Echoes

I'm the most textbook visual learner you could ever have. I love graphic organizers, I'm anal-retentive about organization, I like for everything to be neat, and calm, and quiet. But somewhere along the way I must have picked up some sort of auditory memory. Maybe it's all those years of music lessons.

For the first time in a long time it was quiet in my room after school today. No tutorials, no detention. I closed the door and graded the tests I knew were inevitably failures. I could still hear rhythms in my head. Echoes of things kids said in my classroom today. Like ghosts in the room with me at 3:45 I could still hear the cadence of voices in my head. Stupid comments, occasionally obscene, vulgar, or just inappropriate floated through me head. It's something about the way they talk. Like there's a pattern already laid out, and they just substitute this name or that one. The same words day after day, arranged differently...not really saying much.

It was the first time I've had a moment to even think about them since Christmas. It's amazing how you can be in the same room with children for 8 hours a day and never really think about them. You think about the behavior, the consequences, the rewards, the lesson plan that's due, the copies you need to make, the time, the bell, and a million other trivial tidbits...but it's not until they leave that you really start to think about them. I think that's the hardest part of being a teacher. Having 10 million things to do for tomorrow, and 25 children that need you right now.

First semester, I lived in the moment. I knew everything that had happened, was happening, may happen...I knew exactly what they needed (as best any one person ever could), I adjusted, I discovered, I invented. Since Christmas, I've become much less present. I want to have 2 weeks of lesson plans, I want to have copies made ahead of time, I want to walk out the door of the school and not think about work until the next morning. It's made me a worse teacher (which became blatantly obvious as I watched them fail my test one after the other), but a more stable human being. Is it possible to do this job well and not let it consume every waking hour?

We laugh because E.W. and I went to see Freedom Writers. Apparently you actually can make a difference, but it requires working 3 jobs, alienating your husband to the point of divorce, and only teaching one class a day (why do they only have one class in these movies??). At what point do you start to live a life outside of education, without becoming the "worksheet teacher"? 10 weeks into first semester I was burnt out to point where I seriously considered driving off into the sunset many afternoons. I can't live like that. But even when they're not in the room, their echoes still haunt me and seem to ask, "Why weren't you paying attention? Why didn't you notice?"........It may be that I care too much to actually do this job long-term. I think in the end, it might consume me.

They've lost their minds

It should be easier. I made it to Thanksgiving, I made it to Christmas. I'm on the home stretch. Magically the first semester went fairly well. The second semester is starting out badly.

First, on the administrative end, they've now decided we're having in-school SATP tutoring Mon-Thurs, which means am activity schedule from now until April, where you hold kids who are not on the tutoring list. Ok, I can deal with that. I'm teaching U.S. History tutorials once a week (a subject I've never taught, to kids I don't know). Ok, I can deal with that. Then, last thursday, just before the activity period, they got on the intercom and announced that during the activity period, we would all be doing informative writing with our classes. The students should fill up the sheet (what sheet?), the teachers should use the rubric (what rubric?), at the end of the 25 min we should collect what they have and give it back to them next Thursday since this will take more than one activity period (except for this Thursday is B-day and next Thursday will be an A-day...which means every teacher in the building knew this wasn't going to work except the administrator on the speaker).....I wander up and down the hall. I talk to English teachers, I talk to veteran teachers, I talk to my mentor....eventually we realize that the paper we were handed at the end of the day yesterday by a student worker and simply told to initial for is what we are supposed to have out and copied for the students to use. We run to the copiers upstairs...they're both broken. We run to the copier downstairs and just grab pages as they come out. On the way, I see the principal..."Oh yeah, you were on duty yesterday, so you weren't at the staff meeting."....1/4 of the school is on duty each week...the teacher next door who WASN'T on duty didn't even know what was going on. My kids had JUST finished writing a page essay for me....Now they must write a 5 paragraph essay. That will be counted as a grade in World History (with a rubric from 1-4...how do I enter THAT in the grade book....and why am I punishing my children in history for being poor writers)........I could go on and on about this cluster-f*&k, but the point is: it made no sense then and we haven't heard anything about it since. The same thing will happen this Thursday, only we will have a completely different class and someone will have to figure out what to do about that (they only change every single week---seems someone would figure that out).

Second Problem: My students have lost their minds. It may be the administrative insanity. It may be that report cards just came out. It may be that I'm putting out wierd vibes and they've decided to simply disobey and hate me. I sent 6 referrals in 2 days. Nine of the 15 kids in my A-3 class friday got something past a warning. I've gotten 1 kid back from alternative school in that class and now a completely new kid (who just got out of prison). They're not the worst of the bunch though...the old kids must be putting on a show. My A-4 continues to be ridiculous and I wrote a kid up in one of my angelic classes on Thursday. The whole class was stunned. I think it was the first referral I've sent in that class. I'm going on a serious telephone rampage this week and I'm not going to stop until every kid in that class knows how to act. I refuse to take children to lunch who DISAPPEAR on the way there and then walk off when I try to talk to them after class or who refuse to sit up in their seat and do work, and when I give them a second chance, tell me to shut up. I know it's not supposed to make me angry. But honestly, they're not showing me any respect and it's unacceptable. I'm also kind of angry and disappointed in them. They know better.