My First Day of Not Having a First Day of School

I didn't go back to school today.

For, like, the first time ever. I went from high school to college to grad school to teaching, so for pretty much as long as I can remember the day after Labor Day has been The First Day of School, a day of both nervous anticipation and new beginnings. But today was just any old day, with nothing in particular to anticipate and nary a fresh start to be made.

And despite the fact that I made a conscious decision not to teach this year, I'm feeling out of sorts. Sure, I'm looking forward to a year without papers to grade or bratty students to reprimand, but I already miss the not-so-bratty kids and I haven't quite grown used to my new identity as someone other than a teacher.

So because I can't let go -- and because I never got around to it back in June -- please enjoy Exhibits D through K from last year's classroom portrait gallery.

Exhibit D:

What I don't like: Dude, I NEVER wear heels. Plus that apostrophe is totally unnecessary. And, um, I know I was concerned about the lack of teeth in exhibit C but these teeth are just weird. Oh, OH, and poor Luna!

What I do like: The GMOs! We were totally studying GMOs at the time, and this kid knows enough to know they're bad news.

Exhibit E:

What I don't like: Oh gosh, where to begin? Let's see. . .A) meat is NOT good, B) why is my face a different color than my body?, C) did I just decapitate my cat?!, D) belly shirts are SO 1994.

What I do like: Um? I see the word "organic." That's nice.










Exhibit F:

What I don't like: Whoa. Crazy hair! I look scary.

What I do like: Nice pink dress, plus this is the portrait of a chick who doesn't fuck around. I mean, you'd sit down if she said to, right?











Exhibit G:

What I don't like: Hellooooo, arms?

What I do like: "shhhhhhhh" sounds a lot more like something I would say than, "sit down you fooooolls!" Also red is a good color for me.











Exhibit H:

What I don't like: Um, hellooooo, ARMS? Also why am I twice the size of Mr. Michigan?

(sidebar: Early in the year I got so tired of trying to distinguish between the inseparable and nearly identical Blair and Ashby that I just started calling both of them Blashby. It worked.)

What I do like? Awwww, first portrait to include my totally awesome boyfriend! And I think he's making a kissy face. :-)





Exhibit I:

What I don't like: Dude, that ring is WAY too big for my nonexistent finger. Plus it is important for young ladies to understand that there's more to life than snagging a husband and scoring a nice rock. Seriously, is feminism dead?

What I do like: If I WERE getting hitched, the Outer Banks (or OBX in local parlance) would sure be a nice place to do so.








Exhibit J:

What I don't like: Am I wearing Timberlands with a DRESS? An ORANGE dress? And what is UP with my eyes?

What I do like: I'm rich! Look at all those dubs ($20 bills) I got!











Exhibit K:

What I don't like: At the end of a year-long Geography course, you'd think my students could read a map well enough to determine that Michigan does, in fact, have beaches.

What I do like: Is that a beer in my hand? Oooh, and I have a much nicer rack here than in real life.

Classroom Portrait Gallery: Exhibits A, B, & C

Several months ago, a couple students finished their work early and then used the PaintPad program on the classroom computer to create a likeness of me, which I later incorporated into my daily powerpoint presentations. Other students grew inexplicably jealous of this fame and insisted they could out-paintpad the original portrait-makers.

Paintpad is a difficult medium to work in, but my kids have never let the difficulty of a task stand in their way of completing it -- unless, of course, that task involves doing actual work rather than wasting class time -- and they are nothing if not prolific. Thus I've acquired an extensive series of portraits. And because many of these portraits are amusing, I thought I'd share them and some commentary with you over the next few weeks.

Exhibit A:

What I don't like: Okay, A) I'm naked. B) although I often yell at them to sit down, I NEVER call my students fools.

What I do like: Excellent use of the exclamation point, plus my eyes are a really pretty shade of green.




Exhibit B:

What I don't like: At the time this was created I was neither single nor particularly inclined toward mingling. Additionally, I am not a big fan of the rectangle + boots look. Lastly, studying has never been my idea of a good time. Unless by “studying” you mean “drinking.”

What I do like: First portrait to incorporate my cat, who's featured in most of the subsequent portraits.


Exhibit C:

What I don't like: Um, what's going on with my shoulders? And where are my teeth?

What I do like: Like the Romans mimicking the Greeks, we're building on a previous theme here. More importantly, this was the exact outfit, right down to the bellbottoms, I was wearing on the day this was paintpadded. You may notice, however, that I'm not wearing any shoes. My kids explained this: it seems like I only wear shoes because I have to, so the portrait shows me without them in an effort to capture my essence.

Be sure to tune in next week for exhibits D, E, & F.

Why I Teach

Last week was Teacher Appreciation Week. I'm not gonna lie, I didn't feel very appreciated. My kids are more sick of school than I am, which means their whining and complaining would be at its yearly high even if we were doing something cool in class. Which we're not; we're cramming for next week's standardized tests (thanks, NCLB). They did ask repeatedly if we could have a teacher appreciation party, but that's only because they like A) bothering me and B) snacks. A much better way of showing how much you appreciate your teachers is just shutting up and not bugging the hell out of them. Listening to what they're saying would also be a refreshing change of pace, but let's not push our luck here. Anyway, my week pretty much sucked appreciation-wise.

And I certainly did not get an "I appreciate you" vibe during Thursday afternoon's meeting with my vindictive principal, wherein he scolded me for the unprofessionalism I had demonstrated by sitting on the visitors' side at last week's baseball game and then, considering my loyalties, barred me from graduation. He did, however, offer to procure me tickets to the other school's graduation. He's that kinda guy.

Long story short: school has been rotten lately.

