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...

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.

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?)

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.

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.

I need to find some really professional looking sneakers.

This resource/part-time thing would be okay if I were just moving between the triangle of rooms that is M's, L's, and my classroom from last year (now a joint office with the health teacher/my resource area), but due to lockdown I now have to go get all the kids. And with PSSA tests, I have to get them to do make-ups, drop off tests to their advisors, find their advisors (since in what they're now calling the lockdown "model" the teachers rather than the students move), and figure out where to drop off said tests if their advisors are not present (as two were not today). So today first period for me went: second floor, boy's side (the school is split between "boys' side" and "girls' side" from back in the days when it was actually physically divided up that way- now it's just a reference), for my class's advisory, third floor girls' side, first floor boys' side, third floor girls' side, second floor boys' side... then I lost track.

Went up to drop off Jay's test. He wasn't in yesterday, evidently he was suspended but didn't know it (he said he was just tired and didn't feel like coming in... figures he wouldn't even know if he had been suspended, despite the fact that a parent is always supposed to come in to reinstate the child after a suspension). I have no idea what for. He was there today though, fifteen minutes late and at his locker as I checked his room. His advisor was out, so they split up her class (which is actually illegal, but not a battle worth fighting at the moment). I offered to take him but he refused, so I told him I'd come check on him in the room he was coming to. This was mostly just to annoy him, since I hadn't actually scheduled any time to see him today.

After trying fruitlessly to turn in his test, I walked around the corner toward his classroom-of-the-day. Predictably, he was out in the hallway with his arm around a girl who was giggling at something he said.

"Honey, get to class. You don't want to flirt with this kid! It's taken him fifteen minutes already to find the number of his classroom, he has trouble counting sometimes. You want somebody who acts smarter than that, right?"

The girl giggled some more and wandered off. Jay was annoyed, to say the least.

"Miss! What are you talking about? I can count! What are you doing? Tryin' to bust on me when I was with the shorty... Always following me around, trying to make me go to class... she's like an advocate or something..."

When a child in my school knows a word like "advocate" it's generally not a good sign. But he wandered into the classroom, I suppose to avoid me further humiliating him in the hall. I went and offered to both the teacher and the coordinator to send him down to me if he got to be a pain. Went back downstairs to try and turn in the test to someone else. The next period I was back up again, trying to turn in another test to another teacher who also wasn't there today. I open the door to a classroom on the opposite side of the building from where Jay was supposed to be... and lo and behold, there he is. It was a gym period, so their teacher, (stereotypically a pretty butch lesbian woman) was in there.

Jay looked up but didn't say anything, he just sighed in exasperation and turned away. I felt almost gleeful.

"Hi Jay!" I chirped brightly at him, and waved cheerfully, to maximize whatever embarassment potential there was. The gym teacher, Ms. Lez, cracked up, and I went over to ask her about the homeroom teacher and chat about Jay. Turns out she's actually fairly tight with him- I got a whole load of info today from her. I offered to take him, at which point he ran out of the room, but agreed to walk around with me while I kept trying to find out where this test (which I was at the point of throwing out the window) should go since the teacher was absent. When we got back to my resource space he checked out and ran back upstairs.
"I'm not going back in that retarded room!"

I called the teacher back to tell her he was coming back up, but we both agreed he'd probably be back in the hall.

A period and a half after that... I'm back up again. I don't even remember why that time (I have been on the third floor more in the last two weeks than I have in the last year and a half...). As I walk past Melissa's partner's class (yet another different room), I notice the same gym teacher again through a broken pane of glass in the door. She grinned at me and waved.

"You'll never guess who I got in here!"

I stuck my head in, and Jay looking up just buried his head in his arms before starting to complain again in his aggravated mumble.

"Damn, man! She's always following me around! She's like a stalker or something, she comes and finds me everywhere!"

Ms. Lez cracked up.

"Well, damn, Jay, what are you complaining about? I'm jealous! I wish I had a woman following me around all day. Especially a hot woman like A. Can we trade places? I want to have a hot woman following me around. I'd be bragging..." she was still talking as I took my cue to exit. She evidently had Big Jay (my Jay), Little Jay (his best friend), and one or two others of the "bad" kids of the eighth grade in the room with Melissa's sped kids. Melissa's kids, like the rest of mine, like to pretend that they're badass thugs, but the reality is that they're just punk adolescents who will one day grow out of it and are mostly just being pains in the butt until they do. Confronted with these other kids, who from everything I can gather actually are badass thugs, her kids were silent with fear most of the period, which Lez thought was hilarious.

After lunch I took two of the kids from my caseload in my normal class to do make-up testing. Halfway through, who should show up but the Tweedle-Jays. (I'm debating calling them that but I'm not sure they would even know the reference)

"Where are you guys supposed to be?"
"We're not supposed to be anywhere. Our teacher isn't here today." As though I hadn't been there the period they were in advisory and got sent to another classroom. I spent a while trying to figure out what room they should've been in just to call the teacher and let them know they were at least with an adult, but gave up. I think they've actually convinced themselves that they belong in the hallway.

