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.