At the End of the Day (revision)

A Day in the Life of a High School Teacher:

hour 1 - sunshine!
hour 2 - kittens!
hour 3 - rainbows!
hour 4 - a sunshine/kittens/rainbows sundae with whipped cream and sprinkles on top, with the exception of three "I am teacher, hear me roar" moments which were surprisingly effective.

*drum roll please*
hour 5 - 7th circle of HELL!!! I have yelled at these children enough that they think if they push me far enough they will get to see For-Real Angry Hendrix. This, however, they will never see. As concerns the other Hendrixes, unfortunately they've already seen Uberannoyed, Whiny, Happy, Absentminded, Pain-of-Love, Crying, Disappointed, etc. Hendrix.

After class, Nancy came over and I promptly fell sobbing into her motherly arms. I think I used a few choice words, and then I was off to the portable classroom for which I have Sold My Prep (soul?). By the time I arrived I was no longer crying, but I'm fairly sure that my face was still streaked.

The boys quickly gauged my mood, and I only managed to remain surly for about 20 seconds before M3.2 made some joke that had me laughing uproariously. As I prepared the equipment, V1.0, one of My Very Own, offered to help, and the rest moved into seats with an air of anticipation. We had three choices: Deserts (I like the part with the rainbow lizards that jump up to eat the flies although that footage is too fleeting), Ice Worlds (my fave) and Shallow Seas. I started to click on Deserts because I wanted to see those lizards again, but all as one, in a chorus as if they had planned it, the boys chanted "Shallow Seas! Shallow Seas!" As I clicked on it, three of them one after the other said, "Yay!" just like little kids.

Planet Earth is the best $80 that I've ever spent. For as long as the series has existed, Planet Earth has ushered my students through afternoons after proficiency tests and days when all the Good Kids (oops) got to go on field trips. I get to use it about once a semester. The thing about it is that it results in More and Better Discussion Than Anything Actually Related to History Ever Could. As a culminating discussion, I ask the students to practice their BS'ing skills by telling me what the heck Planet Earth has to do with history. So the Dreaded Portable turned out to be Fabulous just like every other class with one very miserable exception.

After school, I made my rounds: five minutes with G, five more with Boldt, and finally to room 800, where I made a pallet out of a hooded sweatshirt and laid on the floor, looking up at the ceiling and listening to Pink Floyd.

And that, kids, is how my Friday came full circle. It was the fitting and beautiful end of one *choice word* of a week.

I Will Only Do This Once...

So the big thing on Facebook this month is to post things you're thankful for. Every day. I guess the point is that it makes you focus on the little things you're thankful for, therefore forcing you to stop and re-evaluate the pessimism created by the workaday grind.

I AM THANKFUL THAT THE BAD CHOICES OF MY PAST HAVE MADE MY LIFE MERELY UNCOMFORTABLE, NOT RUINED IT FOREVER.

One can see why I'm not posting this on Facebook underneath my oldest friend's post of today: "I am thankful to get coupons in the mail." No offense to MNSO, I still love you. :+D

No, no, no....

The latest is this: in the midst of extenuating circumstances, a Mojave student invaded a home. It just happened to be the home of a Metro police officer who got back while he was in the midst of being robbed. The kid shot the cop and killed him. Before dying, the cop shot the kid, who is now in hospital and no other info is currently available.

I mean seriously, folks...

I mean really.

I don't know this kid. So that when the teacher who DOES know this kid calls me, broken and crying because s/he is such a terrible teacher for never noticing that this child had extenuating circumstances, never extending the hand of her/his care to this child...I cannot be as helpful as I'd like.

And this is what we do. We call each other crying because we care so much in a building and a city and a world where so many care so little. And the bad choices of today mean that this child who just six hours ago was just another child sitting in a classroom at my school...
will be spending a good part of his future in a cage.

I have a copy of the film The Edukators that I don't think I'll ever be watching again, if anyone wants it.

Circadian Rhythms

WHY is it that when one tries to sleep at perfectly normal times like between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Friday afternoon, for example, everyone in the neighborhood seems to want to constantly open and close their garage doors to the tune of a 2.7 on the Richter scale?

My attempt to rest before taking the MHS Key Club to Valencia, CA for the annual Key Club Fall Rally has been thus thwarted!

Yesterday, a friend asked me to identify a personal goal distinct from my professional goals. This is a very difficult challenge to answer, so at the time, I said, "Erm...uh...hmm..." and mumbled something cryptic. Later I realized that my personal goal is the same as the beginning of the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm." So I cued up the Be Good Tanyas, "In Spite of All the Damage," giggled at the oxymoronic nature of the beast, and went to bed at a nice normal time when all the neighbors were already in for the night.

Today, some kid bypassed his friends and interrupted my co-teacher's lecture to sit with me and pour his heart out about many problems on the eve of his leaving forever in the direction of the state of Tennessee. He has been quite the disrespectful little brat all year, so this display of heart-rending confiding in me was shocking. At some point he must have been asleep in class, and I must have sang to him, and so he knows that he could murder someone and still I would preserve a soft place in my heart for him, however small.

But his is not the story that I mean to tell here. Instead...this is the story of the boy in the portable. He's smart, but he likes to get himself into trouble. Therefore, he is a member of the cohort that is BANISHED from Mojave's campus while they get their acts together and rehabilitate enough to re-join the gen pop.

