To Kill a Mockingbird

It seems appropriate that my year is ending as it began, stressing with no great sense of urgency about materials for To Kill a Mockingbird. 

And thus the year has come to an end.  I’m still here.  I feel self-deprecating about the success of my students.  However, I am confident that they are in a slightly better place than when they started.  However that might be, I know it was not only my work, but the work of the five other academic teachers the students had, and the two extracurricular teachers, the NTAs, the new Principal, the CEO, the office staff.  It was everyone.  I was a part.

Now I understand how first year teachers can be considered ineffective.  I feel ineffective.  I feel like unless I’m planning through the summer I will be ineffective next year.  I feel a lot of things these days.  But, with a paper to Ed Law looming on the horizon, with the parents coming in, with TTL duties beginning to expand, I’m doing my last work assignment: make a summer reading packet for the rising Juniors about To Kill a Mockingbird. 

I’m working.  I’m avoiding everything else.  Except this.  I’m not avoiding this.  But that’s because I’ve been avoiding this all year long.  I’ve been sucked into the idea that constantly working makes one a better teacher.  Potentially true, but no less easy to live with. 

Unfortunately, I don’t feel like I need an outlet for my normally hectic mind.  Maybe I’ve learned to keep things in better.  Maybe I’ve learned to suppress it entirely.  Maybe I’ve learned to measure my words with a little more care than the day I began this job. 

Maybe.

Back from the Dead

I’ve been gone fo ra long time.  Mackenzie told me to keep writing because he regretted not, but I did not take his advice.  Rather, I forgot my logon for this one day, and then I just moved on, and I forgot.  But now I’m back. 

And I’m still teaching. 

Believe it or not, I’m still teaching.  This is good news all around.  My guys are occasionally still learning, and I’m occasionally still teaching content.  It’s beauteous.  (Is that a word? Ya?  Nah?) 

By the way, I love my guys.  My students, my boys, are my life right now. 

Because of the time contraints they put on me, I have very little time to update this business.  But I will more often.  The year is winding down, summer is approaching, everything is starting to come together and this next year I cannot wait for.

I’ll be back with mroe soon!

Guess What!

I finally found out what my student’s court ordered subpoena was for:  possession of crack cocaine with intent to sell. 

He’s in family counseling.  And he had to write a 1000 word essay about why what he did was wrong, and what he will do in the future to succeed and not end up in court again.  Why will he never write 1000 words for me?   Sadly, he was out last week because he was caught by the police with alcohol possession.  He got in more trouble for that.  I hope he doesn’t keep acting foolishly.  He’s one of my best students with one of the most promising futures.  Oh well.  What am I gonna do?

I also learned this week that one of my students is in a Christmas play at church called “Black Nativity.”  Guess why. 

And, one of my students used to be a model.  For what, or when, he will not give me any details.  This makes me think he was a model for diapers when he was 5 months old, and he’s still living on the high of it, 13 year later. 

There will also be at least (!) two students gracing my hometown for the Christmas holiday.  Weird.  I will avoid leaving my house at all costs.  Lord knows what I would do if I ran into one of my students in the “real world.”

“Guess what I have!”

The latest news:

As the bell rings and I’m trying to get my students out of the door one of my students, who could not attend a detention gives me one of the best reasons that he could not come.

His reason?  Well, there was a copy of a court ordered subpoena for family counseling in his hand. 

Touche, sir.  Touche.

Note from Student

I received this note from a student on the backside of his quiz:

“This class Pd. 9 always sucks.  You are a mad teacher then.  6 Pd you are nicer and more of a teacher that peple may like.  So if you read this, you should act like 9th period is 6th period.

This is what my students think…

We read a short short story on the origin of the word tantalize from the myth of Tantalus.  After we read it, I had them write a paragraph stating how they would have dealt with Tantalus if they were Zeus.  One students wrote:

“Of course, if Tantalus didn’t have snitches all around him he would not have got killed.” 

 

That’s life in urban Phila.

Personal Questions

There are many moments when I love my studnets.  There are also many moments when I don’t love my students.  Today was a day when I did not love my students as much as I could have.  It was mainly their (not there or they’re!) fault.  However I keep thinking to myself that I need to hold on to the nice and hilarious things they do because I really do appreciate them sometimes.  I love it when they ask personal questions like

• After I said “I have to go home…and make dinner.” –Where’s your wife?  Why doesn’t she make you dinner? (I love working at an all boys school.  Keeping sexism alive one future man at a time.)
• Did you get the belt from the gap? Because my cousin has a belt just like that and he spent a lot of money at gap… (No Comment.  But it was from gap…)
• Where’s your girlfriend? (How do I respond…?)
• Did you just fart sir? (Maybe…)
• Where you from?  What’s it like?  Did you live on the beach? (Florida.  Like Philly, only more trees.  No.)
• Can I buy your tie?  I’ll give you five dollars? (No.  I paid 30.) 
• What do you put in your tea every day?  Why you always so happy in the morning? (I take this as a compliment.)
• Why you gotta play us Mr. W? (”Huh.”) I mean…like every time we say something you gotta be smart with us and say something back..like, that’s not cool… (No, probably not.  But it makes my life fun.)
• Why don’t you curse like all the other teachers?
• Where you get your hair cut?
• Mr. W got that “got me some” smile today! (”Inapproriate.  Sit down.”)

