H-town Teaching

Are you familiar with the angry cartoon character, the one that reaches his boiling point and his face turns red and steam comes out of his ears? I was that cartoon character today, I’m sure there was steam involved too. I won’t go into details, but I raised my voice for the first time with the kids. Today was horrible, I called about 6 parents, and all I can say is that I never want to see a stick of gum again.

I left the kids alone with a sub yesterday, for the first time, since I had to attend a mandatory TELPAS training (it’s an exam that measures ELL students’ english proficiency in reading/writing/listening/speaking), and when I returned today my usually wonderful kids were OUT OF CONTROL. It made me want to both never leave them alone with a sub again, and not come back tomorrow! Is this common with all kids? Sub-days make them so comfortable they regress to first day “I don’t know the rules and had no idea gum-chewing was not allowed even though you make me throw it away everyday” nonsense. I confiscated a total of two notes, broke up one fight, seperated several students for continually talking during class, and had to stop my lesson on specific heat to make the entire class write me a letter of apology before I went crazy. Most of the letters went something like this: “Miss, I’m sorry the rest of the class was so bad,” and the only students who took accountability for misbehavior were the ones who actually hadn’t done anything wrong…AHHHH!

Something else that worries me is that two of my students, two of the best to be exact, got into a physical altercation last week resulting in bloody faces (eeww) and three days suspension. I think it was over a boy in the class, another one of my best students, and the girl-on-girl hate between these very intelligent students just drives me up the wall. I had a talk with one of the students, who is my model ESL student (she works sooooooo hard, despite her lack of english proficiency…well it’s obvious she works hard because of it), and told her the problem could have been avoided if she or the other student had addressed the issue with me beforehand and we could have talked it out. Well today she approached me in confidence and let me know another student threatened to fight her, and she didn’t know what to do, but that I had told her I would help last time. And then I realized I had no clue what to do, so I told the 8th grade dean who now wants a meeting first-thing tomorrow morning with both students. All of a sudden I can’t stop thinking about that Tom Cruise movie, where the police catch criminals who haven’t actually done anything but who might in the future, and the ethical dilema this presents with the other student who has yet to hurt the one that approached me. Ethically, I may also be in the wrong for giving one student advice on dealing with another–a teacher should be unbiased in situations like this. I’ll cross my fingers and hope that the meeting with the dean tomorrow will help the girls talk it out, put their feelings in the open, and address their issues before they escalate. Let’s cross our fingers this is true, and that neither harbors ill feelings toward me in the end!

Lastly, the day ended well because of my new class: I’m now in charge of student council!!!  It sounds lame, but at my majority African American school, where I only work with the hispanic LEP (limited english proficiency) students, I’m really excited to work with the rest of the school’s population in this class. The first class (it’s a class, not a club), was not as smooth as I had hoped–about half the students there let me know they had no desire to be in student council and wanted to switch to football–but when we actually started planning fundraising activities today, volunteer projects, and discussing leadership building skills the kids were sold! I left the meeting feeling so inspired–they were so energized and brought such good ideas to the class about different fundraising we could do. One student shouted out (they’re getting used to my handraising policy, I guess) “THIS IS AWESOME! I need more of you in my other classes, MISS” I can’t wait till the next meeting, when we set sales goals for MUMs  (they’re a homecoming tradition, they’re these ornamental ribbons students wear)  fundraiser, and we create talking points on the necessity for the rest of the student body to buy MUMs and support our library and build school pride. Yay for leadership! I told the kids that by next week they would become such great salespeople and public speakers that students would promise them their first-born child…hmmm, I wonder if there was a better way to get my point across?

Middle Schoolers:

Invite you to their quinceaneras and into their communities, making you feel oh-so-special and giving you something really fun to do on a Saturday night.

Steal pushpins off your wall to scratch their name into their hands. Ick.

Tell you they want to throw parties on the electron cloud, with their negatively charged electron friends.

Write eachother gross notes, during class, which you awkwardly confiscate and don’t know what to do with. Perhaps make a book, like Found Magazine?

Improve their test scores by 20% in one week!

Forget to turn in their homework, again and again, until they finally bring it, and it makes you want to cry you’re so happy.

Remind you to call their mother after they’ve broken all your rules, “Miss, don’t forget to call my Mom today to tell her I was bad…here’s her cell phone and home phone number..”

Tell you “I was born ready,” in reference to finding the lowest common multiple.

Keep chewing gum, after you’ve told them about one million times not to.

Invite you to “the club.” You know, to go dancing.

Fall out of their chairs from raising their hands so hard so you’ll call on them to answer number 4 on the board.

Have discovered perfume/cologne and smell like a mix of AXE and Cotton Candy…gross.