welcome back!

I forgot to add the fight that happened literally at probably 8:04. I signed in, turned the hallway, hugged probably 40-some kids (kind of amazing that the smush of kids didn't turn into a fight, actually) unlocked my classroom, put my stuff down, came out to talk to L, and see Mr. W, whose classroom is across from L's, holding two girls apart, one of them L's and one of them I didn't recognize. Mr. W is a very nice guy, somewhere in early middle age land, a bit stodgy, runs a computer lab for resource level special ed kids. He could be the very slightly stuffy dad on any given TV show; given the right script, he's hilarious. I missed the start of the fight, but it was a good one... one of the girls had scratches up and down her face and by the end they'd literally torn each others' hair out. I run up to help Mr. W, and as I'm literally prying the girls' fingers off each other, he brightly chirps,

"Welcome back!"


Uh huh. 8:07, hugs are over, one girl is in the office and I'm spending advisory holding a student in the hallway away from the door so she won't go attack the other girl again. As another teacher calls it, tumble-weave from the fight making its way down the hall ahead of us.

Obviously what these kids really need is more curriculum driven instruction and another standardized test.

you're so fat when you step on the scale it says, "to be continued..."

My greeting of affection today from Huffy. To put this in context, I've been out of school for the past three days sick with a virus that started last Friday morning which has basically put me off solid food and caused me to drop somewhere between three and five pounds in the last week. I'm already probably the thinnest I've been since I was actually in middle school myself, so for possibly the only period of time in my life I don't mind anyone making fat jokes about me. I cracked up.

Today was actually okay, with the exception of two periods where they would just not shut up. There were a lot of other annoying parts, but they had to do with the adults, and I'm depressed enough about it already and this week has sucked enough that I'm gonna hold off writing about it.

Huge bright spot of the week- on top of going to the "mall"- the bar we go to after school, and actually not throwing up the alcohol I drank, and eating solid food, nine o'clock tonight, while on the phone with my mom, I get a call from DJ's mom's cell phone, actually DJ. I haven't talked to DJ's mom in probably months, although we played phone tag for a long time in the fall so I could check and see how he's doing.

"Hello?"
"Ms. A?"
"Yes? DJ?"
"Yeah."

Silence.

"How are you doing?"
"Good."

More silence.

"Well, thanks for calling, DJ. What's up, what's going on with you? You calling with a question or just to say hi?"
Pause.
"Just to say hi. I'm doing good. I'm getting good grades."
"Like what? As and Bs?"
Pause.
"Yeah. Only one C."
"What do you have a C in?"
Pause.
"Not math!"

The whole conversation kinda went like that. Turns out he was just calling to say hi and tell me he was doing well. For reference, DJ was the kid I had probably the most intense relationship with out of all my kids last year. He was initially diagnosed as being mentally retarded and was testing at a second grade level, but I was (and am) of the opinion the whole thing was bogus- he was tested while in a homeless shelter and spent the whole school year he was with me commuting from the opposite end of the city from the hotel he lived in via multiple trains and buses AND took his little sister to school every day. That kind of independence and adaptive intelligence just is not compatible with retardation (in my not very humble but also not very expert opinion... but I was right! I had him re-diagnosed and got that frigging label taken off him). Anyway, I could write about this kid and how great he is all day (not that I felt that way on most of a daily basis last year from his behavior, but he was), but his family finally got some kind of housing that wasn't a hotel way on the other side of the city and he transferred schools- hence the whole phone tag with his mom thing. So basically he just called to say hi and tell me he was doing well. How many seventh grade boys do that? I love that child.

AND this kid today, who's not even one of my students but in L's homeroom (the sister class to mine) that I got into my after school program because he's so well-behaved and did such good work for me gave me a glass paperweight today. From Las Vegas, actually, kind of random. It was really sweet of him- of course he got suspended a period later for fighting, but I have it sitting on my desk for when he comes back... Plus I think I got a hug from every child in my hallway (except Huffy, who cracked fat jokes instead...). Screw the adults (specifically, the ones who have gone through the admin machine which makes even the best people lose perspective and humanity), all you really need are kids. Who needs adults anyway?
Course, I got a new kid today that I'm afraid to even write about... potential lawsuit with the school... medications, assaults, issues... he might change things.

