They're splitting my class up. I'll write more about it later, but I had a breakdown on Friday and started crying in the middle of 1st period. We had been talking about the split, and Jamie started to whine at me while eating junk food and leaning back in his chair. I lost it.
"You want to know why we're being split up? You're whining at me, leaning back in your chair, eating junk food, and wondering why the principal doesn't think this is going to work. That's why. Are you serious?
I'm going to be straight up honest with you all. Every single person in this room is going to encounter people who think you can't control yourselves, that you don't know how to act, that you're not smart, that you can't do the right thing and you can't succeed in school. People are going to think that about you because of racism, because of sexism, because of classism, because of where you're from, because you're from **the school's neighborhood**, because you go to this school. But you know what? I know better. I don't believe that. I believe that you all know how to act, that you know how to do the right thing, that you are all very intelligent and you can succeed. I think that you, as a class, made a choice. You saw that with Ms. M gone and not coming back, Ms L and I were struggling. We did everything we could to keep you together, so we could stay together as a class. We have spent the last week killing ourselves to make this work, and we told you what you needed to do, and you agreed, and then you didn't hold up your end of the deal. I think you saw us struggling, and you knew you could take advantage of it, and you did. That was your choice. And you got you wanted, to act like fools for a week, and now this is the consequence."
My kids went deathly silent. I started to cry and realized I wasn't going to be able to hold it in and had to walk out. I asked Ms. J (formerly known as the other Ms. A) to stand in for a minute and she got another teacher to come cover. And then I got covered the next period. It figures that the only time I have gotten a coverage this entire year is when I had a complete breakdown in the middle of class (nothing like preventative medicine, eh?). And the sad thing is that I am one of maybe 10 teachers that this has happened to this year- not this situation exactly, but situations that have gotten so bad that teachers- the rest of them veterans, all well respected and competent- had breakdowns in the middle of school. But there is absolutely no accountability for things like that built in to the system. Is my AP, who really could've prevented all of the drama in the first place, ever going to be accountable in any way? Of course not.
My kids stayed silent, shamed, for two straight periods, according to the other teachers who were in there. They wrote me love/I'll miss you/goodbye letters while I was bawling in the bathroom. A couple of other teachers across the hall in the office told me Cyrus left the room crying because he was so upset I at how upset I was.
A couple of them, that made me start crying again when they gave them to me as I came back in the room, edited (only very slightly) for readability:
Cyrus:
I love you. you are one of the best teacher I ever had. I don't want to leave you. I wish we could try again. I feel very sad for what going on. I will allways miss you.
Love your best student ever
Cyrus
I want to cry so bad but I have to stay strong
Lucky (in poem form, in a cover with decorations and things like "bad girl love" written on it):
remember when I first
came here I was a
meain* in the butt
but know the
day had come
for us to leave
but I don't want
it to happen
cuz we all
love you
and from now
on I will
call your
cell phone
to see how
you doin
but we'll
all love
I love
you!!!!
(*editors note I think meant pain but also mean... she likes to combine words, how she got the name Lucky in the first place. and she was a pain and also mean when she first came)
Kira:
Dear Ms. A
Thank you for teaching me this year in sixth grade you don't have to cry we are still your students in our heart and we wanted to let you that that because we are going to miss you I don't really want to leave this room and everybody that was in the class I wish we can have another chance so we can show you who we really are and that we can learn something too. Just like everyone else I wish Ms. M was here too so we can stay together. I'm going to ask Ms. J. can we have another chance so don't cry.
But no, chances are up...
Monday, May 14, 2007
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
processing
I probably don't have time to be writing this. For one of my grad classes, I have to make a graphic organizer through technology, somehow, related to my next unit... HAH.
I mean, not exactly. But if I sat and wrote out how completely crazy my classroom (which is now combined with L's class next door... not counting my resource kids) has become and may be again tomorrow if my principal decides to split the room up (already threatened... not exactly as a threat, but as a "this is what's best for your class and we know because we haven't been in it all year but we're going to make decisions that completely screw you over and then will tell you it's not a big deal" kind of way that is how every decision in my school seems to get made), or complained about my administration (more than I already have- poor Ems already heard a rant about that today though) this post would be longer than they usually are.
I realized tonight though that this blog is how I "process" everything. So, grad school be damned (not really. I am determined to get an A in this class, for once- well, twice- in my grad school career). But really, technological graphic organizer? I mean, that'd be great if I had the resources to do it. Or knew if I was going to be in the same classroom to do it. Or which students, or which subject, or anything. But in a year that has been supposedly all about being "data driven" instruction, really, planning and assessing lessons has really been the bottom of the list of what I've been forced to prioritize. And so my students lose. Again.
I've been thinking a lot about the relationships I have with my students. Why, exactly, do I love Cyrus so much? Versus, say, Pockets? I mean, I had Cyrus the whole year and Pockets only a few months. And I love Pockets, I think he's hilarious and really smart. But Cyrus I kind of want to adopt. Not even kind of. Do. I won't (Grandma, stop worrying...). He has a mother who's cleaned up and gotten her act together (except for her husband, apparently, who's been banned from the school building), who loves him and takes good care of him, and I certainly don't have the financial or logistical capability to take care of a kid right now. But there is just about nothing in the world that I wouldn't do for him. We keep having these conversations about my not being there next year (as I feel more and more like my administration is shoving the very, very short, chewed up, dirty and bug infested end of the stick my way, if not in an orifice, this is becoming more and more clear a decision). He's not trying to guilt me, exactly, just sort of letting me know that he's got no real incentive to even show up to school, much less do better, if I'm not around. And he's kind of distanced himself from anyone in the classroom that would get him in trouble- which, since my class is full of chatterboxes, would be most people. It breaks my heart to not be there for him next year. I explained to him that he would have my email address, and my phone number, and that I fully expected to be invited (and would come back) for eighth grade, high school, and college graduation, and any graduations that he had after that. He mock complained about it for a minute but agreed that he would invite me to them (implicitly agreeing that he was going to graduate at all those levels- hurray!). In the same way that moving away from family and friends is really difficult, I just can't imagine going to work every day and not having him there. The sheer effort he has been making to be a good student and separate himself and grow up is kind of staggering. It's hard, and it's lonely, and it shows on his face. Sometimes when I look at his face in class I can almost watch him struggling to mature inside himself, even while doing something total banal (today, worksheets like identifying conjunctions and interjections). This is going to sound completely cheesy, but knowing what he's been through and is trying to become and watching him go through that struggle every day gives me hope for humanity. I look at him and think that there is some inherent goodness or nobility of spirit or something deep inside him that is just awe-inspiring.
And been thinking about my relationship with other kids, as random as they get. LJ comes to see more often than any of my other resource students, BJ included. I know it makes some of the other teachers nervous. It makes me nervous some days. Friday we had a half day, professional development. I drove to Wawa to get lunch (for those of you not in the tri-state area, Wawa is one of the most amazing places known to mankind. It was the thing I missed most after my family and friends when I moved to Chicago). LJ had actually been suspended that day, but on my way back to school I drove by the house of a friend of his (who actually had come to see me with BJ earlier, but then cut school- I saw them running out of the building the beginning of the last period of the day). They were hanging out on the porch, and when they saw me the started yelling for me to slow down, because they wanted to talk. The house is across a field from the school, but literally within shouting distance and plain view. It was hot out, so I had all my windows down, and I started talking to K, BJ's friend (who had helped me grade papers after spending a very awkward few minutes trying to figure out my sexuality a few days before- LJ had decided that I looked like I "swing both ways" I think to see if he could set me up with Ms. Lez, and the whole little crew really seemed to want to know) out the window about why he cut school. LJ jumped off the porch with an adorable dog (are there really any other kinds?) on a leash and ran around to my passenger window. I figured he'd just stick his head in the window to chat, so I kept talking to K, but then he unlocked the door and jumped in the passenger seat- with his dog.
"Drive! Drive!" he yelled.
I was confused. There were no police around, I wouldn't exactly be the best getaway car or a willing accomplice, no matter how funny or smart I think he is, and he had just been chilling out on a friend's porch in plain view, within a couple hundred feet of the school.
"Um, I'm going back to the school. I can drive you back to the school, but I'm not going anyplace else- just because students have a half day doesn't mean teachers do."
"Oh yeah. Forgot about that. Well, you can just drop me off here then. I just wanted to chat."
And... we chatted, he told me to have a good weekend, and he got out of the car and walked back to K's. Like I said. Random.
Yesterday he asked me if I told security that he brings drugs to school.
"I actually never talked to security about you. But when I talk to people in administration I tell them that you usually have me search your bag when you come in to prove you don't have drugs with you, or empty out your pockets."
"Oh. Good." He paused for a minute. "You can't search my bag today."
I did anyway, when he left the room, mostly because what he said made me suspect that he did bring drugs or worse. Not very thoroughly, but I didn't find anything. He could tell, I'm not sure how. But we wound up having a long talk about prison (he's upset that I think he's going to wind up there) and jobs and money, and he actually admitted that he wants to go to college someday. I wonder if I actually am making any progress with him at all or if he's smart enough to make me think I am to pacify me so I'll keep letting him come down and spend time with me and occasionally his friends. It's not like we have a party- I occasionally have candy and he uses the computer once in a great while. Past that I'm not sure what he gets out of watching me give mind-numbing tests to other kids. I'm even bored by them. You couldn't pay me to sit and watch someone else take them if I didn't absolutely have to. But he actually likes it.
He was excited today because he didn't get suspended- we have an ongoing joke about how I never see him more than one day at a time because he gets suspended pretty much every day that he comes to school.
Might process a little more later, but it's looking like time to do my homework... blech.
To J- Can I even tell you how thrilled I would be if all my students actually understood and remembered all the information in the SchoolHouse Rock video? God, I fantasize about having students that care enough to use mp3 players to cheat like that. Do you realize how technologically proficient they'd have to be to even get that far? That's like, mastery of two national standards right there. Oh, No Child Left Behind. Except- oh, wait, no, that doesn't work at all... maybe, No Rich Child With MP3 Players and Knowledge of Advanced Computer Technology From Well Educated But Neurotic Parents Left Behind? There we go...
I mean, not exactly. But if I sat and wrote out how completely crazy my classroom (which is now combined with L's class next door... not counting my resource kids) has become and may be again tomorrow if my principal decides to split the room up (already threatened... not exactly as a threat, but as a "this is what's best for your class and we know because we haven't been in it all year but we're going to make decisions that completely screw you over and then will tell you it's not a big deal" kind of way that is how every decision in my school seems to get made), or complained about my administration (more than I already have- poor Ems already heard a rant about that today though) this post would be longer than they usually are.
I realized tonight though that this blog is how I "process" everything. So, grad school be damned (not really. I am determined to get an A in this class, for once- well, twice- in my grad school career). But really, technological graphic organizer? I mean, that'd be great if I had the resources to do it. Or knew if I was going to be in the same classroom to do it. Or which students, or which subject, or anything. But in a year that has been supposedly all about being "data driven" instruction, really, planning and assessing lessons has really been the bottom of the list of what I've been forced to prioritize. And so my students lose. Again.
I've been thinking a lot about the relationships I have with my students. Why, exactly, do I love Cyrus so much? Versus, say, Pockets? I mean, I had Cyrus the whole year and Pockets only a few months. And I love Pockets, I think he's hilarious and really smart. But Cyrus I kind of want to adopt. Not even kind of. Do. I won't (Grandma, stop worrying...). He has a mother who's cleaned up and gotten her act together (except for her husband, apparently, who's been banned from the school building), who loves him and takes good care of him, and I certainly don't have the financial or logistical capability to take care of a kid right now. But there is just about nothing in the world that I wouldn't do for him. We keep having these conversations about my not being there next year (as I feel more and more like my administration is shoving the very, very short, chewed up, dirty and bug infested end of the stick my way, if not in an orifice, this is becoming more and more clear a decision). He's not trying to guilt me, exactly, just sort of letting me know that he's got no real incentive to even show up to school, much less do better, if I'm not around. And he's kind of distanced himself from anyone in the classroom that would get him in trouble- which, since my class is full of chatterboxes, would be most people. It breaks my heart to not be there for him next year. I explained to him that he would have my email address, and my phone number, and that I fully expected to be invited (and would come back) for eighth grade, high school, and college graduation, and any graduations that he had after that. He mock complained about it for a minute but agreed that he would invite me to them (implicitly agreeing that he was going to graduate at all those levels- hurray!). In the same way that moving away from family and friends is really difficult, I just can't imagine going to work every day and not having him there. The sheer effort he has been making to be a good student and separate himself and grow up is kind of staggering. It's hard, and it's lonely, and it shows on his face. Sometimes when I look at his face in class I can almost watch him struggling to mature inside himself, even while doing something total banal (today, worksheets like identifying conjunctions and interjections). This is going to sound completely cheesy, but knowing what he's been through and is trying to become and watching him go through that struggle every day gives me hope for humanity. I look at him and think that there is some inherent goodness or nobility of spirit or something deep inside him that is just awe-inspiring.
And been thinking about my relationship with other kids, as random as they get. LJ comes to see more often than any of my other resource students, BJ included. I know it makes some of the other teachers nervous. It makes me nervous some days. Friday we had a half day, professional development. I drove to Wawa to get lunch (for those of you not in the tri-state area, Wawa is one of the most amazing places known to mankind. It was the thing I missed most after my family and friends when I moved to Chicago). LJ had actually been suspended that day, but on my way back to school I drove by the house of a friend of his (who actually had come to see me with BJ earlier, but then cut school- I saw them running out of the building the beginning of the last period of the day). They were hanging out on the porch, and when they saw me the started yelling for me to slow down, because they wanted to talk. The house is across a field from the school, but literally within shouting distance and plain view. It was hot out, so I had all my windows down, and I started talking to K, BJ's friend (who had helped me grade papers after spending a very awkward few minutes trying to figure out my sexuality a few days before- LJ had decided that I looked like I "swing both ways" I think to see if he could set me up with Ms. Lez, and the whole little crew really seemed to want to know) out the window about why he cut school. LJ jumped off the porch with an adorable dog (are there really any other kinds?) on a leash and ran around to my passenger window. I figured he'd just stick his head in the window to chat, so I kept talking to K, but then he unlocked the door and jumped in the passenger seat- with his dog.
"Drive! Drive!" he yelled.
I was confused. There were no police around, I wouldn't exactly be the best getaway car or a willing accomplice, no matter how funny or smart I think he is, and he had just been chilling out on a friend's porch in plain view, within a couple hundred feet of the school.
"Um, I'm going back to the school. I can drive you back to the school, but I'm not going anyplace else- just because students have a half day doesn't mean teachers do."
"Oh yeah. Forgot about that. Well, you can just drop me off here then. I just wanted to chat."
And... we chatted, he told me to have a good weekend, and he got out of the car and walked back to K's. Like I said. Random.
Yesterday he asked me if I told security that he brings drugs to school.
"I actually never talked to security about you. But when I talk to people in administration I tell them that you usually have me search your bag when you come in to prove you don't have drugs with you, or empty out your pockets."
"Oh. Good." He paused for a minute. "You can't search my bag today."
I did anyway, when he left the room, mostly because what he said made me suspect that he did bring drugs or worse. Not very thoroughly, but I didn't find anything. He could tell, I'm not sure how. But we wound up having a long talk about prison (he's upset that I think he's going to wind up there) and jobs and money, and he actually admitted that he wants to go to college someday. I wonder if I actually am making any progress with him at all or if he's smart enough to make me think I am to pacify me so I'll keep letting him come down and spend time with me and occasionally his friends. It's not like we have a party- I occasionally have candy and he uses the computer once in a great while. Past that I'm not sure what he gets out of watching me give mind-numbing tests to other kids. I'm even bored by them. You couldn't pay me to sit and watch someone else take them if I didn't absolutely have to. But he actually likes it.
He was excited today because he didn't get suspended- we have an ongoing joke about how I never see him more than one day at a time because he gets suspended pretty much every day that he comes to school.
Might process a little more later, but it's looking like time to do my homework... blech.
To J- Can I even tell you how thrilled I would be if all my students actually understood and remembered all the information in the SchoolHouse Rock video? God, I fantasize about having students that care enough to use mp3 players to cheat like that. Do you realize how technologically proficient they'd have to be to even get that far? That's like, mastery of two national standards right there. Oh, No Child Left Behind. Except- oh, wait, no, that doesn't work at all... maybe, No Rich Child With MP3 Players and Knowledge of Advanced Computer Technology From Well Educated But Neurotic Parents Left Behind? There we go...
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
you were bad once...
Today for some reason felt kind of emotionally difficult. Can't imagine why- not like that ever has happened other days. Nope, every other day has been happy and cheerful and I've left work postively perky. Chirping with joy about the innocence and wonder of childhood.
Another teacher told me today that sarcasm doesn't kick in until seventh grade. Sixth grade a lot of the kids get it, but not quickly, and there's still some who go, "Wait, really?" and have to be told explicitly that you're messing with them. By seventh grade, the cynicism they've built up in their teachers has become more obvious.
Found out today that Gamer's (I think I called him Farter in previous posts...) dad is schizophrenic. I was on the verge of calling DHS on his family; he comes in with dirty clothes, poor hygeine, and gets hysterical if anyone mentions contacting his parents. Old anecdotal record logs in his file show his previous teacher had the same suspicions I did. Now I think maybe he's manipulating us, which is a hard thing to think about a kid, but I feel a lot more sympathy for his mom. Not going to go into more details now, but I think she just felt defeated, and I actually felt an honest conversation with her which I've never felt with him. Also found out that one of my girls was hospitalized a few days ago for a mental breakdown (actually the girl who Gamer enraged to the point of beating him over the head with a social studies textbook. those babies are big), along with one of L's kids who was in my after school program (not together, it just happened at roughly the same time). And had a conversation with Jamie that made me wonder if he's got a tinge of sociopath in him. It was a terrific morning.
I actually had a wonderful conversation with one of my seventh grade resource kids- the one his teacher was afraid was in a gang. I haven't seen him in a few days, so she called to tell me he was present. I saw him at the end of the day and did some IEP testing with him. In the middle he mentioned he had just passed a math test- and actually, he didn't only pass it, he got a B, which, for him, is terrific. And he has another test tomorrow, and had the study guide to it in his pocket, and could explain to me all of the stuff he was going to be tested on. I was so excited I kept hugging him and offered him a period of anything he wanted to do on Friday if he got an A on the one tomorrow- and it's a hard subject for kids his age, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions (with unlike denominators! and he knew about numerators and denominators! I almost died of happiness. I'm going to go hug his math teacher tomorrow. I think the only honest form of positive communication I have these days is hugs. not so much a good thing in my job, as I could probably be fired for it). Computer time, cake, whatever. It was pretty much the first and only positive thing to happen today. He's right on that brink between where my sixth grade wannabe-badasses are and my eighth grade actual-badasses are. Most of the time I spend with him is really doing self-esteem stuff; he told me last week there's nothing he actually likes about himself. It was kind of heartbreaking. We've been working on journaling, with a list of things he likes about himself in it that he can add to whenever he wants. Of course LJ came down while I was with him. LJ comes to see me more than any of my other students, I think. He told me today that BJ was in love with me.
