Just for the record...

Things I've heard said about the kids:

"I walked into a ninth grade classroom and one of the teachers was teaching them trochees and spondees. I knew there was a problem then. I wouldn't teach trochees and spondees in my college class." -AP

When I mentioned the fact that the novel I'm planning to teach was "dystopian," my AP said "don't use that word with them."

it's great that we have such a realistic view of the little darkies' intelligence (yes, that was said IRONICALLY, don't sue me for racism)

TRUE-sday

Today was another inch up the latter of tolerableness, which probably means that tomorrow will once again begin the spiral towards disaster. My kids were so damn good today-- I had them read Sylvia PLath's "metaphors" as a way of understanding the concept of metaphor. In the poem, she lists nine metaphors for pregnancy, but never explicitly says she is pregnant. I tried to teach it when I auditioned for wilderness leadership stuff at college, and the ivy-leaguers whom I was attempting to imbue with its marvels were too daft to get it. But my kids were really into it, and they understood it. Some of them did excellent work and showed a real comprehension of the poem. The next activity was writing a dialogue between the protagonist of Guy de Maupaussant's "the necklace" and her husband, which they did very successfully as well. They were even rather funny. My "stickers" tactic has worked very nicely. However, they still have problems listneing and following specific directions, and I lack the energy to force it on them.

My frosh are a completely different story. They are OUT of control, physicaly and intellectually. I think they are way behind their grade level and have little ability to be thoughtful in any kind of way. The boys are having a really hard time controlling their bodies and I had to call the dean on two of them, which was depressing. I think I'm going to scrap the curriculum and have them do worksheets and graphic organizers for two weeks until they learn to respect themselves and their work.

Today after work, one of my colleagues met with a student and parent. During the meeting, our AP, whom she'd asked to sit in for support, told the student to come to him if she ever felt like something was unfair in the classroom. She freaked out and almost quit on the spot. I wanted to cry too. Our good days are invalidated by veterans who tell us it will get worse, our good ideas are dismissed, our good intentions are never applauded. I never believed that teachers of all people could be treated so absolutely shittily.

But I will take the better moments from today, the smiles and the victories, the calmness and the encouragement, and muscle on through the last few days before the jewish holidays save my ass.

Monday, Monday

I'm sitting here listening to Dar Williams and Ani Difranco croon "comfortably numb" on my itunes, while I muse over the Joan Didion article I read earlier today, the one about grief and mourning in the times magazine-- it's depressing as hell. My grandmother is feeling the way older people do on a rainy day-- that is, weak and creaky-- and I am feeling the way idealistic teacher do on a rainy day, watching their dreams and goals get crushed. I want my kids to learn so badly, and maybe they are learning, but it's too late in so many ways. I have a hard time finding it cute that they don't want to work, to work with me, to exist as productive entitites. The connection between classwork and success is there insofar as they know good grades will get them to college, but they don't recognize the skills that they will need. It;s enough to make me throw my hands up.
But I can't! I have to press on. Blah blah bullshit bullshit. At least I have Dar Williams to help me.

Musings on a Fall Saturday

Here I am, revisiting the red-brick glory of the institution of higher education I left a hundred years and a hundred minutes ago. Who would have throught as i blearily stumbled up to receive my diploma (and griped about getting cum laude instead of magna) that three mnonths down the line I'd have experienced the intesnity of loss I have-- watching my group of friends go from a crew of innocents to a bereft, grieving family, and watching my family turn from a tightly-sealed insular unit into an openly wounded group?
And on weekdays my new job is standing in front of thrity-five troubled, semiliterate, angry teens trying to explain why learning is worth it (oh, it is!) for their futures.
"Learning is supposed to be fun" they say.
"Engage them!" my superiors say.
Are they going to be engaged in the real world? In college, when they sit in the back of some dimlit lecture hall, penn in hand, and can't take notes because they don't understand how? How are contests and art projects going to help them then?

And yet, to the contests and art projects I go. I have no other choice. My hands are tied.

I miss college like hell, although I wouldn't go back now and deal with the inanities, the stupid, overprivileged, overfed egos that stride down JFK street by the second. But the times we had and have, discussing philosophies of life, gossiping, and letting time slip by in a haze of smoke have become as sacred to me as my sun-kissed childhood...

9/22

Today might have been rock bottom. In my first class, which I began jovially and merrily, I ended up getting into a confrontation with one of my "problems" and he told me my boyfriend was cheating on me-- but not in those words. I blew up, kicked him out, and got him taken out of my class. Then, after one of my kinder students gave me a hug and told me to feel better (and added that I should kick my friends' little friends out of my class too) I sat onthe floor of my classroom and sobbed.

Other devleopments during the day are people telling me my class was a "dud" and boring and my freshmen throwing CDs across the room, me screaming so loudly that I lost my voice. And the saddest part is, it worked.

maybe the only place to go is up.

...and so forth

Today at my high school, two of the new female teachers cried as a direct result of their students' actions, one punk little boy named Rico burst into my classroom uninvited and sat down until I chased him out, two sometimes charming students got miffed and sniffly when I finally chewed them out, and one angry parent called the school enraged that teachers had dared yell at her daughter for squatting on the floor and pissing in the middle of the hallway.
I find out that I am being formally observed next week andI have to start my students doign grupwork. I recognize that groupwork may be necessary for me AND for my sanity, but I don't feel ready to give in yet. How does groupwork teach students how to read and write?
I found out from TP what she told my naughty children when she took them out into the hallway yesterday: she asked them what was wrong with me instead of themselves. It's the most undermining, intrusive shit ever. Teachers cannot teach unless students want to learn.
All the other female teachers find the students oh-so "cute" (even mademoiselle golden showers in the hallway) but I find it hard to find it cute that they're completely ILLITERATE. Cute will not get them into college.
ANd so it goes... the saga continues, my sanity ebbs away.

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.