In Hindsight, That Was Probably Illegal

          So. I have 100 new students. 60+ standard psychology students from 10-12 grade who have proven delightfully open to the establishment of our class culture, and 40+ IB students in 11^th grade who are resisting my attempts to cram everything they need to know into them via powerpoint (dear god we need books). Yes, our classes are, as ever, large-- this Onion article gets it exactly.

      While I’ve taken the time to get to know my standard students, who seem tickled all to hell that a teacher is this interested in their lives and have paid it back tenfold by pumping their enthusiasm into psychology, my IB students keep begging me to slow down and complain about the amount of notes we have to take. I feel them, bruh.

We also have fun, though. Perhaps illegally, I ran the Milgram experiment on several batches of kids today, asking them to pat their friend on the hand, harder, harder, HARDER, (until it looked like the next one might actually inflict pain), finally culminating in asking them to bash their friend over the head with a book until their startled “no!”s made us all crack up. I think it's okay because there was no way that I was going to let them keep going. We also debated the ethics of Little Albert and whether numbers are gendered and why anyone would run an experiment on the duration of peeing in male restrooms when the next urinal is occupied versus when the peer is alone (or thinks he is—that researcher hidden in the stall sounds a creeper). The kids have a pretty good idea of how to evaluate a research study, now.

My kids are lapping it all up, and I am heartily enjoying their insight and enthusiasm. So utterly different from last year. Last year, the kids asked why they had to know world history, and I stuttered. This year, they don’t even ask why psychology’s important, though I tell them with every insight. Our classes feel safe and fun and productive. I’ve learned so much, and am bursting with the pleasure of knowing how to treat each kid as they individually need.

     The teacher in the trailer next to me is as old and as venerable as Noah. She calls everyone “boo,” because once you’re in the thousands you don’t have to remember anyone’s names. Sometimes, from her trailer, I hear strings of happy expletives emerge, a mix of her deep barks and the lighter chirps of her students. They’re not fighting, they’re talking. She surprised me while I was talking to the media specialist in the library by throwing her arm around me and announcing, “this is my neighbor. We love each other.” Though surprised, I confirmed, and I think it’s on its way to being completely true. We have only each other—our trailers don’t front on anyone else’s—and I cemented the relationship by letting her carry off my videocassette player yesterday. Won’t be needing that in this century. Today we stood guard during lunch to make sure no kids had sex under our trailers. It’s stuff like that that best friendship is made off.

            My buddies from last year are spread all over the school this year. The bonds of the back trailer block have been dissolved. I miss them. We still check in with each other, though. The whole school, from administration down to the tetchy little freshmen who are as tall as my hip, seems much happier this year.

Written by a child whose happiness expresses my own:

·      When I first walked in your room, I was happy and excited. I love coming to class. I’m so excited about this year. Turn up!!! =)

What a Man Can Be, He Must Be

            Today was the first day of school. As another teacher quoted, “cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.” And yet, there was no havoc. There was no war. There were not even dogs (remember that time last year a stray got into the A building?). We have a new principal and new administration and finally, finally, finally, my school feels like a happy place to be. Kids were smiling, teachers knew what they were supposed to do and did it, and everywhere we turned our old students ran up to hug and fist bump us. It was hard not to grin all day.

Like this, minus the uniforms and raised hands. We freestyle in my class.

            My first lessons went well. There’s something about psychology that intrigues kids. And those IB students… I am mindblown.  Never in my wildest dreams, not since Norway, did I imagine kids could be this bright, engaged, and ready to learn. They have opinions about everything. They listen. At one point they were all leaning forward and one literally said, “go on, go on, tell us another [psychological experiment].” We have already opened fascinating conversations about race and gender, examining one kid’s statement that at home he acts Indian, but at school, kind of ghetto. After helping him find a better word for it, we talked about whether all people of one race act the same and how you can prove something about behavior. They are all far and away the most engaged children I have ever seen at this school. In short, I’m psyched for this year.

I came home and checked my email to find this (slightly excised) waiting for me from one of them:    

“I am extremely excited to be in your class for psychology... It was surprising that the first thing you did after sharing what you expected out of us students was asking us what we liked and sort of expected out of teachers. It's that kind of respect shown to students that make me enjoy a class more! I have a great feeling that it will be a great semester... I have a newfound interest in psychology and I really hope this will be an educationally fulfilling semester!”

I am jumping up and down with delight. Our class mantra will be from Maslow:

What a man can be, he must be.

This year, we actually have a shot at fulfilling it.  

Ready, Set...

Data wall at the ready. Awaiting student achievement.

