Holding in Homeroom

It's been an interesting week. I proctored my first state exam, in which 200 RE-testers took the English II Exam. Some of the students sat there for the full 7 hours and still didn't finish.

Proctoring is a taxing task. Here, there is no proctor-slouched-over-reading-a-magazine kind of set-up; rather, myself and five other teachers paced the aisles for the full 7 hours. I wore tennis shoes, white, with my black crop pants and a lightweight black sweater (a very becoming get-up, I assure you), per the advice of a second year corps member. Our lunch break consisted of a ten-minute break, in which we had to accompany the students to the lunchroom and eat with them to assure no test-talk would ensue. Unfortunately, no one sat by me.

After the much too long day of silence and numbness, I thought that spending the day in the classroom popping movies and teaching mini-lessons would be better. After two full days of "holding in homeroom," I must say that the jury is still out on which is the better gig.

The students call these days "free days" and refuse (more than normal) to do ANYthing that could be conceived of as work. With nothing to hold over them and no consequence system in place (we can't send them out because the school is a "secure testing site," meaning no one can even go to the bathroom without taking the whole class with them), I am forced to acquiesce to their protestations.

So, we started out by watching "Eyes on the Prize," a PBS documentary on Civil Rights, then moved to "Waiting for Superman," the hot, COLOR, documentary on the achievement gap, and finished out with "To Kill a Mockingbird" --back to black and white but a FEATURE FILM. In between the showings, spread over two days, we did a bit of USA map copying/coloring, US History jeopardy, and the ever sought-after "free time."

It was a fascinating experience, sitting beside my students as we witnessed violent demonstrations of racism and classism, past and present. Every time the "n word" came up, I turned red and slouched in my seat, nervous that I was asking too much of my relationship with my students, many of whom probably still do not trust me. I think it was time well spent, though, since from the first five minutes of "Eyes on the Prize," when a student said "Indianola's like that" when the narrator described segregation, some students were engaging with and responding to the material. Yet, sadly, most students continually complained about how boring the class was and how they wanted to watch movies like "Big Mama," "like all the other classes." My homeroom students are DEFINITELY far from enamored with me. I make them "work" everyday, and they seem to resent me for it. Maybe they'll come around someday.

I couldn't believe that even topics that related so closely to their lives--failing schools, blatant racism/segregation--were of no interest to them. Where is the sense of injustice? The desire to DO something about it. At one point, we listed all of the places in Indianola that are "white" and "black" and then tried to come up with a few places that are integrated (the list: Wal-Mart and McDonald's). But then nothing happened. I asked if anyone was bothered by the segregation. They shrugged. I asked if anyone tried to do anything about it. They stared. Am I wrong to expect critical consciousness of the oppressed? Am I wrong to conceive of it in that way?

Week 7 Has Arrived

It has been awhile since I last posted. SO much has happened in the last six weeks. I haven't really known where to begin or how to process my thoughts, hence my blogging absence.

While I can't begin to sum up what my first six weeks as a teacher have been like, I suppose I've got to start somewhere, now, or I never will.

I've been exhausted, exhilarated, depressed, inspired, hopeful, and despairing just about every day since I began running a classroom. I've got 110 students spread across 7 sections of Algebra II, Geometry, and Literacy Remediation. I wake up at 5:45 am, get home from school at 5 if I'm lucky, eat, plan until 8 or 9, and go to bed. On the weekends, I plan all day Saturday and Sunday, while fitting in a few runs, church, and a movie or football game with my roommates. I've never worked so hard in my life. But I do feel that this is where I am supposed to be. As difficult as each day is, I savor the moments when I'm in front of my students, showing them how to do this-or-that, and they get it. Simple? Obvious? Yes, of course. But no less real or meaningful.

Overall, I am doing just fine. Thanks SO much to all of those who have sent me letters, email, or left voicemails of love/concern. It has meant so much to me to feel your support as I trod through the hours upon hours of planning and dealing with the ever-volatile teenage psyche.

A few scenes from the past few weeks:

-I was teaching about the distance formula when one of my students raised his hand, holding up one of my hairs, and asked me politely if I have to wash my hair everyday.

-I went to make copies one afternoon during my planning period only to be startled to see one of my sweetest (however capricious) students handcuffed, escorted out of the school by two policemen.

-One of my most academically gifted and socially mature students left last week to have a child. She has been tutoring for two hours with me every Thursday evening at McDonald's for the past few weeks, even though she already knows how to most everything. What a courageous young woman. She has what it takes to go to any college she chooses, but with the baby on the way, she will need to stay close to home.

-In my literacy remediation section, an administrator happened to walk in (for the only time all year) to my students huddled around the powerpoint singing and grooving to the (unedited) words to "Boys in the Hood," as I scrambled for control of my lesson (on the impact of violent song lyrics). I turned red.

-One day that same block of remediation was so out of control that I it took me a half hour to notice one of the students writing gang symbols in black sharpie all over the desk.

-One of my students ran in to Algebra II shouting "I'm not late" (he obviously was) as his pants tumbled to his ankles. To sag or not to sag. Maybe he knows now.

-I ripped up a student's test in front of her face when she broke my no-talking rule on the first quiz. I turned around trembling and smiling: I shocked myself by actually doing it.

-This student's mother barged into my next class, as I was teaching, and began accosting me in front of my students. She returned several times that day, and eventually we worked through the debacle. But boy, was it a debacle.