This morning, a very verbal, intelligent student said to me, "Miss Brave, my daddy said something really bad about you." Then she kind of clapped her hands over her mouth. Half-concerned, half-curious, I asked what he had said.
"He wasn't gonna get up and take me to school because he was too lazy. So I said, 'Do you want Miss Brave to give me a bad report card and I won't go to third grade?' And he said, 'If Miss Brave gives you a bad report, I'll just punch her in the face. She's short anyway.'"
Apparently I don't deal with enough; now I have parents telling their students they have no problem with punching me. I felt like I was in that scene in It's a Wonderful Life where George Bailey calls up Zuzu's teacher and bawls her out for letting Zuzu walk home with her coat open and then the teacher's husband punches George in the bar. "She cried for an hour!"
To top it all off, on the way to lunch, one of my girls dropped an entire can of Pringles (why do parents send an entire can of Pringles for lunch? Particularly when we eat lunch at 10 am?) on the staircase, and The Baby decided to eat chips off the floor. I don't know why they constantly pull stunts like that when they're so totally and obviously going to get caught; besides the fact that about six grossed-out classmates ratted him out as soon as we exited the stairwell, plus the fact that their grossed-out-ness was reported to me by another teacher who overheard cries of "Ewwww, he ate it!", but he was staring at me bug-eyed with chipmunk cheeks and chip crumbs all over his face. It was exactly like that scene in cartoons where the cat eats the bird and there are bird feathers floating in the air.
30 more days?
Showing posts with label breakdowns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breakdowns. Show all posts
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The balancing act
One of my recent posts about Julio generated a flurry of discussion in the comments about the nature of collaboration, the role of students and teachers and the general fairness involved in pairing or "buddying" up students with special needs with other students. One commenter felt that I didn't display enough concern for the rights of the other students in my classroom, and I defended my position, which was basically: I'm trying to do what my mother taught me, which was to do the best I can!
Today we had a very, very difficult afternoon. Julio had not had a good day: yelling, singing, humming, tapping, taking his chair wherever he pleased, pulling his jacket over his head, etc. During math, I gave this direction to the whole class: "Take out your slates and your markers. If you can't find your slate or your marker, take out your notebook and a pencil instead. If you can't find your slate or your marker, take out your notebook and a pencil instead." Notice how I repeated this last part when I noticed kids starting to get up and wander around the room to look for extra slates or markers.
Julio had forgotten his marker. And I had forgotten to Pick My Battles. So as he got up from his seat to snag a marker after he had very specifically been told not to, I took the marker from his hand and asked him to take out his notebook.
Right around that time, Julio transformed into the Hulk. I'm familiar with Julio's Hulk routine, so initially I wasn't impressed. Basically it consists of rattling his desk back and forth as if he's threatening to tip it over. Occasionally he does tip it over, and then he goes full-on Hulk, grunting and groaning loudly as he tries to pick it up.
So there I am, trying to manage (1) the Hulk and (2) the math lesson. Briefly, it seemed as though the math lesson would win out. To Julio, I said, "I understand that you're upset, but you're choosing the wrong way to get my attention, so I'm not giving you my attention until you can choose a better way." To the class, I said, "If this dime is one whole, and two nickels can make a dime, what fraction of the dime would one nickel be?" The class is also familiar with Julio's Hulk routine, and although some of them were kind of eyeing him suspiciously out of the corner of their eyes, they were on the whole admirably focused on math.
Just as Lonny was about to offer a well-reasoned answer, the Hulk brought his desk crashing down on top of his leg. At which point the Hulk transformed back into Julio, a seven-year-old boy rolling around on the carpet clutching his leg and screaming and crying about how he had just chopped his leg off.
I immediately called the office and asked them to send someone upstairs, and then I told the class that we would have to change direction for a few minutes. I asked them to take out their math journals and work on math boxes instead. Lonny dropped his head back and said, "Aw, man! But I knew the answer!"
Eventually Lonny did get to offer his answer, after the security guard and the assistant principal led Julio away to the nurse, before I had to fill out the incident report and accident report and make the phone call home to Julio's mother. But I've been left grappling with all the questions raised by the Hulk, chief among them what can I do to make the rest of the year bearable? At this point, Julio is on a long waiting list for a seat in a self-contained class. When I call his mother to tell her what he's been doing in class, I'm not telling her anything she doesn't already know. My assistant principal is sticking to her "Document everything and call his mother" mantra; I have a 5-page single-spaced document of Julio's transgivings on my computer, and no one ever looks at it but me. Obviously I need to be more proactive and do a better job fighting for my students -- all of them-- but I hate casting myself in the role of agitator when at the moment I just feel overwhelmed.
Is my anonymous commenter right? Am I dooming my students to a lifetime of fearing impulsively violent classmates and being cast aside while emergencies like this one continue to build? Why, in a school where we've had to call the police and ambulances for disruptive students, do we still not have a crisis plan in place for these situations? Why does my assistant principal call me to nitpick the reading levels of my students but not to find out if my desk-flipper is flipping any desks over today?
Too many questions. Not enough solutions.
Today we had a very, very difficult afternoon. Julio had not had a good day: yelling, singing, humming, tapping, taking his chair wherever he pleased, pulling his jacket over his head, etc. During math, I gave this direction to the whole class: "Take out your slates and your markers. If you can't find your slate or your marker, take out your notebook and a pencil instead. If you can't find your slate or your marker, take out your notebook and a pencil instead." Notice how I repeated this last part when I noticed kids starting to get up and wander around the room to look for extra slates or markers.
Julio had forgotten his marker. And I had forgotten to Pick My Battles. So as he got up from his seat to snag a marker after he had very specifically been told not to, I took the marker from his hand and asked him to take out his notebook.
Right around that time, Julio transformed into the Hulk. I'm familiar with Julio's Hulk routine, so initially I wasn't impressed. Basically it consists of rattling his desk back and forth as if he's threatening to tip it over. Occasionally he does tip it over, and then he goes full-on Hulk, grunting and groaning loudly as he tries to pick it up.
So there I am, trying to manage (1) the Hulk and (2) the math lesson. Briefly, it seemed as though the math lesson would win out. To Julio, I said, "I understand that you're upset, but you're choosing the wrong way to get my attention, so I'm not giving you my attention until you can choose a better way." To the class, I said, "If this dime is one whole, and two nickels can make a dime, what fraction of the dime would one nickel be?" The class is also familiar with Julio's Hulk routine, and although some of them were kind of eyeing him suspiciously out of the corner of their eyes, they were on the whole admirably focused on math.
Just as Lonny was about to offer a well-reasoned answer, the Hulk brought his desk crashing down on top of his leg. At which point the Hulk transformed back into Julio, a seven-year-old boy rolling around on the carpet clutching his leg and screaming and crying about how he had just chopped his leg off.
I immediately called the office and asked them to send someone upstairs, and then I told the class that we would have to change direction for a few minutes. I asked them to take out their math journals and work on math boxes instead. Lonny dropped his head back and said, "Aw, man! But I knew the answer!"
Eventually Lonny did get to offer his answer, after the security guard and the assistant principal led Julio away to the nurse, before I had to fill out the incident report and accident report and make the phone call home to Julio's mother. But I've been left grappling with all the questions raised by the Hulk, chief among them what can I do to make the rest of the year bearable? At this point, Julio is on a long waiting list for a seat in a self-contained class. When I call his mother to tell her what he's been doing in class, I'm not telling her anything she doesn't already know. My assistant principal is sticking to her "Document everything and call his mother" mantra; I have a 5-page single-spaced document of Julio's transgivings on my computer, and no one ever looks at it but me. Obviously I need to be more proactive and do a better job fighting for my students -- all of them-- but I hate casting myself in the role of agitator when at the moment I just feel overwhelmed.
Is my anonymous commenter right? Am I dooming my students to a lifetime of fearing impulsively violent classmates and being cast aside while emergencies like this one continue to build? Why, in a school where we've had to call the police and ambulances for disruptive students, do we still not have a crisis plan in place for these situations? Why does my assistant principal call me to nitpick the reading levels of my students but not to find out if my desk-flipper is flipping any desks over today?
Too many questions. Not enough solutions.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
He's baaaack
Julio is back.
Not just at my school. Ohhhhh, no. Julio is back in my classroom.
I am so enraged over this entirely f-ed up situation that I can barely calm down enough to post about it.
Quick review. Julio has severe behavior problems at my school since kindergarten. By the time he gets to me, in second grade, his mother has decided that it's probably the school's fault, so she transfers him to another school. On his first day at his new school, Julio gets suspended. New school pesters and badgers Julio's mother until she finally agrees to have him evaluated. The evaluation recommends that Julio go to a self-contained, 12:1:1 classroom. Julio's mother loses it, refuses the IEP, and dumps him back in my school, where for reasons that are completely beyond me, they decide to put him back in my class.
There are six classes in the second grade. One of them is a self contained special education class with one teacher, twelve children (which means they're full) and four paras. One of them is a CTT class, with two teachers and a mixture of special education and general ed kids. One of them is a SETSS class, with one teacher, a para, and several children with IEPs who receive special education services. One of them is an advanced ESL class with a para. One of them is a beginning ESL class. And the last class is mine.
Let's see, should we put the boy with the IEP recommending 12:1:1 services in the CTT class, where he'll have a special education teacher? Should we perhaps place him in one of the two classes with paraprofessionals, so at least there will be another adult in the room with him? Or should we just dump him back in Miss Brave's class with 27 other students and hope he doesn't burn the school down?!
I get that his mother didn't sign the IEP, and therefore it's kind of like it doesn't exist. But, hello, just because the emperor thinks he's got a fabulous outfit on doesn't mean he's actually wearing any clothes. Julio was evaluated by trained professionals, and trained professionals think he needs the support of a self-contained classroom, and just because his mother lives in denial doesn't mean the rest of us should just ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Let's be clear on the details here: self-contained class = a maximum of twelve students with one teacher and at least one paraprofessional. Our self-contained second grade has twelve kids, one teacher and four paras. That's five adults in the room, nearly one for every two kids. My class = 28 students and just me, or: a ratio of 1:28. Are you kidding me? How is this allowed?
No one -- and I mean no one -- gave me a heads up, either; I went to pick up my class from lunch (i.e., not even the beginning of the day) and there he was. They literally dumped him in with the rest of my class while I was at lunch, and no one had the decency to warn me.
I've gone from being fired up to being depressed. How am I going to get through the rest of the year now? And what about my rights and my students' rights and Julio's rights -- not his mother's?
