What You've Missed, January Edition

 What you've missed lately in room 247:

1) My substitute on Wednesday was hung over.  I don't know this for sure since I wasn't there, but the following leads me to believe she'd had a fun night:

• My first period (yellow, clams) informed me upon my return that the substitute arrived late, announced to everyone several times that she didn't feel well, sat at my desk with her head down, then ran out of the room with my trash can and never came back.

• One of my most precious angels, Lawrence, informed me that the substitute "reeked of rotting fruit," which is the way I described the smell of beer several times as a child, though I probably said something closer to "That smells like the apples I leave under the car seat."

• It's not the first time a substitute has come to our school hungover.  I wish I were kidding.

2) I've been tranquilizing myself every night.  Many times in my teaching career I've wished that I could be tranquilized around 6:00 PM in order to get a full 12 hours of sleep.  Now, that dream has become a reality. 

Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Herbal Tea. It's fast, effective, and doesn't interfere with my toothpaste because it's minty. Within minutes my arms and legs feel like they each weigh 300 pounds and that my brain is applesauce.  The only drawback is that I have to get up in the middle of the night to pee from drinking so close to bedtime, but I have faith that technology is not far from providing me with an external catheter connected directly to my toilet.

3) I have The Hunger Games memorized.

I've been reading the Hunger Games out loud for about three hours a day. 

Q: Why don't you let your students take the books home and read them for homework?
A: We would never get the books back. 
Q: Why don't you let the students read the book out loud to practice fluency, tone, and pausing?
A: First, if I let them read, it would take us 15 weeks to finish the book.  Second, I have the best reading voice.  I'm willing to brag about it.  Sometimes, depending on time, I will rotate readers evenly.
Q: Why don't you have them listen to the audiobook?
A: I got the audiobook as a part of a grant, and whoever narrates it is super old and unKatniss-like.  I apologize if you are her close personal friend or family member.  I'm sure she is a very nice person.
Q: Does it hurt your voice to read for so long?
A: By 7th period, I sound like James Earl Jones.

Since I also read The Hunger Games with my students last year (and because I've read the book two or three times on my own), I now have the entire book pretty much memorized. I can finish almost any line if it's started for me, and if you give me a random word from the book, I can come up with at least one excerpt that uses that word.  Some friends of mine tested me at their house:

"Prim."
"Prim's face is fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named."
"Knife."
"The bow and arrow is my weapon.  But I've spent a fair amount of time throwing knives as well."
"Blood."
"'I know what blood poisoning is, Katniss,' says Peeta. 'Even if my mother isn't a healer.'"
"Yeah, you're a freak."

I'm adding "has the Hunger Games memorized" to my resume and to the massive tattoo on my bicep.

4) The cutest child in the world, a 6th grader, is doing our morning announcements.  When she says the pledge, she says "eeny veesy bo" for "indivisible."  It makes me clasp my hands under my chin every time.

5) Christopher's voice is getting deeper.  I bet he thinks aliens are responsible for it.

Love,

Teach

Talk about the fact that I'm writing and posting this on a Saturday night and I'll poke you forcefully in the sternum.

The Time I Thought I Was Magic

When I was little, I loved the book Matilda by Roald Dahl.  I admired Matilda’s indomitable spirit, but what I loved (and coveted) most were her magical abilities. Especially when she learned she could use them to punish bad people.  How I wanted to be able to beat up my older brothers... with my mind!

Last semester, I spent about 2 hours one day in a semi-serious panic that my childhood fantasy had come true.

Please don’t tell anyone.

*****

During the last period of a relatively normal day last November, Paula, one of my 8th graders who still relies heavily on her amygdala, sassed me after I watched her talk to her neighbor for a good 15 seconds during a test. This was the second time I’d caught her chatting, and had already taken my standard amount of points off.  (They were being tested, by the way, over the short story "The Monkey’s Paw" by W.W. Jacobs, which deals with fate and superstition.  This is important for my story.)

“You’re trippin’,” she muttered.

“And you’re chewing gum,” I said.  “Please dispose of it along with your attitude.”*

“I’ll spit it out later,” she said with a wave of her hand.

“Now,” I said. “DO not test my patience.”

There was something about the way I emphasized the “DO” in that sentence that got Paula to stop sassing and start moving. She stomped over to our trashcan and hovered over it with her back turned.  Knowing that our students often pretend to throw away their gum while actually keeping it in their mouths, I made a plan in my head to check out the trash can for evidence after she returned to her desk.  (Why doesn’t teacher education include classes on how to be sneaky?  I feel like that is half the battle.)

