rubinc in nyc!

I called a student’s mom today at the number I’ve reached her at before, was answered by a feminine voice, and proceeded to address the person I was talking to as “Mrs. ___” for a good five minutes before the person stopped me to say, “This is actually Shatoya’s father.” I wanted to die.

On a less mortifying note, today was Twin Day, the first day of Spirit Week. A lot of the girls coordinated cutesy outfits with each other, and it was fun to see them so excited about it. But my absolute favorite was the fact that three of the boys from the bilingual class showed up in slacks, a dress shirt, and a tie so they could be twins with their homeroom teacher. It was adorable.

1. There was a big hullabaloo before school even started today, because after school (and off school grounds) yesterday a group of three seventh and eighth grade girls jumped and beat the crap out of another eighth grade girl - it was so bad that the police had to be called. I teach or have taught all four of the girls involved, so it was pretty bizarre to find out that two of my students will be absent for awhile because they are in police custody. It’s frustrating, because the girl who got jumped has been in our school since Kindergarten and has never been a problem. The three bullies have all transferred to our school in the past couple years, and have all been suspended multiple times for bullying and fighting. But the DOE’s policy about bullying is transfer the victim, not the aggressors - how ridiculous is that?? This girl has grown up in our school and hasn’t done anything wrong, and it’s like the want to punish her for being victimized. And these new girls, who the school has done everything they can with, get to stay and continue terrorizing weaker kids. The AP was saying that she hopes the victim’s parents go to the press or do something to draw attention to how unfair they are being treated, in the hopes that the bad publicity would convince the DOE to change their policy in this case.

2. We had a seventh grade town hall meeting during lunch today to talk about the incident after school yesterday, and also to explain next week’s “Spirit Week” schedule to the kids. I love town halls because they usually end up eating into the period after lunch, and also it’s much easier to bring the kids up from the auditorium than from the cafeteria (which is in the basement). However, when eighth period rolled around I noticed that a lot of the kids were unusually cranky and snappish, so I finally asked them what was up - their class had got to the cafeteria last, and didn’t get to eat lunch before having to go to the meeting! I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. I felt really bad for them, and wished I was one of those super-prepared teachers with a stash of granola bars or something. Oh well. I hope they all were able to get something to eat after school.

3. 7+ is officially starting on Monday! They pulled the dozen kids that will be in it at the end of the day to tell them about, and except for one girl who sobbed when she found out she no longer gets to eat lunch with her friends, most of them were really excited. Sidewinder was running around the yard after school pumping his fists in the air about the prospect of going to high school next year. I felt like running around and pumping my fists too, but for a slightly different reason…

4. I ended up catching the same train home as one of my all-time favorites from last year, and got to spend a while hearing all about his eighth grade year. I love how awesome this kid is and have really missed having him in my class this year, so it was great to get to chat and catch up with him for more than 30 seconds in the hallway. It was the best possible way to end the week

My sister is visiting me for a few days, and today she came to school with me. I was afraid that some kid would have a screaming meltdown and really embarrass me, but they actually went out of their way to be good and impress her! A few times some kid would start to act up, then the others would shut them down with “Be quiet, her sister is here!” I was pretty impressed.

The kids were endlessly amused by the fact that we are both Ms. Rubin, so I told them to call us “Ms Rubin 1″ and “Ms. Rubin 2,” which they loved. They also laughed themselves silly over the fact that they could refer to us collectively as “Ms. Rubins.” They wanted to know who was older, who was more fashionable, who would win in a fight… And the fact that she was even there was a Big Deal, as evidenced by the fact that after first period every class entered the room with “Is it true your sister is here?!?! We get to meet your sister?!” By the end of the day I even had kids that I taught last year stopping by just to see Ms. Rubin 2.

