First Missed Day.

This morning, I walked outside to my truck to drive to school. I released the e-brake, and I backed up- except nothing happened.
Long story short, the brake was stuck, the cable broke, and I think I might have blown up the clutch trying to rock the break loose. Renting a car would have involved an extra gouged price- the lowest quote I got was like $60 for one day and about 40 miles. On top of whatever my repair bills will be, that hurts.
So I had to miss a day of the internship and I feel horrible about it. I am stuck at my house worrying how our small groups are going to work without me.

Yesterday went really well without my cooperating teacher there. It's good to know that the majority of the respect and authority I have in the classroom are because of me and no one else. Everything went well except for a random fight that happened at the end of the day. They were supposed to go to the principal's office first thing this morning... but then I didn't show up. It's going to be hard to enforce that 48 hours later.

No More Training Wheels

Today I have no cooperating teacher. So I guess this is the day I figure out how much of my authority is still coming from the perceived threat that disobeying me will provoke my cooperating teacher.
Mercifully, our day is extremely segmented and well planned. So this will pass pretty quickly.
Yesterday, one of my "heavier" students broke straight through a chair. It took everything I had not to cackle- especially after one of my students with a particularly staccato prosodic speech problem said "oh uh-snnnn-ap-uh." Getting over this reminds me of getting over my squeamishness as a surgical assistant. You just get over your feelings because you have a job at hand- not through any convoluted emotional thought process or rationalization. Except I wanted to get over squeamishness- but not laughing.
I was sucking up my own laughter while telling one of my students not to laugh. I must have done it pretty convincingly though- because my student gave me that ashamed look I always gave in his situation!

FRIDAY.

Time is passing so much more quickly than it was for the first week. Of course, this was a four day week...

We can't buy a snow day, we keep getting close, and then failing. Just enough nasty cold weather that I can't take the kids outside during their recess time. They are so impossible and annoying when they are cooped up in the room- an old science lab. They find the loudest games in the world, and they bother me the whole time. I usually try to sneak in a little bit of grading during that time. I've been trying to assume more of the administrative tasks this week. I hate them, but I really need some experience with them to help me learn how to better manage the massive paperwork burden. I'm finding myself doing a lot of work like counting, tallying, averaging, recording, etc. When I hear those gerunds, only one thing comes to mind: this is the kind of work a computer should be doing. I'm no coder, but seriously, theres got to be a better way to do this. I've got a couple friends in IT who might be able to help me with this.

Buying the eee PC is turning into a watershed event in my life. It's become attached to my arm. Everything computer related that I need to do, I can do immediately. I use a password manager so that I don't have to waste time logging in to anything, or remembering petty things like that. I use google calender to manage my schedule, and it's alerting me of even little things like picking up my class from the gym.
And they're so cheap that I might be able to write a grant and get one in every student's hand before long.
I suppose that comes after learning how to plan a week worth of class...

This is getting easier.

Overheard this week:
"Where's Brian?"
"Oh, we were wondering that too. We heard he got stabbed at the skating rink."
also:
"You can't get reduced lunch unless you don't have a dad!"
It's amazing that even a 5th grader can put together the economics of having an unplanned, unwed pregnancy, but their parents can't!
That first week there was miserable. But now that I'm almost done with the second week, time is passing faster, and things are getting easier.
I planned all of the next week's Social Studies and Reading instruction- a big step for me. I even designed most of the Social Studies unit from the ground up. Last time I ever do that! No more reinventing the wheel for me.
I suppose I have probably already mentioned it, but this job is too hard for the money. I'm working harder and longer hours than a whole, whole lot of careers that would pay me a lot more. Not being paid for your time is supremely insulting. I love working with the kids, and I really enjoy most of the job. But this is not a career, and there's not a future here so far as I can see.
Maybe I could be a martyr if I was living on a trust fund, but I have a retirement to plan, and I'm capable of planning that quite well in another field.
So now my question is: what do I get my master's degree in in a few years?

I got dumped on.

I think today was the day that the kids got comfortable enough around me that they opened up a little bit. I worked with a lot of them one on one for the last few days, and I think that they understand that I'm a person who cares about their well-being.
And that's a double edged sword. Today I was talking to a boy about his geology test, and a girl walked up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and she said "my mom had a baby when she was 15." All I could say was "That must be awfully hard." Earlier in the day a couple of boys were taking a makeup test with me, and one of them was about to fall asleep. I asked him if he had gotten enough sleep. The other boy volunteered "my mom was so drunk last night."
Ramon also told me that he lives in a trailer with his big brother and his sister in-law. His parents got deported in Kansas City and now he has to watch his baby cousin from when he gets home from school until 8 o clock.
I wasn't born yesterday, and I'm wary of please-don't-give-me-homework martyrdom stories. But I don't think any of these kids are making this stuff up- or their delivery was exceptional if they were.

