Work turned-in numbersaside, from a brief looking-over, the quality of the assignments seems pretty standard for this class. I did not recieve work from my GATE identified focus student, which is frustrating, but did get work from the EL, IEP, and both mainstream students, so I should have a good pool of data to sample.

They also took a vocabulary quiz that asked them to match the words to their definitions and then write sentences with the words, with an emphasis on using the words in their correct part of speech. Several students did nothing but write their name on the quiz and turn it over, finished. Others went through it pretty quickly, and a few took the full 20 minutes, painstakingly writing sentences. From just glancing at them as they wrote, I noticed a lot of part of speech mistakes being made consistently – adjectives used as verbs, mostly – and a general sense of what the word sort of means, but an inability to use it effectively in context.

This should give me a lot to work with and I’m hoping the the word squares (which we will begin on Tuesday) will add some depth to students’ understandings of what a word means and how to use it properly.

I don’t aspire to be like that, but I sometimes think I might end up there. She reminded me today that teaching isn’t for everyone and that I very well may decide at the end of this year that it’s not what I want to do. She then reminded me that I’m a really super teacher, so she didn’t think that’s what would happen to me, but that it’s OK if it does, because it happened to her and to a lot of her colleagues and it’s taken a long time to come back.

Gosh, I hate not wanting to go to school tomorrow and not wanting to give my kids the very best that I can give them. They deserve more than that.

But don’t I deserve more than this?

Billy: “Miss Garcia, you need a vacation.”

Yes, I do.

About a month ago, I received an email from the Bookroom Lady about my core novel assignment for Senior Literature & Composition. Bookroom Lady said:

“You are scheduled to receive Hamlet on November 5th”.

Excellent. At the time I was 3/4 of the way through the Canterbury Tales unit in our textbook, and figured I could finish the C.Tales and do the first half of the Renaissance chapter, which would be a perfect lead-in to Hamlet. My planning was impeccable. Everything fell into place beautifully. I was all set. I had Hamlet plans ready to go for today. The 5th of November. The advent of Hamlet.

During first period today, Bookroom Lady calls me and says, “You are going to hate me, but I only have 21 copies of Hamlet. Relatively New Senior English Teacher (RNSET) has had her copies for over a month. What do you want to do?”

I rolled my eyes as I heard the noise in my classroom escalate. My freshman cannot handle a single second of unscheduled time. “Um, well how soon can I get them?” You know, cause I was planning to start reading today. You know, cause that’s when I’m supposed to get my books.

“I’m going to talk to RNSET and see when she’ll be done right now. Come by my office during your prep and we’ll figure it out. I think I can get them for you tomorrow.”

Fantastic. One day isn’t too bad, right? I can handle this. I can re-plan on the fly. I know! I’ll have my seniors do a journal on “revenge” and assign a “revenge in modern culture” writing assignment. Perfect.

I go see Bookroom Lady during my prep. She looks grim.

“RNSET is only on Act 3.”

“Oh. Interesting.” Act 3? Seriously? What has she been doing for the past month with this play?!

“But I’ll get you your books. I’ll go to The Other, Newer High School and borrow theirs if I have to. You are on the schedule. You will get your books.”

Hmf. Things are not looking positive, although I trust Bookroom Lady’s connections with the other high school.

During 4th period, I get an email from Department Head:

“Would you mind delaying Hamlet one week? RNSET is still using them.”

One week? Ugh. I sent a brief (and snippy, I’ll admit it) reply:

“I suppose I can reschedule something on the fly, since there doesn’t seem to be any other option. I was planning to begin in-class reading tomorrow.”

The reply came quickly:

“It’s unfortunate. I thought RNSET would be done by now, but she started later than she said she would and should have been done by now. Apparently she won’t be done until Nov 14. Have you started the Renaissance unit? Maybe you could start with Elizabethan poetry, maybe the sonnets.”

I didn’t bother replying, since I knew I would only sound bitchy, but I’ve already done Elizabethan poetry and sonnets because my whole plan was to gently lead into Hamlet with all the intro to poetry and Shakespeare business. You know, like good English teachers do. So I held my tongue and just figured, Oh well. I’ll figure out something to do for the next week and half.

Fast forward to our department meeting. RNSET breezes in late, complaining about what a rough day she has had because while she was being observed by our principle, Bookroom Lady called demanding Hamlet. Normally, this would make me shrivel down in my seat and feel horrible, but hey, those are my books. You’ve had them for over a month. It’s my turn. I’m on the freaking calendar.

What followed was a confusing conversation about the bookroom calendar and how Bookroom Lady must have just been confused and Miss G, where did you get this November 5th date from anyway? Is it possible you had your calendar wrong?

No it is not possible. My calendar is never wrong.

It seemed more pertinent to me to have had a conversation about why Hamlet is taking so damn long to teach, but that’s just me.

Moral of this story? I don’t know. It just makes me want to hermit away in my room and not talk to my coworkers. Blah.

At my school, we are basically in the technological Dark Ages. When I first got there, my computer sounded like it was trying to make a flight to the moon whenever I turn it on. Now, it growls during class. Growls. So loud that the kids ask me to turn it off because the can’t concentrate. I have an overhead projector (but no place to store it, so it sits in the middle of my classroom and I trip over it all day), but no LCD projector and the whole school is running on ancient PCs. Why there is even a single school in the entire world that is not running a Mac platform is beyond me, but I have to choose to work in an entire PC-based district (this means, of course, that any tech training I get is completely worthless).

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the school-technology connection and how to bridge the gap between the technology that students use at home and the technology that we expect them to use for school. Our kids are fluent in computers, but not in the English language. Surely then, using computers as we instruct can only be helpful to our students, yet so many teachers (and schools, and districts even) are reluctant to bring the technology into the classroom and use it in a way that is meaningful to the students and that supports the acquisition of academic knowledge (i.e. not just “Learn how to set your margins to 1″ when you write an essay”).

