Absolutely (Story of a Girl)

Ok I'll let you in on a little secret. When I'm trying to name my posts, I come up with a theme and then I do a search on my iTunes for a song title with that theme in it. So this time I typed in "story" because I haven't really told many funny ones yet. And "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)" came up, which I thought was very appropriate because just a few weeks ago my coworkers and I were at a local pub that was hosting trivia night. One of the rounds was a listening round, where they basically went through a random iTunes playlist and you had to name the artist. Needless to say, I kicked ass. And when this song came up, I didn't hesitate one bit and wrote down "Nine Days" before my coworkers even knew what was happening. And gave the full title, parenthetical included. Because I grew up in the nineties/early 2000s and lived by my WHFS 99.1 (RIP!). But I digress.

Snapshots of this year's kids...

Girl: "Whoa did anybody else see that? It was like.. everything went black."
Boy: "Yea me too! You noticed it too?"
Girl: "What was that? Ms. Chew, what was that.. everything went black!"
Ms. Chew: "Uhh.. I think it's called blinking."

Some of my boys kept asking me if I was going to D-Day, if I was ready for D-Day, and I honestly have no clue what D-Day they're refering to was. So one day, when they asked me if I was ready for D-Day..

Ms. Chew: "I don't know about D-Day, but I'm always ready for P-Day."
Boys: "P-Day? What's that?"
Ms. Chew: "Physics day!"
Boys: "Physics day? When's that?"
Ms. Chew: "Everyday is Physics day!"

It was a geeky moment, get over it. BUT every day they see me they yell "Ms. Chew! P-DAY!!!" And they tell me how sad they are when they don't have P-Day because of the block scheduling. Cute.

One day in the hallway I was telling one of my boys to hurry up and get to class, so I made an arm pumping motion like I was scooting along. He thought it was the funniest thing and now I can make him laugh at any time by summoning the "hurry up dance." (I think this one is funnier if you saw me do the motions. Lo seinto.)

In the beginning of the year I give my students an "All About Me" info sheet to fill out. This year I told them that whatever name they put in the "I prefer to be called:" space is what I'll call them all year long, so beware. They were allowed to put anything short of racial or other slurs and anything that could be construed as sexual harassment, if they wanted me to call them "Little Johnny Paper Boy" I would. Some of the fun names I get to call my kids by this year.. Penguin, Iron Mike, BBoy Shadow, and Little Johnny Paper Boy. Names I refused.. Baba (from my Cantonese kid) and Christ (I'm a little concerned that he's actually serious. He writes it on his papers).

We have pigeons that live on the third floor of our building. It's gross and it's not okay. They poo everywhere and this year it's really gotten out of control. Four of the five science classrooms are in the main hallway, what we call the Circle of Crap. So last week we decided to draw some attention to the problem and show how serious we are about getting something done. We wore bright pink ponchos from Walgreens during passing periods. The kids got a big kick out of it and the administration finally took notice (although nothing's changed yet). We got to say things like...

Kid: "Ms. Chew, why are you guys wearing that?"
Ms. Chew: "For protection."
Kid: "From what?"
Ms. Chew: "For the poo!!"

and

Kid: "Ms. Chew, it's not raining outside."
Ms. Chew: "Oh but it's raining inside."
Kid: "No it's not!"
Ms. Chew: "It is. It's raining poo!!"

and sometimes I didn't even speak, I just pointed to the fresh new pile outside my doorway. Don't even get me started on the mint chocolate chip greens or flaming hot Cheetoh reds we get on a regular basis. Or the scrambled egg. Yum. The real funny thing is some of the kids really hadn't noticed until we brought it up. Or even denied that there were pigeons inside until we pointed at their butts hanging over the rafters, waiting to strike. It's so bad that I actually know the sound of pigeons taking a crap. Uggg. But today after school some boys were hanging around and they decided to wear our ponchos. We had three kids wearing bright pink ponchos, and a fourth wearing the bright green poncho with an additional plastic bonnet (with visor!) running around the school after hours. It was fantastic.

That's all I can think of for now. On a more serious note, we rematched against our soccer rival (see previous post) today and lost pretty miserably. At least it wasn't pouring, but it wasn't a good game. It was fun though, to see our boys play and support them. Some of last year's senior players came out to watch and we got to catch up with them and hear what they're up to these days. Two of the boys are at Heald College and kid with the red shoes is at Foothill College. The real disappointment, though, is Phillip. He did not look so good today, was all decked out in red accessories from head to toe, and is not taking any classes anywhere. Keep in mind that this is last year's soccer superstar prom king. I'm worried for him, but at list his brother CM is still at the school so we can check in on him from time to time. It would be really nice to NOT see him go down that path. Le sigh.

