Game Changer

I'm sure that I've posted before about my kids who serve a "lunch detention" and come with their lunch to read a book in class with me.  Our first book was "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian".  The second one is "The Hunger Games".

I bought 5 tickets for kids to the Hunger Games and planned to do a raffle, ala Effie Trinket, to pick a winner. Each student could enter their name in the drawing once for each time they came to eat lunch.

I was bragging about this on Thursday night on Facebook. The drawing was to be Friday and the kids would meet me at the theater during our two week spring break.  Someone asked why I didn't take the whole class.  I explained that I can't afford to take everyone and that it was alright- I think the kids just liked reading at lunch and hearing me read it to them.

Then someone said "I'll pitch in for some tickets".

Then someone else.  And someone else and someone else.  I had 2 offers to pay for the whole thing and I started crying.  Part of me wanted to say no, we'd be ok.  But that would be wrong.  My kids will absolutely LOVE going to the movies as a group and seeing the book that we are reading in class!  So I got over it and said yes.  We will get to go on the 24th in Bricktown.  I am so excited and cannot thank my friends enough!

I shot a video of a thank-you picture we were taking.  Very cute.  The kids were so surprised and so excited! This was the highlight of my week and probably of my whole month.  I'm going to send it to our "sponsors".  If you read the book, that would make you smile...

On Friday I also learned that my students made gains of about 20-30% on their benchmark reading scores.  This blew away my principal, who was hoping for 10% or at least some movement.  This doesn't mean my students are passing, just that they have improved.  My kid who ate his library pass on the first day of class passed.  My student who I cannot for the love of God or money get to write more than a few sentences passed.  Several of them earned "exceeded" marks and most are on the edge between "below standard" and "passing" that I am certain we can get a 70% pass rate this year.  Right now the benchmark says that we are at about a 50% rate. These students work hard and know why I do the things I do- to give them a good chance of success through literacy.  I hope so, anyway. I have tried to ingrain it in them since Day 1.

In the not-so-awesome-but-kinda-so department, I taught a geography class for our deceased teacher on Friday as well.  It's during my plan period but the students really need help and stability so I've volunteered to teach it the rest of the year.  I hope it works out that I get to.  The awesome part is teaching geography.  The drawback is teaching it in the building while the demolition crews bang on pipes and raise dust.

As a consequence, Friday night was a total bust. I had multiple asthma attacks and couldn't sleep.  Saturday was rough too and I even had an asthma attack at Grey's sister's birthday party.  I was so embarrassed to have to excuse myself to go take medicine and then I was so shaky that everyone thought I was just nervous.  I was not nervous- Grey's family is full of nice, kind and decent people and the reason I couldn't let go his hand was because I couldn't stop shaking.  I think his mom and dad think I am shy because I didn't say much.  And I'm sure I looked terrible, because I felt terrible.  More asthma attacks and finally some sleep and we went for a long walk on Sunday.  Today here in Tulsa, it's nice and sunny and warm.  I woke up at 3:15 with an asthma attack (sigh) and slept in for a bit.  Then, since Grey works till 6, I did the stuff one normally does to greet the day and then read a book outside in the sunshine.

You know, there is something I almost never talk about.  It's about those feelings one holds deep and dear.  I have a hard time expressing emotions rather than delight, anger or something that is right around arms length.  Grey says the nicest things to me- he is very good whereas I am terrible.  Something in me freezes up and thinks that if I really love someone, and I wish to keep them in my life, I would generally lose them if I opened up and they were able to penetrate that emotional armadillo skin of mine.  It seems that I have lost more of the people I loved or been betrayed or hurt other people too much to have a kind and loving relationship.  And Grey knows this and when I get tongue-tied, he knows that there are things I need time to work out and say.  Something like a time-delay clock.  Fifteen minutes after some declaration of love or a remark about the future, I finally untie the frozen strings from my heart and say what I really want to.

It's even harder to write about, to admit that to all, oh, say 10 of my readers.  I'm supposed to be a writer. I'm supposed to be fucking eloquent.  I'm supposed to be tough and smart and a lone wolf and all of the stupid cliches that go with someone who doesn't know how to accept love.

And how stupid is it that we've been engaged for over a month and I'm just now mentioning it?  And I'm not even going to give any details.

Who is taking her entire class to "The Hunger Games"?  This person!

Give me 15 minutes...

Engage

It's been a minute since I last wrote- my apologies, but life has a way of getting in the way.
Many things are happening simultaneously. Some I can talk about, some I cannot.  But all in good time.

I am feeling better, more or less.  Since I got a doctor's note and moved from the perpetually-under-construction building into the perpetually-hot-cold-no-electricity portable building from 1975, I can breathe better and even headed off the last bout of bronchitis.  There are still some days when I cannot go to school and one day this week that I came home and went to bed.

