Quick highlights from weeks 4 and 5:
- Week 4: The main water pipe at AVMS broke, resulting in much drama as our principal tried to figure out if we could still have school that day. She came up with the following arrangement: after lunch,all the kids who needed to use the bathroom would HOP ON THE BUS and drive ACROSS TOWN to a community center who would allow them to use their restrooms and then return to school. The majority of my lunch class went on the 1st bathroom bus, leaving me with 6 students to entertain with riddles for 40 minutes. Hilarious.
- Week 5: Honeymoon period = officially over. A student literally escaped from school in order to avoid P.E. Just walked right out the back door and started walking home through the city. One of the teachers' landlords spotted him and called us. 20 minutes later, we had him safely back. First suspensions this week for fighting, 2 from kids who I wouldn't have expected to be suspended and 2 from kids I DEFINITELY expected.
This week we have NWEA testing,
the state test of Missouri that will confirm for us where our students rank as far as their abilities in reading, writing, and math. So far, so good. My Aztec students test tomorrow and then we will have 2.5 hour classes together on Wednesday and Thursday. Need to gather plenty of insightful activities for that precious group to keep them occupied in the business of becoming better humans.
I confronted an ugly truth about myself this week. Part of my difficulties with teaching stem from one-size-fits-most lesson plans - I have been trying to plan for the "Middle" level of ability in Language Arts, hoping that my high kids stay occupied and the low kids succeed. Instead, what has happened is tons of disengagement as low students give up or wait for me to drag them through while the high kids are bored to tears.
The state of my approach to plann
ing lessons has revolved around hoping, wishing, and defiance. Hoping, not planning, that students succeed. Wishing, not being proactive, concerning the value of my lessons. Defiance, because I am lazy and selfish and do not want to spend extra time creating modified lessons for both low and high students.
Ugly, ugly, ugly.
Why am I here if not to make learning about language and literature acceptable to everyone?
Talk about conviction. The truth is, nothing will change until I am physically and mentally prepared to plan for everything, rather than throwing things together on a single weekend day and calling it good. So within the craziness of this week, I will suck it up and start structuring these lessons better.
In other news, I picked up what may very well be the BEST NOTE I have ever taken from a student during class. Spanglish with a little bit of Spanish gangsta colloquialism thrown in for good measure:
"Dear Christian,
Jajaja srry pero I luv u pero I also love this boy in my school ese (tr: homeboy) Im not trying to brak up with you but also I dont want to lie to you I love you porque you sexy smart pero it's to hard to love 2 boys at the same time mijo (tr: my dear) poreso I want to ask you algo that If you realy loved me you woudnt say que we Aint goin out and all them lies borque if I was you I would not care wat people said about use 2 you now but tell me if you want sombody else oque cuz I cant make you like me Vato (tr: homeboy)"
Just one reason I love teaching middle school: passionate break-up letters with a woefully poor understanding of conventions. Maybe this week we'll do a notewriting assignment so that whoever reads their next break-up letter can stop wasting time trying to decipher the note and be broken hearted faster?
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