Week 24: February 9-13

090213, Friday the 13th: Day 103
For a couple days in a row DT showed up at the door for my seventh period class. I don’t have DT anymore, so I turned him away. Yesterday he was even escorted by security. DT said Ms. W(itch) kicked him out a few days ago, saying “Go back to G—.” I asked security to take DT to AP A, because I can’t take him into my class without a program change.

This morning, in the special education office, I followed up with AP A simply for the reason that I was not interested in kicking DT out of my classroom again. DT wrote up a report of what happened with Ms. W(itch), and said report was being sent down to AP P, the assistant principal of pupil personnel services (or something like that). Reports often lead to letters in the file, one of the very things that Ms. W(itch) is so concerned about. Clearly AP A has finished dealing with her through unofficial channels and is just letting the shit fly and land where it may.

I’m not sure of the truth in DT’s report. DT is the kid who said he was in family court when HC punched out a cop, a story whose veracity is easily torn apart. But he said Ms. W(itch) told him to “go back to G—” multiple times over the course of a couple days, which leads me to believe he isn’t making it up, per se.

If DT is telling the truth, what was Ms. W(itch) thinking? Did she expect me to cover her ass? If she was expecting that kind of solidarity, she really should have talked to me at any point in the past week instead of giving me the poop-eye all the time. My poor kiddos who are in her class now.

090212: Day 102
Ms. G, the guidance counselor for most of my kids, came to visit me today on behalf of MN. MN desperately wants back into my seventh period—and out of Ms. W(itch)’s. We went to AP A to discuss the situation, because I wasn’t comfortable just poaching kids from Ms. W(itch), especially because I consider MN one of the better kids in that section, and I knew the balancing of those sections was a delicate matter. AP A not so surprisingly said we couldn’t move him.

Unfortunately for MN, RQ had come to me the day before and asked to be let back in. I sent him to AP A who gave him the OK. Poor MN probably did it the right way, but RQ got to the assistant principal first. As of now, I have seven kids and Ms. W(itch) has six. She may even only have five, because I seem to remember JR showing me his schedule, which said he now has Ms. Wi for English.

Sadly, I suspect all the kids would come back to me if they could. This doesn’t have that much to do with me or Ms. W(itch), either. It’s simply a matter of change. They don’t like it.

090211: Day 101
JGi, a student of mine from last year, came by to say hi to me today. His family had moved to North Carolina, but they had to come back because his mom needed health care benefits that are only available here. He hung around for a couple minutes at most, and I swear he looks three years older. It’s amazing how fast high school students grow up.

090210: Day 100
I attended the union meeting after school. We’ll start with the good news first: the free Dunkin Donuts were delicious. And I got to have a glass of milk with mine, which was especially decadent.

Our district rep came and basically begged everyone to attend the big rally downtown on March 5th. If we do not show up with tens of thousands, she said, we will look weak before the mayor. If we look weak before the mayor, those 15,000 layoffs he’s considering look much more viable. Fifteen thousand layoffs, by the way, comes out to roughly every first, second and third-year teacher in the system. So, you know, me. And Ms. L. And Ms. Pe and Ms. V. And Mr. H, Mr. B, Ms. M, Ms. P, Ms. S, and on and on and on. I’ve resolved myself to going to the rally and enlisted Jeff.

I greeted Ms. W(itch) with cordiality—putting all shit aside in order to foster a collegiate working environment—and she remained icy. I then proceeded to feel like a traitor to the UFT for the rest of the meeting, which is admittedly insane. This kind of hypocrisy makes my skin crawl. Ms. W(itch), Mr. C, Ms. M, Crazy J (who has a real name, I just always call her that because of her diehard union stance and insane emails) and the district rep all speak of how administrations divide and conquer. But daily I encounter teachers who make the divisions all the more deep. Alert to Ms. W(itch): you are currently part of the problem!

Anyway, that’s not even the most horrible part of it. After all the talk of layoff and the rally, we moved on to school-specific issues. Ms. W(itch) mentioned a couple things that I had no knowledge of. (She seemed to expect me to magically know all of this and be “on her side” without question—but how would I know if she never told me?) One: she got three letters in her file in a week. Two: administration took away her deanship “to punish” her. Three: she had an administrator physically jump into her face and make her feel unsafe in coming to work on a daily basis.