But as I went back to monitoring their testing, I noticed that Paula was still standing over the trashcan, still with her back turned. Some of my students were obviously distracted.  Their faces said, “Miss, I cannot complete my test while Paula is postponing her chastisement.”  I decided to investigate.

“Paula,” I said.

No response. Was she crying?  About to vomit? Morphing into her alien form?

“Paula?” I said again.

“I need a pair of scissors,” she said with her back still turned.

“Why?” I asked. She whipped around.  A big, blue mass was caught near her hairline.

“There’s gum in my hair, ok?!” she snapped.  My class erupted in laughter.

“That’s what you get!” one of my students shouted.

“Ohhhhh, Paula just got monkey’s paw-ed,” said another.  In the story, a cursed monkey’s paw brings doom to whomever wishes upon it.

I shushed my class. Though Paula had been seriously pushing her boundaries, I pitied her in that moment.  I know that, culturally, hair is a big deal to most of my female students, and that it’s never fun to be laughed at, especially when you’re embarrassed.  Or worse, embarrassed AND pee-yissed. I brought her a pair of scissors and made everyone look away as she held out a thick chunk of hair away from her ear and cut just above the sticky mass.  Paula returned to her desk and said nothing the rest of class. When the bell rang, two of my students, the ones who had shouted out about Paula’s hair situation, stopped me on my way out.

“Miss, that was so beast!”

“What was beast?”

“It was like you made that happen!”

“What are you talking about?” I put on my coat.

“The thing with Paula.  It’s like you said “don’t test me” and then gum got stuck in her hair.” 

“Oh,” I laughed.  “No. I only wish I were psychokinetic.”

“What?”

“Psychokinetic-- you know, make things happen with your mind.  Like in Matilda? Nevermind.  See you guys later.”

“Later, Miss.”

Tons of images and words flooded my mind as I pushed through the swarms of students on my way out.  The Monkey’s Paw. Matilda. “DO not test my patience.” Paula’s face as she sat with maimed hair for the rest of class. Suddenly, my teaching bag fell to the floor, sending my papers flying, as a 6th grader bounced off of me and continued running down the hallway.

“HEY,” I boomed.  If there’s anything that can make me actually scream at students, it’s when they’re being unsafe.  I’m sort of famous for being the teacher who makes kids go back and walk when they’re running, anywhere from 15 feet to the entire length of the school.   “GET BACK HERE, 6th GRADER!”

The tiny child made direct eye contact with me, laughed, and continued running down the stairs, which was blocked from my view.

It was like my mind, blood, and brain all exploded at once.

“DO NOT TEST MY PATIENCE!” I screamed after him, speed-walking until I’d reached the top of the stairs.  I stopped.  What I saw when I got there made me gasp and hold a hand up to my mouth.

At the bottom of the stairs, a couple of kids were huddled around the same 6th grader, who had very clearly fallen on his way down.  I dropped my things and sped to the bottom.  I was sure his neck was broken.  His cheek was completely on the ground while the rest of his body was completely on the stairs, like this:

 “Hey, hey,” I said, pushing back the kids who surrounded him. “You’re going to be ok. Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” he said.  He slowly began to push himself back up to his feet. I tried to get him to stop (my medical expertise being limited to “don’t move people who have broken necks,”) but he insisted he was fine.

“You sure you’re ok?  Your neck’s ok?”  I asked him both of these questions about 8 times.

“Yeah,” he said again.  He began to move towards the school’s exit.

“Oh, ok,” I said.  “Then go back up and walk.”

After I watched him walk down the length of the hall and stairs (and bring me my teaching bag,) it hit me.  That was the second time that day something bad had happened to a student after they’d pushed me.  And both times I’d said, “DO not test my patience.”  Was there a connection there?  Had I somehow altered the fate of these children?  What if the students in my last period class were right, that I had, in fact, “monkey’s paw-ed” them?

You’re being ridiculous, I thought to myself.

Then:

I wonder if Matilda thought she was being ridiculous when she got her powers.

Then:

Matilda is fictional.

Then:

Psychokinesis is not fictional.

Then:

Insane asylums are also not fictional.

Two hours later, I sat in standstill traffic on the interstate back to my home.  The longer I’d entertained the idea that I could be magic, the less crazy it became. The interior of my car was filled with ominous, glowing red light from the brakelights around me. 

