First Quarter Grades Are In

And they do not look good. Like I said, before, most of my students are failing. I have four classes, and the average grade distribution in each would be something like 1 A, 1 B, 2 C's, 2D's, and 15 F's. I even went to the principal's office to ask him if that was OK or if I should alter my grading scale so that like a 50% was passing. Thankfully, though, he said that it was find if I failed most of my students and that sometimes they just need to see that F first quarter to motivate them to try the next quarter. I think I'm failing more students than the average teacher at my school, but not many more. I was hearing very similar comments from all the other teachers while we were in our new "computer lab" (3 P.C.'s) logging grades into the system.

I want to thank those Joe and anonymous for leaving messages again. You are absolutely right that I need to keep my personal and professional life separate and find more joy in the small successes I do have. On that note, I am slowly getting more students coming into my room at lunch, which is such a great sign. That means they like me which means they respect me and the more students in a class who respect me, the better behavior is bound to become. So as irritating as it can be some days to babysit a bunch of kids during my lunch break, the reward outweighs the cost.

I think I last blogged two weeks ago. I felt basically the same way the whole next week, which is why I didn't blog again. Last weekend I must have a hit a low point. I basically did no work and instead just layed around moaning about how I hate my job and hate grading papers and lesson planning. My boyfriend, getting exasperated with having to listen to the same thing over and over told me to just take a day off. Ding! Lightbulb! Take a day off? Why of course! Why didn't I think of that! Then the next day my mom came down to see my new apartment and I spent our entire lunch complaining about everything again and she agreed. Take a day off! So what did I do? First thing on Monday I wrote a letter to the principal explaining how I need an entire day off in order to catch up on grading and on missed sleep because I hadn't slept more than 5 hours a night in two weeks. I was afraid the principal wouldn't go for it, but instead he said something along the lines of, "Oh that's fine, go ahead. We all need a personal day now and then with this job. We appreciate what you do here." So on Halloween, I stayed home.

Playing hooky is one of the best things I have ever done. I slept in, ate a decent breakfast, then graded papers and calculated letter grades from about 10:30 am to 10:30 pm. I only got 75% done, but that was a huge chunk out of my workload. Also, I did not have to chaperone the Halloween dance, which if it was anything like the dances at my high school, must have been mad raunchy.

Wednesday I went in to work refreshed. I may not have seemed any different to my students, but I just felt better overall. I was still yelling at them and everything, but I didn't care so much. I'm getting more used to the constant yelling at children. Almost luckily for me, 3 students in my bad 7th grade class almost immediately broke rules that got them sent out of my room. The emotionally disturbed girl I mentioned last time threatened a boy and sprayed water all over my floor. One boy was punching another. Another girl had a cell phone ring in class. Oddly enough, it was the girl with the cell phone who ended up getting suspended because she yelled at me so bad for trying to take her cell phone from her while the security guard was standing right there. Silly kids. The funniest part was when she came back in my room at the very end of class and was just seething mad at me. She kept saying, "Don't look at me. Don't say my name. I hate you Ms. Newbie I hate this class." Meanwhile, I absolutely could not help but laugh at her. Of course, that just made her more mad. But I got a laugh in during class time and that is a thing to cherish.

Thursday was the Reading in Fundamental kickoff. Every homeroom was given a class set of books to read and a volunteer came into read it to them for about half an hour after talking about why reading in important. Volunteers, you say? How nice! Well, not so much. For the whole school, we could only wrangle 5 volunteers from the community so the rest of our "volunteers" were administrators. My class is reading "Island of the Blue Dolphins" by Scott O'Dell. I like this because it means I have an activity every day for homeroom now. I don't need to hunt for newspaper articles or dream up team-building or citizenship activities anymore.

Next, the students had an assembly, but a handful of my homeroom students lost their minds and could not even be quiet in the hallway on the way down to the auditorium, so I had to keep 6 boys and 1 girl in for 1 hour of silent detention in my room during the assembly. At least it was mostly silent. A couple of boys kept whining. That was irritating as hell. I hate detention more than making phone calls home. It really does punish the teacher more than the student. And on top of that, I missed seeing some of my lunch-time friend/students participate in their speech and debate competition during the assembly. I was even surprised myself how disappointed I was I didn't get to see that. I felt like I was missing my own son's performance or something. I guess I do like kids after all... :-)

So anyway, I only had to teach one class on Thursday (my GT class) and they just did the book work they didn't do with the sub (because they were at the Halloween dance). Then Friday, today, was a half day since teachers needed to log their grades in, so again, I only had one class and they too just did the book work they didn't do with the sub (because they were slackers).

