The second thing you should know is that I cried in front of my students.
The third thing you should know is that this has been my best day so far.
Now to explain.
I checked my roll for each class before I came in. Five of the worst offenders from my 5th period, along with one that was a pretty good kid, were alone together in my new first period. The rest were split up mostly between 2nd and 3rd, with one in 6th. I was scared they were going to eat my alive. The counselor seemed mad at me for having to spend part of her weekend changing all the schedules. I'll be honest. I prayed A LOT this morning.
As my first class arrived, two things happened. First, they were upset that there schedules had changed. Then one of the boys said, "It's going to be just like before!" Yes voices screaming in horror almost rose in my head. Then they came in, sat down, realized there were no girls in their class (yay for me) and I talked to them about consequences and clean slates. We started a project that we are going to be working on throughout the week. Today they wrote an outline to use as inspiration that will be made into mobiles about themselves and later image work. The first line of their "poem" was "I am ..." and then their name. Then they would describe themselves, each line starting with either "I am," "I was," "I want," or "I like." To my surprise, all but one of them got to work, the most defiant from last week filling an entire page before most of the other students were half-way done. I went around while they were working, asking questions about some of what they wrote. I used it as a chance to build a rapport with them, so they could see that I was interested in the things that matter to them.
Second period also went well. They like to talk a lot, which if fine while they are working. I tried not to laugh at the "I am more gangsta than you" conversations.
Third period reminded me of why I went into teaching. One of my students has been ditching my class the last few days. It was obvious early on that he did not like me, avoided doing anything, and then didn't come back. Then today he was brought in about 10 minutes in with the assistant principal and his mother. The AP asked if it was okay if the young man's mom sat in on our class today. I had no idea what to expect, but I told her she was more than welcome to stay.
He kept to himself as other students talked together at the tables while they worked. I checked on him a few times, noticed to he liked football, and asked him how long he'd been playing and what position he liked (fullback). When he got to a point where he thought he was done, I paired him with another student, asking them to share what they wrote and ask each other questions about it. I turned around a few minutes later to see him walking across the room and crumpling up his paper. At first I thought he had become frustrated and simply gave up. Then his partner said he wanted to redo it. I came back later and asked if I could read what he had so far. It is with his permission that I share it with you here:
I was in an alternative to incarceration for 3 months.
I want to get my record clean and start a new life.
I like to play football and hit people to take my anger out.
I am a person that demands respect from everybody.
I have a good sense of humor and I'm funny.
I have real anger problems so if I get mad at one everybody is going to suffer.
I am as real as it gets.
I want to find out what it is that makes me hate a lot of people for sometimes nothing.
It was so honest. So beautiful. By the time I was halfway through reading it I was tearing up. I asked him if I could share it with his mom. She read it and started to cry. I was so proud of him. I couldn't hide how it made me feel. I told him he should be so proud for what he had shared and how well he had expressed himself. I told his mom she should be proud of him too. Later in the day when I saw him in the hallway he gave me a big smile. Such a sweet kid fighting against so much.
When I walked into the cafeteria at lunch, the principal and AP said, "So I hear you're a softie and that you cried in class." Yes, it's all over the school now that a student made me cry, but I'll totally own up to crying for good reasons.
My last two classes were sad we were not doing more theatre stuff. Good to know that I've turned them on a little to theatre. I had a good chat with one of my students today who was hesitant to participate in the warmup. I had called out a series of statements (similar to the ones they would later write) and asked them to step forward if they felt it described them. We talked about how much easier it was to write ideas down after doing that. We talked about how everything we do in this class is to help prepare us to do what is next, even if it seems "boring" at times. When I told him we were going to build mobiles tomorrow using what they wrote for ideas of what to put on it, he got really excited and is already planning to hang it up in his room.
And now for a little comic relief brought to you by one of the science teachers. She was talking to them about how it takes five days to travel to Mars. The following conversation ensued:
Student A: How long would it take to get to the sun?
Student B: Dude, you'd burn up before you got there.
Student A: What if we went at night?
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