rubinc in nyc!

Kristofer is 14 and in the 7th grade. When I was 14, I was a sophomore in high school. As part of a special “7+” program my school is piloting this year, Kristofer and a dozen other over-aged seventh graders are learning both 7th and 8th grade topics in the hopes that they can pass both sets of state tests in the spring and go straight to high school next year. Part of the program is that they have to really put in a strong effort (academically and behaviorally) in all their classes, as measured by the grade the teacher gives them at the end of each period on a tracking sheet. A “4″ is “perfect” and a “1″ is “unacceptable.”

I picked up Kristofer’s class from lunch today, and he had some trouble walking up the stairs without making noises and touching people, so I informed him as he entered the class that he was not on track to getting a “4″ for the period. I guess he decided that he might as well go all out, because he spent the rest of the period being as disruptive and disrespectful as possible - for example, he was loudly chewing gum, I asked him to spit it out, and he responded by blowing bubbles and popping them at me. He refused to sit down, he told another student he was going to “punch him in the face,” and he screamed “leave me alone, I don’t care!!” at me when I tried to talk to him. I considered the “2″ I gave him at the end of the period to be quite generous, but he absolutely flipped out when he saw it and started yelling “This is why I hate white teachers! This is why I hate white teachers!”

Calling me a racist is probably the thing my students do that frustrates me the most, because 99.9% it’s their accusation that is racist, not whatever I did. It’s not like a black teacher would have given Kristofer anything but a low behavior grade after his spectacular display of disrespect today, but because I did it he assumes it’s because I’m white - isn’t that the definition of racism?  Argh. Of course, trying to have that rational discussion with him did not go over well at all, because, as he put it (and I’m sure a lot of my students are on the same page), “racism is when a white person does something mean.” I know there’s still a lot of racism out there and I’m all for calling it out when you see it, but it drives me absolutely insane that my many of my students refuse to learn what it actually means.

It always cracks me up how my kids are often happily unaware of important topics like what unit we are in or when the next test is, but are incredibly sensitive to the most minute changes in my physical appearance. For instance, today almost a quarter of my students had no homework because they “didn’t notice” the assignment on the board last Friday (how they didn’t notice when I made them copy it into their planners and also gave them a worksheet is beyond me). Also today, I wore my hair down for the first time this school year, and almost every single kid had to comment on it - mostly charming things like “You look way better like that, Miss!” and “Woah, you got a man now or something??” Seriously, why is my hairstyle important enough for them to notice and comment on, but the lesson I’m giving isn’t?

And on another charming note, another teacher brought his 18 month old daughter in after school today, and I was playing with her in the yard in a Liz Lemonesque fit of baby craziness. A bunch of my current students saw me through the gate and squealed “Aww, Ms. Rubin, your baby is sooo cute! We love your baby!” I guess I’m old enough by Bronx standards to have a baby (or four…), but seriously? Do I really look like I’m old enough to have a toddler?

I was feeling kind of down on myself yesterday because of a couple of embarrassing teacher mistakes. First, the day before, John was constantly out of his seat and didn’t do any work, so I called his house and told his dad about his behavior. Pretty standard stuff, except the next day John came in and wouldn’t even look at me. I asked him what was wrong, and immediately felt like a huge bitch: “Miss, you called my house on my birthday, and they took all my presents back!” Oops. I mean, he shouldn’t have been acting like he did on his birthday, but had I known I would have at least waited a day to make the call. I guess I need to put all their birthdays on a calendar or something.

The other sad thing yesterday was I had a kid cry in class. Mark is a really tiny kid, one of the ones who is nowhere near puberty and could blend in quite well with the elementary schoolers. He’s also a little slow, although he tries really hard and is very sweet. Anyway, for some reason he had a ten dollar bill in his pocket, and somehow it fell out onto the floor. Sidewinder* saw it and picked it up, and Mark was afraid he was going to steal it so he tried to grab it back. In the process a little bit of the corner ripped off, and Mark, believing that his ten dollars was now worthless, burst into tears. Sidewinder seemed to feel bad about it, but his version of consolation was positioning his face an inch from Mark’s and screaming “THEY’LL STILL TAKE IT! THEY’LL STILL TAKE IT!” This scene activated the maternal instincts of all the girls in the class, who rushed over to Mark and tried to console him, while one got my tape and meticulously reconstructed the bill. It took him a good fifteen minutes to stop crying, and while it was endearing to see everyone be so nice to him (I was afraid they would make fun of him for crying and make things worse) the whole incident wasted like half of the period.

