Week 28: March 16-20

090320: Day 124
For the record, it snowed today. It was the first day of spring and it snowed.

I got another runaway notice in my mailbox this morning: SF ran away as of February 28. Of course, we already knew she ran away because Ms. L tracked down SF’s mom (by asking GW if she had SF’s phone number) when we hadn’t seen SF in a couple weeks. SF’s mother said SF had run away. She just didn’t tell the school or anything because, you know, SF has done this before. It took her three weeks to report it to the school. Think about that for a second. I would add an exclamation point but I fear it would ruin the severity of the statement.

On a lighter note, I had to cover Ms. L’s eighth period class because she took ten of our kids ice skating today. It was me and CD, quietly writing for 46 minutes. I wrote many haiku, of which this is the finest:

Nigga please with that
obnoxious pussy talk you
must be a virgin

090319: Day 123
I’m still photocopying the entirety of When the Emperor Was Divine. Me and the rizo have gotten real friendly these past couple weeks. According to Mr. W, we don’t have much ink left in the entire building. So I closed the door while me and rizo got real friendly. I need the copies. What else can I do?

090318: Day 122
In our house meeting we discussed the fight SP got into last week, in which he had his two front teeth punched out. According to Mr. P, SP didn’t even understand what was happening as he prepared to rumble. He knew a dude was running at him, which meant there was going to be a fight, but he didn’t know why the dude wanted to fight him. He didn’t realize this dude was going to cream him because he had been shittalking him and his girlfriend for a week. Hello, McFly. My favorite part is SP’s initial reaction to said dude running at him was to remove his jacket. Picture it in your head: dude runs at SP, with the intention to fight, and SP takes a second to remove his jacket. As he is removing his jacket, his hands are behind his back. And dude takes his opportunity to crunch him in the face.

Also on the list of completely ridiculous and confusing incidents of the day was LS’s purported running away. I got a memo in my mailbox this morning saying she had been reported runaway/missing as of the day before. Then I got a phone call from Ms. S, her related service provider, at the end of third period asking if LS’s para was in my classroom. I replied yes, and Ms. S said, “Oh, you’re kidding . . . Can you send her down here. LS is here, wondering where she is.” I had that weird feeling you get when there are giant holes in the official story. Did Ms. S know she was “missing”? I talked to AP A later that day to report that LS was in the building—not missing, as previously thought—and AP A had no idea she was in school. What the fuck, people? Either which way, LS was not at home the night before, so who knows where she was? She did make it to school, though.

090317: Day 121
I passed out grades for the fourth marking period today. The number of students who are confused to be failing is more upsetting than the sheer number of failing students. I find myself explaining the class requirements everyday. “Your Aims and Answers sheets count for points. If you are not doing them, you will lose points. The behavior rubrics count for points. If you are not doing them, you will lose points. There is a vocab quiz on Friday. Do not be surprised on Friday when I tell you there is a quiz. . . . Everything counts. If you are not doing classwork, you are losing points. Everything counts. Let me repeat, everything counts.”

That is not an exaggeration, for those of you who were wondering.

090316: Day 120
Turns out the Designs for Learning series of courses at Mercy isn’t just frustrating when your professor is crappy. Even with a decent professor, it is pointless. I understand how to lesson plan and how to unit plan and how to evaluate student work. You know, I pretty much get how to teach at this point. Everyone else does, too. As a result, we spend at least an hour of class bitching about one thing or another while our professor tries to assuage our anxieties nigh on the end of our Mercy career.

I make phone calls during the first half-hour of class now. We’re not talking about anything, and I try to sit next to the door because there’s also an outlet there for my computer (which has a bum battery, by the way: Apple please take notice). It’s very easy to just slip out the door and make a few phone calls to various parents. The fourth floor corridor more often than not has at least one teacher-cum-grad-student on a cellphone talking to a parent, so I know I’m not egregiously out of line.

The purpose of my phone calls this evening? DJ and CM’s incredibly dumb face-off in fifth period wherein they called each other ugly and asked each other to suck their respective dicks. For the record, CM is a girl. The best part of the fight was when DJ got louder and louder as he was taken out of the classroom and away from any chance of CM’s physically harming him.

Also called home for LF because he is failing hardcore and says really, well, hardcore things in the classroom.