Also fun: Melissa confiscated a phone today of one of her eighth graders. The kids all warned her not to look through it, but she opened it just to turn it off so it didn't ring. Turns out the wallpaper was animated cartoon porn. (Doggy style, and yes it moved. You were wondering, admit it.)

Ah, the innocence of childhood.

blatantly stolen from another teacher

Ugh.

Friday I went in and was so sick I had to leave, and thought it might have been psychosomatic, but the continued knotted stomach throughout this week and accompanying not-so-fun symptoms put that out of my head. Although evidently all sorts of fun stuff has been happening at the school- L.'s been keeping me updated. Assaults and union-busting (or more accurately union-harassing) and switched schedules, oh my!

So anyway, I've been too sick this whole week to go in, so I stole this from another TFA-er's facebook note. I mean, it could've happened at my school. And probably has.


SCENE: After school in my hallway.

MALE STUDENT: (rapping to self)
FEMALE STUDENT: (singing to self)
BUILDING ENGINEER (to MALE STUDENT): You know why I'm laughing at you right?
FEMALE STUDENT: He sayin you stupid.
MALE STUDENT: YOU is stupid.
FEMALE STUDENT: No YOU is stupid. You ignorant.
MALE STUDENT: Whatever you play too much.
FEMALE STUDENT: You can't beat me though.

life

the evil teacher name comes from the same student who told me he was going to break my knees with a sledgehammer to prevent me from leaving them... he thought i also created evilteachers.com. unfortunately it wasn't available as a blog domain, but it's not bad for a signature, right? and no, there's no actual evilteachers.com (yet). I checked.

Just thinking today... being an adult sucks. Actually I wasn't just thinking that today. There's this passage in a book I read in middle school, "A Separate Peace" where the character talks about how everyone has got a moment in time that they get stuck in, and no matter how old they get or what they do, they live the rest of their life in that moment. If I misrepresent that section for those of you who happen to've read this recently, forgive me, I haven't read the book in 10 years, but this is how I remember it. Anyway, I've lived in mild fear of getting stuck in a really bad moment since then. And then there was this quarter in college where someone I was connected to died every week, usually on a Thursday. It was possibly the worst time in my life to that point so far, and it certainly was for a lot of people I loved and cared about. And ever since then, every time I get at all depressed, I feel like I sort of boomerang mentally back to that time (or sometimes to the end of senior year, bad for a whole different set of mental health-challenging ways). Life sucks and it just doesn't end. I know a lot of you will make fun of me for this, but an equal number of you are ardent fans as well, so my parallel is Buffy, 6th season. In every season there's some big bad evil that she and her plucky friends get together to defeat against the odds, but that season, the big bad is just life. Getting a job, paying bills, getting through school, etc. Life just sucks throughout the season. I'm kind of in that space right now. I'm having paperwork issues with the school district, which may or may not lead to me having to temporarily stop teaching. I just blew up/had a breakdown at my principal, I'm losing all my kids next week (with whom my relationship is the only reason I even get myself together each day to wake up and go to work), and I'm violently sick (as is Ems), even if I valiantly pretended for 3 hours today that I wasn't to get myself together to go do errands. And that's just the beginning. I'm just not very good at this adult business, and it's not a phase that you can just go through and bounce back. Being an adult is kind of a forever deal (unless you're far more depressed than I am... this is just a getting out the blues kind of rant, but I don't sing or play guitar, so... this is the whining of the 21st century. considerably less melodic and appealing than the blues... sorry). Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't go back to middle school for all the money in the world. It was miserable and awful and watching what my kids go through each day just reminds me of it (and what I went through is NOTHING compared to what they go through). But a break to just go back to high school... or the beginning of sophomore year of college. Or Capetown, third year. Brazil was kind of like that, but it was so short and in a lot of ways it just kind of complicated my life even more (not necessarily in a bad way, just... more complicated).

Anyway, I think I'm leaving teaching next year. I keep thinking about a conversation I had with O., who was my supervisor at an after-school children's center I worked at in Chicago, when I told him I was going to be a teacher. He told me that my personality was perfect for working with the kids, but if I ever left it it was going to be because of the bureaucracy or incompetent administration rather than anything the students put me through. And I hate to say it, but he's right. I feel incredibly guilty, but I just feel caught. The system is set up so that the kids are failed, constantly; me leaving in mid-February is a perfect example. I don't want to leave, because I want them to know they have someone to count on that will be there for them every day, but if I'm in a position where I can't even do that, where I can't even be there to provide what support I can, what's the point? Of course the kids are failing... we're failing them. I can't stop thinking about this today. No matter what else I do it just keeps going around and around in my head.