I took Friday off and went down to the beach for the weekend, hoping to feel rejuvenated (or at least less likely to quit) by today. But driving home last night I was dreading returning to school, and walking to school this morning I was dreading it even more. To make matters worse, my morning class is my most obnoxious and difficult class, which makes me hate Mondays more than your average person -- perhaps even more than Garfield (who really has no reason to hate any day what with him being an unemployed cat and all). This morning I flat out did not want to go to school, and in the grander scheme of things, I caught myself wondering whether I can accurately say I even like being a teacher anymore.

And then I found a note in my mailbox from one of last year's favorites:

I cannot believe that you are leaving next year! I will miss you and the fun-loving atmosphere that your classroom provided. I appreciated your humor and insight that were woven into each and every lesson. I enjoyed spending time in your classroom, during and after class. . .

So often students think it's cool to disrespect teachers and their lessons, it's rare to find a student who truly cares. But, it's even rarer to find a teacher with such vigor and passion for learning and sharing. Your lessons carried over into a reality that each of us face every day. You opened my eyes to injustice in the world, and caused me to want to be proactive.*

Thank you for sharing your knowledge, but thank you, most of all, for caring.

This note -- just one little note -- made me feel so appreciated I cried. More importantly, it reminded me of why I do this. Thank you for that, awesome kid from last year.

*PS: I want this sentence engraved on my tombstone.

My Students Are Funnier Than Yours

Last week I assigned my TA the tedious task of scanning old documents (of which I have no digital copies) and purging, then recycling, my paper files; I'm moving at the end of the school year and I'll be damned if I'm taking 14 boxes of vocab quizzes with me. Perpetually agreeable, my TA fell to this task with her usual good cheer. At one point she came across a typewritten overhead transparency and asked me what I wanted her to do with it. "Toss it," I answered, to the shock of a nearby student. "Why would you throw away a perfectly good transparency?!" he demanded, plucking it from the trash. "Have you EVER seen me use the overhead?" I countered. Nobody has, not since my first year of teaching.

Why anyone -- let alone a high school student -- would want a used overhead transparency is beyond me, but this kid did. He kept holding it up and laughing. "What the hell is so funny about a transparency," I wondered to myself, even after I noticed that he'd drawn thick, dark wavy lines in its blank spaces.

He kept laughing and I kept wondering. Soon all the kids around him were laughing too, some uncontrollably. (Oh, and PS, was this disruptive to the learning environment? Answer: yes.) I looked more closely at the transparency. "Mustaches? You drew mustaches?" I hypothesized, which only served to move the mirth-o-meter up a few notches. I remained puzzled. I mean sure, mustaches are funny, but not THAT funny. So, "What's so funny about mustaches?" I asked dismissively. My kids were now laughing so hard they were practically falling out of their seats.

And then, finally, I got it. Behold:

"The first mustache is my favorite," Mr. Transparency Plucker announced. "I like the second one better," another kid responded. They examined me, alternating mustaches. "Yeah, if she had a mustache she'd definitely have the second one," Plucker finally agreed, "it's snooty." "You think I'm SNOOTY?!" I demanded. They thought about it for a minute. "Well no. You're smart, not snooty. But most smart people are snooty."

So. What did we learn in class on Thursday? That mustaches are funny. We might also have learned why developing countries just can't catch a break, but I can't be positive. Oh, and I bet those pictures are all OVER MySpace.

Ut Prosim

In the wake of this morning's shootings at Virginia Tech, President Bush reminded us that "schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community." For once I agree with him.

I actually didn't know anything was amiss in Blacksburg today until late in the morning when my students started receiving text messages from friends and older siblings at Tech. "Can we turn on CNN?" once typically tough guy asked me anxiously. "Why would we do that?" I wondered. "Look at this text I just got from my sister," he answered, explaining the situation as he handed me his phone. "Dougie, I'm scared. 20 people are dead," I read.

And I didn't turn on the TV, but I have spent most of the day doing something I ordinarily hate: tracking the news in the hopes of receiving some actual news. I've watched the death toll climb from one to thirty-three and noted the headlines growing increasingly sensational -- the shooting of 11 AM is now a mass-murder, a bloodbath, and a rampage in which the victims were not shot or killed but massacred and slaughtered. I've quickly grown disgusted with folks on both the left and the right who seem to care about this act of violence only for the fodder it provides for the gun control debate. I've thanked my lucky stars I'm not a Hokie parent awaiting word on my kid and blinked back tears as I've remembered those who are.

Of course, you'd be hard-pressed to find a Virginian who doesn't know somebody at Tech, so I've also sent emails to beloved former students asking if they're okay. I really hope they are. But even if my kids are okay, somebody else's aren't.

Biblio- What?

I've been doing a lot of work with word roots in my class lately, mostly because my kids keep calling me over during tests and asking me what certain words mean and then, when I explain, growling, "Dude, why can't they just SAY that then?" through clenched teeth. So I'm trying to teach them how to figure out what words mean without having to ask me. Thus the word roots.

On Friday I gave a test on a variety of different word roots, including biblio (book), phil (love), and mania (craving or obsession). Most of the test involved little more than matching words to their definitions, but I also included a few short answer questions to make sure the kids really knew what the word roots meant. I like to give questions that ask kids for their opinions -- for one thing this freaks them out ("wait, is there a right answer for this?") and for another thing, because there ISN'T a right answer they can pretty much get credit for anything as long as they justify their opinion.

And although I did not intend for the last question on Friday's test to be a source of mirth, many of the answers were indeed humorous. Behold:

Miss F. adores books. She loves to read books, she loves to talk about books, she even sort of enjoys writing reviews of books. In the summer when she's not teaching she works at a bookstore. She owns a lot of books (in fact she owns two copies of some of her favorite books) and rarely visits a bookstore without buying a new one. Would you classify her as a bibliophile or a bibliomaniac? Explain your reasoning.

