Disturbing behavior

I've had a lot of bad days since I started teaching. Sometimes it's a bad day because the kids won't stop talking and fidgeting and interrupting and needling and I want to rip my hair out. Sometimes it's a bad day because they respond with blank stares and obvious confusion and I feel as though I haven't done my job as an educator. Sometimes it's a bad day because I'm just plain tired of denying them permission over and over again to go to the bathroom, get a drink of water and use crayons.

I've had bad days where I go home crying and bad days where I slink back to my office and pound the desk in frustration. But I've never had a bad day like Friday.

It started off with a really creepy dream in which I was helping my ESL first graders practice learning their colors when all of a sudden one of them looked straight at me and said, "We were glad when September 11 happened. When the planes flew into the buildings, we thought it was a good thing and we were celebrating."

Okay, what? First of all, she wasn't even born yet. Second of all, she doesn't speak English well enough to say all that to me. Third of all...there is no third of all, except to wonder why in the world my brain would even go there. Anyway, just as that happened, my alarm went off, and I was left with an eerie feeling to start off the day.

You may remember that Darryl is one of my favorite kids in kindergarten. On Friday, I found out from his teacher that Darryl's mother has taken out a restraining order on Darryl's father, who apparently tried to kill her. In front of Darryl.

Darryl has not yet received the mandatory counseling he's supposed to have been getting since the beginning of the school year. Darryl also hasn't been to school in two days.

And then, in one of my classes, I told Nathaniel I would have to send a letter home to his parents about his misbehavior, and he promptly burst into tears.

"I don't want to get a letter home!" he wailed. As you might imagine, this happens all the time, and so I wasn't exactly moved. But then he said something that struck me cold. The last time a letter got sent home, he said, his dad had choked him so hard that he couldn't breathe.

"He almost killed me," he said between terrified sobs. "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"

There are few horrors in life that are quite like hearing a six-year-old cry at you that he doesn't want to die.

Nathaniel is a kid who doesn't always tell the truth, and he's a kid who acts out a lot in class and is prone to histrionics about it. But his regular teacher was absent, and so in the absence of more concrete information, I had to call the mandated reporter hotline and file a report.

Sometimes, this job will break your heart.

The verb pipe

Jacob: "You know how I said you look just like my friend's girlfriend? Well, you sound just like her, too."
Miss Brave: :::crickets:::

* * *

I had a gut feeling that I would be Observed again today. As it turns out, I wasn't, but I wish I had been. I feel like the kids are much mellower after their vacation -- before break they were so obviously sick of each other, sniping and tattling and nagging all the time, and it was pretty disgusting -- and my snazzy lesson on verbs went really well. (It didn't hurt that Mark the hairdresser -- see Item #7 in the link -- was absent, either.)

First I read the kids a boring little story (with accompanying photos courtesy of Google Image Search) I wrote up about my vacation: "One chilly evening, I went to the Bronx Zoo. There were monkeys in the trees. I saw sea lions in the water. In the garden, there were butterflies." Then I jazzed it up by adding some kickin' verbs: "Monkeys climbed and jumped in the trees. I saw sea lions splashing in the water. Butterflies fluttered in the garden."

Then we did the same to caption some photos of our old friend Flat Stanley, and then I asked for "volunteers who are not shy" to play a game in front of the class; I sneakily showed my volunteers a card with a verb on it that they had to perform for the class, and then we wrote sentences about what they were doing and figured out which word was the verb. Aside from the usual tears from a few of my first graders who didn't get a turn, it went off without a hitch. And just now in the shower (where some of my best thinking occurs) I came up with an idea to present the ever-dreaded notion of verb tenses: a matching game like Concentration where the kids will have to match the present tense verb with its past tense form (i.e., "see" and "saw," "go" and "went").

If only I could get over my fear of singing in front of my students, I would teach them the verb song I made up to the tune of "Jingle Bells":

What's a verb? An action word!
It tells you what to do
I can write by using verbs
And you can do it, too!