"They still doing make-ups?" Jay asked me, looking at my kids.
"Yep."
"They retarded, dawg. Especially you." He pointed at the boy. "You got dropped on your head, like, five times." The boy laughed... he's not retarded, but it's amazing what misguided desire for peer approval will make you do... cause I swear he actually started acting as though he was. Not severely or anything, but I had a momentary flashback to Fuzzy from last year.
"They're not retarded. Trust me, I've had kids who actually had mental retardation in my class before. These two are not. You can argue with me all you want, but I have a degree in this. You might win some arguments, but not this one. Just leave my students alone to finish, please?"
Little Jay by this point had discovered the computer that I had hooked up in that room and was searching for cheat codes for video games. He told Big Jay to leave it alone. The conversation turned to special ed... it never fails to amaze me how that has somehow become synonymous for retarded.

"They think I'm retarded too... my mom did cause I was getting in trouble at school. I'm not though. I just don't do the work. That's why I'm in resource."
"Special ed doesn't mean you're retarded. It just means you're behind in something. You can get out of special ed. You're just behind because you don't come to school, and when you do, you don't come to class."
Little Jay started laughing from his computer. "She's right, dawg."
"You don't have to be, though... I could get you out of special ed. You're not stupid, we could get your levels up. Even if we got it up to sixth or seventh grade, not even eighth, I could move you out of resource into the next level where you don't have to come out every day, someone could just work with you when you're having problems. It's called itinerant level. Then you wouldn't have to deal with me coming and harassing you every day and following you around to get you to come. Right now, though, if I tried to move you, everybody would be like, 'Ms. A, you crazy? Jay? His levels are so low, and he doesn't do any work... no way."

Jay paused to think about it.

"I would stop checking in on every class you're in..." I ommitted that today that had been completely by accident... "You wouldn't have to deal with me anymore. But you gotta commit to working with me a little bit for a while, you can't run away. I have to say, Jay, my feelings are kind of hurt. You wouldn't come down here with me before, you ran away from me in the hall and got upset when I came to your classes... I'm starting to think you don't like me."

Big Jay sighed. Little Jay cracked up, evidently as engrossed in our conversation as he appeared to be on the website.

"Naw, Miss, he likes you. He like you a lot. He talk about you all the time."
Big Jay shot him a look.

"Well, you could just do itinerant with me, then. We could check in but you wouldn't have to come down except when you wanted to, and it'd probably be only a couple times a week. Otherwise, though, you're just going to wind up back in resource in high school and probably with someone you won't like."

"Then I just won't go."

I sighed. But he's only vaguely even planning on finishing high school anyway... I'm going to be kind of surprised if he even makes it through to 10th grade...

Ugh, had more to write but too tired. Evidently four of my boys got arrested today... lots of drama. Tomorrow. Hopefully with no drama of its own...

like scotch...

My favorite quote from a pretty decent NYTimes series on middle schools:

“Middle school is like Scotch,” she reflected in the teachers’ lounge one afternoon. “At first you try to get it down. Then you get used to it. Then it’s all you order.”

Dae and Gecko told me yesterday that Cyrus stole my wallet, that Dae saw him and Cyrus confessed it to him. When I asked Cyrus about it, he almost flipped out. I don't know whether he was more upset that he was accused of it or that I might believe it. I don't, though. If Cyrus actually stole it, and gave the credit card to someone who racked up $200 (at Rite-Aid, of all places...), I would pretty close to losing faith in everything I do. As much as I love the other kids, I wouldn't necessarily put it past all of them. Dae, for example, has stolen from me before, but generally only stupid stuff like candy (M pointed out that candy isn't stupid, but you can also buy a whole lot more candy with a credit card than I had in my desk for them to take). He's really the only kid in my class that I know steals on a regular basis, but it's generally just stupid stuff, and I usually deal with it by calling him out on it in subtle ways that just make him really embarassed, so he knows I know, and knows it means I trust him less, but gives him room to make it up to me by displaying really good behavior in other ways. But this would just be miles beyond whatever I thought he was capable of. Cyrus, on the other hand... I can think of fewer things that would break my heart faster or harder than finding out that he, in particular, did something like that to me. This is the kid that asked me to go with him to the Mother-Son Valentine's Day dance, after all.

I actually don't think Jay did it, after all- I brought it up very casually in front of him in conversation to another student, and he seemed genuinely surprised. So either he's a really practiced liar (which is totally possible) or he just doesn't know anything about it. But that begs the question... who did it? Maybe Sidekick... given another three months with him, he wouldn't, but he barely knows me. It's so hard... the way to get trust from these kids is to give it, and this makes it so hard to do that...

When I told S about it, she was pretty shocked. She flat out refused to believe Cyrus did it.

"Not him. Maybe Dae. Not Cyrus. You're like a mom to him. There's just no way. I wouldn't put it past him to do something like that in general, to someone else maybe, even me, but there's just no way he would do that to you. Your class in general, I can't see anyone doing that you. Somebody else, but not you. You're not there for five minutes, they freak out. 'Where's Ms. A? Is she coming? Why isn't she here yet? Where'd she go? Is she coming back?' There's just no way they did it, especially Cyrus."

I keep going back to Jay and Sidekick... I just don't know who else, but it seems less and less likely. When I called Jay's homeroom teacher on Friday, she told me if he made it through a full week the building would explode. He walked in minutes later. I called her back to tell her to mark him present:
"The building's about to explode. We should evacuate. We could go home early."