I would consider her a bibliomaniac because of the word "maniac" which means someone who's crazy. Anyone who spends so much time with books has a big problem.

Bibliomaniac cause she is a maniac for books. You are a FEIND! [sic]

Bibliophile because she likes books so much like a pedophile likes kids. That is my reasoning.

I think she's a bibliophile, because at the beginning it says she "adores" and "loves" books. And I'm sure bibliomaniacs would probably try to work at a bookstore full time. A bibliomaniac would just be more severe than this situation. And because Miss F. doesn't own a TV, there's not much else to do, besides play with her cats that is.

Bibliomaniac because it sound [sic] like to me your whole life is about books because who loves books doesn't really go about liking books the way you do. You would probably marry a book if it's good enough (LOL)!

Bibliomaniac b/c her obsession over books and her being a phene. [sic] P.S. Ms. F. you are WACK for that! :)

Clearly a bibloid. As we all know, Miss F. has spent so much time with books that she has come to resemble them. Though slight at first, for example, black hair (the color of ink in most books!), symptoms will gradually become more pronounced until. . .we turn around one oddly quiet day to find only a monograph on the psychosomatic effects of neologisms in her desk chair, neologisms such as "bibloid."

Well honestly I didn't study but like a pedophile usually likes kids so a bibliophile would probably just LIKE books but a maniac is someone who is like a feighn [sic] for something so I think she is a BIBLIOMANIAC!

In this case, I would say that Ms. F. has a SEVERE case of bibliomania because all she does is spend time looking at books, talking with books, reading books, writing stuff about books, working around books. I wouldn't be surprised if she was teaching her cat how to read. She is obsessed with books basically.

I would classify her as a dork.

So. As you can see, it's not just the word roots. Clearly a quick lesson on how to properly spell fiend is in order as well.

Also, if you're new here you might want to read up on my students' perception of me as a crazy cat lady. Especially considering that one mostly un-funny answer contained this: "PS, Miss F. is also a felinomaniac (obsessed with cats)."

Kids.

And For Some Kids, Only A Swift Kick In The Ass Will Do

Okay, I know I just talked about tardiness yesterday, but I have another tardy story. Rest assured, however, that it is not my intention to turn this blog into an all-tardies-all-the-time kinda place -- at some point I plan on talking about politics or telling stories about my weird-ass family or writing a mean letter to some retard who wrote a letter to the editor and, of course, posting pictures of cute little puppies.

So.

I have this kid (we'll call him D) who's late all the time. I mean EVERY fuckin' day. And not just a little late; we're talking like 10 or 15 minutes late, class has already started late. Most mornings I see him get off his bus as I walk into school, so that's not the issue. What IS the issue is that after he gets off his bus he stands around outside talking to his friends, and when they head for class he heads for 7-11. (I know this, by the way, because I have spied on him from my classroom window, which overlooks the bus drop-off.) Then he and a large coffee -- for him, not me! -- materialize in my class 20 minutes later.

None of this would be so bad if D could manage unobtrusive tardiness, but the general disruption of his tardiness is exacerbated by the fact that D smokes copious amounts of weed and never seems to have any clue that class is actually in progress when he arrives. "Uh, hey, what's up?" he says as he enters the room like a stoned Kramer.

Every. Fuckin'. Day.

So you can see how this would get annoying. And how the whole sticker thing might be sort of lost on him.

A few weeks ago I assigned D detention. The next day he was on time. In fact, he was on time for several days in a row before his scheduled detention. "Were you thinking that if you stopped being late you wouldn't have to serve that detention?" I asked him. "Uh, that's fine with me," he answered. "Tell you what, we'll go double or nothing," I offered (stupidly). "Okay, but I don't really know what that means," D agreed, bleary-eyed. So I explained that he was excused from detention for as long as he continued to come on time, but that the next time he was late he'd have DOUBLE detention. I thought I was incentivizing him.

I'm sure it will not come as a surprise to you that D was tardy again. He was supposed to serve his double detention yesterday and today. I'm sure it will not come as a surprise to you that he didn't show.

Ergo, I called his dad. Who kicks ass. Our conversation went a little something like this:

Me: Mr. D's Dad? I'm D's Geography teacher. I'm calling to discuss his tardiness.

D's Dad: His TARDINESS?

Me: Yes. D is tardy to my class on a regular basis. In fact, he's been tardy to nine of the last ten classes. It's very --

D's Dad: Can you hold on a minute?

Me: Uh, sure.

D's Dad: (shouting) D!

D: (in the background) Uh, hey, what's up?

D's Dad: (to me) Thanks. Can you start over please?

(I believe at this point I was placed on speaker-phone.)

Me: Sure. I was saying D is tardy to my class almost every day. He's been late nine times in the past ten days.

D's Dad: How late are we talking?

Me: Often as late as 15 minutes.

D's Dad: That late?

Me: I'm afraid so. Does D ride the bus?

D's Dad: Yeah, so I don't understand why he'd be late.

Me: Well, he usually comes in with coffee from 7-11. Perhaps he's walking over to 7-11 after he gets off the bus?

D's Dad: Thank you for calling. I'll take care of this as soon as I hang up the phone.

Me: I really appreciate that. However, D still needs to serve his detention.

D's Dad: I understand. What's tomorrow -- Thursday? You want him Friday, Saturday, and Sunday too?

Me: (laughing) No sir, I'm afraid you're stuck with him then, but I'll take him tomorrow and Tuesday.

D's Dad: He'll be there. You won't have this problem again.

Dude. I LOVE parents like D's Dad. Well, assuming he didn't beat the shit out of D once he hung up the phone. And assuming D's ass is on time tomorrow.