I Still Remember

I still feel kind of bad because I made one of my kids feel bad this week. He made an inappropriate comment about 9/11 and I didn't really chew him out, but I was brutally honest in my reaction. Teaching the kids life lessons doesn't always feel good, I'm learning.

So they were working on their warm up, and someone notices the date. Says "hey, it's September 11th. Whoa." To which my student says something to the effect of "Yea it's been seven years, can't we forget about it already?" And I respond something to the effect of "I am not a person you want to say that to." And left it at that.

A little later on I was making my rounds around the classroom and I privately said to him "I really hope you didn't mean what you said earlier. I realize that it's been seven years and maybe you don't think people should make a huge deal out of it anymore, but you can't say we should forget it. My friend's dad died that day, and she'll never forget it." He felt really bad and apologized profusely, actually he was quite mature and said "I'm really sorry. I had no idea." And I just said that it's alright, but you can't make comments like that because you never know where someone is coming from. I spared him my personal story about where I was and how it affected my life, but I think it maybe really never occurred to him that peoples lives really were changed on that day.

The rest of the period though, he was like a puppy that had been kicked. Super polite and diligent in his work, even helped me clean up the lab area without asking. I could tell he still felt really bad about what he said. But I couldn't really help it. I don't think I was completely tactless in my response, and I think he really did need someone to teach him that lesson. But I can't help that I felt bad about making him feel bad.

We'll have to see where our relationship goes from here. Maybe it'll strike a chord with him that I leveled with him. It reminds me of when I was student teaching and I had a talk with a kid when I over heard him calling a misfit chair "gay", and a week later I heard him passing it on to his friend, saying "hey man, don't say that, that's not cool" when his friend made a similar remark. Ahh teaching. It's not just about reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic. Or even physics. Sometimes, it's just about LIFE.

Everything's Magic

Second year is MAGICAL. I mean.. it's almost unbelievable how much more smoothly this year is going. I'm practically waiting for this bubble to burst, but it hasn't (yet). We're into our third week here and I'm still on cloud nine. They weren't kidding when they said your first year teaching is the hardest. Second year has been good to me thus far.

Part of it is already having a niche carved out in the school for myself. I'm still "Ms. Chew Rocks" and now more and more students in the school know it. And since I kind of have a handle on what's going on in my class already, it frees me up for other fun things at school. Like cosponsoring the Asian Club. Like helping out with the after-school tutoring program. Like maybe organizing a school wide talent show? We'll see.

The plus side of having my old curriculum from last year is that now I can improve on it. I've got my barebones skeleton of what I want to do in class.. and now there's nowhere to go but up. I made up this ridiculous lab last week to introduce the idea of average speed. It was "the Physics Triathlon" which was basically the kids making up their own silly events, measuring their time and distances for these events, and racing each other to get the higher average speeds. In my head I was like.. well maybe this will work, but if it turns out lame at least they had a chance to experience average speed in a way they might remember. In class.. it was a gajillion times better than I had imagined. They ate it up. I had my screw-ups in the hallway running hurdles over chairs that they'd set up. I had my ESL kids crawling under the tables. I had my soccer boys running an obstacle course that they made with books and stools. It was amazing. They had so much fun.. and I actually think that they learned something about average speed from it. But we'll see when I give a quiz on Friday.

My algebra class has been a bit of a challenge for me. I think this is partly because algebra always came so naturally for me, it's hard for me to break it down and think like they might think about it. Not to mention that some of my kids should be switched up to Geometry or at least Algebra Honors, so they're extremely bored as I'm going through what whole numbers and integers are. I got a good group of freshmen, though. They're so cute and bright-eyed. High school is just beginning for them, which is kind of exciting. And I guess it might be good that with me they're getting a taste of what upper-class teachers are like. I definitely don't do as much hand holding as the other freshmen teachers do. Again, we'll just have to see how that works out.

I'm excited to keep getting to know this new batch of kids I have. And to be honest, some of my repeaters are actually dead serious and my best students right now. I can't stress enough how nice it is to have some kids that I already have a relationship with in my class. I mean, I saw them almost every day for a year and now I get to see them again.

Oh and at Asian Club today I got to see one of my favorite boys from last year that I've hardly seen at all in the halls. I got a nice big (but appropriate!) hug. It's nice to know that they miss me too. AHhhhhh I'm loving second year. It's freaking magic. If you're a first year and your reading this.. wahlau please hold on because it really is worth it!!