His kick of following my directions ended, though. He doesn't actually care, generally speaking, about Sidekick being there, but I noticed he did way more for me Thursday when Sidekick was absent than on Friday when he was there. Friday he refused to do a damn thing. And Sidekick left fifteen minutes before the test started to go get a pretzel and then disappeared. I called the office fifteen minutes later to have them put a lookout for him on the security walkies. Twenty minutes after that the seventh grade coordinator walked him in, holding him by the arm.

"He got in a fight."

I looked at him in disbelief.

"Already? You went to go get a pretzel!"

He then proceeded to be a pain in the butt for the next hour and a half. Jay refused to do anything but talk about his tattoo, going driving the previous night in a Chrysler (I mistakenly called it a Chevy once. From their facial expressions you would've thought I just talked trash about their moms), some girl he wanted to get with in his class, or his car (not the Chrysler... his car is a Civic. He wanted to bond over us both having Hondas...). I asked him where he got the money to pay for the car (it's evidently in a friend's name so it could be registered) and he told me he worked at his dad's corner store, which may at least be partial truth. At one point when he and Sidekick had left the room, all the other kids looked at me and one of them said,

"You know he's a drug dealer, right?"

They all watched my face to see if I got it. They really think adults are completely clueless, and it makes me kind of wonder how clueless I actually am to what's going on in their world. They tell me stuff all the time and then seem shocked when I know about it, and act like I know everything in their whole little social world ("How you know all that, Ms. A? You a stalker or somethin?" "No, your best friends just told me all of that..."), but I wonder how much I would be completely oblivious to if they didn't confess it to me every three minutes.

Definite tolerance points for Jay: in the middle of the test, no warning, he turns around and looks at Angel.

"Hey, are you gay?"

Angel, who's obviously been asked this a hundred times, started to roll his eyes, but stopped in consideration of the relative scariness of the kid asking. He shook his head a little timidly. I started to get defensive for Angel.

"Why would you ask him that? Is that any of your business?"
"You're not? Yo, chill, I'm just curious. Some kids were saying it, and I just wanted to know."
Angel was shrinking in his chair.
"Well, would you have a problem with it if he was?"
"Naw, man. I don't care if people are gay or not, or who is gay. That's cool. I just wanted to see if it was true."

I was impressed, and told him. "Good for you. That's mature. I like that."

Actually both he and Sidekick have completely stopped cursing in my presence. It's sort of interesting, what they think of as acceptable around me versus around other adults. From what Sidekick says, despite his asinine antics in my class he's better for me than he is for his mom. And Jay actually started to curse, stopped himself, and then apologized to me. That doesn't stop them from fighting, or cutting the rest of their classes, or dealing drugs, or trying to have sex... but maybe it's a start.

Four days and counting...

And Jay swears that he's going to come all next week. I made a bet with him: if he actually shows up all this week and next, I'll come to school in the kids' uniform. If he misses any school, he has to come back to school in uniform. He wanted to bet money, but since he probably has more than me I decided against it.

This kid has kind of taken over all my mental energy for the week. It's taking me a while to figure out what level of comfort I have with him in my classroom, and around my other kids, (or not, not sure yet which is more uncomfortable for me) or whatever. I'm at least not afraid of him now, which I was for a little bit, but if this makes sense I sort of feel prepared to be scared of him, and that preparation is tiring. He walked in today with a new tattoo on his arm that says "North Philly" in graffiti letters. He got it, I'm convinced, because his buddy (a smaller version of him with the same name) basically has sleeves- and that's just on the parts of him I see. It's not even just the fear thing, it's just the awkwardness of the fact that he shows up to my class and nowhere else. Today I went looking for him ninth period; nowhere to be found (he didn't know I was coming for him that period). Yet he sat in my room for three straight periods and even actually followed probably 70% of my instructions. (If you're at all familiar with behavioral modification, for him to in one week suddenly develop perfect attendance from nothing and follow 70% teacher instructions is... well, kind of amazing) So the question is logically, why? And really the only answer that makes much sense is that he probably has a crush on me. Which, usually, is cute, given that most of my students are 11-12 and the crush is very undefined sexually if it's even sexual at all (and I don't think it actually is, often. A lot of times it almost feels more of a mom-love type of thing. C, my sweetheart who moved to Florida, carved my name with a heart around it and an arrow going through it into his desk the day he left. But he also called me "Mom" by accident on a regular basis) . But this kid is 14 and looks grown, and I have a feeling probably thinks grown thoughts, and that is just really uncomfortable all around. One of the girls from my class asked to take her test in my room, because it was a little quieter than our classroom, and I let her once, but then realized that both Jay and Sidekick were looking at her like she was a candy bar, and have asked her in the most delicate way I know how multiple times to please, whatever her social life, not do anything with these particular boys. Every time she looks at me like I'm crazy.

"Miss, you kidding? They ugly!"

I honestly haven't gotten that vibe off of Jay toward me. But I can't figure out why else he would actually choose to suddenly start showing up to school and coming to my class and even occasionally doing some work.

Other stuff has been happening I wanted to write about (union meeting, my other kids...) but I need to go to bed soon. Last story:

I highly suspect one of my resource kids of being flamingly gay. So do most of the other kids, actually, although I don't think he knows it about himself yet. He's also just a total cutie and very sweet kid; Ms. Sel calls him her angel. So I had him, one of my resource girls who reminds me very much of my own group of friends in middle school/high school, and Cyrus in the room at one point. The girl was telling us about her family and her boyfriend, and Angel pops up about how he wants to have kids when he's sixteen or eighteen. Conversation stops.

