Oh! I am so happy I am outta that place...

That was something I heard earlier today from a woman who retired from my school last year. She gave me a sympathetic look when I told her it was my first year and preceded to roll her eyes when I responded with, "So far, so good." Her reasons (though not explicit) for this reaction might have been legitimate. She saw the community change from a traditional, mostly mid to upper-class town to a more transient, financially disadvantaged one. She said that "the 'clientele' (really, why not just say "kids" or "students") didn't know why they were coming to school in the first place" and "didn't really care anyhow". Now, though I had to bite my tongue when she was speaking, I do not think she was an insensitive teacher. Instead, my interaction with her reinforced my theory that the majority of educators (certainly not all) will eventually find it difficult to connect with their students. Honestly, how can this white, presumably financially-stable, woman genuinely relate to a group of economically disadvantaged children of color who society has taught her only to know as "hoodlums"? I wish this were not the case, but in my modest experience it certainly has been.

Should I have explained to her how different my teaching experience has been so far? Should I have told her that some of my kids have brothers and sisters older than me? Could I have told her that I think my kids respect me more because I have seen some of their favorite rappers in concert? Should I have said that I play basketball after-school with my kids to give myself some more credibility in their eyes? Perhaps I should have said that my own family is racially diverse so maybe I can relate to them a little more? Or do I just smile and nod at the appropriate times? This woman obviously cared about kids. She was a retired school teacher after all- she wouldn't have spent a lifetime in a job she hated, collecting an offensively low weekly paycheck. This is a woman who was tainted by the system. Her immediate recollections are of her past few years of teaching, when "they" started to move in. This was the latter part of her career and, as she thought of it, also the demise. Again, this woman is not representative of our entire retired teaching community. Rather, there is another factor in this scenario. I think that it is also a matter of simply seeing things in a more positive light. If you are sitting in your living room on a cold, winter day and the sun is shining in, are you going to celebrate the rays of light or complain about the excessive heat they emit? Seriously, take your GD sweater off and ignore your increasingly sweaty palms.

My students are amazing. They are smart, motivated, funny, personable, enthusiastic and eager to learn. Yes, they are also black, Latino, and Asian, some come from larger families, have brothers that are in jail, some are foster kids and have parents that do not return phone calls. But should I focus on the stereotypes or should I celebrate their unique talents and gifts? Please... I'll take that sunshine any day.

Club 312

Today was the first day of Club 312. Earlier in the year, I asked kids to stay on Tuesday afternoons for after-school help. Two students came one Tuesday so far. Last week, I started calling it Club 312 and told kids that they had to sign-up for it. I also said that if we worked for a solid 30 minutes, then I would bring them all down to the gym and we could play basketball with the remaining time.

The change in name and venue did the trick. 38 kids signed-up and almost all of them came. GIMMICKS, gimmicks, gimmicks.

The kids worked on the night's homework for a solid 20 (not bad for 12-year-olds). We then went down to the gym. At first I was just kind of monitoring a few of the games and passing basketballs to kids when they went out of bounds. Then one of my fav kids started talking trash. It was on. Boys versus girls. I scored the first 8 points and it was all over from there. After 40 minutes of defending smelly 6-ft-tall kids, talking trash to adolescent boys, and taking jumshots in heels- I walked away from the court sweating and red-faced. My kids walked away thinking I was the coolest teacher ever.

Let's see if they actually hand in their homework tomorrow.

Don’t Mess with Texas (Or Me When I Have Been Up for 23 Hours)

It’s 3:30 in the morning and I am en route to Alexandria, VA for the birthday party of the season. Nephew is turning 2 and niece has turned 9. I have officially been up for 23 hours. Currently, Dave is at the helm and I am riding shotgun. The passengers on this trip are peacefully resting in the back. I drove for the first 8.5 hours of the trip that really should have taken us all the way to the Wet Stone but instead, merely got us to a little town called Princeton Junction in the state we all know and hate, New Jersey. After wasting $40 in gas and unnecessary FastLane tolls, we finally got away from that cluster-ef.

It’s late. It’s early. I am exhausted and am trying to keep my eyes open so as to not abandon my pilot. I know, all to well, how awful it is to play the chauffeur to happily snoozing passengers. So instead, I am lending my support my quietly typing away on my computer. In a way, I suppose that is just as rude.

No, actually, what is rude is the excessively tattooed, black nail polish donning gentlemen in front of us on our most recent rest stop run. While patiently waiting for Dave’s Junior Whopper and Becky’s medium fry, I watched as these two slowly but surely made asses out of themselves. After incoherently muttering something about “too much vodka”, the alpha dog gracefully spilled his large fry on the already greased up BK counter. After paying the cashier with his dirty dollar bills and change, he then proceeded to scoop up all the fries that had escaped his pack and shoveled them in his mouth. GROTESQUE. His mouth was like a cesspool for all truck stop generated diseases.

