Life after William

It's possible I may be suffering from PWSD: Post-William Stress Disorder.

As I mentioned ever so briefly in my last post, William has departed from us, to a special education classroom at another school. If I could say one thing to his new teachers, I would say, Please help him succeed where our school failed him for three years. If I could say two things, I would say, Please help him succeed where our school failed him for three years, and also, no backsies.

So here's the deal with my class minus William (who, by the way, had perfect attendance while he was in my class): It's like a whole new class. On the plus side, it's like a whole new class, but on the minus side...it's like a whole new class. It's like September 9 all over again. It's like I turned around to find 26 other children sitting in front of me to whom I had not been able to devote a single iota of my attention because I was too busy chasing William around the classroom and trying to get him to give up my stapler (which he enjoyed using as a machine gun).

Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about this development, but I am a little surprised by it. Even though I knew that William was holding our class hostage and making our days agonizing, I'm still startled by how much calmer everything feels without him. And part of that is my own personal fault, not William's or my students' -- for a while there, I let him control my emotions and my reactions, and of course that trickled down to my class. I was tense and, quite frankly, on the verge of panic when he was in the room (What am I going to do if he doesn't stop throwing that ball at the wall? How am I going to get him to quit the name-calling?), and that vibe oozed around the classroom like poison.

But on the other hand, our class was defined by William and his behavior for so long that it's almost a challenge to adjust to life without him. (Well, for me, at least -- other than Julio, who of course terribly misses his partner in crime, all of the other kids have adjusted well to bidding him adieu.) Last week, we took our first field trip, and all I kept thinking the whole time was: Oh my God, we never could have done this with William. When we got back, my kids were surprisingly mellow as they ate their lunches ("This is the best sandwich ever!" one of them enthused dreamily), and then something miraculous happened: One of the first kids to be done eating asked if she could read a book from our collection of Read Alouds. I agreed. Then another kid asked, and another kid. Before I knew it, my entire class was gathered in small clusters at the meeting area, sharing books. Some of them were reading aloud to each other. Some of them were obviously practicing their own "teacher" persona. Some of them had their heads bent close together, giggling as they pointed at the pictures.

Nobody was fighting, nobody was grabbing, nobody was shouting, nobody was using hurtful language. I had been planning to gather the class together to discuss the trip, but I hadn't counted on this beautiful, wondrous thing happening. I literally just sat back and watched them -- I even snapped a picture -- and before I knew it, it was time to go home.

It was the first time my classroom felt like a community. And slowly we will rebuild, and hopefully it will feel that way again.

I definitely did not teach this in a mini lesson

Today it was blissfully quiet in my classroom during reading. It was so quiet, in fact, that I was considering granting my class a much-coveted compliment (they have been stuck at 16 forever, while they need to get to 25 to earn themselves either (a) a popcorn party or (b) a Michael Jackson dance party. Yes, I said that).

I assumed it was quiet because William is no longer with us (do you hear that? It is the sound of a choir of heavenly angels singing...it is also a story for an entirely different post). As it turns out, I should have known better. It was not quiet because my students were so studiously reading their books, drinking in the vast store of knowledge that can only come from endless re-reads of Mr. Putter and Tabby Bake a Cake. No, it was quiet because they were using the post-its from their book baggies -- which are supposed to be used to mark important parts of their books and jot down notes, thank you very much, yes I did teach that in a mini lesson about how readers blah blah blah by blah blah blay -- they were using the post-its from their book baggies to write and pass each other notes that read, among other things, "Suck my balls" and "Have sex with me." (And, by the way, the only reason I know exactly what these notes read is because I had to go digging through the trash can, CSI-style, to retrieve the evidence.)

Excuse me, I teach second grade. I do not teach middle school or junior high school, and precisely for the reason that I did not ever want to rehearse a phone call home that included the words "Today your son wrote 'Suck my balls' and 'Have sex with me' on a post-it."

What makes the whole thing even grosser is that these notes were being passed to girls, like, now I have a case of seven-year-old sexual harassment on my hands, which does not jive very well with our class trip to the petting zoo tomorrow.

Meanwhile, you know how every class has those girls who are very precocious and very prissy and very bossy and know-it-all and can always be counted upon to Inform you (yes, that's Inform with a capital I) who was doing what? Well, my authoritative informants assured me that Julio was the culprit (naturally), but his mother angrily told the guidance counselor that it wasn't his handwriting. (Which means that he didn't write the note, he just passed it around and flashed it at my Informants, which isn't really necessarily any better but ensures that his mother will probably hate me forever now for accusing her son of being a budding pervert.)