Sticker Shock

Long, long ago in a galaxy not so far away, some educational theorist or early child development specialist or what have you proposed that we modify children's behavior not by punishing them when they do wrong but by rewarding them when they don't. While this "catch them being good" theory was the object of my derision back in Ed. school ten years ago, it today helps to explain why I've just spent 20 minutes sitting on the floor of the Dollar Tree scrutinizing their sticker selection and then devoted an additional hour and a half to sitting on my couch cutting sheets of 1000 stickers into easy-to-distribute squares of one sticker.

I've never been big on behaviorism. Sure, it works fine for training dogs and toddlers and the like, but for more highly evolved beings a behaviorist approach has always struck me as insulting. Of course, this was before I began teaching tenth graders, so I couldn't fully appreciate the beauty of behaviorism. Nor, as a fairly anti-establishment and perpetually late student myself, was I able to appreciate the importance of being on time for class. But both behaviorism and punctuality have grown on me (which I'm pretty sure makes me the man, but that's another story for another time) and I have found my pedagogic bliss in stickers.

Actually, I can't take credit for the sticker approach to classroom management. It was my colleague and friend Steve's idea. (Steve, I bought you some stickers at the Dollar Tree! They have monkeys on them! And ducks!!!) Steve teaches next door to me, and a few weeks ago I noticed him handing stickers to students as they came into class one morning. "Uh, whatcha doin' with the stickers?" I asked him as I prepared to make fun of his answer. But then Steve explained that the stickers represented bonus points and that he was giving them to his kids for being on time, which reduced my witty retort to a lame, "Huh. That's a good idea." And the next day I totally stole it.

You would not BELIEVE how into stickers 15 and 16 year-old kids can be. Even before today's visit to the Dollar Tree I had a decent variety of stickers -- apples, stars, George Washingtons, and Abe Lincolns -- but kids are fussy about their stickers, asking, "Can I have a pink star instead of a green one?" or "Can I trade in this Abe Lincoln for an apple?" Some even ask for an extra sticker to WEAR.

More importantly though, this sticker thing seems to be working, at least a little. The other day a frequently tardy young lady was chatting with her friends at the end of the hall just before class. I had merely to raise my eyebrows and wave a sticker in her direction to send her scampering in mine. "Oooh, I gotta go," she said seriously to her friends.

And this afternoon, another student who is ALWAYS late stopped by after school simply to tell me, "I'ma be on TIME tomorrow." "Oh? What's the occasion?" I teased. "I gotta get me that sticker," she answered emphatically.

Damn. And she doesn't even know about the brand new SPARKLY stickers! Or that tomorrow I plan to award stickers not only for being on time but also for not bitching about everything.

The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades

I am a teacher. I'm aware that regular readers already know this, but I just like saying it. I almost always find a way to work this bit of information into conversations with strangers, not in the hopes that they'll nominate me for sainthood or marvel at my dedication or leer at me and make suggestive comments about what they would have done if I'd been THEIR teacher but simply because it's who I am.

And although it may not always seem like it, I LOVE being a teacher. Not every minute of every day and certainly not when there's a mountain of papers to be graded, but ultimately teaching rocks. And on the good days I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I mention all this because Dave asked me last week if working with today's teenagers makes me worry about the America those teenagers will create for us in the future. His comment got me thinking, and I realized that most of the school stories I tell do not paint a particularly flattering picture of America's youth. But it's not because there are no flattering pictures to be painted, it's because those stories aren't funny.

They are, however, important. And I have lots of them.

Just this week alone I've been approached by seven kids looking to start various clubs or campaigns to improve the world around them:

1. One of my girls from last year stopped by between classes on Monday to tell me about Turn Beauty Inside Out and to ask me if I would help her create a schoolwide campaign. She was so excited about the possibilities that she could barely put a sentence together. And PS, this same student brought me a bagel last Friday morning for no reason other than that she's just an all-around awesome kid.


2. At the beginning of 5th period on Monday one of my students -- a kid whose main hobbies seem to be skipping class and smoking weed, not necessarily in that order -- asked me if I knew about the Invisible Children movie and announced that we should learn about it. I called him over to the computer later to look at the website and he said, "Yeah, we should really do something. I mean, I was thinking about doing something. Like maybe a project? For your class? We could get the whole school involved." And then he was off and running about film screenings and awareness bracelets and fundraisers. Oh, and extra credit.


3. Tuesday morning brought me two little blonde field hockey players who I've been teaching since September and STILL have trouble telling apart. They're fired up about Sudan. "You know how we watched that movie about the lost boys?," they asked, "well we wanna start a club to help them." Their pitch was interrupted by another girl who'd asked me in October to sponsor her Human Connection Project, a fundraising club she created after we watched Sarah McLachlan's "World on Fire" video (administrative approval STILL pending, by the way).


4. On Tuesday afternoon two of my favorite girls took a break from coloring their maps to whisper excitedly to me about their plans for an environmental club. "We want to recycle," one girl said. "And plant trees!" the other added gleefully. I explained that the Young Greens, an existing club that I co-sponsor, has just recently begun talking about an extensive schoolwide recycling program. A potential partnership was born.

And yesterday, when my first period class unexpectedly lasted an hour longer than the normal 90 minutes and I popped in the monkey chant to keep my kids occupied, even the coolest of the too-cool-for-schoolers sat enthralled. At the end of the monkey chant one of my problem students, a perpetually unenthused boy, shouted, "Whoa! Cool! Can we watch it again?" So we did.

