Kyle: "If you came over to my house, me and you could play golf."
Kayla: "I'm not allowed to go to boys' houses."
* * *
Benny: "I have a girlfriend!"
Miss Brave: "You have a girlfriend? Who is your girlfriend?"
Benny: "She's in the big school."
(Our kindergarten classes are held in an annex, and the kids refer to the main building as the "big school.")
Miss Brave: "The big school? Is she in" (lowers voice to stage whisper) "first grade?!"
Benny: "No, she's in pre-K."
Miss Brave: "Ahhhh, a younger woman."
Benny: (nods vigorously)
* * *
Norma: "Miss Brave, do you have a husband?"
Miss Brave: "No."
Norma: "Oh, then you need one!"
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
Flattery will get you everywhere
Leelee: "Miss Brave, I like your hair."
Miss Brave: "Thank you."
Leelee: "And your glasses."
Miss Brave: "Thank you."
Leelee: "And your shirt."
Miss Brave: "Thank you."
Leelee: "And your earrings."
Miss Brave: "Thank you."
Leelee: "You're beautiful."
Miss Brave: "Well, thank you very much!"
Typically I wear contact lenses, but my eyes were burning this morning, so I wore my glasses to school instead. I always feel vaguely half-dressed when I wear them, since I normally don't go out in glasses, but maybe I should more often; my second graders reacted like I was Princess Diana at her wedding and they were trying to out-paparazzi each other: "I love your glasses! They make you look so pretty!" It all culminated with this priceless comment: "Miss Brave, you're not pretty, you're beautiful."
Miss Brave: "Thank you."
Leelee: "And your glasses."
Miss Brave: "Thank you."
Leelee: "And your shirt."
Miss Brave: "Thank you."
Leelee: "And your earrings."
Miss Brave: "Thank you."
Leelee: "You're beautiful."
Miss Brave: "Well, thank you very much!"
Typically I wear contact lenses, but my eyes were burning this morning, so I wore my glasses to school instead. I always feel vaguely half-dressed when I wear them, since I normally don't go out in glasses, but maybe I should more often; my second graders reacted like I was Princess Diana at her wedding and they were trying to out-paparazzi each other: "I love your glasses! They make you look so pretty!" It all culminated with this priceless comment: "Miss Brave, you're not pretty, you're beautiful."
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Vivian Paley would be proud
I think I've mentioned before that one of the things that disappoints me most about a great many of my students is their total lack of regard for their fellow human beings. They're always stepping on each other and sitting down on top of each other and writing on each other's papers and just generally acting like they're the only tiny people in the whole great big universe. There are days when I just get really sick of their selfishness and the unkind way they treat each other.
The other day, though, I finally witnessed some compassion from my kindergarteners. Apparently Mario accidentally spilled some water on Angelina's coat, and Alyssa -- who is like the kindergarten equivalent of Joan Rivers, always acting like the bossy queen bee and generally stirring up drama -- said something nasty about it, bringing Mario to tears. By the time it was brought to my attention, Sylvia and Alejandro were crowded around Mario's side, supplying him with tissues. "We have a plan!" Sylvia announced brightly. "We're going to sit with Mario at lunch so he feels better!" Angelina, of the wet coat, was rubbing his back and soothingly assuring him: "You're going to be all right, you'll see. Everything's gonna be just fine." Even Alyssa, who's usually busy running her mouth off with excuses for why she felt it necessary to cause a ruckus, looked majorly contrite, maybe because Mario, as a rule, is not a crier. "I'm so sorry, Mario," she whispered, her eyes fixed on her paper. "I'm so, so sorry." By the time Angelina (whose coat, by the way, dried off in about two seconds) led Mario off by the hand to get a drink of water (this is my cure-all solution for crying), he was back to his old self again. And I was touched, because if I could leave my students with one lasting lesson from this year, it wouldn't be about grammar or punctuation; it would be about how to live in the world with other people.