This year, funny enough, the brilliant way this has worked out is that there are 4 MHS marijuana dealers all locked in the portable all day every day together. No doubt consolidating. For this reason, I refer to this quarter's portable kids as the "Mojave Marijuana Mafia." It is my 2nd year in the portable, and I particularly enjoy it when the kids who end up out there were once SUPPOSED learners in my classroom.

In the case of M3.2, he was in my worst class last year and was a big thorn in my side. He came to me after a coworker REFUSED to let him into class. His schedule didn't change, he was just locked out of class. The counseling ofc. finally caught on to this and gave him to yours truly. I'm still a little miffed at the co-worker for getting away with that, but anyway... At the end of his very first day in my class, I prank called the counseling office and shouted, "Thanks! I NEEDED THAT!"

I love the story that follows. I tell it again and again to everybody who will listen. Today I told it out loud for the last time, in response to the restless misbehavior and mild insults of M3.2. Here it is for cyberposterity.

Hendrix: M3.2, do you know when it was that I came to love you as a student and a person?
M: WHAT!?!?!
H: [clears throat] I said...[repeats self, for repetition is key to learning.]
M: [snarky tone] I never knew I had that kind of effect on you, Miss.
H: Do you know why? Can I tell you?
M: Why?
H: One day, I was trying to teach, and you were standing in the front of my room batting my flag.
M: I was doing WHAT?
H: Batting at my American flag [indicates portable flag], which is a major breach of flag ettiquette.
M: FLAG ETTIQUETTE?
H: Oh, yes. There are pages and pages of flag ettiquette, and you broke it that day. I told you to sit down, and you didn't. You just KEPT ON playing with the flag. So I growled at you and said, "SIT DOWN!" And still you didn't. Finally, I said, "mumble mumble."
M: WHAT?
H: That's exactly what you said that day! So I said, "YOU HEARD ME! YOU'RE AN ASS!!!"
M: [bursts out laughing]
H: AND that's exactly what you did that day. Then you sat down, and we were copacetic after that.

The moral of the story today, of course, being, "M3.2, you are not to resort to the kind of sophomorish behavior that got you here." (Also, sometimes honesty is the best policy.)

Yes, ma'am.

But we all love our self-destructive cycles, don't we?

"If I wanted to hear you talk on/or to hear your sense of things/or to call you up on a Sunday morning/in spite of all the damage I've done..."

Well, whaddaya know...my ALARM is going off! Whose brilliant idea was Fall Rally? I'd like to prank call them and shout something colorful into their SLEEPING ear.

"If California slides into the ocean/like the mystics and the statistics say it will/I predict this motel will be standing/until I've paid my bill."

Quotes Ani:

"I hereby amend whatever I've ever said..."

Subtitle: In Defense of Verbosity

In other words, I lied, but not intentionally. I discovered when donning the Alexander the Great costume that it was not only fun, but also (for better or worse) a major genderqueer event at Mojave High School. I don't really understand genderqueer all that well, but ascertain from my students' misunderstanding as to why I was dressed up as a man, that I was performing it as well as performing a talk from the POV of the Macedonian emperor. I pulled back my hair during lunch, put on the outfit during 4th hour U.S. history, and gave the talk to 5th hour. One of the boys said, "That looks good on you, Miss." I replied, "It oughtta. After all, it's a *dress.*" Many other things happened afterward. I went out to the portable to work with the three boys who were out there then. Then to my boss for my post-observation meeting. Then, to the end of a Key Club spirit meeting.

Apparently Ms. Hendrix as Alex the Great was a bit much for Key Club to handle in their amped-up cheery state. Throughout the day, many teachers and students, including the Key Club kids, informed me that Halloween had passed. To which I responded (even to the teachers), "This is NOT Halloween, kids. This is curriculum." No photos of this mind-bending event exist.

Luckily, however, I did get a snapshot of Gokey's bellwork for today. It takes me back to a conversation I had back when it was still my favorite month, with Jodi, on the 22nd.
Beyonce's "Irreplaceable" cued up on the playlist in my car, and I said, "I put this song in the playlist to reflect my belief that we are all interchangeable parts."
"Do you really believe that?" she asked. "No," I finally said, sadly.

To Jodi that night, I said, I have my own personal therapist, and my own personal clergyperson, countless personal teaching consultants, so you're right - we are NOT interchangeable parts.

But is that only true when we are talking about each other? Jodi is not an interchangeable part in my life. Nor are any of the other members of my biological or chosen families (you know who you are). I know that from the bitter experience of either losing some or just letting them go.

Jodi taught my two afternoon history classes during a moment when I did not have access to my online attendance book. I passed around a sheet of paper and had all the kids sign in. Without being prompted, they wrote down their names AND their ID numbers. This made Jodi sad. "They're numbers," she said. As we are all numbers. At Mojave High School and in Clark County, the U.S. and the world at large, I and all of my colleagues, not to mention the 216 resplendent little children of a loving and forgiving God that I teach...well, we are interchangeable parts.

Little ants on the floor of the Great Big Factory of the Universe. (I steal the word "factory," from Jodi as well, for it is how she referred to Mojave.) But within that, we have our own little Ant Ecosystem - our little ant families that grieve with all their hearts when one of their own runs away or gets crushed by a boot.

Many, many prayers tonight for the Fort Hood families, for the student who has lost her father her cousin and finally today her mother all within the last 12 months, for the students whose father had a stroke last night but still managed to show up to support them at the tennis banquet, for the student who was released from a mental hospital yesterday, for the six core people who have allowed me to cry on their shoulders from all this vicarious pain, and finally to my biological and chosen family members near and far.

Not a one of you is interchangeable to me.