The other highlight of the day was when we were watching the Bill Nye on skin, and he said that it takes 200,000 frowns to make one wrinkle. One of the kids, who I’ve had a somewhat tumultuous relationship with but has been improving recently with lots of TLC, yelled out “No wonder Ms. Rubin doesn’t have any wrinkles, she’s always smiling!” I don’t think I’m always smiling, but I certainly was then

I realize I already whined yesterday about the scantron machine, but permit me one more thing to bitch about - the students have technology on the first floor, because that’s where the computer lab is, so if a class has technology after you you have to line them up and walk them down the stairs. I dutifully did this today after fifth period, as I always do, only to get to the lab and find it empty with the lights out. We stood there for a few minutes thinking maybe the technology teacher was running late, until another teacher passed by and told us he was absent today. I spent the next 20 minutes frantically sending a student back and forth to the office trying to figure out where I was supposed to take the class, while the remaining 29 became progressively louder and rowdier waiting in line. Finally someone from the office figured out that the sub was upstairs in my classroom waiting for the class, so we had to turn around and go right back to where we started. And that was how I spent half of my prep today. Would it really have been so hard for someone to tell me, or post a notice, or even announce on the PA that all technology classes are to be held in the regular classrooms today?

But, at least I had this waiting for me when I got home:

Now, I Have a question about the Human Body. How do they get the design of the body, the insides? They don’t actually open dead bodies up… Right? And can we go to The Human Body Museum ? Back on  to the main question,, how do they know the insides and the color of it, do they actually open the dead bodies up? I don’t get it :S

And at least the 7+ program is still happening! Whoopee!

Remember my epiphany about being able to access the school scantron last year? I have since become dependent on it for my system of grading tests and tracking student mastery of individual standards - each set of five questions covers one standard, so I can quickly look at each kid’s scantron and see their percent mastery of each standard by counting the red dots in each group of five questions. I can also easily get their overall grade, because the machine prints the total number correct at the bottom of each scantron.

So I had a huge tragedy today when I ran the scantrons from yesterday’s unit test through the machine, picked them up to do my data tracking, and saw - nothing! The scantron machine is out of ink! The machine is hooked up to a computer, which creates an spreadsheet of each kid’s answers and whether they were correct or not, so I spent all my preps trying to figure out if there was some way to easily manipulate that data into the form I wanted. I eventually gave up trying to fight with the very non-user-friendly scantron software, and resorted to grading the scantrons by hand with a red pen. It took two hours, and now I am very grumpy.

The 7+ Program of Amazingness hasn’t premiered yet, but it also hasn’t been cancelled. In fact, today they released the tentative new schedule that incorporates the program - the 7+ class will even be housed on a different floor and eat lunch on a different shift than the rest of the middle school! It seems too good to be true, so I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that this isn’t an elaborate and cruel practical joke the administration is playing on us.

At the end of last school year, my AP came up with a proposal to take 15 then-sixth-graders who had been held back at least once and continue to have behavior/academic issues and put them into a special class called “7+.” The class would be taught only by the most veteran teachers (including the AP himself) and would cover all of the 7th and 8th grade curricula, with the end goal of having those kids catch up on one of the years they missed. As a nice little side effect, those 15 kids - who also happen to be some of the most disruptive students in the grade - would not be in classes with the other students, and would graduate from our school a year earlier. Basically, it was the best plan ever, but because of all the budget cuts it ended up not being possible to staff it. Until…

Okay, so I’m actually not entirely sure what the “until” was, but some money and schedules got moved around, and God smiled down from Heaven and performed a divine miracle, and now the program is happening!! I’m trying not to get too excited because I’ve been burned before by awesome things that are supposed to happen and don’t, but at today’s faculty meeting both the AP and the Principal said it would be happening by the end of the week! Why would they both say it to the whole faculty if it wasn’t a sure thing, right? I really think I need to go sacrifice a lamb or something, because this is the best thing that has ever happened to me at my school. No more Sidewinder! No more Krystofer! No more boy-who-refuses-to-wear-his-pants-above-his-ankles-and-stop-breakdancing! No more scrapping fun lessons and activities for the 27 good students because 3 students are so explosively misbehaving! And I don’t even have to feel guilty about it, because those 15 students are still going to be receiving quality instruction, and are even getting a leg up on their chances of graduating high school!

