Lasers Make me Sad

There aren't many 4 letter words that scare a teacher, particularly one in the BD/ED population. But, there's one in particular I think my colleagues and I agree can cause us to recoil in dread:

ISAT.

No one in their right mind enjoys standardized testing season, but it's been especially offputting this year as our school scrambles to recover from some deficits in test scores from the past couple years. Instead of lumping the test sessions into a couple days as usual, they were spread out over two whole weeks just one hour a day, making teaching any normal lessons the rest of the day very painful for all involved. Then, there were the highlighter yellow "Rah rah for ISAT" (well, that's not EXACTLY what they said) t-shirts that we had to wear 7 days, nearly consecutively. By the time the make-ups were over, test booklets were turned in, and t-shirts ripped to shreds (oh yes, there were teachers that tore them to shreds) everyone--adults and kids alike--was ready to be locked in the looney bin.

The natural progression from this point was to begin an intensive one week poetry unit with my 7th graders, squeezed between gruelling ISATS and a long overdue spring break, and complete with an extended writing assignment, right? NO! Of course not! Worst teaching practices ever!

But I really didn't have a choice. Due to the quite exceptional needs of this group of students, we've been trailing behind the rest of the 7th grade English classes the entire year, and right now it's imperative that they catch up because their next writing unit is tied into another class's project.

Amidst the madness, I had to miss my English class one day this week and I was forced to assign a 20 line poem with a sad mood and several other required elements (figurative language, sound devices, and so on) that day in my absence. When my meeting got out right at the end of 8th period, I caught Alejandro walking out of the media center where he was to be working on the poem.

"How did your poem writing turn out?"

"Good [trademark Beavis/Butthead laugh]."

Alejandro skipped town before I could inquire any further into the progress he had made while I was gone. But I gathered a better understanding once I returned to my room and found a typed, finished first draft of his poem on my desk.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, an Alejandro original:

LASERS MAKE ME SAD

Not a lot of things make me sad

People dying is one

It is sad

In movies they die dramtic deaths

In some movies, when people die they make people bbreathe heavy

It is like they just jogged

It is sad when I lose at a video game

When I lose I practice more so I can own and p'wn (gaming term)

And then I eat a scone and break a bone

It sounds like a crunch

It is sad when people get cramps

When they keep eating beets

They want to cry

When they cry they go boo hoo!

Instead of swimming they should ride their bike

It is sad when I get in trouble and get bad grades

When I get bad grades the school building gets mad at me

The school throws pencils and carpeting at me

It is sad, and I feel awkard because schools should not do this

There are the things that make me sad

There you have it ladies and gentleman: the tried and true cure for standardized teaching exhaustion and general teacher burn out. Thank you, Alejandro. Thank you.

Bad Teacher

We all have that person in our life... An acquaintance, or friend of a friend's friend, or perhaps a virtual stranger who keeps popping up at the most random of times in the most random of places. It's a person who appears as a blip on your life radar every few years seemingly by happenstance.

That person for me first came on my radar my senior year of high school when a lunch buddy of mine become engaged to that person, who was six years her senior. The relationship dissolved quickly, but I continued to see that person randomly every couple of years around the local gym.

Then, fast forward to my fortuitous interview opportunity at my current school of employment. I'll never forget the shock I received when I logged onto the website and found that person occupying the position I was vying for. I reserve no right to pass judgment on that person's character or mistakes or shortcomings while employed at the school, but all I know is that for the first several months in that person's previous position, I had co-workers approaching me regularly to remark how surprised they were to hear actual teaching going on in my classroom.

Fast forward to a text message I received this week from friend and fellow teacher informing me that that person was observing her classroom, likely because he wasn't cutting it in his own position and needed good models. Also, through friendly conversation with my friend, that person revealed that he never even made it through the teacher program at his college the first time round due to its level of difficulty. Teacher programs...difficult...ahem.

