School Daze Chapter 6: Dynamic Duo

I teach one class each year that has a mix of both special and general education students. As an inclusion class, it also has an instructional assistant assigned to work with me to meet the needs of all of the kids in there. This year, I am lucky to be working with a guy who is also a former teacher.

As such, he has a lot of experience and a sharp eye for student needs, and so far, we form a pretty good team. In fact one of the students in our class today asked me if we were married.

I laughed and told him no.

"Oh," he said, "I just thought so, 'cause you're like our school Mom and Dad."

"Really?" I answered. "Well, I think we're more like you're school Batman and Robin!"

School Daze Chapter 5

Once a week our team of teachers meets with the counselors to talk about "student concerns". We share anecdotes and observations of the sixth graders in our class, comparing notes to see if there is some sort of support we might add. To be honest, since kids are, well, kids, some of the stories can be rather hilarious, some are heart-breaking, and some leave us kind of scratching our heads.

Today, for example, the counselor reported that she received a note from a student who was alarmed because another boy had threatened to "kick him in the shins" if he didn't stop singing some annoying song.

That story me with so many questions! Who was the threatener? What song was soooo annoying? And what sixth grader even knows what a shin is?

"Shin" seems a little old-fashioned to me. Most of the kids I know just go with the generic term, "leg" when referring to any part of that lower extremity. My dad used to say "shin," when I was a kid, and I think I even have a vague recollection of him talking about kicks in the shin. And wasn't there an old joke, a parody of a cheer, really, that went something like,

Ra ra ree! 
Kick 'em in the knee! 
Ra ra rin! 
Kick 'em in the shin! 
Ra ra rass... 
Kick 'em in the other shin!

Maybe he was singing that!

School Daze Chapter 4: The 3rd Shift

Oy vey! What a day! After completing my regular job, you know the one where I try to bend a hundred strong-minded young adolescents to my will, and make them think it is all their idea, I had a meeting where I tried to bend one strong-minded colleague to my will, but she was having none of it. Later, I conducted an overview session of the online course about young adolescents that I teach for 20 tired teachers, most of whom, like I, had Back-to-school Night tonight. At 5:30 I dashed home and actually cooked dinner, ate it, and cleaned up the kitchen before changing my clothes and heading back to school. Of course there was no parking, so I pulled in by the tennis courts and hoofed it two blocks to the building where I just barely beat the first of the families arriving for the evening's festivities. Two hours and six twelve-minute presentations later, I slipped off the loafers that were pinching my feet and walked barefoot back to my car, only stubbing my toe that once.

Indelible

"I want a tattoo of Isabel!" Heidi told me a few weeks ago.

"Hmmm," I said, "maybe you should wait a little to make sure that's what you really, really want."

She shrugged sadly. "I just want something I can look at it any time to remember her."

I understood what she meant, even though I am not a big fan of tattoos. (Okay. I kind of hate them.)

Early the next morning I got to work. We had gotten temporary dragonfly tats at a taco place in Atlanta, and it occurred to me that such things must be for sale somewhere. I easily found a website, and then an image, and in a matter of minutes a dozen little temporary tattoos were on their way.

They arrived today and boy! Are they super cute and really seem to capture Isabel's spirit. Maybe such a permanent reminder wouldn't be so bad.

School Daze Chapter 3

"Tracey, what would make you happier at school?" my mom asked me on FaceTime yesterday.

"I'm not sure," I answered.

"Well, what is making you unhappy?" she asked.

I thought a minute. "I guess it's not really that much fun," I shrugged. "Teaching used to be really fun."

It wasn't quite as hopeless as all that, though. Just Friday, when the 90 degree heat had finally relented slightly just in time for the annual "Sixth Grade Watermelon Social," I had stood on the turf soccer field surrounded by over 300 kids running and shouting and generally playing quite nicely together. Eating a big slice of sweet watermelon, I soaked in their exuberance under the clear blue sky.

To carve out these 45 minutes, we had had a crazy-schedule day with short, out-of-order classes, but the kids pretty much rolled with it. And to be honest, the looseness seemed to become us all.

Maybe it finally felt like September.

School Daze: Chapter 2

It was the hectic beginning of my last class of the day. Twenty-three sixth graders had jostled their way through the hall and into their seats in my room. "Record your homework," I reminded them routinely and then--" I stopped, spotting an anomalous sight. "T!" I said. "What're you doin' in here? You're not in my class!"

I paused. T looked upset. "I wish you were," I assured him, but your real teacher will be missing you. What class do you have now?"

With over a hundred kids on the team, by the second week of school, well honestly? By the second day of school I knew who T was, even though I didn't teach him. Not only did his behavior stand out a little in the halls, his teachers had shared several anecdotes to illustrate their concern about him.

My favorite T story came from the science teacher. A few days earlier, in the hubbub of changing seats for a group activity a student inadvertently pushed T, who turned around and punched the other kid in the head. "Hey now!" said my colleague to T. "We never put our hands on another person!" Then she turned to the other student with concern. "Are you all right? Did he hurt you?"

"I'm okay," the boy assured her, rubbing his head. "It didn't hurt."

T reached over and scratched his arm. "How about that?" he challenged him. "Did that hurt?"

Before I continue, let me assure you that the other student was fine, and I do not condone such behavior. But I do find T's reaction a little amusing, mostly because it is so far from the norm.

More than that, though, to me it showed how impulsive T was, and how little self-control he was able to exercise in that situation.

Back in my classroom, T looked panicky. "It was just a mistake!" he chanted over and over as he jumped out of his seat and started to pace.

"I know!" I assured him. "I think you're supposed to be right next door, though, in science."

"Yes!" he said.

"It's okay," I told him as I led him to the right place. "Kids get confused sometimes."

He sighed with relief as he entered the classroom.

Later I considered what his reality must be like: how out of focus must this new school be to him that he could sit, unaware, in a classroom he had never been in before with a teacher and kids he didn't know?

School Daze: Chapter 1

The writing prompt seemed so do-able:

You have one class period to write the best personal narrative- the best true story about you- that you can write. Make this be the story of one time in your life. You might focus on just a scene or two. You’ll have one class period to write this true story, so you’ll need to plan, draft, revise and edit in one sitting. Write in a way that allows you to show off all you know about writing.

After all, we had been coming up with topics for a week, talking about them, and free-writing. All of those resources were available as my students sat down on Tuesday to complete this formative assessment. I just wanted to know what kind of writers they were.

A few minutes into the first class period, I noticed a student who was reading. His writing lay, seemingly abandoned, on the table:

"Whoa!" I whispered to him. "It looks like you're having some trouble."

"Not really," he shrugged. "I'm just finished."

"Hmm," I answered, "why don't you bring your writing notebook out to the hall so we can talk a little?"

He grabbed his notebook and I picked up the paper and out we went.

I was determined to be patient, and he was determined not to write, and so we didn't make a lot of progress in our conversation. "The assignment says to write your best story," I finally said. "Is this really it?"

He assured me it was. With 178 days to go in the school year and the knowledge that I had only begun my work with him, I said, "Okay," and we went back inside, where I read the placement card his fifth grade teacher had sent.

Excellent student! he had written, and under "Writing"? There was a checkmark in the High column.

It was a conundrum, indeed.