High school becomes a day care center

Thursday: When D and S had little-boy birthday parties, I never handled the intensity very well. The screams, hits, thuds, waaah-he-hit-me's, and crashes generated by even a small group of children on sugar made me as tense as a tight guitar string. Now, at the school, most of the students have devolved into giddy five-year-olds at a birthday party; their behavior, in fact, is far worse than any of the kiddies from D's and S's parties. Managing students with the bodies of 18-year-old's and the minds of elementary school children has been exhausting and irritating. Seems like I've lost my sense of humor, doesn't it? Somehow, I just don't find it cute when a senior girl takes up a pair of scissors and teasingly tries to stab a senior guy next to her. D and S did that when they were pre-schoolers! I don't laugh when seniors keep blocking the LCD projector with creative shadows of rabbits and bats that hop and fly across the presentation on the board. I'm just not amused when the balls of paper fly fiercely across the room, aimed at someone's eye.

This morning during "advisement" they were out of their minds. "Advisement" is the euphemism for "homeroom". Since the beginning of the school year, we teachers, who have nothing but time on our hands, have been made responsible for acting as junior guidance counselors to our 20 HR students, who stay with us every year until graduation. We help them fill out course request forms, make sure they have enough credit hours, and give them their report cards. Today was selected as locker-clean-out time during advisement. We teachers were told to go out into the halls with them, supervise clean-up and inspect all the empty lockers. The students burst out of the classroom doors and filled the hallways, exuberantly skipping down the hall, throwing pencils, punching, ducking into doorways to make out, pulling each other's hair, and, acting like total fools. One of my students, an honors student, had literal drum sticks---the wooden tools used to beat a drum, not fried chicken---and went running down the hall towards some boy, hitting him soundly with the sticks. He went screaming and scurrying down the hall, as she followed him, beating him the whole way until he ran back into his homeroom classroom. I was already tense from the idiotic way they were all behaving, so I told her to "stop acting like a fool!" She didn't stop, but later, when I finally corralled all my students back into my classroom, she made some reference to the fact that I'd called her a fool, as though she was offended. I know, I know. . . teachers should never say anything insulting to students. . .teachers should remain calm at all times. Saying something like that is out of character for me. But at least I didn't use a vicious tone. And she was acting like a fool.


Throughout the day, you hear the footsteps of skippers pounding down the hall trying to reach the sanctuary of the stairwell before the approaching AP catches them. Throughout the day, posters are ripped from the walls with laughs of glee. A spilled cup of apple sauce is smeared across the hall floor and the AP mutters angrily, as he looks for a paper towel, "I feel like I'm back in elementary school."

This afternoon, the students were particularly wild. And the phone kept ringing, with parents inquiring about or complaining about the new yearbook. I kept trying to shush the students as I talked on the phone; I didn't want it to sound like a day care center in the background. One of the guys had leaped out of his seat and was cutely holding a protesting girl in a stranglehold; she was screeching, he was making noises, the rest of them were already a little too loud. I tried to reach over the desk to where the two were horsing around, trying to tap him on the shoulder to tell him to let go of her. I stretched out over the desk and tapped him vigorously, but he ignored me, and the noise was growing louder. Suddenly, I covered the phone, hoping the parent wouldn't hear me, and just let loose with the loudest outburst I've ever used in a classroom to date. I yelled at the two wrestling students to STOP IT RIGHT NOW, to be quiet, that I was embarrassed at their behavior, etc. etC!!! The room became very still. I completed the conversation with the parent and hung up. The guy who'd been fooling around picked up his book bag and, looking red-faced and extremely ashamed, slowly walked out of the class and didn't return. Then, as with any confrontation, I began to feel bad. Had I gone too far? Should I have handled it more calmly, if that was possible?
Many of the other teachers scream all day, so I guess it's considered normal. But it was out of character for me, so I'm left with a letdown feeling.

On the other hand, the fact that only a few more school days remain is an instant mood-elevator.

June is busting out all O-o-ver!

Sunday: All over the. . . dum de dum de dum....I've forgotten the rest of the lines though I am a fan of Oklahoma. "O-O-O--Oak! Lahoma...where the wind comes sweeping down the plains..." The musical came out when I was in elementary school, back in the days when school systems still had "music" class and taught students lyrics. We third graders learned the Oklahoma songs, as well as many others. I was introduced to faraway places, times and cultures. I had never been to the South and never dreamed I would be, but some of the old "Negro spirituals" such as "Massa's in the Cold, Cold ground" made me aware of other belief systems and practices. I remember "Tu ra loo ra lu rah" the Irish lullaby.