Add to this rap sheet the knowledge that that person has been in some trouble with the police as well, and I find myself even now having to slap myself over the wrist at my propensity to judge someone's mistakes (however many and frequent they be) without ever reserving the right.

BUT beyond my sinful desires to belittle someone, I think there is an ounce of rightful anger at the injustice being done, here. From a sort of bird's eye view, I've seen that person make mistake after mistake: hurting others and neglecting responsibilities and making life difficult for others. I have to wonder, at what point does "BAD TEACHER" get stamped on his forehead to prevent any more people and districts to be fooled by a charming facade, thus allowing children's lives to be mismanaged and co-workers to shoulder the weight of someone's ineptness.


STILL, I have to wonder if that's any concern of mine. People grow and, with God's grace, sometimes they do a complete 180 in life. Should that person run out of chances and be kicked to the curb, never to step foot in a school again? Or should he be allowed the opportunity to be mentored and refined time and time again until he gets it right?

I guess either way, it's not my call to make. Lord knows I've been offered a second chance, and sometimes a third, fourth, and fifth one before I finally got it together. It takes a lot of wisdom and strength to acknowledge someone like that person deserves it just as much.

Got My Goat

Most people are familiar with the old expression, "got my goat". It is used to express how someone has caused annoyance to one's self on such an extreme level that reasonableness and logic begin to go out the window. If I were to share with one of my co-workers right now that one of my students, Alejandro, has really got my goat, they would probably flash me a sympathetically exasperated look and await tales of relentlessly repulsive behavior that is steering my class towards disaster.

But, I've found a new definition for this timeless saying. While I'm experiencing the same loss in reason, and my classroom is not running as smoothly as a result, I guess you could say I'm dealing with a different kind of goat...

A Hilarious Goat

There was a time that Alejandro didn't have me constantly in stitches--in fact, quite the opposite. The most impulsive case of ADHD I've ever seen with a nice dose of Aspergers to dull his social awareness, it was quite the challenge to transmit any knowledge of English with the spontaneous pacing of the classroom and endless string of jungle sounds emitting from his mouth. I suppose the saving grace that prevented me from secretly begrudging his very presence in my classroom was that, despite his never-rending disruptions, he truly wanted to succeed and much of his impulsiveness was just plain out of his control.

I think the day the day Alejandro started to get my hilarious goat was when he was working in my room, but I was on plan period and, free from supervision duty, I was free to sit back and just watch the show. One of his most winning qualities is his insanely infectious laugh. A perfect cross between Beavis and Butthead in pitch and cadence, it is just as easy to get one out of him as the famous MTV teenagers. As he worked on his laptop, Annie and I--feeling a bit squirrelly--attempted to replicate his laugh. Without missing a beat, he responded with his own laugh as if it were a triggered reflex. I have found other triggers to be the mention of any food or animal, and the conjuring of random, bizarre mental images--particularly mental images involving animals and food. (Example: A cat eating a hotdog. That would have him in hysterics instantly.) With time, I find the tables are turning to where Alejandro's laughter automatically triggers my own, and I'm powerless to stop it.

As I began to appreciate Alejandro a bit more for his quirks, I one day stopped my normal frantic bustle preparing for English class to soak in his trademark entrance to the classroom. I promise there has not been one day this year Alejandro has simply opened the door, walked through the threshold and headed straight for his desk in the normal fashion. Some of his many variations on the expected behavior include jiggling the door handle wildly before opening the door, thrusting the door open and then disappearing from the doorway to feign the appearance of a ghost, bursting through the door screaming indecipherable absurdities, and/or walking in and throwing himself across his desk or chair that requires a greeting of: "Alejandro, get down." The most "normal" arrival in recent memory was sitting down at his desk after several requests to do so, folding his hands in front of him and saying in a perfectly neutral tone, "Shall we proceed?"

That leads me to Alejandro's notorious utterances. As previously mentioned, much that escapes his lips is pure nonsense. He is highly adept at combining random syllables into gibberish, then neatly inserting the gibberish into a grammatically correct sentence. His default gibberish is "Wombo Fish" and it may make an appearance at any time.

