Over the past ten days I have:

• Made my very first student cry and scream obscenities at me
• Gotten autographs from Q and Big Dane from West Coast Customs, to be posted in my classroom
• Watched an hour of the Olympics while stretching, cycling, and stretching at the gym (moguls = kickass)
• Gotten three hours of sleep one night, followed by twelve the next
• Given the "Come to Jesus" talk to the ESL class that told me they didn't do their one page of reading for homework because their other classes are all more important for getting into college
• Subsisted on an almost entirely cheese-based diet
• Decided that if no one else wants to be lead teacher for the new Beginners' Academy I will likely be moved to on A track, I will step up
• Realized that I am no longer a "new teacher" by my school's standards, and am fast-becoming a veteran
• Gotten and gotten over a cold
• Seen the Watts towers
• Spent three hours sitting at the cafe sketching
• Had a spontaneous crying fit
• Gone out with credentialing colleaguges until 6am
• Gotten a student in a headlock
• And on and on and on.

don't be a fool

...follow random bureaucratic rules.

So this week's fun new wrench in the gears: administration just remembered that we are going through accreditation next year and preemptively went all nutty on us this week, cracking down on any minor infraction. Rachel got written up for a misplaced CAHSEE packet or label or something - no one quite knows anything about it except that she did not, in fact, misplace it - and a bunch of us got nasty notes in our boxes reminding us that attendance rosters are due by the end of second period, and since we did not comply with this rule on Monday, a copy of this note was being forwarded to our overseeing Assistant Principal. Well, the joke's on them - CALA does not have an assistant principal. Ha! Anyway, as my awesomely snarky department chair pointed out - to me as well as to the writers of said note - admin is fond of reminding us that we have a no pass policy. No passes, ever. Not for seeing the counselors, not for the bathroom, and certainly not for running rosters to the attendance office during second period. "Just tell me which rule you want me to break, and I will gladly break it," she told them, predictably receiving no answer.

So I decide on Tuesday, fine, I will try this whole "complying with the roster policy" business, since they're getting all anal about it - a mere 4 weeks before we go to a computerized system, might I add (though I still do not have a working network connection, which is a whole other story. It is short, though. In fact, that may have been the whole thing.) I haven't sent my roster up before the end of 3rd this whole semester, so it seems kind of novel, and besides, my kids will try to out-well-behave each other at the mere mention of any outside errand. There, I think with some satisfaction. That will get them off my back.

Imagine, then, my ironic amusement when I opened my roster on Wednesday to discover that it had been tampered with by a student. Possibly mine, possibly not - we may never know. What I do know is that Selena, who has come to class a total of two days (the first one, and then today, of all days) was suddenly excused for all her absences, and Lara, who is one of my best students and has missed a total of one period all year, was suddenly, crudely, marked absent for a week and a half last month. Also, all of my small purple ink dots had been messily expanded in pencil, changing nothing but the neatness of my roll sheet. Huh? So, I stuck one of those massive lined Post-Its over the roll part so they'd be forced to read it up in the office, and wrote a note explaining the forgery situation (it IS, after all, a legal document) and that I had restored it to its original state per my "meticulously kept" in-class roll book. Meticulous may have been a stretch, but I filled in the gaps before sending the note, just in case anyone called me out on it. Today the roster came back with the note, almost assuredly unread, stuck to the other side of the folder. I don't know if they are illiterate or inconsiderate or think it's just not their problem, but I am keeping the note for the not-inconceivable possibility that I may find myself written up over this.

We had a PD the other night with my UCLA observer, who is kind of like everyone's sort of with-it, progressive grandma, and the conversation turned to administrations that blame teachers for the unpreventable problems in their classroom (ahem, ahem.) Our dean's office, with two exceptions, falls very much under this heading; unless blood has been drawn (which it thankfully has yet to in my classroom) they do not want to hear about it, and are a bit resentful if you make it their problem. This makes issues such as threats, extreme disobedience, constant disuption of the learning environment, and theft (ahem ahem ahem) our problem. My observer had the best-ever story about this. Back when she taught English in Torrance, she had a couple of students second period who had first period cooking class together. Pretty frequently they'd bring in goodies for her: biscuits, cookies, and the like. She always appreciated it, and she always ate them. So, nothing seemed unusual the day they left some brownies on her desk.

At this point, she pauses. "You see where this is going."

It's the next passing period and she's walking with her teacher-friend, and she says, "You know, I feel so strange today. It's like I'm here, and then a second later I'm way over there." Her friend giggles. Then they look at each other, and it hits them. Oh. No.

As I say, she is progressive and realistic and she actually thinks this is pretty funny (come to think of it, she thinks everything is funny just then,) but she also thinks that administration should probably know that some students are carrying pot on campus and distributing it to those caught unawares. So she tells them. And it comes down squarely on her head. She is in trouble with administration, with the cooking teacher, with everyone. The consensus is, This is your fault. You should have known.

Unrelated: For the record, I would like to state that I spend an average of 10 hours per day in my classroom, working through my lunch and all breaks; that I spend additional evening hours grading and preparing; that I log about 8 hours per weekend, unless I'm feeling ambitious. I would also like the record to reflect that I am paid for 6.6 hours per day, 5 days a week.

Word.

why, yes I am

still alive. Thanks for asking. It's been a rough couple, though.

I was doing OK and not feeling the burnout much, especially considering that I've been working straight through since August, and I was handling all the X-factors pretty well up to and including last week's theft of wallet/keys/checkbook, thankfully not by my students, but rather by identified students who we cannot OT or even suspend. Then I took Friday morning off to go get a new ID from the DMV - my last one having been obtained just this past October, mind - and I got the world's shittiest sub and my kids went ape. I got there and my first two periods had done no work, despite the assignment being on the board, and in third period the sub hadn't read the note on my desk asking me to pass out the work contained in a folder directly underneath said sub note, but instead had turned the note over and written "Ain't yall foolish" upwards of a dozen times all across the back, presumably while my students climbed up on top of the furniture to tape my desk numbers to the clock, the posters, other students' work, etc. It was more the kids than the sub that pushed me over; it was their taking advantage of my shitty situation to act like complete morons. That was six days ago and I've more or less been a ghost in the classroom ever since.

That isn't to say I've been sitting in the back letting things go to shit. It's been ups and downs, really, but I am now consciously counting down the days until the break. Yesterday was a good day; my next-door neighbor/ally and Rachel, my upstairs neighbor/road dog were both out, and the kids went berzerk, and for the first time I felt competent enough to run my class well, keep an eye on next door, create work for Rachel's class, and convince her sub not to leave after dealing with first and second period - my little angels from last semester. Sixth period I had a sublime moment, in which I was actually the teacher I wanted to be, which rarely if ever happens. My school holds soccer games during 5th and 6th, which means the players miss a lot of class and everyone else ditches to go out to the field. About a week ago some of my students, whom I have for both periods, ditched during passing period and went out to the game; their next day's lesson on vivid adjectives included rewriting sentences like "I was surprised at how empty my class was yesterday" and "I was upset when I saw how many students ditched." We learn a new non-High Point word every day; that day it was "livid." Anyway, yesterday we were wrapping up a writing project and my kids were being so great that I decided we'd go to the game for the end of the day, but before I could announce this, two of my boys ditched and went by themselves.

