Epic days

Wow. These past few days have been quite long and quite hard, but for totally different reasons.

Yesterday I taught all morning as usual. Class went okay, but my fifth hour (which, by the way, is the new 6th hour if you read my student teaching blogs) could barely let me finish a sentence they had so much to say. I switched all their seats today and lectured a bit but my ultimate weapon is yet to be unveiled. If we have those kind of problems again, they're going to lose precious minutes from their lunch hour. Because they have open campus, I think that'll hit them pretty hard so I'm not worried :)

After all that teaching, eating my lunch and racing to get my lessons together for Tuesday, I had a marathon of meetings that almost took me out. First I had to meet with Nacia, Jane and Monica (from the district) about our RTI goals. We're giving a bunch of kids the MAZE test on Friday and planning for NWEA testing later in the month. No telling yet what kind of instruction we're going to base on all this testing, but whatever.

Next was our regular Monday staff meeting which was sort of brought down into a boring spiral by a visit from the Superintendent to discuss the districts "scorecards." Basically, it's a goal statement for the school with lots of boxes and never-ending meetings to put everything in the right boxes. Blech. Then I had to race over to Lincoln Elementary because the district requires all new teachers to take this teaching course 3 hours a week. 3 long hours. I can barely muster enough excitement to tell you about it. The other teachers are very nice and I'll admit I wrote down some good ideas, but I was losing it a little by 6:30.

THEN I had to race over to Faribault H.S. where Matt teaches because they were having a big theatre meeting to announce their plays. I wanted to see Matt and I was told there would be ice cream, so I showed up. The kids did a really cool song at the beginning to introduce the theatre program and the director introduced the staff with a weird Star Trek themed PowerPoint, so I was definitely entertained.

Needless to say I fell into bed the moment I got home.

Today was also taxing, but completely different. First hour went okay, although the timing got off somehow and the bell rang while I was in mid-sentence. Oops. We're reading Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" in 2nd hour, which I tried to make more interesting by reading dramatically, but I realized only about 3 kids were with me. Not a single student noticed when I had gone on to the next page. Need a new strategy for tomorrow. Sigh. We watched the beginning of "The Pursuit of Happyness" during Advisement, which was fun.

5th hour was AWESOME, because we started "Feed" today and the kids are totally into it. They love the recording with all the commercials, they helped me make a big list of the slang words which I think I'm going to have them turn into a dictionary, and were generally really engaged. Bernie told me they had a big discussion about it in the lunchroom and a couple of kids asked to take the book home. Wheeee. I've learned that if you can't find something engaging to teach (sorry, Stephen Crane), classroom management is a LOT harder. Don't let me forget that throughout the year.

The downward spiral came later in the day. Right after lunch, when I'm usually doing work out in the common area, the parents of two new students came in to meet with Jane, the principal. I had one of the boys in my class during the morning and he was quiet and pleasant. Both boys were caught smoking outside of school, which gets the parents called in. I was asked to come into the meeting (along with Jane, Nacia, both parents, both boys and the police liaison) so I could help translate for the mother. The father was furious for the boys and both parents were accusing them of smoking marijuana. The dad was ready to pull the boys out of school because we hadn't been watching the kids during their lunch hour. The dad kept saying over and over again "My kids are bad kids. They're probably the worst kids in this town." The mom clearly did not want a translator, because she wouldn't look at me, but it was probably a good thing I was there because the mom and dad were disagreeing about whether the kids should stay in school, go to the Level 4 Special Ed program next door or whether the dad should pull them out of school and send them to work. The kids, when we talked to them alone, said they didn't feel safe going home with their dad. It was pretty ugly but I have to give props to everyone, especially the police officer, for working with them with a lot of calmness and respect.

Not two hours later, just after school gets out, a student comes pounding on the door to let us know a big fight has broken out on the corner. Apparently one of our students and a mystery student (maybe from the high school?) just started pummeling each other in the middle of the street. All the teachers were outside in two seconds but we missed what happened. A couple of my sweetest students were pulling the mystery kid down the street and away from the fight, and they wouldn't tell the art teacher who followed them a thing about what happened. Everyone was a little shook up after that.

I stayed a bit for night school even though this Tuesday isn't my night (I alternate with Nacia) just to see the kids who showed up and get them started, but then I had to go home and watch some mindless television in my pajamas. Which is where I am now. And it's only Tuesday.