SUMMER!

So… School ended June 26th… phew!  THIS WAS SUCH A HARD YEAR!

In other, but related, news… I got a NEW JOB!

Come September 8th I will be teaching in Bushwick at the New York Harbor School. It’s going to be incredible. Stay tuned…

Problems

I used to really like my kids… that was the thing that kept me going.

If I am honest… I am starting to not like them very much anymore.

That scares me.

My Return…

Hello World,

I’m making my return to the blog-o-sphere. I have had a highly frustrating four months and I just couldn’t quite bring myself to blog about it. But, I was recently reminded that I am going to want to have a current first person narrative of this time. There will likely be a book.

I’ll see what I can knock out in the next couple of days. Keep watching… the updates are gonna be coming at ya! I hope…

Meeting Me Halfway

I have a new student.  He came last week, although he’d been to school once several months ago and then we hadn’t seen him for a really long time.

At 18, he’s older than most of my kids. I remember meeting him a few months back and being very impressed by his apparent maturity.  I think maybe it’s just a stark contrast to what I see in so many of my students.

He says he wants to graduate, get his diploma, and go to FIT (the Fashion Institute of Technology, an art school in Manhattan).  He’s a self-taught artist, he draws all the time!  And, he clearly lacks training, but he’s not bad. 

He wants to sit for the math RCT this week, so we’ve been doing test prep and review. 

He inspires me.  His life has been really hard:  drunk mom, on the streets a lot, spent time in juvenile residential facilities, and now he’s living in a children’s shelter.  But, he’s motivated.  He has dreams for his life, and he seems willing to work hard to make them a reality.

It is refreshing to have a student meet me halfway.  When there are dreams in place, it is much easier for me to come alongside and support.  He’s a neat kid, and together… he and I are gonna get him into art school!

An Inaugural Mixed Bag

Yesterday was the inauguration of our 44th President, Barack Obama.  I have been anticipating this day with growing excitement since November. I almost took off work and went down to DC, but I decided it would be almost as good to watch it from school… with my students.

For me yesterday was such a confluence of emotions.  I was deeply moved and inspired watching our President take his oath of office, and hearing his inaugural address.  He is a good man and a charismatic leader.  We have some trying times ahead, and I sincerely believe that he is the right man for the job set before him. 

However, in addition to feeling the profound weight of what was happening in the nation, with its inevitable global ramifications, I felt saddened and discouraged by the climate in my classroom and my school.   The moment was entirely lost on my students.  Some went to sleep during the speech, and others said terrible, terrible things about Obama.  I tried to impress upon them the signifcance of what was taking place, that this was a moment in history that people will be talking about with their children’s children, that many of their own family members had grown up in situations where they couldn’t even dream that one day an African American man would be elected President of the United States of America!

They didn’t care.

I was so very sad to see how incredibly limited their perspectives are. Of course every 9th grader suffers from a certain amount of self-obsession, but my students refused to even have a conversation that would lift their eyes to something wider and grander than the concerns of right this minute in their little tiny worlds. 

I think the thing that struck me to the core was the reality that my students represent precisely the demographic has been the most marginalized, disenfranchised, and underserved by the foibles of the past 8 years or more.  This new President, President Obama, ran on a platform of change.  He promised us that things are going to be different: health care, education, the war, poverty…  that these things are going to be addressed.  He won this election because enough people decided that they were tired of seeing so many people marginalized and underserved. In effect (and I understand that this is a gross under-simplification), Obama won because people believe in my students’ right to a future.  People fought hard in this election season, not to mention throughout our nation’s history, to ensure that my boys would get a chance for more. 

My boys… they don’t believe that they have a future. They run the streets and brag about their guns, and their drugs, and their hustles…  They live for tonight, not even tomorrow.  Tomorrow isn’t promised.  Maybe they’ll be locked up again, maybe they’ll get shot.  They don’t believe that more is possible.  And honestly, they don’t want hear it from me… what do I know really?  I had hoped they could hear him, Obama with his charisma and chocolate skin… that he would be a voice of hope and inspiration for them, as he has been for me.  But even him… they couldn’t hear.

I spent the day on the verge of tears, saddened by the profound dichotomy I was witnessing.  I just wanted to yell “DON’T YOU SEE???  This election was about YOU! Other people are fighting for you, and believing in you, and sacrificing for you!!  WAKE UP!  Stop wasting your lives!  Stop living in this senseless world of violence and all-consuming greed!”

What can I offer them?  I have been praying and crying… Lord… they need something super-human, something more than me… and more than even a Black President, to open their hearts and minds, to restore their hope and give them a vision for what could, and indeed should, be true of them.  They can’t see who they are, who they were designed to be… the beautiful inspiring men I get to see glimpses every once in awhile.  My students are incredible people, but they’re dying… some of them quickly, taking the fast track with guns and jail and drugs… others slowly wasting away in seas of depression and anxiety.  I can’t save them. Barack can’t save them.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

Welcome Back!