           School starts Monday. For the past two weeks, I’ve been through a slew of professional training and planning sessions, many of which were not strictly applicable to my new discipline of psychology. In fact, my Masters classes, TFA training, and CMS sessions have all made me aware of how very marginalized psychology is in the social studies world. It’s an afterthought stuffed into the back trailers and tagged on to the list of disciplines at the very end of a series of shout-outs when a presenter is trying to figure out why I haven’t raised my hand to identify with a course. It’s cool. I don’t mind my classes lurking in the shadows, and if I have any deep lasting issues about the marginalization of psychology, I’ll take them to my therapist for meta-analysis.

One semester's worth of vocab, already up.

         My trailer is deliciously optimized for student organization. If you’re not a teacher, you won’t understand my delight in knowing how I want my classroom to work and making it all just so. My student organization this semester is, to someone turned on by organization, incredibly exciting. Just look at the pictures and understand my glee.

         Last year at this time, I was freaking out. Right now I feel an exhilarated serenity. True, I’m locked out of my account so I can’t see my rosters or make seating charts, and the computers and internet and projector in my trailer don’t work, and I don’t have enough books for all my students, and we’ve been told that we’re not to teach content the first three days, but you know, I’m okay with that. I’ve got enough of a macro-sense of where we’re going as a class, that I trust the details will find their place.

         In district training, as we sat through two hours of mind-numbing boredom, the district Social Studies guy asked us, “what do you love? What do you really love?” Behind me, an antediluvian teacher muttered loudly, “sex.” Gotta love those teachers old enough not to give one single care.

Well-stocked teacher supply cabinet.
Complete with stuffed... thing... to relieve
student freak-outs. Worked last year.

We were given our duty rosters, and one of the tall male teachers commented that he doesn’t feel safe where his duty is, behind the back trailers. It’s true, but crazy. How can kids feel safe where teachers don’t?

         I’m taking on new leadership roles this year. I volunteered to be the Faculty Advisory Committee member for our department, which means that everyone complains to me and then I meet with all the other representatives across the school and we formulate recommendations to the principal. I feel this will be a highly entertaining, if not necessarily productive, way to spend my evenings.

         Tomorrow I meet my new students! Students! All the blissful complexity of students! Just thinking of the challenges sends a surge of adrenalin through me. Every glue-gun burn and paper cut and the toe I may have permanently maimed by running a cart with 40 psychology books over it feels like a battle scar of love right now.

Can't nobody say they didn't know something was due this year.
Note the interactive student notebook table of contents beside the calendar.
Student organization for the win!

         On Friday, one of my old students was on campus for driver’s ed, and came running across the quad to hug me. She’s the sort who spreads a frisson of mayhem wherever she goes simply by the enormous size of her personality, but we loved each other and I was often able to harness her character into propelling the class forward. She promised to tell everyone where my new room is, and as I finesse my first powerpoints and put the finishing touches on objective clarity, I’m filled by little shivers of anticipation for this school year prompted by her reminder of the connections that teaching offers. I do something that matters, something that I love, and now I know how to do it. Bring it, 2014-2015. I’m ready for you.

P.S. My IB students lack enough textbooks for all of them. You can help. Check out my classroom projects at: 

http://www.donorschoose.org/ms.wenger 

Course mantra.

Permission to diverge, granted.

Lest they think we're not talking about feminism this year...

Dance, students, dance.

War Zones: Jews and African-Americans

When I landed in Israel, I finally felt at peace for the first time this summer. After the horrific events of the past months, I was in a place where people shared my emotions. We could take for granted that together we’d suffered the pain of the triple murder of children, watched with agony as war broke out, prayed for our soldiers’ safety and compassionate humanity, and were now waiting on tenterhooks for resolution. The one thing we didn’t have in common was Israelis’ insulation; they had no idea what was happening outside of their war zone beyond a bewildered sense that the world was condemning them for self-defense.

I was not eager to enlighten them. The anti-Semitism that is rocketing around the world, from synagogues firebombed in France to rabbis assaulted in Morocco and mobs shrieking “gas the Jews” in Germany, is so appalling that it is outside of my ability to understand. In fact, my reaction is more surprised confusion than outrage. In this century? I snuggled into the psyche of Israel, comfortable to be in a country where I know I do not have to defend the fact that we defend ourselves.

On my way out of the country, deep guilt engulfed me. How can I leave Israel at this time? The image of Max Steinberg’s grave and the fresh, as yet-uncovered graves beside his stung my eyes. What does it mean to run away from one’s country when others have laid down their lives for it? How can I possibly understand those who hate others simply because they are other? And how can I connect with students so untouchably distant from my own situation?

