36 – The Slush Pile ABCs

I’m trapped in the gym today…it’s club/organization picture day, and I was “suggested” as a candidate for yearbook sponsor in the later part of last school year.  Of course, my initial response when asked was, Hell No! But I never said that aloud…to my boss (yeah, right…I’m snarky…not crazy).

Okay…so…before I start gripping about my newly appointed duties…allow me to (1) apologize for my EXTENDED hiatus, and (2) catch you all up on what’s been going on with me.

A. Not still teaching with Pollyanna Sunshine. I firmly informed my new department head that I’m a one-woman-show…no assistance needed!  In fact, Pollyanna’s “help” crippled me and (more importantly) my class.  I let my department head know that I did not want anymore collaborative teaching situations (whole “My Buddy and Me” thing creeps me out).  I offered to keep the subject I was already teaching (American Literature – 11^th), but instead I got British Literature…Seniors!!!! Yayyyyyy!

B. Got stuck with yearbook. I don’t know shit from shinola about a damn yearbook.  The only thing I know about yearbooks is that the guy I had a crush on in high school, drew a picture of a penis in mine…and I had to do everything in my power to keep my very authoritarian mother from seeing that!  Had she seen that, she would have demanded to speak to his parents immediately.  My yearbook staff, while sweet kids, is inexperienced…kinda like having sex with a 40-year-old male virgin (throwing up in my mouth a little bit).  They don’t know shit from shinola, too!  We all make an interesting group.  All I can say is that yearbook is stressful, and I’ve already had to decline a part-time adjunct teaching job I was offered.

C. Have high blood pressure. I never thought I would admit to having HBP…at 34!  Perhaps the stress of my profession does not agree with me.  Last year, I over did it.  Last year I smoldered from within every time I came to work because I didn’t like co-teaching and I hated my 6^th period class (damn delinquents…literally).  I was teaching as an adjunct professor, two nights a week, at the community college in my neighborhood (which added another 15 miles to my already 32-mile-one-way trek to work).  Also, I was pining away over an idiot asshole who did not care for me the way I cared for him.  I could not just wake up and smell the bullshit.

D. Got accepted to the PhD program I applied for. This is a bitter-sweet situation.  My student loans were in default…HEAVY default.  I was under the impression that they were deferred because I filled out loan forgiveness paperwork, but it was for something entirely different than what I thought it was for.  So…to make a long story longer…I had to defer my admission to Fall 2010 in order to fix my financial issues.  Although the university is offering me a stipend ($1100 a month BEFORE taxes), free tuition, and medical…I would still need minimal loans to cover my personal expenses.  However, I’m grateful for the offer and can’t wait to get started!  It’s a PhD in Education (of course).  The goal is to teach other teachers HOW to implement meaningful/authentic/germane teaching strategies in which to teach the new breed of people/situations we are being faced with in our classrooms.

So now we are all caught up!  I look forward to posting my daily goings-on more often! 

35-Discipline Starts at Home!

I’m teaching at a new school…but I’m experiencing the same problems. The same apathetic attitudes, unruly teens with no direction (Read: Lord of the Flies), and poor access to educational supplies exist at this school. Just minutes ago, I was verbally attacked by one student for saying that I heard music being played in an area of the room that she happened to be sitting in. I was not directly speaking to that student, however, she responds with, “She don’t hear no music from over here.”

Folks, this is one of my pet peeves, I do not need a pissy-ass teenager telling me what I do or do not hear! I have the hearing of a dog! Unfortunately, I hear most of everything my students say (the “private” things they say to one another especially). Again, addressing the GENERAL vicinity from which the noise came from, I said, “I am aware of what I hear. I do not need someone else telling me what I did or did not hear so, turn it off!” So the Bad Seed responds with, “Just cuz you come in here with a bad attitude everyday don’t mean nothing. I’m sick of all you stupid ass teachers.” My collaborative teacher tells Bad Seed, “That’s enough. Step outside.” Bad Seed replies, “No. I don’t need to go outside.” “Yes you do,” I responded. “I’m straight,” she replies. “No,” I said, “You need to go.”

Now she’s all puffed up and even more pissy (if that’s possible). “I don’t give a shit.” I laugh and say, “Neither do I because the more you say the more you incriminate yourself. I’ve a write-up with your name on.” “Fine,” she responds, “I don’t give a fuck about you. Make sure you put that on the write-up.” …This from an eighteen-year-old girl who is in my 11^th Grade Literature class (with sixteen-year-olds) who throws shoes at her peers and curses her teachers out. I am the one with the bad attitude? HA!

Her parents are afraid of her temper. They allow her to do whatever she wants…her father once said to me, “Sometimes she has a bad temper, but you just have to wait it out and let her come around.” What a cop out! She was never disciplined! In my eyes, that’s child abuse…she has no real-world skills! If she goes off on a boss the same way she just did to me, she would lose her job! I would never hire her. She’s a ticking time bomb. She is not used to being held accountable for following rules…that’s the REAL reason why she thinks I “have a bad attitude.” I don’t have a bad attitude, I just expect DISCIPLINED students, and if they are unfamiliar with what DISCIPLINE looks like…I “gently” remind them. While I respect ALL of my students as individuals, I will not allow them to over-step their boundaries without calling it to their attention. I believe that one of the dire issues, widely affecting education and achievement gaps, is the lack of discipline among young adults. All I have to say is that discipline STARTS AT HOME!

11 – Disturbing Observations of Student Culture

Last weekend, I was invited to the housewarming of my friend’s brother. I had not seen this particular friend in five years, and I did not know his brother…but I was still excited about the invite.