Not just at my school. Ohhhhh, no. Julio is back in my classroom.
I am so enraged over this entirely f-ed up situation that I can barely calm down enough to post about it.
Quick review. Julio has severe behavior problems at my school since kindergarten. By the time he gets to me, in second grade, his mother has decided that it's probably the school's fault, so she transfers him to another school. On his first day at his new school, Julio gets suspended. New school pesters and badgers Julio's mother until she finally agrees to have him evaluated. The evaluation recommends that Julio go to a self-contained, 12:1:1 classroom. Julio's mother loses it, refuses the IEP, and dumps him back in my school, where for reasons that are completely beyond me, they decide to put him back in my class.
There are six classes in the second grade. One of them is a self contained special education class with one teacher, twelve children (which means they're full) and four paras. One of them is a CTT class, with two teachers and a mixture of special education and general ed kids. One of them is a SETSS class, with one teacher, a para, and several children with IEPs who receive special education services. One of them is an advanced ESL class with a para. One of them is a beginning ESL class. And the last class is mine.
Let's see, should we put the boy with the IEP recommending 12:1:1 services in the CTT class, where he'll have a special education teacher? Should we perhaps place him in one of the two classes with paraprofessionals, so at least there will be another adult in the room with him? Or should we just dump him back in Miss Brave's class with 27 other students and hope he doesn't burn the school down?!
I get that his mother didn't sign the IEP, and therefore it's kind of like it doesn't exist. But, hello, just because the emperor thinks he's got a fabulous outfit on doesn't mean he's actually wearing any clothes. Julio was evaluated by trained professionals, and trained professionals think he needs the support of a self-contained classroom, and just because his mother lives in denial doesn't mean the rest of us should just ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Let's be clear on the details here: self-contained class = a maximum of twelve students with one teacher and at least one paraprofessional. Our self-contained second grade has twelve kids, one teacher and four paras. That's five adults in the room, nearly one for every two kids. My class = 28 students and just me, or: a ratio of 1:28. Are you kidding me? How is this allowed?
No one -- and I mean no one -- gave me a heads up, either; I went to pick up my class from lunch (i.e., not even the beginning of the day) and there he was. They literally dumped him in with the rest of my class while I was at lunch, and no one had the decency to warn me.
I've gone from being fired up to being depressed. How am I going to get through the rest of the year now? And what about my rights and my students' rights and Julio's rights -- not his mother's?
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Hysterical
I think I've reached my breaking point.
Crying in class? Check. Screaming so loud at misbehaving kid that good kid next to him jumps back in fear, while misbehaving kid continues to not care? Check. Resisting urge to actually physically harm misbehaving kid? Check. Slamming door to classroom so hard that stuff falls on floor? Check. Spending lunch period in classroom with door closed and lights turned off, hysterical? Check. Watching good kids cover their ears in futile attempt to avoid the commotion created by bad kids? Check. Conferencing with the guidance counselor about how one of my kids apparently drew graphic images of, like, anal rape in his notebook? Check.
This is not the kind of teacher I want to be, and this is not the kind of person I want to be. And I want out. Any readers out there want to hire me?
Crying in class? Check. Screaming so loud at misbehaving kid that good kid next to him jumps back in fear, while misbehaving kid continues to not care? Check. Resisting urge to actually physically harm misbehaving kid? Check. Slamming door to classroom so hard that stuff falls on floor? Check. Spending lunch period in classroom with door closed and lights turned off, hysterical? Check. Watching good kids cover their ears in futile attempt to avoid the commotion created by bad kids? Check. Conferencing with the guidance counselor about how one of my kids apparently drew graphic images of, like, anal rape in his notebook? Check.
This is not the kind of teacher I want to be, and this is not the kind of person I want to be. And I want out. Any readers out there want to hire me?
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Dangerous minds indeed
Ohhhhh boy.
William's behavior has escalated to the brink of complete insanity. Just to give you a small tasting of what our days are like, here are my notes on him from last week:
At one point, in desperation, I sent two kids to fetch the guidance counselor. What do I do, I asked her, when William is grabbing things out of other kids' hands, or jabbing pencils in the direction of their faces, or doing backflips on the carpet, or yelling out so loudly that I can't make myself heard? What do I do with the other 26 kids in my class?
She stared at me like I was speaking Chinese. Then she asked me if I had established any consequences for his behavior.
"Ooooh, consequences!" I felt like saying. "What a fantastic idea! I hadn't thought of establishing consequences for kids who beat up on other kids all day long!"
Then she told me to send home a behavior chart every day that his mother would have to sign, and set up a meeting with her every week if I had to. So...still no ideas on how this is fair to the other 26 kids in my class.
I told her that William frequently throws things around the room, and obviously he won't give them up when he's told to. Her advice for that? "When he's not looking, take away anything he's throwing and put it up high so he can't reach it."
OK. First of all, this is a kid who stands on tables, and who at nine and a half years old is about two feet taller than the rest of my second graders. Second of all, anything he's throwing? Is pretty much anything in the classroom that's not nailed down (and sometimes he even goes for the brass ring and tries for those things, like all the time he spends banging away at the broken pencil sharpener). We have these stupid old tennis balls on the bottoms of our chairs (to prevent them from scraping against the floor, because all the rubber tips fell off), and he takes them off the chairs and hurls them against the wall and the ceiling. He shoots free throws at the trash can with paper towels from halfway across the room (because naturally he visits the bathroom whenever he wants and spends time at the sink whenever he wants).
Oh, but what's worse than William's behavior? The fact that he's taking Julio right along with him. Last week, Julio managed to fit in outbursts of the F word and the "sh" word amidst his busy schedule of (a) playing Tic-Tac-Toe with William during my writing lesson, (b) eating chips in class, (c) emptying his pencil sharpener onto the floor and (d) teaming up with William for a loud and raucous duet of "I Kissed a Girl" (yes, really).
Am I the world's worst teacher, or what? Based on the fact that two of my 27 students are hysterically and completely out of control in my classroom, I'm tempted to say yes. And yet my students managed to learn how to use counterweights to balance objects in science, how to decide when to use the "ck" digraph spelling pattern, how to plan out a small moment story in writing and how to tell time to the nearest half-hour on a clock. And this past Friday, when it was inching towards dismissal and William and Julio were literally bouncing off the walls and all of our nerves were frayed, I plopped down in front of the rest of my 25 kids on the carpet and said to them, perhaps unwisely, "Can you believe how some kids act in our classroom?!" and they collapsed into shocked agreement, all on my side. "Can't we get through one day without giving you a sore throat?" one of them said plaintively -- and that came from a kid who -- if I didn't have William and Jose tearing up the class -- would be one of my behavior challenges.
Ohhhhhh boy.
William's behavior has escalated to the brink of complete insanity. Just to give you a small tasting of what our days are like, here are my notes on him from last week:
- Jumping over kids on rug
- Does handstands and somersaults on rug
- Flips over backwards on rug
- Squashes Samantha against the wall with his body at the water fountain
- Goes into Julio’s backpack
- Physically pulls a boy away from the closet
- Says “Shut up” to other kids
- Calls Jane a “dum dum”
- Says “Suck my dick” repeatedly to Jonathan
- Throws eraser at me
- Makes post-its into paper airplanes and throws them
- Pushes Jose with his body
- Smacks his fist into his palm in someone else’s direction (as a threat)
- Takes cards out of Mark’s desk
- Throws ball around the room
- Tries to block Julio from walking around him, then trips him on purpose
- Runs in hall during fire drill, knocking Julio to ground
- Throwing paper airplanes
- Kicks over Jose’s schoolbag on purpose
- Calls other kids “babies” and “liars”
- Throws pencils and writing folder across the room
- Keeps going into the closet, closing the door, banging the doors from the inside and screaming out loud chicken noises
- Says “Big far liar” and “Liar” to other kids repeatedly
- Says he wants to play with blocks and toys
- Takes Jose’s hat and wears it around the room
- Throws his own hat across the room at the garbage
- Jumps on top of a desk and bounces backwards onto the floor
- Goes into the closet and balances on top of books in closet
- Says he hates the class and all the kids are “ugly”
- Shoves Jose so that he falls to the floor
- Shoves Julio into the closet
At one point, in desperation, I sent two kids to fetch the guidance counselor. What do I do, I asked her, when William is grabbing things out of other kids' hands, or jabbing pencils in the direction of their faces, or doing backflips on the carpet, or yelling out so loudly that I can't make myself heard? What do I do with the other 26 kids in my class?
She stared at me like I was speaking Chinese. Then she asked me if I had established any consequences for his behavior.
"Ooooh, consequences!" I felt like saying. "What a fantastic idea! I hadn't thought of establishing consequences for kids who beat up on other kids all day long!"
Then she told me to send home a behavior chart every day that his mother would have to sign, and set up a meeting with her every week if I had to. So...still no ideas on how this is fair to the other 26 kids in my class.
I told her that William frequently throws things around the room, and obviously he won't give them up when he's told to. Her advice for that? "When he's not looking, take away anything he's throwing and put it up high so he can't reach it."
OK. First of all, this is a kid who stands on tables, and who at nine and a half years old is about two feet taller than the rest of my second graders. Second of all, anything he's throwing? Is pretty much anything in the classroom that's not nailed down (and sometimes he even goes for the brass ring and tries for those things, like all the time he spends banging away at the broken pencil sharpener). We have these stupid old tennis balls on the bottoms of our chairs (to prevent them from scraping against the floor, because all the rubber tips fell off), and he takes them off the chairs and hurls them against the wall and the ceiling. He shoots free throws at the trash can with paper towels from halfway across the room (because naturally he visits the bathroom whenever he wants and spends time at the sink whenever he wants).
Oh, but what's worse than William's behavior? The fact that he's taking Julio right along with him. Last week, Julio managed to fit in outbursts of the F word and the "sh" word amidst his busy schedule of (a) playing Tic-Tac-Toe with William during my writing lesson, (b) eating chips in class, (c) emptying his pencil sharpener onto the floor and (d) teaming up with William for a loud and raucous duet of "I Kissed a Girl" (yes, really).
Am I the world's worst teacher, or what? Based on the fact that two of my 27 students are hysterically and completely out of control in my classroom, I'm tempted to say yes. And yet my students managed to learn how to use counterweights to balance objects in science, how to decide when to use the "ck" digraph spelling pattern, how to plan out a small moment story in writing and how to tell time to the nearest half-hour on a clock. And this past Friday, when it was inching towards dismissal and William and Julio were literally bouncing off the walls and all of our nerves were frayed, I plopped down in front of the rest of my 25 kids on the carpet and said to them, perhaps unwisely, "Can you believe how some kids act in our classroom?!" and they collapsed into shocked agreement, all on my side. "Can't we get through one day without giving you a sore throat?" one of them said plaintively -- and that came from a kid who -- if I didn't have William and Jose tearing up the class -- would be one of my behavior challenges.