Do I really have to deal with this traffic? I wondered, almost guiltily.

I leaned forward onto the steering wheel. “DO not test my patience,” I whispered to the cars around me.

It took me another 45 minutes to get home.  What did I learn from that day?

1) I’m not psychokinetic.

2) I have a disturbingly powerful imagination.

Love,

Teach

The Difference Between 7th and 8th Graders, or Why I Will be Sending my Future Children to Holland The Entire Time They're 13

I love my 8th graders.  They are fun, inquisitive little creatures.  They can participate in a lesson on a serious topic and maintain an appropriate class discussion in which they are respectful of their peers.  I can tell a funny anecdote and they laugh appropriately.  They can even tell funny anecdotes themselves.  They might sass from time to time, but have the maturity to listen and to consider when I redirect them.  Plus, they’re delightfully weird.

7th graders are a little harder to love. (I can say this because I taught 7th grade last year, and was once an unlovable 7th grader myself.) 7th graders sometimes feel the need to make inappropriate comments during serious discussions, and continue to bring them up despite your efforts as a teacher to shame them.  Most 7th graders are not funny yet, and also think that the only funny people are 7th graders.  Their brand of weird is disturbing.  They are like tiny, pubescent tornadoes-- completely unpredictable, loud, and destructive. 

So why such a huge disparity between 7th and 8th?  What kind of difference could a year really make?  How could the distinction be significant enough to make me willing to put the Atlantic Ocean between myself and my own offspring for an entire year?

I’m here to answer these questions.

1) At 13, 7th graders are not physiologically able to recognize that other people are not simply moons caught in their orbit.

In one of my teaching classes, I learned some neat things about the brain.  Here, meet your amygdala and your frontal lobe.

Your amygdala is responsible for emotions, instincts, and impulses.  Your frontal lobe is your big “thinker,” kind of like the adult part of your brain that takes care of logic and decisions.  Where your amygdala tells you “You should feel pissed-- this is injustice!” your frontal lobe tells you, “Well, take into consideration the reasons why the librarian told you not to practice your scream-yodeling inside.”  In the class I took, I learned that young teenagers tend to use their amygdalas more than their front lobes when processing emotional information (surprise!).  I also learned that the frontal lobe undergoes a huge growth spurt at age 12, followed by a significant period of “pruning.”

By “pruning,” experts mean, “7th grade.”

7th graders are literally figuring out how to use the smart part of their brains.  This is a very exciting time (since it obviously leads to being awesome 8th graders!), but, much like learning to drive a car, there are bound to be tons of close calls, scratches, and fender-benders in that first year.

And teaching Driver’s Ed is something I would just rather avoid.

2) The T-Bone phenomenon

In the second episode of the TV show Arrested Development, Michael watches in exasperation as a fire consumes his family’s storage unit.  In a moment of candor, he turns to T-Bone, his dad’s cellmate, and asks him point-blank:

Michael: T-Bone, did you set fire to the storage unit?

T-Bone: (without skipping a beat) Oh, most definitely.

My 8th graders are like T-Bone.  More often than not, when you confront them about “crimes,” they either admit to them readily or immediately give you the reason behind why they did it.  They know that denying it is pointless, and will make things worse*.  They use their frontal cortexes.

Amygdal-icious 7th graders, alternatively, will go to their graves believing they’ve done something wrong.  (By “graves” I mean “turning 14.”)

I could show a 7th grader a video from 12 different angles of him pushing a teacher down the stairs, ask why he did it, and the 7th grader would say the following:

“That ain’t me!”

“I didn’t push her!”

“She was falling and I tried to catch her!”

“I can’t control my arms!”

“I was sleepwalking!”

“YOU pushed her!”

An 8th grader would say,

“I just don’t like that lady.”

Do you see the difference? One is highly emotional, impervious to the most deserved criticism, oblivious.  The other: accepting, reasoning, justifying.

Since I have approximately zero children right now, I am only able to imagine how this would play out in a mother/child role. My 7th grade daughter telling me that the outrageous cell phone bill I received is my fault for not giving her enough minutes.  My 7th grade son, surrounded by a cloud of humming fruit flies, refusing to acknowledge my plea for him to wear deodorant or bathe. I’m not sure I could handle that kind of interaction since I barely managed to handle it last year in 45-minute increments.

3) Holland is a lovely place.

It’s not like I’m sending them to prison or anything.

