Still Funny, But I Belong (Some)

The other day, Barishnakov made a wonderful observation. He pointed out that his litmus test for validity was still ringing negative--said litmus test being whether he still chuckled at the thought that his answer to "What do you do?" is "I'm a teacher," and he definitely can't keep a straight face--but that he feels that his classroom is his, as opposed to being a place that he trespasses upon and dons the disguise of a teacher. I gotta agree--I don't know that I'd still laugh at the self-identification of a teacher (I think my initial reaction is still, "Yeeah, I'm a teacher, bitch!" with a sarcastic grin--close enough to laughter), but I finally feel like my room is my room, and I'm not merely an awkward interloper there.



Before the break, I finally started doing some longer-term planning, and it made all the difference. I only got 90 minutes of sleep last night, and I'm sitting in hour three of six for night class tonight, but I'm no longer miserable about my job. Even late nights no longer feel like shoving my finger in a curriculum dyke, desperately patching together a Frankenstein lesson to throw at kids the next day, with no larger point. They may get late, and I still lack a life, but I feel like I'm functioning as a teacher (I didn't say I'm even adequate yet, but I'm functioning), and my lessons tie together--and the kids can tell. My life is no longer putting out fires, but ushering kids onto the next task, the next point.



It's paying off in so many ways. Many kids see me as someone to talk to; I see a sufficient number of kids every day, so fast, that they think I'm practically omniscient. A fight goes down at lunch, and by the time my next class comes in, I've already heard who started it, who won, how long it lasted, and the order of the landed punches. When kids run to tell me about it, and I can calmly list off a couple of basic facts in response to their breathless "Did you hear about (x)?", it just makes me seem (1) even more like a person who cares (2) even more like someone who you're going to tell about it, since I'm going to find out anyway (3) a sympathetic, or at least friendly, ear for their issues and problems. Kids tell me about their relationships, and even more amusingly, they tell me about each other's relationships. All of this gives me ammo and capacity to nudge them and josh them about what they've been up to, which helps build great relationships with them that I can rely on--to have them behave because they like being in my room, rather than because I'm going to browbeat them and call their parents if they don't.



Case in point--one kid came in with a massive Band-Aid on his neck on Monday. I was walking to the copy room during my prep when I walked by a classroom with an open door and spotted him across the room; it seemed the most natural thing to pop my head in and make a perfectly audible comment for the benefit of the class at his expense, something along the lines of "What, haven't you ever heard of a frozen spoon for a spider bite like that?" The class had a quick belly laugh, and went back to work; more respect earned for me. The kid's neck is now wrapped in Band-Aids; he needs to control someone--but it's been good for diffusing class tension or energy for a week now.

These relationships come about because my lessons now contain time for them to work, which gives me time to run around, help individuals, chat with other kids, hear about their problems, etc.

All of that, plus convincing them to do more meaningful work, means I see them as individuals. They've been writing the most absurd and touching things--they write essays wishing for money so they could help their parents pay the bills; for magic to fix the economy so daddy can go back to work and be happy again; that their parents will get back together, so they don't have to miss mom/dad so much; that mom/dad/uncle/brother will get out of jail because he's not a criminal and they miss him.

(Keep in mind, they also write about how their families tell them they're too young to know about love, but they know better--they've been dating for two weeks now, and this time it's forever! Forget that their last boyfriend is laughing with the current one in a different class about how he hit it and quit it - keep in mind, these are 13-year-olds - they know what love is, dammit. Or that plenty of kids three wishes included an Xbox, games, and a trip to the local pizza parlor, for the big dreamers. But hey, you take the touching with the juvenile.)

I felt better in the last few weeks before break; I've felt near imperturbable since break. They can be angsty, loud, etc.; barring when they are so loud it gives me a quick headache, or on a day like today (where they're talking notes, I'm modeling what they're going to do this week, and therefore talking alot to each class) when sidetalking gives me a headache because I've got to raise my voice, I really am not bothered by their antics. They swear, they clean; they yell, I throw them out; I call their parents, and for many other things, I just make fun of them. I make faces at them, I laugh at them, I do awkward dance imitations of their demands to go to the bathroom--in short, I act like a nut, and frequently, they have literally no idea how to respond, which I think defuses a lot of situations.

When a teacher gets heated back at you, it's easy to escalate. When a teacher sticks his tongue out at you and makes fart noises, its hard to maintain an air of imperiousness--at a certain point, the entire class is watching the strange writing teacher make faces at you, and it's no longer cool.

At a certain point, it just hit me on a more fundamental level--they are fucking short. And they know it. Many, many problems are ended with a simple "I'm sorry, I think you have a problem, but I can't tell what it is. You're too close to the ground. Try again when you're tall."

My classroom is pretty clean most days.
Expectations, assignments, and requirements are posted everywhere.
Student artwork is appearing on the walls.
I have running jokes with different kids.
Most of the 8th grade (and the 7th grade, I'm sure) thinks I'm gay--they have noticed the hair, the piercings, the bracelets, and the fact that I don't like it when they hurl "gay" as an insult (not that I let slurs of any type slide), and filled in what to them seems the only logical solution. When fall break came around, and I went roadtripping with a fellow (male) teacher through Cali, they made the second "logical" leap and assumed that we were dating. (It doesn't help, of course, that he and I are both hippie-esque and came back with bracelets from the same hippie shop.)
I am exhausted, but I don't hate it.

And the most baller thing? I've finally gone through all of their diagnostic essays, and entered in the data on their skills at the start of the year. We worked for awhile on random, stupid shit. Then we worked on vaguely tied together shit, some of which I decided belonged in a so-called unit on fixing our sentences. They took that test--and everyone went up. Class averages, individual scores, and one ELL kid scored proficient who was practically eating his pencil in confusion two months ago.

I don't know how much it was effective teaching, how much it was just practice, or how much it was luck. But damn does it feel good to see their proficiencies grow--I just feel cool about it. And when I broke it down for them today, they did to.

I'm even optimistic about something else--my goal for the year was to push class averages to a 4 out of 6 on each of the six writing traits. 4 represents that the students have met expectations for their grade level. We've only worked on one of those traits so far - Sentence Fluency - and one of my classes has already cracked that bar, with months to go. Sentence Fluency was their single worst trait on the AIMS last year, and on their diagnostics, so I wanted to tackle it first and longest. The other seven classes are all working steadily towards that 4 as an average, and I'm hoping that the current unit on organization will push them over that barrier. The single remaining biggest problem they have is run-on sentences. Fixing those would easily push kids who score a 2 to a 3 (or higher) and could push the kids who are 3's and 3.5's over the barrier into 4 and above, because they would then be able to exert greater control over complex sentences. I'm hoping that teaching them to organize their thoughts will train them to identify separate thoughts--and thereby put them into different sentences--rather than simply run together their stream-of-consciousness writing into a mass of words where the periods are more or less haphazard.

Cracking a 4 on Sentence Fluency by Christmas? That would be piiiiimp.

Part of me wants to tell the kids that the top class will get to cut my hair. But I may let that shit grow for a long time, so I can't let 'em cut it--but oh, what motivation would that be! Decisions, decisions....