Miss Dixon, a Kindergarten teacher pushing 70 told me after a rough day,
"You gotta get ghetto on these kids!"
...Solid words of wisdom.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
The flash out
A slang term that kids say a lot here when they get upset is that they are "flashin out". It takes a lot for me not to laugh when I see kids in this state, but it has quickly gotten old from its daily frequency. Every. Single. Day, there is one student during my class who loses his or her temper with another one of the kids, and disrupts my entire lesson. Considering my time with each class lasts only 30 minutes, it's tough to teach an effective lesson, regardless of whether students cooperate or not. For the past two weeks, it's hard to say I've done a good job because I exhaust so much valuable energy into the students, and I wish there was a more simple approach to this situation. Granted, there are a lot of things I need to improve in my demeanor towards the students, but in just two weeks, the aggression of the students has affected me. Especially tonight.
Today began at 4:30am as usual, with a good breakfast (eggs, cereal and a protein shake), and I was out the door to pick up Emma (another first year corps member) by 5:40am. We got out to New Roads, LA by 6:45am and started school at 8. Between 8am-3pm, I had twelve 30-minutes blocks with kindergarten through 5th grade. Today (Thursday), my one planning block of one hour has now become cluster meeting time (meant to improve teacher effectiveness). As a result, there is literally no break until dismissal.
So between 8-3, I had:
- Second grade girl who knocked her leg really hard because she was sitting improperly in her seat and tipped over onto her knee (1st block).
- Kindergarten boy who couldn't hold back his words and blurted out "I love you" to me while we were making a Color Wheel and going over both primary and secondary colors (5th block).
- Kindergarten girl who couldn't stay on task because she has a severe learning disability and is already two years underdeveloped (she's only 5) (6th block).
- Cluster meeting for an hour followed by two minutes to prepare for my 3rd graders who need absolute structure and organization in order to stay engaged. This requires preparation and some time...ya it crashed and burned when I had students start drawing a still life of a pumpkin and my pencils hadn't been sharpened (7th block).
- Verna Dixon's 4th grade came in with a cocky attitude and I forced them to practice walking into my classroom correctly, which did not make them any happier. Austin and Cameron, the ringleaders, felt more courageous than usual, and tested all of my limits. Austin called me a "____ass", it was hard to tell what he said, and Cameron drummed with his pencil , sang in my face while I talked, and made ugly facial expressions (8th).
- The other 4th grade class (Mr. Ben's) wasn't allowed by the PE teacher to get water before my class, which forced me to use my time to rehydrate the kids after they were in the heat for over 30 minutes. So we didn't do too much...(9th block).
- Ms. Smith's 1st graders came in ready for school to end, which led a group of 3-4 boys to walk into my classroom already acting like animals (10th block).
After school, I had to take care of hiring paperwork and planning for my substitute (I'm taking Friday off to formulate a comprehensive unit and semester plan). Then I had a community dinner at Ms. Sternberg's house until 8:30 and got home at around 9 to find Evan, Sean and Brent watching Always Sunny.
That's when I did something out of character. I had to print out work for my sub to give students and when I tried to print, the paper was out. Now last time it happened, Evan exhausted my entire ink cartridge. This time was the paper. But how I reacted was something really shocking. I cursed at Evan, basically verbally attacked him for not having common courtesy, and flat out verbally antagonized him. I even got to the point of saying "Ya, welcome to Pointe Coupee."
...What the hell?...What had gotten into me?
After two weeks, I sounded exactly like one of students. The social immersion at Rosenwald Elem. got the best of me tonight, proving to me just how weak my backbone is. I feel terrible for what I did because, just like the kids do, it was a gross exaggeration of the severity of the matter. The truth is that now I'm sitting here a little embarrassed. I said things that didn't sound like me and weren't me. I felt the same hostility of my students and suddenly took on a whole other attitude.
For ten minutes today, I wasn't Marco Ramirez, the Art teacher. I was Tyrese. I was Austin and Cameron. I was the boys in Ms. Smith's 1st grade class.
...I was the negative force that hinders these kids.
Today began at 4:30am as usual, with a good breakfast (eggs, cereal and a protein shake), and I was out the door to pick up Emma (another first year corps member) by 5:40am. We got out to New Roads, LA by 6:45am and started school at 8. Between 8am-3pm, I had twelve 30-minutes blocks with kindergarten through 5th grade. Today (Thursday), my one planning block of one hour has now become cluster meeting time (meant to improve teacher effectiveness). As a result, there is literally no break until dismissal.
So between 8-3, I had:
- Second grade girl who knocked her leg really hard because she was sitting improperly in her seat and tipped over onto her knee (1st block).
- Kindergarten boy who couldn't hold back his words and blurted out "I love you" to me while we were making a Color Wheel and going over both primary and secondary colors (5th block).
- Kindergarten girl who couldn't stay on task because she has a severe learning disability and is already two years underdeveloped (she's only 5) (6th block).
- Cluster meeting for an hour followed by two minutes to prepare for my 3rd graders who need absolute structure and organization in order to stay engaged. This requires preparation and some time...ya it crashed and burned when I had students start drawing a still life of a pumpkin and my pencils hadn't been sharpened (7th block).
- Verna Dixon's 4th grade came in with a cocky attitude and I forced them to practice walking into my classroom correctly, which did not make them any happier. Austin and Cameron, the ringleaders, felt more courageous than usual, and tested all of my limits. Austin called me a "____ass", it was hard to tell what he said, and Cameron drummed with his pencil , sang in my face while I talked, and made ugly facial expressions (8th).
- The other 4th grade class (Mr. Ben's) wasn't allowed by the PE teacher to get water before my class, which forced me to use my time to rehydrate the kids after they were in the heat for over 30 minutes. So we didn't do too much...(9th block).
- Ms. Smith's 1st graders came in ready for school to end, which led a group of 3-4 boys to walk into my classroom already acting like animals (10th block).
After school, I had to take care of hiring paperwork and planning for my substitute (I'm taking Friday off to formulate a comprehensive unit and semester plan). Then I had a community dinner at Ms. Sternberg's house until 8:30 and got home at around 9 to find Evan, Sean and Brent watching Always Sunny.
That's when I did something out of character. I had to print out work for my sub to give students and when I tried to print, the paper was out. Now last time it happened, Evan exhausted my entire ink cartridge. This time was the paper. But how I reacted was something really shocking. I cursed at Evan, basically verbally attacked him for not having common courtesy, and flat out verbally antagonized him. I even got to the point of saying "Ya, welcome to Pointe Coupee."
...What the hell?...What had gotten into me?
After two weeks, I sounded exactly like one of students. The social immersion at Rosenwald Elem. got the best of me tonight, proving to me just how weak my backbone is. I feel terrible for what I did because, just like the kids do, it was a gross exaggeration of the severity of the matter. The truth is that now I'm sitting here a little embarrassed. I said things that didn't sound like me and weren't me. I felt the same hostility of my students and suddenly took on a whole other attitude.
For ten minutes today, I wasn't Marco Ramirez, the Art teacher. I was Tyrese. I was Austin and Cameron. I was the boys in Ms. Smith's 1st grade class.
...I was the negative force that hinders these kids.
Official day of hire -- September 27, 2010
I'm actually at the end of my second week, which says a lot about the start of my tenure. To be honest, I don't feel like talking about what has happened during that time because something happened tonight that I did not expect to happen to me...
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