"You know, J is in love with you. He says you're dazzling."
I shrugged.
"Somehow I'm not convinced. If he loves me so much, how come he doesn't come to school to see me?"
This apparently hadn't occurred to him.
"You actually want him to come to school?"
I guess they don't hear that much, or at least not that they think is sincere. I don't blame anyone for that; if they were in my classroom all day I probably wouldn't want them to come to school either. But it occurred to me that LJ might actually have a crush on me. Not just the lust that his friends have rather crudely remarked on that they seem to share, but an actual crush. I barely even talked to him today, and warned him of that.
"I have to do testing, so I'm going to be kind of boring today. You're welcome to hang out, though."
He shrugged. He wanted to help my seventh grader with the test, and actually wanted to take it himself. LJ is actually kind of ridiculously smart, I think. I wish there were some way to channel it that I could see, in the next 30ish days of school that he might actually attend. I told him he would make a good teacher, but he laughed at me. I would too if I were him. Who wants to take that kind of paycut?
Another teacher told me today that sarcasm doesn't kick in until seventh grade. Sixth grade a lot of the kids get it, but not quickly, and there's still some who go, "Wait, really?" and have to be told explicitly that you're messing with them. By seventh grade, the cynicism they've built up in their teachers has become more obvious.
Found out today that Gamer's (I think I called him Farter in previous posts...) dad is schizophrenic. I was on the verge of calling DHS on his family; he comes in with dirty clothes, poor hygeine, and gets hysterical if anyone mentions contacting his parents. Old anecdotal record logs in his file show his previous teacher had the same suspicions I did. Now I think maybe he's manipulating us, which is a hard thing to think about a kid, but I feel a lot more sympathy for his mom. Not going to go into more details now, but I think she just felt defeated, and I actually felt an honest conversation with her which I've never felt with him. Also found out that one of my girls was hospitalized a few days ago for a mental breakdown (actually the girl who Gamer enraged to the point of beating him over the head with a social studies textbook. those babies are big), along with one of L's kids who was in my after school program (not together, it just happened at roughly the same time). And had a conversation with Jamie that made me wonder if he's got a tinge of sociopath in him. It was a terrific morning.
I actually had a wonderful conversation with one of my seventh grade resource kids- the one his teacher was afraid was in a gang. I haven't seen him in a few days, so she called to tell me he was present. I saw him at the end of the day and did some IEP testing with him. In the middle he mentioned he had just passed a math test- and actually, he didn't only pass it, he got a B, which, for him, is terrific. And he has another test tomorrow, and had the study guide to it in his pocket, and could explain to me all of the stuff he was going to be tested on. I was so excited I kept hugging him and offered him a period of anything he wanted to do on Friday if he got an A on the one tomorrow- and it's a hard subject for kids his age, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions (with unlike denominators! and he knew about numerators and denominators! I almost died of happiness. I'm going to go hug his math teacher tomorrow. I think the only honest form of positive communication I have these days is hugs. not so much a good thing in my job, as I could probably be fired for it). Computer time, cake, whatever. It was pretty much the first and only positive thing to happen today. He's right on that brink between where my sixth grade wannabe-badasses are and my eighth grade actual-badasses are. Most of the time I spend with him is really doing self-esteem stuff; he told me last week there's nothing he actually likes about himself. It was kind of heartbreaking. We've been working on journaling, with a list of things he likes about himself in it that he can add to whenever he wants. Of course LJ came down while I was with him. LJ comes to see me more than any of my other students, I think. He told me today that BJ was in love with me.
"You know, J is in love with you. He says you're dazzling."
I shrugged.
"Somehow I'm not convinced. If he loves me so much, how come he doesn't come to school to see me?"
This apparently hadn't occurred to him.
"You actually want him to come to school?"
I guess they don't hear that much, or at least not that they think is sincere. I don't blame anyone for that; if they were in my classroom all day I probably wouldn't want them to come to school either. But it occurred to me that LJ might actually have a crush on me. Not just the lust that his friends have rather crudely remarked on that they seem to share, but an actual crush. I barely even talked to him today, and warned him of that.
"I have to do testing, so I'm going to be kind of boring today. You're welcome to hang out, though."
He shrugged. He wanted to help my seventh grader with the test, and actually wanted to take it himself. LJ is actually kind of ridiculously smart, I think. I wish there were some way to channel it that I could see, in the next 30ish days of school that he might actually attend. I told him he would make a good teacher, but he laughed at me. I would too if I were him. Who wants to take that kind of paycut?
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
do you like coming to school and hearing about all this stuff?
This post is gonna start a little differently. If you're a regular reader of this blog, and procrastinate much like I do by, well blog-surfing, you may have checked out "the colon chronicles". This is a link to a blog of a girl I knew in Chicago through capoeira (hence the portugese sprinkled through her site), who was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer a while back and managed to pull through some truly nightmarish times, and has done so with some amazing good humor. Unfortunately, some more are still ahead for her, as the medical bills have piled up. I'm perpetually a step away from being a financial disaster, despite a steady paycheck and as-needed help from a wonderful and supportive family. I can't even begin to imagine how hard going through that kind of experience would be, even without the financial ramifications... anyway, her website, www.cancer-sucks.com, has a donation button on it, and I wanted to do a quick plug for her. This is sort of an anonymous favor (and how awkward to do it in blog form, right?)- I never knew her as well as I wanted to back in Chicago when we both might've had the time, and have only been following her story from afar through friends and internet updates for the last few months. I doubt she knows her blog is even linked to my blog, if she even knows I have one. She's just somebody I've grown to admire greatly for her attitude and strength, from a distance, and I think she deserves some good karma at this point. So check it out, and try to help if you can.
I got another resource student today. Haven't met her yet. I have to write something like 10 IEPs in the next two weeks. Fun! (And so of course, I procrastinate by writing here instead...)
I rarely get to meet with my resource kids consistently, though, as they all seem to be suspended so often that they're rarely in school more than a few days in a row. LJ has decided to come see me even when BJ's not there. Yesterday I went to go meet with an eighth grade girl that I hadn't actually gotten to talk to yet. LJ came with me (his teacher was hoping he'd cut, but he showed up while I was at her door, so she asked if I could take him instead so he didn't disrupt her class). Jabberwock is the girl's teacher, and told me she had warned him that when it got nice out she was going to stop coming to school. Academically, she's doing fine (it's amazing how many of these kids have no business in special ed...), except in one class where she doesn't seem to be getting along with the teacher, so we started talking about cutting class, and school, and why they do it. She and LJ knew each other already, so the conversation got pretty open pretty fast.
My resource kids don't seem to think of me like a teacher, exactly... they tell me stuff I know they wouldn't think of telling other teachers. I can't tell if it's because I'm young, or because I'm very honest with them, or what. But it gets to the level that I sometimes remind them that I'm obligated to report certain things. LJ, for example, has brought a bookbag to school twice in the last week. Now, LJ never brings a bookbag to school- the school supplies he evidently needs (like condoms) fit in his pocket. He's a smart kid- he knew more than BJ did on the tests I gave him, and BJ did pretty well- but he's pretty comfortable with his future as a high school drop-out, so why bother? So when he brought a bag to school, the logical assumption his teachers made was that he brought drugs or weapons to school. He made a joke about it to me (prompting a "I have to report certain things" talk) but then encouraged me to search it. My assumption, following that, is that he brought something in, unloaded it quickly, and knowing that the administration knows I have a relationship with him and would ask me about him, gave himself a cover by having me search it. He also started telling me about his gang, the initials of which he has tattoed on his arm. He and Alexa started giving me a rundown of the local gangs (among other things... hence Alexa's question, the title of this post). I'm still trying to learn details of the gang that tagged my car. I asked him about them, but he didn't seem to know much, or not much that he would admit. His gang, at least the kids I assume are in his gang, that come to visit me, know what my car looks like- they can't get over that I drove to BJ's house after school. Evidently home visits are out of fashion these days. In the back of my mind I think I felt nervous that they would check the car out and see another gang's symbol and make some kind of connection that would get me caught in some drama. But maybe it'll work out the opposite way; they all obviously like me, so maybe it'll be like I have some loose protection of two gangs, should I ever need it. Friends in low places, right? He had talked to me about the gang before, but I was too slow to put together the pieces. I didn't really make the connection, although I had suspicions, until another teacher asked me about another student we both have, a 7th grader, to see if he was in a gang, because another kid in her same class who got stabbed last week is, and she wanted to know if they were in the same one. Jellyroll, from my class, told me he was there when the stabbing happened but I haven't gotten the chance to talk to him about it. I can't imagine him in a gang, but then I've learned my lesson about never saying never about students- and he was, after all, the kid that brought the cap gun to school. I don't know why it's taken me so long to make all these connections, but it only suddenly hit me today how common gangs are in my school and how many of my kids are in them. It's a little disturbing, actually.
Speaking of disturbing... Jamie (formerly referred to as Dae), Huffy, Gecko, and two other kids (neither of whom have nicknames yet) got suspended for beating up Jellyroll in the bathroom. I'm so disgusted I can barely stand it. Only one actually did it, but the rest guarded the door so Jr couldn't get out. It makes me so angry... Now he has to leave the class, too, and of the group I think he's the only one who was truly sorry for his roll in beating up Squirrel. He was my new secret favorite, the one with a conscience, and he was a really good student on top of that. The fact that they were all his close friends at the beginning of the year just makes it worse. The kid who actually beat him up is just nuts. I don't really even blame him, because I think he just truly has no control over himself at all and really should be hospitalized, but the others...
I'm starting to feel like I've run out of emotion. I'd like to be really angry and upset, but mostly I'm just tired of it. I hugged Cyrus when I found out he wasn't a part of it. And it makes me sick that I'm thankful when one of my kids isn't participating in group beatings. I want to be hugging him for perfect test scores, or winning football games, or showing excellence in some way. And while I rationalize it by looking at how far he's come- to stay out of trouble, when it's all you've known and been in, all your life, and is all that is expected of you, and all your friends are doing it, during the most peer-motivated period of your life, is truly remarkable, and a sign to me of strength and growth and maturity- but it still makes me sick to think that there's a possibility he'll never be held to higher standards and expected to grow to his full potential.
I got a loose job offer, last week, for an electoral organizing job that in many ways is exactly what I want to do and an incredible opportunity. But I feel racked by guilt at the thought of leaving my kids, and my school, even though a few months ago I was ready to do it out of spite and anger and frustration and thought I made the decision for good. I told a couple of the kids there was a possibility I wouldn't be there next year, mostly Cyrus. Cyrus told me if I left he had no reason to come to school. It'll be an ongoing conversation, but I tried to explain to him that the best thing he could do for me was to show me that he could succeed without me, because I'm not always going to be there for him, even if I want to be, but that I will always love him and will know that he really is the person I know he can be if he is his best even when I'm not there. And that that, actually, is the test. I know he'll be his best when I'm there, because I'll make him, but if he'll do it for me even when I'm not there then I'll know he really truly has become his best, both for me and for him. It was a big knife in the heart; it's not that he doesn't have other reasons. He's popular and athletic- he's quarterback of the local football team, which he's on with Jamie- and the girls all think he's cute, which I know from notes I find scattered through the classroom, and I know he's dated at least one girl in the room this year, who is also pretty and popular and happens to be really smart. But I guess he understands there's a level of superficiality to all that, which he could get anywhere. Having a teacher that loves him and believes in him he might not be able to get somewhere else.
I had a long conversation about this with Ems. It's a problem a lot of TFA teachers have, that they want to be that teacher that makes a difference for every kid they see, and the reality that they are not it for every kid is really hard to deal with. I'm pretty comfortable with it. I didn't come in with that illusion. First of all, a lot of my kids don't need that role. For all the awful situations some of them come in with, a lot of them come in with really loving, supportive families or communities that fill that role in their lives. And for some of the rest of them, there's just a personality conflict, or lack of spark, or whatever. No one can be everything every child needs. I've got more than a few kids for whom I am just not what they need or are looking for right now. And that's fine- if there's someone else they relate to better, because they don't like women, or young people, or me, or whatever, I try to point them toward people they might relate to better. But every once in a while, there is a kid that there is just that bond with, where they need something really intensely and you have it to give. I had it last year with DJ, and with Bouncer, and C. This year, that kid in my class is Cyrus, and to a lesser extent Jamie, and definitely with some of the kids, mostly Maria and Anita from after school and a couple of other random kids. Not that I don't love all of my kids, or that they don't need something, but I don't think I'm necessarily that one teacher for all of them. For Cyrus, I am. And it's fairly obvious to most of the kids in my class, I think. It's not favoritism, and it doesn't seem to upset them in any way. Most of them wouldn't even open themselves up emotionally enough to have that kind of bond, so it's not something they really get jealous of. They don't need it, they don't want it. But they see it and recognize it. And it's really hard to let go of those kids, not knowing if they'll ever get this vague amorphous thing that they need ever again or if what I've given them has been enough. I'm going to be the most annoying parent ever, some day, I'm sure, because I'm afraid even of letting go of my students. Not that Cyrus helped with the comment today...
Another cheery day with the future of our country.
I got another resource student today. Haven't met her yet. I have to write something like 10 IEPs in the next two weeks. Fun! (And so of course, I procrastinate by writing here instead...)
I rarely get to meet with my resource kids consistently, though, as they all seem to be suspended so often that they're rarely in school more than a few days in a row. LJ has decided to come see me even when BJ's not there. Yesterday I went to go meet with an eighth grade girl that I hadn't actually gotten to talk to yet. LJ came with me (his teacher was hoping he'd cut, but he showed up while I was at her door, so she asked if I could take him instead so he didn't disrupt her class). Jabberwock is the girl's teacher, and told me she had warned him that when it got nice out she was going to stop coming to school. Academically, she's doing fine (it's amazing how many of these kids have no business in special ed...), except in one class where she doesn't seem to be getting along with the teacher, so we started talking about cutting class, and school, and why they do it. She and LJ knew each other already, so the conversation got pretty open pretty fast.
My resource kids don't seem to think of me like a teacher, exactly... they tell me stuff I know they wouldn't think of telling other teachers. I can't tell if it's because I'm young, or because I'm very honest with them, or what. But it gets to the level that I sometimes remind them that I'm obligated to report certain things. LJ, for example, has brought a bookbag to school twice in the last week. Now, LJ never brings a bookbag to school- the school supplies he evidently needs (like condoms) fit in his pocket. He's a smart kid- he knew more than BJ did on the tests I gave him, and BJ did pretty well- but he's pretty comfortable with his future as a high school drop-out, so why bother? So when he brought a bag to school, the logical assumption his teachers made was that he brought drugs or weapons to school. He made a joke about it to me (prompting a "I have to report certain things" talk) but then encouraged me to search it. My assumption, following that, is that he brought something in, unloaded it quickly, and knowing that the administration knows I have a relationship with him and would ask me about him, gave himself a cover by having me search it. He also started telling me about his gang, the initials of which he has tattoed on his arm. He and Alexa started giving me a rundown of the local gangs (among other things... hence Alexa's question, the title of this post). I'm still trying to learn details of the gang that tagged my car. I asked him about them, but he didn't seem to know much, or not much that he would admit. His gang, at least the kids I assume are in his gang, that come to visit me, know what my car looks like- they can't get over that I drove to BJ's house after school. Evidently home visits are out of fashion these days. In the back of my mind I think I felt nervous that they would check the car out and see another gang's symbol and make some kind of connection that would get me caught in some drama. But maybe it'll work out the opposite way; they all obviously like me, so maybe it'll be like I have some loose protection of two gangs, should I ever need it. Friends in low places, right? He had talked to me about the gang before, but I was too slow to put together the pieces. I didn't really make the connection, although I had suspicions, until another teacher asked me about another student we both have, a 7th grader, to see if he was in a gang, because another kid in her same class who got stabbed last week is, and she wanted to know if they were in the same one. Jellyroll, from my class, told me he was there when the stabbing happened but I haven't gotten the chance to talk to him about it. I can't imagine him in a gang, but then I've learned my lesson about never saying never about students- and he was, after all, the kid that brought the cap gun to school. I don't know why it's taken me so long to make all these connections, but it only suddenly hit me today how common gangs are in my school and how many of my kids are in them. It's a little disturbing, actually.
Speaking of disturbing... Jamie (formerly referred to as Dae), Huffy, Gecko, and two other kids (neither of whom have nicknames yet) got suspended for beating up Jellyroll in the bathroom. I'm so disgusted I can barely stand it. Only one actually did it, but the rest guarded the door so Jr couldn't get out. It makes me so angry... Now he has to leave the class, too, and of the group I think he's the only one who was truly sorry for his roll in beating up Squirrel. He was my new secret favorite, the one with a conscience, and he was a really good student on top of that. The fact that they were all his close friends at the beginning of the year just makes it worse. The kid who actually beat him up is just nuts. I don't really even blame him, because I think he just truly has no control over himself at all and really should be hospitalized, but the others...
I'm starting to feel like I've run out of emotion. I'd like to be really angry and upset, but mostly I'm just tired of it. I hugged Cyrus when I found out he wasn't a part of it. And it makes me sick that I'm thankful when one of my kids isn't participating in group beatings. I want to be hugging him for perfect test scores, or winning football games, or showing excellence in some way. And while I rationalize it by looking at how far he's come- to stay out of trouble, when it's all you've known and been in, all your life, and is all that is expected of you, and all your friends are doing it, during the most peer-motivated period of your life, is truly remarkable, and a sign to me of strength and growth and maturity- but it still makes me sick to think that there's a possibility he'll never be held to higher standards and expected to grow to his full potential.
