Yesterday morning I had one of the most hilarious moments ever teaching. I must preface by saying that I found out that a few students from the University of Texas at Austin will be coming to observe my class this semester twice a week. They are currently enrolled in classroom management, and told the professor (who I once worked with) that I would love to have them come here and get a real experience in it. I work with the students that a lot of other teachers kicked out of their class or hoped would leave their class. People have a lot of ideas of what at-risk kids are like and what it's like to work with them. It is not easy, and I fall short on a regular basis. But there is so much you can do.
It all started when I was telling my students about the UT students that would be coming. I thought it would be hilarious to play a practical joke on the college students when they came. We started joking about staging a fake fight in class so I showed them how to make pulling someone's hair without actually hurting them more realistic. Right as a student was pretending to throw me around, the assistant principal walked in the door. Hilarity ensued. She walked back down the hallway afterwards saying, "Hey, whatever it takes."
My students are getting pretty excited about the haunted house. I love that I have a few returning students that remembered both that we've pulled it off before and the things that needed improvement. I love when I have new students coming in (still at least daily) and I tell them and I get to see the excitement on their faces. I love that I get to teach them skills and application together that they can use in the real world. I love that they are a little bit crazy, and therefore in good company.
I actually have two theatre kids this semester. One that is a total techie and one that took Theatre I already. Even one techie opens up a whole world of possibilities for us and trying to build this program from nothing. Well, not nothing. From my students and I.
Today we continued talking about storytelling and used children's stories and fairy tales as inspiration for our own stories. Some of my favorites from students today:
Snow White and the Seven Zombies
The 3 Little Wetbacks (the wolf character was an immigration officer)
Jack and the Weed Plant
The student that wrote the last one came up to me after class so excited and said he planned on going home and typing it up. He was giddy.
Can I just take a moment and say how much I also love the teachers that I work with? When I was in school we were warned to stay away from the teachers' lounge at lunch. Avoid the negativity of teachers complaining about students. At my school I find something very different. First there is the group excitedly discussing baseball (be careful, there is a Mets fan), others talking about life in general, and even more talking about what they are doing to help their students and how they can work together to make things better for individual students. Today they were talking about tattoos. My fault. I challenged some of my students to find out which teacher had a Harry Potter tattoo. It's the deathly hallows. Hey, it got students talking to teachers as they tried to find out.
I just think they are a pretty dang cool bunch.
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