A Bloody Bad Day

My day began normally enough: I got up at five and did an hour's worth of schoolwork before showering. But then I decided it was absolutely imperative that the bathroom wastebasket be emptied into the kitchen trash between the schoolwork and the showering, and since the kitchen trash was itself almost full I also found it necessary to reach into the can and press down on said trash. Which if I'd remembered the broken juice glass I'd tossed in there yesterday I probably wouldn't have done.

Needless to say, I sliced the shit out of my finger. And needless to say, I yelled, "FUCK!," mostly because it hurt like hell but also because I don't have time for that sort of thing in the morning. I have time for maybe one contingency, and that contingency is usually a line at the copy machine.

"That's probably gonna need stitches," I thought to myself as blood soaked through the tissues I'd grabbed in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Then I got in the shower.

Now, I've never seen Psycho, but I hear tell it contains a bloody shower scene where some chick gets hacked to death, possibly by an axe-murderer. My bathroom probably looked something like that this morning. (Minus the dead chick, of course.) Blood spattered against the shower walls as I washed my hair and oozed over the bar of soap as I washed my person. It swirled around my feet as it made its gory way down the drain, then took up residence on my towels (which, inconveniently, are white). It soaked through bandages and dripped into the sink as I combed my hair and applied my makeup.

Okay, so there was a lot of blood. Need I go on or shall I just skip ahead to the part where I take my bloody self to school to stand in line at the copy machine?

Fine.

There I was, there I was, there I was IN the copy room.* Actually, I was in my classroom because there wasn't a line at the copier this morning. To be more specific, I was in my classroom with 29 kids, 22 crappy laptops, and one student-centered internet-based lesson plan. (Oh, and one bloody finger.) All of which would have been fine if the internet connection had been working, but it wasn't. I know this because my kids told me 50 billion times.

The first student who attempted to log on to the internet announced, "My internet's broken." This announcement was followed, then repeated, by 28 other similar announcements. One girl even recorded herself saying, "Miss [my last name], the internet isn't working" so she could simply press a key on her computer to replay the message incessantly while I checked connections and tried to figure out why the internet wasn't working. Which I couldn't.

Oh, and if you're thinking my finger had stopped bleeding by this point, you're wrong. Still bleeding. In fact, my finger bled all day and well into the night (I'm just guessing here based on the fact that it's 10:15 and it hasn't quite quit yet). Shortly after lunch (which I was too busy to eat, by the way, and blood loss + no food = bad scene) I and my bloody finger consulted the school nurse. I knew the school nurse couldn't do much for me, but I wanted to know if I needed to go get stitches after school. "Oooooh," the nurse said, grimacing as she examined my wound, "they can't even stitch that. It'll bleed a little for a while. And it will hurt a lot. Take some Tylenol." Then she gave me some gauze and sent me back to my internet-connectionless classroom where my kids were happily engaged in the business of doing nothing.

So. It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. My mom says some days are like that.

*This sentence, while serving as a fine transition, is included for the sole purpose of making my brother laugh. If you're not my brother all those extra "there I was"es probably sound pretty stupid.

A Monday Montage

Here, in the order in which they occurred, are a few stories from my day at school today:

This morning I overheard one kid say to another, "Hey, you got a pencil I can borrow?" The would-be borrowee held one finger aloft as if in deep thought and said, "Hmmm. . .let me check my arsenal of writing," then rummaged around in his backpack until he located a writing utensil.

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Last Wednesday I kicked a kid out of class for consistently annoying the shit out of me, to wit: announcing several times a day how pointless he thinks my class is and how much he hates it. Said student then skipped class on both Thursday and Friday and although I can't say I was particularly disappointed by this, I warmly welcomed him back to class today.

"Nice of you to show up," I said sarcastically as he arrived. "Yeah, I thought you could use a break," he replied sheepishly, "I was gonna come on Friday but I figured nah." "What's your problem, anyway?" I asked (but nicely). "Hey, I got no beef with you, [my last name]. You're a cool teacher. You just need to chillax," he answered.

"Chillax," for those of you not quite as down with the cause as I am, is a combination of the terms "chill" and "relax." Oh, and this kid is quite possibly the whitest kid in America.

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As I was passing out papers at the end of a class today, I overheard one group of kids discussing whether or not they thought they were going to heaven. This had absolutely nothing to do with what we'd been talking about in class, so I'm not really sure how they got on the subject. But anyway, I was passing out papers and explaining homework and making sure nobody made off with (or "bucked on," in their parlance) any of the crappy laptops we'd been using, so I was distracted.

"Do you think you're going to heaven?" one kid asked me as I passed him a paper. "No," I answered and continued doing my teacher thing. "Why not?!" several kids asked at once. "Because I don't believe in heaven," I explained without really thinking. "Wow. I feel really sorry for you," one girl said angrily, as if my lack of belief was a personal affront. But I think some other kids might have snickered at her, or at least rolled their eyes on my behalf.

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We had a department meeting after school to discuss changes -- BIG changes -- we should anticipate for the 07-08 school year. We teachers asked a lot of questions about the how and the why of things and were given very little information in response to those questions. Eventually the administration's liaison lost her patience with us and issued this blanket statement:

"You don't have to be here. If you don't like it, leave."

Hey, newsflash: I've had one foot out the door since the second week of school, you administrative fucksticks. Do you think it's because of the KIDS?

What Would Howard Zinn Do? or On Tokenism

Yesterday was the seventh consecutive day my students have asked me what we're doing for Black History Month and the seventh day I've wondered, "SHOULD I be doing something?"

My school is predominantly African-American (although my classes aren't) and my students' most common request is to "just have a chill day." A cardinal rule of education (or at least of pre-NCLB education) is that if your students drop their guard long enough to express a desire to learn about something, you damn sure better teach them about that something.