I got a loose job offer, last week, for an electoral organizing job that in many ways is exactly what I want to do and an incredible opportunity. But I feel racked by guilt at the thought of leaving my kids, and my school, even though a few months ago I was ready to do it out of spite and anger and frustration and thought I made the decision for good. I told a couple of the kids there was a possibility I wouldn't be there next year, mostly Cyrus. Cyrus told me if I left he had no reason to come to school. It'll be an ongoing conversation, but I tried to explain to him that the best thing he could do for me was to show me that he could succeed without me, because I'm not always going to be there for him, even if I want to be, but that I will always love him and will know that he really is the person I know he can be if he is his best even when I'm not there. And that that, actually, is the test. I know he'll be his best when I'm there, because I'll make him, but if he'll do it for me even when I'm not there then I'll know he really truly has become his best, both for me and for him. It was a big knife in the heart; it's not that he doesn't have other reasons. He's popular and athletic- he's quarterback of the local football team, which he's on with Jamie- and the girls all think he's cute, which I know from notes I find scattered through the classroom, and I know he's dated at least one girl in the room this year, who is also pretty and popular and happens to be really smart. But I guess he understands there's a level of superficiality to all that, which he could get anywhere. Having a teacher that loves him and believes in him he might not be able to get somewhere else.
I had a long conversation about this with Ems. It's a problem a lot of TFA teachers have, that they want to be that teacher that makes a difference for every kid they see, and the reality that they are not it for every kid is really hard to deal with. I'm pretty comfortable with it. I didn't come in with that illusion. First of all, a lot of my kids don't need that role. For all the awful situations some of them come in with, a lot of them come in with really loving, supportive families or communities that fill that role in their lives. And for some of the rest of them, there's just a personality conflict, or lack of spark, or whatever. No one can be everything every child needs. I've got more than a few kids for whom I am just not what they need or are looking for right now. And that's fine- if there's someone else they relate to better, because they don't like women, or young people, or me, or whatever, I try to point them toward people they might relate to better. But every once in a while, there is a kid that there is just that bond with, where they need something really intensely and you have it to give. I had it last year with DJ, and with Bouncer, and C. This year, that kid in my class is Cyrus, and to a lesser extent Jamie, and definitely with some of the kids, mostly Maria and Anita from after school and a couple of other random kids. Not that I don't love all of my kids, or that they don't need something, but I don't think I'm necessarily that one teacher for all of them. For Cyrus, I am. And it's fairly obvious to most of the kids in my class, I think. It's not favoritism, and it doesn't seem to upset them in any way. Most of them wouldn't even open themselves up emotionally enough to have that kind of bond, so it's not something they really get jealous of. They don't need it, they don't want it. But they see it and recognize it. And it's really hard to let go of those kids, not knowing if they'll ever get this vague amorphous thing that they need ever again or if what I've given them has been enough. I'm going to be the most annoying parent ever, some day, I'm sure, because I'm afraid even of letting go of my students. Not that Cyrus helped with the comment today...
Another cheery day with the future of our country.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
some high(and low-)lights of this week (mostly from the 8th grade)
1. finding out that Big Jay is actually 13, not 14, while writing his IEP. Not that this should make a difference, but somehow, the fact that he's got such a long criminal record already, is having sex and selling drugs just seems significantly worse somehow now that I know he's 13. Also, he tested damn near on grade level in math without having been awake through a math class or through the entirety of one in about two years. which means... special ed, not so much.
2. going to BJ's house after he and LJ cut out of school because LJ got in trouble for printing out pictures of guns in order to get BJ to finish taking his frigging IEP tests and completely and utterly wasting an hour of my life there as he completely refused to do anything and got so upset I actually came over that he tried to take his bike out to ride away (luckily it had a flat tire). This was a problem as he's under house arrest. I was kind of afraid he'd get locked up again before school this week. Luckily not.
3. being grilled by BJ's and LJ's friends today on my love life. LJ decided I looked like the type who dated women and men, and wanted me to tell them if I swung both ways. They spent the next half hour trying to get me to tell them something about my love (or more accurately, sex) life. BJ stayed out of it, and even sort of had my back.
"Yo, man, she's just going to say no to anything you say. Stop asking her."
I like him more every day. Except when I was at his house and he was a huge pain in the ass. But it definitely had some kind of effect. He told all of his friends about it, repeatedly. LJ wanted to know why I didn't come to his house. I told him if I hadn't found BJ at his own house, I would've checked his next. I actually had his address when I went over, considering it, but I didn't add that in general I'm more comfortable with BJ because he gets mad when I make an effort to check up on him (although I think he does appreciate it in the end) rather than tries to flirt... LJ probably would've asked me to sleep over (echoes of R's brother from last year... "You can borrow my t-shirt!"). They were all shocked I was able to find out where they lived. I guess none of them knew the school has their info on the computer system. This conversation immediately followed BJ telling them about how I drove over to his house and then a conversation about my car, with jokes about how they steal cars. They wouldn't, actually-- they like me, and among other reasons, my car is older and more beat up then the ones they get other ways, and I'm sure they know they would be prime suspects if anything ever did happen to my car. But still... not the most reassuring conversation.
So as LJ kept trying for the personal information...
"Boys, I'm sorry, that's just too personal. I can't talk about that with you."
"Yes you can! You know us, we're sharing, we're a group here. We wouldn't tell anyone, you know us better than that!"
"No I don't! You were just joking about stealing my car!"
"Oh, yeah..." they started laughing. "Whoops. You know we wouldn't do that, Miss."
5. wasting a full period on possibly the stupidest sixth grade drama EVER between one of my girls and three girls in another class, one of whom is dating one of the boys in my class. Making it worse, BJ, LJ, and one of their friends (who decided to help me grade papers during my prep... random...) walked in while I was in the room I use for resource trying to mediate so there wasn't a full on fight after school tomorrow, which is what was about to happen, and decided to watch. It was like trying to mediate a Jerry Springer show with interactive audience members. My sixth grade girls, particularly these ones, are very young for their ages, but they have a lot of attitude. They don't curse in front of me, and these particular ones are very careful about being respectful, but they have mouths like no others... not helped by the commentary from the boys.
"So then Ms. A, in gym, she called me a B! And she said she was going to, you know, f me up!"
"What's a B?"
"What's 'f' stand for? Freedom? She's going to free you?"
"Yo, that sixth grader's got some Eddie Murphy hair!"
I've had more productive conversations.
4. BJ and LJ's friend (not the one who helped me grade, a different one- in all today I had BJ, LJ, two of their friends whose names rhyme, and this last one wandering into my room to hang out. It's kind of a weird situation. They're probably cutting, but they're at least with a teacher when they're with me and occasionally doing something school related or at least having life lesson conversations when I can get their minds off sex or drugs. And they're not in the hallway or selling drugs in the bathroom. I like them, I don't mind, although it's kind of a pain when I'm trying to work with other students) in response to my refusing to answer questions. When they discovered I would just say no to everything, it became a game. You just can't win sometimes...
"Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend? Do you like men? Are you straight?"
You get the idea. The clincher:
"Do you like younger men? If I were older, I'd bang you."
I actually slipped up and cursed. "I don't ever want to hear that s*** coming out of your mouth again."
He feigned shock. I told Ms. Lez about it later, who's very close to that whole group of boys, and she had him come up later and apologize. He was obviously actually really embarrassed about it. That's way further than even LJ would take it. And he's actually a cousin to a girl in L's class that the other boys were pretty crudely talking about taking advantage of, and got upset about it. That made me forgive him and even like him a little more. Still think I've had my share of eighth grade for the week...
2. going to BJ's house after he and LJ cut out of school because LJ got in trouble for printing out pictures of guns in order to get BJ to finish taking his frigging IEP tests and completely and utterly wasting an hour of my life there as he completely refused to do anything and got so upset I actually came over that he tried to take his bike out to ride away (luckily it had a flat tire). This was a problem as he's under house arrest. I was kind of afraid he'd get locked up again before school this week. Luckily not.
3. being grilled by BJ's and LJ's friends today on my love life. LJ decided I looked like the type who dated women and men, and wanted me to tell them if I swung both ways. They spent the next half hour trying to get me to tell them something about my love (or more accurately, sex) life. BJ stayed out of it, and even sort of had my back.
"Yo, man, she's just going to say no to anything you say. Stop asking her."
I like him more every day. Except when I was at his house and he was a huge pain in the ass. But it definitely had some kind of effect. He told all of his friends about it, repeatedly. LJ wanted to know why I didn't come to his house. I told him if I hadn't found BJ at his own house, I would've checked his next. I actually had his address when I went over, considering it, but I didn't add that in general I'm more comfortable with BJ because he gets mad when I make an effort to check up on him (although I think he does appreciate it in the end) rather than tries to flirt... LJ probably would've asked me to sleep over (echoes of R's brother from last year... "You can borrow my t-shirt!"). They were all shocked I was able to find out where they lived. I guess none of them knew the school has their info on the computer system. This conversation immediately followed BJ telling them about how I drove over to his house and then a conversation about my car, with jokes about how they steal cars. They wouldn't, actually-- they like me, and among other reasons, my car is older and more beat up then the ones they get other ways, and I'm sure they know they would be prime suspects if anything ever did happen to my car. But still... not the most reassuring conversation.
So as LJ kept trying for the personal information...
"Boys, I'm sorry, that's just too personal. I can't talk about that with you."
"Yes you can! You know us, we're sharing, we're a group here. We wouldn't tell anyone, you know us better than that!"
"No I don't! You were just joking about stealing my car!"
"Oh, yeah..." they started laughing. "Whoops. You know we wouldn't do that, Miss."
5. wasting a full period on possibly the stupidest sixth grade drama EVER between one of my girls and three girls in another class, one of whom is dating one of the boys in my class. Making it worse, BJ, LJ, and one of their friends (who decided to help me grade papers during my prep... random...) walked in while I was in the room I use for resource trying to mediate so there wasn't a full on fight after school tomorrow, which is what was about to happen, and decided to watch. It was like trying to mediate a Jerry Springer show with interactive audience members. My sixth grade girls, particularly these ones, are very young for their ages, but they have a lot of attitude. They don't curse in front of me, and these particular ones are very careful about being respectful, but they have mouths like no others... not helped by the commentary from the boys.
"So then Ms. A, in gym, she called me a B! And she said she was going to, you know, f me up!"
"What's a B?"
"What's 'f' stand for? Freedom? She's going to free you?"
"Yo, that sixth grader's got some Eddie Murphy hair!"
I've had more productive conversations.
4. BJ and LJ's friend (not the one who helped me grade, a different one- in all today I had BJ, LJ, two of their friends whose names rhyme, and this last one wandering into my room to hang out. It's kind of a weird situation. They're probably cutting, but they're at least with a teacher when they're with me and occasionally doing something school related or at least having life lesson conversations when I can get their minds off sex or drugs. And they're not in the hallway or selling drugs in the bathroom. I like them, I don't mind, although it's kind of a pain when I'm trying to work with other students) in response to my refusing to answer questions. When they discovered I would just say no to everything, it became a game. You just can't win sometimes...
"Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend? Do you like men? Are you straight?"
You get the idea. The clincher:
"Do you like younger men? If I were older, I'd bang you."
I actually slipped up and cursed. "I don't ever want to hear that s*** coming out of your mouth again."
He feigned shock. I told Ms. Lez about it later, who's very close to that whole group of boys, and she had him come up later and apologize. He was obviously actually really embarrassed about it. That's way further than even LJ would take it. And he's actually a cousin to a girl in L's class that the other boys were pretty crudely talking about taking advantage of, and got upset about it. That made me forgive him and even like him a little more. Still think I've had my share of eighth grade for the week...
Thursday, April 19, 2007
my gunshot wound is itchy
Whoopi showed me her gunshot wound yesterday. She needed to go to the nurse to replace the bandages on her back; she said it was itchy. It's a miracle she's alive; one of the bullets went in by her lung and luckily bounced off her rib and ended in her arm, where it still is. She was at her cousin's birthday party during a drive by. I couldn't stop hugging her. She got either embarassed or annoyed ("Ms. A!"), but I think she understands. She's probably gotten enough of it from her family lately.
BJ was here today. LJ made me promise yesterday I would take him to resource with me, so I told him if he brought BJ so I could do his IEP testing he could come too. Talk about awkward. On the way out of class, LJ started telling me how BJ was absent yesterday because he was arrested for stealing a motorcycle.
"I didn't know it was stolen! I just bought this four wheeler off this guy for like, four hundred bucks. I didn't know it was stolen until the cops were like, 'Got licencse and registration?'"
He had to leave early to go to court over it.
An hour with those two was enough to make me want to sample their various products... For whatever reason they decided to trust me enough to tell me about all their various exploits today, including their drug dealing. I tried to talk to them about it, but it's sort of a losing battle. Go to college, like me, so you can take a paycut! Really, it's worth your while... you won't get the cars, or the girls, or the new clothes, or the wads of cash... actually, it's a paycut... but, um, it's worth it, because...
The threat of prison is far enough off that it's not real enough; they're still kids, consequences like that are just not real to them. And I know some people reading this might think that the answer is to treat them like adults and charge them that way, but really, they're just kids, and that wouldn't help the problem, particularly in the overall community. That's the hard part. The threat of being inadvertently made gay while in prison might help. I didn't want to bring that up quite so blatantly, but it's coming. Probably tomorrow. They're about to kick BJ out of the school- that's as close as the consequences are real, so far. He really doesn't want to go. He tried to convince me today that he would be good and that I should try to convince everyone else to let him stay. I'm actually getting almost attachd to him, starting to like him in spite of myself. I don't really want him to get kicked out. And he's good, for me, anyway...
I had to give BJ a math diagnostic. LJ wanted to help. I was waiting for my vice principal to walk in in the middle...
"BJ, what's five times eight?"
"I don't know, man. I'm retarded in math. I don't go to math class. I didn't go last year. I liked Ms. Champion, in sixth grade... I don't even know who my math teacher is... oh yeah, Ms. M... "
LJ looked exhasperated.
"Come on, man. You sell eight nics, how much money do you get?"
A light bulb went on. BJ brightened.
"Forty!"
Math instruction through drug dealing. Hey, differentiated instruction, right? Meeting kids where they're at? I know more than I want to know, now. They told me about the various stuff they've gotten locked up for, showed me their wads of cash, tried to bribe me to fill in the test for them... At one point, LJ asked BJ if he had coke on him.
"Please tell me you didn't bring coke to school... If you did, I don't want to know, please don't bring it to my class. I don't want to know. Just please don't be so stupid as to bring it to school!"
BJ looked insulted. "No, I didn't bring coke to school! I don't deal with that shit. Oops, sorry miss, I mean stuff. Just weed. But coke, no!" He started emptying his pockets to prove it to me. Keys, money (a lot), wallet, condoms. I doubt the kid's touched a pencil this whole year, but he has condoms. *Sigh*. At least they're using protection... And hey, no drugs.
It got even better when LJ decided to start really hitting on me. He's gotten pretty flirty before. Calling me sweetie was just the beginning. Yesterday when I went to look for BJ, he reached up for a big hug (in class, although there wasn't exactly a great deal of instruction going on).
"How are you, Miss? You look wonderful. Amaaazing. Did you lose a few pounds? You look absolutely beautiful. Your eyes are dazzling. Can I come with you? You're so beautiful."
The thing is with LJ that he's a really charismatic, endearing, articulate kind of kid, with just that extra tinge of goof. So no matter how inappropriate he gets (and he does) it's hard to be mad at him. BJ doesn't have that kind of charisma, so he keeps it a little more under wraps. He still apologizes when he curses in front of me, and the most personal he's gotten is to ask if I'm married. LJ, on the other hand...
While I was testing them, LJ looked through one of my filing cabinets for the computer mouse. I told him to get out the candy I kept hidden in there. He pulled out some twizzlers and tootsie rolls.
"Want some?" he asked BJ.
"Nah, I don't eat candy unless it's bangin'. I only eat really good candy. I don't really eat much candy."
"I know what BJ eats..." LJ singsonged. I cringed.
"Don't..." I started, knowing what was coming.
"He eats girls out!" LJ sang. "You just don't eat candy cause you don't know what to do with it, like with girls. You gotta use it..."
He asked what I would do if a student, being younger than me, asked me out or flirted with me.
"Would you have them locked up?"
"Well, what do you mean by flirting? If they tried to do anything, yes, I would have them locked up. That's harassment or assault, and absolutely, I would have them arrested and locked up. If they just said something flirty or asked me out on a date, I'd just think they were being silly," I fudged. Can't say I was really prepared for the question.
"But you wouldn't have them locked up for asking you out."
"For flirting? That's just stupid. They would know that, too..."
"But you wouldn't have them locked up..." He looked me up and down. "Ha-ay..."
So yeah, weird. Then, an abrupt return to the candy topic...
"So BJ, you gotta do like this. Or Miss, with your boyfriend, this is what you gotta do," with a twizzler, licking it all the way up and down and sucking it suggestively, "tell your boyfriend to do like this, and then you do it..."
I gave up on testing soon after that.
BJ was here today. LJ made me promise yesterday I would take him to resource with me, so I told him if he brought BJ so I could do his IEP testing he could come too. Talk about awkward. On the way out of class, LJ started telling me how BJ was absent yesterday because he was arrested for stealing a motorcycle.
"I didn't know it was stolen! I just bought this four wheeler off this guy for like, four hundred bucks. I didn't know it was stolen until the cops were like, 'Got licencse and registration?'"
He had to leave early to go to court over it.
An hour with those two was enough to make me want to sample their various products... For whatever reason they decided to trust me enough to tell me about all their various exploits today, including their drug dealing. I tried to talk to them about it, but it's sort of a losing battle. Go to college, like me, so you can take a paycut! Really, it's worth your while... you won't get the cars, or the girls, or the new clothes, or the wads of cash... actually, it's a paycut... but, um, it's worth it, because...
The threat of prison is far enough off that it's not real enough; they're still kids, consequences like that are just not real to them. And I know some people reading this might think that the answer is to treat them like adults and charge them that way, but really, they're just kids, and that wouldn't help the problem, particularly in the overall community. That's the hard part. The threat of being inadvertently made gay while in prison might help. I didn't want to bring that up quite so blatantly, but it's coming. Probably tomorrow. They're about to kick BJ out of the school- that's as close as the consequences are real, so far. He really doesn't want to go. He tried to convince me today that he would be good and that I should try to convince everyone else to let him stay. I'm actually getting almost attachd to him, starting to like him in spite of myself. I don't really want him to get kicked out. And he's good, for me, anyway...
I had to give BJ a math diagnostic. LJ wanted to help. I was waiting for my vice principal to walk in in the middle...
"BJ, what's five times eight?"
"I don't know, man. I'm retarded in math. I don't go to math class. I didn't go last year. I liked Ms. Champion, in sixth grade... I don't even know who my math teacher is... oh yeah, Ms. M... "
LJ looked exhasperated.
