Teaching.

Week Two:
In the mornings, I psych myself up by blasting the soothing sounds of "relaxing classics"-- a classical music bonanza that my father once bought me to convert me to classical. The notes were sweet in a way I didn't remember music being for years, not since I was last lonely and unhappy , maybe staring out at the Irish rain from my damp flat, or trying to sleep amidst heat and the faint odor of sewage in some second-rate French provincial hotel. Music was sweet like that at the beginning of college, when an interaction with some little person just sent me over the edge and made me want to weep tears of joy and pain.
That is how music is again for the English teacher me. I crave it, never satisfied by just a little. I go up and down with the strings. My heart bleeds.
Along with the student filing in is TP, a skinny Greek with a white smile and a warm demeanor, here to observe me (but not to report to my AP of course)-- though he peeked in anyway, along with mademoiselle Principale whom I'd like to kill merely for the sake of not hearing about her reputation anymore.
I will never get used to intruders in my room.
My room, huge and vacant, filled with the whizz of paper balls (symbolizing perhaps my students' fundamental disrespect for their own work) fills with students, some kind, some unpleasant. Please god, I say, let them learn.
We do "there", "their" and "there". Some of them are into it. They are learning the difference. They like learning concrete things, I know this. They want to understand. I realize that we'd have to do it every bloody day for it to truly absorb. But what can I do? I have to teach them while I can. i will continue quizzing them on there, their and there everyday to indicate how important it is that they carry their knowledge with them from day to day. We learn how to take notes. They are hateful towards the assignment-- they have no concept of how to take notes and no one has every told them that they might think of taking notes beyond what I write on the board. But this system tells them to faithfully copy some shitty "aim" and "do now" like faithful, mindless drones.
Many of my students have never learned how to think.
We talk about passing my class, we talk about responsibility. We will talk about it every day until it goes through. And tomorrow the wonderful moment that we had when the entire class raised its hands saying it wanted to pass will be crushed when my troublemakers return. Its enough to make my underfed stomach turn (maybe I will go fill it with four groumet rugelach).
Oh, someone help me. Someone support me. Don't as my AP tells me, say that "This is your make or break week." "If you lose them now, you lose them forever," he says.
Perhaps its too late for "classroom dynamics." But its not too late for my students. It can't be.