Wednesday, May 21: The first block class this morning was absolutely horrible. I've never seen them so disruptive, disinterested, hostile, confrontational, and just plain mean, as they were this morning. That's one of the problems with the system: they're ensured too early that they're "good for graduation", the caps and gowns are ordered, the graduation invitations are out, so why worry? Why remain civil for the rest of the school year? To be fair, the students who know they aren't graduating are even more horrible. Why bother? With three weeks and 2 days to go, I wasn't sure this morning that I could make it through the day. Luckily, the 2nd and
3rd block classes were okay.
Just to survive, I've inserted excerpts from the book Makes Me Wanna Holler, by Nathan McCall into the curriculum. The state superintendent would probably gasp in horror, and fire me immediately, but this memoir has won literary prizes even if it does contain the occasional "F" or "N" word. It's the story of a young, black boy growing up in the hood, getting in trouble and taking up crime, doing an armed robbery and getting sentenced to 12 years in prison. Just like Malcolm X, Nate McCall became a convert to Education while in prison and empowered himself through reading and studying. Later, after prison, he became a journalist for the Atlanta Constitution and then the Washington Post. He's now a professor of African American studies at Emory. Do you suppose my students can relate to Nathan's upbringing, gang affiliations, crime sprees, and hood attitude? You betcha. That's why the room becomes silent when we read the excerpts aloud. The non-readers read and listen, mouths slighly agape. The book is very deep and insightful, yet entertaining.
On days like today, I feel totally out of place at this school and maybe at this level of teaching. In first block today, I didn't do Makes Me Wanna Holler because due to one of the endless schedule changes the administration made to accomodate the perpetual testing, I hadn't met this class for almost a week, and I felt as though we should do a little bit of British poetry. They were so rude and kept talking blatantly while I was trying to instruct them. I've heard one of the best consequence for students is order them to leave the room; some teachers must do it since they advised it, but then the students end up wandering around the school, and this is a huge problem at Groves. Once they're out of the classroom, they get into more trouble, or phone in bomb threats or start fights, or look for mischief.
I'm sure no matter what the job, people occasionally come home feeling like crap and wondering how they can go on. Usually, once I get in the door, into the sanctuary of my own house, I feel much better.
In my title, I mentioned Judge Judy's mantra, which I have adapted into my own. On her t.v. show, while listening to plaintiffs and defendants, she would snap to some idiotic misfit who was suing his neighbor, "On my worst day, I'm ten times smarter than you are on your best day! So SHUT UP!" Ever since I started in the secondary system and came into contact with a world very different from my own, I've secretly and silently said to myself almost every day, especially every day like this one, "On my worst day, I'm ten times luckier than you are on your best day." Please believe me when I say that there is NO arrogance on my mind as I think this. I merely use mantra on days when I feel like crying to remind myself that the type of problems I face in the classroom, or outside the job, are nothing compared with the types of problems they struggle with on a daily basis. Therefore, I need to be the better person, the stronger person, and push my resentment of their occasional bad behavior to the back of my mind.
Besides, the American Idol finale is on tonight! That'll help block out any thoughts of the school day. I can't help it, I still like Little David better. He IS a phenomenal singer, even Simon thought so last night.
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