"A verb is a Wombo Fish."

"6 to the Wombo Fish equals 36."

"Miss T, I can't do my work, I don't have my Wombo Fish."

His impressively extensive vocabulary often aids in the hilarity of the nonsense. Just this past week, frantically in search of his pencil, Alejandro exclaimed: "Where is my babushka?!?"

I could go on for ages with little anecdotes like these, but the core issue here is that Alejandro has accomplished something that only one in about every 20 students is capable of. He has cracked my stoically professional facade and ruined my objective treatment of the students as far as classroom rules goes.

Lucky for me, Alejandro is marching to the beat of a drummer that bangs so loud he doesn't realize his opportunity to take advantage of his power over me. Even luckier for me, the others in my class have the maturity and intuition to understand the exception I have made for their classmate. The other day, after responding to Alejandro's disruptive exclamations with a helpless giggle, I sobered up and reminded everyone this was not a precedent for allowing silly antics from the rest of them. One of the others, Nick, reassured me, "We know, we know, Miss T. We probably couldn't pull it off the way Alejandro does if we tried."

Wise words from a student with major emotional difficulties. Perhaps we all have something to learn from Alejandro and his Wombo fish.

When Ms. T becomes Mother T(heresa)....

In my handful of years teaching my particular population of students, I've come to find they generally fall into one of three categories.

The first--and most rare--is the category of students with issues in isolation from the rest of their family. In other words, their parents are normal. Perhaps their child's perplexing behaviors have driven them a bit batty over the years, but who could blame them? They are totally cognizant of the problem and they do their best to care for him/her while handing the reigns trustfully over to the teacher during school hours. Again, this scenario comes along about once every 10 kids.

The second category of students--the most common--are those with emotional issues congruous with the rest of the family. They're the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree" kids, or better yet, the "apple is just a smaller version of the tree". These are the families, Annie and I joke, could all benefit from being placed in our ED program.

These first two categories of students I believe I was born to teach. Somehow, despite even the most ludicrous of situations, I'm generally able to approach teaching and managing these students with a great deal of objectivity and emotional detachment.




Now, I'm not saying there aren't some days when I think my head is going to burst into flames. I'm also not saying that ice water runs through my veins and I don't feel any sort of emotional connection to my students. I just believe that, in general, I've mastered the proper degrees of investment and detachment to ensure some longevity in my career.

But then comes the third category of students--the deal breaker. These are the students who lost the lottery. If born into any other family where they were loved and encouraged and provided for, they would be, for all intents and purposes, normal. But they haven't been so lucky. They've been broken. They're bright and seemingly so full of potential; you see glimpses of love and that child's innate desire to please, but it's clear that much of that was sucked out of them long ago, and by no fault of their own. It was this situation on a very large scale that drove me from my first job--a urban, impoverished community where ignorance and depravity beget more and more of the same in a never-ending cycle. It infuriated me and I knew I was not doing myself or the students there any favors.

Teaching in the context of a much healthier community, now, it's a less common scenario. But, it is still one that gets my goat every time. When tales of abuse and neglect emerge from a child's background, it's all I have not to take them home with me that very day and start showering them with the protection, love, and affection they so dearly need. I'm sure I wouldn't fix the kid overnight, and I'm no miracle worker; but I'd like to think some proper nurturing is all it would take to nurse these poor kids back to some semblance of normalcy.

Talk about your emotional investment. When I'm ready to bring home troubled 12-year-olds and become their surrogate mothers, I know I've gone off the deep end.

Control Freak

Less than a month into my unofficial training and I'm already up to 7 miles!

I've been surprised how impressed some of my friends have been with my accomplishments--in particular, those friends who, from all appearances, are more fit than I am. I'm relatively in shape, but I'm no Olympic medalist, nor do I look the part. I had a very thin, athletic friend remark the other day that he could barely run 3 miles these days, and that made me realize that perhaps my progress is more noteworthy than I thought.

