no issues presenting every other kind. Sigh. Teenage rebellion just isn’t what it used to be.