Here comes the sublime part. I took the class out to the bleachers, then searched until I found my two charming boys sitting with a bunch of their too-cool friends. I walked up, sat right down in the middle of them, and said, "Hey, guys. I'm going to give you today's new word: irony." My boys were petrified, but the too-cool friends were rapt. "What does that mean, miss?" "Well, irony is kind of when the opposite of what you'd expect happens, and it's usually kind of funny. The best way to learn it is by seeing it. For example: How ironic that these two young men decided to ditch my class today - on the very day I took the class out to see the game anyway." My boys are squirming at this point, and there is a long silence and a lot of averted eyes. I can't help it and I break out into a smile, and then their friends put it all together and they just about die laughing. "She's your teacher? She brought the class anyway?!?" And then we all have a huge, big laugh at their expense and I give everyone some pointers for identifying irony on the upcoming PSAT and CAHSEE. Then my boys swear that they will be my model students forever until they die, and we shake on it, and we watch the rest of the game together. The sun is shining, and there's a light breeze. It is glorious.

Today was more of a "down" day, or at least an all-around day. I was feeling fine until lunch because my senior class has been turned into a writing seminar and for the first time ever it's really functioning and the kids are working dilligently, which tells me they see some value in what we're doing. Then at the end of the day, Rachel sent down my old problem child because he couldn't hang in her class, and he got up to his old tricks, which revolve around figuring out very quickly what will bother or distract you and then doing it with increasing urgency until you physically want to punch him in the face. He feeds off this energy and only gets worse from that point, gleefully bounding around the room throwing things into other students' faces and more or less demanding that you punish him. We think he is seriously emotionally disturbed. Eventually we had to phone the deans to come get him, and not 5 minutes after they had left, two other boys in Rachel's class got into a full-on fistfight. She is like "What must the deans think of me?" and then we are both like "Why is happy hour only on Fridays?"

This would all be much easier to deal with were my courses not conspiring to bury me up to my neck in work and leave me for dead; I've got an assignment to do by day's end tomorrow that is simply not happening, and another by Saturday morning that's even further from coming into existence. I'm just too exhausted to teach classes and take classes at 100%; it's almost unfortunate that my classes are so good this semester. One is my second term of English methods, and the other is "Social Foundations," more or less my course on radical activism and why if you're not getting written up, you're doing something wrong. It's good to be reminded of this; it's easy to sign on as a social justice educator and then forget everything at the end of the day that isn't keeping your students a) in class and b) from punching each other in the face.

good/bad/ugly

Good:

Yes, we are getting married. I was going to find some better way to bring it up, but I wrote my last post at the mental equivalent of 4 am and basically just didn't notice what I was saying. Anyway, don't plan on going anywhere in spring of '07.

Additionally, we have added a member to our family. Major Major is nine months old, and he is a bundle of love and playfulness. He gets so much attention from us it is kind of obscene. He still does not think it is enough. Here he is on his chair, in a rare moment of observed sleep, atop his blanket, hand-crocheted by my mother.


In-between:

I am getting observed next week by my Program person, and I'm really kind of stressed about it. Observations are always okay, but the anticipation of being observed always reminds me of everything that is going wrong, or not going at all, in my classroom. My senior class, in particular, is kind of a mess and requires a serious paradigm shift. We are down to about 10 students and the vibe is just really weird. They're kind of hating me right now, and I'm not really happy with (most of) them either.

Good:

My morning class is effing phenomenal. I cannot physically give them enough work; no matter how much I give, how many new concepts I introduce, they finish with about 20 minutes to spare before the bell. On top of that, they do it well - my brilliant kids help out my slower kids and my "trouble" kids, they love reading aloud, and on their last test, we had a class average of 86 percent. No one failed. This is the first time ever I have had a class meet our class goal. I about keeled over. They, on the other hand, were nonplussed, and just wanted to get on with their work.

In-between:

My afternoon class has yet to hit its stride.

Bad bad all kinds of bad:

My small learning community is definitely getting disbanded. The name will stay on the books - huzzah - but the teachers, students, classes, focus, and mission statement will all change. Yahoo. The plan as it currently stands: ESL, currently housed entirely on B-track, is getting moved onto all 3 tracks. As of July, our waiver students (those who take all their classes in Spanish) will move to A-track. They will remain there for one year of "intensive, accelerated" ESL, after which they will be forced to move either to B or C track, where upper-level ESL classes will be housed.

Problems with this scenario: It forces our primary-language teachers to change tracks. If they do not want to do so (as many do not,) they will remain on B track teaching in English, while the empty positions will be filled by long-term subs who will likely not teach at all, let alone in Spanish. It forces ESL teachers to make a choice between low-level (like my amazing morning kids) or high-level (like last semester's amazing afternoon kids), which no one really wants to do. It forces students to constantly change tracks, leaving their familiar teachers and friends several times during their high school careers. It destroys our single greatest resource - the mutual support system we have created as teachers. Worst of all, it is completely unrealistic. The idea is that students will get through their primary-language phase in one calendar year, by attending school year-round with no vacations, and taking "accelarated" four-hour-long ESL classes during intersessions. But Admin and The Org are ignoring a few key pieces of information, for instance:
-The primary-language phase, as it stands now, takes two calendar years, assuming each class is taken only once.
-Students more often than not must repeat one or more of the low-level ESL classes during this time. It is not uncommon to take the same level three times - one and a half calendar years for just one of the four classes.
-We already offer intersession ESL classes. They are intended to boost students' skills for the next level, as no one in their right mind believes two months is long enough for a whole level.
-Students cannot, and should not, be expected to absorb four hours' worth of language per day.
-Students cannot, and should not, be required to attend school year-round simply because of their native language.

The absolute bitch of the situation is that I am not really telling you about it right now. In fact, I don't even know about it myself. You see, discussing it would constitute "spreading propaganda." Those with information about the current plan have been expressly instructed not to spread such propoganda - not to students, not to parents, and certainly not to the teachers who will be affected by the changes. So like I say. You didn't hear it from me.

new year, new surprises

For instance, thinking you're going to be continuing on to the next level of ESL with your passing students, only to find out, on the last day before your weeklong break, that you will instead be returning to re-teach the same levels, with entirely new students, except possibly for a few who failed your class not two weeks earlier.

As you can imagine, I was pretty pissed off about this, especially since Rachel (my co-worker/fellow Programmer/partner-in-crime) just happened to notice it on my change of room form (NB: I am supposed to change rooms every four months, and have been in this one for just two), as I was never officially notified. Had she not chanced to double-check, I would have shown up to work on the 2nd expecting my familiar students and ESL 2B and 4. I was so pissed off, I just sat on my desk and knit all day instead of updating the ESL portfolios.

