i'm so hood

I don't feel like editing my other entry and this is much too embarassing/special of a moment to not have its own entry.

I take my 8th bell on a bathroom break. It's the end of the day, I have a co-teacher, I always have to write 10 billion bathroom passes, and they are super hyper and energetic (or coming down off of the super hyper and falling asleep). So, we take them on water fountain/bathroom breaks. We were about to start the last chapter of Lord of the Flies, so I tell them it's time for the break.
At the bathrooms, one of my students was playing with this hat and placed it on his head for a second. Another teacher (always a stickler for the rules) starts freaking out about his hat being on his head and blah blah blah. He starts telling her, "it's not that serious!", but before he can finish, I butt in and say, "Jevon, do me a favor and give me your hat before you say something stupid". He gives me his hat, but still wants to tell the other teacher to stop taking hats so seriously, so I have to butt in again and say, "do me another favor and head back to the classroom. Thank you." He easily obliges and heads back down the hallway. I round up the other kids and start heading back. I ask Jevon, "you want your hat back or can I keep it?" Then I put his hat on and zip my black hoodie all the way up, putting the hood up over the hat. Jevon responds with, "UH OH!! Mrs. P's going hood y'all!". The other kids start laughing and I do my impression of some of their walks. Simone stops me before going into the classroom and says, "Wait wait! You should be the last person in the classroom! I'm going to announce you!". We wait for everyone to go in, all of us laughing and giggling, then she yells into the classroom, "Class, class! We have a new teacher with us today... I give you the new, improved... Ghetto Mrs. Alison P!" I walk in, throw some deuces, do my walk and we all laugh for a good 5 or 10 minutes.
Seriously. Best moment of the year for this class. It was nice to have them all laugh together. I had a few tears come out, I was laughing so hard. It was good.

end of the year rollercoaster

The week after Memorial Day weekend is always a tough one. Nothing like a 3 day weekend at the end of May to remind you (and torture you with this reminder) that summer-like weather has started and that summertime activities have started, but you still have 2-3 weeks of school left. Noooooooooo!! This leaves us on Tuesday, grumbling and tired, having to deal with a group of kids who got their first taste of summer vacation and not wanting to see your ugly mug again.
It doesn't stop in the classroom, either. Tuesday and Wednesday, during lunch and plan periods, I took part in and listened to other teachers whining and complaining about how we should just end the year at Memorial Day. I mean, it would make sense-- we start after Labor Day now and if they insist on keeping this old, tired schedule of September-June school year, then why not end it on another famous 3 day weekend? A lot of kids stop showing up right around then, anyway, so it would save a lot of their asses from failing due to attendance.
This week was also heartbreaking because two of my brilliant boys, who I've fought for all year, got into fights and suspended for the rest of the year (okay, well, one of them was a 10 day suspension on the day when we have 11 days left of school!).
One of them, KH, was involved in what administrators believe was a gang-related fight. I'm pretty sure this kid isn't involved in any of our lovely gangs, but he has fallen in with a small group of our basketball players (one in particular) that have dragged down numerous brilliant students this year. He beat the crap out of some kid with a few of them, for whatever reason and some other student (who is now forced to go to another school) snitched on them. This is something I never saw coming. There are certain kids you know would easily kick some kid's ass over stupid stuff. This kid? I never, ever in a million years would've guessed he would do that--especially not on school property. He's friends with one kid who every teacher dislikes, every security guard is tired of, and the principal has taken the disciplinary file of (usually the student's academy's assistant principal takes care of referrals). This kid has dragged down every student he becomes friends with. He's probably broken records for the amount of complaints and referrals. In other words, there is no reason this child should be in our school, while my student gets the ultimate punishment. Both of them were suspended for this fight, but guess who comes back to school yesterday? Yes. Problem Child. Not KH, but the kid who every teacher and security guard was thinking to themselves, "Finally!!". I am incredibly disappointed with KH, but now that disappointment has been overshadowed by the administration allowing this other student back. I don't usually blame kids for influencing behavior, but with 3 of my students, he's been a factor in their behavior and grades taking a nosedive. I place 90% of the blame on that jackass.
The other student, LaQuan, I've written about before. Another student, Shaniqua, comes banging on the workroom door during my 2nd bell planning period. When I open the door, I expect to hear to whining about her research paper, but instead, she's incredibly upset and just starts babbling: "Do you know what happened with LaQuan this morning?! He got in a fight with this other kid because the kid said he was looking at him the wrong way! He is so stupid, cause now he's going to miss the end of the year. Why did he have to do this? I had to leave my 2nd bell because some stupid ass girl was in there talking shit about him, but Dontay [another kid I had in LaQuan and Shaniqua's clas] stood up for him and told her to shut the hell up. I'm sorry to cuss in front of you, but I can't go back into that class cause then I'll have to shut her up and I don't want to get suspended. I am going to cuss LaQuan out for being so stupid later..." I told Shaniqua to tell him that I'm disappointed in him, but I understand that if someone's going to come at him, he's not just going to sit there and get beat. I was thinking to myself that I hope he comes in for his make-up exams on the last day and not just accept failure. Later on, I realized that I never got a chance to tell him that I started watching his favorite show, The Wire. It seems like a small thing, but for some of these kids, you have no idea how that small bonding point can mean a lot. He'd been trying to get me to watch the show for a long time, it finally came up on my Netflix list, and I now understand why so many people love it.