This entire system is a huge cycle of failure. In my grad class we had a discussion about whether the education system would ever improve under capitalism. It had been a long time since I thought about it in those terms, but it was a discussion that if anything just made me feel even more depressed about the future. The world is just going to keep failing these kids. And I can't even hold it together to be with them anymore, and even if I could, it's not worth it because the system won't even let me do that.

I PROMISE next post I'll have something cheerful to say. I actually got a lot of really sweet adorable Valentine's Day cards from my kids, but of course getting them on Thursday (Wed. was a snow day- that's cheerful!) they just made me more upset that I wasn't going to be with the kids who gave them to me anymore... like C., my sweetheart that came in the middle of the year that I posted about before ("smart boys like smart girls")- although that's actually not related, he's moving to Florida...

Follow up to Leopard Geckos... and also worst day yet

note: this blog is a continuation of one posted on friendster. if you want to see previous posts, check out: http://neka.blogs.friendster.com/nobody_likes_ms_aro/

I'm probably going to be deleting it as soon as I archive the posts from there- if I can put them here without too much trouble I'll do that, but it may be more trouble than it's worth...

and onward blogward...

A quick funny for those folks waiting for the update on Leopard Geckos...

"What were you THINKING?"

"How'd you know it wasn't mine?" Spoken completely seriously, of course.

"I read it."

"Oh."

Onto more depressing stuff...

So Thursday I swing by the special ed office to grab a donut on my prep, and Ms. Sel stops me to ask about my caseload. This has been a continuing issue all year, because technically in my class of 25 kids only 4 of them are part-time (the level of special ed I am there to service) despite the fact that something like 10 of them have IEPs. I've been told all year that they would give me a split-level caseload and I would just absorb IEPs for the extra kids, mostly the resource kids. I realize this sounds like gibberish to anyone not familiar with special ed, but the details aren't really that important. Evidently in the last two weeks, a huge surplus of kids has walked into the building that all have resourse level IEPs. I still am not sure exactly who made this decision, or how, but as the special ed teacher with the lowest caseload, they decided to dissolve my class and make me a resource teacher. Starting next week.

I cannot even start to list the things that are wrong with this situation. Legally, I understand the decision and why they did it. But for those of you who are unfamiliar with special ed, I made an analogy to explain to my mom, who's a latin teacher. Imagine you're a Latin teacher, or a French teacher. One day you're swinging by the office because you want to grab a donut on your prep, and the head of the language department says,

"Oh, hey, we got this situation. A bunch of kids transferred in that are all registered to take Spanish, and since both your French class and the other French class are small, all your kids are going to that class now and you'll be teaching Spanish. We don't have a classroom for you, so you're going to be teaching a class in the library while there's two other classes going on. By the way, this starts beginning of next week. We haven't given you a schedule yet, or explained how to teach Spanish, or given you Spanish books, or given you any time to wrap the projects you have going with your kids or even to tell your kids what's about to happen. It's okay, kids are resilient, they'll deal- why do you care if they're upset? We haven't told the other French teacher yet, either, or the teachers who are on your grade team that also teach your kids, or the teachers you're sharing the library with. You might or might not have a desk or a locker like you're supposed to have in the union contract. We don't know when we'll even tell you what room you're supposed to go to. You should just know. I don't know what you're upset about- Teacher X has twenty kids on his caseload, you're switching four for eight!"

Now while I'm obviously being bitter and cynical about the whole thing, the sad part is that very little of that was sarcasm. As I was having this conversation with Ms. Sel, Ms. W. calls on the walkie for me- she had Cyrus with another kid from my class doing a reading program, and Cyrus had evidently stopped talking and balled up, so she called to see if he would come to talk to me. I run and grab Cyrus and walk him back up with me and give him a piece of a donut- it was supposed to make me feel better, so maybe it would make him feel better. And I start to explain what I just found out but was at that point numb to, I guess in shock. Cyrus listens quietly and doesn't say much. I wanted him to know especially because he's one of the ones I'm closest to, and above all I don't want these kids to think I abandoned them- especially a kid like Cyrus who has come so far from last year. I kept trying to push Ms. Sel for more information but she spent virtually the entire rest of the period on the phone. The bell rings and Cyrus and I walk back to class.