Day One is OVER!

I met my fifth grade classroom today. My cooperating teacher has a great setup- for most of the day I am only working with a small group! My students are relatively well behaved. Most of the "special needs" are met entirely by being in a small group with a teacher who can give them individual attention.
Attitude at the school is generally negative, all the usual teacher's lounge crap that I was told expect. They're toxic and cynical and I have to keep away.
I had a great conversation at recess with Ramon, one of my students. He has a really thick chicano accent:
Me: Ramon, did you do your spelling?
Ramon: Man, I don't wanna talk abouts nothing with school right now. It's recess.
Me: Ok. Ramon, did you know that their are mites that live on your eyelashes?
Ramon: Yuck, how do I get them off?
Me: You probably shouldn't, they're probably protecting your lashes from something worse.
Ramon: Man, you are giving me a headache.
Me: Why?
Ramon: I'm not used to talking to people that gots so much knowledge.
Me: Well what do you usually talk about?
Ramon: I don't know, wrestling?

Speaking of which, in the lounge today I sat around and listened to my coworkers. I realized that they are kind of dumb, and maybe Ramon is right. I gots too much knowledge to be a teacher.

"Curveball" #2

I got my second placement today during a break in a presentation. A 6 hour presentation on ways I can be sued. I'm very impressed by someone who can give a 6 hour presentation with no notes and still manage to be entertaining.
Anyways, my second placement is with an 8th grade pre-algebra teacher. I have a learning disability in math, dyscalculia. I have trouble doing stupid little math like counting my change, reading an analog clock, and whatever those fancy tricks are where you give a cashier extra money so that they give you an even amount back... yeah, have a hard time with those things.
In high school, I took Algebra twice. The first time, I made a 77. So I took it again, hoping I'd understand it better. The second time I took algebra, I got a 70.
This is something I was just over. I chose a major without math in it, and I moved on with my life. I hate it that math had to limit my prospects, I really do. But seriously, when you get a C in "math for liberal arts" after spending every day in the math lab, you have to just deal. Apparently my symptoms are very textbook, and a lot of math learning disabled individuals show abnormality or lesions in their parietal lobe, interesting, because the diagrams look very similar to the place from which I had a tumor removed.
So yeah, now it looks for 8 weeks I will be pretending I have any idea what I am talking about. In an 8th grade class room, in a mostly urban school. Seriously, if this was never the plot of a Chevy Chase movie, it should have been.
8th graders are notoriously more obnoxious and difficult than their younger peers, and this is not going to be pretty.

On my student teaching application, I listed Math as the subject I was "least interested" in student teaching. Apparently, this was how our department chose where to place us. I don't know if they had "Kindergarten Cop" in mind, or what. But seriously, there's no personal discovery to be found here- just my own personal hell!

Curveball #1!

I've not even started teaching yet and I've already got a real curveball! "Inclusion" is a special education term used to describe the process of providing special education students with the "least restrictive environment." This typically means that a special education student attends a "typical" class.
TN classrooms(and probably others) have found a way to circumvent this by dumping all of the special education students in a grade into one class. Teachers call this the "inclusion class." I find this practice totally abhorrent, as it is clearly a way to circumvent a law designed to help students.

Here's the curveball: of the 24 students in my class, 17 are special education.

It's not that I dread kids with special needs- doesn't bother me. It's just that there are people out there with an education in "special education" who might be a little better qualified than me to deal with this class.
So now I have two education assistants under me. So now I get to try my damnedest to be in charge of two grown men or women with no education, who I'm afraid will give me the "what do you know you are 24 and you don't have any kids" attitude.

Tommorrow.

I have meetings for the next two days from 10:00am to 4:00PM with my department. I know I'm excited.
Next Monday begins the official "student teaching experience." It's the capstone of my degree, it's pass-fail, and I'm totally terrified. Planning 7 hours of presentation a day is a little hard to get used to. Especially because I'll be working nights at UPS(part time).
I was not the most well behaved student in school, hence the title of the blog. Now it's my turn to see what it feels like to be the one in charge of little scoundrels like myself.
By the way, this is not going to be one of those "my service year teaching in the poor, dangerous, black inner city school system" blogs. For now, it looks like I'm in a school thats very diverse economically, racially, and culturally- and that's right where I want to be.