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.