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 12: November 10-14

081115: Bonus Day
I finished my last session of Life Spaces Crisis Intervention! I get my Saturdays back!

081114: Day 51
I followed the steps of the writing process and wrote my first successful short story. Turns out that what I’m teaching my students actually works.

See, I needed a short story for the test on Thursday that would be short enough to read in 7 minutes or so, followed a clear plot structure and included setting, protagonist, antagonist, and conflict. Those elements had to be clear, but the story had to be just complicated enough to be a true test of my students’ ability to apply what they’d learned to something they hadn’t read before.

So I did everything I asked the kids to: I brainstormed a setting, protagonist, antagonist, and a conflict. I laid out the events of the story on a plot pyramid that included exposition, three incidents of rising action, a climax, falling action and a resolution. I turned that pyramid into a draft.

Most amazing? The kids loved it. Especially third period. BJ suggested that I had to “write the next chapter of that” and every time another horrible thing happened to Billy, my protagonist, FR would mutter, “Ooh, he tight! He tight!”

I may write more formulaic short stories. They are quite rewarding.

081113: Day 50
Where to start. Ms. P is facing a “routine” corporal punishment charge for taking a student’s hat off. KCh, who was student of the month for September, was suspended for play fighting in gym. DD’s baby picture, which was attached to his project on my bulletin board, was ripped off and stolen. I gave a test, which is always kind of hectic. Yet even among these moments of insanity, I haven’t revealed the most frustrating moment of my day.

I spent my sixth period with CA–whose mother kept him home for most of the first marking period because she is crazy, too–organizing his backpack and trying to get him to work. He hadn’t finished the test from first period, yet, and he still has not done ANY work on the short story project, despite our spending two days of class working on it.

He did nothing. I had him working on brainstorming some details about his protagonist, and all he could tell me was that the guy was 14 and a male. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer any of the following prompts (which were written on the worksheet): what does he look like? what does he do all day? what is he good at? what does he like? hate? goal in life? what do other characters say about him?

CA sat there, chewing on his tissue (both weird and gross, but that’s a different problem) and wouldn’t work even when confronted. He is failing all his classes because he has turned in no homework and often fails test due to his just sitting there, chewing his tissue. In his own words: “I just really don’t like to do work.” He participates well in class, so I feel confident that he is capable of the work. He just won’t do it.

He sat there and looked sheepish for a good fifteen minutes, assuming I would forgive him for his laziness and pass him anyway? I told him I would not. Neither would Ms. L or Ms. P or Ms. P. He continued to look sheepish and ignore the magnitude of the problem. When I suggested I would have to call his mother to discuss this, because discussing it with him was doing no good, he recommended that I call that day, because his brothers monopolize the phone on Saturdays and Sundays.

081112: Day 49
When we play Jeopardy or any other game in order to review a test, I always lay out rules at the get-go. Rule #1: If you yell at me, call me a cheater, accuse me of treating your team unfairly or argue over how many points you should get or the other team should lose, then I will not be having a good time. And if I’m not having a good time, then we will stop playing and the game will be over.

Third period did not follow this, my most important rule. Thus, we stopped playing the game. Well, I stopped playing the game, and they continued to play against one another. It was kind of a cluster-fuck up by the Smart Board, but they kept going through the questions and answers. And fighting. And trying to keep score. I was kind of impressed with their determination to play the game, given that it was still about English.

When I stepped back in to make sure they had covered the important stuff for Thursday’s test, little JC (who was just added) wanted to know which team would get the extra credit points I had offered to the victors. I explained that because the game had been canceled, there were no victors. So: no extra credit points for anyone. That’s what you get for breaking the rules, motherfuckers.

081110: Day 48
JS and MB have an odd relationship. JS, who is barely 4’10″, chases MB around the room with one of his copious highlighters at the end of nearly every fifth period. MB runs around to get away from him, but won’t actually exit the room to escape. They often have spats in class where MB complains that JS is bothering him or touching him or doing something else vaguely annoying. Yet MB sits himself in front of JS everyday.

The conflict in JS’s short story is between John and Bob: John is always bullying Bob. In much the same manner that JS bullies MB. This makes me wonder even more.

Privately, in our house meetings, we speculate about the illicit love between the boys. We think they have some kind of elementary-school level flirtation going on, with their unexpressed, inexpressible homosexuality working its way out by proxy of a florescent highlighter.

Week 11: November 3-7

081107: Day 47
I could barely teach today. I gave them a quiz (as promised) and then we discussed “What To Do In Class” and “What NOT To Do In Class.” I read them my letter about canceling all rewards. The only students who complained were those who are the worst offenders in all of our classes. And the students who deserve rewards–and there are many, I know, and I feel for them–were sympathetic and understood my position. CA stayed behind after first period to tell me, “I understand why you can’t do it anymore.”

I feel much better. Lighter. The heartbreak is still there, but I’ve let myself off the hook for rising above the chaos.

Ms. P told her mom about the cookies, among other insane stories from the week, and her mom commented that it was hilarious. And the year is comedic in its exaggerated proportions, unless, as Ms. P told her mom, you feel responsible for teaching these students.