The other day, though, I finally witnessed some compassion from my kindergarteners. Apparently Mario accidentally spilled some water on Angelina's coat, and Alyssa -- who is like the kindergarten equivalent of Joan Rivers, always acting like the bossy queen bee and generally stirring up drama -- said something nasty about it, bringing Mario to tears. By the time it was brought to my attention, Sylvia and Alejandro were crowded around Mario's side, supplying him with tissues. "We have a plan!" Sylvia announced brightly. "We're going to sit with Mario at lunch so he feels better!" Angelina, of the wet coat, was rubbing his back and soothingly assuring him: "You're going to be all right, you'll see. Everything's gonna be just fine." Even Alyssa, who's usually busy running her mouth off with excuses for why she felt it necessary to cause a ruckus, looked majorly contrite, maybe because Mario, as a rule, is not a crier. "I'm so sorry, Mario," she whispered, her eyes fixed on her paper. "I'm so, so sorry." By the time Angelina (whose coat, by the way, dried off in about two seconds) led Mario off by the hand to get a drink of water (this is my cure-all solution for crying), he was back to his old self again. And I was touched, because if I could leave my students with one lasting lesson from this year, it wouldn't be about grammar or punctuation; it would be about how to live in the world with other people.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Isn't it ironic...
...that while the teachers are at a crisis intervention training session, I keep having crises with their students?
I could smell the tension as soon as I walked into the classroom. The sub said they'd been "horrible." (The sub had also put some of them in charge of being "helpers," which means that there were kids touching the bell and moving the discipline cards. Lesson #1: Never let your students touch your bell or move your discipline cards.) It was the end of their first full week back from vacation, and the kids seemed keyed up, restless, ready to snap.
As soon as I asked them to put their writing folders away, Mohammed and Justin (who is ordinarily so docile that I've occasionally wondered whether he has mental challenges) got into a physical altercation. It wasn't the kind of irritated jostle I see my kindergarteners and first graders get into; there was real malice flashing in their eyes.
"WHOA!" I shouted, sounding like a jockey trying to tame a wild horse. Upstairs, the crisis intervention counselor had urged the teachers to "speak CAR" -- Calmly, Assertively, Respectfully. My "WHOA!" was precisely none of those things.
I instructed them to separate, cool off, ignore each other, take a breath. But after the mini lesson was over, Mohammed spit at Justin and apparently threatened to "f**k him up." Justin told Christopher that after I left, he would beat up Mohammed.
I believed both of them. This wasn't a situation where I could chastise someone for using unkind language or not keeping his hands to himself. This was a genuine, explosive crisis.
Let's get some perspective: I did my student teaching in Newton, Massachusetts, a town that has a median household income of $121,496 and was named the nation's safest city for three years in a row. When I interviewed for a teaching job with the New York City Department of Education -- in a group with two other young, white, female students at private colleges -- my recruiter emphasized heavily the need for us to have a desire to teach in an urban environment. Having spent thirteen years of my own in the New York City public school system, and having become disenchanted with the segregation I'd encountered at schools in Massachusetts (in one first grade classroom in which I student taught, there was one African-American student in the entire class -- she was bussed in from a neighboring town, of course -- and when the librarian showed my students a movie about Ruby Bridges, the first black student to attend an all-white elementary school in the south, my students kept referring to her as "the Vanessa in the movie" and protested, "But we let Vanessa come to our school!"), I felt like I was up for the challenge.
But let's get real here: I thought "shut up" was a swear word until the fourth grade. And although I'd heard horror stories about things like second graders who say "I'm going to f**k you up" to each other, I never really thought I'd encounter it myself. Until one day I saw Nathaniel walking home from school, and his father was having a conversation with Nathaniel's older brother in which he casually tossed around curse words like they were popcorn kernels that were exploding their way into Nathaniel's brain. Is it any wonder that Nathaniel is one of my most challenging students or that he is so consistently rude and disrespectful to everyone around him?
