Still too busy for a real update

But in lieu of one, I present Kids Say the Darndest Things: Miss Brave Edition.

(1) I go to pick up my class Monday morning after the Thanksgiving vacation. Marco spots me and grumbles, "Aw, man, school ruined my weekend."

(2) It is time to line up on a Monday afternoon after a difficult Fundations period in which way too many students are talking, faking explosion noises, futzing around with the carpet or just generally not paying attention. Consequently, I am grouchy. One of my smartest and most well-behaved students bounces up to me and says brightly, "Miss Brave, it's a good thing it's time to go home, because I was about to fall asleep at the carpet!"

(3) We are discussing the vocabulary word "flood." Manuel raises his hand and says, "If there is a flood coming, you should turn your TV off, because I know that water and electricity are not a good combination."

(4) We use the FOSS science curriculum at my school. I think it's excellent and my kids loooove science. The materials for each unit come packed inside large boxes that I don't have room for in my classroom, so I store them in the bathroom we have inside our room. One day I am giving a science test when Bryce raises his hand and says, "Miss Brave, is our next unit in science going to be Pebbles, Sand and Silt or New Plants?" I was astonished. "How did you know what our science units were called?" I asked. He gave me a 'duh' look and shrugged, "The bathroom."

(5) We are working on a "realistic fiction" unit in writing, creating realistic but fictional characters and stories. On an extremely cold Friday, I remind the students to put on and close all their layers of clothing. I tell them it reminds me of the scene in Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse when all the students are buttoned and zipped and tied and snapped and ready to go home. Christian points out: "Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse is realistic fiction!" I want to kiss him.

(6) I am meeting with my five K readers for guided reading. We are discussing the word "busy" and I ask them to explain what it means. Jason says, "It's like, okay, Miss Brave, ask me if I want to play a game." I oblige: "Jason, do you want to play a game?" He answers: "I can't, I'm busy in a group with the teacher."

The day the animals escaped from the zoo

In response to my last post, in which I confessed to jumping up and down as my two most notoriously troublesome students changed schools, one of my readers wondered: "What ever will you post about now?"

Oh, I don't know, how about the time there was a lizard in my classroom?!

Scene: Monday morning, second period. My kids are finishing coloring in some turkeys that a substitute teacher gave them last period. Everything is relatively, blessedly mellow. Then I hear a voice say: "Um, Miss Brave? There's a lizard!"

I look. My eyes see, but they do not believe. Actually, at first I think, Who brought in a toy lizard and dropped it by the door?

Then the toy lizard scurries across the floor. Then I think: A lizard? Seriously? Why me?

My kids are obviously more with it than I am, because someone started yelling out, "Call Mr. R and Mr. M!", our science teachers. So I did, but no one picked up in the science lab, and then while I was on the phone, one of my pull-out teachers appeared and tried to open the door.

Try to imagine, if you will, just for a second, what she might have seen. She's pushing open the door to our classroom, as she does every single day, only today there is a roomful of panicked seven-year-olds yelling at her, "Don't open the door!" and madly pointing downward at a creature she obviously cannot see.

Anyway, she got the door open a crack, and I explained the situation. To which she addressed my class at large: "Who is not afraid of the lizard? Maybe one of you can capture it."

Um, Mrs. C? I hate to break this to you, but there will be no capturing of any kind going on in my classroom by anyone under the age of 18.

In the meantime, the science lab is still not picking up, so I call down to the main office and say what might be my favorite opening line ever in a call to the main office: "Um, hi, it's Miss Brave. There's a lizard in my classroom and I don't know what to do."

Miss Brave: "I called Mr. M and Mr. R but they're not there."
Main Office: "Well, they did give each classroom a lizard."
Miss Brave (thinking: Is this some kind of crazy science experiment by our wacky science teachers? Did they legitimately just drop a lizard in front of my door to see how my class would react? I'm going to kill them!): "Um, okay, but it's running around on my floor."
Main Office: "I'll tell them."

Now envision the next few minutes: Kids screaming each time the lizard moved. Miss Brave yelling, "SIT DOOOOOWWWWWN!!!!" at kids constantly jumping out of their seats to see what the lizard is up to. Utter freaking pandemonium.

At last, Mr. M and Mr. R arrived. They grabbed the first thing they saw -- an empty drawer that had been housing the markers and crayons of the now-abandoned turkey project -- and wrangled the lizard. Once they had cornered him inside the drawer, they bizarrely grabbed the next thing they saw, which happened to be Felix's book report, and used it as a top.

"They took my book report!" Felix howled with glee.

"Felix," I said, "you are the only person who has a good excuse for not handing in a book report."

With the lizard gone, we debriefed. So far this year, my classroom has been home to a bee that refused to leave us and a ladybug that was the subject of much great fascination. My students were understandably delighted to have another up close and personal encounter with wildlife.

"First the bee, then the ladybug, now the lizard!" they chorused. "What's next, a bear?"

"I hope not," I said.

The lizard, as it turns out, had escaped from another classroom down the hall, whose members hadn't even noticed the lizard was missing. The next period, Mr. M and Mr. R arrived and noted, with mock seriousness, that of all the classrooms in the school, the lizard had chosen ours as his refuge.

"There must be good energy here," Mr. M said. My kids were eager to explain about the bee and the ladybug and the lizard and how we're apparently the animal-friendliest class in the school. Martin raised his hand and asked the science teachers if the lizard was cold-blooded, which they deemed an excellent question.

And later in the afternoon we began a thrilling composition about the escaped lizard. And that, my friends, is what I deem a teachable moment...and another adventure in the urban jungle of NYC public schools.

When it rains, it pours

Julio has left our school.

I wish I could tell you I reacted to this news with the maturity and wisdom befitting my profession, but I am not ashamed to tell you how I actually reacted: by jumping up and down in the lobby after I received his discharge papers in my mailbox. Yes, really. To be frank, when his mother mentioned at one of our many conferences that she was considering transferring him to another school, I did very little to discourage her; in fact, I told her that different schools do in fact handle things differently and who knows how Julio might react to a change in his school environment.

Well, now we know how he would react: by punching someone and using inappropriate language on his first day at his new school, resulting in an immediate suspension. Oh, Julio. I know this is totally taboo, but I do not miss him, or William, one bit.

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.