In retrospect I was probably already predisposed to avoid working, as I do not generally bring my knitting to work.

Anyway, last semester, as you may recall, I had the Devil Class sprung from hell, who lit things on fire and had farting contests and refused to act like human beings, ever, and also the Angel Class, who asked why we could not read more books or work faster, and when finished, read to each other, in English and Spanish, from Cien Sonetos de Amor. This semester I have two classes of fully functional, sometimes lazy, always hilarious human beings. It is a revelation.

Rachel inherited The Spawn, but mixed with her mellow kids and faced with her newness and warm, nurturing teaching style, they are actually doing better. We have pretty much established that she is a Mothering Teacher, whereas I am a Hip Teacher, and different kids respond to us differently. Rockers and tough guys, especially, seem to like me, as well as girls in general, though not the ones with attitude problems; younger kids like Rachel a lot, especially the "young for their age" ones, and also girls in general. I think it is pretty funny that I grew up to be a Hip Teacher, as they're more or less the ones that got me through school relatively undamaged.

In case you were wondering, I did not give up my room.

******************************************
This semester, I must say, is off to the right kind of start. I've already given one assessment per ESL class, in addition to one spoken assessment apiece - equivalent to 50% of the speaking assessments I managed all last semester. I realized that my "pacing problems" were, by and large, behavioral problems which dragged us ever-further behind schedule. I am running a much tighter ship this time around, in terms of curriculum, preparation, grading, attendance, homework (I am actually giving it!) and behavior, from talking out of turn to gum-chewing, and it had just better not get any more serious than that. I am smiling a lot more too, and praising more. This whole thing is very disorienting for my seniors (11, down from a class of 13), for whom it must seem like I've been body-snatched or something. They got shamed something fierce today, for begging and begging and begging for me to extend the deadline on a project they've had three solid weeks for, two even without counting vacation, and then using the half-hour of classtime I gave them to work to drink soda and chew gum and talk shit about other people right in front of me, none of which is even remotely allowed in my classroom. It was actually kind of liberating to get pissed off at them, as I've been letting a lot of things slide that I shouldn't. We are moving to a seating chart, and they will be pissed.

******************************************

Exchanges:

Student: Miss, was that your fiance [helping you carry in boxes] this morning?
Ms. L: It certainly was.
Student: Oh. He looked like a nerd.
Ms. L: (amused) A nerd?
Student: Oh, I mean a schoolboy.

Student: Miss, how you gonna make us work on the first day back?
Ms. L: Like this. Now get to work.
Student: Oh, you got jokes this year.

******************************************

You might be a teacher if...

• You asked for a printer for Christmas (both me and Rachel)
• Upon receiving a $200 gift card to Staples in order to buy said printer, you immediately spent the entire amount on supplies (Rachel)
• Upon receiving your paycheck, you headed immediately for Staples (me)
• Upon purchase of printer, you made excited "birth announcement"-style phone calls to discuss your new printing situation (both me and Rachel)

the teacher-administrator relationship

...sucks.

In fact, it can be summed up in just three key points.

1. Drama.
Grades were due Friday. Finals ended yesterday. You do the math. So, many teachers, myself included, were a bit late with their grades. I turned mine in midway through this very morning, as a matter of fact, and as of this afternoon seventy-four of our 220-odd teachers had not completed the grading/verifying process. How odd, then, that my cohort-friend Anne, while turning in her grades first thing Monday morning, was verbally reprimanded by one of our numerous APs, and rather rudely reminded that now she was going to have to verify everything "by hand," as though anyone has ever given the first-years copies of District grading software. In fact we all found out about it, like most things, from veteran teachers. Anyway, Anne is middle-aged and has been a sailor and a limo driver and a theater director and she is not about to take unwarranted shit from anybody, so she rather acidically thanked her AP for the pat on the back. This morning Anne found a page-long, single-spaced memo waiting for her in her box, reminding her that grading - which, as you may remember, she had already finished - was her professional responsibility, and that oh, by the way, the AP would be conducting her instructional evaluations next month, just as soon as we got back from the break.

2. Drama.
Attentive readers and web-untanglers will recall that my school, for being in its sixth recorded year of steady decline, was about to be taken over by the state under No Child, but negotiated a deal in which we split into Campus North and Campus South, expertly helmed by Principals North and South, and allowed an outside organization (henceforth The Org) to come in, hire away our admin (my AP = no instructional evals for me!) and make "reccomendations" to us, which we are "under no obligation" to follow, all funded by the nonprofit arm of a certain unnamed tech gajillionaire. Read as: we are getting restructured.

The Org, you may also recall, has great success in places like Missouri and Texas - places whose English Language Learner populations are largely migrant, whose idea of a "large campus" is less than half the size of ours, which do not have year-round schools, which are not restrained by California's "A-G" college prep requirements, and which otherwise bear little or no resemblance to our school. To paraphrase Grandpa Simpson, it will be a cold day in hell before we recognize Missour-ah as our model. Especially considering The Org's latest, strongest reccomendation: that CALA - my beloved, supportive, successful small learning community- be disbanded as soon as it is feasible. English learners are to spend one year segregated into an English-intensive "Newcomer School," at which point they are to be mainstreamed. ESL and primary-language subject teachers will be divided between at least two tracks, if not all three.

The Org's problem is that having ESL students all on one track violates their civil rights - which, unfortunately, is true. Even more unfortunately, all alternatives to our current situation, apart from tripling our ESL/primary language faculty (RDRR), violate their civil rights while decreasing the quality of their instuction as an added bonus. For example: we are one of the few schools in the area - in fact, the only one I am aware of - that has enough bilingual teachers to provide Spanish-language instruction to its lowest-level ESL students across subjects: history, science, math, even health. If we split up CALA, that will no longer be the case, and students with the most basic levels of proficiency will be taking, say, chemisty in English. As for ESL classes, without all our students in one learning community, we won't have enough students of any level at any given time to fill single-level classes, meaning a move to the dreaded split roster. This is something like the old schoolhouse style of teaching, wherein students of all different levels all sit in one room together with only one teacher. I could, quite plausibly, have a class with five students who are two months away from mainstream English classes, essay-writing, etc, five students who cannot ask where the bathroom is or when we get out of class, and twenty-five students somewhere in between.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Admin is siding with The Org on this one. Not outright, of course, but they keep talking to us about "being open-minded" and assuring us that they're "really trying to understand how the ESL program works." Then they come to our meetings and insist that it's really for the best, and make it sound like we're being openly defiant - which at this point, I guess we are. We're rabble-rousing, stirring up support across all the other SLCs, and getting a huge percentage of SLC design meetings to come to consensus that CALA should stay. This was possible for a variety of reasons, in part because nothing unites teachers like a common enemy, but perhaps more truthfully because of our de facto slogan: CALA. We teach English Language Learners...so you don't have to.