Second graders in Newton do not threaten to f**k each other up. They're too busy taking swim lessons and getting privately tutored at places like Sylvan Learning Center. Which is why every urban teacher I know has such a beef with No Child Left Behind; obviously we want to hold our students to the same high standard, but how does whaling on them with standardized tests help us overcome the deficit that is a fact of life in less privileged areas?
After the fight, one of the students who'd tried to help break it up confided in me that "My dad keeps trying to teach me the wrong lesson. He says when someone hits you, you hit them back. I say tell the teacher. I say walk away. But he says pow, you hit them back."
This is why I worry about what will become of my students when they get older. I worry that we're spending so much time drilling them with academics in fear of federally mandated testing that we're losing sight of the responsibility we have to promote their social development. I worry that they are receiving deeply mixed signals from their teachers and parents about what kind of behavior is acceptable and who they should strive to be. And I worry that on days like today, when I yell at my students instead of trying to understand them, I'm only confusing them more and driving them to lash out in their anger.
Which is why I find myself wishing more and more that I had my own class; though I have no doubt that it would be just as challenging, it would be nice to have 25 or so students to worry about instead of 425.
I could smell the tension as soon as I walked into the classroom. The sub said they'd been "horrible." (The sub had also put some of them in charge of being "helpers," which means that there were kids touching the bell and moving the discipline cards. Lesson #1: Never let your students touch your bell or move your discipline cards.) It was the end of their first full week back from vacation, and the kids seemed keyed up, restless, ready to snap.
As soon as I asked them to put their writing folders away, Mohammed and Justin (who is ordinarily so docile that I've occasionally wondered whether he has mental challenges) got into a physical altercation. It wasn't the kind of irritated jostle I see my kindergarteners and first graders get into; there was real malice flashing in their eyes.
"WHOA!" I shouted, sounding like a jockey trying to tame a wild horse. Upstairs, the crisis intervention counselor had urged the teachers to "speak CAR" -- Calmly, Assertively, Respectfully. My "WHOA!" was precisely none of those things.
I instructed them to separate, cool off, ignore each other, take a breath. But after the mini lesson was over, Mohammed spit at Justin and apparently threatened to "f**k him up." Justin told Christopher that after I left, he would beat up Mohammed.
I believed both of them. This wasn't a situation where I could chastise someone for using unkind language or not keeping his hands to himself. This was a genuine, explosive crisis.
Let's get some perspective: I did my student teaching in Newton, Massachusetts, a town that has a median household income of $121,496 and was named the nation's safest city for three years in a row. When I interviewed for a teaching job with the New York City Department of Education -- in a group with two other young, white, female students at private colleges -- my recruiter emphasized heavily the need for us to have a desire to teach in an urban environment. Having spent thirteen years of my own in the New York City public school system, and having become disenchanted with the segregation I'd encountered at schools in Massachusetts (in one first grade classroom in which I student taught, there was one African-American student in the entire class -- she was bussed in from a neighboring town, of course -- and when the librarian showed my students a movie about Ruby Bridges, the first black student to attend an all-white elementary school in the south, my students kept referring to her as "the Vanessa in the movie" and protested, "But we let Vanessa come to our school!"), I felt like I was up for the challenge.
But let's get real here: I thought "shut up" was a swear word until the fourth grade. And although I'd heard horror stories about things like second graders who say "I'm going to f**k you up" to each other, I never really thought I'd encounter it myself. Until one day I saw Nathaniel walking home from school, and his father was having a conversation with Nathaniel's older brother in which he casually tossed around curse words like they were popcorn kernels that were exploding their way into Nathaniel's brain. Is it any wonder that Nathaniel is one of my most challenging students or that he is so consistently rude and disrespectful to everyone around him?
Second graders in Newton do not threaten to f**k each other up. They're too busy taking swim lessons and getting privately tutored at places like Sylvan Learning Center. Which is why every urban teacher I know has such a beef with No Child Left Behind; obviously we want to hold our students to the same high standard, but how does whaling on them with standardized tests help us overcome the deficit that is a fact of life in less privileged areas?