Oh, and notice how I said sub. Yes. A real, honest-to-goodness substitute. The DC central office shifted personnel around the system so my school finally got teachers for our science and english vacancies. This is fantastic for two reasons. One, the subs that were in those spots are now free to sub for sick teachers so I won't have to cover other classes nearly as much as I used to. Two, I don't have to plan lessons for the other 8th grade science classes anymore or plan for 8th grade all by myself. I now have another physical science teacher to collaborate with. The bad news is that this new science teacher is a first-year just like me, so we are both equally inadequate at helping each other. But it's better than nothing, right? (Remember that the third science teacher in my school is just a second year teacher, too. Are we the most inexperienced team of teachers you've ever heard of?)

Now that I going through a not-really-caring-about-bad-behavior phase and a I-did-everything-I-can-do-so-it's-not-my-fault-they-all-failed phase, what can I whine about in my blog from now on? Science fair - that's what. I hate science fairs. EVERYONE hates science fairs. Why must we hold one? Why are science teachers held accountable for planning and assessing this huge undertaking that definitely does not teach kids anything about how science really works and that barely anyone enjoys. Ugh. This 3 month long science fair period is going to get underway in just a week or two and I am just frightened. I would so much rather just teach science content than coddle a bunch of kids who can't read or write or operate a keyboard and don't care into doing lame fake experiments and writing massive reports about them. Meanwhile, I'll have the kids who can read and write and can type 100 words a minute who will have finished weeks ago. What am I supposed to do with them? I'll let you know how it goes.

Anyway, I think that's really all for now. I plan to relax a bit this weekend guilt-free and then develop independent projects my students can do in class that will take them several days. I think their behavior will be much better if they are just working on some kind of project. I'm basing this on the fact the days when my 7th graders were making posters were always the ones when the most students participated and behaved well. Have a good weekend all!

Still going

I've been trying to only blog when I'm in a good mood, but I haven't been in a good mood since last Wednesday. I don't want to use this public space just to whine and moan. My purpose here is more to inform my friends and family of my progress in life and to inform anyone else just what this is like. I'm discovering what it's like to teach for the first time, and seeing how I find it extremely dramatic and interesting, I thought others might like to discover it with me.

I just watched the movie, "Papillon" last night starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. The whole movie is about their attempted escapes from prison in French New Guinea. In the movie, there are scenes of Steve McQueen, or Papillon, in solitary confinement that are just torturous. When Papillon goes through similar experences again, the audience is simply told of the ordeal. We aren't asked to watch it over and over again. In the same way, I don't want to burden my audience with reading the same depressing story over and over again. I should just be able to tell you that everything is the same as always and you'll understand.

I should also point out that solitary confinement in French New Guinea prison circa World War II does, in fact, seem much worse than teaching in SE DC. So at least there's that.

But I don't even know what to say. The end of the advisory period is on Friday and almost all of my students are failing. I was at work hours longer than usual on Thursday making up packets of all the worksheets all my students needed to still turn in knowing full well that even when I hand them each what they need personally, they are still not going to do it. I've been dealing with lots of parents lately coming to realize that they all either have no effect on their children, or talk a big game but really don't mean it. Look at my grade book and you'll see that I've only assigned a few real homework assignments all quarter, and it's those assignments I'm lucky to have 3 students that have turned it in. I try to play jeopardy review on the days before the tests I've given, but none of the students pay attention. I repeatedly tell them that about 80% of the test is exactly the same as the questions in Jeopardy, and they still don't pay attention. Instead, I hear whines of, "I don't get it" and then the second I try to explain it to them in a new way, they turn around and talk to a friend.

I was talking to another teacher and he was saying this job is the fastest and cheapest psychotherapy you can get. It makes you evaluate your life's purpose and worth very fast. I have never felt so ineffectual and pointless in my life. I have four students that eat lunch with me everyday. For all I can see, those four students are the only ones who care if I come in to work everyday. Now I know that that's not true. I know that in these kids lives, the fact that I am a consistent presence in their life may be more important than I can understand. Maybe I really am reaching some of the shy kids. Maybe I really am challenging some of the problem kids to evaulate what they want out of life. Because at this point I've stopped caring how much science the kids know when they leave my class - I just want these students to leave with some sort of life goal, or at least an understanding of the fact that they need goals. Right now I see a culture of defeatism. Everyone believes they will fail so much, and cares so little that they will because failure is all they've ever known, that they only hope to have a lot of fun and excitement on the way down. They don't even recognize the connection between studying and learning, or learning and succeeding. Was I this blind to the consequences of my actions when I was 13, or is it their culture? I probably was short-sighted in middle school as well, but my parents certainly weren't. They made sure I worked hard so I could get to where I am today. But these kids I'm teaching are being raised by kids who were raised by kids. This is a whole generation of children raised by un-wed teenage moms who are still living with Grandma if their lucky. You can pick the kids with fathers out of the crowd - they are the ones who are dressed decently and act politely around adults. The majority of these kids have no idea what proper manners are because their mothers and grandmothers have never modelled them before.

