Things that Happened Today That Were Stupid

-I found out yesterday during the last period of the day that I would be testing A THIRD DAY for students who needed to make up the standardized test.   That's right.  Three days of all seven phases.  I am extra, extra, EXTRA crazy right now.  If I had a boyfriend right now, I would probably break up with him just for crazy's sake.
-We don't have counselors at my school and my co-teacher had to deal with a very frightening incident with a student on her own
-All my blueberries at lunch were sour!
-I stayed after school three and a half hours making an Excel list of room, teacher, and chaperone assignments for our field trip next week to see The Hunger Games movie.  (Teachers at normal schools: do you have a person on staff whose job it is to organize field trips?  Because so far my two teammates and I have done everything single-handedly.  And if you've never organized an event for 400 people before by yourself, I encourage you to not do that ever no matter what.)
-I didn't get to see my clams (1st period) or my labrador retriever puppies (4th period).
-I did get to spend a double block with my werewolf-piranhas.
-Speaking of my WPs, I got my 4th new student in that class in the past week
-I've found about 5 typos in this post already that I will not be changing
-I am being asked to tutor on Saturdays for grade levels that I do not teach, not because "Ms. Teach, we would love your help because you're so great!", but because "Ms. Teach, the other grade levels don't want to do Saturday tutorials.  Are you busy any Saturday between now and forever? If you can't come, that means you're not a team player." I'm very picky about the way I am asked to do things, and things like that not only make me want to say no, they also make me want to throw anvils through windshields. 
-I found out that one of my favorite students is going to the alternate educational facility starting next week.
-It rained.
-My students' soccer game was cancelled due to the rain.
-I have no idea what I'm teaching tomorrow.



Goodnight. 

Love,

Teach

What Happens to me During Standardized Testing

Imagine being locked in a room with 30 middle school students. You have never met these students before.  The students are quiet because they are taking a test, and your job is to monitor them.  You may not speak or answer any of their questions. You may not sit. You may not check your phone or email-- in fact, your phone and computer must be turned off and your phone left off campus.  You may not draw, write, or have anything in your hand besides testing instructions.  You may not even stand in one place for too long, or look at a spot on the wall for too long. For the next SEVEN HOURS, your job is to walk around the room and watch 30 students take a test.  And if you don’t, you will get fired, audited, or some other scary word. 

For public school teachers across America, at least once a year this nightmare becomes a reality.  It is called standardized testing.

As with many other aspects of the teaching profession, it is impossible to convey to non-teachers exactly how mind-blowingly boring it is to administer a state-mandated test.  (Lots of hyphens in that last sentence.)  In fact, I bet it comes off as whiny. Some of you may even be saying, “Why, I would love a day to sit around and do nothing!”  No, no, honey.  First of all, you’re not sitting-- you’re walking.  Second, I’m betting that any other time in your life that you THOUGHT you were “doing nothing,” you were actually doing a lot.  Looking at magazines in a doctor’s office, listening to music on your iPod in line at the post office, checking your phone while waiting for a friend to show up for coffee-- you were doing plenty.  Even if you really did have nothing to do, chances are you were at least allowed to gaze off into the distance and come close to nodding off.

I dread standardized testing more than anything else at school. And while I’m particularly prone to being dramatic and/or overusing superlatives, I can say with certainty that that is the truth.

I go through 7 phases during standardized testing:

Phase 1: Optimism

In the Optimism phase, things are ok.  I’ve passed out the tests, things are going smoothly, and I am pleased with the silence that only happens when these kids have been threatened to do well within an inch of their lives.  “This won’t be too bad!” I think.

Phase 2: Recognition of the problem

Less than an hour in, I remember why I hate standardized testing. I have ran out of lists in my head, already having completed Groceries, Errands, Things I will Do this Summer, My Pop Culture Crushes in Chronological Order, and Foods that Start With the Letter D (there are hardly any!). I have looked at each child’s face and determined in my head what animal he/she would be.  I have tried (and failed) to mentally translate T. Pain’s “Whatever You Like” into Spanish and French.  I’m running out of things to think about, and definitely not running out of time.

Phase 3: Determination

Determination usually follows a break of some kind, usually lunch.  In Determination, I manage to pick myself up by my bootstraps ever so slightly. The sugar in my bloodstream kicks in, and I’m certain that I can get through the rest of the day. “Alright,” I tell myself.  “You can do this.  Plenty of people in history have been bored.  And you’ve got twice the imagination those poor suckers do.”