This is the point in the storytelling that I became very uncomfortable. I know that administrator was my AP, AP A, and I know that AP A called me pretty well directly after the confrontation Ms. W(itch) described. I will not defend AP A for getting into Ms. W(itch)’s face, but I also know exactly how Ms. W(itch) approached her because she approached AP A the same way she approached me: telling us the way it was without a second’s thought to our perspective.

I also find it hard to believe that Ms. W(itch) got half of my seventh period as part of her “punishment,” as she contends. If she did get my kids as punishment, then I say that’s a big Fuck You from the administration to me, too—because obviously I’ve been receiving severe punishment for a full semester.

During her monologue of agony, Ms. W(itch) actually started to choke up. I felt bad for her—I had no idea about her losing her dean’s post, which means losing money—but also that much angrier at her. She came at me, AP A and Ms. L with boatloads of attitude and then felt threatened when a little of it came back at her. You can’t go into rooms yelling at people and then get uppity if a little anger comes back to you.

Oh, worst part? The kids know Ms. W(itch) doesn’t want them. MN has told me three days in a row that she hates him. JR and others overheard her in the hall telling AP A that she was being punished by getting all the kids I can’t handle—that’s right, she’s slinging the shit at me, too. And she won’t let me talk to her, even about the kids, so I don’t know how to help them.

090209: Day 99
First day with my seventh period broken in half. I was standing in the hallway, waiting for my students to arrive. And waiting and waiting. They have a tendency to be pretty late—each one of those who is left. AR came down the hallway with a lissome and smiley young lady. It was clear he was courting her. He gave me a look that said “keep it cool,” but I fucked it up. I said hi to him—and as a teacher, there was no way I could be cool.

AR took it all in stride. He shook his head and smiled at me, walked past my door, thus past the class he had next, and the girl barely noticed. Charming though it was, he was late to class.

Week 23: February 2-6

090206: Day 98
It is clear that the events of this school year are my school’s death throes. We are all, students and teachers, little lysosomes, oozing enzymes to digest the dying tissues. Too bad it’s all dying tissue.

Ms. W(itch) came into my room during eighth period and accused me of giving her only the behavior problems, implying I was out to fuck her over. I attempted to explain that the section we were dividing was only students with behavior problems (and not even all of them, at that)—and thus she got half the behavior problems while I kept the other half. She then told me that I was giving her all the students from my fourth period who made me drop the F-bomb. If she would have let me speak before getting in her last word and walking out, I could have told her that, in fact, none of the students in the section AP A asked me to split up were in my fourth period save one: BR. And, when asked which half of the section I wanted to keep, I chose to keep the half with BR. So, she would have had NONE of the students from my fourth period. I could also have explained that she is getting two A students and one solid B student in the bargain, while I think I was only taking one student who passed last semester. Too bad she thinks she knows more about what happens in my classes and about my students than I do.

Apparently, she’s going to go to the union about the matter. To which I say, ok—the only truth that will come out is the truth I attempted to tell her. AP A asked me on my way out if I would be willing to swap sections with Ms. W(itch), to prove that the split was fair. I agreed because the split was fair. As it is now, I’ve lost JR and MN—which breaks my heart—but I’ve also lost DT, which is awesome. If we reverse the sections, I’ll lose AR and BR—which will break my heart—but I’ll lose SC, which is awesome.

The worst part of splitting the section is what it’s doing to the kids. I spent a lot of eighth period with JR, who refused to go to Ms. Po’s class because he knows he’s going to be switched out of it starting Monday. What we are doing to these kids is the definition of shuffling problems around in order not to deal with them. And they know. JR told me he just wanted things to go back to the way they were. Even without the regrouping of our students, things can never go back to the way they were: Ms. Pe is gone. Ms. L and I are a hair’s breadth from being gone. The school is returning money left and right. And the system doesn’t care what it does to JR. Or MN, BR, JO or AR.

JR said he was going to tell his mother to send him back to Jamaica if they didn’t change his schedule back. I suggested that if that would be a better education for him, he should do it. He said it wouldn’t be better.

JR has nowhere to go. He’s fucked in the Bronx; he’d be fucked in Jamaica. He stood in my doorway, unable to stay and unable to leave.