I mean just the other day I walk into the front office and see the mother of a girl who must be emotionally disturbed. I called home a couple nights in a row leaving messages about all the profanity and threats her daughter had been using in my classroom. When I tried to apologize to this mom for not returning her latest call, she says to me without ever even turning to face me, "I can't even talk to teachers right now. The only person I want to talk to is the principal. I am so mad." The more I think about this encounter, the more mad I get. How dare you show your daughter (who was standing right there) that it is expected and ok to show such aggression toward a teacher or lack of manners toward any adult. Especially an adult who has been suffering the presence of your daughter and meanwhile trying her hardest to teach the 23 other students in the room, nevermind this disturbed girl, too. How can we expect children coming out of households like these to ever succeed in school or the workforce? They've been taught to be rude and selfish and aggressive since birth. How can I be expected to teach children like this? When I see these kids only 2 or 3 times a week for 90 minutes, am I really supposed to revolutionize the way they approach other human beings and their own lives??

This is why I shouldn't blog when I'm upset...

But it is really catching up to me just how upset I am. I've past the point of nervous breakdown. I almost had one a few weeks ago but I didn't. I survived that. Now I'm just unhappy. I can barely remember what it is to have fun. I am never relaxed. When I get home and during the weekends, I am so drained and feeling down that all I want to do lay on the couch and watch tv allll day. And as I do this, I am feeling immense guilt and dread because I know that I have 6 hours of grading ahead of me and I don't have a clue what my classes are doing on Monday.

With that in mind, I need to go do that grading now. Oh but there is some good news. I got my DC driver's license, tags, parking permit and car title. And it only took like 45 minutes yesterday, too. I just waited until 2:00 in the afternoon to go, and it was fine. No line at all. So keep that in mind anyone who's moving to DC. Don't got to the DMV in the morning.

I'd also like to respond to the comment I got. I did call all of my 8th graders at the beginning of the year to introduce myself, so I figure that was kind of a positive phone call. I also called 7 parents last week and asked the parents to reward their children at home with a tasty dinner since their children were so great in my class. You had suggested I should call all parents with a positive message, and I do agree. But I just don't think I can. I hate calling home and it takes sooo much time. For every phone call I make, there's like 5 to 10 minutes of paperwork. Plus, I've made so many negative phone calls to some families already, it'd be hard to make a positive one. I might adapt your method and make a point of calling home to the typically bad kids on any one day they are good. Will they ever be good... I also wanted to call home everyone at least once a quarter, but again, I just don't want to take the time. When the day ends, calling parents is always the last thing I want to do.

Listen to me - I'm already a burned out teacher. This is so dissappointing. A few months ago, I loved kids and wanted to make a difference and loved teaching. Now it's the opposite. I gotta go grade now, though. Hopefully, I'll feel better soon and leave a more pleasant post.

Down again and up again

I don't have much to say, but I have a little bit of "free" (stalling) time now so I'm going to seize it to update. Who know when I'll find the time to do so again.

Tuesday, my homeroom came in to see their mural on the wall. The girls who did most of the work seemed almost embarassed they were so quiet. The boys on the other hand, when I asked them how they liked their mural, replied, "That's gangsta! That's gangsta!" So, they were thrilled.

I briefly went to the Anacostia Watershed Society homepage to look for teaching resources and it looks like I've missed all the teacher trainings and stuff. I haven't contacted them or anything yet - I want to research a bit more, first - but I may have to do this on my own.

My 8th graders were horrible on Tuesday. Absolutely horrible. They would not be quiet! I know, this is the same problem I talk about all the time. Believe me, I'm even saying to myself that this is getting boring. But every time I think I've got the problem licked, it starts again. Yelling doesn't work. Nice only works sometimes. I try to do fun stuff, but they are usually so bad right from the start of class I can't do the fun things.

So I'm yelling at the class about how I'm not going to shout over them and how if they missed my explanation of density the first three times, I'm not going to go over it again. One girl in the back says quietly to herself, "Cuz you don't care". Oh that touched a nerve. I really actually got mad then. I immediately tore into this angry emotional speech about how I spend every minute I am awake from 5:30 in the morning to 11:00 at night grading and planning and worrying about whether or not I am ready for my classes the next day. I was shouting stuff like, "I take that as a personal insult" and, "Don't you dare say I don't care" and bla bla bla for a couple minutes. Finally the girl says, "I didn't it mean it that way, Ms. Newbie". "Are you apologizing?" "Yes" "Alright, thank you, apology accepted" and I moved on for about 30 more seconds before the class acted up again.

