Kids Curious About Kids...

Shoelace: "Miss Anonymous, when a girl is having twins or triples, how do they push all of the babies out of them at the same time without dying?"

Me: "Well... the babies only come out one at a time..."

Shoelace:  "Oooohhh!  Well that makes more sense than what I was thinking happens.  Have you had any kids yet?"

Me: "Nope."

Shoelace:  "Miss, when you have a kid, are you gonna doo-doo yourself?"

**BELL RINGS**

New Teacher Tip Of The Day: Saved By The Bell was based on a true story... the one I just told you.

Creepy Death Stare Works Like A Charm

Today one of my students who is extremely tall and athletic, who we'll call Football, sat in the back of my resource room and pretended to perform oral sex on an imaginary you- know-what to get some laughs from his peers.  He clearly was oblivious to the fact that I was glaring at him until he and his friends turned around and met my stare of death.  What I wanted to do at that moment was scream at him about how disgusting he was, but I didn't.  As all of his friends began laughing hysterically because they knew Football had just been caught, I just continued to glare at him and make him feel very uncomfortable.  Eventually all of his friends who were laughing at first, quickly began to quiet down and look back and forth between myself and Football as I continued my death stare.  Right as I could sense that everyone was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the silence, I very calmly said, "Football, can you please go stand out in the hallway?"

New Teacher Tip of the Day: Sometimes acting really creepy and calm totally freaks the kids out.  The second we got into the hallway, Football began apologizing and promised it would never happen again and when we reentered the classroom, the remaining students continued to work in silence.  The death stare works like a charm.

"1.) Ask Miss Anonymous For Help"

Today in Science, I met Shoelace for the first time.  He's a pretty large, tough looking hispanic kid with a mohawk who, when I first introduced myself to him, I felt a little bit intimidated by.  Needless to say, that didn't last very long.  The assignment was to write, in detail, how one ties his or her shoe.

As soon as the students began their assignment, Shoelace already had his hand raised.  When I went over he asked, with a huge grin on his face, "Miss, are you in the class to help me?  Because I'm retarded."  After reassuring him that he was not retarded and that I wasn't there for just him, but for all of the students because many ninth graders struggle with Science, he replied, "Nahh... I'm retarded.  Can you help me?  I don't know how to write this, my Mom always ties my shoes."  Now you have to understand, if this was a child who had very significant disabilities, I would not laugh at all.  But when this big tough hispanic kid, who is obviously well liked by all of his peers said this, I couldn't help but start laughing.  Luckily, he wasn't offended and admitted that he knew how to tie his shoes, but that his Mom always said that he tied them too loose, so she's been tying them for him.  So I told him to get started and to try his best, and I'd be back in a little while to check on him.

About 5 minutes later, after making my rounds around the classroom, I made it back to Shoelace.  He had one step written down, "1.) Ask Miss Anonymous for help."

New Teacher Tip Of The Day:  Remember each of the funny little things that happen to you throughout the day.  Those little moments are what make what we do totally worth it.

New Year... Fresh Start...

I'm back, and I'm hoping to be better at blogging this year than I was last.

Last year was a really tough year for me.  It was my second year of teaching and it made me totally question if what I was doing was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.  After the riot in December, tons of dramatic political banter followed.  Parents became enraged, teachers felt unsafe, our principal was fired, our superintendent left, and many great teachers and an excellent assistant principal decided to leave our district and seek employment elsewhere.  I didn't enjoy my job last year.  I had many difficult students who no matter what I did, refused to accept my help and ended up becoming 9th grade repeaters.  It was just not a good year.

But now I am starting a new one.  A breath of fresh air... I hope!

Today was the first official full day of school and I got to know my kids a little bit.  Because I'm young, and many of my students are hormonal 14 and 15 year old boys, I got the usual questions as to whether or not I was single, or if I would consider dating a student.  I also got the inappropriate comments such as "Miss!  So-And-So was just looking at your butt!", or "Damn Miss! You're my teacher?  I could get used to this," while high-fiving his "boys".  Whatever.  I usually respond with, "No, I'm not single, I'm going to be getting married.  But I do have some single teacher friends who I could hook you up with... as long as you're into 65 year old men."  Or something of the sort to embarrass them and shut them up quickly.