The weather has been beautiful this weekend. I read some senior portfolios which are easy to grade with the rubric checklist I have, yet I feel compelled to write little notes complimenting them on their pending graduation or on a particularly engaging piece of writing in the portfolio. Last time I wrote on the blog, I didn't mean to give the impression that I don't like my students. I do, most of the time (same way we feel about our own children). The only thing I don't care for is the culture that prevails at the school.

L. and P. are currently putting down the new laminate on P's bedroom floor. The sounds of manly sighs and groans and curses are drifting this way. So far, the room looks 1000% better. I'm sitting here at the computer printing out a forest of handouts, to make absolutely sure all the students will have plenty to do next week. I spend a lot of money on cartridges and paper. A LOT! I suppose if I timed things better, I could print material at school on one of the three printers which may or may not be working. I must see about getting one of those new all-in-ones where the cartridges are only $11.99 each.

N. called me today! He's such a smart, well-mannered young man. His parents have done a fantastic job of raising him. We also talked last night, on his birthday, but he was so tired from all the day's partying that he was almost falling asleep as we talked (and so was his daddy, when we talked.)He thought it would be polite to call back the next day to thank me for his gift card, with which he bought a new bike.

I can't describe how happy I feel about the school year ending. Even as I print out all these stacks of paper, I feel litte surges of joy. The sky seems brighter, the sun yellower, the wind fresher. And have I mentioned that the school yearbook arrived a week ago, ahead of schedule, having actually come together? This has been the longest school year I've ever remembered, even compared to graduate school.

Friday job interview

May 30: I just returned from my interview with the principal of Richmond Hill High School! This all happened so fast. . . the phone call from the secretary on Wednesday, my return call on Thursday, the interview on Friday. The interview seemed to go well, but the very best part was reclaiming my shredded confidence. For the first time in 10 months, I was made to feel qualified, smart, creative, and impressive. He was impressed, for instance, that I'd gotten a nearly perfect score on the Praxis test in my subject area. He seemed to like the creative classroom activities I've used, as well as my philosophy of classroom management, which is a more positive than punitive one. I don't know if he will offer me a job, or even if I can break my contract with Chatham County without being sued, but I do know that at the very least it was a valuable experience to feel as though I'm a well-qualified and talented human being after all!

Richmond Hill is a very middle-class suburb south of Savannah, and the school reflects the tax base. He said all the roons have LCD projectors. They have class sets of novels, several computer rooms, a media center, and best of all, students whose families value education, students who have high test scores, students whose philosophy is not "We real cool..we drop out of school" (Gwendolyn Brooks). Richmond Hill is just over the county line, about six or 10 miles south of our residence about the same driving distance to the south as Groves is to the north. As I've said before, the Bryan County school system usually only has about three job openings, across disciplines, because no one ever wants to leave that system, while Chatham County has to import people from India and Phillipines to fill the hundreds of vacancies.

I'm so grateful that it's Friday, and even more grateful that there are only 10 more student days left. From next Tuesday until the last day of school, they're going to send around evaluators to do the "Look fors", such as Word Walls being up and Essential Questions, and to make sure the students are "engaged" in "appropriate activities." I hope this weekend I can find inspiration on how to "engage" the two journalism classes during the next to last week of school. I've been trying to engage them all year! They're not engaged. They have porfolios due on Thursday, but I guarantee you, most of them just won't do them. They don't care. What, oh what, can I possibly do with them that will engage them? But hey, why I am worried anyway? I've already been evaluated as "Unsatisfactory" so what difference does it make? It's been a lo-o-ong year, folks.

Tomorrow is grandson N's 7th birthday!! I sent him a big gift card from Toys R Us since we couldn't make it up there this weekend. P. always insists that we buy a birthday cake on the birthday of any family member who is having a birthday, whether they're living here or not, so I know we'll be having cake tomorrow.

Love the weekends!

Wednesday phone call

May 28: I was happily surprised to get a voice mail message from the secretary at Richmond Hill High School asking to schedule an interview. Of course, she'd called early in the day. By the time I got the message, at 4:30, she'd left for the day. But I'll phone back tomorrow morning, even if I have to step out in the hall from my classroom, and schedule an interview, if they haven't already filled the job by tomorrow---every teacher in Chatham County is salivating to get into the Richmond Hill School system. The students there do homework, read, and don't belong to gangs, from what I've heard. A few months ago, I sent an application to the Bryan County School Board, sometime during the long bleak stretch between January and April. But at this point I'd forgotten about it.

