My (Not So) Favorite Things

Waiting to Park

Dear Parents,

I understand that mornings are not easy and that the last thing on your mind is where you stop to drop your student off at school. However, I would remind you that your student is not the only one arriving at the school every morning, and it would be greatly appreciated if you could exercise enough common sense not to pull over in front of the entrance to the parking lot and have a heart-to-heart with your student before they go to class. Thank you.

Feeling Pretty

Friday a group of seniors gathered around Mz. Salmon and my desks after fourth period. They needed copies of various worksheets or wanted to check their grades before the weekend. As Mz. Salmon was directing her attention from one student to another, the student standing across from me, Hayley, said bluntly, “You look like snow white.”

The rest of the group turned to look at me appraisingly. “You do!” said the girl standing next to me. They all nodded in agreement and Hayley, who had now been staring at me for several moments said, “You look just like Snow White.”

(OK. What's with the collar though?)

Student Teacher Benefits

I was surprised this morning pulling into the faculty lot just a few minutes before class at how many available spaces there were. It was cold this morning, true, and the weather was not expected to get any better, but it didn't seem to me that it would make this percentage of the staff late. Nor did it seem very likely that the school had granted us a late start due to the cold. When I brought this up with Mz. Salmon she said, “Oh yeah, they probably called in subs.” Teachers have a certain number of vacation and sick days where they call someone in to teach for them (of course they still complain when their students are late due to weather). Student teachers however, do not have this ability.

Getting My Things Back

Occasionally I play the lottery. Only when gets over 100 million dollars though – not because I wouldn't happy to win 20 million, but because this seems like a good way to justify throwing my money away. My chances of winning that jackpot are 1 in 195,249,054 according the back of my latest ticket. However, these odds are easy money compared to the chances of a student returning anything you lend them, be it a pen, stapler, or any other classroom supply that they require. So I was overjoyed when, after lending a student my favorite pen (and threatening his life if he didn't return it), he not only returned my pen, but walked all the way from the computer lab down the hall to my room to do so.

The “Student Teacher” Diet Plan

As a student teacher, I eat four or five meals a day. This is a significant difference from my college eating schedule, which usually consisted of two meals plus snacks (except during final week were eating was my only break from studying and paper writing). I have been trying to ignore the stress I feel about doubling what I eat, mostly because I don't know how I could get through the day with any fewer calories. So when I stepped on the scale friday afternoon I was ready for the worst. “Pleasant surprise” doesn't really capture the feeling of expecting to feel guilty about everything you put in your mouth for the next week, and finding instead that you've lost six pounds.

Razzleberry Pie

This doesn't have anything to do with teaching. It's just delicious. You should try it. 

Something on My Back

Grading is literally the most exhausting thing I have ever done. Given the choice between grading a stack of essays and unloading a semi full of gold bricks, I would take the semi without hesitation, and I would probably have more energy at the end of it.

Sometimes I think it's like a kind of high. After reading the same responses, or their incorrect variations, a certain number of times, a cloud of pressure sets in on my mind, as if the students' responses get filtered into the space between my brain and my skull. By the time I have scored six or seven copies of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Study Guide my grey matter is being squeezed so hard I can barely read anymore.

The other day, having gone through about fifteen ridiculously incorrect responses to a question asking the students to identify an example of allusion in our text, I cried out with glee to see that one student had not only correctly identified the allusion, but had also clearly stated their response in neat handwriting. What a gem.

It's not even that I have trouble with their handwriting, or that I get frustrated by their wrong answers (though sometimes I do), it's just the most monotonous possible task. It requires constant and unwavering attention and calculation (well Devon didn't get the answer quite right answer but at least he supported his claim...etc). On a few occasions I thought about completion grading, but that seems like such a disservice to the students.

If I could just toot my own horn for a moment - It amazes me how little credit teachers get for completing this vital element of their job. Teaching is hard. I put an incredible amount of time into designing lessons and activities that I hope will both engage and challenge the students. And most of the time all I get in return is attitude, sloppy work, and the occasional email from a parent demanding to know why their student is failing my class (The answer is almost always, “Because they have only turned in 50% of the work.”).

But I have accepted all of this, I knew about these challenges going into this assignment. However, what I didn't realize, was that even after all of the work I have put into my lessons, and after the students and their parents give me lip, I have to go home and perform the most mental crippling activity of the lot. I have to sit down in front of the students completed work and pour all of my remaining energy and brain power into resolving the cycle of student work. Usually after a long stretch of grading, I am so drained that I will take a long shower in an attempt rehydrate my humanity.

But by far the worst part is that it is a total time suck. Today I was grading while Mz. Salmon, my host teacher, was teaching her two back to back AP classes. When the bell rang, I looked up to say goodbye to a student that I enjoy talking with every now and again. What I found was that he wasn't there, because this was the period after his class. Not only had I missed the period change, I had not even noticed that the class was taking twice as long as usual. 

However, it's not all bad. Grading is the time that I get to see my students without any of the social filters that apply in the classroom. It's amazing how honest students will be on a worksheet.

Today, grading more poetry analysis sheets, I come across a fantastic to response to the following poem.