One of my Social Studies colleagues is highlighting a notable African-American at the beginning of each of his classes throughout February. The English department is promoting a campaign to abolish the "N" word. But __________ History Month is an approach to the study of History I have long abhorred, and I'm particularly averse to teaching Black History to black kids in this manner.

It's worth noting at this point that I am not black. I'm white, in fact, and I'm not sure how my race affects my position on Black History Month. The story I've always been told as a student of History is, in large part, a story of my people -- white people. But the stories that have always resonated with me, touched me, and made me CARE about History are the stories of oppressed people, even though I have never been the least bit oppressed.

These are the stories I tell as a teacher. Yesterday's class made no mention of Maya Angelou, Frederick Douglass, Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Harriet Tubman, or the Tuskegee Airmen, but my course deals (on a regular basis) with all sorts of issues related to the marginalization of minorities. In the past week I've discussed ghettoes, government policies that perpetuate poverty, Brown v. Board, and gerrymandering.

I like to think that my treatment of students, my commitment to teaching all of them, and my emphasis on injustice mean that I am, in a sense, doing Black History every day. I mean, isn't it more important that Black kids receive quality instruction on meaningful and relevant topics throughout the year than that for one month they learn about the first African-American senator/astronaut/nobel laureate/doctor/whatever?

Of course, I live in a city with more institutional racism than you can shake a stick at, so it might actually be important to do both. It's just that the latter approach smacks of tokenism to me. I get why we have Black History Month, but wouldn't it be nice if we didn't NEED it?

The Semester Of The Bitch

Classroom management has never been my strong suit. I kinda suck at it, in fact. It's a tough thing to be good at when you're the sort of person who thinks rules are stupid. I mean, "don't talk while other people are talking" is a pretty reasonable rule, but "no hats, caps, coats, do-rags, cell phones, pagers, iPods, or other electronic devices" is not something I can really get behind. Ditto on no eating in class, and double ditto on not being allowed to go to your locker or meet with your guidance counselor during the school day. A student (not mine) visiting my class last year observed, "Wow, you run a pretty loose ship here."

The thing about kids, though, is that if you don't enforce the stupid rules, they don't understand when you try to enforce the reasonable rules. And they walk all over you, which is a hell of a lot more annoying than having to enforce stupid rules.

I reached my breaking point last week as my kids wandered aimlessly around the classroom after finishing their mid-term in record time. "I let you kids [alert! alert! old person talking!] break all kinds of rules!" I yelled, "Half of you are listening to your iPods and the other half of you are eating ridiculously unhealthy snacks! All I ask is that you sit the eff down! What the eff is so effing hard about that?!" They sat down, but they didn't look like they'd stay there for long. They looked like they thought I might be a little bit crazy. And I've explained to them, calmly and reasonably, why I need them to sit down. They're all taller than me, and when they all stand up and clump together I can't see what sort of mischief they're getting into.

So I've mentally declared this semester, which began on Monday, the semester of the bitch. I stole this concept from my friend Eileen, who was once overheard saying sympathetically to a (high school) student, "Oh sweetie, you can't bring a knife to school," and who shortly thereafter announced that the upcoming school year would be the year of the bitch. Neither one of us can really pull off the whole bitch thing, and Eileen's year of the bitch was pretty un-bitchy (although she did tighten up her knife policy a bit).

My semester of the bitch is shaping up quite nicely, however. I've already kicked two students out of class -- one for saying "what the fuck is this shit?" in response to my introduction of a writing assignment (Come ON. Even *I* don't say the f-word in class.) and another for pointing out that in addition to persecuting Jews, the Nazis were also not big fans of "fags" (an f-word that makes me so angry I can barely think straight). I've responded to numerous queries of, "Wait. What are we supposed to be doing?" with the very bitchy, "Ask someone who was listening." I've refused repeated requests for bathroom passes from a kid whose last authorized trip to the bathroom took him nowhere near the bathroom (according to my spies) and lasted 40 minutes. "If it was an emergency would you let me go?" he asked. "No," I said, "sit down." I'm a bitch like that.

And today, when the first real snow of the season began to fall around 1:00 and my kids went crazy with glee, I simply lowered the blinds and continued ranting about the plight of refugees. The kids whined and cried and promised to pay attention if only I would open the blinds back up a LITTLE bit. And even though I was once a kid too, even though I had just moments ago whispered excitedly to my TA that it was snowing, even though I would have liked nothing more than to pause for a few moments and watch that snow flutter to the ground, I resisted.

"Have you no soul?!" one of my favorite students wailed.

Hey, it's the semester of the bitch, baby.

PS artwork courtesy of my students.

Of Boobs and Boos

My school offers a "class" called Teacher's Assistant, open only to members of the Future Educators of America. In theory, each future educator is paired up with a current educator to experience what it's really like to be a teacher before he or she is stupid enough to actually join the profession (we kid because we love). In practice though, most of the future educators weren't ever all that interested in becoming teachers in the first place -- they just run a lot of photocopies and grade a lot of quizzes.

I know you're waiting for the part of the post where I talk about boobs, but I mention all this first because the boobs in questions are my TA's boobs, and if I just started off the post by saying, "My TA. . ." you'd probably think, "Wait. She has a TA?" and then you'd be focused on that instead of the boobs. Right? Totally.

So. . .

My TA is a ditzy but incredibly sweet girl who I taught last year. We have a good relationship -- friendly but not unprofessional. She showed up unexpectedly at the end of my 6th period class today because she'd just checked into school and she didn't feel like going to the last few minutes of her own 6th period, which is fine. As I chatted with her I noticed that she was sporting rather a lot of cleavage for a Tuesday afternoon and I said, "Hey, what's up with your boobs hanging out all over the place?" in a very you're-totally-violating-the-dresscode-but-far-be-it-from-me-to-enforce-the-man's-rules kind of way. She glanced down at her chest, smiled, and said, "My boo's in my next class."