Phase 4: Resignation

I have resigned to the idea of ever experiencing happiness or sunshine again.  The sugar rush is over, and I am only capable of thinking, “I will die here.”

Phase 5: Delirium

I am only capable of thinking, “Wabbits, wabbits, wabbits.”

Phase 6: Relief

Yes! The announcement to turn in testing materials. I skip down the hallway.  Literally.

Phase 7:Flashbacks

Occasionally, I’ll have testing flashbacks.  They’re not pretty.

Love,

Teach

P.S. No idea why #4 has tiny sharp teeth and an underbite, but it has been making me laugh.  Probably because I tested today. 

Just like when I blew up that crate, yo

If you've never read the Hunger Games, you should just skip this post.

If you have read the Hunger Games but have an aversion to other forms of pop culture, you still might want to skip this post.

For the past few weeks, my students have been working on projects as a wrap-up to our Hunger Games unit.  I let them choose between art, writing, and performance-based projects, with several choices in each category (record and edit your own movie trailer, write your own fan fiction chapter, design a movie poster, etc). There is nothing more fun to me as a teacher than watching my students be their creative, weird selves, and I can practically see their synapses firing as they work hands-on.  Winning for everybody!

As I was watching them work, the same sentiment kept coming up.

"You guys are so lucky!" I'd say, watching students use my Nerf arrows to stab each other dramatically in front of their "cameraman," poised with my iPhone. "I don't remember doing anything this fun in junior high.  In fact, I think I only smiled three times." 

"I'm so jealous," I told one student as she quietly edited her partner's script. "I wish I was in 8th grade again."
"You were in 8th grade once?"
"Don't look so surprised."

I kept wishing I could be back in 8th grade to do one of these projects.  The only thing I remember about 8th grade English class is thinking the rest of my class were complete idiots for not understanding sentence diagramming. The only thing I remember about the rest of middle school English was a friend and I almost getting kicked out of my 7th grade class for laughing hysterically during "Rikki Tikki Tavi." That's it.  Sentence diagrams and a weasel.  No projects, no technology, no laughing.  Well, unless we were reading a story with a hilarious name.

On the last day before Spring Break, my students presented their projects.  I was blown away.  They put so much time and energy into these projects (I imagine partly because my rubric was almost impossible.)  Look at this movie poster one of my students drew!

 

After everyone had presented, I told my students how today had been my proudest day as a teacher, and how I was so amazed at their creativity and talent.  Then I told them how jealous I had been watching them, and how I had been wishing there was some way I could participate as their teacher.  By the time I got out my guitar from the closet and sat down, they were already screaming.

My dear readers, I give you: my first song.

"Hunger Story"

Original lyrics by: Love, Teach

Melody by: Taylor Swift

(to the tune of "Love Story")

Verse 1: 

We were both young when I first saw you

Outside the bakery I was starved

You threw some bread

Luckily it missed my head

I see Effie at the District Reaping

See her make her way through the crowd 

And say, "Primrose"

I couldn't bear to see her go

Chorus:

Then she drew Peeta Mellark, the boy with bread

And Claudius said, "Don't you eat that nightlock yet!"

And I was crying in the hovercraft

Begging you, "Please don't go,"

And I said,

Peeta, take me to the cave that's by the stream

I'll forget that you are Merchant I am Seam

Girl on fire and the boy with the bread

It's the Hunger Games, but, baby, we'll stay fed

Verse 2:

So I sneak out to the roof for some fresh air

The windchimes blow, and you whisper, "I dare

For them to see

That they don't own me..."

See the lights at the Capitol party

See you tell Caesar how I stole your heart

Is it a lie?

Or just a method to survive?

(Chorus)

Bridge:

I got tired of waiting

Wondering if your fever would ever go down

My faith in Haymitch was fading

When I saw that parachute floating down

And I said,

Peeta, let me get that backpack from the Feast

Just lie back now, have some syrup, go to sleep

You'll be unconscious, I'll fight Cato

Just like when I blew up that crate, yo

Peeta, run there's some mutts about to eat us all

An "X" on his hand, with my last arrow Cato falls 

Is this in my head? I don't know what to say

Claudius gets on the speakers and the Anthem plays,

"Only one victor; the two of you will have to choose."