But, having now added Handwriting Comparison Expert to my growing list of teacher skills, I know who the real author of the note is. Alas, the number on his blue card turned out to be disconnected. I sort of hope he's at home right now playing with his DS, because I suspect that once I get in touch with Mom, today will be the last he sees of it for a long, loooong time.

Every kid has a story

Every kid has a story. That's something I have to remind myself constantly in my class, because -- even putting aside William (who remains in my classroom, despite assurances from virtually everyone in the school that he'll be gone "any day now") and Julio (whose mother just sent me a lengthy form to fill out from a psychiatrist, hallelujah), I have some naughty, naughty kids in my class. But, unlike William and Julio, there's usually some kind of motivation for their behavior, and that's where the stories come in.

Jason is one of those naughty boys. He's so naughty, in fact, that his articulation card clearly stated that he shouldn't be placed in the same class as Julio (see: pants-wetting, tantrum-throwing and overall violent behavior). Wonder of wonders, I ended up with them both, and while Jason started out the year okay, lately he's been acting up. And by "acting up," I mean that (a) the tattle turtle received an anonymous note that read: "Jason tried to punch me in the face at lunch, (b) Jason passed a note to another student that read "dum dum," and (c) somehow the words "Shut up, crybaby" were deemed an appropriate response to another student playing a math game.

Jason is actually very bright, but he's also extremely lazy and a total whiner. I'd been communicating with his mom via e-mail, but after he broke out the "dum dum," I broke out the phone call. "What did he do?" she said knowingly after I introduced himself, sounded exasperated and affectionate at the same time. After speaking with his mom, I realized I'm so used to getting a total blank response from William's mom and excuse after excuse from Julio's mom that I wasn't expecting an actual positive response from a parent. That's when I got the story. Of course, it doesn't excuse the name-calling and the refusals to do classwork and the bordering-on-rudeness, but it does explain it a little. Jason's mom wrote me a long note today in which she explained Jason's side of the story but also conceded that "you never know with kids who's lying" -- a parent who's willing to admit that her child isn't perfect! How novel! And now I know that Jason is getting counseling outside of school, and we have a plan to keep Mom updated via e-mail.

It's not easy teaching a class of 27 kids, but it's even harder teaching 27 classes of 1 kid. But every kid has a story.

Friday cupcakes

Yesterday, while I was walking my class upstairs with William at the front of the line (which is not where his line spot is, but you try getting him to stay in his place), he enthused to me: "We're going to have a party!"

"Where, in after-school?" I asked.

"No, in our class!" he responded, jerking a thumb to the back of the line. There was Arianna carrying three boxes of Entenmann's Halloween cupcakes that I had no idea were coming.

Now, Friday was Joan's birthday; Saturday was Arianna's. A few days before, Arianna had said to me: "My dad asked if the class could sing happy birthday to me, but I don't want to take away from Joan's birthday."

My hardened, blackened teacher heart melted, and I assured her we could sing to both of them. But I had not been forewarned about the cupcakes.

Arianna is a holdover; she was in my reading group last year. She is a quiet, sweet little girl who tries very hard, has low self-esteem, and giggles when I tell jokes to the class. Naturally, I adore her. I get the impression she doesn't necessarily get pumped up by her family at home, so I was surprised they went out of their way to send her in with birthday cupcakes. Here was the problem: There were 18 cupcakes for my 27 students. (Well, 25...thank goodness Julio was absent and William was with a pull-out teacher, because the day might have ended with a food fight instead of singing if they had been there.)

That's why, seventh period, I found myself sawing through the gooey cupcakes with a plastic knife. Robert gave each student half a paper towel, Tanya collected all the garbage, and I handed out baby wipes so everyone could clean their frosting fingers. Then a student from across the hall popped in to offer me a cupcake from her birthday party. When she proffered the box of cupcakes, I nearly fainted: They were from Magnolia Bakery! You bet your sweet frosting I took one.

As we all settled in to eat our cupcakes, my students started venting their complaints about William: "I know why I can't behave," Jose said sadly. "It's because William keeps saying mean things, and I try to ignore him but he keeps saying them, and then I just get so mad!" Melinda agreed: "When William keeps coming to my table and bothering us, my brain just gets so angry and I just have to say something to him."