"Come on, man. You sell eight nics, how much money do you get?"
A light bulb went on. BJ brightened.
"Forty!"
Math instruction through drug dealing. Hey, differentiated instruction, right? Meeting kids where they're at? I know more than I want to know, now. They told me about the various stuff they've gotten locked up for, showed me their wads of cash, tried to bribe me to fill in the test for them... At one point, LJ asked BJ if he had coke on him.
"Please tell me you didn't bring coke to school... If you did, I don't want to know, please don't bring it to my class. I don't want to know. Just please don't be so stupid as to bring it to school!"
BJ looked insulted. "No, I didn't bring coke to school! I don't deal with that shit. Oops, sorry miss, I mean stuff. Just weed. But coke, no!" He started emptying his pockets to prove it to me. Keys, money (a lot), wallet, condoms. I doubt the kid's touched a pencil this whole year, but he has condoms. *Sigh*. At least they're using protection... And hey, no drugs.
It got even better when LJ decided to start really hitting on me. He's gotten pretty flirty before. Calling me sweetie was just the beginning. Yesterday when I went to look for BJ, he reached up for a big hug (in class, although there wasn't exactly a great deal of instruction going on).
"How are you, Miss? You look wonderful. Amaaazing. Did you lose a few pounds? You look absolutely beautiful. Your eyes are dazzling. Can I come with you? You're so beautiful."
The thing is with LJ that he's a really charismatic, endearing, articulate kind of kid, with just that extra tinge of goof. So no matter how inappropriate he gets (and he does) it's hard to be mad at him. BJ doesn't have that kind of charisma, so he keeps it a little more under wraps. He still apologizes when he curses in front of me, and the most personal he's gotten is to ask if I'm married. LJ, on the other hand...
While I was testing them, LJ looked through one of my filing cabinets for the computer mouse. I told him to get out the candy I kept hidden in there. He pulled out some twizzlers and tootsie rolls.
"Want some?" he asked BJ.
"Nah, I don't eat candy unless it's bangin'. I only eat really good candy. I don't really eat much candy."
"I know what BJ eats..." LJ singsonged. I cringed.
"Don't..." I started, knowing what was coming.
"He eats girls out!" LJ sang. "You just don't eat candy cause you don't know what to do with it, like with girls. You gotta use it..."
He asked what I would do if a student, being younger than me, asked me out or flirted with me.
"Would you have them locked up?"
"Well, what do you mean by flirting? If they tried to do anything, yes, I would have them locked up. That's harassment or assault, and absolutely, I would have them arrested and locked up. If they just said something flirty or asked me out on a date, I'd just think they were being silly," I fudged. Can't say I was really prepared for the question.
"But you wouldn't have them locked up for asking you out."
"For flirting? That's just stupid. They would know that, too..."
"But you wouldn't have them locked up..." He looked me up and down. "Ha-ay..."
So yeah, weird. Then, an abrupt return to the candy topic...
"So BJ, you gotta do like this. Or Miss, with your boyfriend, this is what you gotta do," with a twizzler, licking it all the way up and down and sucking it suggestively, "tell your boyfriend to do like this, and then you do it..."
I gave up on testing soon after that.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
MASH
Well, not exactly. But remember in middle school, those games where you had to categorize your classmates and future lives? Who was cute, who was hot, who you'd marry, where you would live... There's an infinite number of those games, MASH is just the only one I remember.
I confiscated a note a couple days ago from Chatterbox, my new girl who was my trade for Squirrel. She's not a bad kid, just kind of frustrating. She looked terrified for a minute and tried to pass it off to Cyrus. I told her I would have no problem writing her up for giving it to him and not me after I explicitly told her to give it to me.
"Okay! Okay!" she yanked it back out of Cyrus's hands.
I stuck it in my pocket without looking at it. While torturing kids by reading the notes in class is fun, it also leads to a lot more disruption and occasionally humiliation, so I rarely do. I just put them away and throw them out later, or in rare cases, if they're really good kids who are writing notes after they're done their work or something, will give it back at the end of class, sometimes without even looking at it (I usually only do that with Jazz and Kira, who both have near 100 averages, but I told them they were only allowed to write notes if they used proper grammar and spelling and used words other than "play"). This one I just totally forgot about. I don't even remember when I took it from her. I pulled it out of my pocket today. On one side is the list of categories:
girlfriend
marry
sexy
Dog
hommie
cute
chill
On the other side is the Girl list and the Boy list. I'm number 8 on the Girl list- and, I might add, the only adult on the list. Unfortunately, they hadn't actually gone through and categorized anybody yet, so I don't know whether I'm "hommie" or just "chill".
I confiscated a note a couple days ago from Chatterbox, my new girl who was my trade for Squirrel. She's not a bad kid, just kind of frustrating. She looked terrified for a minute and tried to pass it off to Cyrus. I told her I would have no problem writing her up for giving it to him and not me after I explicitly told her to give it to me.
"Okay! Okay!" she yanked it back out of Cyrus's hands.
I stuck it in my pocket without looking at it. While torturing kids by reading the notes in class is fun, it also leads to a lot more disruption and occasionally humiliation, so I rarely do. I just put them away and throw them out later, or in rare cases, if they're really good kids who are writing notes after they're done their work or something, will give it back at the end of class, sometimes without even looking at it (I usually only do that with Jazz and Kira, who both have near 100 averages, but I told them they were only allowed to write notes if they used proper grammar and spelling and used words other than "play"). This one I just totally forgot about. I don't even remember when I took it from her. I pulled it out of my pocket today. On one side is the list of categories:
girlfriend
marry
sexy
Dog
hommie
cute
chill
On the other side is the Girl list and the Boy list. I'm number 8 on the Girl list- and, I might add, the only adult on the list. Unfortunately, they hadn't actually gone through and categorized anybody yet, so I don't know whether I'm "hommie" or just "chill".
Saturday, April 14, 2007
i got it covered
Went to the third floor (8th grade) to check for one of my students yesterday. Two girls stopped me- one is one of my resource girls, who I like a lot but feel for because she doesn't really fit into the school at all, and her best friend that she cuts with all the time that I am growing to loathe. My student was holding back her friend, who was about to fly into a rage because some girl in her class threw a water bottle at her while she was helping clean the room. It was one of the first times I've had to navigate a racial issue between students at the school. Both girls (my resource girl and her friend) are white, the girl who threw the bottle was black. The school has an interesting race dynamic, in general. It's really diverse, as city public schools go. I have no idea what the actual demographics break down to, but if I had to estimate based on the classes I've seen on a regular basis, I'd say it breaks down to something like 50% black, 30% latino, and 20% white, with a micropercentage of "other"-- there's at least a few asian kids, for example. In that breakdown there's a lot of overlap and mixing- Trish, for example, is white, but her nephew in the 8th grade is black, and they have been raised as brother and sister (fortunately for their overall quality of life, but unfortunately for me, they just moved into a house from a homeless shelter and so transferred schools. Luckily Trish has a fellow TFAer who is a good friend of mine at her new school, so I know someone's looking out for her). Lucky is very vocal about her puerto rican heritage but looks like a carbon copy of her african american father. I don't know how she's counted in whatever school census data there is.
Anyway, I mentally organize the white kids into one of three categories, or at least think of them as falling somewhere along a spectrum between these. There's the white racists, who are following in long intergenerational footsteps of families and a community that are racist, have white supremacist groups, and at some point etched a swastika on my blackboard. Then there's the white kids who culturally are not white at all. This year we're doing a school play of West Side Story. The cast, rather than being white and puerto rican, is black and of mixed latino heritage (mostly puerto rican with some dominican thrown in). There is one white child in the entire play, and he plays Riff, the leader of the Jets, otherwise all black. He's a good example of the type who assimilates; I've never actually seen him hanging out with another white student. His aunt, who was an aide in my classroom last year, is black; I wonder if a lot of the cultural assimilation of those kids (like Trish and Riff) has to do with being raised in poly-racial/ethnic/cultural homes. The third type is somewhere between, and those are the kids I feel for; they're not racist and so aren't accepted into the white supremacist cliques, aren't culturally integrated enough to fit in with the black or latino kids, although they may have friends from those groups, and there aren't enough of them, per class, to form their own cliques. Squirrel was one of those kids. He was transferred to another classroom when Gecko, Jamie, Pockets, Huffy, and Jellyroll (his nickname from his friends, I'm trying to think of a better one cause that one's pretty bad) jumped him and stole his stuff. All of the kids who jumped him were black but Jellyroll, who has a latino last name but whose mom is white, but I don't think it was a racial thing at all; none of them really even disliked Squirrel. I think he was simply an easy target for the side of young boys that wants to cause trouble, which is a pretty universal trait. Now that Trish is gone, Squirrel is gone, and my two potentially psychotic kids both passed through my classroom and were hospitalized, there is only one white kid in the room, Tory, who also falls in the middle category (not counting Jellyroll, I'm not actually sure what his background is). Tory luckily seems to have bonded with a couple of the other kids pretty strongly despite pretty different backgrounds (oddly enough she seems to be closest to Lucky, who otherwise seems to think that every white person is racist and, for example, once accused L of racism for temporarily confiscating a toy that was causing a fight in the middle of class).
The other thing I've noticed about the white kids is something apparent mostly in the special ed kids. The black and latino kids often have serious issues, are violent, oppositional, defiant, etc. Most of them, though, seem to be at least workable, or have problems that are understandable or are capable of managing them with time and effort and care. Cyrus is a good example, as is DJ from last year, or Bouncer. All, the year before I had them, had records that looked kind of terrifying on paper. Assaulting teachers (I still can't imagine DJ biting his teacher...), daily fights, oppositional to authority figures, etc. But then looking at their files, it makes sense. Torture, abandonment, molestation, transient living situations and homelessness, etc. Their behavior is mostly symptomatic of defenses they've built for mind-numbing experiences. But all three are still resilient enough to bounce back, and have (except for Bouncer, who's at a disciplinary school, but I think she would have given enough resources). While Cyrus is a pain in the butt sometimes, he's still mostly a happy, loving, good child.
When my mom went to begin teaching in an inner-city high school a few years ago with serious violence problems, another teacher told her to think of building relationships with her kids as a priority for safety.
"If someone walks into your classroom with a gun, you want to know that there is a kid in the room who would jump in front of the shooter and take a bullet for you."
My mom thought it was overly intense at the time, as did I, but it's a thought that has stuck in the back of my mind (especially recently as I actually now have kids that I think probably do carry guns with them). In my classroom this year, there's a couple of kids that I think might do that for me, but Cyrus is the kid that I know would. Whatever his problems, they haven't completely destroyed who he is, internally, and I think he's actually got a lot of nobility in his heart. He would have made a good knight.
The white kids in special ed, however, are a totally different ball game. Case in point Super-soaker, who was hospitalized early this year, after such stunts as covering people with gasoline and trying to light them on fire or kicking his five year old brother's teeth out. Then there's the kid who was in my classroom for a week due to legal issues and was also hospitalized (I think, he's not at my school anymore at any rate) after assaulting both his teachers before me and who was on something like four heavy duty anti-psychotic drugs. These are kids who are just totally past any resources available to them to help. Love and care from a teacher, which so far seems to be what kids like Cyrus most need, just does not cut it. Nor, evidently, does anti-psychotic medicine or round-the-clock behavioral specialists. I don't know what causes the difference in severity between the groups, and certainly this isn't true of everyone. Just an observation based on the kids I've worked with and know from around the school.
Anyway, while I was trying to deal with the two girls (really only one, the other one who's actually my student was trying to calm the other one down), I ran into Mr. Fart, the "art" teacher who farts on students as a classroom management technique. Because he doesn't actually make anyone do anything, he's fairly tight with a lot of the delinquent end of the eighth grade, and hears a lot of fun/horrific stories. This one, of the several he told me yesterday, was the best (and also involves a small bit of graphic language, while only a minute fraction of what I listened to the girls saying in the water bottle incident). LJ evidently came in with a big black eye, so Mr. Fart asked him about it.
"LJ, what happened to your eye?"
"I got rolled on."
"Well, why'd you get rolled on?"
LJ shrugged.
"I don't know."
"Well, who punched you?"
Another shrug.
"I don't know."
"LJ, a black eye is kind of a personal thing. Generally speaking, you know why you get one, and who the person is who gave it to you."
LJ looked around.
"Between you and me?"
"Yeah, between you and me."
"Well, I was fuckin this girl yesterday at her house, and her brother and his friends walked in on us. So they rolled on me."
Fart mulled it over.
"Well, LJ, I don't want to tell you how to live your life or anything, but uh, I wouldn't really want to be a pop at your age."
LJ shook his head in agreement.
"Naw, man, I got it covered!" he reassured him, and pulled out a long strip of condoms from his back pocket. The next line in school supplies...
Anyway, I mentally organize the white kids into one of three categories, or at least think of them as falling somewhere along a spectrum between these. There's the white racists, who are following in long intergenerational footsteps of families and a community that are racist, have white supremacist groups, and at some point etched a swastika on my blackboard. Then there's the white kids who culturally are not white at all. This year we're doing a school play of West Side Story. The cast, rather than being white and puerto rican, is black and of mixed latino heritage (mostly puerto rican with some dominican thrown in). There is one white child in the entire play, and he plays Riff, the leader of the Jets, otherwise all black. He's a good example of the type who assimilates; I've never actually seen him hanging out with another white student. His aunt, who was an aide in my classroom last year, is black; I wonder if a lot of the cultural assimilation of those kids (like Trish and Riff) has to do with being raised in poly-racial/ethnic/cultural homes. The third type is somewhere between, and those are the kids I feel for; they're not racist and so aren't accepted into the white supremacist cliques, aren't culturally integrated enough to fit in with the black or latino kids, although they may have friends from those groups, and there aren't enough of them, per class, to form their own cliques. Squirrel was one of those kids. He was transferred to another classroom when Gecko, Jamie, Pockets, Huffy, and Jellyroll (his nickname from his friends, I'm trying to think of a better one cause that one's pretty bad) jumped him and stole his stuff. All of the kids who jumped him were black but Jellyroll, who has a latino last name but whose mom is white, but I don't think it was a racial thing at all; none of them really even disliked Squirrel. I think he was simply an easy target for the side of young boys that wants to cause trouble, which is a pretty universal trait. Now that Trish is gone, Squirrel is gone, and my two potentially psychotic kids both passed through my classroom and were hospitalized, there is only one white kid in the room, Tory, who also falls in the middle category (not counting Jellyroll, I'm not actually sure what his background is). Tory luckily seems to have bonded with a couple of the other kids pretty strongly despite pretty different backgrounds (oddly enough she seems to be closest to Lucky, who otherwise seems to think that every white person is racist and, for example, once accused L of racism for temporarily confiscating a toy that was causing a fight in the middle of class).
The other thing I've noticed about the white kids is something apparent mostly in the special ed kids. The black and latino kids often have serious issues, are violent, oppositional, defiant, etc. Most of them, though, seem to be at least workable, or have problems that are understandable or are capable of managing them with time and effort and care. Cyrus is a good example, as is DJ from last year, or Bouncer. All, the year before I had them, had records that looked kind of terrifying on paper. Assaulting teachers (I still can't imagine DJ biting his teacher...), daily fights, oppositional to authority figures, etc. But then looking at their files, it makes sense. Torture, abandonment, molestation, transient living situations and homelessness, etc. Their behavior is mostly symptomatic of defenses they've built for mind-numbing experiences. But all three are still resilient enough to bounce back, and have (except for Bouncer, who's at a disciplinary school, but I think she would have given enough resources). While Cyrus is a pain in the butt sometimes, he's still mostly a happy, loving, good child.
When my mom went to begin teaching in an inner-city high school a few years ago with serious violence problems, another teacher told her to think of building relationships with her kids as a priority for safety.
"If someone walks into your classroom with a gun, you want to know that there is a kid in the room who would jump in front of the shooter and take a bullet for you."
My mom thought it was overly intense at the time, as did I, but it's a thought that has stuck in the back of my mind (especially recently as I actually now have kids that I think probably do carry guns with them). In my classroom this year, there's a couple of kids that I think might do that for me, but Cyrus is the kid that I know would. Whatever his problems, they haven't completely destroyed who he is, internally, and I think he's actually got a lot of nobility in his heart. He would have made a good knight.
The white kids in special ed, however, are a totally different ball game. Case in point Super-soaker, who was hospitalized early this year, after such stunts as covering people with gasoline and trying to light them on fire or kicking his five year old brother's teeth out. Then there's the kid who was in my classroom for a week due to legal issues and was also hospitalized (I think, he's not at my school anymore at any rate) after assaulting both his teachers before me and who was on something like four heavy duty anti-psychotic drugs. These are kids who are just totally past any resources available to them to help. Love and care from a teacher, which so far seems to be what kids like Cyrus most need, just does not cut it. Nor, evidently, does anti-psychotic medicine or round-the-clock behavioral specialists. I don't know what causes the difference in severity between the groups, and certainly this isn't true of everyone. Just an observation based on the kids I've worked with and know from around the school.
Anyway, while I was trying to deal with the two girls (really only one, the other one who's actually my student was trying to calm the other one down), I ran into Mr. Fart, the "art" teacher who farts on students as a classroom management technique. Because he doesn't actually make anyone do anything, he's fairly tight with a lot of the delinquent end of the eighth grade, and hears a lot of fun/horrific stories. This one, of the several he told me yesterday, was the best (and also involves a small bit of graphic language, while only a minute fraction of what I listened to the girls saying in the water bottle incident). LJ evidently came in with a big black eye, so Mr. Fart asked him about it.
"LJ, what happened to your eye?"
"I got rolled on."
"Well, why'd you get rolled on?"
LJ shrugged.
"I don't know."
"Well, who punched you?"
Another shrug.
"I don't know."
"LJ, a black eye is kind of a personal thing. Generally speaking, you know why you get one, and who the person is who gave it to you."
LJ looked around.
"Between you and me?"
"Yeah, between you and me."
"Well, I was fuckin this girl yesterday at her house, and her brother and his friends walked in on us. So they rolled on me."
Fart mulled it over.
"Well, LJ, I don't want to tell you how to live your life or anything, but uh, I wouldn't really want to be a pop at your age."
LJ shook his head in agreement.
"Naw, man, I got it covered!" he reassured him, and pulled out a long strip of condoms from his back pocket. The next line in school supplies...
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Good always wins out over bad in the end
Follow up to what I wrote yesterday that I only got around to posting today... grading papers today, my students had to write whether they agreed or disagreed with various statements, then pick one and write a paragraph as to why. Whoopi's paragraph had the best example, hands down (she dictated to another student who is writing for her for extra credit).