Love,

Teach

*The only exception for 8th graders is the IWTP, which, from what I’ve told, applies to students K-12.

Why Teachers are Complete Psychos

Ok, other teachers might not be completely psychotic.

But we’re all flirting with it.

I, in particular, have noticed a steady decline in my sanity since I’ve begun teaching.  I can’t make friends the way I used to in high school or college.  People I meet for the first time sometimes frown when I’m talking, or tip their heads to the side politely like my dog does when I talk to her through a cardboard tube.  I talk to myself ALL THE TIME-- not just in the car like I used to before I started teaching. I can pretty much cry on command. 

Why has this happened?  My other friends who have begun their career paths have also reported an increase in stress levels since joining the “real world,” but none of them are crazy.  My mom raised three children (one being me, who spent my childhood doing things like drawing elaborate scenes on the underside of our couch cushions with Sharpies) and she’s normal-- even nice.  Barack Obama has a terrible job and he seems to keep it under control.

It’s teaching, my friends.

Reason #1: We are tired.

Have you ever had to give a presentation for school or work?

Do you remember the preparation you had to do for the presentation?  Creating a Powerpoint, doing research, making graphs, charts, handouts.  You had to practice your presentation, think about what you would say, what order you would say it in, etcetera.  You put hours of work into something that might take 30 or 45 minutes, tops.  After you gave your presentation, how did you feel?  Proud, right?  But probably exhausted?  In need of a stiff, celebratory drink?

Teachers give presentations for 8 hours a day.  5 days a week.  And we plan these presentations or grade papers or fill out inane paperwork or answer hundreds of emails or meet with crazy parents for another 10-15 hours on top of that weekly.  Yes, it gets easier with time and practice, but it never gets less tiring.  In fact, the longer I’ve been teaching, the better and more elaborate my ideas get, and the more tired I am.

I’m not trying to get you to create a shrine to teachers in your home or feel sorry for us.  (We know we’re awesome enough on our own without other people’s help.)  I just want you to think twice before judging me for forgetting to undo my seatbelt before getting out of my car in the parking lot at the bank and almost strangling myself. 

We’re tired, and being tired can make people crazy.

Reason #2: We are in complete control for 8 hours a day.

I think this is the main reason I’m psychotic.

After growing out of a frighteningly bossy childhood, I spent the latter part of my teenage years and my time in college being very complacent, warm, and receptive to others’ ideas and concerns.  You would have described me, for the most part, as “laid back.” “Easy going.”  “Johnny-come-lately.”* I was always totally fine with whatever the group wanted to do; more than willing to accommodate those around me. 

“Heck yes I’ll lend you my favorite shoes!”

“Oh, you’re out of bagels?  It’s cool; I’ll have the breakfast tacos.  My other fave!”

“Oh, no worries about the loud music last night, neighbor--  I eventually fell asleep after awhile.”

I am not “laid back” anymore.

First, you have to understand that I have created an environment, my classroom, in which I have complete control.  Over EVERYTHING.  Not only do my students behave impeccably this year, but they know how everything works-- from turning in homework (no wide ruled paper, proper heading, no hearts or abbreviations or emoticons) to asking questions (“Fellow classmate Raul, would you mind moving your head for one moment while I copy the notes on the board?” not “UGH I CAN’T SEE”;  “I’m having trouble understanding,” not “MISS I DON’T GET IT.”)  We even have a system where they ask to use the restroom silently. Everything operates in the most efficient way possible, which allows us to learn in the best way possible.

Then I leave school and enter the world, where I have no control.

It makes me sad.

What do you mean, 5th red light in a row?

What do you mean, “Sold out?”

What do you mean, sassy drugstore employee?

I am not simply annoyed by these things; I become livid.  I find myself saying, “I just don’t understand why _________________.”  It’s usually something to this effect:  “I just don’t understand why (I can’t have my way).”

I have no idea why I’m still single!

(This reason also explains why teacher professional development days, particularly ones with old teachers present, are a joke.  These teachers have been in control for 8 hours a day for YEARS-- God help the man or woman trying to tell them what to do or how to do it. It also explains why first-year teachers cannot control a classroom.  See any post from the 2010-2011 school year for proof.)

Reason #3: Our job is violently important.

(I’m on this kick of using “violently” as an adverb ever since I saw The Pioneer Woman use it to describe the movement of her back fat.  That, my friends, is prose.)

Sometimes I think that America forgets that teachers fill young minds with knowledge.   And if America does know that, I’m pretty sure they don’t really get it. 

