Mr. Jesus pays a visit

Between my PACT, professional development, and required portfolio maintenance, I've found myself out of the classroom four of the last ten days. Additionally, we had Memorial Day off, so I was already pretty disoriented when I found out that I'd have a formal observer in from The District to watch how my scripted ESL program was being implemented. It reflects on the program itself, not me, but it's still been a pain in the ass to have her there in the back of the classroom typing down everything that anyone says. So far she's been there for two straight days, and she's scheduled for one more, for a total of about 7 hours. Argh argh argh.

On one of those on-campus off days, I had the evil luck to get Mr. Jesus in my classroom. I hate Mr. Jesus for perhaps obvious reasons, and I have done since I met him last September (back then we called him Mr. Church.) Though other teachers request him because he will make sure the kids do not trash your room, I don't want my kids preached at, I don't trust anyone who has "met" me upwards of fifteen times and still does not recognize me, I don't particularly enjoy finding propaganda leaflets tucked into my library books and left on my desk, and I just plain hate the way he so expectantly calls out "Teacher!" when he's subbing next door and he needs me to drop everything and go deal with my neighbor-kids or something. So I'm running late for my PD and trying to get my kids to take out their books and study, and in walks Mr. Jesus. The agenda is up on the board, the other classes have photocopied letter/checklists stapled to their assignments, and this class knows they are supposed to be studying so I figure at least nothing can get effed up. I am politely laying out the way I want the day to run while I shove all my files into my stylish milk crate when he, sitting at one of the student desks right in front of my teacherly one, cranes around to look at the class.

"This class is amazing," he barks. "They are just looking at us. Shouldn't they be studying?"
Bear in mind, it is 7:40 in the morning on the first day back from a 3-day weekend. Yes, they are slow to start, but this is not unusual. I express this to Mr. Jesus.
"No, really!" he continues. "I have never seen anything like this! Are you all in Special Education?"
I just freeze at that one, and all eleventeen thousand responses roll through my head at once, but all I can get out is a slow "Excuse me?"
He turns around to address my kids again. "I said, are you all in Special Ed?"
My kids do not respond, as they are all frozen as well and just staring at me. I get out another Excuse Me, followed rapidly by a truly angry rush of words about the complete inappropriateness of that statement, and how I don't even know what that means, and that my students simply lack motivation as it is very early on a Mondayish morning, a feeling which I am sure he understands. He can tell I am pissed and starts backpedaling, talking about how he knows how they feel, and he is that way all the time himself, blah blah fucking blah. My kids, who have heard the term "lacking motivation" before, are sort of angrily chorusing "Yeah, yeah!" while I am telling him off. Later on that day, I hear them telling this story to their friends. It goes something like this:
(rapid Spanish)
Excuse me?
(more rapid Spanish)
Excuse me?!?

I dealt with the aftermath of the whole incident for the rest of the week. My kids were really upset by it, especially the five or so who really do have IEPs and deal with stigma all the time. What really surprised me was that the rest of my students were upset not at the implication that they were SpEd, but that SpEd was in this case synonymous with stupid. I think it's partly because they are all friends, and partly because they deal with the stigma of being language learners, but either way I was really impressed with them, and we talked about it, and it was a good Program Moment all around. Plus I got to yell at Mr. Jesus, so maybe he will remember who I am and stop introducing himself to me, the creep.

Speaking of creeps, our incompetent and creepy-as-all-get-out counselor has taken to coming to school obviously intoxicated and wearing shades in and out of doors. This is against dress code. They are Prada though, spawning lots of devil wearing Prada jokes, along with less sophisticated exchanges such as the following:
Me: What, so you've never worn dark shades indoors?
My co-chair: What, you've never shown up to work still drunk?
Me: What, you've never been hung over for eight straight days?

I am insanely proud of my seniors today. We've decided to spend the rest of the year on response to lit, as almost all of them are going to state or community college in the fall. When I asked them to brainstorm questions they had about essay writing and asked if they felt comfortable writing a thesis, they asked, "What's a thesis?" Ho boy. So that's where we've been living. Additionally, they had expressed that I was not challenging them enough, which was true, so our texts for this essay are short stories which I read in college, under the assumption that if they can master these texts and write coherent essays about them, there is not a lot they will not be able to do. (Although I will cop to letting them write on Esperanza, although it was optional reading which we did not discuss in class.) Anyway, today we finished prewriting and sat down to really "answer the question," and after many times handing back the paper with a "Yes, but WHY?" or "Yes, but HOW?" and one serious conversation beginning, "If I can write a good essay without a thesis, how come I have to have one?", we finally got some theses down. And they kick ass. My favorites, slightly paraphrased (in response to a prompt about how environment affects minorities living in mainstream American culture):

The narrator of Maxine Hong Kingston's "No Name Woman" is traumatized by the stories she is told by her family, making her unlikely to become a wife or a mother.

In Sandra Cisneros's "The House on Mango Street," Esperanza is never truly the girl she wants to be, because she is ashamed of the places and people she comes from.

I dance, dance, danced around after those.