Tomorrow we make good on the zoo trip.  I wrote a grant last year and got a trip to the zoo for 30 of my kids. I actually have 36 going and will pay for those six myself. Each of has perfect attendance, is passing all of their classes and doesn't have any behavioral problems.  It should be fun and I am excited to reward them for their efforts- most were completely unaware that they would get a reward.  This makes it that much sweeter. I did an internship at the Tulsa Zoo back in 1999 and had a blast in the herpetology department.  I do have a degree in biology and love to talk about animals.

My little lunchtime reading group has grown as well.  What started as 8 students reading Sherman Alexie's novel "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" has turned into 24 faithful followers as we sit and eat and read "The Hunger Games."  I picked it because the movie comes out next month.  I had a revelation on the way to work one morning.  I've started carpooling with Cathy once a week just so that we can talk and catch up.  Anyway, I was talking about ways to keep my kids engaged. Don't get me wrong, they like the book. There are 16 boys who are engrossed in a strong female protagonist because she can hunt and kill things.

Since there is a lottery at the beginning of the book and that lottery ultimately leads to our protagonist, Katniss, getting into the games, I decided I would have a lottery too.  Each time my students show up for lunch, they get another "tesserae", an entry into the lottery.  It stands for their participation in my group, in their investment in each other and in their membership in our little community.  You can get extra tesserae by doing extra projects or by writing about the book.  Everyone knows the rules and everyone is game to follow them.  Soon, I will draw five names and give five movie tickets to whomever is on the ticket.  One person could win them all. On the front of the bucket will go a saying, "May the odds be ever in your favor!", a catchphrase from the book. Since I do the word of the week, I have also added references to "The Hunger Games" into each example sentence I construct to demonstrate the use of the word.  For example, for the word "Ponder", I wrote "Peeta sat on the hickory log and pondered his next words thoroughly."

It seems to be working out well.  More and more students are getting into "trouble" with me and getting "lunch detention".  In the meantime, we talk about the book, predict outcomes, talk about characters and who we do and do not like.  It's great fun and I have 24 kids to have lunch with every single day.  Yes, that also means that I don't have any down time besides one plan period (all others are taken with meetings or tutoring), but those kids will always remember what we did together.

And so will I.

Speaking of tutoring, I have to tutor a group of 8 students twice weekly.  I'm supposed to have 8.  I have 16.  I'm "team teaching" with a social studies teacher but he doesn't know anything about teaching English. At first he didn't show up himself, just sent his kids.  I'm trying not to be bitter, but those kids won't get much actual help if I don't step up.  So I've thrown out the curriculum on this one.  If I have to give up my plan period, I'm doing whatever the fuck I want to.  We are reading mythology and fables, discussing tall tales and telling stories of our own. I'm enjoying it- this is what I signed up for. Literature, the basis of creative and critical thought.  The very same that is going away in the new common core curriculum.  My boss says good riddance- he only read informational texts and graduated (almost) magna cum laude at his (Mickey Mouse) college.  Neil Postman, Neil Gaiman and I all agree that he is an asshat.  And besides, those kids love coming to tutoring.

I guess they aren't the only ones engaged.  I am too. I love doing the things I do and being part of their lives. I'm pushing a few towards a choice alternative school that will push them towards college.  I am helping another kid out with a glove and some shoes so that he can play baseball. Because everyone needs to play baseball if they want to. If I had only the kids to think about, I'd stay here forever.

But tomorrow I'm going to the zoo and the sun will be out and I will have the sweet satisfaction that for several, their first trip to the zoo is with someone who can give a hell of a tour.

A Tale Worth Telling

Tonight is the second night of parent-teacher conferences.  Last night I got to tell about 15 families how well their kids are doing.  Their gaines are in reading, in the length of their writing responses and in their attitudes and behavior.  Too bad that these gains aren't what the CRTs will measure.  I saw a number of happy, smiling faces and parents surprised at how well their child is doing.  It was gratifying.  Then there was the one kid whose mom asked if she talked a lot.  Yes.  In fact, she is often disruptive.  Oh, well, she says that it's this other kid distracting her.  Yes, well then, I'll move you again and in two weeks I will call to follow up with your mom.  Problem solved.  Mostly though, it's the kids who you don't have problems with who show up.  They like stickers too, incidentally. One of the parents offered to bring me some tamales the next time she makes them.  I enthusiastically accepted her offer.  Yes, I'm a vegetarian. Yes, it's got pork in it.  Yes, I'm eating them anyway and she's putting "extra hot" on them. I don't care if my stomach gets upset and my ass catches fire. I'm eating them.  

I have an intern now too, brought to my by my university.  I asked for one. I think that more people need to be exposed to what teaching in the trenches is like.  There are days of beauty and despair here in the poverty-ridden inner city.  My kids might be hungry, and their clothes are not new or even in great repair, but they have bright eyes and a natural curiosity that can easily be channeled into critical thinking exercises and a love of literature.  We've got a one seat ladies room with no hot water.  There is dust in the hallway and noise from the remodeling construction going on.  When I came back from Christmas vacation, chunks of my ceiling had fallen onto a student's desk.   Despite having four copiers, it's a crapshoot as to whether or not any one of them will work on a given day.  I have a projector in my room and no way to use it.  Other teachers have Smartboards that they do not know how to use and one of our teachers has been MIA for over 2 weeks.  He just stopped showing up. I wonder about the story behind that.