Another little glitch: I've already signed a contract with Chatham County, but oh well, we'll cross that bridge IF we come to it.

Today, at school, a colleague named "B," who was eviscerated in his annual evaluation, asked me, "Did you hear what happened to "R"?" I said I hadn't. "B" said "R" was all set to transfer to Windsor Forest. He'd met with the principal there, shaken hands, was told that the paperwork would be taken care of, and then, suddenly, he was called into OUR principal's office a few days ago, and was told that she had overridden his paperwork to transfer (must be some hidden clause in policies and procedures) and now he can't transfer. Boy, is he pissed off!! Another teacher found out that she is being transferred to a middle school in town that she doesn't want to go to, but she has no choice now that the principal has arranged it. "B" was joking with me and saying, "Well, at least WE'VE got job security here, har har!" referring to our inability to transfer because of unsatisfactory evaluations. He's planning to file a grievance or a lawsuit or something later this summer.

The school year is winding down, thank God. Next week is senior week. They have a senior breakfast, a senior toast night, a senior picnic and all sorts of fun. I don't even know whether they have to come to class any more. They're so hyped up now that I would just as soon have them off on a picnic than in my classroom. Their excitement has also triggered emotional confrontations in class that have bordered on fights but were averted. The principal now has all of us going to lunch duty every day of the week and has also re-formatted lunch into 4 20-minute periods rather than 3 25-minute periods, to disperse all that teenage energy that had been building up into erupting volcanoes for the last few week. There've been too many food fights, firecrackers set off in the courtyard, and lots of other mischief during lunch period.

I have my first day of summer, June 19, all planned out. I've ordered complete seasons 4 and 5 of my favorite old show Dallas, and I'm going to veg out and watch that for a day or so! I deserve a day of rest, doing nothing! Then the rest of the summer, I'll read, write, exercise at the gym, get the house cleaned up and enjoy the unstructured days. Maybe we'll all get up to Washington to see D, E and N, maybe go to Arizona to see S. P. wants very much to go to one of the American Idol tour concerts. There's one in Duluth, GA, which is the closest. But first, I have to drag myself through 12 more endless school days, graduation ceremonies at the Civic Center, then 2 teacher planning days. L. loves it when I'm home because I can take care of all the household business, pets, shopping, etc., and more important, because I'm also so relaxed and in a good mood!

Saturday odds and ends

May 24: "What are you, about 80?" the 20-ish kid asks Indiana Jones. I liked the way the age factor was handled in the new Indiana Jones. They brought the issue out early in the movie, never trying to pretend that Harrison Ford's character was still some boy toy, acknowledging instead that he was of an age, though still limber enough to swing through the air, kick butt, and leap tall pyramid stones in a single bound. I assume his body double got a more strenuous work-out than he did, but Ford clearly did some of the rough and tumble stunts himself.

One of Indiana Jones' lines early in the movie was something like "We're not as young as we used to be." That acknowledgement gave his character permission to be older and less invincible than in the past. I also liked how Karen Allen's character, his love interest of 25 years ago, looked like a plumpish middle-aged woman, as she should have. Still pretty, but not glamorous. I guess it would have been inappropriate for weathered and grizzled Indiana Jones to re-hook up with an old lover who looked 25. Not only would that have been mathematically implausible, but the contrast would have aged him too much for the cameras. Besides, she turned out to be the mother of the 20-ish kid, who turned out to be Indy's son. She had to look mature.

This morning, we started clearing out P's room to re-do the floors. The things I found on his bookshelf! We filled at least three garbage bags of high school notebooks and papers, so thankful to see them disappear in the trash. I'm so glad he's done with high school. It was very hard on me. One unexpected item I retrieved from the bookshelf was a photograph I'd forgotten we had. Several years ago, when S. was living here, he and P. and I went to Kreatures and Koi, a fish supply store in town, to buy P. a new koi for his birthday. At Kreatures and Koi, they keep a large glass tank of koi, from which customers can choose the fish they want. P. had convinced me to bring the camera that day, and with the permission of the store owner, I took a photo of the banana yellow koi we had picked out to buy, swimming along with its tank-mates in a colorful school. The one we purchased that day is our only yellow one and the only butterfly type of the 9 we have.

We got as far as clearing off the bookshelf, sorting the books into different boxes and moving the book shelf into the living room. The next phase is dismantling the desktop computer and putting it in storage until maybe I can set it up in my classroom for next year. (Can't leave anything there over the summer. They put everything in the hallways to clean the floors, and then other teachers come along and help themselves to anybody's stuff.) P. never uses that desktop computer, ever. He only uses one or the other of the laptops. I want to move P's tiered computer table into our bedroom, and use that in place of L's bulky desk which is too big and too dark and is only used as a repository for everything he happens to have in his hands when he passes by.