Break

Dorian Laux

We put the puzzle together piece

by piece, loving how one curved

notch fits so sweetly with another.

A yellow smudge becomes

the brush of a broom, and two blue arms

fill in the last of the sky.

We patch together porch swings and autumn

trees, matching gold to gold. We hold

the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair

of brown shoes. We do this as the child

circles her room, impatient

with her blossoming, tired

of the neat house, the made bed,

the good food. We let her brood

as we shuffle through the pieces,

setting each one into place with a satisfied

tap, our backs turned for a few hours

to a world that is crumbling, a sky

that is falling, the pieces

we are required to return to.

Little Jeffery Delano (I find myself drawn toward the little guys) has clearly spent some extra time on this assignment as it is written in three different pen colors. Jeffery is quiet in class and I would never have expected the analysis the I am about to read of “Break.”

“It is,” he writes in his spare chicken scratch that I can barely make out, “about how we love perfection.”  

Poetry and Oranges

I am particularly fond of a student in my 1^st period class. His name is Quasar Pina (yes, it's an pseudonym but his real name is just as awesome). He is probably about 4'7'' with a faint downy mustache and big half moon smile. He speaks in an incredibly soft voice and checks his grades on the computer in the back of the room everyday before class.

Earlier this week, the students in Quasar's class where given a homework assignment to find and bring in a poem to share with some of the other students. Quasar brought in “Oranges” by Gary Soto.

Oranges

Gary Soto

The first time I walked

with a girl, I was twelve,

cold, and weighted down

with two oranges in my jacket.

December. Frost cracking

beneath my steps, my breath

before me, then gone,

as I walked toward

her house, the one whose

porch light burned yellow

night and day, in any weather.

A dog barked at me, until

she came out pulling

at her gloves, face bright

with rouge, I smiled,

touched her shoulder, and led

her down the street, across

a used car lot and a line

of newly planted trees,

until we were breathing

before a drugstore. We

entered, the tiny bell

bringing a saleslady

down a narrow aisle of goods.

I turned to the candies

tiered like bleachers.

And asked what she wanted -

light in her eyes, a smile

starting at the corners

of her mouth. I fingered

a nickle in my pocket,

and when she lifted a chocolate

that cost a dime,

I didn't say anything.

I took the nickle from

my pocket, then an orange,

and set them quietly on

the counter. When I looked up,

the lady's eyes met mine,

and held them, knowing

very well what it was all

about.

Outside,

A fews cars hissing past,

fog hanging like old

coats between the trees.

I took my girl's hand

in mine for two blocks,

then released it to let

her unwrap the chocolate.

I peeled my orange

that was so bright against

the gray of December

that, from some distance,

someone might have thought

I was making a fire in my hands.

Quasar was so excited to work with this poem. He called me over at the beginning of class to show it to me, and raised his hand throughout the period to point out his favorite parts of the poem and to make sure that he was writing the answers on his worksheet just right.

Under the theme section he wrote something along the lines of, “The poem means that he loves the girl and love is worth trading an orange.” This may not be exactly what Gary Soto was going for but Quasar can feel the love in the poem: the love that Soto feels for this girl, the love of the generous saleslady. And I think it's because he can sense this love – though he can't fully express where it comes from – that Quasar so adores this poem.

It's wonderful thing, and a brilliant end to my week, seeing the quiet joy, generosity, and affection in a poem reflected on the face of one of my students. I wish I could make them all understand what Quasar has stumbled upon on his own. I wish they could all see that poetry, even literature in general, doesn't have to be work. Sometimes it is the excitement of young love or the altruism of a stranger. But for today, this one student is enough.  

Balancing Act

Today I went in to school after an exhausting battle with food poising over the weekend. I had only just recovered from some obscure strain of the flu that presents like a cold and then gives you a fever of 102.8, when I woke up Monday morning and preceded to spend the day with my head in the toilette (I actually fell asleep on the bathroom floor at one point. This is when you know you are ill).

In any case, standing in front of my 1^st period freshman class I'm feeling significantly better than that first mad dash to the bathroom, but not well enough to enjoy standing for any long period of time. We are working on a poetry unit. I have just assigned them an analysis worksheet which they are completing in pairs. They have to answer some basic questions about a poem that their partner brought in, and then try to draw some larger conclusions on connotation and theme.

As I move around the room, I'm not overly surprised at who is working and who is not. Three of the students brought in poems by Robert Frost (God love them!). However, one of the young men clearly did so because it was the first poem that he came across online. I'm trying to help him with the more difficult questions, “OK. What words or phrases in here do you think could mean something other than what they are saying literally? There is some straight description, but what parts of the poem are more figurative?” I say. He stares blankly at the head of the student sitting in front of him.

It's at about this time that I notice an inordinate amount of noise coming from the front left corner of the room. Brittany Fox, the student I knew would cause trouble if I let them work in groups, is bragging about a party that she attended over the weekend with her friends from another nearby high school. Brittany reminds the class daily how superior her friends school, and how much she would rather be there than “in this messed up school.”

I leave the student whose name I don't know (yes I realize this is awful, but I never get to take attendance for this class) reassuring him that I will be back in a moment, and make my way to the opposite side of the room where Brittany is now laughing flirtatiously.