My thoughts on tech-based teaching are still jumbled, so I’ll leave off here. However, I do just need to say that four of my 6th period students stayed after class today to work on their essays (or so they said, I suspect that only needed a little help, but really wanted an excuse to hang out) and I have never laughed so hard in my entire life. Some of these kids are just so great and after the week I’ve had, it was such a nice reminder of why I do what I do. For the kids. Not the other teachers who still don’t know my name, not the administrators who keep rescheduling my pre-observation conferences, not the support staff who keep butting into my room and telling me I’m doing my job wrong, not even the parents who don’t support their own child’s education. But for the kids. The ones who struggle and struggle and put in a good fight and try hard and make me laugh because, amazingly, they like me and they want me to like them. And they trust me. And they tell me when they’re fighting with their girlfriend, or think they might be pregnant, or they are afraid their mom’s boyfriend is selling drugs, or when they’ve just had a rough day. They ask me to come to their football games, and baseball games, and wrestling matches. They ask me to call their parents when they get an A and understand that I’ll call their parents when they get an F. And I think, deep down, they want to learn. I need to believe that. Everyday, I need to believe that.

The school went into a code red lock-down today due to a convenience store break-in down the street. That’s what the kids said, at least. I never received any notification from the administration as to the cause of the lock-down, which would have been really nice. Then, I had to give a kid in my EL class a referral for his miserable behavior yesterday while I was away at the FAFSA conference. When he came back to my class after lunch, his behavior was so abysmal, I gave him another. Then, during 6th period, I yelled (and I mean yelled) at one of my students who refused to shut his mouth while I was trying to conduct a discussion about the brilliant symbolism in the last chapter of Of Mice and Men. When I asked why he found it so difficult to be quiet and respect his other classmates who had done the assigned reading and were trying to participate in the discussion, he sulkily replied, “The girl in front of me keeps saying I’m bugging her.”

“Are you bugging her?” I cried in exasperation.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Then stop it!”

That’s not even taking into account my seniors, who failed yet another chapter exam yesterday and spent the entire period complaining about how hard my tests are and how, get this, they shouldn’t have to study all weekend in order to pass.

I’m so irritated about my students’ refusal to take ownership for their own damn education, it just makes me sick. If I hear another, “Miss G, you gave me a D!” I just might hit something.

“No, darling scholar of mine, I did not give you anything. That is the grade you earned.”

“But why?”

“See all those zeros on your grade printout?”

Blank stares of confusion.

“When you don’t do your work, you get a zero. If you get enough zeros, you fail my class.”

“But…”

“How many zeros do you have?”

“Um……. twelve.”

“Well, there you go.”

“So what can I do?”

“Completing your assignments might be a good place to start.”

My sixth period class is just plain out of control. Nothing I do shuts them up. Nothing I do gets them to work. It’s just an all-out teacher v. student brawl for the last 59 minutes of the day and it’s wearing me out.

The crazy thing is, they are all (OK, almost all) really good kids. I asked my little class clown to step outside today after an vaguely inappropriate comment that derailed the class, but then couldn’t keep a stern face while scolding him because he’s just so good-natured. He just doesn’t know when to shut his trap, which is pretty much the general issue with the whole class.

There are other issues, however. Like the two ninth grade girls who told me, in succession, that they were pregnant this week. Or the other girl who, while I reminded her that her attitude needed a major overhaul or she would find herself kicked out of my class, rolled her eyes and drummed her fingers on the desk in a “can we get this over with please, you’re so insignificant” sort of way.

I won’t lie when I say I had to sit on my hands to keep from slapping her insolent little gum-chewing smirk right off her face.

So I’m taking Friday off. I was originally planning to do this out of necessity so that I could get totally caught up on my research and was not really looking forward to it, but now I’m calling it a delicious vacation from high school students.

Miss G: You know how you guys make me feel sometimes?

Students: Angry?

Miss G: No. Crazy. 100% nuts. Sometimes the bell rings and you all leave and I just stand here in the middle of the classroom and think, I am working in a looney bin with crazy people and you all are making me crazy too! Seriously, folks. You’re driving me up the wall.

“We are doing so much work, Miss G” they wail.

“I have no idea what is going on!” they complain.

“We’re writing another essay?” they moan.

I will admit, I’ve really been piling it on lately. The beginning of the school year was rough. They didn’t do their work because they were testing me, but I refused to bend. Then, they started doing their work, so I lightened the load a little. They thought it was because I was getting nicer, but it was really because I knew what was coming.

We are waist-deep in both Of Mice and Men and our second essential assignment, a compare and contrast essay on “The Sniper” and “Cranes”. I refuse to plod through a novel as short and surface level as M&M (plus, we don’t have enough books for all the ninth graders, so I have to return my two class sets on 10/31), but I’m also on a time crunch for the essay – I have to have them graded and turn in all the failing papers to the Learning Center by the second Friday of November.

So my poor freshman are reading and completing reader’s journals on one reading assignment tonight and then switching to essay writing on two different stories the night afterward. I’m trying to schedule the due dates so they can easily work ahead and not get bogged down, but what 13-year old will work ahead if they don’t have a gun to their head?

So the complaints continue. Today, Mexican Shrek (the kids’ innapropriate nickname, not my own) said, “Wait. What packet are we supposed to be doing? The essay one, right?”

“No, Mexican Shrek,” I said, as I stamped homework. “We did the essay packet in class. I’m stamping your Of Mice and Men reading packet right now.”

He sort of stared at me for a minute before shaking his head and saying, “I need to start doing my work.”