10/12/11
I’m taking a sick day today to recuperate. I came home after
school yesterday, laid myself down on the couch, and couldn’t get up until
around 9, at which time I immediately went to bed. I woke up at 3am intending
to plan for the day, but I again couldn’t rouse myself, so I hit snooze until
4:15. Then I went downstairs and poured myself a bowl of cereal, but I couldn’t
bring myself to start planning. I started telling my housemate, Adam, about
what happened yesterday.
It really wasn’t any worse than a lot of other days I’ve
had. It started out ok; my homeroom group is always really uncooperative and
disrespectful and they were at just about their average level. I got a new
student during homeroom, which did add a psychological element of wanting to
make sure I was doing everything perfectly so she would get a good impression
of the kind of teacher I am. The transition to Comm. Arts was ok. I gave them
each their 200 Scholar Dollars that they earn daily. A lot of my students came
in, sat down, and got to work on the DOL as usual and a few of them came in
playing around as usual.
Somehow, though, the DOL ended up taking our entire hour
until support. Ah, I remember now: Benny said something to Anna while she was
correcting her DOL, she snapped back, he blew up and started yelling at her, so
I tried to send him out, which he refused, which gave Tim or Montarrious the
space to throw something across the room, which meant I had to first get the
whole class under control, and then get Benny under control, and then call the
office to get him out of the room, but they didn’t respond, and so in this manner
we struggled through correcting our Daily Oral Language. And Markesha and China
were doing something crazy too. I think Markesha called someone “dusty”. I
don’t know if the details are right, but I do remember clearly pointing at the
board at the end and saying “this is ALL we could get done in AN HOUR!”
I called 5 parents while the rest of the class was in the
computer lab, which wasted more than half of my planning time.
When we came back in from the bathroom, there was a picture
of my mother, grandfather, aunt, and uncle projected on the board. We were
starting a writing project about people who are important to us. The class was
fairly focused (or at least not loud) while I read a short essay I wrote about
my mom. Then we moved on to read a story about a little girl whose elderly
uncle saves her life. During the story, one of the para-professional assistants
came in, Montarrious ran up to him and told him that Leon had stolen a stack of
white paper from me, an accusation I had heard early but ignored for the sake
of progressing with our lesson. The paper materialized, the para told me to
write up the student, and 5 or 6 students took up the chant of “Thief! Thief!
Thief!”, which made poor Leon sprint out of the room and required me to yell a
lecture about respecting others. It took us a few minutes to refocus back on
the story.
Things continued in a similar vein through our work on using
a graphic organizer to begin thinking about how to write the descriptions of
people we care about, all the way until lunch.
After lunch was when I started to lose my game. They had
done a terrible job lining up after recess the day before, so I forced them to
march up and down the hallways instead of going outside. I had done this
before, but I had let the ones who had been good go out. Today I couldn’t quite
do that because two of the Kindergarten teachers had subs and they normally
help keep track of the ones who I send out. As such, I marched them for about
20 minutes, then took them inside and had them all silent read except for two
who had been “perfect” (meaning they didn’t even ask if the good ones could go
outside since they are supposed to be silent in the hallway). The teachers
among you can see why this might not have been the best call.
Benny was in the closet for all of silent reading, crumpling
up papers and throwing them. My new student started to cry because I had told
her she was going to get recess much earlier, though she had been a bit out of
line after lunch. Everyone else was fairly cooperative and I gave tootsie rolls
to those who were focused on their reading out of guilt (another mistake?). The
room was largely quiet though. There was an air of sadness about it. I, on the
other hand, was busily running around doing things. I don’t remember exactly
what I was doing, but it was enough so that the quiet gradually deteriorated
and I would have to use some force to bring it back. I did this several times.
One thing I was doing was filling out their daily behavior reports, I remember
that.
The transition to math went as poorly as ever, and even
after I made them do it over three times (line up outside, walk in quietly,
find your seat quietly, do your Number of the Day quietly, hang up your
backpack when it is your table’s turn quietly), they still sat down chatting or
just running their mouths off to themselves or throwing paper balls into the
trash can.
I don’t remember if we went to the bathroom before or after
the fire alarm went off, or at all. In any case, they were all in their seats
and relatively quiet when the buzzers in the hallway sounded and the girls
started screaming and everyone tried to bolt for the door. Fortunately, I have
a loud voice and there is no alarm in our room, so I was able to get them in
something of a line and away from the door. Once the other classes passed, we
filed out into the hallway, at which point the line became a clump until it had
to stretch out again to fit through the doors to get outside.