I know there are still some rough students who aren’t in the program and will probably try to step up and fill the power vacuum left by their overaged peers, but seriously - if someone had asked me what I would do to have the worst-behaved 15 students removed from my class for the rest of the year, I think I would have offered a kidney. I cannot overstate how great this is.

Top three acts from the talent show today:

3. My identical twin girls from last year doing “All The Single Ladies,” in perfect unison the way that only identical twins can be.

2. Two fourth grade boys doing stand-up about our school who were as funny (”my teacher says she never punishes kids for things they don’t do, but she punishes me for not doing my homework!”) as they were adorable (one of them was wearing an argyle sweater and a brown corduroy blazer, which is the cutest thing ever on a person who doesn’t even come up to your waist).

1. A bunch of my most hyperactive seventh graders doing a hyperactive-yet-coordinated dance and looking absolutely ecstatic. It’s always nice to see kids in their element, and for a lot of kids that doesn’t happen in the classroom - I guess that’s why some of them can’t control the urge to bring their breakdancing/singing/rapping/stand-up comedy into class.

Completely unrelated to the talent show, two kids excitedly waved me over during class today to share “Ms. Rubin, we just noticed you’re always standing up!!” I said that most teachers spend the day on their feet, to which one responded, “But don’t you get tired? My legs hurt just thinking about it!” I actually do get tired of standing by the end of the day, and I don’t think it ever occurred to me that teachers don’t sit down during my 12 years of grade school. I guess this falls into the category of my kids’ uncanny ability to notice when I slightly change my hairstyle, despite being unable to remember the things I explicitly tell them a million times during class.

I was in a terrible mood today, since I had a coverage with my least favorite class (the one with Sidewinder) that gave me seven teaching periods in a row. I guess Sidewinder’s dad and his lizard have split again, as Sidewinder ripped the heating grate out of the wall, screamed at another kid that he was a “coon” and “smelled like skunk sex,” and knocked over like three desks. Also, over the past week there have been FIVE new kids added to the bilingual class, none of whom speak a word of English, putting the total enrollment well over the theoretical 30-kid cap.

But then I came home and two kids called me to make sure I am coming to see them in the talent show tomorrow, and my awesome sister did a beautiful job of translating my super long and boring unit test into Spanish. So I will try to focus on those things, and Sidewinder’s impending suspension, to get through to the weekend.

(Actually, this all happened yesterday, but I was too excited about Fossil Man to write about it then.)

I was lined up with a class in the hallway on the way to lunch, as was pretty much every other seventh and eighth grade teacher, when the fire alarm went off. This was pretty unusual, because they don’t have fire drills during lunch periods or in the transition time between periods, and this was during the transition time between lunch periods. The principal came on the PA and announced something, but since we were all in the hallway and all the classroom doors were closed and locked (last year some teachers had things stolen out of their classrooms by kids hanging back on the way to lunch) no one could hear what it was. We decided to play it safe and evacuate, and fortunately it turns out that that was what the principal’s announcement was telling us to do.

We ended up having to stand outside for quite a while, which was pretty miserable because since we had all been in the hallway no one had their coats on, and it was very cold. Also, because it happened at such an awkward transition time, a lot of the classes were mixed up, which was very stressful because teachers being accountable for their class’s whereabouts during a fire drill is Serious Business. The kids weren’t bad, but they were really agitated and whiney because of the combination of being cold, missing lunch, and being frantically shepherded around by anxious teachers.

We were let back in the building eventually (with only 15 minutes left for lunch, I don’t think all the kids even got to eat!), and kept pretty much in the dark about what had happened for the rest of the day. At the end of the day, I found out through the grapevine that a kid had actually pulled the fire alarm in the cafeteria! They have it narrowed down to a group of suspects, but I don’t think they’ve figured out who the specific kid responsible is. When they do… that kid is going to be the second most-in-trouble kid ever, after my two who brought in the BB gun.

And speaking of those two, something or other was negotiated at their hearing and they’re actually coming back in about a month. I can’t decide if my happiness to see the sweet one will be enough to outweigh the suckiness of the nasty one coming back.

I just wish it was longer.