May 24, 2011
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The Daily News1 Wow, we talk a good game, I swear.
2 My entire plan yesterday was to get everything done, everything graded, and everything packed up so I could jet outta school and into summer by 6 p.m. Wednesday.
3 Yesterday I FLEW home on a minimum day to finish off about an inch standing of papers, and to figure out all my grades, tuck them into a packet, and then see if anything changes after a presentation final I gave my students.
4 <basketball buzzer>
5 The second I got home I felt starved, since a minimum day means minimum lunch. During my half-hour lunch yesterday I got visited by some of my awesome students, who wanted to give me cards and to hang out. I LOVED it, of course, because they are some of my best. And they took the time to come into my room to chat, to sign yearbooks, to reminisce, and to share memories. All the students who visited were my honors-bound students.
6 By the time I left yesterday, I needed to get home and begin the immense task of finishing up the school year grading and ultimate escape plans.
7 But when I got home, I found I was almost shaking from lack of food. I have been eating very little for the past month, with the exception of a bit of fun up in Caitlin Country this past weekend, so I had one healthy smoothie early in the day. I stopped at the store on the way home and bought a ton of vegetables, came home, jammed my blender full of romaine lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, almonds, nonfat milk, and cilantro. Technically, that's not a smoothie, because a true smoothie uses fruit and yogurt or ice cream. A smoothie is also a charmer, a smoothy, and a sweet-talker.
8 Just thought you might like to know that. AnywayZ I blended this amazing concoction and slammed two of them, and then settled into doing the grading.
9 While I felt ready to take on this immense task, my exhaustion said otherwise.
10 Still, I began grading papers figuring I could be done in two hours. I then ran into my support class's papers on poetry, and on the songs of Simon and Garfunkel.
11 Well.
12 Amazingly, these students WAY loved Simon and Garfunkel and the entire poetry unit. My honors-bound students enjoyed the unit, but didn't show half the interest in the Simon and Garfunkel portion. They were a bit ho-hum on some of the great songs. My support students, on the other hand, were dazzled by the Old Friends.
13 One of my support girls stapled her packet of lyrics to her paper with notes all over it saying, "LIKE", "LIKE", "LOVE", etc. with lines from songs circled. "When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light" had a huge "LIKE" next to it, and "I left my shadow waitin' down the road for me a while I'm...cloudy."
14 This music talked strongly to a generation you would think would have nothing to do with it. I was stunned, and slowed my reading down to see why they felt the songs much more than the honors' students.
15 I realized that Simon and Garfunkel dealt with issues that were quite real to these guys: isolation, emptiness, love, friendship, and feelin' "groovy". It was a series of some of the sweetest papers I ever read, complete with reasons the music meant so much to them.
16 One boy said that he had put all five songs on his iPod, and was going to put a whole bunch more, that these guys spoke to him way better than he had ever anticipated.
17 So this small class that was absolutely incorrigible at the beginning of the school year broke down and thanked me. The girl who circled the words and wrote "LIKE" on them was the same girl who told her friends loudly around the second week of school, "I don't RESPECT him!" I had kicked her out of class several times for constant disrespect, cussing, acting out, etc.
18 On one occasion, I went into the hall to talk to her. She refused to apologize, and was brought to tears. I stayed firm saying to her that her behaviors were not acceptable, and that some day she would see. I didn't "demand" nor even "command" respect at the time. I let her cry and hate me. I followed with a referral.
19 That turned around when the San Jose Rep brought Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie to our school and the English department had been invited to bring classes down to watch.
20 My students had to get forms signed by teachers in order to go. I used standard field trip forms, and they kept coming to class without them signed by their teachers.
21 All the honors kids were excited to be invited to go, and had their forms into me the very next day. My support kids really lagged at bringing them in. When I confronted them, that same girl said, "My teachers hate me. They won't let me go!" My heart sank. "Your teachers don't hate you," I said.