Yup, move over, Rodgers & Hammerstein. It's better at least than my noun song, which never saw the light of day thanks to the wonders of the Noun Eater:

Nouns, nouns, looking all around
A noun is a person, place or thing
Nouns, nouns, looking all around
Nouns make writing interesting!

In other news, today a first grader asked me how to spell "TV."

You know, I could really get used to this whole "Wednesday through Friday" work week thing.

Well, ask a stupid question...

Miss Brave: "Keith, why were you in the bathroom for so long?"
Keith: "I was going poo poo."

We'll drink a cup of kindness yet

It's the night before the first day of school in 2008, and I'm irrationally worried that it's going to feel like the first day of school all over again.

Maybe if I hadn't had the best winter vacation in the whole world, it wouldn't be so hard to go back. But as it is, teaching feels like a dream: Did I really do that last year?

I left before the break feeling unexpectedly fond of my job, and now I find myself (not so unexpectedly) dreading my return.

I don't know if it's my position, my school, my colleagues or the profession altogether...but next year, something's going to have to change.

There's a hand, my trusty friend

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?"

"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle playing softly and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, "This is now."

She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

My new year's resolutions as an educator are these:

1) to respect my students' tender minds, their easily wounded hearts, their efforts and their challenges;

2) to challenge myself to think beyond, to get creative, to stoke the fires that will burn tiny fires under the butts of each and every one of my 400+ students;

3) to reflect constructively on my teaching successes and failures and accept them gracefully as learning experiences;

4) to breathe deeply, speak smoothly, and enjoy the ride.

Happy 2008, everyone!

So nobody's going to call me "Miss Brave" for a whole week?

I MADE IT TO WINTER BREAK.

(And I've been waiting four long months to say that!)

I don't know if it's just the joy of the holidays, or if the fact that I got to sit in on a reading professional development session that opened my mind up to new possibilities (oh, how I miss teaching reading!), but for the first time so far this year I had a new, irrational thought that was terrifying and exciting all at the same time:

Maybe I'm not done here yet.

Miss Brave is it

The awesome Ms. Frizzle has tagged me to do a meme; I have to "share 7 random and/or weird things about yourself." Here goes nothing:

1. I love candy. (Except for anything that is malted!) I have been known to spend inordinate amounts of money at those sweet shops where you can buy bulk candy (and I feel a little guilty when I see little kids with their parents, who are limiting the amount they can buy while I go hog wild on the gummi sour octopi).

2. I thought "shut up" was a swear word until, like, the fourth grade. I was always really scandalized when I heard kids say it in the hallways because I'd think, "Ooooh, they're gonna be in trouble!" Little did I know I'd grow up to teach first graders whom I see walking home from school with fathers who liberally pepper their speech with far more profane language.

3. Once upon a time, I made it a point to know all the words to REM's "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" and Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire"...because I guess there's something about songwriters who try to cram all the words they can into a 4-minute song that tickled my fancy?

4. In a diner, I invariably order one of three things: challah French toast, grilled cheese, or a mushroom and American cheese omelet.

5. I own a toothbrush that plays the theme song to Rocky.

6. I once ran a marathon, and it changed my life. It's still my greatest accomplishment, and if I could, I would tell that fact to everyone I meet. I am already committed to running the 2008 New York City Marathon, and if I stay in teaching, I'm going to find some way to involve my students in my training.

7. I read the Sunday New York Times sections in the following order: Real Estate, Business, Sports, Main, Metro, Travel, Book Review, Arts & Leisure, Week in Review, Styles, City and Magazine. If I can manage to finish the entire Sunday Times on Sunday itself, I consider the weekend a great success. (This past weekend, what with the sinus infection debacle, not only did I not even start the Sunday paper, I hadn't even started reading last Sunday's paper.)

OK, I know that I am supposed to tag seven other people to do this, but I am so not cool or worthy enough to tag seven other educaters, plus it is already 9:51 pm and that is the latest I have managed to stay awake in about a week. So if you're reading this, consider yourself tagged!