All in all, I think I'm going to have a good group this year.  I'll give you a couple of today's anecdotes:

First, during my resource room, my students didn't really have much to work on so I allowed them to either draw or read.  One student, who we'll call Sleepy since all he ever talked about was how much he loved to sleep, decided to be a wise guy and draw a picture of what he sees when he sleeps: he scribbled all over the entire piece of paper with a black pen.  I then took it from him and exclaimed in front of the class that it was a brilliant masterpiece and that I was going to sell it on ebay and make millions off of him.  That's when one of my students, who has Autism and Tourettes and who we will call Gamer since he loves his video games, raised his hand and asked to take a look at "the masterpiece". He stared at it for a good 30 seconds and then looked up at me and said, "You know what?  I really see something here.  I see something through this drawing.  Do you know what I see?"  "No, what do you see Gamer?" I asked enthusiastically.  He motioned for me to come closer, I leaned in, and he whispered into my ear, "I see a penis."  Yeah... that one totally threw me off.  I just took the paper away and said, "Uhh... no I don't think I see that... what's your favorite video game again?"  Note to self: always be on your toes when it comes to Gamer.

The second story I have for you is about one of my students who has extreme OCD when it comes to germs and who I think may also have been recently diagnosed with schizophrenia.  He's scared to touch calculators, pens, and door handles or give any dap or high fives.  He's also only 4 feet tall.  We'll call him Howie (after Howie Mandel).  So today during resource, Howie asked if he could use the bathroom.  Twenty minutes after I had granted him permission to use the throne, I realized that he had never returned.  So I went out in the hall to get one of the security guards to go check on him.  Security came back out and informed me that he wasn't in there.  So as I go into panic mode, since this is the first freakin' day of school and I've already lost a kid, I ask security to sweep the building and put out an all call for him.  Ten minutes later, in comes Howie with a security escort who is barely able to contain his laughter.  I go into the hallway, after letting Howie back into the room, and the security guard informs me that he was found in an upstairs bathroom hiding in a bathroom stall trying to skip my class.  Great.  So I go back into my classroom and explain to Howie that he cannot skip classes.  His response: "Why not?  I did it in the middle school all the time."  I replied that we are now in the high school and that it cannot happen here.  So I ask, "So, from now on you are not going to skip, right?"  His respone: "I dunno.  Maybe."  This one is definitely going to be a handful.

In fact I think the majority of my kids are going to be a handful this year, but I think that they are also going to be goofy and fun for the most part.  **KNOCK ON WOOD**

I'm looking forward to the start of a new year.  I'm working with all new teachers this year, we have a bunch of new administrators, and a whole new batch of students.  Pretty much everything is brand spankin' new.  So I'm just going to remain optimistic!  Wish me luck!

And to all of you new teachers out there, here's my New Teacher Tip of the Day: Remain optimistic and make teacher friends.  They are the only ones who will truly be able to understand you!

Gang Fights and Lock Downs.

Today was one of the scariest days I have had as a teacher.  At around 9:15 this morning, the principal came over the intercom system to inform us that we were officially on lock down and that it was not a drill.  When a lock down happens, all windows and doors must be closed and locked.  All blinds must be drawn, and all students and staff members must be inside of a classroom against the wall closest to the door so that if someone happened to look in through the window of the door, we wouldn't be able to be seen.  As soon as it happened, I knew it had to do with the rivaling black and hispanic gangs we have.  And sure enough, I was correct.  More than twenty students got into a very large physical fight with one another and the police ended up having to be called to help break it up.  Luckily there were no weapons involved and as one student resisted arrest, a police officer was injured and had to be taken to the hospital.  In the end, nineteen students ended up getting arrested and the police and their K9s were crawling all over our school for the rest of the day.  Every lunch wave had multiple police officers present with their K9s.

After school, an emergency faculty meeting was held and it was probably one of the best faculty meetings we've had.  Many teachers voiced their concerns about their fear for safety not only for our kids, but for ourselves as well.  My mentor teacher also spoke out as one of the first people to have responded to, what the news media is now calling, the "riot" and she was brought to tears as she described that she has been working in our school for 15 years now and she has never been as scared as she was today.  She also said what many others were thinking: that this is not over and there will be more fights.

Many of us are nervous for tomorrow; we all feel that it's not over, and that it's only just begun.

They never taught me any of this in college....