"Well, cause, see, I heard the oceans are going to get bigger and Puerto Rico's going to disappear, and I want to go back before it sinks because of global warming and have babies so my babies can be 100% Puerto Rican."
The girl looked at him.
"Where were you born?"
"Philadelphia."
"So your babies wouldn't be 100% Puerto Rican..."
Somehow this flaw in his plan hadn't occurred to him yet. Cyrus chimed in about how he, also, wanted to have children that early, prompting a warning from me about his butt getting kicked if he tried to have kids before graduating from college (a kicking which I would able to do as he would no longer be my student).

"What Miss, you don't have kids yet?" Angel asked.
"Naw, she doesn't have kids. She's in love with this guy, and he's Jamaican and has dreads and stuff, but he lives far away and she's afraid to go up and talk to him about it but she should cause they would get married and have babies cause she's old enough now," Cyrus answered before I could open my mouth, without any pauses. I started laughing. Cyrus can take the tiniest piece of information and twist it into several whole new plotlines... He could be a great screenwriter one day for something like Grey's Anatomy (sorry just watched this week's episode... it's still on the brain). I wasn't sure how he got that whole story, but Angel loved it.

"Oh, Miss, you shouldn't be scared to go up to him! You should just, like, get braids, put on some tight jeans or a little skirt and a cute little shirt, maybe some boots, ghetto it up a little, and go up to him and be like, 'Haaa-aay baaaby.....!' And then he would want to marry you and have babies!"

Now, why didn't I think of that?

i'm not even gonna curse you out...

Jay is actually turning into a student. His homeroom teacher is in mild shock. She's sworn up and down every day that he's not coming in the next. First that he wouldn't come at all, then not two days in a row, then not three days in a row. It's gonna be a miracle if he makes it through a week.
But... it's a record... he's come three times in three days, and actually comes on time and even came down to my class today with no prodding or fighting. He got upset when I busted on him yesterday for his behavior in school.

"What, miss, I ain't never done nothing to you. I ain't cursed you out. I'm not even gonna curse you out."

Such a sweetie!

I'm revising the earlier speculation of him being one of the biggest drug dealers in the school. I think actually he may be one of the bigger ones in the area. Today the seventh grade kid (I think I'm going to call him Sidekick... he so desperately wants to be Jay) walked out to go buy a lock from the NTA in charge of lockers. Jay realized he needed one too, somebody had taken his, and pulled out a wad of cash that probably was more money than I generally have in my bank account. (And I just found realized my wallet was missing... I don't think I ever left my purse alone with either of them, but I can't imagine how else it would have gone missing. Maybe he doesn't get his money through dealing... although stealing from teachers has gotta have a fairly disappointing going rate. I mean really, of all the people to steal from... You could at least make the effort to steal from someone with a lot of money. Like, say, another drug dealer. Although I guess a teacher is less likely to, oh, say, shoot you for stealing from them)

on the second floor it's peace, love, and granola. on the third, it's cambodia.

my school at the moment, as described by an eighth grade teacher...

This week is PSSA testing... my favorite! I've been pulling my four part-time kids from my class, plus Cyrus who I actually had moved out of part time and into resource and is technically not on my caseload (although I'm not sure he's on anyone else's either) mostly because he's not perfect for me but is at least way better than he is for everyone else, plus five of my six resource kids (two seventh, three eighth). Let me tell you, reading three sets of standardized test instructions at the same time is about as much fun as a root canal. I mean, I'm bored and I'm not even doing anything. Especially when someone's been absent and they're all on different sections.

I'm only even just now meeting one of my resource kids... he's chronically truant, and I had probably checked six times to see if he had come to school to pull him prior to the PSSAs (unsuccessfully). His teacher swore he wasn't going to come. So of course, the first two days he decides to show (in a row!) are the first two days of the PSSA. First he swore he wasn't going to come down to my classroom. Then he swore he wasn't going to take the test there. Then that he wasn't going to stay in that room, or take the test. Finally he started one section of it and then pulled out his cell phone and put it on walkie-talkie mode and started chatting it up. I walked over to him.

"Naw miss, naw. You ain't taking my phone. Y'all must be trippin. I'm not givin my phone to y'all. Naw." And he got up and walked out, directly into the principal who happened to be outside patrolling the halls. Not that he would have been hard to miss anyway; his "uniform" is jeans, a non-uniform hoodie (today it was baby-blue) and a huge black puffy jacket. He also is about twice my size and looks my age, walking around the sixth grade floor. Today he actually came, sat down, and finished the whole thing... He evidently told Ms. Sel that he came today because "that lady" was coming for him now. I'm kind of at a loss for how to handle him... One of my other resource kids who has so far been an angel for me turns into a wannabe gansta thug whenever the first kid is around. So I decide to pull him (my eighth grader) after testing as his IEP is coming due pretty soon and I have virtually no information on him from this year at all since he just hasn't been coming to school. (He claims he comes, but then he just wanders the halls. "And my teachers just say I'm cutting!" "Well, the definition of cutting is coming to school and then not going to class, right?" "Yeah." "So what they're saying is actually correct?" "Well, yeah. But I'm in school!") And who walks in, but my other boy, who walked out of class to avoid a fight and came to me.