3. And more drama.
A brief history of the English department's war with administration: The District requires 9th and 10th grade English teachers to give "periodic assessments" - read as, yet more standardized tests. Our department (rightly) decided that we couldn't waste the time and more or less refused, unless there was something in it for us: the return of our computer lab, appropriated by Campus South. As not administering the assessments would jeopardize our compliance and thereby jeopardize our funding, this was agreed upon - until the assessments were administered, at which point a closed-door meeting was held, sans English department representation, deciding that we would not get our lab. We, in turn, withheld the assessments. It is now basically a balls-out war between our head of department and The Principals, growing increasingly more abstracted and petty. How petty, you ask?

School let out today at 2:11. We're supposed to work until 3:24 anyway, the pupil-free time being built in for department meetings. The English department decided to have its meeting/social at a restaurant off-campus. Ordinarily this is fine; CALA did it yesterday. But if CALA is in the doghouse, the English department is in exile, and thus any enjoyment and/or freedom on its part is to be thwarted, priority one. So admin got wind of this off-campus meeting and took decisive action, scheduling a whole-campus meeting at 3pm solely to ensure that the English department could not leave. The English department sent around a memo stating that since we did not have 24 hours' notice, we were not contractually obligated to attend, and that our head of department would in fact buy drinks for the first person or persons to arrive. Apparently Admin got wind of that too, because a second memo was sent around stating that there had been a "mistake" and that the department meeting had in fact always been scheduled for 3:50! How silly of them!

So the whole campus goes to this 3pm meeting, and do you know what it is? It is a "working meeting" with "no set agenda" that lasts ten minutes, during which time they wish us all a happy holiday and remind us that our grade verifications were due this morning. We have been held, according to Principal South, "for [our] convenience."

It really was quite convenient, in the sense that all 220-odd of us could sit in the same room and bask in the warm glow of our collective hatred. Usually, the dual-campus split precludes such things.

words and pictures

My favorite student got OT'd for jumping another student. I saw the aftermath, him slammed facefirst against a brick wall, the look in his eyes. I do not think he did it.

My thorn-in-the-side student got OT'd for his personal safety. He was jumped three times, the first of which resulting in a huge black eye and five stitches. I would feel bad for him if I did not know that he did something to warrant (if not deserve) this, and if I did not believe that he will learn nothing from the experience.

Grades were due Friday. I will probably get them in tomorrow morning.

I baked bread yesterday. Lots of bread. I have so many new systems to implement and lessons to try out next semester...but right now, bread is about my speed. I am so done with students.

Thursday and Friday were finals, so we had full-length days but with four classes per, two of them doubled up, resulting in my having some students for 3 hours per day. Today was finals too, but it was a half-day, so we got out at 12:35. Tomorrow and Wednesday are "regular instruction" days, meaning six periods of post-finals class which students know do not count towards their grades, but they are short days - not our regular 1:53-release professional development short days, but rather, 2:11-release. Thursday, the last day of school, is a completely normal day, releasing at 3:24. When we come back on the third, it is a reverse professional development Tuesday, meaning that we get out at 3:24, but that we sit in a meeting for the first hour-odd of the day, until the students arrive at 8:48. They are really excited about that. I would be too.

I am not even remotely in the holiday spirit. Wonder why.

Please to be enjoying these examples of the odd, mundane, and deformed which have lately caught my eye.

Bow down! Bow down! Before the power of marshmallow Santa! Or be crushed! Be crushed! By....his jolly boots of doom!*

It's officially intentional...the display was switched this week from McCormick to Von's brand pepper. I am still purchasing pepper from the spice aisle. It seems less salmonella-y.

I apologize for the glare and the shadows and the bad angle. It's really difficult to photograph, but this is my favorite sign in South LA. So many messages going on!

At least one person in this town is awesome.

Blurry, yes. And yet...that about sums it up.

*five points for the reference.

sick, cranky

I am home sick today - I feel pretty OK but am periodically coughing my lungs out, and my voice is definitely not at full strength. All my work is at school, so there's not much I can do; I slept until almost 11, dorked around on Craftser for awhile, and am thinking of knitting something or deconstructing my ugly, oversized Program t-shirt and making something wearable. What I have mostly been doing is enjoying one of the many side effects of Los Angeles living: the 37 phone calls we receive, per day, for someone named Paris Barclay. They're usually from Unknown Caller but one was from the Director's Guild - go figure - so I do a little investigating and it turns out that this is in fact the Paris Barclay, the famed guest director of a million and one TV episodes and that cinematic classic, Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood. I, for one, have always preferred the early work of the Wayanses.

I think only The Moms have the house number, and they know we're not generally home during the day, so any and all calls we get are for Paris. I was really mean to the last one, and she sounded kind of shocked, but whatever. I wish we had an answering machine, so I could record a nice hostile message and save my voice from any furthur terse exchanges. Something along the lines of,

"Hi, you have not reached the home or office of Paris Barclay. If Paris Barclay is successful enough to have a secretary, and you are fortunate enough to be in contact with said secretary, please call her at once and instruct her that this is not, nor will it ever be, the number at which Mr. Barclay can be reached. If she is in posession of and has been distributing the correct number, please instruct her that her job responsibilities have just increased, as Mr. Barclay is not to be trusted to give out his own contact information and must be monitored at all times. Congratulations on your fine connections to Hollywood's brightest stars."

Or maybe I will just start taking messages for him.

Getting the hell out of LA: T-minus 30 months and counting.

sick again, jiggity jig

Yay yay yay. I am not sure if it was my students, or some other students via another teacher, or what. But today, after spending the entire morning at work, I came home and took a nap only to wake up literally drowning in my own nasal drip. Awesome. So, apologies for any disjointedness of post today.

Wish I could tell you something good about my classroom. Final grades are not due until the sixteenth but my final ESL fail list was due on Friday due to how long it takes to reprogam the kids' schedules for the next semester - most classes are year-long, but ESL classes last one semester, two periods per day. So last week I mostly gave and graded assessments and writing projects and agonized over both my sweet, hardworking students who are not ready to move on, and my Damienesque students who are passing with flying colors. As of the new year I inherit other peoples' failing sweethearts and howling demons, mix them in with my passing ones, and start this whole thing over again. With better, clearer expectations this time, and some kind of paper-grading system that does not go "Collect it when I remember, put it in a pile, never look at it again." Also, with a fresh data collection sheet, a much better idea of the curriculum, and SigGains on the brain.

In my ongoing effort to read every book in my classroom library, I read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants in its entirety today. It was much better than White Oleander - sapfests being more appropriate for adolescents than the middle-aged - and the kind of thing I might have really enjoyed when it was at my reading level. I am really looking forward to when Jarhead and Killing Pablo come back into the room so I can grab them for a change. My ESL students have been taking books off the shelf a lot lately, which is really awesome. When they are done with their work, I have a mixed group of girls and boys who sit and read Neruda aloud to each other. They always look at me guiltily, like I am going to make them stop. I only have one or two more books of English/Spanish side-by-side poetry, but I'm bringing them in as of Monday (or Tuesday, if my head does not clear up) and am officially keeping an eye out for more.