I went home that night hating my job. Hating kids and hating my job. And with this job which takes up every minute of every day, hating my job is equivalent to hating my life.

Finally, after dinner, some Seinfeld, and a beer, I was ready to get back to work and plan for Wednesday. Since the cell city posted went so well, I decided to give my 7th graders a cut-and-paste activity about the photosynthesis/respiration cycle. My homeroom did that today and it went great! I need to find things like this for my 8th graders to do.

My bad 7th grade class never had a chance to start because their was an assembly - once again a total surprise to me. It was this whole thing about peer pressure put on by Kaiser Permanente. It was really well done and entertaining, but I'm sure had no lasting impression on them. But, it is really nice to see these corporations and non-profits paying for these assemblies and field trips, because even if the kids can afford to go, they won't pay a dollar if they have to. Seven students refused to even go on the free field trip.

And then I left early to come wait for the cable guy. So today was great! After I grade all this work I have to give back tomorrow, I'll have to think of some kind of lab to do with my 8th graders tomorrow or I might just have to bang my head into a wall during class.

I'm Back on the Internet!

Hey Hey! My internet randomly started working in my apartment so now I can get on and gush about everything in my life again. But don't tell my school that - I still want to take off early on Wednesday to take care of the television cable. Otherwise it'll be like two weeks before they can come out. Plus, I won't be missing any of my classes because my last period on Wednesday is set aside for me to sub other classes. So all I'm missing is the chance to cover a class.

So I'm sitting here with my grade book/lesson plan book so I can remember what happened the last three weeks. I'm going to try and keep each point I make very short. Let's see how this goes. This is going to be a very random collection of facts.

My homeroom is great. I only have 19 kids and only 2 of them are bad. One of them has only been to my class three times she is such a truant so she doesn't even really count. I really know nothing about here except she can be a real brat when she's in a bad mood and lies all the time. I caught her in the hall with a cell phone which is not permitted. She lied and said she had permission to have it. I asked her to return to my class after school for detention since she ran out of the room for detention the day before (I was subbing my homeroom as they were in another class). She told me to go ahead and write a referral because she already told the assistant principal to "Kiss My" butt (in harsher words). Again, not true.

The other kid who is bad is really more of a class clown. It's nothing I can't handle given he's the only one. Plus, he has started dating the smartest girl in the room so he's doing a LOT more work than he used to. It's fantastic. They goof around a flirt a lot which is annoying, but it's better than him not doing any work. I just hope his girlfriend's acting all goofy and ghetto is a temporary thing to try and impress him. A few weeks ago she was proper and sweet. Now she comes to class late a lot and is wailing in the hallway in that high-pitched whining scream thing these ghetto girls do.

I also found in the bathroom outside my room that someone had scratched my homeroom's number (each class has a number) into a bunch of the stall doors. So of course I do not condone graffiti, but I was actually kind of pleased that my homeroom was showing signs of pride and identity. So I am now trying to direct this pride to a more productive cause. A few days ago I had them brainstorm ways to revise the school motto to reflect something about science (since we are in the science hallway). They came up with "Working Together to Save the Environment: A Sense of Community". Isn't that great? We've got science, civic pride, building community which is like social studies. The next day they colored in a mural that I hung in the hallway Friday night. I'm really looking forward to seeing their reactions on Tuesday when they see their mural hanging proudly in our hallway.

This is all winding up to what I realized our theme for the rest of the year will be: Cleaning up the Anacostia River. The whole point of homeroom is to be interdisciplinary and to build study skills, especially in math and reading, and also to build citizenship or something like that. So I've got citizenship with us working together to improve our community. I've got literacy with us reading newspaper articles related to our theme and writing a monthly newsletter to the rest of the school informing them of our progress and our mission. We can bring in social studies by talking about how this relates to our community and science with the actual cleaning and improving of water quality. We can make graphs of how financial savings by switching to energy saving lightbulbs and stuff. We got it all!

I already have a bit of a relationship with the Anacostia Watershed Society since I wrote a large research paper on how to clean up the Anacostia River. I'm hoping I can rekindle this relationship and have my students volunteer for clean-up projects and take field trips touring the River. Basically, I don't know exactly what we're going to do, but there are so many possibilities, I think this could be really great and exciting. Plus, it'll make me look a lot better to my administration because I've been really wearing them thin lately.

