hipteacher

the flow

For the last two days, I have not recognized my American Lit class. Where once there was disorder, there is now organization. Where once there was disruption, there is now industriousness. Where once there was attitude, there is now, dare I say, engagement???

They are sitting in their desks, working really hard, helping each other, sharing, asking questions and, gasp!, wanting to go to the library for extra information. Today, I tried to fake them out. I told them were really doing well, so I would play some music. Usually, for me anyway, disorder usually follows any music playing.
    "What is this sh*t?"
    "Can we put in my cd?"
    "Tone has 50 Cent. Can we put that in?"
    "I'm going to vomit."
Today, there was quiet acceptance. It was like they didn't even notice--because they were working.

It was so freaking fabulous.

I felt like the queen of my classroom. I floated on air. I reminded myself to post about it so I could have something to read on the days when I am utter crap-o-la in the teaching department.

Clearly, there must be a full moon or something, but I do like my assignment. We are finished reading the transcendentalists. They are creating their own high schools that are based on transcendental beliefs. Download trans_high_school.doc

postscripted

First, let's just say that little matter has been all taken care of. Thank you for all your helpful comments. I spoke with the counselor, two vice-principals and the principal of my school about the matter, and they followed up quickly. I did ask, however, that my identity be kept private. Since the blog was available to anyone on the internet, I saw no reason why my name had to be involved.

Staying anonymous wasn't important to be because I want to be the "hip," "fun" teacher. I threw that whole idea out the window early on when I started calling moms to tell them their daughters were kissing on the wrong sorts of boys. I worried at first that the kids would be mad at me, and to be honest, I don't like people being mad at me, but, without exception, all the kids I've told on have been really appreciative. Not immediately, of course, but eventually. I think they like being looked after. All in all, those kids seem to feel closer to me.

However, if dealing with a kid who really may be sociopathic, I don't see any reason why teachers shouldn't consider their own safety.

On a side note, I am worried that my school's so-far-so-positive response to blogging may have been somewhat tainted by this experience. Some administrators, and others, thought the student was writing all the bad stuff on the blog his English teacher used for class. I explained over and over that it was the kid's personal blog, that no teacher would ever be using Xanga for god's sake, and that he hasn't even had a class with one of the "blogging teachers." But I still don't think it really sunk in.

Ethical Decisions of the 21st C. SchoolTeacherLady

Ahhhhhhhhhhh! My eyes are burning!!!

DON'T EVER READ YOUR STUDENTS' PERSONAL BLOGS!!!

Seriously.

One of my 3rd perioders and I were having a back n' forth about poetry on his nice, clean school blog, and he gave me the address to his xanga blog. I shouldn't have looked, but, I admit I was a tad curious. Now, I have major ethical questions that were not, I repeat, not covered in my ethics class in grad school.

First issue: A boy we'll call Stoner. Stoner doesn't keep a xanga blog, but he is often the topic of conversation among my three xanga bloggers. Sometimes I worry about Stoner because his parents put a lot of pressure on him. To be honest, I think his parents are too hard on him.

The pot references didn't trouble me so much but the tales of bringing water bottles filled with vodka to school did. Then there was a post about how Stoner took some prescription med and was passed out forever under someone's coffee table. That reminded me about a conversation I overheard at school about someone who was taking Xanax recreationally. So, let's add it up: smoking pot, drinking, and taking Xanax. Awesome.

I spoke with a teacher-friend, and she said that as long as the student isn't talking about hurting themselves or hurting someone else, teachers should stay the heck out--let the kids have a little privacy.

Second issue: A boy we'll call Angry Boy.  Angry Boy isn't my student, but he goes to my school. And he is, well, angry. His mom is a b*tch. His teacher is a b*tch. He's pissed about it all. And, almost every other day, he says something about shooting someone or blowing someone's brains out.

Being grossed out about how the boys talk about girls and their p*rn habits is one thing; this is another. Kids cannot joke about crazy violence these days because people like me are going to wonder if maybe they're for real. But how can you tell what's "boys being boys" and what's seriously scary?

When is it right to sell them out?

Connotatively Loaded Culture

Studying Transcendentalism, I asked my American Lit class what they needed in life to feed their souls. After a few broad, not-quite-there responses, Chances, the son of my favorite custodian, grinned broadly and yelled out, "HOT WINGS!" I'm pretty sure he was kidding around.

I started saying some stuff about feeding your soul, not your body, and talking again about needs versus wants, but then, suddenly, I stopped myself.

Hot wings don't feed my soul (a good, vegetarian soul btw), but maybe, in a way, hot wings feed his soul. I opened the discussion to the class. We talked about how food could be tied to cultural identity. We talked about the term "soul food." And in the end, we decided.

Hot wings can indeed feed the soul.

That little turn in the grave was probably good for, as the kids like to call him, our friend Waldo. And whether everything I said was PC or not, we had a good, open-minded, and, I think, productive class discussion.

Yea wings!

 

Commercial Break

Newsflash: Parents of honors students like to chit chat with good 'ole English teacher on a regular basis--and by that I mean weekly, if not daily. So, if posting has seemed erratic, that's because it has been. I've been in parent conferences before, after and during school. Some of it seems a little less-than-pressing, like how Billy didn't turn in his homework one freaking time and now he's not going to get into med school, when I've got kids poppin' out babies and trying to stay in school or filing charges against his/her dad because step-mom is a crack whore. But, on the other hand, I really must stop myself from being too snarky because most of these parents really seem to love their kids and just want the best for them. Not to mention, they are doing something right to have such motivated, intellectually curious children.