The day before the housewarming, I received directions from my friend’s cousin, and my heart almost plummeted one thousand feet into the earth…I had to take the same exit as my work exit! At that point, I was not entirely sure if the complex was located five minutes from the school…or fifteen minutes from the school…I did not want to panic prematurely, however, a bad taste was beginning to form in my mouth. I wanted to see my friend, so I had resigned myself to go.

I followed the directions, hoping that the complex would be farther off the exit than I was anticipating (I don’t know that area very well)…but I would not be that fortunate…the complex was a mere five minutes away from the school. When I turned into the complex, I saw students…I did not like that. Normally, I believe it is in best practices to socialize FAR AWAY from where students may be. When I found the building number, I noticed that everyone was sitting outside; that was strike two for me…I did not want to expose myself, like a sitting duck, to my students.

So, I attempted to try to settle into the afternoon. It was around five p.m., and people within the neighborhood where going about their business…

Disturbing Observation #1: A cute little girl, around the age of four, was running through the neighborhood unattended. “Where’s her mother?” I asked. Everyone there chuckled and replied, “At least she has shoes on today!” I was incredulous. She was running up and down the complex street, going in and out of different houses…and no one was supervising her. “That’s how little girls get raped,” I stated. Everyone nodded their heads in agreement.

Disturbing Observation #2: The little girl’s mother FINALLY makes it outside. She is “looking” for her daughter, but without any true effort. The mother is not calling her name. The mother is only walking, stumbling, along…she looked to be about seven months pregnant, MAYBE twenty-one (ish)…The mother really does not seem concerned, and I only assumed that she was looking for her daughter because I know that if it were my daughter…I would have been looking for her (for REAL looking). So, eventually, the little girl comes running out of some random apartment and into the street. The girl runs to her mother, and the mother says nothing…she does not scold or chastise her daughter for running in and out of “strange” homes, nor does she lecture her daughter about the importance of remaining in her sight at all times.

Disturbing Observation #3: There’s a teen-aged boy to the left of the town home who periodically would sit outside, look around, and then go back into his house. He had a chair set up in a nice space under a tree. In fact, his house was one of the houses that the little girl ran into. I was curious about the boy, but savvy enough to know better than to stare openly. The boy watched nothing, and yet was omniscient, simultaneously. As the afternoon wore on, the boy began to receive visitors…a motley bunch of guys who seemed to be around his age. The boys were young, some wore their hair in long spindly dreadlocks, others had their hair close shaven…they all wore extremely oversized T-shirts and jeans…one boy had on a white shirt that was so dirty that it held an orange hue…another boy wore a black shirt that had an ashen grey-like tinge…they all looked like people I would not want in my classroom…sneaking, skulking, menacing, posturing…they were up to no good!

Random people were visiting them, “dapping” them up (fist pounds), and then exiting as soon as they entered…this happened for an hour…and then the little girl…AGAIN! She zoomed in and out of houses, up and down the street of the complex, and always found her way into this busy boy-man’s house. “Is he selling drugs over there?” I asked. “They call him White Boy,” my friend replied. “White Boy? But he’s not White…he’s like mixed-race or something,” I respond. My friend laughed and shook his head. “WHITE boy…cuz he got that White.” “Ohhhhhhh!” I got it! He sold Cocaine.

Disturbing Observation #4: Around the time of my epiphany concerning White Boy’s occupational status, I notice someone in a car, who looks like one of my students. “Oh no!” I hid behind my friend, hoping my student did not see me. She lives on the other side of White Boy…opposite of where the house warming group was congregated.

Disturbing Observation #5: White Boy and his friends began to smoke weed on the front stoop of his house. “Can they do that?” I asked. My voice was full of incredulity. “Sure,” my friend responded, “Who’s going to stop them? This is a laid back living community.” …um…okay…? I immediately began to picture a police sting operation were I would be arrested upon association…Okay, NOTE: I realize that I have an over-active imagination! LOL! But I was picturing the fact that I could loose my teaching certificate by being in the wrong place at the wrong time!

Disturbing Observation #6: More people are randomly coming up to White Boy. The traffic in and out of his vicinity was higher than that of an airport’s…and the little girl continued to make sporadic visits in and out of White Boy’s place. I thought it was all so very strange. It made me so uncomfortable…Something about that little girl just running around unattended, in and out of other people’s houses, truly unnerved me. Then…to add more uncomfortabilty (not a “real” word I know) to an already uncomfortable situation, I saw ANOTHER student! Okay…time to go!

…I left soon thereafter…all of that was way too much for me. Gaining that bird’s eye glimpse into what some of my students’ lives must be like…painful…because I knew that that place was not the worst place. That place was not a housing project, but it had elements and people that I never had to deal with as I was growing up…those boy-men I saw congregated around White Boy…they were headed for a life of nothingness. They all looked so angry and defeated. What they were doing was “it” for them…the height of their achievements in life…being a dope boy. They will probably go to jail, have a few children, maybe get shot, and/or shoot someone all by the age of twenty!

The little girl…will probably get raped or molested by the time she is nine…maybe have a baby by the time she is fifteen…WHY? Because no one is watching the little ones out there!…And WHY was she running from house to house? My personal theory is that she was running drugs for White Boy.

I had seen enough.

6 – Stuff Inner-City Students Like (Visiting the “Weed” Man with Mama)

Today, my students were given the assignment of collaborative essay writing.  Somewhere in between brainstorming and outlining, two students who were sitting the closest to me began to discuss the ills of living with mothers who are always saying that there is no money.

G1: “Oh, girl, yeah I know…my mama is always talkin’ bout she ain’t got no money, but why she be turnin’ the corner to the weed man house when she sayin’ it?”

G2:“-And goin’ right to the do…”

G1:“Umm Hmm” 

 Oh the irony; Mama had enough money to buy “weed!”

 Apparently, Inner-City students like to visit the weed man with Mama…