The week before last was just terrible all around. I kept screwing up. I think this is how it went: On Monday, my car got something stuck in the wheel well and was making a horrific noise. I'm going to skip the whole dramatic story of me freaking out and nearly crying in the ghetto and sum it up by saying I had to have my car towed and spend the night at my boyfriend's without ever going home. I was wearing the same clothes I had on the day before on Tuesday. Then, Tuesday night, I was up until 1:30 planning. On Wednesday, I went to school, but forgot all the paperwork I had at home, so I had to leave school during my planning period and drive all the way back into Maryland to get my stuff before my next class. Then, I was covering for the art teacher and the class was out of control. Oh right! On top of all this I was very sick and praactically lost my voice. I couldn't raise my voice about normal talking level. So as all these kids I don't know are screaming out the window and walking out of class and throwing papers, I couldn't get any of their attention because I couldn't do more than whisper. Several administrators came by bringing back students I gave passes to go to the bathroom 20 minutes earlier and trying to figure out who was screaming out the window because the neighbors complained. At the staff meeting after school, I was anonymously called out for letting students go to the bathroom in groups. Thursday was back to school night, and I was all ready to stay afer school until it was over, but then I learned I had to drive to Adams Morgan to sign my lease. Not only did I get lost and stuck in regular rush-hour traffic, but there was also a torrential rainstorm, so I ended up being 30 minutes late to back-to school night. Now, it wasn't that big a deal because all the parents (all 50 or so of them) were still in the auditorium, but it looks bad none-the-less. Only about 4 or 5 parents of my students came to back-to-school night. How sad is that? Then finally, on Friday, I was covering again and it was chaos again. This time I was in the room next to the front office so the principal could see even more how little control I had. Even worse, the students noticed, too. During this time, I took an ipod from a student promising to return it to him after class. Then later, the principal came in and was checking this same student's pockets on suspicions he may have stolen money from someone else, so I handed him the ipod. Now this student has a personal vendetta against me, because as he sees it, I'm a snitch. I was afraid this would mean the kid would vandalize my room and such, but instead he's decided to lash out by hollering down the hallways whenever he sees me, "You're Hot! You're Hot! Hot like a firecracker!" So, I guess he's trying to make me feel violated or something, but he's overestimating how much I care. He may look mature, but he's still an 8th grader. I'm just glad he isn't breaking into my room and stealing stuff.

So after that week, I spent the whole weekend furniture shopping and such and got barely any work done. For those two weeks, I was practically winging it in every class because I had no time to plan meaningful lessons. Then I had another terrible Monday with my kicking and screaming 7th graders followed by moving boxes into my apartment until 2:00 am.

But then the light came back out! I assigned a cell city project to my 7th graders (where they make a poster of a city where the mayor's office is the nucleus and so forth) and it went really really well. Almost every student was working and learning. I had been practicing these vocabulary words with them for days and they still weren't remembering any of it. Then all of a sudden with making this poster, they were actually using names of cell structures in conversation with each other! Learning! And also in my 8th grade classes they were learning! I remembered what teaching is supposed to be - I'm supposed to teach and they are supposed to learn. Oh man I can just keep doing that and they can keep learning. Because being one of those police officers in charge of restoring order to an angry mob is an entirely different job.

I also changed my whole behavior plan, again. Remember how excited I was about teaching my kids manners and having like 25 rules? Yea... that didn't work. I know, I know. You told me so. I remember. You all told me before I started that that was a bad idea. You were right. I only see these kids every other day for 90 minutes. Maybe if they were younger and I had them all day, I'd have them time to teach manners. Instead, I need to focus on science. Here's what I've been doing lately. Every time a student breaks one of my "Big Six" rules, they get a check on my clipboard. If they get four checks, they have to complete a behavior journal which is basically a letter of apology to me already formatted for them. They just fill in spaces where they explain what they were doing, why it was wrong, what they need to do from now on, how they'll do that, and how I can help them. I like this plan better because it keeps problem students quiet for 10 minutes while they finish the letter (they can't leave my room until they do, so they finish it fast), it is more immediate than detention, so the students respond more to my warnings, and it means I'm only after class a couple minutes with kids instead of 15 minutes every day. Those lunch and after-school detentions were only punishing me before. The kids barely cared. My Big Six Rules are:

1. Always come to class fully prepared
2. Always work diligently on the task at hand
3. Always raise your hand quietly and wait for permission to speak or leave your seat for any reason
4. Always keep your hands and materials to yourself - no throwing stuff!
5. Always listen carefully when I am talking
6. Never argue with my over classroom procedures

Parent-teacher conferences - only 7 parents came. So there's really nothing to say except that I spent those full 7 hours grading and I still have more to do. Thank goodness I've got Monday off.