After the fight, one of the students who'd tried to help break it up confided in me that "My dad keeps trying to teach me the wrong lesson. He says when someone hits you, you hit them back. I say tell the teacher. I say walk away. But he says pow, you hit them back."
This is why I worry about what will become of my students when they get older. I worry that we're spending so much time drilling them with academics in fear of federally mandated testing that we're losing sight of the responsibility we have to promote their social development. I worry that they are receiving deeply mixed signals from their teachers and parents about what kind of behavior is acceptable and who they should strive to be. And I worry that on days like today, when I yell at my students instead of trying to understand them, I'm only confusing them more and driving them to lash out in their anger.
Which is why I find myself wishing more and more that I had my own class; though I have no doubt that it would be just as challenging, it would be nice to have 25 or so students to worry about instead of 425.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Move over, Imelda Marcos
Today I asked a second grader (ESL, mind you) if I could meet with him.
"Indeed!" he replied.
I asked my ESL first graders what we call those three dots that look like periods (correct answer: ellipsis).
"Lipsticks!" they called out.
I told them I would miss Alejandro, who apparently moved to Long Island.
"The friendship is in your heart," one of them told me.
I modeled for a small group of them how I could choose an idea for a story by thinking about places I had gone. "Let's see, where did I go, where did I go. Oh, I know! I went -- "
Phillip cut me off. "You went to Target!" he chimed in excitedly. I stared at him in amazement; I had -- indeed! -- gone to Target. Phillip is so totally my first grade soulmate.
I regrouped and continued with my story about how I found the perfect new shoes (which I happened to be wearing) at Target. And just as I was thinking that a story about shoes probably wasn't the best example to be sharing with a group of 7-year-old boys, Charlie studied my feet, gazed up at me sincerely and said -- I kid you not -- "Those are lovely shoes!"
"Indeed!" he replied.
I asked my ESL first graders what we call those three dots that look like periods (correct answer: ellipsis).
"Lipsticks!" they called out.
I told them I would miss Alejandro, who apparently moved to Long Island.
"The friendship is in your heart," one of them told me.
I modeled for a small group of them how I could choose an idea for a story by thinking about places I had gone. "Let's see, where did I go, where did I go. Oh, I know! I went -- "
Phillip cut me off. "You went to Target!" he chimed in excitedly. I stared at him in amazement; I had -- indeed! -- gone to Target. Phillip is so totally my first grade soulmate.
I regrouped and continued with my story about how I found the perfect new shoes (which I happened to be wearing) at Target. And just as I was thinking that a story about shoes probably wasn't the best example to be sharing with a group of 7-year-old boys, Charlie studied my feet, gazed up at me sincerely and said -- I kid you not -- "Those are lovely shoes!"
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Where everybody knows your name
I was proctoring the ELA exam yesterday when a girl looked up at me and said curiously, "Are you Miss Bray?"
"Miss Brave," I corrected her.
She smiled. "Oh!" she said. "My brother Phillip keeps talking about you!" Phillip is one of my favorite (see Item #6) first graders, and he also happens to talk nonstop about his sister, who is clearly his Hero, so it was great to finally meet her.
On Monday, Yovary gazed up at me, looking fairly pleased with himself, and announced, "I saw you on the subway yesterday!"
I wasn't on the subway on Sunday. "Maybe somebody who looks like me," I said. But Yovary seemed pretty insistent.
"Maybe the day before," I acknowledged, and his eyes lit up. "Yeah! I saw you. You were walking up the stairs and talking to your brother."
My brother? Hmmm. I don't have a brother, but I was on the subway with a boy. Curious, I tried to pump Yovary for more information.
"What did he look like?" I asked. He shrugged helplessly.
"His hair was...up," he said, motioning near his forehead.
"And do you know where you were?" I asked.
"I was sitting down. You didn't see me! I was behind you, and you were walking up the stairs with your brother."
"No, I mean, like, do you know if you were in Queens, or Manhattan...?"
"I was going to Mass," he said confidently.
"You were going to Mass?" I repeated.