A few of my great ones headed my plea for them to get in a
straight line, but several others were off doing backflips in the middle of the
field. At the same time, I noticed several tootsie roll wrappers in the hands
of Lyzala, of whom I will surely have many tales to tell by the end of the
year. I pulled her out of line and told her I was going to write her up for
stealing. She protested, saying it was not she who stole them but Leon, whose
backpack Lyzala then tore open. Sure enough, an almost empty bag of tootsie
rolls was found inside. Leon darted across the field to the Principal to tell
him God knows what story about how Lyzala planted the stolen candy in his bag.
Meanwhile, my line was getting worse while the other classes
were starting to walk in. I told them that we were not going inside until the
line was straight and quiet. That did not happen. So, we waited outside about
10 minutes until those doing flips finally got in a line. And we marched back
in. I was handing out $50 notes like crazy to those who were doing the right
thing, desperate to not let morale dip so low as to have a mutiny.
We marched around the entire building and back in through
the front door in a still far-less-than-perfect line. By the time they were
back in the classroom sitting in their seats, it was already 2:45, less than 45
minutes left in the day. I tried tell them to take out their homework so we
could correct it. They didn’t because they were still talking and not
listening.
I lost it. I threw my clipboard down on the table and
screamed at them: “You learned NOTHING today. Not a single one of you learned
ANYTHING about math today. And it is YOUR FAULT. Unless you are one of the two
or three people (I named them) who were doing exactly what they were supposed
to be doing the entire time, IT IS YOUR FAULT.” It was quiet for a second. “Now,
take out your homework so we can go over it and make something of today”. The
talking started again instantly.
I called down to the principal’s office (he was supposed to come
in around the time of the fire alarm anyway). He said he would come as soon as he
could. I passed out a worksheet for them to work on and told them to do it
silently. One of my girls came up and asked if I could help the people who want
to learn at the front table. I said yes and a group of about 6 gathered around
me and I helped them with the worksheet.
My principal came in about 20 minutes later and everyone
finally got to work. He began walking around, helping students. 10 minutes
after than I walked over to him and told him what had been happening earlier
and asked him what we are going to do about it. “Get some parents down here” he
said.
He left, and soon it was time to line up. I told them to
stand on their numbers. A few did. I couldn’t bring myself to yell. I sent a
student to go over and get the long-term sub for the computer teacher. She is
an older black woman who is very intense and very concerned about the behavior
of the kids at Satchel Paige. She yelled, got them in line, and we finally
walked out to the buses.
I cleaned up my room in a stupor, gathered my things, and
looked up directions to a Chipotle between my school and home.
It happened to be located in a bourgeois business complex
next to the posh Plaza branch of the Kansas City Public Library. I sat and ate
by myself and let my thoughts run together: what would my students feel if they
came here? Or the other teachers at my school for that matter? These people
have no idea what the world I just came from is like. They reduce the problems
there to simple formulations about race and poverty. They don’t understand the
depth of it. I thought about the beautiful school on the edge of the
countryside I visited with my instructional coach last week. The kids there are
of color too, they are poor too, but the school is set up to make them feel
happy and safe and cared for. Not that the staff at Paige aren’t trying…
I went home, sat down on the couch, and watched a couple of
episodes of 30 Rock with my roommate. I had every intention of buckling down
and preparing for the next day at 8pm, after the last episode.
I tried to get up and couldn’t. I tried to think about what
I needed to do and couldn’t. I felt beyond weak, just completely shut down. I
half-slept on the couch until 9 then dragged myself into bed.
I woke up at 2:50am in sort of a happy daze. As I dozed off
again, the feelings from yesterday began to rise. I got up at 4:15 when Adam
knocked on my door (he knew I was going to try to get up early). While I was
eating breakfast in a silent rage I told Adam about how I had lost control of
my class, lost the battle. He asked whether that hadn’t happened before. I then
told him how I felt like I couldn’t get a handle on my emotions, I was till
angry, irrationally, and that that was scary. I never lose control of my
emotions. If anything I control them too much. I couldn’t get myself to do
anything to get ready for the day, so I went back to bed and lay there until
6:15.
I got up still in the same funk. I had been thinking the
entire time about all of the little things that if I just got them right every
time things would go fine. If I had just been quicker getting my math class
started working on something after I yelled at them it would have been ok. If I
had given Benny some incentive to behave well it would have been ok. If I had
been more consistent giving out my dollars it would have been ok. If I had
gotten Leon or Lyzala out of the room more quickly it would have been ok. And
bigger things too: if my students had gotten more assignments back and knew how
they were doing, if I had been consistent with management all the time from the
beginning, if my lessons were more planned out, if I had talked to parents
earlier. My mind reeled and I was still in the same angry stupor. I snapped at
Adam while he was trying to tell me to get help from people in TFA.
I’m not angry now, although I still don't totally have a handle on myself and that scares me. Writing this has helped a ton. I’m going
to go in tomorrow, and it might not be better, but it will be fine. I just need
to find some ways to get rid of these feeling in the evenings after school.
(All of the names in this post are fictitious except for
Adam’s)