Death for one would mean that we both lose...

"Wait, wait--stop!  We'll get you out of this mess,"

District 12 victors, baby, just say, "Yes."

I don't claim to have any kind of singing voice, but they made me feel like I was T. Swift herself.   Even if I did cheat in the bridge by making "down" rhyme with "down".

It was a very good day.

Love,

Teach

When the Wall Come Off.

I don't really feel like talking to you about The Dog Whisperer anymore.

Instead, I feel like talking to you about what my 7th period class did last Thursday.

Last Thursday, I was off campus for the last meeting in a series of terrible professional development trainings.  That afternoon, while browsing my local Target for purchases I did not need, I got a call from my colleague who teaches across the hall from me.  It was the way she said, "Heeeyyyy...." that made my heart sink into my pelvis. My colleague began to tell me that apparently, the substitute did not show up for my last period class.  This meant that my werewolf-piranha hybrids had spent the first 30 minutes completely unsupervised before my colleague discovered them.  In that time, the following took place:

-Students used my packing tape to tape each other to chairs
-Several students destroyed and wrote threatening messages on the property of other students who were absent
-Students were running around the classroom, throwing books, pens, and pencils
-My desk and things were untouched (because my students enjoy being alive), but the rest of my room was trashed
-Not a single student decided it would be wise to alert another teacher or administrator that they were unsupervised
-One student took a video on his phone of the pandemonium that was occuring
-That video ended up on Facebook

I forgot I was standing in Target.  I forgot my first name, or that I'm even a teacher.   I forgot, for a moment, that I was human.

Everything became Rage.

"When I figured out what was happening, we split up your class," continued my colleague over the phone.  "I emailed administration to let them know what had happened."

"Thank you," I said.  "Do the kids know that I know?"

"I don't think so," she said.  "What are you going to do?"

My 7th period class has had a bad reputation with substitutes.  It took me a solid 3 months to earn their respect, and God help the man or woman who tries to earn it in the first 5 minutes of being in my classroom alone.  By this point in the year, though, the notes from substitutes are usually for relatively minor issues with one or two of my Baddies.

But this time was different.  This was the first time where I was not only mad at a select few, but at an entire class.  I was, of course, most angry at the bullying and vandalism, but there was also a seething disappointment that not a SINGLE one of them had the gall to get another teacher or administrator and say, "Hey, we are alone.  The room is in a state of chaos.  I am pretty sure we are not supposed to be alone."

"Oh.  I'll think of something." I said. 

(Time out. You might be asking yourself, "Where was the principal or assistant principal in all of this? These children are in middle school-- shouldn't the real blame be placed on the adults who are responsible for making sure a teacher or substitute is in each classroom?  Why didn't Love, Teach blame her administrators?" My answer, without violating my 2nd New Year's resolution too blatantly, is that I work at a school where the administration is blameless.  If you asked them, it's probably El Niño's fault that I didn't have a substitute in my room.  Also, I'm a big believer in having high standards for my students, even if they are in middle school. Time in.)

---The next day----

7th period began outside my classroom door, where I usually greet them with a smile and greeting.  This time, I was the Native American Chief Buried Fury.

"Hi Miiiiiiiiiss," one student cooed.

"Please go inside," I replied.  I imagine that my face looked bored, which is almost scarier than mad.

"Oo, Miss, I like your jacket thing," said another student, whom I had last seen on the student video, scrawling on her desk with a pair of scissors.  I looked at her and blinked slowly.

"I'm not ready for your compliments."

I heard her whisper, "Oh, shit."

By the time 5 or 6 students walked in and compared notes on the state of my face, word quickly (and quietly) spread that "She knows!"  Because when I returned into the classroom once the bell had rung, all 30 of them were sitting shame-faced in their seats, watching me silently. 

Then I began.

I played the Respect card.  Then I played the You-Totally-Embarrassed-Me card (better known as the Shame card).  Then I played the rest of my cards, including the Didn't-We-Just-Do-a-Unit-On-"Integrity?" card, the I-Drive-30-Minutes-To-Be-Here-When-I-Could-Be-Teaching-Down-The-Road-From-Where I Live card, and the Maybe-I-Should-Just-Be-the-Kind-of-Teacher-Who-Passes-Out-Worksheets-and-Sits-Behind-Her-Desk card. I let my hand sink in*, and then spent a good 45 seconds making eye contact with students who eventually had to look away.