090205: Day 97
Ahem, I kicked another two students out of seventh period today. DT and SC: screw those kids, they had to go. After they left, the period was much easier, and the relief of the remaining students was clear. It’s easier to be both ruthless and rewarding with the new section set up. With all the behavior problem students together, I feel less guilty having a couple removed because that action sends a clear example to the others and having any student buck authority in that class leads to their downward spiral. It’s also much easier to reward students. I can give rewards for the smallest good things—coming on time, paying attention to me and making eye contact, good group work—without having “good” students feel jilted because they aren’t rewarded every day for doing just those things.

Then I got a phone call eighth period from AP A and Principal N asking me to split that section in half. In order to save jobs, AP A wants to split up the behavior-problem section to create two sections. I see the benefit in this: the fewer of those kids you have together, the easier it will be to control them and thus for them to learn. Our problem in the house has been there are too many of them to separate with only five sections to work with. With the new plan, Ms. W(itch), who taught freshman last year and is known for her iron fist, will get half of my seventh period and I will keep the other half. Similarly, Ms. Po, Ms. L and Mr. P (new math teacher for the house) will have their behavior-problem sections split and given to other teachers in the department.

I made a list that splits the section as evenly as possible: equal numbers of LTAs in each section, kids I want to keep in each section, and a kid I want to get rid of in each section. I didn’t think I would get to choose which section to keep, so I wasn’t so into making it an uneven split.

Of course, the moment we start to get a handle on all the changes in the house, we have to make more. I don’t want to give away any of my students. Though I have power over them, I don’t have any such power when it comes to administration.

090204: Day 96
I’m teaching one of my favorite units now—yet another reason I would not like to be excessed—”Flight v. Invisibility.” In the course of the unit, students research movies, comics books, and TV shows to answer the question: Which superpower is better, flight or invisibility? The question engages nearly every student, the research sources are immediately captivating as they are all part of the fabric of our nation’s pop culture, and we get to write essays. Granted, perhaps it is only I who enjoy the essay part, but so what! This is also the second time I’ve taught this unit, so I feel organized and competent.

The assignment today had the students working in small groups to brainstorm the pros and cons of flight or invisibility. Seventh period today? Great! They were kind of crazy, but they did perhaps the best job on their brainstorming of any class. This fact isn’t surprising, as all the students in there are quite bright and very creative. This tracking thing could work—for all my students.

On an unrelated note, a story about DD and LF. The two of them like to loiter around the teacher elevator at the end of the day, hoping to catch a ride down. They tried to hitch a ride down today as Ms. Pe, Ms. L and I were walking out. We were talking about students—a conversation I wasn’t keen to stop—so I told them they could not ride down with us. DD literally stood in the doorway of the elevator, trying to force his way on, as we explained that he and LF could not ride with us. I can’t imagine we actually pushed DD, but perhaps we did, as they did not ride the elevator down. Why would I do favors for kids who come 25 minutes late to class?

090203: Day 95
First day of the new semester. We arranged to have our kids grouped in such a way as to put the high-functioning students together in one section and isolate the behavior problems in another. I suppose you could call this “tracking,” but tracking is such an ugly and political word. Of course, the whole situation with the freshman is ugly, so perhaps we should just call a spade a spade: we tracked the kids. And we did it because we had to do something to save both our own sanity as teachers and improve the educations of all our other students who care enough to shut up when asked.

The students in the behavior problems section figured shit out pretty quickly. They’re angry. Most of them said something like they couldn’t learn in this class with all the bad kids. Bad kids was their term, not mine. I have little to no sympathy for this. They can’t learn? Ironic they should be so sensitive to misbehavior when their own persistent misbehavior impeded the learning of countless students last semester. Not so much fun for them when the shoe is on the other foot. Ha ha!

I have the behavior-problem section seventh period (forget fourth, they’ve been largely disbanded and dispersed—seventh shall be my new Everest). Today—first day of class—I kicked out two students. Peace out, GA and JO. Turns out I have more power than you.

090202: Day 94
Professional Development seems to always leave me dissatisfied. My time could be better spent lesson planning. I did get to paint with watercolors and dance salsa, though. Before slugging my way through yet another pointless department meeting.