I’ve come to some sort of temporary peace with the idea that I will teach my students but no longer go beyond my bare bones responsibilities. No more treats and privileges. No more lending pens and pencils to have them stolen or vandalized. No more lawn-chair-lounging for a relaxing period.

Lessons, worksheets, quizzes, projects, and I’m done.

081106: Day 46
I make homemade cookies for students when they win Student of the Month. Today I brought the cookies in for students who won for being “Most Respectful of Peers and Teachers.” Kids in my fourth period (KC? TE? BR? JK?!?) stole student-of-the-month cookies from my desk. I know it happened during fourth period because CG confirmed for me that she saw LFo’s and JR’s cookies sitting on my desk during the period and that they were gone at the end of the period. I suspect she knows who took the cookies, but being a “snitch” is worse than stealing from the teacher and your classmates.

I have canceled all rewards in my classroom. There will be no more cookies, candy bars, homework passes, raffle tickets or grab bag prizes. Student of the Month is suspended.

I pulled down just about everything that makes it feel homey. The fucking flowers won’t stay up anyway, and the thought of any of my students–even the kind and sweet ones–sitting in my lawn chair with their backs squishing my handmade pillow as they nod off or refuse to take notes is intolerable.

I cannot hold onto the idea that all of my kids are honorable and worthwhile. Believing in them has once again opened me up to heartbreak. They have proven time and again that they will not change their behavior. I don’t know what else to do other than change my own behavior, hold myself at a distance.

This means I will be a worse teacher. I have to be a worse teacher in order to save myself from stinging betrayals and continual disappointment. This week, this month, this year: the good I do is not worth the emotional price I pay on a daily basis.

081105: Day 45
Mr. L, the assistant principal of security and safety is doing us a huge favor; he has created conduct sheets for our worst offenders to help us control their behavior. The boys (they’re all boys) have to ask their teachers at the end of each period to initial the sheet under “proper behavior” or “improper behavior.” We have no idea what the consequences of these sheets are–it’s possible Mr. L doesn’t know yet, either, because it seems like he’s kinda doing the job of our departmental AP (ahem) and afraid of stepping on toes–but they have certainly pissed off certain of our kids. Whether this translates into improved behavior has yet to be determined.

081104: Day 44
Chancellor’s conference day: Ms. P, Ms. L and I went to the American Museum of Natural History for our professional development. We checked out African animals and dinosaurs, ate a tasty lunch and drank some afternoon tipple. Ms. P treated us to the Manhattan’s largest, tastiest cupcakes at The Little Red Hen, where she used to work. I spent most of the day in a daze.

I lost my shit on the subway ride back to Grand Central. A woman tried to stand on top of me despite the copious amount of room to her opposite side. Then I moved away from her and a man put his arm in front of my face. I can acknowledge now that this was normal crowded-subway-car behavior. But in the moment it was the latest in a string of incidents of being treated like I’m invisible and have no needs.

So I took a step backward, off the train. Then Jeff held me while I sobbed on the platform.

081103: Day 43
My despair is great. My mom came with me to school today and watched my fourth period treat me inhumanely. Again. I think she is the only thing that stopped me from screaming and crying at them. I do not like them. They are not kind. They make me hate teaching.

Behavior is not improving. It is getting worse. Worse and worse. I don’t think it is going to get better. I do not know how I will be able to keep teaching these kids day after day.

Dad gave me the speech about the greater good. And I’m all about the greater good and how the results of my labor may remain invisible for years before they are apparent. I get that. But that doesn’t mean I can stand in front of students on a daily basis and have them insult me.

I don’t have words for the hole in me about this.

Week 10: October 27-31

081101: Bonus Day
In taking my Saturday workshop on helping students deal with crisis, I came to a realization about an incident that occurred during seventh grade. We were discussing the fact that as teachers we can’t always spend a half-hour talking to students in crisis because we cannot–legally–leave the other students in our room alone.

This reminded me of a day in band during seventh grade when Mr. P left us unattended. We were alone long enough for half of us to wander into the percussion section and begin to play all the percussion instruments. When Mr. P returned, he was furious and took us out into the hallway. He lined us up along the lockers and began to write detention slip after detention slip. This is the only time in my entire life I was in genuine danger of receiving disciplinary action.

In the end, he didn’t give any of us detentions. Looking back, knowing what I know now, he couldn’t have given us detentions. If he’d given us detentions, he would’ve had to admit that he wasn’t in the room–that he’d left 12-year-olds alone in the band room for an extended period of time. It also explains why he was so angry (it seemed out of proportion at the time) about our playing the percussion instruments–we could have directed unwanted attention to his leaving us alone.

081031: Day 42
Halloween tends to be a slow day around the school. Kids stay home, either because they have mayhem to cause elsewhere or because they are afraid of getting caught in such mayhem. To prevent problems before they begin, security is out in force and we have a rapid dismissal: the bell rings 10 minutes early and all kids must exit the building immediately through the nearest exit and leave school grounds.

For the students who showed up, I had a writing workshop. They worked on organizing their short story ideas into plot pyramids. Using the ideas they brainstormed about setting, protagonist and antagonist, and conflict, they created the bones of a story with exposition, rising action (3-4 events), climax, falling action and resolution.