I mentioned I found the fathers of two of my students on the sex-offender registry. Both of the offenses were from the 80's so the kids weren't even born. And both sounded mostly like taking advantage of women who were intoxicated. Deplorable, but not outright violent. Though, both of these clearly have problems at home or emotional issues. One is the boy I named Sleepy-Head and the other is a boy who throws full out temper tantrums in my class when I ask him to move to his assigned seat so he'll quit fighting with another boy.

I moved myself into my new amazing apartment and Friday and we basically finished making the place look like a home last night. Not to brag, but it really is the best apartment ever. Adam's Morgan is so cool, the apartment is completely noise-free, our decorating job is super-cool, the rent is controlled, it's just great all around. You should come visit!

How about "The Wire", huh? Fantastic television. You should all be watching it. My review is that my kids are not nearly as hard-core as the kids in that show, but mine are much more playful/disruptive. Raising my voice once has never gotten them to be quiet. One student yelling, "Shut Up!" has never worked either (10 other kids just yell the same thing back). Also, the principal never magically appears when my class is rowdy. He has come by conveniently before, but not every single time, of course. But, if you watch the show, you know when I mean be hard-core. My kids, though more bratty, are far less scary.

And "Lost"? Great! You should all watch that, too. Not that it is related to my job or anything. It's just good.

And one final question to the public: has anyone seen "Half Nelson" with Ryan Gosling? I need to catch that. He's a teacher addicted to cocaine in Harlem. Looks really well-done.

I guess I should be grade or lesson plan now. Ugh. I really miss having a life. I think I'm seeing "The Departed" tonight, so that's something. I hope you all have a fantastic Columbus Day. Byebye!

Sorry, can't talk long...

I am so sorry it has been about 3 weeks since I last updated. I have soooo much to say, but that's because I've been so busy. I mentioed I had back-to-school night, furniture shopping, painting, moving, progress reports, substitute folder, parent-teacher conferences, and more moving coming up. Well all of that happened and I am moving the very last of my stuff into my new (spectacular!) apartment in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC very shortly. I was planning on telling you about all this important stuff plus things like almost have a nervous breakdown last week before feeling revitalized this week, my new amazing plan for my homeroom class, finding two of my students' fathers on the sex offender registry, and how my school compares to "The Wire" on HBO this weekend (because I have Monday off - weeeeee!). But, as it turns out, the cable for TVand internet is not working in my new apartment. I need my internet so badly (and my fix of "Lost") that I'm actually going to take off work early on Wednesday to be there for the technicians. So hopefully I can fill you all in on my most eventful last 3 weeks by next Wednesday. The only reason I can talk now is because I am back at my home in Maryland picking up my last car-load full of stuff. I'm a real honest-to-goodness DC resident now. Which unfortunately also means I need to spend all next weekend at the DMV. Surely that will be an exciting blog to read - my adventures waiting in line all day.

Anyway, I seriously have to go. I'm supposed to be buying food for dinner for my boyfriend and I right now. I can't leave the man hungry. Talk to you all again soon, I promise.

I got Paid!

Friday was pay day! My very first pay day! And I have never seen a paycheck that large in my life. This is so crucial because I'm moving from Maryland to DC to two weeks and need the extra cash to buy furniture and stuff, not to mention food. On that note, by the way, the next three weeks are going to be so stressful dealing with school, back-to-school night, progress reports, and moving all at once. You'll see. It's going to be awful. I just have to keep reminding myself that that which does not kill you makes you stronger and that once I survive this, I can do anything.

Before I tell you how Thursday and Friday went, I wanted to mention something I forgot last time. I had told you I got two new students on Wednesday. One of them was only in my class for one day before they switched him to another room, but I need to mention him because of this: he'd been shot. This boy walked into my cast with his arm in a sling, so I'm thinking he broke it playing basketball or skateboarding or something. During class, he raises his left hand and says, "What am I supposed to do? I can't write because I got shot." All the sudden I'm stunned because one, it had slipped my mind that the boy wouldn't be able to write without his right arm, and two, he got shot?! What?! Of course, as the teacher, though, I need to remain calm even when I'm panicking inside, because if I show signs of panic or confusion, the class will immediately pick up on t and start acting up. So I just calmly asked another student to volunteer to copy down notes for the boy and then got his phone number so I could call his house and discuss what we would do about his school work.

All day I was anxious about calling his home to discuss this. I did reach his mother and it turns out he was hit by a stray bullet from a drive-by. He was not the target. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. So that's kind of a relief and a tragedy at the same time. It's a relief that he's not in any kind of trouble and it shouldn't happen again and a tragedy because the boy was lucky he got shot in the arm and not somewhere else. Oy - the ghetto. It's too much, too much.