22 "They do! They hate me, so I can't go to the play!"
23 Can you imagine? And that triggered a lot of the students to say, "Yeah mines too. They hate us, Mr. H."
24 I had been put on the spot, because as the Activities' Director, I knew that field trip forms were simply a polite means of informing a teacher that the student would be missing class on that particular day. Teachers could refuse to sign, but the signature was simply an acknowldgement that the teacher was told by the student that he or she would be absent.
25 Long story, but it is called "equity" in today's vernacular.
26 So I was in the situation of my knowing the policy, but many teachers were not. I told the students, "Don't get in your teachers' faces, but you are protected in that area, and I can make it happen. You guys are going to that play." I said this to a class that majored in spitballs, wisecracks, and rubber bands.
27 They never believed me, nor that I would trust them to behave at such an event. I told them, "You are great kids. I totally trust you, and we are going to go into that Theatre with our heads up, AND I will secure the best seats in the house for us."
28 I knew how to do that. I'm not new to these events, and I know most teachers take roll in their rooms and then go to the Theatre. I told them to meet me at the Theatre on the day of.
29 They STILL didn't believe I could get that done, but when I put the tickets in their hands, they lit up. I told them to meet at the Theatre the next day, and the same girl said, "But my teacher won't let me go!"
30 I said, "Don't get in your teacher's face. If anything comes up, I'll deal with your teacher. You meet us at the Theatre tomorrow, because you're going to a play!"
31 That very day, the class turned around. Oh, they still acted out, cussed, ignored my pleas at getting quiet, and all the rest, but there was a different sort of disrespect going on. Hard to explain it, but I knew that prior to this, they would have been fine about flipping me off and storming out of the room, and that now they would pounce all over anyone who would even try that sort of behavior on me, especially anyone not in the class.
32 On the day of the play, a bunch of them got to the Theatre early, and we got center section, around five rows back. Once we establised territory, the latecomers were able to come in and sit down in those same seats. Some other teachers seemed a little stunned, but we beat them to the seats. Happens. ; ) <-----sideways winky guy
33 The place was lit down, and the atmosphere immediately became that of a professional show.
34 My students knew to act politely, and once the show started, they were the best behaved students at the event.
35 The show proper was amazing, and as professional a show as you will ever see. My students stood riveted, and asked questions at the end.
36 To me, it was one of my best moments as a teacher.
37 At least until yesterday, when I silently read their poetry and almost lost it a couple of times.
38 So I'm not really ahead of my work this week. I conked out early last night and awakened at midnight to begin streaming these thoughts out to you.
39 Even though this class did very little at the end of the year, they enjoyed Shakespeare, poetry, and the entire end of the school year. I still worry about them, but with what I read yesterday, a lot of them were given theatre, poetry, and self-expression in my class, as well as a sense that the language can be a powerful friend.
40 And you can't grade that sort of learning, or what it might have meant to students who six months earlier were saying, "My teachers hate me!" There are no state standards for what they learned. But somewhere, it made a difference. I know it, because I have lived it.
41 Somewhere this strange year, I succeeded perhaps better than I ever have, because THEY succeeded on an immeasurable level.
42 And having everything done, everything graded, and everything packed up so I could jet outta school and into summer by 6 p.m. Wednesday went right out the window.
43 But I'm looking forward to that class, which is my first class on Wednesday. They won't have their presentations ready, but they will give it a try. And after that, we're going to relax and talk, and they will be hugging and smiling in the end. Real issues will emerge, but they will be hugging and smiling in the end. That I promise. And they will cling to the friendships they made in that class for the rest of their lives. It was comfortable, friendly, and quite often a lot of fun. So they got love and respect from one another. In the end, that was what they came away with.
44 And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
45 And truer words were never said.
46 One more day. Or maybe two.
47 Godspeed. I'll be the last guy to leave the parking lot on Wednesday, but Godspeed.
48 Indeed.
49 Peace.
~H~
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