Ohhhhhh boy.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Punching out...and in
I wonder if there's a name for the condition in which one panics before the first day of school and finds oneself making endless return trips to Staples, forking over exorbitant amounts of cash for anything that might conceivably make the day go easier.
If there isn't, I'd like to propose to name it after me.
I already bought two packs of punch-out letters, but foolishly abandoned them at school. With a limited amount of time left tomorrow to get my room ready, and with many, many letters that still need to be placed on my walls, I found myself at Staples tonight, buying two more packs so I could punch out the letters beforehand. (Sidebar: Those letters are the devil. Way harder to punch out than I thought they would be. Arranged in seemingly random order. And when they only give you one W in a pack, and you want to spell out "Look What We Did," you're doomed right from the start!) I sent Mr. Brave off to Best Buy to purchase a new printer, because ours is always on the fritz and I foresee the need to print out many things in the first few days of school, such as the letter to send parents that I haven't written yet and therefore can't ask for copies of.
I bought a huge pack of mechanical pencils (on sale) in case the kids don't come in with pencils. I bought about 40 folders during the penny folder sale and am now contemplating asking Staples if they'll let me trade colors, since I bought my folders in a rainbow and then realized I should buy them all in the color of our writing folders, since they'll definitely wear out during the year and I'll need new ones. Then I started worrying about all the things I didn't see in my room: Where were all the dry erase markers? We're being told constantly that we're completely tapped out of money for supplies, so am I going to have to go back out tomorrow and buy tons of dry erase markers?
I have to say, last year, I was not this nervous about returning to school. And I'm 100% sure that if I were going back to the position I had last year, I would be cool as a cucumber right now, instead of panicking over my punch-out letters. Yes, yes, this year will be a grand new adventure, and yes, there's even a possibility I might like being a classroom teacher, and yes, this experience will be good for me even if I don't like it. But right now, I feel like every student in New York: I don't want to go!
If there isn't, I'd like to propose to name it after me.
I already bought two packs of punch-out letters, but foolishly abandoned them at school. With a limited amount of time left tomorrow to get my room ready, and with many, many letters that still need to be placed on my walls, I found myself at Staples tonight, buying two more packs so I could punch out the letters beforehand. (Sidebar: Those letters are the devil. Way harder to punch out than I thought they would be. Arranged in seemingly random order. And when they only give you one W in a pack, and you want to spell out "Look What We Did," you're doomed right from the start!) I sent Mr. Brave off to Best Buy to purchase a new printer, because ours is always on the fritz and I foresee the need to print out many things in the first few days of school, such as the letter to send parents that I haven't written yet and therefore can't ask for copies of.
I bought a huge pack of mechanical pencils (on sale) in case the kids don't come in with pencils. I bought about 40 folders during the penny folder sale and am now contemplating asking Staples if they'll let me trade colors, since I bought my folders in a rainbow and then realized I should buy them all in the color of our writing folders, since they'll definitely wear out during the year and I'll need new ones. Then I started worrying about all the things I didn't see in my room: Where were all the dry erase markers? We're being told constantly that we're completely tapped out of money for supplies, so am I going to have to go back out tomorrow and buy tons of dry erase markers?
I have to say, last year, I was not this nervous about returning to school. And I'm 100% sure that if I were going back to the position I had last year, I would be cool as a cucumber right now, instead of panicking over my punch-out letters. Yes, yes, this year will be a grand new adventure, and yes, there's even a possibility I might like being a classroom teacher, and yes, this experience will be good for me even if I don't like it. But right now, I feel like every student in New York: I don't want to go!
Friday, September 4, 2009
Time for a back-to-school emotional breakdown
It's been an emotional seesaw of a back-to-school week. First there was the nightmare of the backing paper; then I started to get a little excited about my room. Then I saw other teachers' rooms and worried that mine wasn't finished enough; then other teachers told me they thought my room looked great, so I felt better.
I was back at school again this morning, and my day was packed with errands. I was looking forward to relaxing and enjoying this last weekend before school. Which is why you should never, ever check your DOE e-mail when you're looking forward to relaxing and enjoying a weekend.
I got a memo about interclassing ESL students due to the results of the NYSESLAT. This happens every year at the beginning of the school year; ESL students get switched around depending on whether the NYSESLAT deems them "beginning, intermediate or advanced" ELLs. I have a holdover on my roster whom I had been expecting to be interclassed to an ESL class (I don't have any other ELLs), and he was.
OK, fine. But then further down on the list, I see I'm getting a new student. But not just any new student. My new student happens to be William.
Now, I had William in my AIS reading group last year. That's because William was in second grade last year. What's worse, William was in second grade the year before that. The 2009-2010 school year will be William's third year in a row in second grade. Put another way, William has been in second grade as long as I have been a teacher.
I don't think William belongs in second grade for the third year in a row, and I don't think he'll get anything out of it. At this point, I don't think William belongs in general education at all. Even though he's never been "diagnosed" with a learning disability of any kind, he's so emotionally broken down by being held over so many times that he's completely uninterested in anything I have to teach him. And then there's the other issues -- William is a big kid, and I just can't picture him next to my other students who were in kindergarten when he was in second grade for the first time. I already have boys on my roster to watch out for, and putting William -- who has a lot of anger and who last year hit, kicked and choked other kids -- just seems like a terrible idea.
Worst of all, he's being moved into my class from a CTT class. As in, a class with two teachers and a para that serves special education students? Most ridiculous of all, he's not even ESL, and neither is the CTT class, so I have no idea why they would do this to us.
I was back at school again this morning, and my day was packed with errands. I was looking forward to relaxing and enjoying this last weekend before school. Which is why you should never, ever check your DOE e-mail when you're looking forward to relaxing and enjoying a weekend.
I got a memo about interclassing ESL students due to the results of the NYSESLAT. This happens every year at the beginning of the school year; ESL students get switched around depending on whether the NYSESLAT deems them "beginning, intermediate or advanced" ELLs. I have a holdover on my roster whom I had been expecting to be interclassed to an ESL class (I don't have any other ELLs), and he was.
OK, fine. But then further down on the list, I see I'm getting a new student. But not just any new student. My new student happens to be William.
Now, I had William in my AIS reading group last year. That's because William was in second grade last year. What's worse, William was in second grade the year before that. The 2009-2010 school year will be William's third year in a row in second grade. Put another way, William has been in second grade as long as I have been a teacher.
I don't think William belongs in second grade for the third year in a row, and I don't think he'll get anything out of it. At this point, I don't think William belongs in general education at all. Even though he's never been "diagnosed" with a learning disability of any kind, he's so emotionally broken down by being held over so many times that he's completely uninterested in anything I have to teach him. And then there's the other issues -- William is a big kid, and I just can't picture him next to my other students who were in kindergarten when he was in second grade for the first time. I already have boys on my roster to watch out for, and putting William -- who has a lot of anger and who last year hit, kicked and choked other kids -- just seems like a terrible idea.
Worst of all, he's being moved into my class from a CTT class. As in, a class with two teachers and a para that serves special education students? Most ridiculous of all, he's not even ESL, and neither is the CTT class, so I have no idea why they would do this to us.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Got a revolution behind my eyes, we got to get up and organize
The organization sheet is here.
But before I reveal its contents, let me just tell you about the grief it has caused me these past few weeks: I am exhausted. My head hurts. I itch. I couldn't eat at our potluck lunch this afternoon because my stomach was in knots.
So where did I end up? In a second grade classroom of my own (not a CTT class as previously rumored; I think those teachers felt so strongly about co-teaching together next year that they asked my principal to reconsider keeping them together).
People keep asking me, "Are you excited? Are you happy?" The truth is that I'm not, but it's not even completely because I have to give up my (relatively) cushy AIS position for a classroom, or because I'm totally switching gears again for the second year in a row. It's because my administration has been acting like they're the Wizards of Oz these past few weeks, refusing to divulge any information about their decision-making process -- or, come to think of it, any information at all. There are teachers at my school who got called into the principal's office a week ago only to be told that they were moving rooms, but meanwhile there are other teachers who are making huge program changes, to positions they didn't even ask for at all on their preference sheets, and no one in the administration had the courtesy to tell them in person. More than anything else, I feel disrespected, like I'm being slighted for something I don't even know about. You tell me how fabulous I am all year and then boot me for someone who didn't even apply for it? That, as Cynthia Lord's Catherine would say, stinks a big one.
And now, my head is spinning with everything I'll have to do next year. I'm completely overwhelmed...and so totally done with this year that I don't know how I'm going to stand the next few weeks. And don't get me wrong, it's not that I dread the idea of having my own classroom -- I'm already swimming with ideas and plans. I'm ready to see it as a challenge: You want me in a second grade classroom? I'm going to make it the best second grade classroom it can be.
But please, let me have a little summer first. Please.
But before I reveal its contents, let me just tell you about the grief it has caused me these past few weeks: I am exhausted. My head hurts. I itch. I couldn't eat at our potluck lunch this afternoon because my stomach was in knots.
So where did I end up? In a second grade classroom of my own (not a CTT class as previously rumored; I think those teachers felt so strongly about co-teaching together next year that they asked my principal to reconsider keeping them together).
People keep asking me, "Are you excited? Are you happy?" The truth is that I'm not, but it's not even completely because I have to give up my (relatively) cushy AIS position for a classroom, or because I'm totally switching gears again for the second year in a row. It's because my administration has been acting like they're the Wizards of Oz these past few weeks, refusing to divulge any information about their decision-making process -- or, come to think of it, any information at all. There are teachers at my school who got called into the principal's office a week ago only to be told that they were moving rooms, but meanwhile there are other teachers who are making huge program changes, to positions they didn't even ask for at all on their preference sheets, and no one in the administration had the courtesy to tell them in person. More than anything else, I feel disrespected, like I'm being slighted for something I don't even know about. You tell me how fabulous I am all year and then boot me for someone who didn't even apply for it? That, as Cynthia Lord's Catherine would say, stinks a big one.