She's a nice person. Fired up for teaching.  Wants to save the world. I almost hated to disillusion her, except that I know once she gets over the bitter reality, she will find, as did I, that one really can make a difference.  It's small at first, and then will spread through the school and community.  The first afternoon, she was shocked.  She had a meeting in the morning and made it only to my sixth hour class. Having met me less than an hour ago, and watching me teach a class- and of course, my kids decided to be rotten that day- I could tell she was not impressed with my teaching skills.  I don't blame her.  From the outside, things don't seem like much.  Progress lies in the daily struggles as students gradually change their attitudes and grow as people.  I looked around the dilapidated classroom, housed in a portable building that looks like a train car long forgotten on public land.  It's a sky blue on the inside and I had just moved there from my old classroom on Friday.  Boxes were everywhere and much was to be done.  Yes, I can only imagine what kind of impression I was making, and what kind of impression my school was making.

I gave her a tour and introduced her around.  We went back to my classroom to discuss strategies and get to know one another.  I could see the skepticism in her eyes.  I could tell she thought that this was a very bad idea, that per haps there had been a mistake and tomorrow she would get her real appointment.  It's a third world school, in a mismanaged district and state seemingly bent on destroying education entirely.

It's also a great place to learn how to be a great teacher.

Over the last week or so, I have seen her go from disbelief to shock to depression and dismay, to a grim determination to make it work.

There have been many bright moments.  There was the first full day that she saw me teach and observed the range of how awesome and individual kids are, of how they wear their hopes on their sleeves and how fired up they get about learning sometimes.  She saw Debbie (pseudonym), my little fireball, discuss her ideas articulately and felt the regular hum of the classroom as we went about our day.  She was exhausted by the end of that day, and we still had another class and a meeting to go.  It's a marathon, not a sprint.  She'll get used to it.  She is getting used to it.

It was time for her to begin teaching without me there.  Interns have to teach for a full 3 weeks without the regular teacher in the classroom.  I left her in charge of my 2nd hour class.  My sweet kids, the ones who make me smile when all else fails.  One of the really heart-ful classes.  We went over the lesson plan.  We talked options.  I took my phone in case she got in trouble.  I went to the office.

At the end of the hour- during which I relaxed and caught up on email- I walked into my classroom to Debbie screaming at another kid because he'd called her a "black bitch".  The kid is screaming back and the rest of the class vehemently taking sides.  The poor intern was doing her best to deal with what had suddenly become a pack of rabid children.  "Outside", I said, as calmly as I could.  My kids followed me out, both teary-eyed. We talked and I calmed them down.  Then class was over and we were off to the next one.  My intern- nice as she is- needed a few minutes to herself.  I might have warned her of the perils of the first time teaching, that all wonderful and loving children can and will turn on a teacher who shows a sign of weakness. I taught the class and suggested she write out her experiences while they were fresh- even if they were painful.  She did, though she doesn't want to actually *read* it again for awhile.

Then, I asked her get back on that horse and ride.  I stayed right outside the door.  It was a sunny day and the kids didn't know I was there, but she did.  Invisible support is highly underrated.  I got to sit in the sun and read a book and she knew I was right there if trouble brewed.  I listened with half an ear.  Best not to look too closely the first day.  Seemed like all normal stuff.  It went better.  She breathed a sigh of relief (or perhaps she had just been holding her breath for an hour?) after the class. Admitted that she had thought perhaps this wasn't the school for her.  But middle class white kids in rich schools can be just as difficult- if not more so.  And my kids actively LIKE her.  Then our last class of the day.  She did fine and I stayed in the room.  I whispered a request to two of my kids to chill out on her behalf.  They did. Maybe she didn't need me to do that part, but I figured it couldn't hurt.

The next day, she taught my second hour class again.  Again, I stayed nearby, just in case.  Fine. It was fine. Again, I saw the sigh of relief and an exhalation of breath that perhaps she didn't know she was holding.  It's a good strategy to do pre-game strategy, teach without me interfering, and then do a post-mortem analysis.  It's really hard for me to not interfere. But I know she'll learn more from catching her own mistakes because she is self-aware.  And my favorite professor, my advisor from OU, is supervising her internship.

If she lives through this semester, she'll be able to teach anywhere.  And I for one hope that she lives through the semester.  The bright moments will come more frequently.

Speaking of bright moments, my little book club has grown.  My kids, who use the excuse of "lunch detention" to come eat lunch in my classroom, has interested more and more children.  Right now I have 21 students.  That's almost 3 times as many as I had when we started in November.  We are reading "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins.  The movie opens in March and I'm hoping to have it read by then.  The only rules to attending are that you cannot talk while I'm reading and you must clean up after yourself.  What they get in return is a fun lunch atmosphere with nobody yelling at them and a good book read out loud.  And what I get is better- satisfaction and a big smile for my afternoon classes.

And a good story to tell. Can't wait for the tamales.