Now, a bit of background on these kids... My eighth grader, Jay, came to my school to avoid a 21 at his last school (I'm not clear what on... one of the other 6th grade teachers thought it had to do with him throwing a fire extinguisher through a teacher's window). His mom claimed he was developing behavior problems due to academic frustration, and he was placed in special ed. He did behaviorally well when he was transferred to my school ("I was like a nerd in Ms. Champion's class... I got like, Ds and Cs. I didn't even fail!") so they dropped the 21. He then became a chronic truancy problem, started cutting and wandering the halls, and according to rampant teacher speculation (and occasional actual observation) is likely one of the biggest drug-dealers in the school, drives a car-- he showed me the car keys on his keychain today--, and has been caught by a teacher smoking outside the school (as a joke one of them asked him if he had an extra cigarette one day, to see if it was true. "Yeah, sure, you want one, Miss?"). One of the teachers who actually had him in sixth grade thinks his truancy may have actually been do to an arrest, and the consensus seems to be that the administration doesn't do anything to him mostly because everyone's a bit afraid of him.

I haven't gotten the file on my seventh grader yet, but I do know he also came to my school to escape a 21, and that it had something to do with him sexually assaulting a girl in the bathroom of his old school (he told me today she wanted it, although he was more trying to prove consent to me than justify it... I didn't want to go more in depth than that just yet.).

Needless to say, these two boys in a room together... especially when my seventh grader looks up to the eighth grader cause he looks (and actually, in this case, probably is) more gangsta, is a bit of a situation. S. recommended I either work with them in her office or take one of my kids into the room whenever I'm working with them as a preventative measure for any kind of weird situation that could come up, to back up my word on anything that could happen (for all his behavior problems, I know Cyrus would try to defend me with his life against pretty much anyone that even pointed a bad thought in my direction). But Jay actually came with me to do resource today, although protesting now that he wanted to be in class, probably the first time those words have ever left his mouth- there's a "shorty" that he wants to get with in there now- and even made it two thirds of the way through the reading diagnostic I have to give him for his IEP. I had actually redesigned my schedule to account for him not coming to resource, since he hasn't been here in weeks. Guess I'm going to be re-doing that. Again.

And I got a memo today for not turning in a reading level tracking form based on a (standardized) multiple choice test that they could score fourth grade levels just based on probability. Whoops. Guess I should re-prioritize... I mean, those tracking forms that have nothing to do with the curriculum or specific skills and don't actually diagnose any problems (and are a pain in the butt as we have to mark them by hand) or provide a means to guide, inform, or improve teaching... just vital to the success of the kids.

to Kira

Transcript of a note I found on a desk after school (it's so much more fun when I get to confiscate them during class...)

K: Tell him dont play with me

J: (Scribbled out line)

he said he anint playing
he dead serious

K: You lieing and tell him he better be playing
because I'm not playing

J: he said what you going to do if he anit playing

K: he don't have to No what Im going to do


Note to self: Monday, review contractions with J and homonyms (know/no) with K. If we have time, also synonyms for "play" with both.

i forgot to mention...

probably should just edit last post, but hey, i'm tipsy and therefore lazy. I have rarely had motivation to clean quite so much as finding out that two of my kids have headlice. Nothing like six hours of psychosomatic itching and having to take every single child in a class to the nurse to encourage the cleaning and/or sterilization of EVERYTHING in sight.

She checked me and I'm fine, but I'm seriously thinking about going and getting some anti-nit shampoo just in case... just what my class needs right now (and I can just imagine everyone having lice during the PSSA... ooohhh god if they've got ants in their pants now just imagine in their hair? misery in twelve-year-old form). The nurse's comment was, "Better than scabies," and I now have waking nightmares of head and body lice infestations everywhere.

you sound like a old lady

One of my students just called me. Random. I give my cell phone number to all the parents of my students, as a show of investment, and sometimes to students (as shown by DJ calling up last week...) but usually only so their parents can call me. But tonight...

"Hello?"
"Hello?"
"Yes, who's this?"
"Ms. A?"
Red flag.

"Yes?"
"Hey."
"Who is this?"
"Is this really Ms. A?"
"Yes, this is really Ms. A. Who's this?"
"Um, Jazzy. You aren't really Ms. A."

It should be noted about this point that I had a long day. Actually, I've had a long several weeks, but a particularly long day. So I came home and promptly opened a beer, and had finished it, on an empty stomach, right before she called.

"Yes, it is. Why do you think it's not?"
"Um. Well if it is, what class am I in?"
"You're in section *** and you have class in *** and *** with Ms. *** and Ms. ****. Can I help you with something, or did you just call to see if this was my number?"
"Yeah."

The thing is, she's actually one of my best students. Then she asked if another one of my students called. Evidently a bunch of the girls in my class decided to phone bomb me to see if this was really my number, but she's the only one who went through with it. She ended the conversation by telling me I sounded like an old lady, and then started playing the, "You hang up first" game. It occurred to me that a warning sign of being old is not doing that anymore... I'd forgotten about it until she did it with me, and I (like an old lady) actually hung up.

This came after a very, very long day... after many talks with a friend of mine who consistently stays at his (semi-corporate) office until 8 or 9 and occasionally even 11 pm, and realizing how amazingly behind I am on CYA paperwork, I made a resolution to not leave school tonight until I had finished everything, since for once in a very great while I had no after school group, no capoeira plans, and no class. Like most of my resolutions, that took all of about four hours to get trashed.