Back to school, though. Thursday with the 8th graders went all right. It took them way longer to do the activities I had planned than I thought, though. As usual, readings I give them that I thought were at grade level were not and they still don't know the vocabulary words we've been practicing for two weeks. A whole lot of students didn't even turn their classwork in and that is going to seriously hurt their grades. I hope they will finish it as homework and turn it in next time I see them, but I highly doubt that's going to happen. On the behavior front, my regular 8th graders are still behaving fine which is fantastic news, but my GT class is still acting up just like they do with all their teachers. It's like a school-wide dilemma. All of us are dumb-founded as to how to handle this group of kids who is clearly grade-levels above the rest of the school but whose behavior makes it so difficult to give them the more challenging work they deserve.

Friday with the 7th graders was kind of odd. My homeroom went fine and I gave the quiz. 3rd period, though - shoot. Those kids still haven't found their minds from when they lost them on Monday. For four days I had managed to yell at any of my classes, but that class got me yelling and screaming again like I couldn't believe. They were sooo bad. They wasted so much time that they only had 10 minutes to take the 25 minute quiz. I've been implementing this new system where as many checks the students get on my clipboard, that's how many minutes they stay after class with me. Well, only 4 students were allowed to leave when the bell rang. Meanwhile, I'm telling the kids they can stay in to lunch as long as they need to to finish the quiz, but not a single one of them stayed longer than I made them. Not a single kid in the room finished the quiz. They just stopped working and turned it in. So not only did only half the quiz not turn in their classwork, but the whole class failed the quiz again.

Now, to add insult to injury, I realized when I went to grade the quizzes that I forgot to rearrange the order on the matching portion. So the answers to numbers 1 through 9 went ABCDEFGHI. At first I was like, "Oh my god! I can't believe I did that! Now I'm never going to know if the kids actually know this stuff." On the contrary. I now know very clearly that the classes didn't learn much of anything at all, because even with the answers spelled out for them like that, only 2 kids got all of them right. Only 2! At some point I have to stop blaming myself and blame the kids for not studying. This was the second time they took this quiz and I re-wrote it so it was easier than last time. Now I'll take this as a teachable moment to tell the kids that I will do everything I can to make sure you succeed in my class, but I can't make you learn. You need to put forth some effort. We did five separate activities surrounding these vocabulary words, so it's not like I didn't give you enough opportunities to learn them. You chose not to study. Hopefully this will wake them up to the fact they will be held to high expectations in my class.

Another teacher told me that if I need to fail every student in my class first quarter, then I should do it. I shouldn't go back and make their grades better for the sake of having a more palatable class record. Failing them may be the strong message they need. Oh man I hope I don't have to do that, though. We'll see.

I'm going to go now. I have more to do than can ever be done, so I should get started. See ya later alligators.

Half way through my third week

I'm so sorry it takes me so long to post. I really don't mean to leave you like that. I love you! I have really just barely had a minute to myself since the last time we spoke. You say, "But what about the weekend, DC Newbie? I know you frittered your whole Labor Day weekend away. Surely you did the same this weekend." I answer, "No, I did not, actually. I worked a lot."

Friday night I was dealing with more attendance issues (even now, halfway through week 3 of school, I got two new students today and a couple more were moved to another class). I also managed to grade a few papers. I didn't get very far at all through grading those quizzes before I saw that every single student failed. Not like, oh no, they got a C. I mean like, jeezy peezy, will anyone get at least 5 out of 12 on this? Everyone, 7th and 8th graders, failed the quiz except for two students. One genius boy in my GT class got 100% on one side of the quiz (the memorization side) and the monster boy from my other 8th grade class got 100% on the other side that was more application.

I was talking to another teacher earlier that day and he told me that although monster boy is, well, a monster in class behavior-wise, he is one of, if not the, naturally smartest kids in school. And he's not ashamed of it either. He's not a poor soul who wants to be accepted by his peers and so acts dumb. This boy, who I will stop calling monster boy from now on and start calling... ummm... Sleepyhead, is a leader and likes to brag when he gets things right. I know this because I made a point to announce to the class how smart Sleepyhead is. I didn't just come right out and say it, though. I had a plan.

I don't think I ever mentioned the spelling test I gave to all my classes. It's this "Morrison McCall Spelling Test" the other science teacher gave me. There are 50 words that start off easy like sea and far and end up harder like endeavor and villain. If you get all 50 right, then you are reading on a 14th grade level or something like that. A score of 32 means 7th grade, and a score of 37 means 8th grade. I highly highly recommend this tool to all teachers. I think this is the only thing I've done so far that I feel very good about. All the sudden I have what appears to fairly accurate predictions of the reading abilities of my students. After grading them, I realize that student A never does their work because they clearly never understand it, or that student B is always so bored because they are reading at a high school level. It's mad helpful to say the least.