And I really can't blame them. They're seven years old. It's hard. Even I can't control my anger at William sometimes. How do I explain to them that William is angry, and frustrated, and compensates for that by trying to bully them? How do I explain that William is obviously not in an appropriate setting, that we're working to find a better environment for him?

All I know is, for forty minutes on Friday afternoon, I got a taste of what my classroom would be like without William and Julio. And oh my, it was sweet.

This is why I wanted to stay a reading teacher

We just finished our first unit in math, and I feel like a dismal failure as a math teacher. I have 16 students in my math group. From the pre-test to the post-test (they have exactly the same questions), 6 of my students got exactly the same score (usually because they got exactly the same question wrong), 6 went up, and 4 went down.

I despise math.

Counsel

Yesterday afternoon, very close to the end of the day, Julio had an accident. He was already in the bathroom when it happened, so I figured (a) he had waited too long to ask me to go, (b) he was fooling around in the bathroom and underestimated how much he had to go, or (c) he had trouble getting his belt undone and ended up wetting himself. Anyway, I called downstairs and the office called his mother, and because it was so close to the end of the school day, his mother just took him home. There was an awkward period in between when he wouldn't pull up his wet pants and come out of the bathroom, so he simply stayed in there with his pants down, only he wanted to hear the story I was reading, so he kept sticking his head out of the bathroom, which of course caught the attention of some of the girls, who squealed, "Julio has his pants down!" But eventually Mom showed up and I figured that was the end of it.

Today, Julio had another accident. Again, he was already in the bathroom. But this time, he peed all over the bathroom floor. Again, he wouldn't pull up his wet pants and come out of the bathroom, but today, he started wadding up toilet paper and throwing it out of the bathroom. When I confronted him, he flat-out denied it, and then -- maybe in a misguided attempt to get rid of the evidence? -- he stuffed the toilet paper in his mouth and started chewing it.

So now we have the pants-wetting, and the violent and sexual pictures he's been drawing, and the fact that when he gets angry he bangs his head against the wall and says things like, "I'm going to kill myself." Last year, when he was in first grade, he scrawled a racial slur on the hand of the only African-American child in his class. And every day, when I pick up the class from lunch, I hear, "Julio punched me, Julio kicked me, Julio spilled milk on me."

Mom promises she's looking into getting him counseling. But in the meantime, I can't hold my breath.

The pencil problem

My classroom has a pencil problem.

Before the first day of school, in my adorable naivete, I supplied each table in my classroom with a table caddy filled to the brim with pencils, erasers, crayons and a pencil sharpener.

That was my first mistake.

Within weeks, all of those things had disappeared. The pencil sharpeners were broken. The erasers were missing. The pencils had been swept up by the janitor.

That's when the complaints started: "I don't have a pencil." "My pencil is broken." "I don't know what happened to my pencil."

Every afternoon, our pencil monitor sharpens pencils. Every morning, I sharpen a box of pencils. And by second period, all of those pencils are broken, or missing, or both.

Now, I have a few naughty children who simply snap them in half, or use them so inappropriately that they break. And I have those others who simply can't stop sharpening their pencils, even when they are sharp, so they sharpen them until they break or get too tiny to use.

But for the love of God, where are our pencils going? Do my students not know how to use pencils without pressing hard enough to break them? Why, every single day, do I spend half the day dealing with a total effing lack of pencils?

Yesterday, I put new pencil sharpeners on all the tables. This morning? They were all gone. According to many reliable student sources, the culprit was a student who was absent today. "He took all the sharpeners," they took me solemnly. "I saw him. He said not to tell."

Why do I have so many students who think it is acceptable to just take things that they want? I already have William dancing around the pencil sharpener, saying, "I'm going to break it!" I have William blatantly taking things right off my desk or snatching things right out of the hands of other students and then accusing them: "Shut up, you big fat liar! Who asked you? I'm gonna punch you in your head!" (Nice.)

And the one desktop pencil sharpener I bought (again, with my own money) has had a group of children crowded around it constantly, no matter how many times I explain that only one person at a time should be standing near the pencil sharpener.

I've been reduced to begging my students to tell their parents to send them to school with an ample supply of sharpened pencils (and really, is that too much to ask?) or at the very least a pencil sharpener. But I beg of you, other classroom teachers: How do you solve the pencil problem?