I had planned to knit all afternoon but with the fever, I would probably just have screwed it up.

Random photo time!

Behold the mighty cabinets o' grammar!

The day I wore these shoes, my low-level ESL students searched furiously for the right word to express their reaction. They came up with "clown."

I forgot to mention it, but Aaron was tragically crushed by the weight of our unwashed laundry.

I do not understand this town. Not even a little.

my week in one-liners

My first and second period, on test day, after stonewalling my review attempts for two hours the previous day: But Miss! We need to study!

Me, after leaving my glasses in the library: I can't see. Why is that?

My kindest, gentlest student: Miss, what means the word "titties?" Because my friend, he say you have big titties.

Me, on my students: I swear to God, I'm going to throw them all out the window...which is probably OK, seeing as we're on the first floor.

My rocker kids, on being told that failure to turn in a writing project will result in their failing the class: What happened to cool Miss L?

My fifth and sixth period, when asked what the president's goals are: Send us back to Mexico!

A student with a 38% test average, just before putting put his name on an A student's essay and turning it in as his own: I do all the work and you give me F!

One of my shrewdest and most thoughtful seniors, being asked if facing racism makes you grow up faster: No, it just makes you want to punch everyone in the face.

self-sabotage

The only thing worse than having your students fail because they are either a) not getting it or b) not paying attention (and they usually, if not always, get it when they are paying attention) is having to fail students who can do the work because they are cheating off each others' papers. I have not been hard enough on this, but that changes now, especially since I have talked to one of these kids about it before. I wish I could say it just makes me sad - and that's what I'm going to tell them - but in all honesty, it pisses me off. I know they're insecure and they're scared because they're all on the pass/fail border, but you'd think that would make them more inclined to do their own work, not less. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with them? Do they think I won't notice that they are all writing the exact same misspelled sentences in the free response section? It drives me crazy, because I already know that they will look me straight in the eye and tell me they absolutely did not cheat. Then they will explode in rage at the merest suggestion that I might take off any points. Boy, will they be surprised when I tear up their papers and they get a zero for the assignment.

That is my grading pen, right there. Woot.

drink first, then grade

So, the 100 was actually pretty cool, especially once my PD showed up, informed me that they had $1000 to spend on liquor, and insisted that I stop paying for drinks. Now. I told him I was so done, I would chuck my high-ball glass onto the dance floor and never look back. He mixed me a much-less-watered-down drink, My People started showing up, and things got markedly better all-around. We even had a Small World moment, discovering that Aaron went to elementary school with one of my good Program friends' roommates, who I have never really gotten to know. Also, I am getting better at walking/dancing in heels. The pathetic thing is that I don't wear anything taller than a kitten heel - maybe 3/4 of an inch at the tallest. Heels mess up your feet, though, for real. I try to wear sneakers in the classroom about 3 days a week, and flats the other 2.

This morning I slept in good and late, knowing I'd need all my strength for the Test-Grading Day I have planned. Grading days can be really depressing. They can also be really freeing, though. Today, for example, I am going to rid myself of about 10 pounds' worth of paper and the constant neck-and-shoulder-ache I get from carrying them around. The backache will be around until I quit the profession - or start sitting at my desk during the school day. Guess which of these things will happen first.

improvement / celebration

Things were better this week. My students are starting to mellow out, and the big problems are gone, leaving me with the dreaded and continual talking while I am talking problem. I met with my PD and came up with a kickass action plan, and a couple of other teachers in my SLC came over to my room with a plan all drawn up to nip it in the bud: since next week is only 3 days, they're each taking two of my biggest troublemakers, first thing in the morning, no questions asked. I'll give them a book and an agenda for the day and then they'll go sit in these well-behaved classrooms, isolated from their friends, facing the wall, and they will do their work silently. If this happens, they will be allowed to come back to my classroom after Thanksgiving. If it does not, they will continue to work in Solitary.

It sounds cruel but it will absolutely work.

This leaves me free to deal with my other, more serious problems: my English class lacks any kind of momentum or urgency, and my Advanced ESL class is still failing their reading comprehension. I'm feeling a tremendous sense of relief - these are the problems I was hired to deal with, not a bunch of post-middle schoolers who refuse to spit out their gum and put the goddamn nano away.

As I type I'm getting ready to go out on Program bid-ness. The LA 100 is a Program tradition, maybe even the Program tradition in my region. After 100 days in the classroom, we all get together and go out for a night of drinking, dancing, and cavorting at some super-trendy nightclub. I'm actually not that into it, but some of my favorite Program people, including my PD, my best Institute friend, and my best credentialing class friends will be there, and there's no cover, and I made a deal with my friend Hess that if we go, and it sucks, we leave immediately after the free champagne and seek out a dive bar. I'd kinda rather just do that to begin with, but I guess that's why I wasn't asked to organize the 100.

watchword: purposeful

So I went all Program-nuts after last week's observation made me realize that I am just sort of going through my scripted program for the sake of going through the scripted program. This is death in the classroom. If I do not have a clear purpose for being there, why should my students?

I went in on my day off and tracked out all my objectives and made calls to have people come into my classroom to support me and made a behavior log, all of which is very exciting and has already changed my approach, if not the whole mood of my classroom. I also had my head of department make phone calls home. Until now I had doubted the power of the phone call home, but Oh. Man. You should have seen them this morning, slinking in like dogs with their tails between their legs. They just sort of sat there, sullen, for the first hour of class, doing the work and occasionally shooting me a death glare. It was awesome. Then they got over it, and things were back to semi-chaos. But a little better.

Had a very serious conversation with The Firestarter today in which it was made expressly clear that if I so much as heard the flick of a lighter, his ass was OT'd down to Watts, no questions asked. Then I moved him front and center, away from his friends. We will see how that goes.

Lots of my kids are failing, which sucks. The good behavior class too, not the bad one, as the work is just a lot harder. (NOT my fault. Talk to the scripted program.) It does not help that anything below a 70% is a fail; most of these kids actually have what would traditionally be called a D. I swear, wherever we as a society set the bar, that's where they aim. Mostly, they are failing because of reading comprehension, as opposed to speaking, writing, or vocabulary. Very interesting - you would think you could pass that part of the test just by matching up the sentences on your exam with those in the book. It takes zero thought, right? But my kids lack test-taking skills. All of them, not just the ESL kids. It's really sad, just another example of how suburbanites are better prepared for success - no one's sending my students to SAT prep classes (though they are eligible for all kinds of free tutoring, which none of them are taking advantage of.) The scripted program is really good about building in practice for most other skills, but this is one area where I'm definitely going to have to supplement.