And now, my head is spinning with everything I'll have to do next year. I'm completely overwhelmed...and so totally done with this year that I don't know how I'm going to stand the next few weeks. And don't get me wrong, it's not that I dread the idea of having my own classroom -- I'm already swimming with ideas and plans. I'm ready to see it as a challenge: You want me in a second grade classroom? I'm going to make it the best second grade classroom it can be.
But please, let me have a little summer first. Please.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Rumor has it
I now know that I am not second grade or first grade AIS next year. The latest rumor (one of my colleagues said to me, "Miss Brave, have you heard any rumors about yourself? Because I heard a rumor about you!") is that I'll be doing a second grade CTT class (although I think CTT is now known as something else...see, I'm not even up on the lingo). CTT stands for "Collaborative Team Teaching," and CTT classes contain 40% special education and 60% general education students, with a special ed teacher and a general ed teacher team-teaching the class.
I did check CTT on my preference sheet, but the rumors say I'm with a special ed teacher who is currently in a third grade CTT. She and her co-teacher work really well together and want to stay together next year, so I have no idea why my crazy administration wants to split them up and I feel really weird and awkward about the whole situation even though I obviously have no control over it.
Meanwhile, Monday is like the absolute last day according to our contract that we can be notified about these things, but administration is still saying things like, "The reorganization sheet isn't final" and being extremely coy about everything. Monday is definitely going to be an interesting day.
I did check CTT on my preference sheet, but the rumors say I'm with a special ed teacher who is currently in a third grade CTT. She and her co-teacher work really well together and want to stay together next year, so I have no idea why my crazy administration wants to split them up and I feel really weird and awkward about the whole situation even though I obviously have no control over it.
Meanwhile, Monday is like the absolute last day according to our contract that we can be notified about these things, but administration is still saying things like, "The reorganization sheet isn't final" and being extremely coy about everything. Monday is definitely going to be an interesting day.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Not counting my chickens
So. It's not a secret that I don't always exactly love my job. But I do consider it a vast improvement over what I did last year. When preference sheet time rolled around, I dutifully dusted off my resume and worked up a letter of intent (because for some reason even AIS teachers have to re-apply for AIS) for an AIS position. In second grade. (There's no place for listing grade preferences for AIS, but I sneakily mentioned in my cover letter that I looked forward to being part of the second grade team again next year.)
On Friday, one of my second grade colleagues, a lovely and dynamic teacher whom I consider a friend, was called into the principal's office and told that she'd be taking the second grade AIS position next year.
I? Was told nothing.
Needless to say, I have spent the entire weekend freaking out. What does it mean? Am I going to first grade AIS? Am I going into a classroom? Why would administration make us apply for AIS positions when they just end up giving them to whoever they want anyway? (My colleague, who I am, don't get me wrong, happy for, and who I believe will do a great job in the position, nevertheless did not actually put in for AIS.) Why would they tell her that she was taking my job without telling me what I would be doing?
Then I started getting paranoid: Does my principal know I sent out a few resumes through the open market transfer system? Does she know I say unpleasant things about our school on my blog? Am I being punished?
At this point, best case scenario, I go down to first grade AIS (because the first grade AIS teacher would like to go into a classroom). But here's what I don't understand: Not to brag about my general fabulousness or anything, but this year, I have gotten pretty much nothing but compliments from administration. In my last post-observation conference, my AP told me I was "flawless." So if I'm good at my job, and they like the way I'm doing my job, and I ask for the same job again next year...why wouldn't I get that job? Why would they give it away to someone who didn't even request it?
Aaaaarrrghhhh. Rumor has it that our reorganization sheet is being released on Tuesday; I'm hoping I'll find out something before I get the paper in my mailbox and potentially start, like, crying in front of the entire office when I see my name next to a fifth grade class or something. But in the meantime, the waiting is exhausting.
On Friday, one of my second grade colleagues, a lovely and dynamic teacher whom I consider a friend, was called into the principal's office and told that she'd be taking the second grade AIS position next year.
I? Was told nothing.
Needless to say, I have spent the entire weekend freaking out. What does it mean? Am I going to first grade AIS? Am I going into a classroom? Why would administration make us apply for AIS positions when they just end up giving them to whoever they want anyway? (My colleague, who I am, don't get me wrong, happy for, and who I believe will do a great job in the position, nevertheless did not actually put in for AIS.) Why would they tell her that she was taking my job without telling me what I would be doing?
Then I started getting paranoid: Does my principal know I sent out a few resumes through the open market transfer system? Does she know I say unpleasant things about our school on my blog? Am I being punished?
At this point, best case scenario, I go down to first grade AIS (because the first grade AIS teacher would like to go into a classroom). But here's what I don't understand: Not to brag about my general fabulousness or anything, but this year, I have gotten pretty much nothing but compliments from administration. In my last post-observation conference, my AP told me I was "flawless." So if I'm good at my job, and they like the way I'm doing my job, and I ask for the same job again next year...why wouldn't I get that job? Why would they give it away to someone who didn't even request it?
Aaaaarrrghhhh. Rumor has it that our reorganization sheet is being released on Tuesday; I'm hoping I'll find out something before I get the paper in my mailbox and potentially start, like, crying in front of the entire office when I see my name next to a fifth grade class or something. But in the meantime, the waiting is exhausting.
Monday, June 1, 2009
In the past 8 days of school...
I have had 5 full-day coverages.
I'm not a math teacher, but even I can tell you that is messed up.
Today I covered a class with a student who is, shall we say, behaviorally challenged. Severely behaviorally challenged. As in, when I was calling students to line up and I said, "If you are wearing clothing with buttons on it, you may get on line," he made a rude gesture and yelled out, "My penis has buttons!" No matter what I said to him or how I said it, he responded by screaming at me: "MAKE ME!" (Or, occasionally and more perplexingly, "MILK ME!")
On our way into the classroom, he grabbed a bucket of plastic weather symbols, dumped it out onto the floor in the hallway and then tossed the bucket at my feet. I looked up and saw an assistant principal standing a few feet away in the hall, watching the whole thing. Oh good, I thought with some relief, she'll help me handle the situation, since this is a student she's very familiar with and I've never dealt with him before.
She watched the entire situation unfold, did nothing, said nothing, and walked away. Meanwhile, Mr. Personality ran into the classroom, grabbed hold of the closet doors, began slamming them -- BANG! BANG! BANG! -- and then screamed out, "That was an ACCIDENT!"
Thanks for your help, AP! Honestly, I do not want to work in a school where that kind of thing is OK.
I'm not a math teacher, but even I can tell you that is messed up.
Today I covered a class with a student who is, shall we say, behaviorally challenged. Severely behaviorally challenged. As in, when I was calling students to line up and I said, "If you are wearing clothing with buttons on it, you may get on line," he made a rude gesture and yelled out, "My penis has buttons!" No matter what I said to him or how I said it, he responded by screaming at me: "MAKE ME!" (Or, occasionally and more perplexingly, "MILK ME!")
On our way into the classroom, he grabbed a bucket of plastic weather symbols, dumped it out onto the floor in the hallway and then tossed the bucket at my feet. I looked up and saw an assistant principal standing a few feet away in the hall, watching the whole thing. Oh good, I thought with some relief, she'll help me handle the situation, since this is a student she's very familiar with and I've never dealt with him before.
She watched the entire situation unfold, did nothing, said nothing, and walked away. Meanwhile, Mr. Personality ran into the classroom, grabbed hold of the closet doors, began slamming them -- BANG! BANG! BANG! -- and then screamed out, "That was an ACCIDENT!"
Thanks for your help, AP! Honestly, I do not want to work in a school where that kind of thing is OK.
Monday, April 6, 2009
If wishes were attitude adjustments
William and Jonathan have officially pushed me to the breaking point. Today, when I brightly called Jonathan over for guided reading, I was rewarded with a huge sigh and body language that screamed, "I hate reading, school, and you (not necessarily in that order)." While Jonathan and I were having our guided reading, William was doing what he does best: simultaneously not reading at all and preventing other kids from doing their reading.
During the mini lesson, Joseph ripped a sticker (presumably awarded to him earlier in the day) off his shirt, tore it in half, and then proceeded to rip it into tinier pieces that he stuck to each of his fingernails like he was giving himself a manicure. Meanwhile, William was playing with some little toy on wheels, which I valiantly tried to ignore until it went skidding across the table and clattered to the floor, causing everyone else in the group to turn around because they completely lack the ability to ignore a distracting classmate.
After the mini lesson, I called an emergency circle meeting to discuss why our group has recently devolved into a cesspool of eye-rolling, loud sighing, ridiculously gloomy body language and general rudeness and mutiny. Even my sweetest, hardest working, most enthusiastic kids have lately been all doom and gloom. I think it's spring fever, only without the spring.
So anyway, I'm having this emergency circle meeting at which we're getting to the root of the various obstacles to becoming good readers: "I'm tired," "I have a headache," "I have a stomachache," "My eyes hurt," "Other people are bothering me and then everyone gets in a fight," "I'm bored." Bored is the one that killed me, because guess what? TC is boring. And guess what? School is probably boring too. A typical schedule for these kids is reading, writing, word work, lunch, math, read aloud, social studies. It's been a long winter, so they don't go out for recess. They don't get choice time. They don't get to play games, or draw. It's just go go go all the time with academics -- no wonder they're bored. It's a virtual pressure cooker of academia.
Anyway, I humored them and took suggestions on how to make our reading time more interesting. Of course, I got the usual "You could let us play with toys in school," to which I was all, hello, you already know how to play with toys, you don't need someone to teach you how to play with toys, but how about someone teaching you how to read? But then some of the kids actually offered some halfway thoughtful suggestions, like giving them more opportunities to choose their own reading material or occasionally letting them use a puppet to act out their books. OK, I can work with that.
Can Jonathan work with that? Obviously not, because he spent this discussion trying to shove some tiny broken pieces of God knows what through slats in the closet door. When a classmate hissed at him to stop, he yelled at her. When I reminded the group at large that if we see someone doing the wrong thing, and we try to help them do the right thing, but they continue to do the wrong thing, we should just take care of ourselves and ignore them, he took this as an opportunity to taunt his classmate.
Meanwhile, while I was trying to have this genuine, grown-up discussion in a circle on the floor, William was sitting above us on a chair, being obnoxious. Yelling out things like, "It should be a toy workshop in here!" Flat out refusing to join us in the circle ("I ain't going nowhere down there with them!") but also refusing to relocate to a different spot in the room. In short, William is only satisfied when he is working his hardest to antagonize everyone else. If I ignore him, he goes right on being disruptive until he is impossible to ignore. But if I give him the attention he wants -- whether it's positive or negative -- he shuts down completely, pulling his sweatshirt over his head or burying his head in his arms. But then five minutes later, he's at it again. Because he doesn't know how to be part of a group, doesn't understand how to make friends without acting like a clown who calls attention to himself.