To which I generally say: “Off topic. Are there any serious questions? Moving on..”

Back Again!

OK, so I’m back again.  And my mental health is much better.  I can probably claim it is because I the day off to reconfigue, reassess, re-evaluate, and re-emerge a changed man.  Or at least, a refeshed man.  I have a positive perspective, although I don’t know how far that will get me.  I still plan on a nightly basis.  Maybe that’s usual, though.  I don’t know.  I don’t know at all.  There is constantly so much paperwork to get through I never know what to do with myself.

Wait.  Yes I do.  I know exactly what to do with myself. I go to my blog and write.  I should get back to work.  I really should.  But that is not going to be the best thing for me.  I want to keep writing here.  I want to avoid work.  Already I have no idea what’s going on tomorrow, or what I’ve been doing for the past week.  But things are getting done.  Somehow.  Although it seems like my students aren’t learning much.   I’m “easy.”  That’s not a good thing.  I should be really hard. I’m changing that.  I’m not being nice about grades anymore.  Let’s hope I stick to that plan.  Otherwise, I’m gonna be a coward for the rest of the year.

This revolution will definitely not be televised

The optimism of my last entry will not be reflected here.  I lost my first student.  And it was sad.  I felt he was put in a bad situation because he came in testing well below his actual capacity, and while I had him in class he was acing every test and sleeping throughout.  I didn’t have the heart to punish him for the mental capacities of his fellow students being so much further behind his own.  It was hard to lose him.  I liked him.  He was a good kid. 

And two nights ago I had the revelation that I my enthusiasm is weakening.  I no longer walk into school with the same sort of enthusiasm that I used to.  Sometimes I wait for class by my door, and I wait with dread: wondering not if, but when Eric will punch someone else in class while I’m telling him to sit down.  And then I’m responsible for the punched student, the puncher, and everything’s my fault. 

My students started out well.  But as more and more new information gets thrown at them, they’re returning worse and worse test scores and objective mastery.  And I’m not sure what to do.  I’m out of snazzy classroom intros to get their attention.  I’m tired of grading.  I’ve been getting a lot more headaches lately, and that fact that I’m drinking about four to five cans of soda a day is probably not helping. 

Check two paragraphs ago.  Two nights ago I had a breaking point.  Where I almost cried.  Because I’m so tired at 6 pm on a friday night, there’s nothing I can do but go home and crawl into bed and hope I get some sleep before I have to get up again, on Saturday, and go to school. 

One of the other teachers says there’s probably nothing more difficult that working in an urban school that is trying to be high performing.  I’m inclined to agree.  My life is my school right now.  Almost everything I do (even this included) is dedicating my existence to my school.  When I’m in school I’m making copies, I’m filling out paperwork, I’m writing emails, I’m trying to relax before next class, I’m up in front of my classroom.  I’m filling in for another teacher.  I’m monitoring homework help.  I’m monitoring detention.  I’m fulfilling the mandatory duties of sponsoring fencing club.  I’m getting home around six most days. 

When I get home everything is about teaching.  I shove in a dinner inbetween, usually during, grading, entering grades, calling parents, planning for the next day.  And somewhere around 10:15 I think, “Crap.  I really need to get to bed otherwise I’ll be useless tomorrow.”  I usually get to bed by 11.  Cleaning up, changing, showering, organizing, and preparing take a little while.  I wake up at six and I’m thinking about teaching.  Thinking how I should have come up with a more interesting opener.  Maybe I should just skip the warm up.  Maybe I just won’t teach the lesson.  Did I come up with a lesson for today, or was I just thinking about making one up. 

And so it goes…

Mundane

I have officially lost no students yet.  Others have.  I thank goodness for that.  And I have not funny “Teacher” (with a big T) to relate, because lets be honest, I’m not very funny.  Although the last three days of this past week were standardized testing days.  That means that I proctor from 8 AM – 11:30 AM, with one 30 minute break.  I then move straight into teach 11:40-1PM, 40 minute break/prep/lunch/parent-phone-calls/regain-sanity, and two more period 1:38-3:05.  Homework help until 4PM.  Fencing until Five.  I work an 8-5 job with an hour and ten minutes of break for the whole day.  I am exhausted. 

I am also only teaching some of my students.  I don’t want my other students to fall behind and not be prepared for the benchmark next Thursday.  So instead we do review and fun games.

I had my Literature class (who just learned what the key elements of the quest story are) create a story that had to abide by all the rules of a quest narrative.  Those element are:

• A quester – a knight
• a place to go
• A “stated” reason to go on the journey
• challenges
• A “real” reason to go there (aka. SELF-DISCOVERY!)

So, we’re developing a quest story.  They democratically decided I should be the quester.  I said OK.  Probably a mistake.  Because when it came time to create some challenges, every student had to come up witha  challenge.  Most of the challenges (needless to say?) involved one member of the class shooting me in some necessary part of my body.  Darren shot me in the head.  Jared shot me in the kneecaps.  And then Jake’s doberman attacked me and tore open my neck.  They also decided the “real” reason for my quest would be to discover that I shouldn’t really be a teacher.

Thanks guys.  Thanks a lot.  I feel the love. 

Never again will I have such an unstructured activity.  Never again will I allow my school to do Standardized Testing.  Never. Ever. Ever. Again.