One of the Program Ten at my school quit her job on Thursday, and one of my best Program-Friends is talking about quitting. We all go through periods in which we're really despondent. At this point we've been in the classroom just long enough to get past the initial question - How do we get through to these kids? - and arrive at the real question - No, really - how the f*ck do we get through to these kids?

No word on how long you must remain in the classroom before arriving at an answer.

crashing back down

Of course you knew it could not last.

Today...yes. Today was rough. They are re-promoted to Nightmare Class. One of them stole my glasses today, though at least they were not on my face at the time. He is kind of a klepto, can't seem to help himself from stealing things like pencil sharpeners and random papers off my desk - and I really think he needs to be evaluated by the SpEd people as he also can't sit still or keep quiet or look directly at any one thing for longer than about 90 seconds. Today I also busted him spitting out his gum - which is forbidden in my class for exactly this reason - directly onto my floor. What has happened in these kids' lives for them to have so little respect for their environment? You just have to walk around the neighborhood to answer that one, I guess. There is this shopping cart full of bizarre garbage - abandoned by a homeless person, perhaps, though South Central seems not to have homeless people in the street-dwelling sense - lying turned on its side about a block from my school. It has been there for almost two weeks, trash spilling out across the sidewalk, and no one is making any moves to dispose of it. The worst is that when someone runs over a pigeon or something, it takes a couple of days before someone from the city comes down to clean it up, or someone from the neighborhood gets worried enough about disease to risk doing it themself.

Tangent. Sorry. Anyhow, tomorrow: big changes. I had this whole list of ordered consequences before the break, and then things got crazy, and I kind of forgot about them. They are not even up on my walls. As a result, the kids get warned 3,000 times per day with zero follow-through. Just warnings and talks outside, which really work on the days when my instigators are absent (witness: yesterday) and are just a lot of fun for them on the other days (witness: today.) So tomorrow, the consequences are up and we follow them, in order, no exceptions. There are only five levels before they're referred to the dean, and as I have been warning some of them (shame) in excess of five times a day, I fully expect my class size to be reduced by about 30% by the end of the period. They won't go to the dean - not unless anything else gets stolen, a-hem, regardless of whether or not it is swiftly located and returned by my other, wonderful students - as I don't want to abuse that avenue and destroy the relationship for when one takes a swing at the next and I really do need it. But I know which teachers they are scared of, and I have already warned them that they will be having guests.

Hilarious: one of my students wrote on the papered-over chalkboard that serves as my information wall. It says "PUSSY FUCK." Ummm...yes. We do need to work on those rules of grammar.

Not hilarious: this class knows my first name and they use the hell out of it. Like if I am talking to one student and take too long (over 30 seconds) transferring my attention to another, they will start hollering. "HEY! HEY JASMINE!"

The first one to do this tomorrow goes straight out of my classroom. We have had the "respect" talk too many times. They know what the rule is. But that is not the same as abiding by it.

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I think I am so frustrated because today was such a complete waste of time. First and second were spent attempting, ineffectually, to corral the kids, third and fifth we had an assembly, and sixth was kind of a wash. We are learning note-taking and my kids are either not getting it or bored out of their minds with it. Really, it could be both. The assembly was a bizzare hodgepodge of ideas: free tutoring! global warming! dress code! job-appropriate attire! crystal meth makes your heart a-splode! Then some ex-gangbangers from San Diego talked to us about the conditional love of the streets and how prison is terrifying even if you think you are hard. Unsettling take-homes from the assembly:

• Ex-G asks students how many plan to play pro ball, and enough to stock two full expansion teams - per assembly - raise their hands. Instead of "bein' real," as purported, Ex-G chastizes the other students for laughing at them, telling us that we must believe in ourselves above all else because "anything is possible." He himself just finished filming a new movie with Xzibit and The Rock.
• Principal, himself a brownish black, consistently refers to students as "black and brown people."
• Principal, in denouncing the gang lifestyle, asks, "Ladies, who do you want to marry? The guy who's running around getting shot up and probably going to prison or dead, or the guy who's going to make some good money, and provide for you and your babies?"

Ex-G does say one interesting thing, when he talks about his family on drugs and in prison and how hard life can be for a kid from the inner city, and he asks, "How many of you try to look good so others can't see the pain you're feeling inside?" No joke, 3/4 of the hands in that auditorium shot up without even a moment's hesitation. It was the only moment that felt real, not like some corporate-sponsored cautionary tale, which of course it was. I looked at all their faces then, and for just a second, they looked very old. I think it was the self-awareness, more than the pain.

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I ran into Ms. M today, the new teacher who took over my long-term sub position. She was stressed to the max and said she was starting to doubt that this school was the right place for her. I tried to encourage her, and I hope to God she doesn't quit. She is a good teacher and my kids - er, my ex-kids - have already been abandoned too many times. This stress and uncertainty, that feeling like all you do at work is punish yourself for eight straight hours, is one of those wounds that time will heal - for her, for me, for all new teachers. It's just a matter of hanging in there, and making sure you are learning while you do so. If you are paying attention, it is impossible not to learn every day.

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In other news, I am kind of (read as: desperately) wishing that friends will come down and visit me this fine Veterans Day weekend, but they are busy and this will almost assuredly not happen. So instead I may go to Homecoming, ha ha. It depends on if any other Program members or first-year teacher friends want to go with me. It could be kind of fun, and we have all these hours of "extra" stuff we have to do each month, like our jobs aren't friggin time-consuming enough. Anyway, my seniors ask me every single day if I am going, and some of them are up for royalty (gag), and my mentor says he wants to see me there too. So we will see. There are worse ways to spend a Friday night.

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In still other news, I voted today. If you live in Cali, and you did not vote, and 74 passes, I am coming for you. I will have lots of time to hunt you down and break your kneecaps once the Governator personally comes down here, fires me, and turns over control of my school to The State.

beautiful monday

Today was a good day. I am cradling it in my hands.

First/second, previously my nightmare class, has been downgraded to my headache class. Last week we did the whole "practicing coming into the room, picking up our books, and sitting down like human beings" business, and we did the "if you are not here to learn, leave right now" act with the holding-open of the door, and we played the "for every minute we waste we will stay one minute at nutrition" game, and we did the we-are-not-amused thing, and all of this kind of helped but not really. Then several of them failed their first test because they were not doing their classwork and were therefore unprepared. The "staying after" bit probably bothered them more, though.

And then, somehow - and I do not know how this happened - I found myself sitting down at eye level with two of my biggest troublemakers, laughing. They gawked at how I hold a pencil, and they showed me how to bend just the top joint of your fingers, and then they lurched at me like zombies, and we were sitting there, just laughing, and I had this epiphany. I had not laughed with this class at all. Not even once. And then I got to thinking, wow. All of the things that make me a good first-year teacher, when I am one - patience, humor, personal connections, individual check-ins and explanations - were completely missing. I was doing the authori-tah dance, and leaving them responsible for monitoring their learning - the complete inverse of my ideal classroom, in which they self-police and I make sure they're getting the material. It was a slap in the face. So things changed.