Their classroom teacher and I have tried virtually everything for these two boys. We have communicated with their parents through e-mails, notes home and phone calls about positive and negative behavior. We have tried rewards of every shape and size. We have awarded special privileges and taken them away. We have tried partnering them with every variety of classmate and sitting them in every variety of reading spot with every variety of reading material. We have been patient and we have been generous. But now my patience is exhausted, I am out of strategies to try and I don't know how we are going to survive the next two and a half months.
During the mini lesson, Joseph ripped a sticker (presumably awarded to him earlier in the day) off his shirt, tore it in half, and then proceeded to rip it into tinier pieces that he stuck to each of his fingernails like he was giving himself a manicure. Meanwhile, William was playing with some little toy on wheels, which I valiantly tried to ignore until it went skidding across the table and clattered to the floor, causing everyone else in the group to turn around because they completely lack the ability to ignore a distracting classmate.
After the mini lesson, I called an emergency circle meeting to discuss why our group has recently devolved into a cesspool of eye-rolling, loud sighing, ridiculously gloomy body language and general rudeness and mutiny. Even my sweetest, hardest working, most enthusiastic kids have lately been all doom and gloom. I think it's spring fever, only without the spring.
So anyway, I'm having this emergency circle meeting at which we're getting to the root of the various obstacles to becoming good readers: "I'm tired," "I have a headache," "I have a stomachache," "My eyes hurt," "Other people are bothering me and then everyone gets in a fight," "I'm bored." Bored is the one that killed me, because guess what? TC is boring. And guess what? School is probably boring too. A typical schedule for these kids is reading, writing, word work, lunch, math, read aloud, social studies. It's been a long winter, so they don't go out for recess. They don't get choice time. They don't get to play games, or draw. It's just go go go all the time with academics -- no wonder they're bored. It's a virtual pressure cooker of academia.
Anyway, I humored them and took suggestions on how to make our reading time more interesting. Of course, I got the usual "You could let us play with toys in school," to which I was all, hello, you already know how to play with toys, you don't need someone to teach you how to play with toys, but how about someone teaching you how to read? But then some of the kids actually offered some halfway thoughtful suggestions, like giving them more opportunities to choose their own reading material or occasionally letting them use a puppet to act out their books. OK, I can work with that.
Can Jonathan work with that? Obviously not, because he spent this discussion trying to shove some tiny broken pieces of God knows what through slats in the closet door. When a classmate hissed at him to stop, he yelled at her. When I reminded the group at large that if we see someone doing the wrong thing, and we try to help them do the right thing, but they continue to do the wrong thing, we should just take care of ourselves and ignore them, he took this as an opportunity to taunt his classmate.
Meanwhile, while I was trying to have this genuine, grown-up discussion in a circle on the floor, William was sitting above us on a chair, being obnoxious. Yelling out things like, "It should be a toy workshop in here!" Flat out refusing to join us in the circle ("I ain't going nowhere down there with them!") but also refusing to relocate to a different spot in the room. In short, William is only satisfied when he is working his hardest to antagonize everyone else. If I ignore him, he goes right on being disruptive until he is impossible to ignore. But if I give him the attention he wants -- whether it's positive or negative -- he shuts down completely, pulling his sweatshirt over his head or burying his head in his arms. But then five minutes later, he's at it again. Because he doesn't know how to be part of a group, doesn't understand how to make friends without acting like a clown who calls attention to himself.
Their classroom teacher and I have tried virtually everything for these two boys. We have communicated with their parents through e-mails, notes home and phone calls about positive and negative behavior. We have tried rewards of every shape and size. We have awarded special privileges and taken them away. We have tried partnering them with every variety of classmate and sitting them in every variety of reading spot with every variety of reading material. We have been patient and we have been generous. But now my patience is exhausted, I am out of strategies to try and I don't know how we are going to survive the next two and a half months.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Thank goodness for mid-winter break
What would school be like without vacations? I desperately needed this break (despite the fact that I already sort of had a break grading the ELA a few weeks ago). Lately I've been feeling really down about school without really knowing why. I know the constant rearranging of my schedule has been getting to me, especially because I've been working really hard to make sure my students get all they can out of our non-fiction unit and a lot of my hard work gets thrown out the window when I'm not there. I know I've been starting to worry a lot more about where my students are headed in third grade and beyond. A lot of them just aren't progressing the way they need to be, and they don't seem to share the sense of urgency about it that I do, which means that they will always be behind.
It's past the famous 100th day of school, which means it's more than halfway through second grade, and I still have kids aimlessly spinning around in the meeting area during my mini lesson, or staring blankly into space, or tearing holes in their book baggies. It's getting to be that point in the year where my patience starts to wear thin when they come to the meeting area without a pencil despite the fact that every day I patiently announce three times that we need to bring pencils to the meeting area, or when kids are carrying around two sad-looking books because they've ripped or lost their book baggies for the umpteenth time this year.
And then there's William, who receives so much of my time and care and patience, who treated me with unacceptable disrespect last week ("I read that already," he snarled as I innocently approached him with a book, ordering me to "get another one") and to whom I fear I will never get through. On the Friday before this vacation, I gave him a ridiculous speech during which I actually said things like, "I know you don't like reading, and I know you don't care about reading right now, but you're going to need to know how to read in order to live your life, and when you grow up and you can't read, you will say, 'I wish I had listened to Miss Brave in second grade!'" Uh...yeah, because prognosticating the future failures of an eight-year-old is always a successful motivator! I have definitely seen too many teacher movies in which, at the climax, William would fight his way to becoming an M reader and then thank me for believing in him all along (which, by the way, I do, but try telling William that as he puts his hands over his ears and turns his back on me).
I am already dreading my return to school and the long, dreary, spirit-killing month of March, which is punctuated only by running records and parent-teacher conferences (more gloomy reminders of how far below grade level my poor students still remain). I don't mean this to sound like I'm giving up on my students, because I'm not, but I am feeling a little depressed about their odds: If it's the middle of second grade, and you're almost nine years old because you've already been held over, and you are completely stymied by the fact that your pencil is not sharp enough to write with, and you need an incredulous teacher to remind you that there are ways to solve your pencil problem, such as (a) sharpening your broken pencil, (b) finding another pencil, (c) asking a neighbor for a pencil or (d) using a pen, then something in the system that is supposed to be teaching you to be a functional human being has failed, and I don't know whose fault it is.
It's past the famous 100th day of school, which means it's more than halfway through second grade, and I still have kids aimlessly spinning around in the meeting area during my mini lesson, or staring blankly into space, or tearing holes in their book baggies. It's getting to be that point in the year where my patience starts to wear thin when they come to the meeting area without a pencil despite the fact that every day I patiently announce three times that we need to bring pencils to the meeting area, or when kids are carrying around two sad-looking books because they've ripped or lost their book baggies for the umpteenth time this year.
And then there's William, who receives so much of my time and care and patience, who treated me with unacceptable disrespect last week ("I read that already," he snarled as I innocently approached him with a book, ordering me to "get another one") and to whom I fear I will never get through. On the Friday before this vacation, I gave him a ridiculous speech during which I actually said things like, "I know you don't like reading, and I know you don't care about reading right now, but you're going to need to know how to read in order to live your life, and when you grow up and you can't read, you will say, 'I wish I had listened to Miss Brave in second grade!'" Uh...yeah, because prognosticating the future failures of an eight-year-old is always a successful motivator! I have definitely seen too many teacher movies in which, at the climax, William would fight his way to becoming an M reader and then thank me for believing in him all along (which, by the way, I do, but try telling William that as he puts his hands over his ears and turns his back on me).
I am already dreading my return to school and the long, dreary, spirit-killing month of March, which is punctuated only by running records and parent-teacher conferences (more gloomy reminders of how far below grade level my poor students still remain). I don't mean this to sound like I'm giving up on my students, because I'm not, but I am feeling a little depressed about their odds: If it's the middle of second grade, and you're almost nine years old because you've already been held over, and you are completely stymied by the fact that your pencil is not sharp enough to write with, and you need an incredulous teacher to remind you that there are ways to solve your pencil problem, such as (a) sharpening your broken pencil, (b) finding another pencil, (c) asking a neighbor for a pencil or (d) using a pen, then something in the system that is supposed to be teaching you to be a functional human being has failed, and I don't know whose fault it is.
Friday, September 19, 2008
The crying game
Confession time! For the past few weeks, I've been reading online about other teachers who are already feeling over-worked and over-stressed. Several of them have mentioned experiencing their "first cry" of the school year, and when I've read about that first cry -- something with which I am all too unfortunately familiar -- I have, I admit, congratulated myself on avoiding it. Ha ha, I may have even thought. I am no longer a first-year teacher! I know exactly what I am doing now! I am immune to the first cry!
OK, you know what comes next, right? And the worst part is that my first cry came over the stupidest little issue. I mean, last year I had first graders threatening to stab me with scissors and fifth graders who wrote on the walls -- those were incidents worth crying over.
This particular incident probably isn't even worth the time and energy it'll take trying to explain it, but here goes: This year, during 50 minutes, I was assigned to the art room, where my students will be working on a computer program. I was psyched about it because (1) I have experience working with the program and think it's really helpful for our students and (2) they are totally independent while working, and I wouldn't have to do the ridiculous backflips I did last year trying to come up with a plan for 50 minutes. (See, technically teachers are not supposed to "plan" for 50 minutes, but you can't exactly show up for 50 minutes totally empty-handed, but it's at the end of the day and you're likely to be completely fried by that point, and so are the kids, so 50 minutes is pretty excrutiating. In my opinion.)
Anyway, of course there have been tons of problems so far, starting with the fact that because we're not in the computer room, we have to set up 16 laptops every afternoon, and they're Macs, which we're not so familiar with, so picture two teachers racing around from laptop to laptop, barking at the kids to stop touching buttons, while other kids whine about how they haven't gotten to play with the computers yet. Half of the laptops won't turn on, the other half won't connect to the Internet, all of them require us to enter two separate passwords before the kids can actually get started...I'm so glad the Quality Review wants us to focus on our use of educational technology!