Normally, department meetings consist of our AP giving us the party line as to our responsibilities and the faculty complaining long and loud about something stupid—parking regulations, time-clock/time-card injustices, vagaries of school policy. The meeting today began as expected: AP A once again exhorting us to call homes, call homes, call homes for the students who were LTA (long-term absences). And to log the calls on Daedalus, a piece-of-crap software program that seems to be only good for logging phone calls.

Dean C, for the first time in my memory of special education bitch sessions, spoke out on the underlying issues, not just the bullshit. Dean C suggested that, as experience proves phone calls home do not bring the students back, the school should address the reasons why students do not want to come. Say, the lack of community in the school or the unwelcoming atmosphere. The department immediately remembered why Dean C inspires love in everyone he meets (and it’s not the fact that he’s gorgeous). AP A responded by saying we need to call home and log the calls on Daedalus.

Mr. K took up the standard and confronted AP A with the culture of fear and lack of transparency in the school: “Just the tone of your voice shows how afraid everyone is in this building.” I’m certainly afraid: my job is not secure. In fact, I spent my day worrying that I would be excessed, perhaps along with Ms. L. AP A responded by saying we need to call home and log the calls on Daedalus.

Our school is out of money. The teachers are so fed up they are actually talking about the real problems, which is not typical in the building. Many are planning on leaving at the end of the year. I’m waiting to see if we get word any time soon that our school is on the to-be-closed list.

Week 22: January 26-30

090130: Day 93
I made an offhand remark to my AP this morning about having time to sit down with Mr. P, the new math teacher for the house, because I need everyone to be going like gangbusters the second the spring semester starts. AP A looked right at me and said, somewhat loudly, “How did you know that? How did you know it was Mr. P? That hasn’t been announced yet.”

Oops.

I excused myself from naming my source, and AP A explained to me that Ms. Pe’s replacement has not been announced because the replacement has not been finalized. Interesting, though annoying. I really need to know who’s going to be working with us. We only have one shot at making this semester different than last, and I’m not so into fucking it up. Bureaucracy blows.

090129: Day 92
I proctored the Reading RCT this morning, which is to say I read the Reading RCT aloud, in its entirety. This would normally be the worst thing ever, but SR was there. SR graduated last year and was my BEST student. She works harder than most people I know, let alone students. God bless her, she’s taken the Reading RCT half a dozen times at least, without passing it. She came back, after graduating, to try again. Seeing her did my heart good.

Only 16 kids out of the hundred or more who took the test passed it. Hearing she failed (again) wasn’t surprising, but it was still heartbreaking.

090128: Day 91
We learned today that Ms. Pe is to be excessed. We learned this through the gossip underground, which is the only reliable source of information in the school. (That should tell you something.) Many things are said behind closed classroom doors.

It’s hard to be that upset by this information because I really believe the situation vis-a-vis our students cannot get worse. Of course, our students hate change even more than the average kid, so who knows what this kind of change will do to them.

When Mr. R, our kids’ music teacher, was excessed, MN told me the class was deliberately planning on making his replacement’s life miserable. I fear for what they will do to a new math teacher. And how that will bleed into all the other classrooms in their academic lives.

090127: Day 90
Few things are as lovely as Regents Week. With the exception of proctoring and grading a couple of exams, there isn’t a lot to be done.

This morning I watched “Pretty in Pink” and organized my paperwork.

My afternoon was spent grading finals, sitting on my heater, watching “Roswell” on Hulu.

I could hear the papers whispering against one another as I stacked and organized, the scratches of felt-tip marker on file folders, the clink of my keys hanging from my back pocket. The bliss of a student-free week.

090126: Day 89
Today I showed some fourteen-year-olds my awesome bowling prowess. For those of you who know me, you may find the former statement pretty funny, as I do not actually have any bowling prowess. But let me tell you, I gots more game than my students. I bowled an 86! Even had a couple spares and a couple strikes.

GW, however, was the real star of the show. She told me she wasn’t going to bowl, but I had already paid for her games. I made her bowl, because that’s my job. I can’t explain what she did, exactly. She would bring the ball back, swing, and let the ball literally fall onto the alley. She had no follow through. But the ball would slowly, slowly make its way down to the pins and knock at lest nine over almost every time. I have never seen anything like it.

We had lunch at McDonalds and played Two Truths and a Lie. It was quiet, awkward and sweet. The way 14-year-olds should be.

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Update: New film picture on Day 67.