Right. Of course. So what I perceived as a minor wardrobe mishap was actually a calculated and deliberate display of boob-age for the 8th period ogling pleasure of her boyfriend. And I bet if she hadn't had class with him she wouldn't have even bothered to check into school for the last class of the day. Brazen little hussy.

I wish I could say I was above such behavior in high school, but I wasn't. And while I never rocked the cleavage (mostly because I didn't -- okay, DON'T -- have any cleavage to rock), I definitely considered the presence of certain boys in class when selecting my outfits. Hell, I once even called my mom from school and faked sick when I discovered my crush wasn't at school for like the third day in a row.

I guess there's a brazen little hussy in each of us. And we don't quite grow out of it either.

I'd be stupid to deny that every girl's boo enjoys a little cleavage, but I also know that MY boo doesn't really give a rat's ass what I wear. If you think that prevented me from agonizing about what to pack for Chicago, you were obviously lucky enough not to have had to talk to me in the weeks preceding that trip.

On the other hand, I once wore the HELL out of a hoodie my then-boyfriend had made it clear he didn't "particularly care for," just to assert my independence, so I don't know. I mean, I want my boo to ogle me a little bit, but mostly because he likes ME and not my outfits. Is that so much to ask?

Rarely Is The Question Asked: Is Our Children Learning?*

I try, I really do, but some days it's damn near impossible. Take today, for example. My students were watching the film Osama as part of our study of religious fundamentalism. Osama is not -- as you might think -- about bin Laden, but about a young girl living in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Because she has no male relatives and is therefore not allowed to leave her house, her widowed mother disguises her as a boy and sends her out to get a job so the two of them don't starve to death.

It's not the world's most exciting movie -- I mean, there aren't any explosions -- but I thought it gave a pretty good feel for what it might have been like to live under the Taliban: how far-reaching and oppressive their rule was. And I've been at this teaching thing for a while -- I know teenagers generally can't get themselves too terribly worked up over irrelevant things like oppression. (I'm not being sarcastic here. It annoys the hell out of me, but I get it.) But we're talking SERIOUS injustice here, and the film is pretty powerful, so I thought my kids might actually give a shit.

Wrong.

Late in the film there's a scene where a woman is accused of advocating profanity and, after what I guess is supposed to pass for a trial -- an observer at the so-called trial even notes the absence of a witness, sentenced to death by stoning. In the next scene you see a hole being dug, and then you see the woman in the hole with only her head and shoulders visible.

"What's going on?" asked my kids. Which. . . okay. . .fine, we're Americans, we're not all that familiar with stoning procedures. "They're getting ready to stone her," I explained, deliberately being blunt. "They bury you up to your shoulders and then throw rocks at your head until you die."

"Big rocks?" wondered a kid.

And I get that they're teenagers, I get that developmentally they don't have the whole empathy thing down yet, I get that having never experienced anything particularly awful themselves the horror of being stoned to death is probably tough to fully grasp, but COME ON. Does it really fucking matter how big the fucking rocks are?! Can we please focus on the fact that a woman -- who, oh, by the way, can't show her TOES let alone her face in public -- was just charged with a completely made up crime, was neither allowed to defend herself against the charge nor confront even a single witness against her, was sentenced in a matters of seconds, and now people -- like for FUN -- are gonna throw ROCKS, whatever their size, at her head until she DIES?

Oh, but my day gets worse.

The stoning scene ends with people swarming around the woman in her hole, all -- I presume -- eager to throw rocks at her for her horrible transgression of advocating profanity. As the next scene began, one of my kids said, "Wait. We don't even get to SEE her get stoned?" "You want to watch a woman get stoned to death?" I asked angrily. "Well, not in real life," he answered nodding, "but yeah."

What is this, like, Jackass: The Class?

Toward the very end of the film, we see an old mullah locking his newly acquired (against her will, of course) young bride in a room with his other wives. She weeps as the other wives tell her how cruel he is, while he makes preparations for their wedding night. In one of the very last scenes, the mullah holds an array of padlocks out to his new wife, as if he's giving her a gift, and encourages her to choose one. "What's he doing?" asked a kid. "He's letting her choose the lock for her door," explained another kid. "Awwww, that's really sweet," said a girl. "She's gonna spend the rest of her life locked in that room unless he says she can come out," I ranted, "what's SWEET about that?" "Well, if she has to be locked up, at least he's letting her choose the lock she likes," answered my student.

Seriously. What do you even DO with that as a teacher?

*thanks to my pal Jay for reminding me of this lil' gem of a Bushism

First Period, Wherein My Hypocrisy Is Exposed By A 15-Year-Old

Although I pretty much wear nothing but skirts when the weather's nice (well, I mean, I wear tops WITH the skirts), wintertime is a different story, mostly because of footwear. In the spring, summer, and fall I can go bare-legged and flip-flopped, but in the winter skirts are a major production involving both tights and boots, neither of which I am particularly fond of. Still, I try to wear a skirt to school at the beginning of the week so that then I can slack off attire-wise for the rest of the week.

I mention all this because today is this week's skirt and boot day. I don't think I paid any attention to what my teachers were wearing when I was a student, but not a day goes by that at least one of my kids doesn't comment on some aspect of my outfit. And this morning one of my students complimented me on my boots, which are indeed nice. This compliment prompted another student to examine my boots, after which she furrowed her brow and asked, "Wait. Aren't you a vegetarian?" Because the boots, in addition to being nice, are leather. But I pretended not to know where she was going with this. "Um, yeah. What does that have to do with anything?" She didn't fall for it.