Meanwhile, all along the art teacher has been semi-reprimanding me every day because she feels that our students are too loud in the hallway while they're waiting to be let inside. Our 16 students are coming from 3 separate classrooms on 2 different floors, and sometimes they get there before I do (my co-teacher is coming from our annex down the block, so she's always 10 minutes late anyway). The art teacher has been bugging me to start picking the kids up at their classroom instead of letting them walk in a group by themselves, so I finally acquiesced, even though it means traveling around the building and making us even later for the Great Laptop Setup Debacle.
One classroom sends us only two kids, so I decided those two kids couldn't possibly make such a ruckus in the hallway as to cause the art teacher to object. But yesterday when I arrived with my merry band of 14 students (making zero noise in the hallway, I might add), one of those two students was waiting for me alone in the hall. Well, not alone, because the art teacher was with her, informing me that I would need to pick up that student as well (from a third classroom on a different floor), because she "can't be up here alone." Even though I explained that normally she would be traveling with a partner (who happened to be absent), the art teacher claimed that the two of them couldn't wait in the hallway alone...even though this is what all students do when they, for example, go to the bathroom together. She suggested I tell those two students to wait for me in one of the other classrooms from which I'd be picking up students...which I think basically translates to "It's OK to inconvenience another teacher to send two students to their room to wait, but not OK to inconvenience me by having these two students wait in the hallway outside my classroom."
So, OK, fine, I tell her I'll take care of it. Wait, the crying part is still to come! So at the back of the art room is a small workroom. The art teacher has been bringing her 50 minutes group into that room, even though her assignment is in a classroom, because I guess she feels that it's all part of her work space and she can bring her kids in there because it's quieter than the classroom. But, that workroom is slowly but surely being transformed into a room that will be used during the regular school day exclusively for the same computer program that my kids are working on during 50 minutes. Yesterday I noticed that the laptop cart had been moved into that room and tables had been set up. I know that room is designated to be the computer program room. So I tentatively mention to the art teacher that maybe I will bring my 50 minutes kids in there, because, well, clearly that's the room that's meant to be used for this program, and (this part I didn't say out loud), her 50 minutes assignment isn't even in the vicinity and she's just having her kids read silently anyway, which they can do virtually anywhere in the building.
And in the same imperious tone she used to inform me of my pickup duties, she completely dismissed my suggestion, all "I'm bringing my kids in there."
"Well," I said carefully, "it just seems silly to move the laptop cart in and out of that room when it looks like it's set up to be in there during the day."
"That's not my thing, I don't know what to tell you," she said with a wave of her hand. (That's right, it's not your thing. Because it's not your room anymore! It's the computer program room! I'm sorry you lost your space, because goodness knows that no teacher in this whole school has enough of it, but you have an entire huge art room here and we only need your teeny tiny workroom space and you're not even supposed to be in here during 50 minutes anyway!) And then she walked away.
Ahem. That's when the tears, ridiculously enough, started. I was just so frustrated and fed up with trying to get this program off the ground day after day for our kids, when it hasn't been working, when I think it could really help them, and all I was asking for was one tiny thing that would make my job easier, like can't you find another place in this whole school to take your five students to do silent reading that they can do anywhere? I literally stood in the hallway (because I still hadn't let my kids into the room yet since I didn't know where to put them) in front of these 15 kids while my eyes welled up. I think the majority of teachers at my school are great, but there are some who are so embittered and possessive of their own stuff and space and materials and interests that it's really frustrating. I mean, it's not like I wanted to send 16 kids to the art room to cause a ruckus; I'm just trying to do my job here.
So I took a deep, shaky breath, put my hand on the door handle, and said to the kids, "You just have to give me a minute to think." I went inside to pull the laptop cart out of the workroom, and surprise! With the addition of the tables in there, it's really not meant to be moved in and out; the cart was crashing into tables as I tried to maneuver. I pointed this out to the art teacher, who was already parading in with her group, and she gave me the same "I don't know what to tell you, it's not my thing" line (that's right, it's not your "thing," so why are you in here?).
Fast forward 50 minutes to after my co-teacher has arrived (I had to explain, "I'm having a moment" when she showed up and I was still near tears) and we've spent 50 minutes racing around the library like mad trying to make sure everyone's laptop will turn on (no) and log onto the Internet (no), everyone's Macromedia Flash player is compatible with the program (no), everyone is logged in under the correct name (no), everyone can maneuver the touchpad because the laptops don't come with mice (no) and Julianne goes downstairs before her bus arrives (also no). Finally, when we are both exhausted and sweaty, it's time to put the laptops away. That's when the paraprofessional who's going to work with the program during the day arrives to tell us that our AP says we should just leave the laptop cart in the workroom and let the kids work in there.
Seriously, you should have seen the glare of death I got from the art teacher. It was the first and only time I've ever felt like there was a genuine beef between me and another teacher at my school, and it was all because of this stupid 50 minutes program assignment that I didn't choose. I magnanimously tried to patch things up by suggesting that we switch places (i.e., take your kids out into that giant room behind us! Look around and marvel at all the room you'll have out there while no one has to maneuver a giant heavy cart in and out of a tiny room for no good reason other than you for some reason want to be in there with your tiny group!), but there was totally an awkward vibe in the air that I'm still puzzling over.
And that, my friends, is how Miss Brave cried her first cry of the school year (in front of her students, mind you, although none of them noticed). Let me tell you, there is nothing like an inagural cry to remind you who you're working for! (The correct answer: Not the art teacher!)
OK, you know what comes next, right? And the worst part is that my first cry came over the stupidest little issue. I mean, last year I had first graders threatening to stab me with scissors and fifth graders who wrote on the walls -- those were incidents worth crying over.
This particular incident probably isn't even worth the time and energy it'll take trying to explain it, but here goes: This year, during 50 minutes, I was assigned to the art room, where my students will be working on a computer program. I was psyched about it because (1) I have experience working with the program and think it's really helpful for our students and (2) they are totally independent while working, and I wouldn't have to do the ridiculous backflips I did last year trying to come up with a plan for 50 minutes. (See, technically teachers are not supposed to "plan" for 50 minutes, but you can't exactly show up for 50 minutes totally empty-handed, but it's at the end of the day and you're likely to be completely fried by that point, and so are the kids, so 50 minutes is pretty excrutiating. In my opinion.)
Anyway, of course there have been tons of problems so far, starting with the fact that because we're not in the computer room, we have to set up 16 laptops every afternoon, and they're Macs, which we're not so familiar with, so picture two teachers racing around from laptop to laptop, barking at the kids to stop touching buttons, while other kids whine about how they haven't gotten to play with the computers yet. Half of the laptops won't turn on, the other half won't connect to the Internet, all of them require us to enter two separate passwords before the kids can actually get started...I'm so glad the Quality Review wants us to focus on our use of educational technology!
Meanwhile, all along the art teacher has been semi-reprimanding me every day because she feels that our students are too loud in the hallway while they're waiting to be let inside. Our 16 students are coming from 3 separate classrooms on 2 different floors, and sometimes they get there before I do (my co-teacher is coming from our annex down the block, so she's always 10 minutes late anyway). The art teacher has been bugging me to start picking the kids up at their classroom instead of letting them walk in a group by themselves, so I finally acquiesced, even though it means traveling around the building and making us even later for the Great Laptop Setup Debacle.
One classroom sends us only two kids, so I decided those two kids couldn't possibly make such a ruckus in the hallway as to cause the art teacher to object. But yesterday when I arrived with my merry band of 14 students (making zero noise in the hallway, I might add), one of those two students was waiting for me alone in the hall. Well, not alone, because the art teacher was with her, informing me that I would need to pick up that student as well (from a third classroom on a different floor), because she "can't be up here alone." Even though I explained that normally she would be traveling with a partner (who happened to be absent), the art teacher claimed that the two of them couldn't wait in the hallway alone...even though this is what all students do when they, for example, go to the bathroom together. She suggested I tell those two students to wait for me in one of the other classrooms from which I'd be picking up students...which I think basically translates to "It's OK to inconvenience another teacher to send two students to their room to wait, but not OK to inconvenience me by having these two students wait in the hallway outside my classroom."
So, OK, fine, I tell her I'll take care of it. Wait, the crying part is still to come! So at the back of the art room is a small workroom. The art teacher has been bringing her 50 minutes group into that room, even though her assignment is in a classroom, because I guess she feels that it's all part of her work space and she can bring her kids in there because it's quieter than the classroom. But, that workroom is slowly but surely being transformed into a room that will be used during the regular school day exclusively for the same computer program that my kids are working on during 50 minutes. Yesterday I noticed that the laptop cart had been moved into that room and tables had been set up. I know that room is designated to be the computer program room. So I tentatively mention to the art teacher that maybe I will bring my 50 minutes kids in there, because, well, clearly that's the room that's meant to be used for this program, and (this part I didn't say out loud), her 50 minutes assignment isn't even in the vicinity and she's just having her kids read silently anyway, which they can do virtually anywhere in the building.
And in the same imperious tone she used to inform me of my pickup duties, she completely dismissed my suggestion, all "I'm bringing my kids in there."
"Well," I said carefully, "it just seems silly to move the laptop cart in and out of that room when it looks like it's set up to be in there during the day."
"That's not my thing, I don't know what to tell you," she said with a wave of her hand. (That's right, it's not your thing. Because it's not your room anymore! It's the computer program room! I'm sorry you lost your space, because goodness knows that no teacher in this whole school has enough of it, but you have an entire huge art room here and we only need your teeny tiny workroom space and you're not even supposed to be in here during 50 minutes anyway!) And then she walked away.
Ahem. That's when the tears, ridiculously enough, started. I was just so frustrated and fed up with trying to get this program off the ground day after day for our kids, when it hasn't been working, when I think it could really help them, and all I was asking for was one tiny thing that would make my job easier, like can't you find another place in this whole school to take your five students to do silent reading that they can do anywhere? I literally stood in the hallway (because I still hadn't let my kids into the room yet since I didn't know where to put them) in front of these 15 kids while my eyes welled up. I think the majority of teachers at my school are great, but there are some who are so embittered and possessive of their own stuff and space and materials and interests that it's really frustrating. I mean, it's not like I wanted to send 16 kids to the art room to cause a ruckus; I'm just trying to do my job here.
So I took a deep, shaky breath, put my hand on the door handle, and said to the kids, "You just have to give me a minute to think." I went inside to pull the laptop cart out of the workroom, and surprise! With the addition of the tables in there, it's really not meant to be moved in and out; the cart was crashing into tables as I tried to maneuver. I pointed this out to the art teacher, who was already parading in with her group, and she gave me the same "I don't know what to tell you, it's not my thing" line (that's right, it's not your "thing," so why are you in here?).