With all that said, I really need to develop a) patience and b) thick-skin/ assertiveness in dealing with some of the parents of honors students who maybe aren't so honors. I know. The horrors.

I understand why parents want their average student to stay in honors-level classes. General-level classes have sort of a bad rep at my school, like they are holding pens for Thug 101. Partly, the rep is well deserved, but if the more average, ok students were weeded out of honors, general could be more, well, actually general. I feel a twinge of guilt fairly often because even though general is college-prep, it really isn't. I spend most of my time on moving my general classes towards basic comprehension of the text and writing in complete sentences.

In college and grad school, I felt very anti-tracking, and I still don't agree with tracking's limitations and bias towards individuals of certain races, economic classes and genders, but it's not easy to be so self-righteous from inside the classroom. I find my thinking slipping, wishing for a low-level general class in addition to regular general, to weed out...

You see where that kind of thinking gets me. Bad, gross territory.

Eventually the white kids and the black kids are gonna have to be in the same classroom. I know. It's gonna be culture shock for both Billy and Toe-man (don't ask, but I swear the child exists), and Billy's mom will sign a waiver so Billy can take honors English even though he wasn't recommended. Eventually, though, if I and others stick to a rigorous, high-level honors curriculum and grading level, Billy will go to general so he can get As instead of Cs and Ds. After all, the kid probably wants HOPE (lotto funded college for 3.0 GPA students in Georgia).

Whoa. I totally wasn't planning on writing that. I meant to finish my fun story. But, alas, what comes out comes out. Sometimes regardless of whether folks will understand what I am talking about or not. But, I'm feeling type-y (chatty?) tonight, so the rest of the story will follow soon.

And PS, just 'cause Billy is abnormally brilliant in Calculus does not, in fact, mean that Billy can also explicate a poem with any proficiency. So there.

a long story of coincidence: part one

A beautiful thing happened today.

This morning at breakfast, I stopped to talk with another English teacher about the journalism staff. There were quite a lot of applicants for the staff this year, and there was a particular kid I wanted to recommend. Well, sort of recommend. Dee is one of my “potential” kids, but he was also in my heinous fourth period class last semester. And yes, he hangs with our friend Pimp. Therein lies the problem.

Dee is bright and quick. He can be mature and hardworking. When he gets around trouble kids, however, he is very susceptible to peer pressure. Pimp’s influence last semester got Dee so off-track at the end of the semester that he didn’t manage to complete a whole research paper. I couldn’t recommend him for honors, although I had been grooming him all semester and he was willing to move up, and so the cycle continues.

This semester, Dee has my mentor teacher for English, and she is having the same issues--which, I might add, is a little comforting. She’s had the same conversation with him about moving to honors and watches in disappointment as Dee slowly begins to follow the trouble-kid in her class both in behavior and grade point average. Watching Dee in the library last week, we shared our mutual frustration and shook our heads.

Then I saw Dee’s name on the list of journalism applicants. First, I was very surprised he even applied. It’s a pretty white kid, honors kid thing to do. Second, I got all hopeful. Being on the staff would be so good for him--not to be around white, honors kids per se, but to be around motivated, college-bound achievers. Peer pressure can be a beautiful thing when applied for the right reason. So, I spoke to the journalism teacher about Dee.

Dee maybe isn’t as accomplished or as talented at writing as the other applicants, but it would be so good for him. Is that a legitimate reason to put him on the staff when there are more qualified applicants? Does it matter that Dee is black and the staff usually lacks, uh, flavor? Might he be valuable to the staff solely because he could add another perspective--could provide a link between the, seemingly, two schools that I teach at, the black and the white, the have and the have not?  Could I possibly be far too hopeful about the difference that one success story could make to the culture of my school?

Yes.
And no...(to be continued after 80 essays are graded or after mid-term grades are turned in Monday morning, whichever comes first. sigh.)

detention

Hipteacher suddenly stops her mini-lecture about the beauties of the sestina when she looks back and sees Jimmy's desk. A white, powdery substance formed into mini-pyramids covers the top of the desk. Seeing that she is in an honors class and this substance is not, in fact, blow, she calms down and tells Jimmy that she'd be seeing him for detention that afternoon.

    "Jimmy. What was that all over your desk?"
    "Uh. It was, um, Altoids."
    "Altoids? I'm sorry, you crushed up Altoids to look like cocaine?
    (snickers) "Yeah."
    "Oh, ok. That's totally normal." She says this a bit snarkily, but kid doesn't get it.
    "I thought it would really hurt, and it did for about five seconds, but then it didn't feel so bad."
    "Wait. You were snorting Altoids in the middle of my class?!"
    "Well, only because Tim dared me too."
    "And it wasn't really painful?" Because, hipteacher admits, she was sorta curious.
    "Nope. After awhile it was kinda cool. When I did this (he inhales sharply through his nose like you would do if you were snotty and had no immediate access to a tissue) it felt really good! And tasted kind of sweet!"
    "Ok. Get the cleaning stuff and paper towels. I want you to clean the tops of all the desks and sweep the room. And next time, use better judgment when dared to do something. You don't want to get falsely arrested on drug charges."
    "Yes ma'am. And when I'm done, can I call Mr. hipteacher?!" (hipteacher's students are strangely fascinated with her husband. For a few of her male ninth graders, Mr. hipteacher has reached almost mythic status. They are obsessed. The phenomenon is an enigma.)
    "No. He doesn't want to talk to you."
    "C'mon, please? He likes me!"
    "No. Jimmy, get to work."
    "Ok, hipteacher. But he really likes me!"