I'm starting to understand that long distance training, like any challenging pursuit, is a great deal more a mental game than anything else--the proverbial 1% perspiration, 99% inspiration (a partially inaccurate equation when you take into account how soaked my clothes are after a run). If I wasn't so dead set on going all the way and making some real changes in my health, I probably would have petered out after mile 5 when my hips were screaming and I started to think I might upchuck.

Yeah, yeah. Go me and my incredible willpower. I'm proud and pleased with what I've done so far, but I think a ton of credit goes to the simple fact that this kind of challenge was made for someone exactly like me--THE CONTROL FREAK.

There are so many aspects of my life in which attempting to attain a goal is a painfully slow, often confusing and turbulent process; sometimes, only with hindsight can success then be measured. This is difficult and incredibly frustrating for the analytical mind which craves a step-by-step formula to reach the desired result.

Thank goodness for the tangible rewards of a running plan, measured in miles run, calories burned, and firmness of booty muscles (yeah, I said it), and the power I have over achieving those rewards simply by making the choice to lace up and swipe in at the gym.

Ah, but, see, life has taught me some valuable lessons about my compulsive need for control. That lesson is this: Just when I think I've harnessed it, some sort of rude and often unpleasant awakening comes to remind me just how powerless I am.

In my mind, I've already set the course for the next 6 months of training, discounting any chance for a sprained ankle or illness to set me back, but who's to say? The occasional reminder to myself that I am, in fact, NOT a machine may prevent any rude awakenings in the near future.

James 4:14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

God helps those...

The first day back from Christmas Break, I opened class with the obligatory question, "How was your break and what did you do?"

Of course, the kids interpreted this question--as they do every year--to mean, "What incredibly awesome gifts did you score for Christmas?"

The responses, as far as the typical pre-teen goes, were not very surprising: new video game systems and Apple products galore. What was surprising was the nature of the students who received these gifts. More than one of them has documented need for financial assistance through the school's free and reduced lunch program; yet, here they were acquiring video game systems worth 50 days worth of school meals. Clearly, something didn't add up.

This is far from the first time I've experienced frustration with the discrepancies between the expressed needs of the students' families and their lifestyle choices. Sure, we all have difficulties prioritizing our money. I freely admit I skimp on quality grocery products sometimes so I can buy some higher-end threads to parade around in. Popular culture easily persuades us to value some silly things.

But, I find myself becoming bitter when I witness extremely poor financial choices, and on a repeated basis, among families of children I care for. I put much of my yearly classroom budget to basic school supplies for those who can't acquire them. I donate money to school families for the holidays or give anonymous gifts throughout the year to under-resourced students. I don't do it to check "Be Generous" off my bucket list for the year. I do it because I want them to experience at least an ounce of the privilege I've been so blessed to have. So, it doesn't bode well when they come to school rocking brand new $100 shoes the next day.

"God helps them that help themselves."

Amen, Ben Franklin! I mean, the declaration definitely has some merit to it--particularly from the perspective of the teacher. Our students would get nowhere if we handed them every answer, every step to solve the problem, every ticket to the "Fast Pass" lane. So, instead of giving them a fish to eat for a day, we teach them how to fish so they can eat for a lifetime (Chinese proverb) .

My angst over individuals playing the welfare system and/or charity stems from more than just the desire to help the disadvantaged become self-sufficient. I fear it's something much more primal and not so noble in me.

There's this song by Christian artist, Matthew West called "My Own Little World" about learning to be selfless and reach out to the less fortunate. In one part of the song, the lyrics describe finally taking notice of a homeless widow on the side of the street and giving her some money. Every time I hear the song, my mind screams, "No! Don't do it! She's gonna take your cash and blow it on a 40 at the liquor store!"