Fast forward 50 minutes to after my co-teacher has arrived (I had to explain, "I'm having a moment" when she showed up and I was still near tears) and we've spent 50 minutes racing around the library like mad trying to make sure everyone's laptop will turn on (no) and log onto the Internet (no), everyone's Macromedia Flash player is compatible with the program (no), everyone is logged in under the correct name (no), everyone can maneuver the touchpad because the laptops don't come with mice (no) and Julianne goes downstairs before her bus arrives (also no). Finally, when we are both exhausted and sweaty, it's time to put the laptops away. That's when the paraprofessional who's going to work with the program during the day arrives to tell us that our AP says we should just leave the laptop cart in the workroom and let the kids work in there.
Seriously, you should have seen the glare of death I got from the art teacher. It was the first and only time I've ever felt like there was a genuine beef between me and another teacher at my school, and it was all because of this stupid 50 minutes program assignment that I didn't choose. I magnanimously tried to patch things up by suggesting that we switch places (i.e., take your kids out into that giant room behind us! Look around and marvel at all the room you'll have out there while no one has to maneuver a giant heavy cart in and out of a tiny room for no good reason other than you for some reason want to be in there with your tiny group!), but there was totally an awkward vibe in the air that I'm still puzzling over.
And that, my friends, is how Miss Brave cried her first cry of the school year (in front of her students, mind you, although none of them noticed). Let me tell you, there is nothing like an inagural cry to remind you who you're working for! (The correct answer: Not the art teacher!)
Monday, April 14, 2008
Tough times behind
My day started with the longest paper cut ever (courtesy of a stubborn sentence strip)...and it ended with my lowest moment as a teacher.
I have a second grader whom I suspect might be on some kind of medication, because some weeks he is quiet and calm and gets all his work done in a timely fashion, albeit with a vaguely vacant look in his eyes, and some weeks he is inexcusably disruptive. This week it was the latter. He made clicking noises at the meeting area. He interrupted to say rude things. He laughed inappropriately.
I think I handled the situation badly. His class, who always gives me trouble, is by far my least favorite to teach. I go in there anticipating a battle, and it shows. And the kids maintain the attitude that they're not obligated to behave, since I'm not their regular teacher.
So things with Mr. Personality quickly spiraled out of control. He started to run around the classroom, jumping over tables and knocking over chairs. He yelled and beat his fists against his chest. He rolled around on the floor, kicking his legs up into the air and sucking his thumb.
The rest of the class seemed virtually unfazed. After a while, I brought them back to the meeting area and read them a book while Mr. Personality continued his wild spiral around the classroom. If I had hoped that ignoring him might wear him out, I was out of luck.
Eventually it was time for us to head downstairs, at which point, naturally, my friend sprawled himself out on the floor and refused to move. When I headed over to the phone to call the guidance counselor (who didn't answer), he jumped up to shove a few kids against the door and rolled right back down to the floor, all the while making some disturbing shouting noises. I finally got the class out the door, with my friend holding my hand, when he came to a dead stop on the stairs.
I was getting a little frantic. Here I had 25 kids on the stairs, with one of them sitting on the floor and yelling. I was deciding whether or not I should send a few kids to the office for reinforcements or just try to tough it out when my friend, who still refused to stand up, slid himself down the rest of the stairs on his butt.
Bottom line? He feels like he doesn't have to behave when his classroom teacher isn't in the room, because he doesn't give a hoot what I think of him, because whatever consequences he might suffer for the one hour a week he spends with me are worth it. At this point in the year, I'm extremely frustrated by my inability to get some of my more challenging students to respect me and obey me, especially since a lot of these kids I'm yelling at have difficult home lives and might be going through a tough time, which I don't know about since I only see them for an hour a week. At the beginning of the year, I was probably too nice, and it got me nowhere. Now, I've turned into this mean ogre whom I intensely dislike.
I did a bad job today. Instead of reacting with sternness, I reacted with anger. Instead of defusing the situation, I only made it worse. I didn't act like the teacher I've been striving to be, and I am not proud.
I have a second grader whom I suspect might be on some kind of medication, because some weeks he is quiet and calm and gets all his work done in a timely fashion, albeit with a vaguely vacant look in his eyes, and some weeks he is inexcusably disruptive. This week it was the latter. He made clicking noises at the meeting area. He interrupted to say rude things. He laughed inappropriately.
I think I handled the situation badly. His class, who always gives me trouble, is by far my least favorite to teach. I go in there anticipating a battle, and it shows. And the kids maintain the attitude that they're not obligated to behave, since I'm not their regular teacher.
So things with Mr. Personality quickly spiraled out of control. He started to run around the classroom, jumping over tables and knocking over chairs. He yelled and beat his fists against his chest. He rolled around on the floor, kicking his legs up into the air and sucking his thumb.
The rest of the class seemed virtually unfazed. After a while, I brought them back to the meeting area and read them a book while Mr. Personality continued his wild spiral around the classroom. If I had hoped that ignoring him might wear him out, I was out of luck.
Eventually it was time for us to head downstairs, at which point, naturally, my friend sprawled himself out on the floor and refused to move. When I headed over to the phone to call the guidance counselor (who didn't answer), he jumped up to shove a few kids against the door and rolled right back down to the floor, all the while making some disturbing shouting noises. I finally got the class out the door, with my friend holding my hand, when he came to a dead stop on the stairs.
I was getting a little frantic. Here I had 25 kids on the stairs, with one of them sitting on the floor and yelling. I was deciding whether or not I should send a few kids to the office for reinforcements or just try to tough it out when my friend, who still refused to stand up, slid himself down the rest of the stairs on his butt.
Bottom line? He feels like he doesn't have to behave when his classroom teacher isn't in the room, because he doesn't give a hoot what I think of him, because whatever consequences he might suffer for the one hour a week he spends with me are worth it. At this point in the year, I'm extremely frustrated by my inability to get some of my more challenging students to respect me and obey me, especially since a lot of these kids I'm yelling at have difficult home lives and might be going through a tough time, which I don't know about since I only see them for an hour a week. At the beginning of the year, I was probably too nice, and it got me nowhere. Now, I've turned into this mean ogre whom I intensely dislike.
I did a bad job today. Instead of reacting with sternness, I reacted with anger. Instead of defusing the situation, I only made it worse. I didn't act like the teacher I've been striving to be, and I am not proud.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The sun never sets on the in-school suspension room
When students at my school are suspended, which happens on a fairly regular basis, they have to spend the day in the in-school suspension room (which is really just the guidance counselor's office with a special code name). This is really more to give their classmates and teachers a break from them than a punishment for the suspended student, because all it means for them is that they're excused from regular classroom routines and expectations for the day. Students who are aggressive become more aggressive after being cooped up in a small office all day. Students who crave unlimited attention -- positive or negative -- get exactly what they want in the suspension room, because they're alone with a teacher. (School policy is that teachers are never to be alone with just one student, but this happens all the time in the suspension room.)
When a student is in the suspension room, a rotating cadre of teachers is assigned to cover the room -- including, of course, your own intrepid Miss Brave. My two periods a week in the suspension room are "schoolwide" periods, meaning that I wouldn't be doing anything else during those periods anyway except using them as extra preps. But other teachers assigned to the suspension room are Academic Intervention Services teachers, meaning that they're being pulled away from providing services to our neediest students in order to sit in a room with a suspended student. They used to put memos in our mailboxes when the suspension room was in effect, but now it's open so frequently that they can't keep up and they just make announcements over the loudspeaker. I typically don't hear these announcements, since I'm out of the building first period, which forces other teachers to come looking for me and then I feel like a jerk. But the teachers who cover the room after me are also almost always late; I would estimate that in the past few months I've lost at least an entire prep period's worth of time (five minutes here, ten minutes there) to waiting for my suspension room replacement.
Sometimes our school is sent students from other schools who have been suspended. As you can imagine, this makes a difficult situation worse because we the teachers don't know the students or why they've been suspended, and the students are in a strange environment with strange adults and are expected to make a smooth transition from one adult to the next every 55 minutes.
The suspension room is the only place in my school where I've felt genuinely unsafe. It's the only place I've had students touch me or threaten to touch me in an aggressive manner. It's an ugly combination of factors: emotionally disturbed and angry students + young, inexperienced teacher without crisis intervention training + small office without outside stimulation minus any kind of guidance or support = implosion. No one, for example, has ever explained to me what kind of interaction I'm supposed to have with these students; ostensibly they're supposed to be doing work that's provided to them by their classroom teachers, but it's essentially busywork and they can tell, which is why a majority of them spend their time staring at the walls or trying to pick fights with me. Am I supposed to ignore them? Am I supposed to encourage them to do their work, but try to keep my interaction minimal? Am I supposed to offer them my support? No one has ever told me who to call when suspended students start to go beserk, which has happened to me on a few occasions while no other adults were in the office. No one has ever advised me what to do when students start peeling things off the walls and tossing them in the garbage can, or pushing buttons on the copier, or banging large wooden blocks furiously against the table. (All of those things happened during one memorable hour with my most challenging second grader; in the grand culmination, he grabbed my wrists and forced them away from a garbage can lid that he happened to be swinging, and how could we respond? By bribing him with choice time for ten minutes of "reading.")
Twice a week, I leave the suspension room feeling frustrated, exhausted, disillusioned, and emotionally broke down. Today, for instance, my suspension room coverage ended in tears...and I'm not talking about the suspended student. (He physically assaulted at least two teachers in the last two days, so I consider myself fortunate that I at least escaped without bodily injury.)
There has got to be a better way.
When a student is in the suspension room, a rotating cadre of teachers is assigned to cover the room -- including, of course, your own intrepid Miss Brave. My two periods a week in the suspension room are "schoolwide" periods, meaning that I wouldn't be doing anything else during those periods anyway except using them as extra preps. But other teachers assigned to the suspension room are Academic Intervention Services teachers, meaning that they're being pulled away from providing services to our neediest students in order to sit in a room with a suspended student. They used to put memos in our mailboxes when the suspension room was in effect, but now it's open so frequently that they can't keep up and they just make announcements over the loudspeaker. I typically don't hear these announcements, since I'm out of the building first period, which forces other teachers to come looking for me and then I feel like a jerk. But the teachers who cover the room after me are also almost always late; I would estimate that in the past few months I've lost at least an entire prep period's worth of time (five minutes here, ten minutes there) to waiting for my suspension room replacement.
Sometimes our school is sent students from other schools who have been suspended. As you can imagine, this makes a difficult situation worse because we the teachers don't know the students or why they've been suspended, and the students are in a strange environment with strange adults and are expected to make a smooth transition from one adult to the next every 55 minutes.