We are now passing a Greyhound bus with Texas plates. I believe it is going in the wrong direction and I am considering letting the driver know of this by way of a note in my passenger-side window.

Just Another Manic Monday

I am finally home from school after being gone for 12 hours. That' s right- when you consider my half-hour commute both ways, I was at school for 11 hours today. I left at 6 p.m. after finally completing my Term 1 grades. Let me explore the events of my Monday with you...

The new Superintendent was scheduled to visit our school all day. I knew that he would be floating around the school so I made sure that my room was just a little neater than usual and that I was just a little more prepared for class than usual.

Sure enough 5 minutes into 2nd period, which is my worst class behaviorally and academically, the superintendent and Principal stroll in, note-pads and pens in hand. I shake the Super's hand and offer them seats in the back of the room. The class starts off okay though I have to redirect several students- asking them to take out something to write with, getting extra textbooks from the closet because they've forgotten theirs and fielding the typical barrage of beginning of class questions. Since it's the first day of Term 2, I ask kids what our classroom procedures are and they respond by raising their hands (class participation, check-plus). I tell kids about some new rules and responsibilities for Term 2 (setting high expectations, check-plus). I then read a book to the class (check-minus).

Here's the scene: I ask the students to move their chairs to the front of the room in true storytime fashion. I introduce my favorite children's' book, Click, Clack, Moo (WHAT'S UP TTP), because its related to our topic of domestication and farming in early civilizations. The book is about cows that strike because they are upset with the conditions of the barn. They send Farmer Brown notes with an ultimatum- they want electric blankets or else. When the Farmer refuses, the cows hold an emergency meeting to address the issue. Sounds cute, right? Wrong- my school district and teacher's union are in the middle of negotiating our expired contract. Currently, the relations between administrators and the union are a bit cold as they continue to negotiate pay, health care etc. Furthermore, teachers were picketing tonight at the town meeting because we are moving into a work-to-rule situation. (For those not in the know, work-to-rule is a period of time in which teachers only work their contracted hours and nothing more. This is, of course, absurd. If teachers did not show up early, stay late, and do work at home, we would only have a 45-minute prep period a day to correct all papers, enter grades, call parents, meet with other teachers, make copies and plan lessons.) Anyhow, the climate in our district is quite tense and here I am, a first-year-teacher (obviously without tenure) reading a book about labor relations with the Superintendent and Principal in the back of my room taking notes. Anyhow, they stayed until the end of the period and waved upon exiting. GD.

Thhhheeeennnnnn....

I am walking down the hallway after my 22-minute lunch to supervise the mass of 12- and 13-year-olds coming back from the cafeteria. As I turn the corner I hear, "You f*cking bitch". I look down the hallway and see two of the girls in my next class lunging at each other. I sprint- I mean literally- sprint down the hallway in heels like I was on a treadmill. These girls are out for blood and I hate watching kids fight. Because I am not "supposed" to physically separate them start screaming in my don't-mess-with-Ms.-H voice, "GIRLS! GET YOUR HANDS OFF EACH OTHER NOW." After a few seconds, the blood-bath ceases and the girls separate. One teacher grabs one of the girls and I take the other. The girl that I am leading has a bloody, cut lip, a shirt that is ripped and hanging off her shoulder and her eye is already starting to puff up. The vice-principal is not in the office and I go to search for her. Where do I find her, you ask? Well, talking to the Superintendent and the Principal of course, standing not 3 feet away from where the altercation took place. So here is the subversive first year teacher waltzing up to the trio, interrupting and telling the VP that there is a student emergency in the office.

Phhhhheeeewwww, I walk back to my classroom, shaking my head at the absurdity of the morning. I enter my class and my kids start applauding. "Ms. H! You are so strong." "Yo- I wouldn't have tried to break that fight up." "Dude! I have never seen a teacher run like that- I didn't even know they could." "Ms. H, that was tight." Heh? I thought they would have been angry at me for breaking up their afternoon entertainment, but I guess this battle was even a little too bloody for them. Ten minutes later, the girls that got in the fight come in my classroom to retrieve their belongings, and amazingly, I manage to have them leave the room without so much as a sideways glance from a classmate. For the remainder of the day, I was getting high-fived (or at least fist-hit, "lock-it" style) by my kids.

As we like to say in my school on Fridays, "another day, another dollar draft".

Deep Thoughts...