"No, my daddy said he would buy a mask, so we was going to buy the mask at the place where we buy the mask and I saw you."
If I ever meet Yovary's dad, you can bet the first question I ask him will be, "Were you by any chance on the F train with your son on January 5?"
"Miss Brave," I corrected her.
She smiled. "Oh!" she said. "My brother Phillip keeps talking about you!" Phillip is one of my favorite (see Item #6) first graders, and he also happens to talk nonstop about his sister, who is clearly his Hero, so it was great to finally meet her.
On Monday, Yovary gazed up at me, looking fairly pleased with himself, and announced, "I saw you on the subway yesterday!"
I wasn't on the subway on Sunday. "Maybe somebody who looks like me," I said. But Yovary seemed pretty insistent.
"Maybe the day before," I acknowledged, and his eyes lit up. "Yeah! I saw you. You were walking up the stairs and talking to your brother."
My brother? Hmmm. I don't have a brother, but I was on the subway with a boy. Curious, I tried to pump Yovary for more information.
"What did he look like?" I asked. He shrugged helplessly.
"His hair was...up," he said, motioning near his forehead.
"And do you know where you were?" I asked.
"I was sitting down. You didn't see me! I was behind you, and you were walking up the stairs with your brother."
"No, I mean, like, do you know if you were in Queens, or Manhattan...?"
"I was going to Mass," he said confidently.
"You were going to Mass?" I repeated.
"No, my daddy said he would buy a mask, so we was going to buy the mask at the place where we buy the mask and I saw you."
If I ever meet Yovary's dad, you can bet the first question I ask him will be, "Were you by any chance on the F train with your son on January 5?"
Monday, January 7, 2008
Choose or lose
So here's my big dilemma:
Every single morning (but especially on Mondays) I drag myself mournfully out of bed, and while I'm dejectedly brushing my teeth and deciding whether I'm going to wear my uncomfortable but badass professional shoes or my scruffy but blissfully pain-free flats, I think: I can't do this next year, I don't want to do this next year, I need to have a different job next year, I hope I'm not a teacher next year.
And then most afternoons, as I'm heading away from school toward the gym and Duane Reade (I swear I spend the bulk of my non-teaching time in a Duane Reade), a teeny tiny Vivian Paley-esque spark glimmers within me and I think: Well...maybe. Maybe.
I know that it's perfectly natural to feel dread at the beginning of the school day and relief at the end, but which will be the stronger pull for me? Should I heed the advice in this Monster.com commercial (with which I strongly identify, by the way), or should I take heart in the message of this Teach NYC ad (with which I take exception; obviously New York's other influential role models wear Mets uniforms, not Yankee uniforms).
In other news, tomorrow is Day 1 of the dreaded ELA exam, and hmm, what's that I smell cooking in the air? Could that possibly be the smell of...doom?! I'll be proctoring, so it looks like I get to find out!
Every single morning (but especially on Mondays) I drag myself mournfully out of bed, and while I'm dejectedly brushing my teeth and deciding whether I'm going to wear my uncomfortable but badass professional shoes or my scruffy but blissfully pain-free flats, I think: I can't do this next year, I don't want to do this next year, I need to have a different job next year, I hope I'm not a teacher next year.
And then most afternoons, as I'm heading away from school toward the gym and Duane Reade (I swear I spend the bulk of my non-teaching time in a Duane Reade), a teeny tiny Vivian Paley-esque spark glimmers within me and I think: Well...maybe. Maybe.
I know that it's perfectly natural to feel dread at the beginning of the school day and relief at the end, but which will be the stronger pull for me? Should I heed the advice in this Monster.com commercial (with which I strongly identify, by the way), or should I take heart in the message of this Teach NYC ad (with which I take exception; obviously New York's other influential role models wear Mets uniforms, not Yankee uniforms).
In other news, tomorrow is Day 1 of the dreaded ELA exam, and hmm, what's that I smell cooking in the air? Could that possibly be the smell of...doom?! I'll be proctoring, so it looks like I get to find out!
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