The suspension room is the only place in my school where I've felt genuinely unsafe. It's the only place I've had students touch me or threaten to touch me in an aggressive manner. It's an ugly combination of factors: emotionally disturbed and angry students + young, inexperienced teacher without crisis intervention training + small office without outside stimulation minus any kind of guidance or support = implosion. No one, for example, has ever explained to me what kind of interaction I'm supposed to have with these students; ostensibly they're supposed to be doing work that's provided to them by their classroom teachers, but it's essentially busywork and they can tell, which is why a majority of them spend their time staring at the walls or trying to pick fights with me. Am I supposed to ignore them? Am I supposed to encourage them to do their work, but try to keep my interaction minimal? Am I supposed to offer them my support? No one has ever told me who to call when suspended students start to go beserk, which has happened to me on a few occasions while no other adults were in the office. No one has ever advised me what to do when students start peeling things off the walls and tossing them in the garbage can, or pushing buttons on the copier, or banging large wooden blocks furiously against the table. (All of those things happened during one memorable hour with my most challenging second grader; in the grand culmination, he grabbed my wrists and forced them away from a garbage can lid that he happened to be swinging, and how could we respond? By bribing him with choice time for ten minutes of "reading.")
Twice a week, I leave the suspension room feeling frustrated, exhausted, disillusioned, and emotionally broke down. Today, for instance, my suspension room coverage ended in tears...and I'm not talking about the suspended student. (He physically assaulted at least two teachers in the last two days, so I consider myself fortunate that I at least escaped without bodily injury.)
There has got to be a better way.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Living in fear
Q: What did one kindergartener say to the other kindergartener?
A: "F**k you!"
Oh yes, it's true. And it neatly sums up the kind of day I had.
My fifth graders and I have been studying idioms and proverbs. One of the proverbs we explored was "Don't count your chickens before they hatch." Oh, how I should have taken Aesop's advice. See, the kindergarten was supposed to go on a field trip today. So when I headed over there this morning, I fully expected to see just one class for about twenty minutes before they headed off. I brought one book to read them and one pitiful little stack of paper to write on in case they were leaving later than expected. I thought I was all set.
Except that the field trip, of course, had been canceled, and I was caught totally off guard. I faked it -- er, "improvised" -- quite nicely, if I do say so myself; we read my book and then we wrote about one thing we had learned from it, and the kids actually did an awesome job drawing beautiful pictures and writing fairly sophisticated sentences. Everything was going swimmingly!
Until...dum dum DUUUMMMM -- my assistant principal turned up to do some observations. She came into a classroom I was in expecting to see another teacher, but I thought she was there to see me, and I literally -- literally -- stopped breathing for a few seconds. The one time in my entire teaching career I had been caught unprepared...! I had counted my chickens! Now I would pay for it! I wasn't sure whether to fall on my sword with excuses -- "The field trip, I didn't know" -- or just go for it and pretend I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that my mini lesson was neither mini nor a real lesson.
Anyway, it turned out that she wasn't there to see me anyway, but I went totally gonzo bonkers nuts during my lunch period because I was absolutely convinced that she was coming back for me after lunch, which she didn't, which almost virtually guarantees that she's coming for me tomorrow, unless she doesn't, in which case I will be holding my breath for the rest of my teaching life. The surprise observation thing? SO UNFAIR. When I thought I was about to be observed, I literally almost cried thinking of the dozens of beautiful, fantastic lessons I'd done that had gone over so well, and now I was about to be judged on this? Plus, the kids were absolutely bonkers all day, and can you blame them? They were supposed to be on a field trip! Why make the decision to observe teachers on a day they weren't even supposed to have planned lessons for?! To surprise them out of spite? The week after everyone went freaking insane over the Quality Review? It just seems so counter-productive and -- dare I say it? -- mean-spirited. Like, "Don't forget, we're watching you at every minute."
And, get this, one of the kindergarten teachers asked my AP if the kids could watch a movie since they were disappointed that they didn't get to go on a field trip...and she responded by telling the teacher that the kids have to learn to live with disappointment. Um...they're five? And their lives consist of a very teeny tiny bubble in a run-down neighborhood? And many of them live with people who hit them and use language like the F word so frequently that they've picked it up and think it's okay to say it to their classmates in school? I'd say they've already learned to live with disappointment. And, like so many things at my school, that makes me a little bit angry and a little bit sad.
A: "F**k you!"
Oh yes, it's true. And it neatly sums up the kind of day I had.
My fifth graders and I have been studying idioms and proverbs. One of the proverbs we explored was "Don't count your chickens before they hatch." Oh, how I should have taken Aesop's advice. See, the kindergarten was supposed to go on a field trip today. So when I headed over there this morning, I fully expected to see just one class for about twenty minutes before they headed off. I brought one book to read them and one pitiful little stack of paper to write on in case they were leaving later than expected. I thought I was all set.
Except that the field trip, of course, had been canceled, and I was caught totally off guard. I faked it -- er, "improvised" -- quite nicely, if I do say so myself; we read my book and then we wrote about one thing we had learned from it, and the kids actually did an awesome job drawing beautiful pictures and writing fairly sophisticated sentences. Everything was going swimmingly!
Until...dum dum DUUUMMMM -- my assistant principal turned up to do some observations. She came into a classroom I was in expecting to see another teacher, but I thought she was there to see me, and I literally -- literally -- stopped breathing for a few seconds. The one time in my entire teaching career I had been caught unprepared...! I had counted my chickens! Now I would pay for it! I wasn't sure whether to fall on my sword with excuses -- "The field trip, I didn't know" -- or just go for it and pretend I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that my mini lesson was neither mini nor a real lesson.
Anyway, it turned out that she wasn't there to see me anyway, but I went totally gonzo bonkers nuts during my lunch period because I was absolutely convinced that she was coming back for me after lunch, which she didn't, which almost virtually guarantees that she's coming for me tomorrow, unless she doesn't, in which case I will be holding my breath for the rest of my teaching life. The surprise observation thing? SO UNFAIR. When I thought I was about to be observed, I literally almost cried thinking of the dozens of beautiful, fantastic lessons I'd done that had gone over so well, and now I was about to be judged on this? Plus, the kids were absolutely bonkers all day, and can you blame them? They were supposed to be on a field trip! Why make the decision to observe teachers on a day they weren't even supposed to have planned lessons for?! To surprise them out of spite? The week after everyone went freaking insane over the Quality Review? It just seems so counter-productive and -- dare I say it? -- mean-spirited. Like, "Don't forget, we're watching you at every minute."
And, get this, one of the kindergarten teachers asked my AP if the kids could watch a movie since they were disappointed that they didn't get to go on a field trip...and she responded by telling the teacher that the kids have to learn to live with disappointment. Um...they're five? And their lives consist of a very teeny tiny bubble in a run-down neighborhood? And many of them live with people who hit them and use language like the F word so frequently that they've picked it up and think it's okay to say it to their classmates in school? I'd say they've already learned to live with disappointment. And, like so many things at my school, that makes me a little bit angry and a little bit sad.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Stick a fork in me
5:30 am Wake up
6:00 am Leave apartment
6:50 am Arrive at school
8:05 am Class begins
3:15 pm Dismissal
4:00 pm Leave school
5:10 pm Arrive at gym
6:30 pm Leave gym
6:40 pm Arrive at home
7:00 pm Shower, eat dinner, prepare lunch, pack clothes for tomorrow
10:00 pm Bedtime
My life is starting to feel like Groundhog Day.
Yesterday a second grader sat down on the (off-limits) rocking chair, picked up my book, and flung it aside. Calmly I told him I don't like it when he throws my books. He denied it. I repeated myself. So he called me -- direct quote -- a "stinking liar."
Sometimes I just stand there and think, This is what I got a master's degree for?
6:00 am Leave apartment
6:50 am Arrive at school
8:05 am Class begins
3:15 pm Dismissal
4:00 pm Leave school
5:10 pm Arrive at gym
6:30 pm Leave gym
6:40 pm Arrive at home
7:00 pm Shower, eat dinner, prepare lunch, pack clothes for tomorrow
10:00 pm Bedtime
My life is starting to feel like Groundhog Day.
Yesterday a second grader sat down on the (off-limits) rocking chair, picked up my book, and flung it aside. Calmly I told him I don't like it when he throws my books. He denied it. I repeated myself. So he called me -- direct quote -- a "stinking liar."
Sometimes I just stand there and think, This is what I got a master's degree for?
Monday, February 4, 2008
Guess who has bronchitis?
I'll give you a hint: It's not Joel Klein!
The bronchitis doesn't excuse it, but it might help explain the fact that I was so mean today. Or maybe it was the weather, or the Monday blues, or the February doldrums. But today...I've had it. I'm fed up with cryptic memos instructing me to do things I don't understand and I'm fed up with being totally left out of the loop on memos that concern my program. I'm fed up with being locked out of my own office during state testing, and with professional development sessions that eat into my lunch time and prep time and instructional time, even though I never get any professional development myself, and I'm fed up with living in fear of being Observed. I'm fed up with rude and obnoxious kids and kids who go crazy when a girl's nose bleeds all over her white shirt and then all over the floor and kids who feel they have to re-enact for me that morning's projectile vomiting incident and kids who can't stop getting on each other's nerves, which consequently gets on my nerves. I'm fed up with having no friends at my school, not to mention a mentor.
I was never this mean to kids until I started teaching. Which means that most of all, I'm fed up with myself. This is not the teacher I wanted to be.
The bronchitis doesn't excuse it, but it might help explain the fact that I was so mean today. Or maybe it was the weather, or the Monday blues, or the February doldrums. But today...I've had it. I'm fed up with cryptic memos instructing me to do things I don't understand and I'm fed up with being totally left out of the loop on memos that concern my program. I'm fed up with being locked out of my own office during state testing, and with professional development sessions that eat into my lunch time and prep time and instructional time, even though I never get any professional development myself, and I'm fed up with living in fear of being Observed. I'm fed up with rude and obnoxious kids and kids who go crazy when a girl's nose bleeds all over her white shirt and then all over the floor and kids who feel they have to re-enact for me that morning's projectile vomiting incident and kids who can't stop getting on each other's nerves, which consequently gets on my nerves. I'm fed up with having no friends at my school, not to mention a mentor.
I was never this mean to kids until I started teaching. Which means that most of all, I'm fed up with myself. This is not the teacher I wanted to be.
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.
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