Unedited:
I feel strongly about good always wins out over bad in the end like in real life like a guy shoots people and he shoots a girl and she reported him and he got caught and got locked up and she was good so I feel strongly about that sentence.
Unedited:
I feel strongly about good always wins out over bad in the end like in real life like a guy shoots people and he shoots a girl and she reported him and he got caught and got locked up and she was good so I feel strongly about that sentence.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
all that is so you would no I did my work!!
Last week was spring break. I took the opportunity to go to the other side of the world (Spain) and have as little contact with children as possible. My flight home was yesterday, so I took a sick day. It was actually kind of legitimate, since I started developing a cough Sunday night, although luckily it seems to be going away; if I get sick again this year I'm going to have to find a way to order a new body. I arrived home carrying a bit of emotional baggage to make up for all the physical baggage the airlines lost (including my cell phone... grrr...), trying to get mentally ready to get back to school.
Now, bit of background on what I thought I was coming back to. My primary partner teacher, M, who started out as the science and reading teacher for both my section and its sister section (L's class), has chronic health problems. She's been out of the room for what I think amounts to months, now, and the last few in a row. She came back for another staff member's baby shower, the day Maria told me she was running away from home the last period of the day, so I saw her only briefly, but she told me she was going to try to come back for report card conferences but would absolutely be back after spring break. (While I love M as a person, it was not the best moment of my year discovering she felt well enough to come to a staff party but not school...)
She didn't come for report card conferences, but I assumed, naively, that she would be back after spring break. Not so much.
The powers that be put in her place a while ago a long term sub working on getting his certification who's been in the building several years, who was previously subbing for an eighth grade teacher moved to another school a few months into the school year because of teacher/student ratios (my school has a lot of people who are legally considered teachers but are in actuality "support" staff, some who are terrific and some who are not, including grade coordinators who handle discipline and grade-wide concerns, and subject coaches. It's probably a system that should be in more schools, albeit with more accountability to actually helping the staff rather than doing CYA for administration, but it sucked for the kids who lost their teacher for no good reason they could see, mid-year, twice). But since she's been out, I've been planning for both my class and the other class and trying to take care of most of the administrative responsibilities for them, so Mr. Crush has something to go on, as being thrust in mid year not the best time to jump into to all of that, and even occasionally attempting science although mostly leaving that to him, trying to figure out how to do my job well in terms of actually meeting the needs of my special ed kids, and now also doing resource. Basically I've been doing three jobs rather than one, none of them particularly well-designed or very well supported. Fun.
I walked in ten minutes before the bell, and discover one of Mr. Far's kids (my roommate from last year) in the hall. She is probably one of the through and through nicest, sweetest, most innocent kids in the building, and I couldn't imagine her breaking the rules on purpose.
"Hi, Honey, what are you doing in the hall before the bell's even rung?"
She glanced at me guiltily, but had a good cause. "I just wanted to check if Mr. Far is here."
"Was he not here yesterday? I wasn't here."
"No, he broke his ankle!" She looked like she was about to cry.
Now, the last time Far was out, and I went in to check on his kids, since they are largely mine from last year, the rumors were already flying. The sub looked about to cry. Far's class is notoriously hard to deal with. My gift to him, from last year...
"How are you guys doing? I just wanted to check on you, because Mr. Far asked me to make sure you all had been doing your best today for your guest teacher," I lied. I actually had only stopped in because I had run out of the building to do an errand on my prep, and on the way back in heard screaming from his classroom window. I hadn't known before I walked in his room that Far was even absent. "But I somehow heard all this screaming coming from this room, so I wanted to make sure everything was okay."
A class full of fingers pointed instantly at Vandal, a kid I had last year along with Honey in the after-school program for kids who needed extra hours of school to make up for their low test scores.
"Naw, man, naw... it was him! I mean him!" Vandal protested, pointing at the kids he thought I was mostly likely to believe would have been screaming instead.
"Uh-huh..."
"So Ms. A, Mr. Far got arrested?" asked another kid out of the blue. A couple kids nodded and started whispering, but attention was definitely on my reaction.
"Arrested?" I asked, a little confused.
"Yeah, didn't he get into a fight?" Jekyll added. I looked at his face. He's grown up a lot this year from when he was in my class- I think having a male teacher, especially someone like Far, has done wonders for him, but thankfully his sense of humor hasn't diminished too much with his newfound maturity. He almost kept a straight face, but there was a trace of a smile underneath.
"Well, yeah," I decided to play along, "we went to a club last night, and there was a big fight. But when the cops came I managed to get away, but Mr. Far didn't, so he took the fall for both of us. I'm going to bail him out after school, so he'll be back tomorrow. But since he had such a rough day in jail, I want to have good things to tell him about you, not that you were screaming out your window."
Most of the kids instantly knew I was joking, especially since it was pretty obvious (I thought, anyway) that they had made up the whole thing. A couple kids, though, had completely not expected me to go along with it, and all of a sudden were taken aback with the potential that maybe it wasn't a hoax of their classmates. There was a look of suspicious confusion on their faces, but most of them knew me well enough to know I was joking after a couple seconds. Honey, however, who would never imagine a teacher would make something up like that, was devastated.
"Mr. Far is in JAIL?" she wailed. "He got arrested? Is he okay? Was he okay in the fight? He's not hurt, right? He's getting out?"
I didn't have the heart to keep teasing after that, and confessed that actually he just didn't feel well. But long story short, while kids are treasure troves of gossip, reliable info on teachers is not always their strong points, particularly gullible ones like Honey. So I took the broken ankle story with a grain of salt, although it didn't sound like the kind of story someone would have made up for fun.
I walked upstairs. On my into the office to sign in, I see Mrs. B, Melissa's partner teacher.
"Oh, Ms. A, have you talked to Melissa?"
"No, what happened?"
"She's in the hospital!"
Long story, but thankfully far from the kids' version I heard later, which involved her having a heart attack. The hospital part was true, though.
I sign in, go back toward my classroom, see Mr. Crush in the 6th grade office and stop to talk about what he covered yesterday with my class, as M obviously had not come back... As we start talking, L comes in. She looked kind of upset, and without too much of the how-was-your-break small talk, jumped in.
"Did anybody... talk to you about it?"
I was confused. "What do you mean?"
"About... you know..."
"Oh, M not being back?" I brushed it off. "Yeah, can't say I'm terribly surprised..."
"No, about... the whole hospital thing..."
"Oh, Melissa? Yeah, Ms. B just told me..."
She looked confused. "Melissa's in the hospital? No, I didn't hear about that, is she okay?"
"Yeah, I think... Wait, what are you talking about then?"
"The other thing..."
"Oh, Far? Yeah, I just ran into one of his students, I heard about that too. I'll call him later, but I'm sure he's fine."
She looked even more confused.
"No... you mean, you really haven't talked to anyone? I left you a message..."
"My cell phone got lost with my luggage. Long story, but I don't have it right now. What's wrong? What are you talking about?"
L took a deep breath. "Now, don't freak out."
I started to freak out. "What?"
"Just, before I tell you, she's fine. She's really fine, she's home, she's okay. Don't freak out, she's gonna be just fine."
It's amazing how the words "don't freak out" make you do exactly that.
L took another deep breath. I started to hyperventilate.
"Whoopi got shot."
Whoopi (so nicknamed by her classmates who think she looks like Whoopi Goldberg) is the girl who wrote the fairly incomprehensible birthday card that she worked on for three days from my post back in December.
"She what? Like, with bullets? From a gun?"
"That's why I said to not freak out... She's fine, really. She got caught in some cross-fire, and she got shot, on the news something like three times, but she's okay, she's out of the hospital."
I almost fell over. As mornings go, finding that my partner teacher who was absolutely positively supposed to be there after months of absence is nowhere to be seen, one friend has a broken limb, one is in the hospital, and one of my student has been shot three times, all before 8:10 in the morning, is not the best way to start. And I'm not really a morning person to begin with. Way to come back from vacation...
Whoopi actually wound up coming into school today. She couldn't use her hand- she evidently still has a bullet in her arm, but she seemed to feel fine. I couldn't believe she actually showed up. Granted, the shooting evidently happened the last day of school before break, which was over a week ago, but still... she has a friggin bullet in her arm. As everyone in the class was fussing over her in the hall, I helped her open her locker. Cyrus came up to us.
"See, Whoopi? I told you! Everyone's going to be all nice to you and give you all this sympathy because you got shot. That's why I want to get shot. I'm gonna go get myself shot in the head."
I looked at him and said dryly, "If you get yourself shot in the head there won't be any Cyrus for us to give sympathy to or be nice to."
Cyrus appeared to contemplate this for a minute. "Well... yeah, maybe. I guess so."
What disturbed me the most was the total normalcy of how he said it, for all the other kids as well. Getting shot isn't even a huge or life-changing event... Cross-fire is a part of life. A few weeks ago Penelope came in grouchy and snappy. In the afternoon she explained to me that she was just tired. There was a gunfight in her neighborhood the night before, and some bullets hit her house. The cops spent a significant part of the night banging around her house looking for the bullets.
"Stupid cops... I didn't get any sleep. It's not like we shot anyone! I just wanted them to do it quietly."
Penelope, is, incidently, trying to make up for weeks (verging on months) of apathy and indifference to school. She's a really special kid, loves learning about other cultures and is, when not beating other kids in a rage (which to be fair has only happened a couple times this whole year, though she's had other problems and evidently spent last summer under house arrest, I'm not real clear on why) actually really respectful and considerate of others in a way that I wish more adults were. Over break, as part of a reading program we're supposed to be having the kids do, she was the only one who actually recorded what she read, how many pages (145!), and even wrote a summary of what she read for me to prove that she actually read it. The only problem lay in what she read... I'm not sure how I'm going to pass this onto the reading coach...
The summary, with spelling but not much grammar edited, for your reading pleasure (consider it a preview, I'm sure they have it at Barnes and Nobles...):
G-Spot
The book The G-Spot is about a teen. She was 16 when she first heard about a man named G, and G was a pimp he got money from left to right. So she always heard this about him like one day he almost killed his cousin because his cousin because his cousin couldn't pay him his money so what she knew was that G was very strict about his money but as she got older she always heard things about him. She lived with her grandmom. Ok so shen she was 18 she and her friend wanted to go to G Spot the club G onde. Well, really her friend wanted to go but you had to be 21 or older to get in because it was a strip club. At her house she lived with her brother that was kind of mental but not too mental and one day she met G she didn't really know who he was until he told her and by then she had a crush (editor's note- the word she wrote is actually "clow" but I can't figure out what that is... "crush" is my best guess). So you know he got money so he told her he will help her get some money for her brothers school. So she love her brother and wanted him to finish his school so she went along with it.
Then they lived together started going out and then he was beating her.
but I didn't finish reading the story.
(arrow pointing up to her summary)
all that is so you would know I did my work!!
Have a good day (smiley face inserted here)
Now, bit of background on what I thought I was coming back to. My primary partner teacher, M, who started out as the science and reading teacher for both my section and its sister section (L's class), has chronic health problems. She's been out of the room for what I think amounts to months, now, and the last few in a row. She came back for another staff member's baby shower, the day Maria told me she was running away from home the last period of the day, so I saw her only briefly, but she told me she was going to try to come back for report card conferences but would absolutely be back after spring break. (While I love M as a person, it was not the best moment of my year discovering she felt well enough to come to a staff party but not school...)
She didn't come for report card conferences, but I assumed, naively, that she would be back after spring break. Not so much.
The powers that be put in her place a while ago a long term sub working on getting his certification who's been in the building several years, who was previously subbing for an eighth grade teacher moved to another school a few months into the school year because of teacher/student ratios (my school has a lot of people who are legally considered teachers but are in actuality "support" staff, some who are terrific and some who are not, including grade coordinators who handle discipline and grade-wide concerns, and subject coaches. It's probably a system that should be in more schools, albeit with more accountability to actually helping the staff rather than doing CYA for administration, but it sucked for the kids who lost their teacher for no good reason they could see, mid-year, twice). But since she's been out, I've been planning for both my class and the other class and trying to take care of most of the administrative responsibilities for them, so Mr. Crush has something to go on, as being thrust in mid year not the best time to jump into to all of that, and even occasionally attempting science although mostly leaving that to him, trying to figure out how to do my job well in terms of actually meeting the needs of my special ed kids, and now also doing resource. Basically I've been doing three jobs rather than one, none of them particularly well-designed or very well supported. Fun.
I walked in ten minutes before the bell, and discover one of Mr. Far's kids (my roommate from last year) in the hall. She is probably one of the through and through nicest, sweetest, most innocent kids in the building, and I couldn't imagine her breaking the rules on purpose.
"Hi, Honey, what are you doing in the hall before the bell's even rung?"
She glanced at me guiltily, but had a good cause. "I just wanted to check if Mr. Far is here."
"Was he not here yesterday? I wasn't here."
"No, he broke his ankle!" She looked like she was about to cry.
Now, the last time Far was out, and I went in to check on his kids, since they are largely mine from last year, the rumors were already flying. The sub looked about to cry. Far's class is notoriously hard to deal with. My gift to him, from last year...
"How are you guys doing? I just wanted to check on you, because Mr. Far asked me to make sure you all had been doing your best today for your guest teacher," I lied. I actually had only stopped in because I had run out of the building to do an errand on my prep, and on the way back in heard screaming from his classroom window. I hadn't known before I walked in his room that Far was even absent. "But I somehow heard all this screaming coming from this room, so I wanted to make sure everything was okay."
A class full of fingers pointed instantly at Vandal, a kid I had last year along with Honey in the after-school program for kids who needed extra hours of school to make up for their low test scores.
"Naw, man, naw... it was him! I mean him!" Vandal protested, pointing at the kids he thought I was mostly likely to believe would have been screaming instead.
"Uh-huh..."
"So Ms. A, Mr. Far got arrested?" asked another kid out of the blue. A couple kids nodded and started whispering, but attention was definitely on my reaction.
"Arrested?" I asked, a little confused.
"Yeah, didn't he get into a fight?" Jekyll added. I looked at his face. He's grown up a lot this year from when he was in my class- I think having a male teacher, especially someone like Far, has done wonders for him, but thankfully his sense of humor hasn't diminished too much with his newfound maturity. He almost kept a straight face, but there was a trace of a smile underneath.
"Well, yeah," I decided to play along, "we went to a club last night, and there was a big fight. But when the cops came I managed to get away, but Mr. Far didn't, so he took the fall for both of us. I'm going to bail him out after school, so he'll be back tomorrow. But since he had such a rough day in jail, I want to have good things to tell him about you, not that you were screaming out your window."
Most of the kids instantly knew I was joking, especially since it was pretty obvious (I thought, anyway) that they had made up the whole thing. A couple kids, though, had completely not expected me to go along with it, and all of a sudden were taken aback with the potential that maybe it wasn't a hoax of their classmates. There was a look of suspicious confusion on their faces, but most of them knew me well enough to know I was joking after a couple seconds. Honey, however, who would never imagine a teacher would make something up like that, was devastated.
"Mr. Far is in JAIL?" she wailed. "He got arrested? Is he okay? Was he okay in the fight? He's not hurt, right? He's getting out?"
I didn't have the heart to keep teasing after that, and confessed that actually he just didn't feel well. But long story short, while kids are treasure troves of gossip, reliable info on teachers is not always their strong points, particularly gullible ones like Honey. So I took the broken ankle story with a grain of salt, although it didn't sound like the kind of story someone would have made up for fun.
I walked upstairs. On my into the office to sign in, I see Mrs. B, Melissa's partner teacher.
"Oh, Ms. A, have you talked to Melissa?"
"No, what happened?"
"She's in the hospital!"
Long story, but thankfully far from the kids' version I heard later, which involved her having a heart attack. The hospital part was true, though.
I sign in, go back toward my classroom, see Mr. Crush in the 6th grade office and stop to talk about what he covered yesterday with my class, as M obviously had not come back... As we start talking, L comes in. She looked kind of upset, and without too much of the how-was-your-break small talk, jumped in.
"Did anybody... talk to you about it?"
I was confused. "What do you mean?"
"About... you know..."
"Oh, M not being back?" I brushed it off. "Yeah, can't say I'm terribly surprised..."
"No, about... the whole hospital thing..."
"Oh, Melissa? Yeah, Ms. B just told me..."
She looked confused. "Melissa's in the hospital? No, I didn't hear about that, is she okay?"
"Yeah, I think... Wait, what are you talking about then?"
"The other thing..."
"Oh, Far? Yeah, I just ran into one of his students, I heard about that too. I'll call him later, but I'm sure he's fine."
She looked even more confused.
"No... you mean, you really haven't talked to anyone? I left you a message..."
"My cell phone got lost with my luggage. Long story, but I don't have it right now. What's wrong? What are you talking about?"
L took a deep breath. "Now, don't freak out."
I started to freak out. "What?"
"Just, before I tell you, she's fine. She's really fine, she's home, she's okay. Don't freak out, she's gonna be just fine."
It's amazing how the words "don't freak out" make you do exactly that.
L took another deep breath. I started to hyperventilate.
"Whoopi got shot."
Whoopi (so nicknamed by her classmates who think she looks like Whoopi Goldberg) is the girl who wrote the fairly incomprehensible birthday card that she worked on for three days from my post back in December.
"She what? Like, with bullets? From a gun?"
"That's why I said to not freak out... She's fine, really. She got caught in some cross-fire, and she got shot, on the news something like three times, but she's okay, she's out of the hospital."
I almost fell over. As mornings go, finding that my partner teacher who was absolutely positively supposed to be there after months of absence is nowhere to be seen, one friend has a broken limb, one is in the hospital, and one of my student has been shot three times, all before 8:10 in the morning, is not the best way to start. And I'm not really a morning person to begin with. Way to come back from vacation...
Whoopi actually wound up coming into school today. She couldn't use her hand- she evidently still has a bullet in her arm, but she seemed to feel fine. I couldn't believe she actually showed up. Granted, the shooting evidently happened the last day of school before break, which was over a week ago, but still... she has a friggin bullet in her arm. As everyone in the class was fussing over her in the hall, I helped her open her locker. Cyrus came up to us.
"See, Whoopi? I told you! Everyone's going to be all nice to you and give you all this sympathy because you got shot. That's why I want to get shot. I'm gonna go get myself shot in the head."
I looked at him and said dryly, "If you get yourself shot in the head there won't be any Cyrus for us to give sympathy to or be nice to."
Cyrus appeared to contemplate this for a minute. "Well... yeah, maybe. I guess so."