It worked amazingly well. LMS is writing a romance set in the WWE locker room. LF’s story is about a cat protecting his territory from a band of defiant rats. JK is writing about a drug boss and his new dealer who have a conflict over money. DCr’s story is called “The Cop Killers” and involves an antagonist who loves honeybuns and hates tall people.

Incidentally, my story is set in 1987 in an arcade. The protagonist is a bully who is in love with a curvy Pac-Man maven. Tune in later for a rough draft; right now, I only have a plot pyramid.

081030: Day 41
Ms. L gave up teaching her seventh period. She sat down behind her desk and refused to teach through the constant roar of conversation in her classroom. Of course, the kids immediately begged her to keep teaching. They wanted her to answer questions. They wanted to know things about U.S. History all of a sudden. She still refused.

I am proud and jealous.

She wants to transfer the good kids out of the class, but I kinda put the kibosh on that idea. Our classes are already busting out–I had 17 kids in my third period, which is illegal–and what would happen to the crappy kids who are left in her class? I’m not gonna say I want to teach the kids (see below), because I don’t, but that doesn’t change our responsibility as educators.

We have students who need to be removed from the class for their behavior. The answer has to be to take out the problem students, not the good ones. We made a hit list: we’re calling parents and compiling incident reports in order to get certain students suspended. I don’t expect the phone calls to make a difference in the kids’ behavior (they haven’t so far), but they are documentation that we have exhausted our resources as classroom teachers and the students need consequences doled out by those above us in the ladder of discipline.

081029: Day 40
In the movie of my life, I am the protagonist and fourth period is the antagonist. I once again lost myself to frustration and anger. I cannot keep teaching through the swearing and conversations and throwing of paper balls.

I am kind and it does not work. I am angry and it does not work. I give rewards and it does not work. I use I-statements–”I feel disrespected . . . I feel hurt . . . when you won’t listen to me”–and it does not work. I tell them I don’t like teaching their class and they don’t even listen to more than half of the sentence. I call parents and it does not work. I speak to individual students after class and it does not work.

Ms. D, one of the paraprofessionals, warned me a couple weeks ago that I have to be careful of my heart because these kids are not. But I have to teach them, which means I have to at least pretend to like them, which means they break my heart almost daily.

081028: Day 39
I got my first ever whiff of student-fart today.

081027: Day 38
In light of it being Halloween week and the fact that most of my students have already read “The Black Cat,” we read “The Most Evil Sorcerer” by R. L. Stine. Over the course of four days, I used that creepy little YA short story to teach characterization, antagonist and protagonist, conflict, and plot structure. Rats are thrown up, spiders crawl under a dude’s skin, an evil wizard is turned into a black, disgusting bug.

You should have heard me acting out the the rat part. It was inspired.

Week 7: October 6-10

081010: Day 28
We watched Pixar short films, rather the perfect medium for discussing the basic elements that all stories must have: character, setting and plot. Ms. A, my AP, commented during first period how amazing it was: put on a silly cartoon and every student is completely engaged, without a moment of teacher encouragement. The films–“Knick Knack” and “Lifted”–were wordless, allowing my kids to identify story elements and conflict without getting caught up in language processing or vocabulary issues.

081008: Day 27
How do you explain to a general education teacher that your special education students take quite a lot longer to do everything, including vocabulary? Or perhaps especially vocabulary, as their language skills are so impoverished as to be crippling?

Mr. B, my mentor from last year, came to watch my disillusioning fourth period in order to give me advice on how to settle them long enough to teach. He’s going to tell me what he saw this coming Tuesday, and I am unreasonably worried about what he will say. I am using emotional reasoning, as my Life Spaces Crisis Intervention training calls it: he will see my limited plans (five vocab words? that’s it?) for the day and blame me for my students’ behavior. Perhaps needless to say, emotional reasoning is an invalid approach to interpreting the world around you.

081007: Day 26
Monday on through Tuesday morning sinks me in the doldrums. I am swamped with Mercy work, leading me to spend literally the entirety of my waking hours on Monday engaged in the know and do of teaching; I hardly get enough sleep to function on Tuesday morning. I snapped at Jeff because he was relating some small detail about the Bill Ayers affair–which invokes my ire like little else these days–over breakfast.

There is a tipping point on Tuesday, though. During my second period prep I have my first chance of the week to organize all the random papers floating around my classroom. And organization makes me feel really good.

081006: Day 25
Mondays seem to last forever. We had our monthly staff development meeting after school. I had to write learning strategies that work for me on the front of my paper bag and then write learning strategies that don’t work for me on little strips of paper that I put inside the bag. Then I shared with my partner, Ms. W, and she shared with me. The rest of the session continued as such.

I snuck Hershey’s kisses from my pocket to keep me happy.

Week 1: August 28-29

082908: Ms. A did not want me to take a picture of her. I warned her I would.

082808: I pulled my whiteboard markers out of my teacher closet after the long summer. I couldn’t remember if the bunch I was holding had been used or not. Then I pulled out the second bunch, conveniently labeled for just this moment.