I'm still mostly living in M's room, despite spending several periods a day chasing down my resource kids and several periods in L's room with my class. M has now been out for several weeks, and will probably be out for several more if not the rest of the year. I'm actually convinced this is the reason they haven't made me a full time resource teacher; my class (being something like 70% special ed) is one of the biggest behavioral issues in our grade, and to add to the school's multitude of problems by taking me out if they didn't absolutely have to would be a step above (or below, I suppose, depending on your viewpoint...) stupid incompetence. I guess they realize they would wind up having to deal with the consequences of my class having a free-for-all with only subs (and poor L, three periods a day...) in the room. What they did do, to compensate for L's class, was move in a guy who's been a long-term sub in the building for two years now but most of this year in the eighth grade (his former classes are currently on their 3rd teacher of the year, 2 of the 3 being long-term subs) into M's position, so at least there's one consistent person on a daily basis for the weeks M's out. The problem today was that this guy was out sick too, so we had a sub for him, but he had to leave the second half of the day when L's kids were in the room with a whole random assortment of subs. Yeesh.

Anyway, if you know me, you know I'm a bit messy, and a bit of a packrat. It's genetic, I'm convinced; either that or I blame it on my loving but cluttered upbringing (maybe kind of a nature/nurture mix?).
I look like Martha Stewart, however, next to M, who has saved graded student work she never handed back to the kids since 1997. (And possibly earlier) I have spent probably the equivalent of days in the classroom after school trying to clean and organize, and it just never seems to get better. With the situation today, the sheer level of crap hit ammunition level, and I just could not be in that room with it that messy and get my paperwork done... so I decided to straighten up. Four hours later my principal walks by...

"N, are you STILL here working? It'll be here tomorrow."

And so will the kids, I wanted to say... and now that we're on lockdown, I don't even have their gym periods to clean up.

"Five, ten minutes more max. This isn't Abington. And the only people left in the building at this point are the men."
"Point taken. I'll be out of here as soon as I'm finished this last thing..."

Abington, fyi, is a plush suburb in which I'm sure it's probably safe to sleep outside on the sidewalk. My school's neighborhood... not so much. The men she was talking about were the custodians (who had to come by three times to empty my trashcans of the crap the kids had left everywhere...), who are generally speaking really nice guys, but this year include at least one, who, in the words of our building engineer, has an elevator that doesn't go all the way to the top floor. So yeah. My room looks better, if not ideal, but I have NONE of the paperwork done. (And what do I do when I come home? Work responsibly? No! Drink beer and blog, of course.)

Speaking of neighborhood, I found out today that Urkel's dad just died. Now, Urkel's evaluation for special ed reads like the I Want To Kill Myself Times. Taken away from his parents multiple times for neglect and abuse, foster parents, dad in prison for years, etc. But they actually seemed like a fairly close-knit, if intimidating, family. They were, however, the only family I didn't feel it would be prudent to do a home visit with last year, based partly on his file and partly based on meeting them and just having a weird feeling. Urkel, however, is back on my caseload, as I moved him out of part-time last year and into resource. I went to talk to him today, as he wasn't in the last few days I was trying to get in touch with all my resource kids. He told me he was at a funeral. I asked him if it was someone he was close to, and he told me it was his dad. He told me it wasn't a big deal, though- he sees dead bodies, like birds, all the time.

"Yeah, but Urkel, your dad isn't like a bird. Someone you live with, who's known you your whole life, the physical reason for your existence in the universe... not really like a random pigeon in the street, you know?"
He laughed but then said seriously, "He didn't know me my whole life. Just 11-13. The rest of the time he was in jail."

Sometimes, you just don't want to know. (A lot of the time, actually. In fact, the more I think about it... most if not all of the time...) I've got no idea how much he told me was true, but his understanding of it was that both his parents were doing something criminal, probably drug dealing, and when they got caught his dad took the fall for both of them, hence them getting back together 11 years later when he got out. They had some problems, dad moved out, started up the old business, and... that was it. Something went bad somewhere along the line, and someone came into his dad's house and shot him.
I'm so used to dealing with overemotional kids this year that it was weird to switch back to Urkel... standard reactions of sympathy don't always apply with ED kids. I asked if they were close, and he told me they were getting closer, but...
"Then he died." He shrugged. "Oh well."

Too tired now to post the links about school violence, but can I just say, I heart Sue Snyder. God bless you and any journalist who actually writes about schools and school conditions instead of waxing poetic about whether Kevin is supporting Britney through her rehab or Anna Nicole's estate soap opera... so so tired of it.