Student: You're wearing leather boots.

Me: I'm not EATING the boots.

(collective laughter)

Student: So you won't eat animals but you'll wear their skin?

Me: Well, what else am I supposed to do? Shoes are made of leather.

Student: Not ALL shoes are made of leather. What about shoes like that? (pointing to another kid's shoes)

Me: You want me to wear SNEAKERS?!

Student: So you care more about looking good than about the poor animals?

Um, yeah, kinda. I mean, if there was a reasonable vegan alternative to leather boots I'd be all over it, but I can't wear sneakers with my skirts -- that would look silly. In which case I guess I might as well have a cheeseburger. Actually, make that a BACON cheeseburger.

I Lack Direction

Shortly after I moved to Norfolk from the DC suburbs two years ago, I announced that I was never moving again. I've moved a lot and it sucks -- the packing, the U-Haul, the carrying hundreds of boxes of books up multiple flights of stairs, the unpacking, the settling in. . .ugh. Sure, I thought I might someday move out of my apartment into an actual house, but as a military brat, I really like the idea of roots -- of being FROM somewhere. And I love Norfolk, so I decided I would live here forever and ever and ever.

The trouble is that I hate my school and I don't plan to work there once this school year is over. I could go work in some other school district, but that would mean driving out to the suburbs every day, and a big part of why I moved to Norfolk in the first place was because I didn't want to teach (or live) in the suburbs.

And despite the fact that I have long thought of teaching as my true calling, every day I spend at my current school is a day I grow less sure I even want to be a teacher at all. I'm a powerful literacy, Socratic seminar, inquiry-based instruction girl in a standards-based, data-driven instruction, high stakes testing world, and I don't think this NCLB accountability bullshit is going away any time soon. So I keep debating whether I should continue working within a fucked up system to try to do what good I can, or whether I'd be doing more good by refusing to be a part of a system that's completely fucked.

Actually, that dilemma -- now that I see it on virtual paper -- is pretty much a no-brainer for me: there are few things I am more passionate about than the importance of public education, so I just don't see myself getting out of teaching. That would be like moving to Canada and letting right-wing Republicans take over my country. But I'm tired and burned-out and I think I need a break. I just don't know what to do with my break, and I don't know who I'd be if I wasn't a teacher.

I also have no idea where I might like to live, and to complicate matters I seem to be falling -- and falling hard -- for a man who lives in a galaxy far, far away.

So, for perhaps the first time in my life -- certainly for the first time in my ADULT life -- I find myself completely without a plan. I am not a spontaneous, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda girl. I ALWAYS have a plan, and the thought of winging it freaks me out a little. I have never ended a school year without knowing what I'm doing A) for the summer and B) for the following school year, and this is the sort of shit I tend to start thinking about in January or so.

In three months I'll have to renew my lease, and in five months I'll have to sign a contract for the 07-08 school year. But you know what? I don't think I want to do either of those things. I think come June I might just put all my worldy possessions in storage, travel to the galaxy far far away, find some indie bookstore job, and see what happens.

No doubt the universe will unfold as it should. Right?

Gifts I Received From Students

Most high school students do not give Christmas gifts to their teachers, and my students are no exception. There are, however, always a few kids (usually girls) who do. Yesterday I received some baked goods and a number cards with sweet little notes in them. One of the cards, from three girls I taught last year, came taped to an envelope that was too small for it and included this PS: "A riddle: How many blondes does it take to buy an envelope big enough for the card?" More than three, I guess. Anyway, two other girls from last year gave me a tote bag ("for carrying around those papers you never grade") they'd decorated with postcards from their travels ("hope it shows your Geo pride! The Amish and whatnot are cultural!").

In addition to that stuff, I also received this

and this

and my personal favorite. . .

a crazy cat lady action figure! Which, you'll note, comes with six cats, not including the cats hiding in her coat.

Have I mentioned I love my kids?

Funny Things My Students Have Said Recently

"Uh, we took a group vote? And Chapter 10 is bogus." (to explain why he wasn't doing his work)

"America is for AmeriCANS, not AmeriCAN'Ts." (purely to annoy me, I think)

"Hey, you're a fan of the things that are weird. . ." (prefacing a question about karma)

"Are you EVER gonna get married?!" (completely out of the blue)

"Dude, the Christians OWNED the First Crusade!" (during a discussion about Islam)

I've Always Wondered What To Serve With Chicken Noodle Soup

At the beginning of every school year I have a conversation with my students about what kind of environment they learn best in and what they need from me in order to learn. Inevitably, the kids mention something about liking to listen to music while they work, which is good since I myself can barely function without music. So whenever the kids work on something in class -- like a map, for example -- we have music playing in the background. Sometimes we listen to my music (lately it's been last month's Paste CD sampler) and sometimes we listen to theirs. I reserve the right to veto anything I don't like.

Recently I vetoed one of their favorite songs: "Chicken Noodle Soup." If you work with teenagers or have a thing for horrible music, you've probably already heard the chicken noodle soup song. If not, you'll need to listen below before we continue.

Alrighty then. So you can see why I vetoed it.

"This is awful!" I said as I watched my kids dance in their seats. "It doesn't even make any sense." "Naw," one of my kids disagreed, "it's about when you're sick and you eat chicken noodle soup. With, like, a ginger ale. Makes you feel better." "Well, what's up with the crap about 'let it rain. . .and clear it out' then?" I asked, making rain motions with my hands. My kids just shrugged and kept on chicken noodle souping.

So now I guess I have to do a whole lesson about minstrel rap, which I guaran-damn-tee you will not be on the state exam at the end of the year. But still. It's my duty as an educator, right?

Right. So let it rain. And clear it out. And then maybe break out your old Tribe Called Quest records.