Today we were about halfway through class when Omar, one of my zombie-lurchers, raised his hand (!!!) and said, "Miss, we better today!" He was right, and he was happier, and I was happier. So the new strategy is, no irritation on my face. Not ever. We count down 5-4-3-2-1 for silence - they respond well to it, and it's the only signal that doesn't completely make me gag. When we have a problem, the problem kids come and talk to me, and each other, outside. It goes like this:

A, explain what happened. B, you just listen.
Now B, you explain what happened. A, you just listen.
Okay. What should you have been doing?
If you were both doing that, would X have happened?
What are you going to do when you walk back into my classroom?
Now tomorrow, I expect you to be my star students. Best in the class. Can you commit to that?
I look forward to it. Come on back in.

It's funny, but the part that makes the biggest difference is the "star students" bit. They really do commit to it, and they come through. It is amazing, and it's all starting to gel.

I was also observed today, with my seniors, who are the coolest, mellowest class. We did this A.MA.ZING activity called Cube Writing (Amelie, hit me up for a copy - get your kids to write developed 2-page essays in-class! No joke!) to come up with a first draft for the autobiographical sketch required in their senior portfolios. The class is small, which can feel awkward because it's necessarily more seminar-style and my students are used to being lectured at, but today it was cool. We were joking and learning about each other and my review was outstanding, which was nice. But really it was all about the feeling when it all works.

Who knows how tomorrow will go. I'm tempted, though, to just type up a handout for my seniors, then head to bed and leave this day perfect. Worry about it in the morning.

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Speaking of worrying in the morning:

Tomorrow is November 8th. To all my Cali people: Yes, it is supposed to rain tomorrow. I do not care. You get your asses out there in the rain and vote. Early and often, as they say. Influence as many people as you can. Be incredibly irritating to anyone not wearing an "I Voted" sticker. There is some mess on the ballot this time around, and we must send the message that we are tired of being jerked around by the government-industrial complex, and that we want Arnold, his cronies, and his financeers out of our schools, out of our unions, and out of our pregnant womens' wombs, minors or otherwise. With that said:

• NO on 73 through 78.
• YES on 79 and 80.
• And a resounding YES, for my LA people, on Prop Y. Pay the taxes, build the schools, and burn year-round minority sabotage to the ground.

But if you only remember one thing:

NO ON 74

NO ON 74

NO ON 74

NO ON 74

NO ON 74

who you are < who you know

I just had a kick-ass Day After my First Day Back. Day One wasn't bad, just kind of exhausting and underwhelming. Today was smooth sailing, and I'm excited to really get started over the next week or two.

The real reason I am so happy today, though, is that I got hooked up.

We are a Title 1 school, meaning that the government gives us money to "improve the academic achievement of the disadvantaged." We just lost one of our teachers - my mentor-man, in fact - to a new post as the Title 1 coordinator. My department is affiliated with the Bilingual program, which gets a bunch of money from lord knows who. I am a first-year teacher, thus entitled to first-year goodies, ranging from tissues to technology, funded by The District. There is a boatload of money in my school, and I have all of these "ins" to help me gain access to it. That being said - it is IM.FUCKING.POSSIBLE. to get a laptop.

The story is that all first-years are supposed to get a laptop when they are hired, for planning/grading/online poker-playing purposes. (That last part was a joke. Only the APs' secretaries are allowed to do that, and they must use clunky desktop machines for it.) Laptops were ordered way back in mid-summer, and at some point, for reasons that no one can really articulate, the money was frozen mid-order and now requires an administrator's all-clear to free it up again. We are supposed to just wait on that, as it should be happening any time now.

In case you have not been keeping track, it is almost November.

Anyway, you can't get a laptop. Don't even ask. Don't make me laugh. Yeah, sure, we can put you on a list. Yeah. You'll get one just as soooon as we get them in.

Unless, of course, your department head, an alum of both TFA and the B-Eng department, is the daughter of the tech guy.

Then when you walk up to his uber-wired little hidey-hole and he says, before you can even take a breath, "No laptops. None. So whoever told you there were, is lying," you can counter with "Oh...because Tiffany told me-"

At which point he produces not only a new lappy but an LCD projector as well, plus two nifty tech bags for the toting. No one has gotten an LCD projector yet. Couple this little duo with the printer I am keeping for an off-track Riley, and I am big pimpin' to the fullest.

the hour draws near

B-track comes back on Thursday. As my PD James reminded me today, we are the last Program members in the entire country to enter our classrooms and get down to business. I find this a bit ironic, as despite being a paperwork-procrastinator, I prefer to get actions over with. I feel like I've been inching into the frigid waters of teaching, rather than jumping in full-body, as I would have preferred.

That being said, I can kind of see where the inchers are coming from. I told James today, I'm about as comfortable as I can get on campus and in front of the class - any class - which is really a huge part of the early battle, and frees me up for the war.

I was on campus Friday for a meeting with the other Program girl with almost my exact position (except that she got soph English while I have seniors - ha ha!- and, her sub actually did his job - awwwdang) and the ESL coordinator, which was very productive. I was also there yesterday for a "buy-back" (optional but paid) day, which was somewhat less productive but quite informative. Our school has some huge grant from a known philanthropic organization (*coughgatesfoundationcough*) and it has recently come to the attention of the folks Up Above that we are not, so much, on track to improvement despite being handed wads of cash. So, this organization has been brought in to restructure the school in a way that will magically help our scores improve and our students become well-rounded, articulate, and college-bound. This will happen through switching to a block schedule, halving the size of our small learning communities (how? hiring more teachers? serving Soylent Green? or, as I rather suspect, waiting for another school to be built and then patting ourselves on the back for our accomplishment?), and giving every teacher, administrator, and "other qualified staff member" a caseload of 15 students to work with through their four years - creating their schedules, ensuring they are on-track, getting to know their families, and generally insinuating themselves into students' lives. This is going to be either a bloody war, or a complete nonevent, because no one will do it. We have huge culture problems at my school - the students don't want us "up in their business," and neither do many of the teachers think this is their job.

Anyway, I am waiting for them to truck in the fairy dust. Not because I don't think these things could help our school, but because I think people are going to resist the changes with all the strength in their bodies, and that the organization is getting in over its head. Homeboy making his presentation was talking about another "quite large school" they work with in Kansas City, which has 2200 students. My eyebrows went about through the roof - we have that many on B-track alone. We also have a tremendous amount of "teacher mobility" (read as: packing bags, never coming back) and statistics that make your blood run cold.

For instance:
77% discrepancy between sizes of freshman and senior classes (highly suggestive of dropout rate)
67% of students reading below 25th percentile, thus having a 50% likelihood of graduation
8% of students reading above the 65th percentile, thus having a 95% likelihood of graduation.