It's 90 degrees today, too hot to sit outside. I'm almost finished with Ten Year Nap, so I think I'll grab it and a cup of coffee and sit inside to finish it.

Let Memorial Day weekend begin!

Friday, May 23: The students were spellbound today with the next installment of Makes Me Wanna Holler; silence reigned for 90 minutes as they took turns reading it aloud. When we read this book, with its occasional "F" word and other ghetto talk interspersed with high level vocabulary, I always glance nervously at the door; I expect any minute for some administrator to burst through, discover what we're reading, and fire me on the spot. But it's unrealistic to worry that we're corrupting the students' innocence by reading a book that uses strong language---you should see what THEY write on the restroom walls and the desks. Yesterday, another teacher was complaining about her students' hyperactivity, so I gave her one chapter of the book to read in her class. She told me after school today that her room was about as quiet as she'd ever seen it.

Said another teacher, hearing this, it's little wonder they like the book; the students can relate so well to that prison culture. She teaches business and technology, so she has a room full of computers, and she constantly has to tell the girls to get OFF of those prison websites, where they endlessly surf looking for hot guys in jail and compare notes excitedly on what the guys are in for and how long. I've had several students who have been in for armed robbery. At the beginning of the year, I had a student named "F" who was a fifth year senior. Unfortunately, just months before graduation last spring, he and a few homies were booked on an armed robbery charge. But "F" was allegedly at the wrong place with the wrong crowd, and the charge didn't stick for him. And the school granted him an attendance waiver for his days missed while in jail, so he completed the senior year, and came back in the fall to repeat his 12th Grade Comp/Lit course. He was transferred out of my class into another one and I haven't seen him since. "M", another guy who started out in my class last fall, seemed like a quiet, polite young man. In class, at least. Then one day he stopped coming. I overheard one of the girls saying, "...."M" held up the Mexican restuarant on Highway 80 and now he's locked up." He was also expelled from school. This new administration has a zero tolerance policy. Recently, I ran into "M" at Wal-Mart. He was with a friend and looked happy as the day is long. He remembered me and acted friendly and commenced with the high-fiving. I assume he's out on parole now.

If the following wasn't so sad, it would be funny: I used to assign the TAPP girls to do a portfolio of their lives. One topic was "Significant Others," and in many a portfolio, a CrimeStopper clipping from the Savannah Morning News would be pasted onto the page to serve as the picture of the boyfriend or the baby daddy, who were not necessarily one and the same. In low-income black culture, many girls seem to accept it as inevitable that some teenage guy will get them pregnant and become their baby daddy, and later in life they'll look for a man who is husband material. Leonard Pitts one of my favorite columnists who also happens to be African-American, has written about this phenomenon. He asked, in these approximate words, "When are teenage African American girls going to stop lying down with any junk yard dog and letting these losers get them pregnant? Why do they think of their baby daddy as a separate guy from their husband?"

I was telling someone recently that what seems so odd to me is how girls in my class who turn up pregnant seem so "boyfriend-less." Prior to the pregnancy, you never observed them walking down the halls snuggled up to some guy, you never overheard them telling girlfriends about Him, never saw his smiling picture on a notebook, never saw any of the signs that you see with the established teenage couples who have been going together for "two months, one week and three days!" Sure, maybe the guy is someone from the neighborhood who doesn't go to our school, but still, I would think that there'd be signs of being attached or being in love.

Ah well, it's Friday night, so it's time to relax my mind and lose myself in some movie. Oh, the two David's are going to be on Larry King Live tonight, a fact P. has reminded me of once or twice or a dozen times today. And contrary to what my friend Sharon says, LITTLE DAVID IS NOT WOODEN! I'm also reading The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer, which is wonderful escape material. It's about the post women's liberation generation, women my daughter-in-law's age, who have left the workplace and now have conflicted feelings about being at home with children, just their mothers' generation did, except that this generation actively sought a retreat back home, while their mothers had actively sought a niche in the workplace but couldn't always get it.

I'm so happy that there's the "end of the school year" feeling in the air, as the Media Center sends an email reminding teachers to return their t.v.s on carts and department chairs tell teachers to get textbooks signed back in. I know three teachers on my hallway who aren't coming back next year, who "couldn't take it anymore." And those are just the ones I know about. There'll be so many vacancies that they'll have to import all of Manila by next year.

Judge Judy's mantra, with a twist

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.