As we walk back into class, Cyrus looks at me, and sadly but with the definite intent to cause trouble announces first thing, "Ms. A's leaving us."
The class looked at my face for confirmation and then disrupted into mild chaos.
"WHAT? Ms. A, what does he mean? You're not leaving, right? Are you leaving the school? Why are you leaving? Do you want to leave?"

Huffy, a tall thin kid who's somewhat of a class clown, got everyone quiet. "Naw, naw, naw, naw y'all. Ms. A, you can't leave. If you try to leave I'll break your legs with a sledgehammer so you can't go and leave us."

Now that's affection.

One of my girls started crying, and that was just it for me. I felt worse and worse about it the entire day. I went over to N's house right after school, mostly to tell either N or J about it, but neither were home when I got there so I pretty much just went in every door until someone was home and then ranted about it to each person as they got home in turn. I kept waiting (and still am) for it to feel better, but I started feeling physically ill from the whole situation. Went back to AC and ranted about it to my parents. My mom told me I had their support if I went in and told off the principal and got written up for insubordination. Went home, burst into tears to Ems, woke up the next morning and started throwing up. I went into school anyway- I didn't know if M was going to make it into school- she hasn't been there in a week because of this flu or stomach virus that I guess I now have, and I didn't want to have the kids have a subsitute on their last day with me. It was probably a mistake. I threw on jeans and a sweatshirt, but felt awful and looked awful. I made it into school a couple minutes late (having only just decided I was going to try to go and make it through as much as I could), and walked over to my class to find it locked, although everyone telling me M was there. Evidently she got put on some new medication that made her have some kind of breakdown in the office as she was signing in. So I sign in, and as I let all my kids in go to ask S. and L. about M. (I know I need better names here... S is also the other Ms. A, the house coordinator, and L is my other partner teacher). Just talking about the whole situation is enough to make me lose it again, and I start crying. I tried to get myself together in Ms. A's office, unsuccessfully, and had to go hide in the nurse's office. I have almost never in my life been in a situation where I couldn't stop crying when I had to, for a work situation. Gotta say it's not the most professional I've ever felt, but then I don't really feel like I was treated particularly professionally either. My kids were really good about it. They mostly just asked if I was sick, and I said yes. I made it back in after advisory but just put on a movie- I couldn't even stand up my stomach was clenched so badly. Third period I went to the roster chair to tell her I needed to leave early. As I was going around getting my stuff together I stopped by S's office.

"Have you talked to the principal yet?" she asked.
"No. I don't feel up to it today," I said, my eyes seriously red from crying.
"Honestly, I think she should see how you feel before you leave. She needs to know this isn't just a decision that isn't going to affect everyone. It is having a serious affect on her teachers and she needs to know that, and to really see it. I think you should go see her before you leave today."

So I went, and waited for what felt like twenty minutes for her to get off the phone, and unloaded pretty much everything. I think I was probably toeing the line of insubordination, but given that I was also sick, and in tears, and obviously devastated by the whole situation, I don't know there was a lot she could have said. I told her a lot of what I've already written- I understand the decision, but the way it was done sent the message that the administration has a total lack of regard for the work that the teachers put into their classrooms every day, which is something I hear on the building committee on a regular basis. I called it unprofessional and demeaning and hurtful to the kids, and a dismissal of the potential of the kids in my classroom who probably could have made AYP on the PSSAs this year but who are not going to without their regular reading teacher, three weeks before the PSSA... I was probably in there forty minutes, and at the end I felt at least emptied if not better. I don't know that anything good came of it, except that I hope I made her feel guilty...

You hear so many stories of the kids who have umpteen substitutes in the room. And part of the reason people join something like TFA is to at the very least give kids a chance to not have to go through something like that. And no matter how much you put into that class, sometimes you get forced to anyway. It makes me so crazy... these kids and their families take the heat for so much, and of course us teachers take the blame for everything that goes wrong with their communities. But then a stupid law made by someone who hasn't seen the inside of a classroom since he was in school just forces an administration which is already overburdened and exhausted into the lesser (maybe) of the evils... Of course the kids are not succeeding, the entire system is set up for them to fail. And I just got forced into being a part of that failure, two forced failed models in a row.

So anyway, spent the last two days in bed. I was supposed to go snowboarding this weekend... that's out. If I'm feeling recovered I may try to drink my troubles away tonight. I'm seriously at a loss for anything else to do to feel better right now.