Next, I handed out pieces of paper.

"Explain your involvement in what happened yesterday," I ordered.  "I'm not going to even ask for an apology since I'm not sure you respect me enough to even do that.  Don't stop writing until I say so."

I stopped them after 15 minutes. I followed that with having them write letters of apology to our custodians, and then finally ended class by repeatedly emptying a box full of paper confetti out onto the floor for them to pick up to understand what it felt like for our cleaning staff yesterday after their "fun."

After school, I slumped into my desk chair.  I haven't yelled like that OR slumped in my chair since my 1st year, and I hate the feeling of both.  After sitting and breathing for a few minutes, I glanced over at their stack of papers (the ones about what happened the day before) and pulled it towards me.

These made me laugh:


"I had told the others to stop what your doing but they wouldn't stop.  I didn't even see the wall come off."

"Miss I was asleep most of the time but I bid hear yelling and someone hit me with a penical on my head."

"What happened was when we came in the classroom we seen there's no sub so we sat down for a minute.  Then it got boring, so we started to tape people in chairs."

"The yelling was too much and I saw people get up and have a war!"

"I had told the others to stop.  Then, I saw paper balls and books flying."


Then these made me cry:

"I know you are disappointed in me because you trusted me a lot."

"You do get a sorry from me.  I am sorry for looking at all that and doing nothing."

"We disappointed you and it hurted." 

"We disappointed you because we don't get it when you tells us how to behave."

"Even if you don't want to accept my apology, I am still very sorry."

Deep down, I know I was mad at something much larger and more complicated and more devastating than a bunch of paper on the floor of my room, or simply feeling that I'd been disrespected as an individual.  I'm mad at the system.  I'm mad at poverty.  I'm mad at public education.  I'm mad that my students have less of a chance-- at everything-- because of circumstances they cannot change.  I'm mad that the psychotic amount of work I've put in the past 6 months in modeling behavior and in choosing texts that honor kindness, integrity, courage, compassion, and honesty aren't enough to undo the years of evil they've seen in their homes and communities and schools. 

Maybe one day I'll find a way to make The System pick up paper off the floor.  Until then, I have to insist on the best from my students.  Even the werewolf-piranhas.

Love,

Teach


*Before you alert my superintendent, I mean "hand" like when you're playing cards, not that I let my hand sink into their faces.

The Dog Whisperer and Teaching: Body Language

The Dog Whisperer is big on on body language.  So am I.

In almost every show, Cesar shows owners how to interpret his/her dog's body language.  Is the tail up or down?  Mouth closed or open?  Ears up or back?  Pupils normal or dilated?  (Can you see dog pupils?  I do not have one handy.)

It is fairly simple to interpret middle school student body language, since it is very similar to normal humans.  Eye movement, stance, and posture can tell you whether a student is bored, thrilled, lying, or about to drop-kick the nearest 6th grader across the gym.

I had never thought about my own body language until a year ago.

Before I started teaching, I read a chapter from a book for one of my teaching classes about  how students could read a teacher's body language and the effect it had on them.  There were diagrams about posture, shoulder placement, eyebrow raising, and even the horizontal distance between your chin and your neck.  I remember glancing at the page, laughing hysterically, and then closing the book.

(Obviously, I wouldn't have told that story if it hadn't turned out that I was completely wrong.)

It was actually a teacher last year who pointed out to me that crossing my arms over my chest, hunching my shoulders, and keeping my hands super close to my torso told my students, "Hello.  I am weak.  Please disrespect me." I was a little offended at first.

"I've never said those things!" I protested.
"You've said everything," she said, gave both my shoulders a good-natured squeeze, and walked off.

It wasn't the type of change where I then went to class the next day with my shoulders back and all my students started turning in their homework.  Actually, I specifically remember trying to keep my shoulders back one day while teaching and a student asking, "Miss, you got a itchy bra?"  I sort of gave up after that and didn't give body language much thought.  But sometime between that moment and now, a gradual shift in body language must have occured.  It looked something like this:

My 1st year body language

What my 1st year body language looked like to my students:

My body language now:

What my body language now looks like to my students:

Cesar sure does know what's up.

Love,

Teach

P.S.  Sorry about the non-cropped phone photos of Post-It Notes propped up on coasters on my kitchen table place mats.  It's been a long week.