It would be one thing if we were cranking out burgers or graphic tees or expense reports.  We could meet up with our friends or go to concerts on weeknights.  We could email our friends from our work computers, or take a long lunch, or maybe only put in 75% one day.

But we can’t.  We’re creating scientists, writers, historians, Nobel Prize winners, moms, dads, farmers, executives, counselors and teachers. We’re investing in our students, not as commodities to be shuffled through the conveyor belt, but as individuals with unique visions and gifts. Some of us are putting in 150% to make sure that these people will hopefully leave the world a little better than they found it.

That kind of effort and pressure would make anyone a raging lunatic.

But it’s something worth being crazy about.

Love,

Teach

*Gotcha.

Penis ok.

Today I stumbled into school an hour and a half early, grabbed a red dry erase marker, and scrawled some instructions on the board. For the next hour and a half, I was in constant motion-- making copies, redoing my bulletin boards, and trying to organize the towering piles of paper on my floor and desk that have increasingly begun to resemble a smaller scale model of downtown Chicago.

My students were taking a diagnostic test today. I'm not usually excited about test days because it's incredibly boring to monitor children as they silently look at pieces of paper and occasionally write on it. After a complete whirlwind of a morning, though, I was ready to let my brain and some other parts of my body be still for a while.

The bell rang for first period to begin.  I stood outside my door to greet my little dumplings and to make sure nobody got their hair pulled out in the hallway.

I love my first period.  They are very reserved, pleasant individuals.  If my first period were a color, they would be pale yellow.  If they were an animal, they would be a clam. Which is why it was surprising to walk in and see that, instead of having their testing materials ready, many of them were laughing hysterically.

"Oh," I said.  They immediately went silent.

'I am sorry for laughing," said Kang, my over-apologetic Vietnamese student who I'm considering adopting.

"No, it's cool, I've just never seen you guys like this.  What's so funny?  Do I want to know?"

"No," they answered in perfect unison.

Later on it was time for 7th period, which I also love.  If my 7th period were a color, they would be the color crazy. If they were an animal, they would be a werenha (werewolf-piranha hybrid).  This time, I knew something was up because I could hear all of them cackling.  From outside.

"Alright, kiddies," I said, stepping inside.  "What's the deal?"

"Miss, you made a erroneous." It both pains and delights me when they use our vocabulary words incorrectly.

"What? What'd I do?" 

"LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAD WROTE!"




Come visit our class soon.  I'm sure my 7th period will greet you with a chorus of our new class motto within seconds of your arrival.

Love,

Teach

Belated New Year's Resolutions

Oh.  Hello, there.

I almost didn't recognize you since I've been so busy being terrible.

This year I resolve to:

1) Write more.  I've been blogging less for a mélange* of reasons. Among them: physical and mental exhaustion, roughly 45 seconds of free time per day, and uncontrollable appendages from the amount of Diet Coke in my bloodstream.  And I hate that.  Maybe it's my Child of the 90s Sense of Entitlement**, but I don't feel like I should have to completely stop doing anything I love the way I love writing.  I don't just write this blog for my entertainment; it's so I can look back on a record of my life as a teacher and smile.  Then cry.  Then throw 10 expensive dinner plates on a hard tile floor.  Then hide under a table and suck my thumb and whimper.  I won't be able to do that if I don't write it down. Thus, I resolve to write more, and to arrange my life to allow it. 

2) Love more.  Let me be real with you: there are a lot of parts of my job that I hate.  Not "hate" like the way I hate the roof of my mouth itching or The Black Eyed Peas, but special reserve label hate.  The kind of hate that makes me a cranky jerk to pretty much everyone I'm around outside of school, that made me cry roughly eight times over Christmas break, and that often make me not want to be a teacher ever again.  Luckily, though, there are also parts of my job that I love obsessively: every last one of my 8th grade urban cherubs, the fun and brilliant teachers I work with, and the part of my job where they learn and I learn.  This semester, I want to not let the "hate" part affect everything else so much.  I may have to resort to deluding myself, but it won't be the first time.  Have you met my boyfriend, Dawsey Adams?

It's very possible that this post doesn't make any sense at all since it is now well past Teacher Bedtime and I don't have the energy to edit, but I have just made resolutions to write more and to love more.  So I will post.

Love,

Teach

* that just happened.
** my mom actually suggested this was why I cried 8 times over Christmas break.  Then we arm wrestled.  I won.