Time Flies When You're Having... Fun?

Christmas is only a week and a half away; I can't believe how quickly this school year is flying by!  I know that it's been forever since I've last updated, but as I had said it my last post, life has been hectic.

Recently there has been a large outbreak of physical fights and assaults in our school.  Many of the fights have to do with rivaling gangs in our town and it's becoming a very serious problem.  A good friend of mine jumped in the middle of two girls to break them up and ended up getting punched directly in the face.  This was the student's second fight of the year and ended up being arrested.  The school, however, only gave her a four day suspension.  This has created a bit of an uproar with teachers.  Every student who has fought over the past 2 weeks, which is probably a total of close to 15 students, have only received a 3 or 4 day suspension.  In my eyes, that is just a slap on the wrist, and in talking with my students, they view it the same way.  My students told me that it has become very obvious to the student body that fighting in school will not result in an extremely negative consequence, so why bother waiting to go do it out on the streets in these now below freezing temperatures?  It's nice and warm inside our building, may as well just handle the business indoors.  In talking with the police officers at our school, the number of fights we've had this year thus far is a 25% increase in the number of total fights throughout all of last year.  We have also had 11 staff members physically assaulted by students in our building this year which, one police officer who has been with us for years, said that he hasn't seen a total of 11 assaults in all of the years he's been here.

It's obvious and it's frustrating that our school is beginning to get out of control.  I had a pretty lengthy conversation (well actually, it wasn't much of a conversation really, I was doing most of the talking yelling) about respect today.  The English teacher who I co-teach with was out , so I was running the show solo.  The kids instantly began giving me a hard time: they wanted to sit in different seats than their assigned ones, they wanted breaks, they kept talking.  I then just stopped and asked, "Do you guys have any respect for me?"  They all looked at me kind of puzzled.  I then asked, "If Mrs. SoAndSo were here right now, would you be acting like this?"  Blank stares.  I then explained to them that from the behavior that they were demonstrating, they were basically telling me that they didn't have any respect for me and only respected Mrs. SoAndSo.  This caused an uproar.  They couldn't believe that I would think that, they told me that they had way more respect for me than they did Mrs. SoAndSo and that all Mrs. SoAndSo does is write people up.  So I then said, "So in order to gain your respect, I have to begin writing people up?"  Again, "NOOOO MISS!!!!"  Finally I explained to them that they were making me feel as if they do not respect me as their teacher.  I explained how much I respected each of them and that I am never rude to any of them unless I have a legitimate reason to be upset with them.  I told them that the only reason why I get frustrated with them at times is because I know that they all can be successful and that I want to see them succeed.  I told them that the reason why I am always making them do their work and "bothering" them is because I care about them. At that point they all went, "Awwww!"  And one student said, "Yo, she really does care about us y'all." I felt like I had actually gotten through to them (for the time being at least) and they ended up behaving for the rest of the class and got a ton of work done.  I was really pleased with how it all went.

At one point during that same class, a student made a comment about white people and I said, "Hey!   I'm white!  Be nice!"  Then one of the funniest things I've ever had happen, happened.  They became totally confused when I had stated that I was white.  Apparently they had all thought that I was Puerto Rican or some "other color" (as they had put it), but not white!  Now if you have ever seen me in person, I am pretty much your stereotypical white girl (or so I thought), so their reactions totally caught me off guard!  One student said, "Miss Anonymous, you're the coolest white person I've ever met!"  Another student then said, "Miss, you're the only white person I like!"  I couldn't stop laughing because I couldn't believe that all this time they hadn't realized that I was white.

Alright, time to go write some IEP's and eat some dinner.  I'm exhausted.  I'll end with my New Teacher Tip of the Day: Your students will respond well when you remind them how much you care about them and want to see them succeed.  Don't be afraid to tell them that you truly care about them (even if you really don't), it makes a world of a difference.

What The Hell Day Is It Now?!

As you may have been able to tell, I have become extremely busy and have struggled with keeping this blog updated.  Over the past couple of weeks I have had a total of 6 IEP meetings, I have learned that one of my students has a severely schizophrenic father who cannot be left alone because he will kill himself, and I had a student attempt suicide while in school, just to name a few major events.  Soooo needless to say, it has been very difficult for me to find the time to write in here.

I promise that I will try to update more often!  But for now, I have to run!