So far so good.

I actually feel good about being back in my classroom today.  It felt surprisingly like coming home.  It is familiar… I have laid claim to this place and somehow, mysteriously, over the past four months Room 305 has become my domain. 

One of the boys from another class was trying to get in my door today (a problem that I am perpetually combating… all the students love me, apparently… so they come visit ALL THE TIME!)  I was insisting that he go to his own class, and that I was not going to allow him to be in my room. When he tried to get someone else’s attention and convince them to open the door for him, I declared unequivicoaly ”I am in charge, and I said you need to go to class!”  My kids laughed… but I realised… its TRUE!  I am in charge, and sometimes they even listen to me! 

We had a pretty successful morning.  I had put together some review sheets over the material we were working on before break.  My kids seem ready to work (a situation that will undoubtedly be short-lived)  so I think I really need to keep them interested throughout January.  I think we could get some really good stuff done this month!  We’re going to be working on Science Fair projects, a prospect that actually seemed mildly exciting to my boys.  We’re going to be learning about probability in Math for the next few weeks, and I have some really hands-on things I want to try.  We’re also going to start doing more with functional life/math skills (I hope!) and I am planning to start talking about cells in Biology.  (I am so ready to move on from Biomes… Teaching Science is much harder for me than the Math.)

I was sad to leave the Midwest, and distressed by the relationships I was leaving behind… I hadn’t realised just how much I missed my friends and family.  Sometimes I am really lonely here.  But, I really LOVE my students!  They continually surprise, intrigue, and confound me. 

Quote of the day:  “Have you seen my girlfriend?  She’s mad beautiful!  She looks like Ms. King without the glasses and nose earring.”

Vacation

As 2008 draws to a close I have been tying up lose ends… mostly just in my heart and mind. 2008 was a year of endings and also beginnings. By its end I was tired. Vacation has been good for me. I just needed to be home with my parents. I needed a sense of renewed hope and excitement for the difficult job I am doing. I still really don’t feel ready to go back to teaching though… I’m nervous about a lot of things as I look toward the start of January.

Christmas Movies and Paper Chains

My children are boycotting all things educational… and I am exhausted.  I just don’t feel like fighting with them anymore.  I have yelled, actually raised my voice and yelled, TWICE in the last 8 days.  I never yell. In fact those are the only two times I have yelled at my kids all year.  This job is getting to me.  I feel vaguely like I am losing my mind.

We have been watching a lot of Holiday movies in my class this week.  We have made snowflakes, Christmas trees, and about 40 feet of paper chain so far… with more yet to come! 

Everyone keeps telling me what a good job I’m doing… but I’m not so sure.  I feel like my life is just a mess.  I am maybe just keeping my head above water in the teaching arena… but in other more personal ways… I feel like I am sinking.  Sometimes being a grown up is really hard, and I don’t like it.

Uh Oh

The other teacher who has my kids is out today and there is no sub… which means… I am teaching them ALL (both classes that I usually see) ALL day long… (for the periods they would have me, and those when they would be with him)!!! This could, quite possibly, end up being the day from hell!

It’s Coming On Christmas

Hello everyone,

I am internet-less at home right now… blogging has been consequently quite difficult.

I’m feeling a little of the holiday blues lately, exacerbated I think by the downward spiral in my students’ behavior.  Everyone warned me that these weeks leading up to Christmas would be crazy.  I believed them… but like so many other things I’ve experienced this year, there is just no preparing for what it will really be like.

I have to decide in the spring if I am going to continue working at my school, or if I will look for a new job for next fall.  I really love my students, and despite the intensity of their behavior and their needs… I like working with them.  But the school has so many systemic problems.  The staff is the hardest part.  Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly bright spots.  I’d like to think I can be part of changing the culture of the school for the better, it is just that sometimes it seems like I am out here all on my own.  It is so hard to let it be enough that my students just copy some work or do a few math problems when I now they are capable of SO MUCH MORE!  But, the culture of the school doesn’t lend itself to meaningful learning, unfortunately.  I do very little actual instruction, which is starting to make me crazy.

Tonight is the Holiday Party for the staff… hopefully it is a fun time that helps to build some community in our midst.  (We are a catty divided bunch for the most part, a situation that causes further problems for the students…) 

I am so looking forward to Christmas vacation.  I need to see my parents, get my batteries re-charged a bit, and my vision restored. Our first day off school is Christmas Eve, so I’ll be flying home at 6am the day before Christmas.  (I see the makings of a gloriously cheesy Christmas movie, don’t you?) 

I am determined to enjoy this Friday.

Peace on Earth… Goodwill toward Men,

Ms King