The Org brought these statistics to us, so it's not like they're unaware, but I did note that they seemed more severe than those of other schools they had serve. I also noted that the schools featured in their little videos had things like, oh, classroom supplies, equipment...

Anyway I am hanging out at home today writing student letters, making handouts, and planning my first week, or at least my first two days, back in the classroom. The first couple of days are rules/procedures days, and I also have to explain what it is we're going to be doing for the rest of the semester/year. I fully expect riots, as my seniors are being told that we'll have an in-class book in addition to an outside reading book, and that they will have homework, in the form of reading, every single night. These are the students who told me they did not read any books in English last year.

My ESL students are being told that they have to do half a semester's work over six weeks with a test about every two days, that their grades up until this point do not count for anything - the scripted program requires that at least 75% of grades be based on tests and assessments - and that they will need to work harder than they have ever worked in their lives in order to pass. In all likelihood they will not, which is in no way their fault, nor is it mine. My sub, in thinking that the important thing was his teaching of the first half of the class rather than assessing student learning, probably prevented students from learning the skills they need to pass the second half of the class. If they do not learn the second part of the class, they can't go on, as they would only fail the higher class. I am expecting about a 75% failure rate. I am not basing this on anything except my desire not to be floored by whatever it ends up being.

This is going to eff up my Significant Gains something fierce, but that is not the bad part. I just feel sick to my stomach when I think that a whole semester will have been wasted for these kids. ESL classes are like remedial college courses - they don't count for credit, and must be mastered before you can do well in your other classes. They've just been set back another four months. The anger is so strong that it's not even sustainable; it's like a blinding white flash every time I sit and think about it, and then I'm just exhausted.

This post feels really sort of sprawling and incoherent. I have been working on handouts for like seven hours; this is perhaps to be expected.

curiouser and curiouser

To refine my theory:

Teaching: A job.
Special Ed teaching: A different job.
Subbing: Still another job.
Subbing Special Ed: A freaking nightmare.

I subbed a Special Ed math class yesterday composed of about 20 students (HUGE for SpEd), 17 of them boys, about 12 probably classified as "behavior disabilities," with no lesson plan and nothing in the room for them to do - no worksheets, no mini-activities, not even a TV. So they entertained themselves. You might think you can imagine how they did so. But you would be wrong.

Picture this:

• Students chasing each other around the room at a flat run
• Students standing/jumping on top of desks
• Students shouting obscenities and racial slurs
• Students pushing/slapping/punching each other
• Students standing waay too close to me, asking me waay-too-personal questions, and touching me on the arm and back whenever feasible
• Students "chirping" each other on their phones (curse you, Boost mobile!)
• Students stealing dry erase markers from the teacher's desk, taking out the cores, and using them to tag
• Students stealing paper clips and tacks from the teacher's desk and hurling them, along with the marker husks, across the room at each others' heads
• Students sitting in the room's two rolling chairs and pushing each other, very fast, into the walls, or, alternatively, into each other, sumo-style
• Students sneaking out of the room, then pounding violently on the doors and windows
  

All at the same time.

My favorite moment came when the most out-of-control of the bunch, with the biggest-ever glob of snot leaking out of his nose, rather than go get a tissue, started dancing "gettin' low"-style around the room singing his own version of the crazy-offensive "Whisper Song," changing the lyrics to "Wait til you see my snot, b****! Wait til you see my snot!"

To make matters worse, this was the day's long period, which is a combination second period and homeroom. On top of this, the 10th grade classes were all taking the PSAT, so we had a special extended period. Of course so one bothered to announce this, so I also had to try to quell a mutiny when the bell did not ring for an additional thirty minutes.

I kept thinking, This cannot seriously be happening. This is the kind of thing right-wing suburban cartoonists draw to show how insane and fundamentally useless teaching in the inner city is. I seriously considered walking up to the front office and telling the scheduling ladies, who tell me every day how they abuse me by sending me period-to-period where no one else wants to go, that this was it, my limit, and that if they did not find me another class, I was going home and would be back when my track came on. I could not bring myself to do it, though, and it turned out OK - the teacher's other four periods each had a maximum of five very calm students. We are masters of scheduling at my school, we are.

So today I thought things could not get weirder or more stressful, until oh, about 6:25 am, at which point I snapped awake on a no-longer-moving bus only to be unloaded on the street, where four cars' worth of police were waiting to arrest a schizophrenic-sounding young man who had been unnerving the other passengers with his shouted obsecenities (in two languages, no less) and frantic head-pounding. As the police (all eight of them) attempted to subdue and cuff him, for what crime I could not tell you, he kept shouting, "They're terrorists! They're here to kill me!"

I was so sleep-deprived and hazy, all I could think about was that people were going to rush the bus and take my good seat once we got the all-clear to get back on board.

I decided my day needed resetting and stopped on the way to school to buy myself a donut. It seemed to help.

schooly stuff

I finally lost my long-term students this week. About 50% of them (not an exaggeration) have tracked me down in the hallways or other classes to tell me how much they miss me and want me back. This says more about their fear of change than about me as a teacher, as they spent their first two weeks with me telling me how much they wanted their old sub back and how living with me was like living in a living nightmare. The new (permanent) teacher established herself as “mean” on the first day by understandably kicking a few students out of rambunctious, work-loathing, hormonal, profane, attention-craving sixth period. I miss them already. I have such a bias toward the group I call the “Clever Derailers” – I am consciously working on balancing it out. I have been day-to-day this week, I take a week off to get my shit together, and then I get my Real Kids back and must attempt to win them back over after being The Most Boring Teacher Ever when last we met.

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Weird thing about teaching in an entirely black/Hispanic school: I subbed a class this week wherein three girls had my first name. I swear my students are going to bust me one of these days, because I look up every time I hear it – it’s not something I’ve had to get used to sharing.

You might think it is weird how fiercely I protect my first name (and age, and number of years teaching,) but know this: my long-term students go home after school every day and search for me on Myspace. I think this means I need to give more homework – not that they do what they’ve been assigned already. Regardless, if they figure out my first name, the jig is most definitely up.

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I don’t know if you have discovered Google Earth yet, but if you haven’t, do it – do it now. It allows you to zoom into any location from space via nifty satellite imagery, and it is the coolest Google Toy yet. It also provides the only activity more popular with my students than looking at rare and collectible sneaker auctions: pinpointing the locations of recent drive-bys and the exact 7-11s at which this or that fool got shot. Whenever I catch them doing this, I make them look at different college campuses.

It is getting harder and harder to avoid the “ghetto mentality” post.

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I subbed cosmetology for the first time the other day. I don't know which is creepier: the severed heads, or the worksheets about hair pigmentation headed with inspirational, life-affirming quotations.














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Spot the errors!

From yesterday’s Daily Staff Bulletin:

There was many staff that came out on Saturday, October 8, 2005 to give a helping hand to the many projects that were scheduled by the Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa’s Office, that took place around the school and the neighboring community.