I hit America with a brain and a soul foggily left in Israel. Slowly, the headlines assaulted me until I began to make sense of them: an 18 year-old has been gunned down by a cop, riots and looting have broken out in Ferguson, and the police are using force to subdue peaceful rallies while shouting that news cameras should be turned off. Once again, the African-American community is facing the death of an innocent child for being African-American.

As all around me, my friends react to Michael Brown’s murder, I feel a surreal ache. Whatever I thought I’d left behind in Israel is right here beside me. The same hatred against a group, the sense that their deaths don’t truly count, that perhaps Jews and African-Americans are so used to being under attack that they’re now making it up as an excuse for attention… I never imagined, none of us did, that we’d reach 2014, half a century on from the Holocaust and the Civil Rights movement, and find ourselves right back where we started. Are some hatreds so entrenched that every advance is merely a mask? Is there any resolution to which we can look forward in our lifetimes?

I don’t know. But I feel a powerful connection to my students right now. Our stories are not so different. And they lay a fierce responsibility upon us.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” MLK

What the Feck Am I Doing Here?

Caesarea: it only said not to climb on the ruins in Hebrew

I returned from Israel Sunday night. Ten days staffing a Birthright trip left me exhilarated and exhausted, confident and questioning, spiritually soaring and sunburnt. Israel is so much more vivid than America. The land is fierce. Israelis have an intensity that Americans lack, even in their leisure. As one woman told me on the beach, she’s terrified the whole time she’s outside, and constantly traces the route she’d take if a siren sounded, but it was summer, and she was going to be damned if she’d let Hamas take it from her and her children. Swimming was an act of defiance.

  

All throughout Israel, the participants and the people we met engaged in truly evaluating, considering, assessing life. Both the Americans and the Israelis who joined our group were astounded by my gamut of religious observances (No phone for 24 hours? No swimming for 9 days? Now no eating? Now lots of eating? How do you keep track of it all?), and asked searching questions that kept me on my toes. With everyone we met, we discussed the matzav (the situation). The mother of a baby who latched onto me told me she’s the daughter of a Jewish woman and Israeli Arab, and simply wants the conflict to end. Our Israeli soldiers asked that we defend Israel with our words the way they do against weapons. Our Arab Israeli bus driver told me he didn’t know how it could end. We visited the fresh graves at Har Herzl and the old memorials at Yad Vashem and then bussed straight to the midrachov to celebrate life. The contradictions and complexities drove us into heightened modes of feeling and thinking.

Sde Boker! Such a powerful oasis in the desert

So now I’m back in America, sitting in my second day of TFA Charlotte preparation for the school year. Yesterday we met our teacher coaches for the year, and I have been blessed by the gods with a man who ACTUALLY TAUGHT social studies. He is wonderful. Our team-building exercises had the minimum of TFA-y culthood that they could, and I basked in freedom to speak my mind.

Then came today. I’ve been sitting in a banquet hall for the past four hours listening to TFA staff speak about their vision. When a video of Kid President was shown, my jetlagged body took a nap. I woke up and the staffer was talking about hedgehogs. I looked at my friends and mouthed, “wtf?” Our table erupted into laughter and I felt the full absurdity of the situation. The question I always ask upon leaving Israel fell upon me heavily.

Giving a brachah to the bnei mitzvah on the trip

Where the feck am I? Why am I in Charlotte instead of Israel? Easy: for my students. But why am I staying in a room where I was forced to perform a “birthday party for diversity” and where that lady is still discoursing on hedgehogs (it’s a metaphor for… um…?) instead of thinking about educational equity? Yesterday we talked about values and people flubbed around various ideas while I felt increasingly detached— 48 hours before that I’d been in a place where people are certain of their values, where their values connect them to a community of shared values, where the values have evolved from thousands of years of refining and tradition. The manipulative word “vulnerability” has been pummeled through me in an effort to replace true connection with the value of transparency with strangers.

I walked through the airport Sunday bursting with excitement for this year. I felt a sense of power, of joy, of possibility. I have now spent four hours with the regional TFA staff and all around me, people’s voices have taken on the tinge of desperation, of anger and whining that comes when TFA staff are present. Mine tends to assume the tones of a smartass, and I have asked my closest friends to throw something at me if I look like I’m about to open my mouth. It’s not a question of rebellion, but of purpose. Students will enter my classroom in two weeks, and I need to keep only two things in my mind: the vivid fierce urgency of joyful life acquired in Israel, and the warm hold my students have upon my heart.

Happiness is family reunion at Waffle Bar