The week improved on Thursday and Friday. My 11th graders finished Gatsby and we watched the end of the film version. They're excited to watch the hip hop version of Gatsby, called G next week. My 8th bell 10th graders finished Lord of the Flies, mourned the deaths of two characters they liked and actually stayed awake for the ending. I hope my odd day students enjoy the ending as much as they did (I expect they will, my 8th bell is the hardest to impress with reading). Also, a few of my students gave me really sweet notes and drawings. One student (who I've had a real love/hate relationship with all year) sat at my desk while I was reading parts of Lord of the Flies to his class and drew a "BIG PUSH!" and wrote a note about how I was the best teacher on the back of his late pass. It was really good timing because it was one of those days you look around a classroom while the kids are falling asleep or doing other things and you think to yourself, "I put so much work and time into this, I don't get paid that much, and they thank me by falling asleep, not paying attention and generally being rude and disrespectful?! Why do I even bother??". There were some other good moments, too, like Bryan rolling up his shorts, walking around barefoot and yelling out, "BAREFOOT REVOLUTION! I'm sorry, but you're going to have to take off your shoes--TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!!", and playing Apples to Apples with kids in my Study Hall and kids I had last year that are graduating.
Plus, yesterday afternoon, I finally got to use my gift certificate for my massage. I came in there, tense and tired from the week and driving home on Friday afternoon (always a pleasure--I am not going to miss that at all) and left completely relaxed. I slept so great last night. I love my massage therapist, she is amazing. I'm glad we're not moving that far away, so I can continue to see her. The place is near Prime Outlets, too-- sounds like a great reason to come back to Williamsburg once or twice a year, huh?

may/june soundtrack

Can't stop listening:
Santogold S/T
Adele 19
Crystal Castles S/T
The Cool Kids Totally Flossed Out
Foals Antidotes
Kap Bambino Zero Night Life Vision
The Kills Midnight Boom
Kit Thomas The WA Salute
Man Man Rabbit Habits
Mates of State Re-Arrange Us
MGMT Oracular Spectacular
The Old Haunts Poisonous Times
Vampire Weekend S/T
Wolf Parade At Mount Zoomer

(as always, I'll make you a good mix if you want.)

By the way, check out Rome, Dexter, Weeds, and The Mighty Boosh. It's all David and I are watching (and quoting) these days, it seems.

p.s. I HAVE THREE WEEKS OF SCHOOL LEFT! THEN EXAM WEEK!! Where does the time go??

20 day mark

My students are asking more and more about me leaving. I told my 5th bell on Monday that I had good news and they go, "You're not leaving us!!!!". Sorry, kids, no. On Wednesday, they randomly burst into a chorus of "You can't leaaaaaaaaave, we're going to miss youuuuu." and then I got a stare down from one of the kids I've struggled with the most. He asked me if I taught English 11. I said I did and would be glad to have him in my 11th grade class.... if I was going to be at Granby next year.

Ever heard "Trapped in a Closet"? The kid on the right constantly gives me an English class version of that. Sometimes he just refuses to speak-- he must sing everything. It is absolutely hilarious.


Today I got this in the mail from Kate. I was very curious.

She sent me some knitted fortune cookies!! It was awesome! She put in fantastic fortunes that suited our upcoming changes: moving to Richmond, David's job, my future job, etc. It was so sweet! I looooove them!
Speaking of Richmond, we may have some friends from Michigan who are also (possibly) moving there. Exciting! Shannon's a teacher, too, so we might end up working in the same district, which would be awesome!

BTW, I have some videos of my 11th graders' talk show versions of The Crucible, The Piano Lesson, A Raisin in the Sun, and Fences. They did a fantastic job! Both classes got a great laugh and a great ego boost from them.

catching some butterflies

I'm baking breakfast bars and they take an hour, so I figured I'd update the ol' blog. I didn't realize that it'd been a while.

The biggest news is that David is now a Master of Public Policy.

I made him try on his stuff the day before.

There's a (semi-blurry) picture of him doing the walk across the stage.

Beyond that, not much has happened. My students are finishing up plays and research papers, getting ready to start The Great Gatsby and Lord of the Flies to wrap up the year. My 11th graders take their last English SOL (if they pass both of them) on Monday and Tuesday; it'll be nice to have them over with and get the scores back. Keep your fingers crossed.
Also keep your fingers crossed for me. I've applied to two different places and this is about the time of the year when they start hiring people outside of the district. I'd love to find a job sooner rather than later, and the two districts I've applied to I've already met with (the job fairs I went to in February) and they seemed to consider me a good possibility. They're pretty large districts, so hopefully I hear from them soon. We're also starting to seriously look and set up appointments for housing, so there's another thing. I asked everyone to keep their fingers crossed/pray for me to find a good job and great place to live and it turned out fantastic, so keep that positive thinking going for us.

And, for your viewing pleasure, here are 2 videos I took of some of my 5th bell kids presenting the first part of their play.

Raisin in the Sun
(I wanted to tape more of this, but Kenny was making the whole class laugh with his hand going out into the air every time he had to say a line. I think you can hear Stephanie in the background go, "Mrs. P-- watch his hand!!" before giggling. I had to stop the video because I was starting to shake the camera so much.)

The Piano Lesson

These were the best of the 2 groups. My battery in my camera was dying, so it was difficult to film more than a few seconds. This week, since the groups are finishing reading, they're to come up with a talk show modeled after "Oprah", "Maury", or "Jerry Springer" using their characters and the conflict(s) in their plays. They were really excited about it and were totally into the idea. They did great using just the script, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what they come up with! I'll be sure to tape some of it.