And, also, just tired. Night, folks...

it's no big deal

My AP has taken to answering any concern I bring to her with, "It's really no big deal." It's amazing how hearing that sentence after these last few weeks has actually become quite a big deal, to me anyway. It's not even that I particularly care about the insanity that is my daily life right now, but I wonder if there is any phrase that could make me feel more unprofessional when bringing up a legal concern regarding a student's services that could potentially lead to thousands of dollars cost to the school, lawsuits, etc. than "It's no big deal." Cause actually, honey, it is. I wouldn't care if she would just admit it... or even don't, just don't try to write it off. If it's such a small deal, you do it. You're a district certified special ed teacher who refused to even teach in a middle school, and certainly never had to go into a brand-new model with no training, resources, support, or other trained special ed teachers around you, then got told you were being pulled out at the end of February in a manner so unprofessional even your principal admitted it, then told you were only being kept in because your classroom was the only place to send a kid who was being laterally transferred because he assaulted both his other teachers- but don't worry, he's fine unless he doesn't take one of his four heavy-dose anti-psychotic drugs every day on time. Oh, just kidding! He's there for a week, but he has to be in a small class environment, so he's gone to the (now split 7th/6th grade self-contained) 7th grade self-contained (lucky N! more of that karma...), but now your partner teacher is out sick (for the third week in a row) and we know your class would rapidly disintegrate into chaos if you weren't there, so... you're staying with your students. Unless she comes back, maybe. We don't think we're going to tell you, actually. It's funnier that way. Except that you also now have a split caseload, so you have just as many kids on your caseload as everyone else but teach twice as many, and all the new kids are in the seventh and eighth grades in all different classrooms. It's no big deal, really... such a little deal that the roster chair won't even touch it, so you have to create your own schedule in which you service all of these children daily, one to two periods a day, even though they're all in different classes and you're not allowed to interfere with their math or reading classes or your part-time kids' math or reading classes. Don't get too hung up on the schedule, though- we're probably going to add more kids by the day as they transfer in! Oh one last thing- you have to go get the kids every day, they can't just come to you, because we're still on indefinite lockdown. It should only be three or four (or six) trips round the building daily, right? Plenty of time for engaging and rigorous content instruction. What do you teach them? Math and reading, of course. Do you do curriculum or IEP goals, you ask? You teach reading and math! What don't you understand? What, you think you're going to get some kind of information about your job description? (Maniacal laughter...) Get me that schedule by the end of the week... It's no big deal. Oh, and Happy Standardized Test Week! Oh, I'm sorry. Happy Standardized Test Prep Week! Oh, by the way- next week be ready to give the test to all of your sixth, seventh, and eighth grade special and general ed students simultaneusly while still accomodating for short breaks, extended time, and other IEP accomodations like small group testing (HAHAHA), but not for your general ed students. You clearly should be keeping them all engaged and positive- yet totally silent and in their seats- throughout a 3 hour test during which they can't even go to the bathroom. That's why we're practicing this week and making the kids hate the whole thing early! Remember that any inconsistencies or problems with the test could result in potential lawsuits in which everyone will blame YOU. I mean really, it's no big deal.

I hear rumors that there are folks who read this blog to feel better about their own lives. Go ahead. Please do. I'm glad my venting does something positive for someone.

So update on the School District of Denial... suddenly everyone has realized that city schools are actually horrible places to work and incredibly violent and dangerous. So our CEO (what, you thought this was a public school system and not a corporation? HAHAHA) has valiantly decided that any students who even threaten a teacher will be suspended for ten days and immediately processed for expulsion. This, to me, is hilarious beyond words. (The hahas don't even cut it) Ten days is the maximum any students are supposed to be suspended for the entire school year. If we tomorrow suspended everyone in my school who threatened a teacher, tomorrow, we would automatically be out of compliance with that particular law because in general kids who threaten teachers aren't so much bright-and-chipper go-lucky kids to begin with, and by March they've already been suspended at least once for prior threats/fights/random acts of violence. Not to mention the number of them that are special ed, since such a huge percentage of special ed kids get placed because of inital behavior problems rather than evidence of an actual learning disability... and to suspend special ed kids (and expel them) there's like four more layers of bureaucracy to get through. But hey, no big deal!

Maybe I've been around these kids too long, but this whole situation kind of makes me want to punch someone in the face. There's been a bunch of articles about it in the paper, but I'm too tired to link them. Maybe tomorrow...

NOTHING to do with teaching

Okay folks, I had to share this with the world because when I saw it I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. This may have something to do with having a roommate who cooks fresh bread every week. But anyway, it has absolutely nothing to do with education, teaching, schools, or anything remotely otherwise related. It is, however, funny as hell.

Bread expert

school (un)safety

So glad the press got the ball rolling on reporting school safety (or lack thereof) after a teacher got his neck broken. Nothing like preventative medicine...

I love that the Inquirer also came out with this story the same day the eighth graders started rioting at my school. Kind of underscored the whole point for us. I can't believe they actually kept it under wraps for as long as they did. Talk about shady...

"The report - completed last summer but kept under wraps by the district until yesterday - was released six days after a Germantown High School teacher's neck was broken when two students attacked him after he confiscated an iPod. It was released at The Inquirer's request.

District officials, who hired Green-Ceisler in summer 2005 and paid her $25,000, immediately criticized the report as being full of vague generalizations and for using words such as "numerous" and "some." They said they had asked Green-Ceisler to visit the most problematic schools to expose troubles and had expected an earful - although Green-Ceisler said she also had visited schools where things were supposedly working well.

And the officials contended that the report did not include a wide enough sampling.

However, a separate survey by the district of more than half the 11,000 teachers also found widespread concern about discipline. In the May survey, released yesterday, more than half the respondents said they did not think their schools were addressing discipline issues effectively or consistently."

So, their independent monitor was wrong for getting the exact same results the district did? The logic is breathtaking.