What disturbed me the most was the total normalcy of how he said it, for all the other kids as well. Getting shot isn't even a huge or life-changing event... Cross-fire is a part of life. A few weeks ago Penelope came in grouchy and snappy. In the afternoon she explained to me that she was just tired. There was a gunfight in her neighborhood the night before, and some bullets hit her house. The cops spent a significant part of the night banging around her house looking for the bullets.
"Stupid cops... I didn't get any sleep. It's not like we shot anyone! I just wanted them to do it quietly."
Penelope, is, incidently, trying to make up for weeks (verging on months) of apathy and indifference to school. She's a really special kid, loves learning about other cultures and is, when not beating other kids in a rage (which to be fair has only happened a couple times this whole year, though she's had other problems and evidently spent last summer under house arrest, I'm not real clear on why) actually really respectful and considerate of others in a way that I wish more adults were. Over break, as part of a reading program we're supposed to be having the kids do, she was the only one who actually recorded what she read, how many pages (145!), and even wrote a summary of what she read for me to prove that she actually read it. The only problem lay in what she read... I'm not sure how I'm going to pass this onto the reading coach...
The summary, with spelling but not much grammar edited, for your reading pleasure (consider it a preview, I'm sure they have it at Barnes and Nobles...):
G-Spot
The book The G-Spot is about a teen. She was 16 when she first heard about a man named G, and G was a pimp he got money from left to right. So she always heard this about him like one day he almost killed his cousin because his cousin because his cousin couldn't pay him his money so what she knew was that G was very strict about his money but as she got older she always heard things about him. She lived with her grandmom. Ok so shen she was 18 she and her friend wanted to go to G Spot the club G onde. Well, really her friend wanted to go but you had to be 21 or older to get in because it was a strip club. At her house she lived with her brother that was kind of mental but not too mental and one day she met G she didn't really know who he was until he told her and by then she had a crush (editor's note- the word she wrote is actually "clow" but I can't figure out what that is... "crush" is my best guess). So you know he got money so he told her he will help her get some money for her brothers school. So she love her brother and wanted him to finish his school so she went along with it.
Then they lived together started going out and then he was beating her.
but I didn't finish reading the story.
(arrow pointing up to her summary)
all that is so you would know I did my work!!
Have a good day (smiley face inserted here)
Thursday, March 29, 2007
A new kind of superhero...
I have no idea how I forgot about this when I was writing the other day, but it's okay because now I have two completely ridiculous stories.
When Melissa came back from her prep the other day, she was on the computer and in the "history" tab noticed that someone had been searching for porn. When she confronted her students about it, they told her that it had been one particular student who had done it while the "art" teacher was in the room. (I put quotation marks on that because this man is, as a teacher, completely useless. Funny, entertaining, and by and large popular with the students, but also completely and utterly useless- he's a long-term sub who basically hangs out and reads the paper with the kids. He's currently in for the art teacher who I think just walked out one day and never came back, and he has been for months, but the only art that happens during that period is kids drawing on their desks) They told her no one else would ever do it, and that she would never catch him because he would never do it while she was in the room. As she started devising a plan to catch him, she started checking the history of what he had been searching for (we're hoping most of the actual links got blocked by the school district, but somehow some of the computers aren't linked into the censor thingees properly- the history, however, shows all links searched for, not just visited, so she found quite a bit).
Best search of the bunch? Simpsons porn.
The other thing that I completely forgot about until Melissa reminded me of it is the new eighth grade superhero, formerly of my roomate from last year's class. This kid is now in a push-in (the "model" I do most of the time) class with a pretty awesome sped teacher, whose exploits include making up fake standardized tests with made-up words for the fun of watching other teachers explode. I have to say it was a pretty awesome test... although he then had to run to tell the people he gave it to that it was a joke before they went and flipped out on the department chair.
So the other day when I was with Little Jay, trying to find Big Jay's teachers, I run into this teacher, Jabberwock (after the text he based his fake test on), walking the little superhero down the hall. Jabberwock stops me.
"Ms. A, do you know M? He's one of my students."
"Nice to meet you, M."
"Now," Jabberwock started, obviously trying to keep a straight face, "M has decided that he needs a new tag. So he decided to be a superhero. See, he made a shirt and everything."
The kid grinned and nodded emphatically.
"I see," I said, noticing that the kid had drawn a Superman-style logo on the front of his t-shirt, only instead of an "S" there was a "J". "Super J?"
"Not quite..." Mr. Jabberwock trailed off.
"Super Jizz!" M yelled.
Jabberwock and I looked at each other. I looked away, then at the floor for a minute, trying very hard to not look at either M or LJ until I got my facial expressions under control.
"Super jizz?" I asked. M nodded emphatically some more, pushing his chest out to show off his "J".
"Now, I'm trying to explain to him why that's maybe not the best name without explaining why, exactly, that's not the best name, because he doesn't see why that might not be the best thing to go around calling himself and get known by..."
"Mmmhmmm," I tried to make agreeing sounds without laughing, and found myself silently thanking whatever powers that be that I started with sixth and not eighth grade...
"See, M, it's kind of like calling yourself "Super Snot", only worse." Jabberwock explained again.
"But why?"
Luckily LJ had wandered away to disrupt another class. I'm not sure I could have kept a straight face through that conversation or had to talk to him about it afterward. Part of me thinks that no kid could possibly have gotten through three years at that school and be that clueless about something like that... but part of me no longer doubts any potential for stupidity from any human being...
When Melissa came back from her prep the other day, she was on the computer and in the "history" tab noticed that someone had been searching for porn. When she confronted her students about it, they told her that it had been one particular student who had done it while the "art" teacher was in the room. (I put quotation marks on that because this man is, as a teacher, completely useless. Funny, entertaining, and by and large popular with the students, but also completely and utterly useless- he's a long-term sub who basically hangs out and reads the paper with the kids. He's currently in for the art teacher who I think just walked out one day and never came back, and he has been for months, but the only art that happens during that period is kids drawing on their desks) They told her no one else would ever do it, and that she would never catch him because he would never do it while she was in the room. As she started devising a plan to catch him, she started checking the history of what he had been searching for (we're hoping most of the actual links got blocked by the school district, but somehow some of the computers aren't linked into the censor thingees properly- the history, however, shows all links searched for, not just visited, so she found quite a bit).
Best search of the bunch? Simpsons porn.
The other thing that I completely forgot about until Melissa reminded me of it is the new eighth grade superhero, formerly of my roomate from last year's class. This kid is now in a push-in (the "model" I do most of the time) class with a pretty awesome sped teacher, whose exploits include making up fake standardized tests with made-up words for the fun of watching other teachers explode. I have to say it was a pretty awesome test... although he then had to run to tell the people he gave it to that it was a joke before they went and flipped out on the department chair.
So the other day when I was with Little Jay, trying to find Big Jay's teachers, I run into this teacher, Jabberwock (after the text he based his fake test on), walking the little superhero down the hall. Jabberwock stops me.
"Ms. A, do you know M? He's one of my students."
"Nice to meet you, M."
"Now," Jabberwock started, obviously trying to keep a straight face, "M has decided that he needs a new tag. So he decided to be a superhero. See, he made a shirt and everything."
The kid grinned and nodded emphatically.
"I see," I said, noticing that the kid had drawn a Superman-style logo on the front of his t-shirt, only instead of an "S" there was a "J". "Super J?"
"Not quite..." Mr. Jabberwock trailed off.
"Super Jizz!" M yelled.
Jabberwock and I looked at each other. I looked away, then at the floor for a minute, trying very hard to not look at either M or LJ until I got my facial expressions under control.
"Super jizz?" I asked. M nodded emphatically some more, pushing his chest out to show off his "J".
"Now, I'm trying to explain to him why that's maybe not the best name without explaining why, exactly, that's not the best name, because he doesn't see why that might not be the best thing to go around calling himself and get known by..."
"Mmmhmmm," I tried to make agreeing sounds without laughing, and found myself silently thanking whatever powers that be that I started with sixth and not eighth grade...
"See, M, it's kind of like calling yourself "Super Snot", only worse." Jabberwock explained again.
"But why?"
Luckily LJ had wandered away to disrupt another class. I'm not sure I could have kept a straight face through that conversation or had to talk to him about it afterward. Part of me thinks that no kid could possibly have gotten through three years at that school and be that clueless about something like that... but part of me no longer doubts any potential for stupidity from any human being...
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
meme of the day: darf
Just a thought unrelated to teaching directly- I have an addiction to internet news that, while it doesn't quite rival J's NewsBlues, isn't terribly far off. I mostly stick to BBC international; local news is too close to home and there's been too many cases where I found out a child at my school had a connection to something in the paper for me to want to have to filter even that small additional amount of emotional stress. Anyway, while I was checking through headlines before I got on to post this, I came across the headline: Blog Threats Spark Debate. Turns out the woman threatened blogs on learning theory- and from the posts I skimmed, not anything hugely controversial, just common sense stuff like, chunk information so the learner doesn't get overloaded and that people learn more when they're interested in the topic. It was written a bit more technically, of course, but still- death threats? Come on. Her following posts repeatedly made reference to a "Blogosphere" community, a term I've seen more and more in reference mostly to political monitoring.
And here's where I go, "huh?"
According to wikipedia, I am now a part of a global community that is used to track memes through research on hyperlinks and the like. Now, a small, cozy, blogocommunity, sure- there's a comfy little triangle of links between this blog and two written by two of my favorite people in the world, and I live with yet another of the bloggers I linked to. But I keep finding out that yet more random and widely spread people read this, which is cool but a little strange, since I initially started blogging assuming no one but my immediate friends and family would read it. But hey, we're all in this blogosphere together...
So anyway, the line that got me thinking about this was the wikipedia line about tracking memes... To any researchers reading this, your meme for the day is "darf". I'm not really sure what it means yet, but I'm working on it...
M's long-term sub replacement, Mr. M (it's so much harder to come up with good nicknames for teachers, sorry for all the initials that look the same...) was out today for the fourth day (not counting the weekend) in a row. My kids were a total pain in the butt this morning and just would not shut up for even 90 seconds, although I have a new girl that so far I absolutely love, and who seems to have a pretty sweet political analysis going, depending on where you are in the political spectrum. We're starting persuasive writing now, and her group brought up ending the war in Iraq as their goal- and no, for any conservative family out there, I did not in any way plant that thought in their heads, that was entirely on their own- so I asked them to think of specific goals surrounding that and reasons for it. One of her groupmates had just gone on a sugar high silly binge and was babbling about ending the violence, and then shot her fist up and yelled, "Black power!" before collapsing into giggles. I laughed, but my new girl kind of tuned us out for a minute, staring at her paper.
"Why should we fight for a government that doesn't care if we live or die?" she asked quietly, referring to BP's comment. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized what she said, and her expression went blank as she looked at me to see what my reaction would be. When I told her that was totally valid if she could support it with facts and examples, she relaxed a bit... She's gonna be an interesting one. Much like Pockets, who can't go three minutes without some kind of stupid outburst, generally involving someone's mom and a sexual act, but yet knows every political candidate of the last two presidential elections (at least), their histories, most important issues, related scandals (i.e. swift boat nonsense), and running mates, among other details. The kid probably knows more than most adults, and keep in mind he was barely out of the toddler stage two elections ago. Janine, refreshingly, has yet to say anything about anyone's mom or any sexual act. I'm hoping she's my replacement for Carver (my name, now that he's gone, for my baby that moved to Florida)- sweet, smart, well adjusted, all that good stuff. Especially since when they moved out Squirrely (the kid who brought the pelt in way back in the year) because the other kids jumped him, they told us we're gonna get a trade for evidently one of the worst girls in another class... fun times ahead.
Anyways... I was afraid to leave them alone with the sub in for M/Mr. M, so I didn't leave to go do resource (at some point I'm gonna start getting in trouble for that, I'm sure). When I finally got up there, 8th period, I wound up spending half an hour tracking down Jay's teachers. I have to write Jay's IEP this week, and have literally zero data on him or his ability or his levels. He finally did the reading test with me, although I highly doubt it was to the best of his ability, but he refused to do any of the math, and then was suspended out until after his IEP is going to be due, so I don't even have the chance to try and test him. Awesome. I'm debating a home visit to do it, actually, but his mom evidently doesn't speak English and my Spanish is pretty pathetic right now.
The half-hour was a half-hour wasted, however... when I finally found her, his math teacher got out her grade book.
"Absent, absent absent, zero. Zero, zero, zero, walked out, absent, cut, absent, zero. He never even bothered to turn anything in- I have nothing for him."
His reading teacher was pretty much the same.
"I don't even know what his handwriting looks like. I literally don't even think he's ever written his name on a sheet to turn in. I don't even know if he knows how to write his name."
Awesome. On the continually awkward side, trying to find them I ran into Little Jay, as usual chilling in the hallway. He has a new haircut, kind of a faux-hauk, but his hair is so short it's pretty subtle, and then he had little designs etched into the sides.
"New mohawk, huh?"
"Yeah," he grinned, "like it?" and swung around to walk me wherever I was going.
"Of course," I replied, mostly hoping that the little designs weren't gang symbols that I just didn't recognize- the gang in the neighborhood I lived in last year actually painted their symbol onto my car trunk, but theirs is pretty recognizable (and I'm hoping functions more like protection than anything else... so long as there's no gang wars I figure it doesn't really matter- it's more of a conversation piece than anything)... this was a little more abstract. "So what inspired the haircut?"
"You," LJ said kind of seriously but still smiling, and put his arm over my shoulders- he may be smaller than Big Jay but he's still bigger than me. Now, my 6th graders and I are fairly physically affectionate, just with small stuff like patting shoulders or hugs in the morning, and I have been known to tickle kids into promising improved behavior/homework/no more cursing- it's fine, it's with kids I already have a strong relationship with, etc. And if Cyrus, for example, (who started out smaller than me this year but is growing like a shepherd puppy and is already taller than me) put his arm around my shoulder, it wouldn't be weird in any way; like S said, my relationship with him is more maternal than anything else, and ditto for most of my other kids. BJ, though, not so much, and LJ, who's not even my student in any way.... like I said before, probably think slightly more grown thoughts than kids who still call me "Mom" by accident. And it's, well, weird. I patted his back and maneuvered as far from his body as possible, but he was determined to walk me to wherever I needed to go. We chatted for awhile- he wanted to know why I was trying to find BJ's teachers, I wanted to know what class he was supposed to be in ("I'm supposed to be with you, Miss. My teacher said." Uh huh. And you've never smoked a joint. Hey, was that a pig that just flew by?) - but then, as the reigning champion of non sequiturs, switched topics completely.
"Miss, say 'Darf'," he demanded.
"Darf?" I asked, a little confused.
"Darf! Like that," he clarified, emphasizing the "-rf" part of the word.
"Darf," I repeated, now even more confused.
"Yeah, like that!" he said, starting to laugh. I got a little nervous.
"What does that mean? Are you telling me to say something that's actually really dirty in another language?" I asked, racking my brain to think of how "darf" could possibly be inappropriate. I can probably curse in six different languages at this point (it's amazing how those words stick with you when everything else you learn can just fade away... and we circle back to the learning theory blog...), and for the life of me just could not think of anything.
"No, Miss! That's just like, our word, you and me. You're part of our group, now, that's what we use."
Not so much reassuring words from a kid like LJ, as charming and charismatic as he can be... I started hoping that "darf" wasn't a gang symbol of some kind.
As we were talking we swung by a room I needed to check for a teacher, actually the room I think he was supposed to be in. Of course, there was a sub, looking totally overwhelmed in the corner. LJ motioned to a friend, who climbed off the table he was reclining on and sauntered over.
"Yo, come here! Tell her our word."
The friend, clad in a black hoody, let out a quiet, pretty, musical howl: "Daaaaarrrrrrff!"
"You say it, Miss!"
"Darf."
"No! Like before, like him. He just added that stuff at the end. Daarrffff."
"Darf."
"Yeah!"
The friend laughed approvingly, then looked at LJ. "Yo, why she sayin' that?"
Which I actually was wondering myself as I distractedly tried to figure out how I was going to extricate myself from LJ, find BJ's teachers who seemed to have vanished from the third floor, and theoretically check in on some of my other resource kids, all before 9th period.
"She's part of us now, she knows our word." LJ swung off me and disappeared before I could even turn to the sub. One of the other kids in the class I knew from the MG program, so I chatted with him for a minute to see if he knew where his teachers would be. No luck. As I turned to go I realized LJ had actually swung into the classroom to hang out with his friends. I waved and started to leave.
"Goodbye, sweetie!" he called after me. Loudly.
Every time I start to think I'm getting comfortable with this job, something happens that makes me realize what a stupid thought that is.
Darf.
And here's where I go, "huh?"
According to wikipedia, I am now a part of a global community that is used to track memes through research on hyperlinks and the like. Now, a small, cozy, blogocommunity, sure- there's a comfy little triangle of links between this blog and two written by two of my favorite people in the world, and I live with yet another of the bloggers I linked to. But I keep finding out that yet more random and widely spread people read this, which is cool but a little strange, since I initially started blogging assuming no one but my immediate friends and family would read it. But hey, we're all in this blogosphere together...
So anyway, the line that got me thinking about this was the wikipedia line about tracking memes... To any researchers reading this, your meme for the day is "darf". I'm not really sure what it means yet, but I'm working on it...
M's long-term sub replacement, Mr. M (it's so much harder to come up with good nicknames for teachers, sorry for all the initials that look the same...) was out today for the fourth day (not counting the weekend) in a row. My kids were a total pain in the butt this morning and just would not shut up for even 90 seconds, although I have a new girl that so far I absolutely love, and who seems to have a pretty sweet political analysis going, depending on where you are in the political spectrum. We're starting persuasive writing now, and her group brought up ending the war in Iraq as their goal- and no, for any conservative family out there, I did not in any way plant that thought in their heads, that was entirely on their own- so I asked them to think of specific goals surrounding that and reasons for it. One of her groupmates had just gone on a sugar high silly binge and was babbling about ending the violence, and then shot her fist up and yelled, "Black power!" before collapsing into giggles. I laughed, but my new girl kind of tuned us out for a minute, staring at her paper.