Grades closed on Friday and I gave my students the opportunity to assess themselves on their classroom behavior. I reminded them that their "Classroom Participation, Cooperation, and Respect" is worth 25% of their grade and that I take this component very seriously.

When they were done rating themselves using the behavior rubric I gave them, I said that they could flip their paper over and use the back as a comment card. I said that they could tell me anything they thought I should know about their performance in my class so far this year. Some students let me know of a personal or family issue that had caused them to be a little unfocused. Other students apologized for being disrepectful and promised to try harder in Term 2. Some students identified problem areas and set some goals for the rest of the year. Several students said that my class was their favorite because I made "learning fun" (yay...) .

Overall, I was impressed with the profound comments and moved by their sincerity. After reading a comment by a student who said that my class is the only class they have ever really cared about, I came to this student comment:

"I think lunch should be $2.75 for an extra slice of pizza instead of $3.00."

I LOVE middle-schoolers...

Hi Honey, I'm Home

Whoa/Wow, it's just been so long.

I am sitting in a cafe waiting for my clothes to dry at the local laundry mat and wondering where Term 1 went. I knew that my daily life was flying by but forgot that my weekly and monthly life was also passing by at an alarming rate. Grades close tomorrow and I am celebrating my 2 month birthday as an educator.

Allow me to back up.

The First Day: I thought I was going to be extremely nervous my first day of school. Much to my surprise, I slept soundly the night before and arrived at school refreshed and ready for the first day of the rest of my life. The kids filed in, I went through my *first days of school* activities and that was that. I didn't have butterflies in my stomache and I didn't stutter over my words. The only downfall was that it was 112 degrees in my room and humid. When I went to the restroom for the only time each day that first week (never before noon), I saw a red-faced, frizzy-haired image of myself staring back at me in the mirror. I would laugh at myself and mutter that if I was teaching me, there would be no way that I would listen to me. (heh?) Anyhow, besides the excessive sweating, I was a confident, well-prepared, organized, funny and personable teacher. The rest of my first week continued like that and I marveled at how natural it all seemed. (What wasn't natural, and still isn't, is waking up before 5 a.m.)

I realized earlier today that I haven't been at all nervous about my teaching. I don't practice what I am going to say to my kids over and over again until it's perfect. I am comfortable around kids. The only time I am nervous (and perhaps a little awkward) is around my adult counterparts (by the way, I survived my first formal and informal observations). I think that's what I love about teaching. I can be my crazy, zaney self in front of my kids and they still listen to and respect me. This is the very joy in teaching- that kids like me as a teacher because of my eccentric nature.

The Kids: I cannot say enough about my students. They are funny, talented, intelligient, curious, and energetic. They are chatty, rude, disrespectful, obnoxious, and lazy. I mean, each 7th grader really has it all - rolled into one disheveled, disorganized awkward teen body in a Sean Jean sweathshirt. My classes are like the rusty roller coaster at the county fair that everyone is just a little unsure of. Period 1 is quietly inquisitive. Period 2 is always confused, lost in the lesson and yet, still talking when I am. Period 3 is full of the wicked smart kids and the wicked lazy ones. Period 5 has more absences than the local senior citizen center during a snow storm. By the time Period 7 rolls around, I am so exhausted that I am super laid back (and perhaps a little too much so). Every 47 minutes is a new adventure as the chemistry of the kids in the room (and those not in the room) continuously churns. Sure- I have "bad" kids that swear at teachers, that give me a hard time and that refuse to do work, but I try not to let it bother me. I am going to be faced with a new situation that requires my attention in about 7.8 seconds anyhow and cannot focus any more energy in the wrong direction.

My kids are from all of the globe and speak a variety of languages. I love talking to them one-on-one about where they came to the States from and what their life was like in their country of origin. I love talking to them about what moving to the U.S. was like for a nine-year-old who didn't speak a word of English. More on that later.

The Staff: The staff at my school is super supportive and I am so appreciate of my colleagues. We thoroughly enjoy our much-deserved Happy Hours on Fridays. Veiled under terms such as "Collaboration Meetings" and "Team Planning Time", the Happy Hours are our debrief from the long, arduous week of middle school drama. I have so much fun with my team teachers and only wish that we could have more structured time during the day to chat about student issues and curriculum connections.

The Disclaimer: (Regarding the positive tone of my post...) I have only been teaching, officially, for 2 months. Check in with me on June 27th when I am still in school, red-faced, sweating, and frizzy.

Ok- it's almost 9:30 and both of my alarms (hey, you never know) are set to go off at 4:30 a.m. That's okay though because tomorrow is Hawaiian Shirt Day.