The union's even starting to get off its ass on this issue. Not quickly though, or particularly effectively. It makes me crazy after four years working with labor leaders and doing really radical labor solidarity work in college with people who were just incredibly well organized and mobilized (like the CIW) to actually be a part of a union whose members complain bitterly about conditions but who won't go to a damn meeting or vote in the elections. It could be doing so much more, and it would take so little to get people reinvested in it.

"In light of the attack on Burd, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers yesterday sent an e-mail urging its 18,000 members to participate in an online poll on school violence.

The Web survey was launched in September, but union officials said Burd's injuries had heightened concerns for safety in the schools.

"This may be one of the most dramatic and terrifying examples, but this is happening in big and small ways every day in schools," Goodman said."

An online poll... man that's some radical action... grrrrr.... anyway, if you are a Philadelphia teacher or know one, encourage them to take the poll and show up to the next union meeting (I believe it's March 15). This has gotten to a level that's beyond absurd, and there is obviously no one in the district who could care less about the teachers, and, by extension, the students, and the union needs to actually start being accountable to its members.

I hate adults some days... if the eighth graders can get organized, why can't we?

Conversation with Huffy

"Ms. A, have I ever told you that you were the best teacher in the whole world?"

I thought about it. "Nope. Mostly you ask if I've gained weight."

Huffy nodded thoughtfully, reflecting.

"Or tell me we're gonna fight someday,"

"Oh, yeah..."

"Or you tell me that I'm so fat my scale says 'to be continued'."

He smiled, I suppose nostalgic for that morning.

"Or talk about how I started www.EvilTeachers.com."

"You did!"

"Don't forget when he said he was gonna break your knees with a sledgehammer if you tried to leave us!" interjected another kid, one of Huffy's friends.

"Hey, don't help." said Huffy disapprovingly.

"Oh yeah, almost forgot about that one... Why?" I asked, waiting not-very-expectantly for something sweet and nice (along the lines of... "cause you are the best teacher in the world" to come out of his mouth.

"Oh no reason, just wondering." And he turned back to his work.
I guess not this time.

Hell in a handbasket. Alternately known as LOCKDOWN

Today we spent the entire second half of the day in Lockdown. Lockdown is the procedure we drill as a preparation for something like Columbine, or a kid bringing a gun into school and flipping out, or some random person in off the street getting in somehow and attacking people. All hall movement stops; everyone must be in a classroom and the classrooms are locked with only security and administration leadership in the halls checking on everyone, finding strays, and eliminating the threat while everyone hides in a classroom completely silent against the walls. Except today wasn't a drill; the eighth grade got organized and took over the school. I don't know the details; I went out to my car during lunch and came back in and the halls were dead silent. I walked into the grade office, lights out, with four teachers and two students sitting totally silently until they shushed me and told me about the lockdown. At that point, none of us knew why- it was all sixth grade teachers and students. The drill usually lasts only a few minutes, though, and this kept going. Another teacher walked in and was promptly shushed as well.

"Why are you all whispering?" he said loudly. "We're on lockdown because of the eighth grade, not because of some guy with a gun in the building."

Sure enough, a few minutes later someone came on the loudspeaker to announce that the lockdown was no longer a drill, but students were not permitted at any point to leave the classroom for any reason. I had to actually walk my kids to the bathroom at one point. Evidently the eighth grade, which has been going mildly insane all year, just got organized and decided to wreak havoc and chaos. Sometime 5th period, on some invisible cue, kids from almost every different eighth grade class got up, broke the windows out of their doors in their classrooms, and ran out of class into the hall. I think there might have been a fight that broke out about that time, too, but I'm not totally positive yet. The situation in the hallways basically turned into a mini-riot/stampede. By the time they got that resolved we had five police cars surrounding our building. It didn't end there, though; a bunch of the kids called their parents during the melee and asked their parents to come up and beat up some of the other kids. So when the bell rings and all the kids are let out of the building, a parent brawl starts happening and the police called for backup. There were probably about fifteen police cars by the time I left professional development. There was also a foodfight at some point that added to problems but I'm not clear on when that happened.

The one upside is that the principal cut PD short to let us go work in our rooms while she figured out what she should do. I don't envy her. I think it's fairly obvious to most of the teachers in the building that the eighth grade has gotten this bad because of several fairly specific bad decisions on the part of the administration, and the administration refuses to admit its own mistakes or weaknesses, which is in itself a weakness or mistake that helps nobody, including them. She finally came on the loudspeaker five minutes before the official end of the day, and announced that we would be in effect on lockdown indefinitely. Students would stay in their hoomrooms all day and teachers will switch rooms. The teachers are pissed about that, which of course was a decision made by a leadership team which steadfastly ignores (when they even bother to include) the one teacher on it, who's building rep. She also announced (L's idea) an emergency meeting with all staff to come up with ideas on how to change the climate of the building and, I quote, "take our building back".

When the principal admits that she has lost the school to a few hundred 14 year olds....


Unrelated, one of my students gave me a "Bio of Ms. A" with a little construction paper frame. Apparently I've helped this girl with everything but spelling. My bio reads:

Ms. A is a vary, vary, vary nice teacher in the hole wide world. when she teaches us she makes sure we lern evrything. And Ms. A. whers vary nice close all the time. (she's vary skny) and somtimes when the class dose not get things she makes sure we lern it. and she has vary nice jewlry, like her earrings, neckess, braclets.

by, Danielle S.
To Ms. A

And then there's a picture of me with very large earrings.

Guess I've been slacking on the spelling instruction...