"Why should we fight for a government that doesn't care if we live or die?" she asked quietly, referring to BP's comment. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized what she said, and her expression went blank as she looked at me to see what my reaction would be. When I told her that was totally valid if she could support it with facts and examples, she relaxed a bit... She's gonna be an interesting one. Much like Pockets, who can't go three minutes without some kind of stupid outburst, generally involving someone's mom and a sexual act, but yet knows every political candidate of the last two presidential elections (at least), their histories, most important issues, related scandals (i.e. swift boat nonsense), and running mates, among other details. The kid probably knows more than most adults, and keep in mind he was barely out of the toddler stage two elections ago. Janine, refreshingly, has yet to say anything about anyone's mom or any sexual act. I'm hoping she's my replacement for Carver (my name, now that he's gone, for my baby that moved to Florida)- sweet, smart, well adjusted, all that good stuff. Especially since when they moved out Squirrely (the kid who brought the pelt in way back in the year) because the other kids jumped him, they told us we're gonna get a trade for evidently one of the worst girls in another class... fun times ahead.
Anyways... I was afraid to leave them alone with the sub in for M/Mr. M, so I didn't leave to go do resource (at some point I'm gonna start getting in trouble for that, I'm sure). When I finally got up there, 8th period, I wound up spending half an hour tracking down Jay's teachers. I have to write Jay's IEP this week, and have literally zero data on him or his ability or his levels. He finally did the reading test with me, although I highly doubt it was to the best of his ability, but he refused to do any of the math, and then was suspended out until after his IEP is going to be due, so I don't even have the chance to try and test him. Awesome. I'm debating a home visit to do it, actually, but his mom evidently doesn't speak English and my Spanish is pretty pathetic right now.
The half-hour was a half-hour wasted, however... when I finally found her, his math teacher got out her grade book.
"Absent, absent absent, zero. Zero, zero, zero, walked out, absent, cut, absent, zero. He never even bothered to turn anything in- I have nothing for him."
His reading teacher was pretty much the same.
"I don't even know what his handwriting looks like. I literally don't even think he's ever written his name on a sheet to turn in. I don't even know if he knows how to write his name."
Awesome. On the continually awkward side, trying to find them I ran into Little Jay, as usual chilling in the hallway. He has a new haircut, kind of a faux-hauk, but his hair is so short it's pretty subtle, and then he had little designs etched into the sides.
"New mohawk, huh?"
"Yeah," he grinned, "like it?" and swung around to walk me wherever I was going.
"Of course," I replied, mostly hoping that the little designs weren't gang symbols that I just didn't recognize- the gang in the neighborhood I lived in last year actually painted their symbol onto my car trunk, but theirs is pretty recognizable (and I'm hoping functions more like protection than anything else... so long as there's no gang wars I figure it doesn't really matter- it's more of a conversation piece than anything)... this was a little more abstract. "So what inspired the haircut?"
"You," LJ said kind of seriously but still smiling, and put his arm over my shoulders- he may be smaller than Big Jay but he's still bigger than me. Now, my 6th graders and I are fairly physically affectionate, just with small stuff like patting shoulders or hugs in the morning, and I have been known to tickle kids into promising improved behavior/homework/no more cursing- it's fine, it's with kids I already have a strong relationship with, etc. And if Cyrus, for example, (who started out smaller than me this year but is growing like a shepherd puppy and is already taller than me) put his arm around my shoulder, it wouldn't be weird in any way; like S said, my relationship with him is more maternal than anything else, and ditto for most of my other kids. BJ, though, not so much, and LJ, who's not even my student in any way.... like I said before, probably think slightly more grown thoughts than kids who still call me "Mom" by accident. And it's, well, weird. I patted his back and maneuvered as far from his body as possible, but he was determined to walk me to wherever I needed to go. We chatted for awhile- he wanted to know why I was trying to find BJ's teachers, I wanted to know what class he was supposed to be in ("I'm supposed to be with you, Miss. My teacher said." Uh huh. And you've never smoked a joint. Hey, was that a pig that just flew by?) - but then, as the reigning champion of non sequiturs, switched topics completely.
"Miss, say 'Darf'," he demanded.
"Darf?" I asked, a little confused.
"Darf! Like that," he clarified, emphasizing the "-rf" part of the word.
"Darf," I repeated, now even more confused.
"Yeah, like that!" he said, starting to laugh. I got a little nervous.
"What does that mean? Are you telling me to say something that's actually really dirty in another language?" I asked, racking my brain to think of how "darf" could possibly be inappropriate. I can probably curse in six different languages at this point (it's amazing how those words stick with you when everything else you learn can just fade away... and we circle back to the learning theory blog...), and for the life of me just could not think of anything.
"No, Miss! That's just like, our word, you and me. You're part of our group, now, that's what we use."
Not so much reassuring words from a kid like LJ, as charming and charismatic as he can be... I started hoping that "darf" wasn't a gang symbol of some kind.
As we were talking we swung by a room I needed to check for a teacher, actually the room I think he was supposed to be in. Of course, there was a sub, looking totally overwhelmed in the corner. LJ motioned to a friend, who climbed off the table he was reclining on and sauntered over.
"Yo, come here! Tell her our word."
The friend, clad in a black hoody, let out a quiet, pretty, musical howl: "Daaaaarrrrrrff!"
"You say it, Miss!"
"Darf."
"No! Like before, like him. He just added that stuff at the end. Daarrffff."
"Darf."
"Yeah!"
The friend laughed approvingly, then looked at LJ. "Yo, why she sayin' that?"
Which I actually was wondering myself as I distractedly tried to figure out how I was going to extricate myself from LJ, find BJ's teachers who seemed to have vanished from the third floor, and theoretically check in on some of my other resource kids, all before 9th period.
"She's part of us now, she knows our word." LJ swung off me and disappeared before I could even turn to the sub. One of the other kids in the class I knew from the MG program, so I chatted with him for a minute to see if he knew where his teachers would be. No luck. As I turned to go I realized LJ had actually swung into the classroom to hang out with his friends. I waved and started to leave.
"Goodbye, sweetie!" he called after me. Loudly.
Every time I start to think I'm getting comfortable with this job, something happens that makes me realize what a stupid thought that is.
Darf.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
when i wish i was in (a different kind of) grad school
A friend still in college came over for dinner last night, and mentioned off hand this trend of music videos starting to be influenced by/attract queer (GLBTQ) ideas/identities. She phrased it better, of course, but it was much more evident when we all sat down and watched music videos for half an hour off YouTube. Ems and I were in slight shock; not having a TV just puts you totally out of the loop of a lot of this stuff, although we agreed it was better so we didn't just sit around all night and watch music videos. S, who brought up the whole thing, mentioned while we were watching a not particularly queer video, Beyonce and Shakira's Beautfiul Liar, that this was the stuff eight and nine year olds were watching now, obviously a little taken aback by the thought of the overwhelming sexual connotations of it. All I could think was, I want to write a paper deconstructing the reciprocal influence of this trend on the identities of young black and Latino girls (and boys, for that matter) in urban environments (okay, my school). Actually, I don't, I want somebody who's far more skilled at these kinds of analyses- *cough M cough cough J cough*- to do it so I can read it... and just know that that kind of work is going on.
Now, I listen to the radio on a daily basis, and almost always stations my kids listen to. I love what would probably most aptly be termed "pop-hop", and while I recognize the many many many problematic aspects to it, it's also a fun way to relate to my kids (with maybe four exceptions... currently the song about lip gloss makes me want to break the radio, and "Grillz" came pretty close to putting me into a homicidal rage after the 800th time I listened to it, it being the absolute favorite song of my kids last year- especially after they found out I didn't like it). Point being that I am very aware of both the good and bad they listen to, and I have heard all of these songs probably a hundred times.
I was just totally unaware that these videos were even out there; one of them is an alternate version for the song (Upgrade U) in which Beyonce actually plays against herself, as her standard sex kitten persona and then as Jay-Z, in his clothing, in his masculine counterpart to her standard role (with her femme self dancing around her-as-him), lip-synching to his words, looking, well, very rich and kind of queer. The seond video blew me away, "Like a Boy" by Ciara. Now, the kids LOVE these songs- we got new tables in my classroom yesterday, and for a while before they were set up there was a big open space, and as my kids had been pretty much rockstars for the previous four periods, I let them turn on the radio and have a dance party for fifteen minutes before we started setting the tables up. Both of these songs came on, and the kids damn near knew the moves from the Ciara video; I just didn't know the context, since I only listen to the radio, I don't watch the videos.
Well, damn, I was missing out. "2007. Ladies, I think it's time to switch roles," are the first words, with Ciara in a thin white tank, big jeans, and sneakers, with tattoos up and down her arms, and a scully hat- she could've borrowed the entire outfit from Little Jay, or pretty much any other boy in my entire school. She also plays against herself in another scene, one being in a suit and one in an overly feminine dress. A full dance group of all women, all dyked out, dance with her, all with moves exaggerating the masculinity of their roles (a stylized crotch grab is the most obvious). Yet all of them, Ciara especially, look absolutely gorgeous from a totally conventional feminine standpoint in close-ups, and the lyrics never touch on any kind of actual gender-bending or challenge sexuality in any way. The "sometimes I wish I did act like a boy," pretty much sums up the theme- what would men do if women acted like men (in relationships)?
And yet..
Every time I look at the video, there's a dozen girls at my school that spring to mind. There's one girl in particular that looks just like boy-Ciara in the video, not one of my students but somebody I chat with in the hall. All of these girls endure the standard, "You look like a boy," and variations of insults, although some of them, like the one I'm thinking of, are actually quite beautiful in a feminine way; they're attacked for their choice of dress and appearance, rather than whether or not they actually look like a boy. It goes beyond being a tomboy (although that's sort of a whole interesting phenomenon too...); I would put money on at least exploration into a queer identity for most of these girls at some point in their lives, if not that they turn out just completely gay. Now, I've rarely heard people insulted by words like dyke; homophobia is a little more vocal against males, so "faggot" tends to be the word of the day (and sometimes not even as an insult; that's just the identifier for a gay man, but that's more slippery). "Lesbian" is almost too exotic to be something taken seriously. One of my after-school eighth graders decided last week to set me up with his science teacher (another TFA member); I laughed and told him that was the second set-up of the week, since LJ was trying to get me to hook up with Ms. Lez. My match-maker looked puzzled.
"He thinks you're a lesbian?"
"Evidently. Or that I could be convinced into it."
"Huh."
But there was no questioning of it, and no disgust at it; it's simply too foreign a concept (particularly for the boys) for them to really put a value judgement on it or even evaluate whether it could be true or not.
So I wonder... given the huge importance of celebrity images like Ciara and Beyonce in developing self-image in their community, what is/could be the impact of these kinds of videos? It definitely legitimizes the choice of girls to look like boys; if Ciara does it, it's a valid fashion choice. Although it in a way would only legitimize it as a continuation of a straight identity, which sort of negates the point for girls who dress that way as sort of first steps to a queer/lesbian identity. And what about the relationship of the femme character obviously in a very sexualized relationship with the butch character? I don't even want to touch on how they're the same person... auto-sexual? Too complicated... Oh, what I would give for a gender studies class right now...
And yes, I know it's entirely possible I'm over-analyzing some stupid music videos in the vain hope of finding the intellectual stimulation missing from my life since I left Chicago. But honestly, I think this is stuff that should be studied; graduate educational theory should take into account the cultural context children are learning in as well as developmental issues that are quite often ignored (like the development of a sexual and/or gender identity). And for kids for whom celebrity culture is so ever-present and often defacto role models for self identity, who are also dealing with umpteen other issues... I just want someone to write a paper on it, okay?
(M, J, get ready, get set... go! please?)
Now, I listen to the radio on a daily basis, and almost always stations my kids listen to. I love what would probably most aptly be termed "pop-hop", and while I recognize the many many many problematic aspects to it, it's also a fun way to relate to my kids (with maybe four exceptions... currently the song about lip gloss makes me want to break the radio, and "Grillz" came pretty close to putting me into a homicidal rage after the 800th time I listened to it, it being the absolute favorite song of my kids last year- especially after they found out I didn't like it). Point being that I am very aware of both the good and bad they listen to, and I have heard all of these songs probably a hundred times.
I was just totally unaware that these videos were even out there; one of them is an alternate version for the song (Upgrade U) in which Beyonce actually plays against herself, as her standard sex kitten persona and then as Jay-Z, in his clothing, in his masculine counterpart to her standard role (with her femme self dancing around her-as-him), lip-synching to his words, looking, well, very rich and kind of queer. The seond video blew me away, "Like a Boy" by Ciara. Now, the kids LOVE these songs- we got new tables in my classroom yesterday, and for a while before they were set up there was a big open space, and as my kids had been pretty much rockstars for the previous four periods, I let them turn on the radio and have a dance party for fifteen minutes before we started setting the tables up. Both of these songs came on, and the kids damn near knew the moves from the Ciara video; I just didn't know the context, since I only listen to the radio, I don't watch the videos.
Well, damn, I was missing out. "2007. Ladies, I think it's time to switch roles," are the first words, with Ciara in a thin white tank, big jeans, and sneakers, with tattoos up and down her arms, and a scully hat- she could've borrowed the entire outfit from Little Jay, or pretty much any other boy in my entire school. She also plays against herself in another scene, one being in a suit and one in an overly feminine dress. A full dance group of all women, all dyked out, dance with her, all with moves exaggerating the masculinity of their roles (a stylized crotch grab is the most obvious). Yet all of them, Ciara especially, look absolutely gorgeous from a totally conventional feminine standpoint in close-ups, and the lyrics never touch on any kind of actual gender-bending or challenge sexuality in any way. The "sometimes I wish I did act like a boy," pretty much sums up the theme- what would men do if women acted like men (in relationships)?
And yet..
Every time I look at the video, there's a dozen girls at my school that spring to mind. There's one girl in particular that looks just like boy-Ciara in the video, not one of my students but somebody I chat with in the hall. All of these girls endure the standard, "You look like a boy," and variations of insults, although some of them, like the one I'm thinking of, are actually quite beautiful in a feminine way; they're attacked for their choice of dress and appearance, rather than whether or not they actually look like a boy. It goes beyond being a tomboy (although that's sort of a whole interesting phenomenon too...); I would put money on at least exploration into a queer identity for most of these girls at some point in their lives, if not that they turn out just completely gay. Now, I've rarely heard people insulted by words like dyke; homophobia is a little more vocal against males, so "faggot" tends to be the word of the day (and sometimes not even as an insult; that's just the identifier for a gay man, but that's more slippery). "Lesbian" is almost too exotic to be something taken seriously. One of my after-school eighth graders decided last week to set me up with his science teacher (another TFA member); I laughed and told him that was the second set-up of the week, since LJ was trying to get me to hook up with Ms. Lez. My match-maker looked puzzled.
"He thinks you're a lesbian?"
"Evidently. Or that I could be convinced into it."
"Huh."
But there was no questioning of it, and no disgust at it; it's simply too foreign a concept (particularly for the boys) for them to really put a value judgement on it or even evaluate whether it could be true or not.
So I wonder... given the huge importance of celebrity images like Ciara and Beyonce in developing self-image in their community, what is/could be the impact of these kinds of videos? It definitely legitimizes the choice of girls to look like boys; if Ciara does it, it's a valid fashion choice. Although it in a way would only legitimize it as a continuation of a straight identity, which sort of negates the point for girls who dress that way as sort of first steps to a queer/lesbian identity. And what about the relationship of the femme character obviously in a very sexualized relationship with the butch character? I don't even want to touch on how they're the same person... auto-sexual? Too complicated... Oh, what I would give for a gender studies class right now...
And yes, I know it's entirely possible I'm over-analyzing some stupid music videos in the vain hope of finding the intellectual stimulation missing from my life since I left Chicago. But honestly, I think this is stuff that should be studied; graduate educational theory should take into account the cultural context children are learning in as well as developmental issues that are quite often ignored (like the development of a sexual and/or gender identity). And for kids for whom celebrity culture is so ever-present and often defacto role models for self identity, who are also dealing with umpteen other issues... I just want someone to write a paper on it, okay?
(M, J, get ready, get set... go! please?)
Thursday, March 22, 2007
boring by this week's standards
Just thought I'd throw in that evidently two of my resource kids were suspended... not one. Which makes seven, eight if you count Sidekick's suspension from earlier this week... I haven't even checked on Urkel or one of my other resource girls in days, so I don't know about them.
On the plus side, with five kids out the rest of the class did an AMAZING job today during RELA (reading and english language arts). Small cooperative group work, one doing guided reading, one doing dictionary work, one supposed to be doing cause-and-effect but they decided collectively to review the play we just read and reassigned themselves parts and read it together instead. Most classes I hear my name called, without exaggeration, probably eighty times. Somehow they think if I didn't respond to them the first three times they called my name without raising their hand or being in their seats it'll work SO much better to just say my name repeatedly eighteen more times without taking a breath while walking around the room. Today they actually shooed me away because they wanted to keep focusing on their work and didn't want me to distract them, and they all wanted to spend the full two periods on their projects rather than switching every 25 minutes like I planned. I was in teacher heaven for probably two hours.
I even went over Bloom's Taxonomy with my high group-- if you're not a big educational theory dork/TFA member, Bloom's is a system of organizing thought processes that teachers use to sort of scaffold learning and push kids to more advanced critical thinking (being able to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate knowledge rather than just identifying and using it)-- and had them create questions from their reading (they chose the most difficult of the books I gave them the option of choosing between, I was proud) and categorize their questions. And all this with the other teacher who's been the consistent long-term sub for M. out today. It rocked.
If only I'd been observed today... course I probably didn't have some piece of paperwork in the right place, especially with all the teaching materials and student work covered up from the PSSAs...
Three more of my kids told me they think Dae took my wallet and passed it off to somebody. I really, really, really hope that's not true... I've managed to convince myself that it happened downtown, and now I'm trying to psych myself up for being mean/disappointed when my kids come back. They deserve some mean treatment, after basically ganging up and robbing another kid, in their class no less, and they need to know and understand that, but mostly I just miss them, even Dae, who I'm starting to have serious character doubts about. I need to borrow some of his mean streak.
On the plus side, with five kids out the rest of the class did an AMAZING job today during RELA (reading and english language arts). Small cooperative group work, one doing guided reading, one doing dictionary work, one supposed to be doing cause-and-effect but they decided collectively to review the play we just read and reassigned themselves parts and read it together instead. Most classes I hear my name called, without exaggeration, probably eighty times. Somehow they think if I didn't respond to them the first three times they called my name without raising their hand or being in their seats it'll work SO much better to just say my name repeatedly eighteen more times without taking a breath while walking around the room. Today they actually shooed me away because they wanted to keep focusing on their work and didn't want me to distract them, and they all wanted to spend the full two periods on their projects rather than switching every 25 minutes like I planned. I was in teacher heaven for probably two hours.
