Alert: Positive Sentiments About Teaching To Follow

Tuesdays always start off wonderfully with MFT and I in the gym playing games with our advisory. In the absence of any equipment but a kickball, we decided to play... you guessed it! Kickball. I was amazed, if not alarmed how few kids knew the rules. Having spent a significant portion of my childhood in the street playing kickball or on a baseball diamond trying not to get my a$$ kicked by mean boys who wanted to pitch at my head because I was a girl, I knew the rules of baseball/kickball/stickball/softball by just about the 1st grade. I'm not sure our kids actually do anything in gym other than sit around or play double dutch. The boys and girls take gym separately and I think only the boys play any real organized sports. Consequently, the game was a hilarious disaster. We had a few boys playing with us since 2 teachers were out and the boys begged. They were helpful in reminding the girls not to run the wrong way on the bases. Most of the girls thought you had to slam the ball down on the base to get someone out, that you could reverse the direction of base-running to score a run, or that you could actually "lap" someone on the bases and pass them by, if they were running too slow. We played one-out innings and they really liked it. I'm going to suggest a rotating regiment of that and capture the flag for the remaining Tuesdays of the year. MFT wants us to be our school's gym teachers next year... I think I'd consider foregoing my PhD to be partnered with MFT as an all-girls gym teacher. I love it.

When I started off with my homeroom, preparing for the TV Newscast presentations they were doing, the day seemed like it might be headed down the tubes... Kenny, the preciously nerdy boy who plays the recorder and speaks in long long vowels, had worked very hard on his 1-2-3 Local News sign for his desk, and while he is very bright, he is not the best artist. Sonya, the little meanie-face that she is, and her evil partner Adrian [a boy with as many pairs of Converse as evil tendencies] say to Kenny "Your sign is ugly--we want to use this one instead," and grab his sign. Kenny is shocked and goes to grab his sign back and they start taunting him and Sonya crumples the sign up and then gives it to Adrian who runs across the room. Kenny gets up, crying and bright red, and starts chasing Adrian who is shrieking like a girl. I intervene and take the crumpled sign and pull Sonya into the hall and I'm so angry that I want to just step on her. "You are just so unbelievably MEAN!" I say. "He stabbed me with a pencil" she lies. "Sonya, I saw the whole thing. Don't even bother lying to me. Furthermore, do not expect to come with us to the Bronx Zoo tomorrow, and plan to spend your lunch period drafting a public apology to Kenny." "Whatever, I don't wanna go on that stank trip anyway." "Excellent, it's settled then. Send Adrian out here to speak with me." I have roughly the same chat with Adrian. We go to lunch, planning to present our TV Newscasts after lunch, with the principal in attendance.

Let me tell you, these kiddies blew my mind with their presentations. In something of a gift from above, the Superintendent appears in my classroom with the principal to watch the presentations and take pictures. They were both grinning ear to ear at the cuteness of my students, many of whom were dressed "professionally" in full-out suits and skirts and heels. Sariah did a celebrity interview with Josh, who played "Jay-Z." Laquan sang his group's theme song "This is the Gheeeeeettto News at Five." Brianna interviewed Donna posing as Keyshia Cole [admission: I had to google that to figure out who the hell she was] and Brianna goes "Come on Keyshia, don't you wanna sing us a line from your hit single?" and Donna is mortified and shakes her head no. "C'mon Keyshia, we're on LIVE TV" says Brianna. The class was in hysterics. Jenny was interviewed as Tyra Banks and was asked to demonstrate her famous catwalk strut, which she did quite eagerly. Other students included rather professional deliveries of various local and world news, including Brandon who was decked out in a full suit and tie and gave a weather forecast that included high/lo temps and cold/warm fronts for the next ten days.

It was amazing to see them go above and beyond what I expected of them, and gives me confidence that my Readers' Theatre unit planned for June might just actually work. Even my other class, which I expected to be a total disaster, pulled off pretty good presentations. They were less comical and creative, but they were not disastrous in the least. T-Rex and Melanie even took part! Melanie had her whole local news transcript written out for me in neat cursive writing and was afraid I'd be disappointed that she was not professionally dressed. I handed out the April Break HW assignment since we are on a trip to the Zoo tomorrow and Melanie reminded me that she would not be returning after break so she didn't need one. I gave it to her, just in case...

I plan to only leave Adrian and Sonya behind tomorrow for the trip [unless there is some kind of special "Mean Kids" version of a Bronx Zoo field trip where you get to dangle them over the lion cage and watch them squirm...] I seem to recall the last time I wrote a positive teaching-is-inspirational kind of entry, the kids came back like whackadoos the next day and shattered my delusions of grandeur, but I'm hoping for the best, and after vacation is our poetry unit which will undoubtedly provide endless writing material.