And you know what? My concerns have some validity. Let's not kid ourselves: there's a reason a lot (not ALL, mind you) of these people are destitute and it doesn't result from throwing away all their money on infomercial products or brand-named groceries. They have some nasty and expensive habits that I don't particularly want to sponsor with my pocket change.

With this cold-hard truth in mind, the sink-or-swim, every-man-for-himself side of me does a mental fist pump when I hear Big Ben's quote.

But then, another side of me starts to kick in. The side that rejects what is culturally accepted, or what is "fair" by world standards, or what suits my selfish heart. It's the side that acknowledges the Truth.

The belief that the quote, "God helps them who help themselves" is straight from the bible, is a misconception. In truth, not only is it not found in the bible, but it is refuted.

Psalm 46:1-3 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

God gives grace (favor, blessing) to the humble. 1 Peter 5:5

True, there's nothing there about God favoring the free-loaders and the parasites, but there are some pretty important verses about not judging others when we have our own share of issues.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? Matthew 7:3

So, there's a danger that my charitable giving is not being taken advantage of appropriately. What am I to do? Keep on giving as I've been called. It's not up to me to determine who is most worthy of the gift.

After all, Lord knows I've been given something a time or two of which I didn't deserve...

My Big Bang Theory

My flavor of the month, lately, has been episodes of CBS's The Big Bang Theory. It's not always the most well written and you find after watching several episodes back-to-back, that they don't vary much in their basic formula. However, I'm pretty "tickled" (who uses that word anymore?) by the character Sheldon Cooper.

Yeah, yeah, everyone thinks he's great and hilarious and Jim Parsons has won about 3 million Emmys for the role if that's any proof. But the reasons I love him may differ from most. With his debilitating social challenges, lack of ability to express or perceive emotions, extreme OCD tendencies (same seat on the couch, always knocking on a door 3 times, strict food preferences), impeccable math and scientific reasoning skills, and love for all things nerdy, it's impossible to ignore the fact that the character of Sheldon Cooper is based off of someone with autism. Rarely am I watching the show thinking these geeky scientists are "so ridiculous!". Most of the time I'm thinking they are "so every kid and adult with an Autism Spectrum Disorder I've worked with in my life!"

There are students in particular that come to mind when I think of the show, and they're none other than my favorite English class alumni, Ryan and his best friend, Allen (not previously mentioned, I'm surprised to say) . The very best of friends, and undoubtedly cut from the same cloth, Ryan and Allen travel the halls together perpetually engrossed in conversations about Star Wars, Pokemon, and Kirby for Wii. They walk into class tossing around "Lord of the Rings" themed jokes and are silenced only at the teacher's request. In unison they break into hysterics over the teachers' puns or simple wordplay (once again, I refer you to the "Eggs Benedict--Good Speaking Eggs" incident). The end-bell hasn't even finished ringing before they're out of their seats and throwing around theoretical scenarios for Mario and Luigi in non-existent levels of the video game.

Before I even ever invested in the story line between Leonard and Sheldon, I vowed that Ryan and Allen would be room mates some day. More and more now I find myself connecting the dots between my former students and their television complements.

The first day back, I had the honor of getting caught walking right in front of the boys during a passing period. Their conversation was true-to-form.

Ryan: Hey remind me to bring the "Physics of Star Trek" book tomorrow.
Allen: Oh yeah, and I'll bring [nerdy graphic novel, the name of which I'm blanking on].

At that point, Ryan spotted me ahead walking in front of him and caught up to my side. For the following exchange, feel free to substitute a mental image of Sheldon Cooper.

Sheldon--I mean Ryan: Why should Windows XP be a prison guard?
Me: Oh, well, hello to you too, Ryan! Nice to see you...my break was GREAT! Thanks for asking!
Ryan (no emotion): I'm trying to tell you a joke.
Me: Okay, go for it.
Ryan: Why should Windows XP be a prison guard?"
Me: Why?
Ryan: Because it always locks up.
Me: [forced laughter] Good one
Ryan: It's true.

If only I could the kid to finish with "Bazinga!", we'd be golden.