“Hey guys,” I say. “How's it going?”

“This is boring” says Brittany, pushing the assignment sheet away from her. She leans back in her desk, crosses her arms, and sneers at me smugly. She was late and, although she had ample time to begin working, her sheet is completely blank.

“I thought you liked poetry, Brittany,” I say.

“Yeah. But this TP-CASTT (an acronym for the process they use to analyze the poems) thing is stupid. It's boring and I don't want to do it.”

“Really, Brittany?” I want to say. “Because that just changes everything. Why don't I stop the whole class and we can just sit here and listen to you prattle on about how much better than everyone you are, because you spent the weekend smoking cigarets and drinking stolen Keystone Lite. You know what I don't want to do, Brittany? I don't want to have to fight back nausea while trying to convince you that the lesson I designed is worth your time. So you're bored? How about if I throw-up all over you, right now? Would that be a little less boring?”

Breathe. I don't resent my students. They know not what they do.

“I'm sorry you feel that way,” I say, “But you need to get this done. It's practice for the poetry project you guys are starting later this week.”

She rolls her eyes, but pulls the worksheet toward herself on the desk and at least feigns working on the assignment. I try to hover as close as possible in the last few minutes of class, hoping that I can encourage her and the other students she has distracted to work until the bell. As the class comes to a close, I am rattling off reminders, “Don't forget to do your vocabulary homework for next monday. And tomorrow we will be looking at some authors for you to choose from for your research project, so if you already have an idea of what you want to do, bring it in.” It amazes me how quickly I can rattle off information like this if I need to, or stretch it out to fill up time.

When I finally sit down with the worksheets that were turned in at the end of class “The Road Not Taken” catches my eye under poem title. The student I had been helping, I see now that his name is Carson, has left several sections of his worksheet blank. The sections that I had been helping him with until I left. I had been so intent on monitoring Brittany, that I never made it all the way to the other side of the class again.

What lesson did I teach today? What did Carson learn – or Brittany? Certainly very little about poetry. It's a ridiculous balancing act. By leaving Carson, Brittany and a few other students might have gotten some work done, but I neglected the student who cared enough to ask for help. So we all suffered. But what am I teaching Brittany if I allow her to distract other students, and not turn in work? Which lesson is my responsibility? Which is more important?

I suppose I can't do more than my best to give each student what they need. But it's sucks not being enough, not being capable enough to balance the class. It makes me feel small and incompetent. I'm not looking for sympathy. It's just the truth.  

Bell Work

I'm standing in front six long rows of empty desks. My hair is still damp from the bath I had to take this morning, my shower curtain still being MIA. It is lost, no doubt, somewhere in the chaos of boxes, upturned furniture, and chocolate-santa candy wrappers carpeting the floor of my new apartment. I'm overdressed; there are no students in the school today and the veteran teachers are moving briskly down the halls waving  Happy New Year to each other in jeans and sweaters, clutching tall coffee mugs or thick stacks of ungraded final exams. Meanwhile, I stumble down the recently waxed halls in what I thought would be sensible heels, and slacks much to thin to protect me from the chill still being driven out of the school by the 40-year-old heating system.

But right now I'm standing at the head of a vacant class. I am standing, I think, in the same spot that I will stand hundreds (perhaps thousands) of times during the next three months: taking attendance, giving exams, reviewing homework, breaking up fights (actually, I might have to be bit more mobile to handle that one). It is the spot where all of the students look automatically, searching for direction, permission, or furtively checking that their cell phones continue to go unnoticed. This is the spot from which I will earn my way as a student teacher, probably the lowest title on the power totem of a public school. From here I will fight for students' attention, defend my teaching ideals to the veteran teachers, and - in all likelihood - confiscate a cell phone or two.

It is common for most student teachers to take on the full load of their host teacher's classes. However, my host teacher - Ms. Salmon, being the heroic professional that she is, has four plans (that is four classes to plan for), which is a lot, even for a veteran. One of these plans (which is actually two classes, or periods) is AP Literature, which I am not trained or qualified to teach, but that I will greatly enjoy observing. As a result, the three plans that I will be taking on are Introduction to Literature - a freshman course, Technical Writing - a senior elective course, and American Literature - a sophomore course with several juniors thrown into the mix. I will begin immediately with the freshman, taking them through a poetry unit, and add the other two on a few weeks into the semester.

As there are a great deal of legal issues that surround the privilege to privacy of students and teachers, I am intentionally omitting the name of the school that has graciously accepted me as a student teacher, as well as changing the names of both my students and my colleagues.

So this is the beginning, though in true beginning form, it feels a great deal like an ending. It is the end of my life as a student, as a proud procrastinator and essay bullshitter (two "t"s or one?). God save the soul that tries to bullshit his way through a high school class. I am jealous of my friends returning to campus for their final semester of college classes, worrying about book lists and 9 am classes. It is an odd space that I fill as student teacher - not quite a college graduate but definitely no longer a student. And it is the indefinite quality of my position that signals a sense of beginning. There is something still be discovered, still to be defined.