Back to Sleepyhead. Turns out he's reading at a mid-9th grade level (which is expected since he's repeating 8th grade). In class, he started talking over my and all and saying some ridiculous things, so I said, "Sleepyhead, don't act stupid and do..." whatever it was he was doing. He, of course, goes, "You can't call me stupid!!" in his high-pitched yell. I then got to what I wanted to say the whole time. "I did not call you stupid and I never would. I know you are smart, Sleepyhead. You know, how? Because you got one of the highest scores on that spelling test out of all the students I teach. I know that you are one of the brightest students in the school, but you act stupid and waste that talent. I know you can do better and I'm trying to get you to do that now." Well, I don't know if those were my exact words but it was something like that. That shut him up real fast and put a genuine smile on his face, too. Since then, he's not been the worst student in my class at all. And neither has the monster girl that came in with him (who I'll start calling Freaker because she can't stop shaking her butt all over the school - it's sick). She scored really high, too, and I told her so after class. I've enlisted her as my friend, and although she's far from perfect, she has stepped down from being a terror in my class and let a new girl take her place.

So that's a lot of information that would lead you to believe my job is going great, right? Wrong. Thursday, Friday, and Monday were terrible behavior wise. I don't even want to get into specifics because it puts me in a bad mood. I'll just summarize. Every class but my homeroom has at least 1 if not 5 students in it that will yell and scream at me and walk out of the room without permission when I tell them to do something. I've written so many referrals already. Every class I taught (but my homeroom, thank God) had at least one student make it nearly impossible for me to teach. It was awful awful awful. All weekend I was trying to pick a new profession. I kept telling my boyfriend that I'm clearly bad at my job so I need to pick a new one. Except that there's really nothing else I can see myself doing. I told him I think I'd be a good secretary, but then he told me that at his office, almost all the secretaries have affairs with their bosses. So scratch that.

After my all work and very little play weekend (I graded papers while my boyfriend watched the US Open), Monday was even worse than Friday. My 3rd period lost their minds. Absolutely lost them. I kept 7 of them in for what was supposed to be 10 minutes and turned into 30 minutes lunch detention because they could not shut their mouths. Then, joy of joys, I realized the class I was assigned to cover 5th period - was the same one I just had! AHHHH!!! And it was terrible again. Only slightly better because I sent two of the kids to the office. But that defiant behavior was quickly replaced by fighting. Remember the "sweet" kid who so unjustly was punched in the bathroom. Ha. Turns out he's not exactly an emotionally fit child and picks fights with everyone he sees quietly. He mumbles insults at everyone he sees. So he kept doing that all class until another girl starting fighting him and I had to hold her back. Sent them to the office, too.

I was very afraid the administration was catching on to how bad I am at my job, but actually, they seem to expect me to be this bad because I'm new and in the ghetto and they really want to help even if they don't really have the time. So that's good news.

I knew something had to change. So Tuesday I had a new seating chart. Instead of rows I made groups of 4. This actually worked well during one class as long as a handful of the students stayed out of their assigned seats and sat in the back by themselves. I realize that went against my authority, but these kids either love or hate each other and I can never tell until they are right next to each other. I'd rather them not sit where I told them to than fight. I'm going to try and fix the seating chart tonight so that everyone will be able to sit in their assigned seats, though. I also gave a little speech like, "Last week was bad for everyone. I was yelling, you were yelling, everyone was angry. That's not how this class should be. I got some rest and I'm coming to you with a blank slate. Let's just start over. I don't want to yell at you guys anymore. Can we start over. Let's cooperate so science class is fun and not maddening." Third period liked this and they were much better behaved over all. It's was a miracle, really. Clearly a lot of the management problems I was having stem from me yelling at them. Everyone was wrong. Yelling is not the answer. I was right before. (I think). My GT class on the other hand behaved the same as ever. Ugh. I think they have a stronger group mentality and are very good at ganging up on me.

New seats with my 7th graders today also went ok minus all the kids not sitting where I told them to. But again, I'll try to fix that. Tomorrow my goal is no negotiate with the kids. They had their chance to write me a letter explaining why I should change their seats and if they didn't, too bad. I will not negotiate! Note: that's what I should say. Just watch as that turns into an all out brawl with the teacher.

Since everyone bombed the quiz, I've been reviewing all the information for two days and they'll re-take the quiz Friday and Tuesday. I'll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, I have GOT to go. I still don't know what I'm doing with my 8th graders tomorrow! Something about picking apart a lab report, I know that much. Oy. Talk to you later!