H-town Teaching

Here’s a new memory for my imaginary first year of teaching treasure chest: a fellow teacher called me unpatriotic today! I was so wrong in assuming that the patriotic police ceased to exit when Bush left office. But I digress…

We were having a planning meeting for the school assembly, and a teacher suggested cutting out the pledge since the kids already say it in the morning.The Patriot, as I will call her, laughed and said “We’re not doing that! Not saying the pledge at an assembly is just unpatriotic.” I couldn’t help it…I laughed and shook my head. They mostly ignored me, as they usually do (which is why I’ve gotten away with dozing through the last two planning meetings), and the meeting continued. And as I listened to my colleagues try and figure out how to shorten the assembly, I brought up the cutting out the pledge idea again…and again The Patriot laughed and refused. I don’t know what came over me but I shared that I personally don’t say the pledge in my class, although I ask my students to stand and allow them to chose on their own if they would like to say the pledge.  I personally don’t believe in blindly pledging my allegiance to anything other than my family (and only on their non-crazy days), and I definitely don’t think the word “under god” has any place in a school building (separation of church and state anyone?).

The Patriot went crazy! She scrunched up her nose and nasally yelled “that sounds terrorist!” And then she went on a long-winded and unnecessarily loud tirade about people moving to Canada or back to South America if they didn’t want to follow our customs…no one invited them. It was unclear if she was referring to a specific them, an “everyone and their mom” them, or just me. And I couldn’t tell if she was joking. If it was a joke, it was lame.

Ridiculous.

Now that the test that shall no longer be named is over, my kids love me again. They were all really into drawing me pictures this week. And now I’m running out of room in my class to post their masterpieces. It’s adorable. And the project I have them working on, in which they’re planning their own international vacation, is going so well! They have no idea how much they’re working (comparing prices, creating pie charts, calculating percents and using proportions), because they’re having so much fun. The kids have really taken ownership of the cities they’re visiting, and they walk into class yelling “my plane ticket to Beijing is WAY MORE EXPENSIVE than your plane ticket to Paris!” And one will yell back “YEAH? Well my hotel is more expensive and I get to eat escargot!” It’s refreshing to hear them getting so excited about class, as opposed to who looks sexiest that morning (me, obviously, with my purple pants).

A happier girl you could not find right now, really.

The idea of going through another TAKS season is vomit-inducing. I went running for the first time in three months yesterday, and it was a nice way to celebrate the end of a very stressful and unhealthy period in my life (candy drawer, I am locking you!). And today I started my first long-term project with the kids–they’re planning their own international vacation and using their fancy math skills to budget and plan the trip. THEY LOVE IT. They had no idea what continent Barcelona was in, and asked if Tokyo was in North America. Oh, achievement gap, you rascal.

I only have two sleepless Sunday nights ahead of me, and I have an entire Summer just waiting around the corner. I’ll be teaching a Summer Bridge class to incoming sixth graders for two weeks, and in July I’m going to Israel on TFA’s tab (I’m travelling with 40 other corps members to study the education system!). And hopefully I’ll be able to finish the stack of books on my nightstand and catch up on current events (swine flu, anyone?).  I’m so exhausted, but at least I had a good school year. I don’t know if I have it in me to continue teaching after my two year committment, but I can imagine that life as a seasoned second year corps member is a lot more doable than this year has been. We’ll see.