thoughts / delerium.

I feel that an update is needed.

It's been three days in the classroom so far. Our first group has a regular attendance of about 45. They are wonderful. The biggest problem we have is that four or five students tend to dominate the discussion, shouting out answers before others have a chance to think or volunteer (which they are disinclined to do in either case.) Our second group has a regular attendance of about 24, and they make you work for it. It doesn't matter what "it" is; you will be working. Today I had the great pleasure of teaching the last quarter of the day, when the kids are amped up on soda and candy from breaktime, tired of sitting in a classroom for five hours, and antsy for the final bell. It was what The Program likes to call a "Learning Experience." Lesson: have different strategies in place for the post-lunch, pre-bell hour. With fall students, have frequent and frank talks about proper nutrition. Get some sleep, because by 3pm, you will feel like you ran a marathon, regardless.

Had a bit of disappointment today. We have a kid who's clearly bright but shockingly far behind. His diagnostic was very poor on the reading comprehension, and he did not even fill out the grammar section, let alone the essay. His "Do Now" activities reveal sentences dotted with random periods; he uses "do" in place of "the." He is the textbook case of the frustrated kid who acts out. Our FA warned me about him, telling me "he's a troublemaker." In fact, he's the one who found my Teacher Voice for me the other day, for which I will probably always remember him. This kid has had a rough few days. I cracked down on him on Monday, because I kept catching his misbehavior and no one else's. He was sullen and resentful the rest of the day. Since then, he has been moved to the front of the room and has of course not been allowed to sleep in class. We have been trying to reach him, if only to have a conversation, but it has not been working. This morning I saw him in the halls and said hello; he greeted me more politely than I would have guessed. And then, this afternoon, he did not come to class.

It is, of course, possible that he decided to skip out with some friends during nutrition, or... Well, there is no "or," really. He's checked out. Gone. Is he coming back tomorrow? It's possible. But it is not likely. We are all hurting over this. What could we have done to make him stay? And if he comes back, what can we do to help him, if he's hostile to showing that he needs help?

Today's good news is that Mike got transferred to my school; his had low enrollment in Special Ed so he and a few others were shipped over to fill spots left by our deserters. Mike says that the CMs at his old school were, on the whole, much more attractive than the ones at my school. I am willing to believe this; we seem to have all the quirky people, which I vastly prefer.

Mike jokes a lot - we all do, really - but he had a hard first day. One of his kids, who he suspects was born with FAS, came up to him today and said, with his slow, heavy stutter, "Mr. [Mike], I won't be in school tomorrow." Mike asked why not - did he have an appointment? The kid said, "Because I'm going to go home today and kill myself." It is your first hour of teaching in your entire life. What do you do? Mike goes to his FA who goes to the school counsellor who goes God-knows-where. Does that kid come back to school tomorrow? For how long?

Many of us in my CM group are concerned about whether we're really doing our students a service by being here this summer. We're doubtful that we'll make any kind of gains, and we wonder if they may not just be the guinea pigs through whose suffering we, as humanity, benefit. I am definitely not OK with this thought. As one of the other English teachers pointed out tonight, though: they are high school juniors and seniors, and many of them cannot tell the past from the present tense, coordinate subject and verb number, or write a coherant paragraph. Clearly someone down the line has given up on them - maybe a long list of someones. As long as we are not on that list, and as long as we are working hard to improve every day for them, we are doing more good than harm.

I have another placement fair on Friday. I'm stressed about it because realistically I will have slept six-ish hours between now and then. I am going to show up looking haggard and thinking about my lesson plans for Monday. I need to do laundry tomorrow night or I will show up in some kind of clashing-floral ensemble. It is difficult to think about these practical things with my lesson plans looming over me and my kids to think about.