I even went over Bloom's Taxonomy with my high group-- if you're not a big educational theory dork/TFA member, Bloom's is a system of organizing thought processes that teachers use to sort of scaffold learning and push kids to more advanced critical thinking (being able to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate knowledge rather than just identifying and using it)-- and had them create questions from their reading (they chose the most difficult of the books I gave them the option of choosing between, I was proud) and categorize their questions. And all this with the other teacher who's been the consistent long-term sub for M. out today. It rocked.
If only I'd been observed today... course I probably didn't have some piece of paperwork in the right place, especially with all the teaching materials and student work covered up from the PSSAs...
Three more of my kids told me they think Dae took my wallet and passed it off to somebody. I really, really, really hope that's not true... I've managed to convince myself that it happened downtown, and now I'm trying to psych myself up for being mean/disappointed when my kids come back. They deserve some mean treatment, after basically ganging up and robbing another kid, in their class no less, and they need to know and understand that, but mostly I just miss them, even Dae, who I'm starting to have serious character doubts about. I need to borrow some of his mean streak.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
I want a day in the life of an accountant
Six of my kids were suspended today. Five boys from my class, and one resource kid. Three guesses as to which resource kid. No, I take that back... Just one. Think hard, now...
Evidently five (I thought it was four, but no, five) of my boys jumped another one of them on Friday and took his gameboy and something like eleven of his games. The kid's mom went to the police and is evidently pressing charges... It's Dae, Gecko, Huffy, and two other kids I don't think I've written about specifically. One is a generally a good kid following Dae's lead (as, actually, were all the rest of them), and the other is relatively new to my class, who got transferred for being harassed himself in another class. (My favorite story from the week before he was transferred in- from the same teacher who actually also had Jay back in the day: walking to an assembly, another kid calls this one, for whom I've yet to think of a good nickname although I'm leaning toward Pockets from his habit of cramming food such as whole cheesesteaks in there on a regular basis, a faggot. Pockets turns around and replies,
"Oh yeah? Then how come my fingers were in your mom's butt last night?")
They were supposed to be arrested but the police from the local station never showed... So they're out for five days. This morning someone asked about it in class, and Cyrus interrupted to add:
"See Ms. A? Another bad thing I wasn't involved in!"
I told him I was proud of him for how he had stayed out of the whole thing, since he's friends with all the boys that did the attack and robbery. He's also friends with the kid who got attacked, though... I really have no idea what his motivation was for staying out of it, but I'm glad he did. It's funny the things they need to know I appreciate. It also looks like my wallet was stolen while I was out at dinner last week, which clears Cyrus (huge relief, although it doesn't make the annoyance of the whole dealing with the stolen wallet thing any easier. I can't even begin to express how heartbroken I would have been if he had actually done that) but makes me even more disappointed in Dae, since I believe he now lied to me about it and made me doubt a kid that I really love who really just needs to know someone believes in him. It sucks; in a lot of ways Dae and Cyrus are my DJs of this year. They're the ones who've made the most obvious drastic improvements in behavior from their last year in school, that I have in some ways the most intense relationships with. Dae has definitely got a lot of DJ's sneakiness, that I just pray he grows out of... Thank god Cyrus doesn't have that, although I think some of the other teachers might appreciate that more than his current overwhelmingly oppositional behavior with some of them.
Tangent on that note- one of my professors came in today to do observations, although I was doing make-up testing. Cyrus was supposed to be finishing his test, but was having trouble concentrating and so was walking around the room. He started rifling through the health teacher's stack of posters as I was talking to the professor, so I told him to put it down.
"But this is my project!" he protested as he pulled one out. The subject? Cocaine and crack! My professor looked a little overwhelmed. Little bit embarassing. Just a little. And by little I mean... a lot. (ever see the Buffy episode in sixth season with the social worker...?)
Walking into the special ed office this morning I hear over someone's walkie that Jay had entered the building- the same time that another girl started having seizues evidently, outside, and an ambulance was on it's way. I asked the principal if the ambulance was for Jay, but she said no; I don't know whether at that point she knew about the security issue or not. Now, it's not like Jay's a regular at the building, but him coming isn't so shocking that it would go out over security. So I go up to see if he's there the beginning of third, but his teacher was out so I went around to check for some of my other eighth graders and see Little Jay in the hall.
"Where's your buddy, Jay?"
"He got locked up." Little Jay responded, lounging comfortably against the lockers with no thought of class even in the vicinity of his head.
"Locked up? What do you mean, locked up? He was here yesterday, and this morning, I heard it over the walkie. He's not locked up, it's not even 10:00 yet."
"No, Miss, I'm serious. He's locked up. He threatened a teacher or something."
Turns out he threatened a security officer yesterday at the end of the day, was suspended, and came back anyway and so was arrested for trespassing. Kid doesn't show up for months, and now he can't stay away... sometimes they're just stupid. I didn't get the chance today, but I'm definitely calling him tomorrow to yell at him for being stupid.
Little Jay, however, decided to be my best buddy. I told him to walk with me while I went around dropping PSSA stuff off and picking other PSSA stuff up. Kids aren't allowed to be alone with the testing material, even to carry it between rooms, which makes the whole thing a ginormous pain in the ass. Then he asked if he could stay with me for a while, and since I wasn't going back in with my main classroom, and his class was split up (not that he would have gone or attempted to learn anything anyway), I said sure so long as he didn't talk to whoever I brought into resource, and that he could use the computer so long as he did something educational first. So he came in, did First in Math for a little while, and checked out at the bell and even waited for a note to go back to class. Even the thug kids'll surprise you some days...
Lez told me that after I left Melissa's class yesterday when she was telling Jay that she wanted to have me following her around, Little Jay was all about it. I'm not sure how explicit he got, but evidently he was seconding her on my being hot and being jealous of my following Big Jay around, and he may have had an ulterior motive for following me today- he told Lez he'd work on getting me to hook up with her somehow.
This will come up later, but I gotta say, sometimes I get tired of being the young attractive teacher that the boys have a crush on and the girls relate to. Too much baggage. At least this time it was funny.
Anyway, I grilled him for awhile about how I keep hearing about how he and Big Jay used to be such good students, which he steadfastly denied, and how they were really sweet and polite, "-not that you haven't been polite to me. You've been very polite to me. But threatening security, and all the other stupid choices you guys have made this year? What changed?" LJ just shrugged. I asked him if he was in the same business as BJ. He claimed ignorance but it was a pretty clear cover to get me to ask him if they dealt drugs, which I didn't want to do outright. He told me anything we talked about would be in confidence- I suppose meaning he wouldn't tell BJ. I think he might have wanted to have an actual heart to heart, but I was just curious how much he would tell me right off the bat. Especially since when I first ran into him, he was practicing how to roll a joint using his late slip.
"Just practicing my skills," he responded when I gave him a look.
"On your late slip?"
"Uh huh."
"That's probably not the best thing to practice on. A lot of people have probably touched that paper. I wouldn't stick it in my mouth. Do you not get enough practice with the real thing?"
"Naw, I don't smoke that stuff. I'm just playing around."
And pigs have wings... and then in a slight veer of conversation:
"So do you smoke Newport cigarettes?"
"No."
"Tell the truth, Miss!"
"No, I do not smoke Newports. I promise. It's the truth."
"Do you smoke weed?"
"No."
"No, really. I won't tell." Actually probably true... Another teacher the TweedleJays are close with told me Big Jay offered her a sample.
"No. When you're a teacher, you can lose your job over something like that."
"Oh." I don't know if he believed me, but he let it drop.
The clincher of the day, however, came after school, when two of the eighth grade girls came in late, freaking out.
"Miss A! We gotta show you something! We don't want to say it in front of anyone, though."
Turns out someone thought it would be cute to put a condom on the third floor railing. Like, really on, not just hanging on. One of them touched it by accident before she saw it and was paranoid she was going to get a disease. They thought it was used because it had stuff inside it, but it wasn't quite that disgusting; I'm pretty sure it was just lubricant or spermicide or something, which I tried to explain to them before getting really uncomfortable with the whole topic.
"Oh, we know about that, Miss."
"And how would you know about something like spermicide in condoms in eighth grade?" I asked pointedly.
"Because our parents tell us! You know, like how to protect yourself from disease and stuff. But I'm a virgin, I never even touched one before! I washed my hand, like, fifteen times. Do you think that's enough?" Anita asked, panicking for probably the eighth time in as many minutes.
"Yeah, I'm a virgin too. Well, I mean, technically..." Maria started to answer but faded off. Guessing she was referring to oral sex or something else I didn't really want to know about, I waved her off.
"I don't even want to know..."
We started back downstairs to go back to the program. The girls started chattering in Spanish. Anita talks at lightening speed even in English, so in Spanish I had no hope of understanding, but Maria looked progressively more and more upset. I was going to keep going down the stairs but when we were almost there Anita yanked me back.
"Um, Miss, there's something we- Maria- well, she can't say it, but there's something we want to tell you..."
More conferencing in Spanish, then confession of the year... They told me Maria had been raped by a teenage neighbor when she was a little kid, which is why she stumbled over the "virgin" issue. Not only that but that her step-dad molested her for four years, only stopping last summer, and that her mom doesn't believe her. It was one of the more depressing conversations I've had yet this year. Some days I want to have a neon sign on me that says, "Please do not tell me anything you don't want me to report to someone else." because she flipped out when I talked about going to the police or DHS... I have to do something, though. The situation just sounded worse and worse the more she talked about it. Needless to say the end of the after-school program was shot. She started shaking as she told me, and a lot of it she just looked at Anita and Anita told me because she couldn't talk or she would start tearing up, and she kept saying that she just really didn't want to cry.
Back to the tired of being the young female teacher... she's not even in my class, or on my caseload... Just in my after school program. I've been friendly to her, but we're certainly not close- that was really the first conversation I've ever had with her, but she told me she just never knew an adult she trusted before, and I doubt she would've told me if not pushed to by Anita, who I do know well and who does trust me.
Just for one day I'd like to have a boring job. Maybe just have a day in the life of an accountant.
Evidently five (I thought it was four, but no, five) of my boys jumped another one of them on Friday and took his gameboy and something like eleven of his games. The kid's mom went to the police and is evidently pressing charges... It's Dae, Gecko, Huffy, and two other kids I don't think I've written about specifically. One is a generally a good kid following Dae's lead (as, actually, were all the rest of them), and the other is relatively new to my class, who got transferred for being harassed himself in another class. (My favorite story from the week before he was transferred in- from the same teacher who actually also had Jay back in the day: walking to an assembly, another kid calls this one, for whom I've yet to think of a good nickname although I'm leaning toward Pockets from his habit of cramming food such as whole cheesesteaks in there on a regular basis, a faggot. Pockets turns around and replies,
"Oh yeah? Then how come my fingers were in your mom's butt last night?")
They were supposed to be arrested but the police from the local station never showed... So they're out for five days. This morning someone asked about it in class, and Cyrus interrupted to add:
"See Ms. A? Another bad thing I wasn't involved in!"
I told him I was proud of him for how he had stayed out of the whole thing, since he's friends with all the boys that did the attack and robbery. He's also friends with the kid who got attacked, though... I really have no idea what his motivation was for staying out of it, but I'm glad he did. It's funny the things they need to know I appreciate. It also looks like my wallet was stolen while I was out at dinner last week, which clears Cyrus (huge relief, although it doesn't make the annoyance of the whole dealing with the stolen wallet thing any easier. I can't even begin to express how heartbroken I would have been if he had actually done that) but makes me even more disappointed in Dae, since I believe he now lied to me about it and made me doubt a kid that I really love who really just needs to know someone believes in him. It sucks; in a lot of ways Dae and Cyrus are my DJs of this year. They're the ones who've made the most obvious drastic improvements in behavior from their last year in school, that I have in some ways the most intense relationships with. Dae has definitely got a lot of DJ's sneakiness, that I just pray he grows out of... Thank god Cyrus doesn't have that, although I think some of the other teachers might appreciate that more than his current overwhelmingly oppositional behavior with some of them.
Tangent on that note- one of my professors came in today to do observations, although I was doing make-up testing. Cyrus was supposed to be finishing his test, but was having trouble concentrating and so was walking around the room. He started rifling through the health teacher's stack of posters as I was talking to the professor, so I told him to put it down.
"But this is my project!" he protested as he pulled one out. The subject? Cocaine and crack! My professor looked a little overwhelmed. Little bit embarassing. Just a little. And by little I mean... a lot. (ever see the Buffy episode in sixth season with the social worker...?)
Walking into the special ed office this morning I hear over someone's walkie that Jay had entered the building- the same time that another girl started having seizues evidently, outside, and an ambulance was on it's way. I asked the principal if the ambulance was for Jay, but she said no; I don't know whether at that point she knew about the security issue or not. Now, it's not like Jay's a regular at the building, but him coming isn't so shocking that it would go out over security. So I go up to see if he's there the beginning of third, but his teacher was out so I went around to check for some of my other eighth graders and see Little Jay in the hall.
"Where's your buddy, Jay?"
"He got locked up." Little Jay responded, lounging comfortably against the lockers with no thought of class even in the vicinity of his head.
"Locked up? What do you mean, locked up? He was here yesterday, and this morning, I heard it over the walkie. He's not locked up, it's not even 10:00 yet."
"No, Miss, I'm serious. He's locked up. He threatened a teacher or something."
Turns out he threatened a security officer yesterday at the end of the day, was suspended, and came back anyway and so was arrested for trespassing. Kid doesn't show up for months, and now he can't stay away... sometimes they're just stupid. I didn't get the chance today, but I'm definitely calling him tomorrow to yell at him for being stupid.
Little Jay, however, decided to be my best buddy. I told him to walk with me while I went around dropping PSSA stuff off and picking other PSSA stuff up. Kids aren't allowed to be alone with the testing material, even to carry it between rooms, which makes the whole thing a ginormous pain in the ass. Then he asked if he could stay with me for a while, and since I wasn't going back in with my main classroom, and his class was split up (not that he would have gone or attempted to learn anything anyway), I said sure so long as he didn't talk to whoever I brought into resource, and that he could use the computer so long as he did something educational first. So he came in, did First in Math for a little while, and checked out at the bell and even waited for a note to go back to class. Even the thug kids'll surprise you some days...
Lez told me that after I left Melissa's class yesterday when she was telling Jay that she wanted to have me following her around, Little Jay was all about it. I'm not sure how explicit he got, but evidently he was seconding her on my being hot and being jealous of my following Big Jay around, and he may have had an ulterior motive for following me today- he told Lez he'd work on getting me to hook up with her somehow.
This will come up later, but I gotta say, sometimes I get tired of being the young attractive teacher that the boys have a crush on and the girls relate to. Too much baggage. At least this time it was funny.
Anyway, I grilled him for awhile about how I keep hearing about how he and Big Jay used to be such good students, which he steadfastly denied, and how they were really sweet and polite, "-not that you haven't been polite to me. You've been very polite to me. But threatening security, and all the other stupid choices you guys have made this year? What changed?" LJ just shrugged. I asked him if he was in the same business as BJ. He claimed ignorance but it was a pretty clear cover to get me to ask him if they dealt drugs, which I didn't want to do outright. He told me anything we talked about would be in confidence- I suppose meaning he wouldn't tell BJ. I think he might have wanted to have an actual heart to heart, but I was just curious how much he would tell me right off the bat. Especially since when I first ran into him, he was practicing how to roll a joint using his late slip.
"Just practicing my skills," he responded when I gave him a look.
"On your late slip?"
"Uh huh."
"That's probably not the best thing to practice on. A lot of people have probably touched that paper. I wouldn't stick it in my mouth. Do you not get enough practice with the real thing?"
"Naw, I don't smoke that stuff. I'm just playing around."
And pigs have wings... and then in a slight veer of conversation:
"So do you smoke Newport cigarettes?"
"No."
"Tell the truth, Miss!"
"No, I do not smoke Newports. I promise. It's the truth."
"Do you smoke weed?"
"No."
"No, really. I won't tell." Actually probably true... Another teacher the TweedleJays are close with told me Big Jay offered her a sample.
"No. When you're a teacher, you can lose your job over something like that."
"Oh." I don't know if he believed me, but he let it drop.
The clincher of the day, however, came after school, when two of the eighth grade girls came in late, freaking out.
"Miss A! We gotta show you something! We don't want to say it in front of anyone, though."
Turns out someone thought it would be cute to put a condom on the third floor railing. Like, really on, not just hanging on. One of them touched it by accident before she saw it and was paranoid she was going to get a disease. They thought it was used because it had stuff inside it, but it wasn't quite that disgusting; I'm pretty sure it was just lubricant or spermicide or something, which I tried to explain to them before getting really uncomfortable with the whole topic.
"Oh, we know about that, Miss."
"And how would you know about something like spermicide in condoms in eighth grade?" I asked pointedly.
"Because our parents tell us! You know, like how to protect yourself from disease and stuff. But I'm a virgin, I never even touched one before! I washed my hand, like, fifteen times. Do you think that's enough?" Anita asked, panicking for probably the eighth time in as many minutes.
"Yeah, I'm a virgin too. Well, I mean, technically..." Maria started to answer but faded off. Guessing she was referring to oral sex or something else I didn't really want to know about, I waved her off.
"I don't even want to know..."
We started back downstairs to go back to the program. The girls started chattering in Spanish. Anita talks at lightening speed even in English, so in Spanish I had no hope of understanding, but Maria looked progressively more and more upset. I was going to keep going down the stairs but when we were almost there Anita yanked me back.
"Um, Miss, there's something we- Maria- well, she can't say it, but there's something we want to tell you..."
More conferencing in Spanish, then confession of the year... They told me Maria had been raped by a teenage neighbor when she was a little kid, which is why she stumbled over the "virgin" issue. Not only that but that her step-dad molested her for four years, only stopping last summer, and that her mom doesn't believe her. It was one of the more depressing conversations I've had yet this year. Some days I want to have a neon sign on me that says, "Please do not tell me anything you don't want me to report to someone else." because she flipped out when I talked about going to the police or DHS... I have to do something, though. The situation just sounded worse and worse the more she talked about it. Needless to say the end of the after-school program was shot. She started shaking as she told me, and a lot of it she just looked at Anita and Anita told me because she couldn't talk or she would start tearing up, and she kept saying that she just really didn't want to cry.
Back to the tired of being the young female teacher... she's not even in my class, or on my caseload... Just in my after school program. I've been friendly to her, but we're certainly not close- that was really the first conversation I've ever had with her, but she told me she just never knew an adult she trusted before, and I doubt she would've told me if not pushed to by Anita, who I do know well and who does trust me.
Just for one day I'd like to have a boring job. Maybe just have a day in the life of an accountant.
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