ANYWAY, those two stories are to lead up to my surprise today at several incidents that hinted that I may not be perceived as incompetent as I sometimes feel:

• Ms. S, the 7th grade social studies teacher, told me that during her class Dalasia told her she was her favorite teacher. Her friend said, “hey, you said Ms. Rubin was your favorite teacher,” and Dalasia said, “Oh yeah, sorry Ms. S. I do like her better.” The weird part is that Dalasia is kind of nasty in my class, and has already gotten in trouble with me a few times.
• Venus, while turning in her homework today, excitedly exclaimed “I did your homework, Miss! I only do yours, you give the best homework!” I really don’t know what that means, but I guess it’s good.
• While I was picking up one class from gym, Nadeera - a pretty popular kid from a different class that was also at gym - came up, put her arm around my shoulder, and addressed my class, “You all better treat my favorite teacher well, or there’s going to be problems.” It was weird in the same way as the Dalasia thing, in that Nadeera’s been in trouble in my class a few times already. Maybe she just hasn’t been in trouble with me as much as with other teachers?

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that at this time last year not a single student liked me, so I’m taking this as a sign of progress. It’s a nice way to end the week, and head into the three day weekend!

*So named because last year I saw him on the floor, screaming and kicking his feet with such ferocity that he was literally going in circles. He’s also the crotch-grabbing Meow Mix singer. He is insane.

Today was middle school curriculum night, when from 5 - 7 the parents can come in to meet their child’s teachers and learn about what to expect in seventh grade. Unlike last year’s rather dismal turnout of seven parents out of 120 seventh graders, this year we had a rather whopping twelve parents show up - double digits, woohoo! And of course those twelve have the best behaved and hardest working students in the grade, not the ones who should have their parents come in to find out what they’ve been up to in only the first three weeks of school.

Two kids got into a (non-physical) fight today, and while I’m not sure how it started it ended with one of them screaming “You’re just jealous because of my career in basketball! I’m in the NBA! I’m playing ball all over the world! Google my name, I’m famous! GOOGLE ME, BITCH!” I actually did google him when I got home, but he doesn’t actually have any hits - unless you count an eponymous NHL referee from the early 1990s. I like his style though, someday I hope to end an argument with “GOOGLE ME, BITCH!”

And in keeping with his desire to defy me at every turn, Caesar was an angel in class today and asked if he could stay after school to get help and make up work. He even made a point of holding the classroom door open for me, saying “ladies first.” It was surreal. I hope that by writing about his turnaround I won’t reverse it the way that my writing about his obstinacy yesterday seems to have done…

I love the fact that my day now starts with being hugged by little people, and that the “baddest” kid in first grade (so dubbed because he has a pierced ear) still sucks his thumb.

I do NOT love the new student who was recently transferred to my class out of self-contained sped because something or other in his IEP lapsed. He is an absolute mess, and unlike most of my difficult students, who at least have occasional redeeming moments, I have yet to have an exchange with him that doesn’t end with violent urges. Take, as a perfectly representative example, today.

The classroom Ms. L and I share has a single-occupancy bathroom attached to it, since it used to be a self-contained sped room. However, the lock is broken, so for obvious reasons we do not allow students to use it. In order to avoid any confusion or temptation, we keep our filing cabinet against the door, as well as a poster over the door/wall boundary (the side opposite the hinges, I don’t know what it’s called). It is completely unambiguous that that door is never to be opened.

So imagine my delight when I looked back to that corner and saw that Caesar, having already shoved the filing cabinet aside, is in the process of taking down our poster. I suppressed my urge to scream “What the Hell is wrong with you?!” and calmly went over and asked him to stop, which resulted in the following brain-melting conversation:

Caesar: Stop what? What am I doing?

Me: Do you see that we have a filing cabinet in front of this door? Do you think that means we ever open it?

Caesar: Hahaha, what did you say?

Me: Filing cabinet?

Caesar: Haha, that’s not a word! That’s a desk!

Me: No, this is a desk *points to desk* (in retrospect, I shouldn’t have even engaged that remark)

Caesar: No, that’s not a desk! That’s a desk! *points to filing cabinet*

Me: Alright, do you see that we have a piece of furniture in front of it?

Caesar: Haha, you said it was a filing cabinet! Now you say its furniture! You don’t know what it is!

Me: *digging fingernails into my palms* Caesar, you see that the door is blocked, why would you think it was okay to rearrange the classroom?

Caesar: It was an emergency!

Me: You just went to the bathroom 15 minutes ago, how could it be an emergency?

Caesar: I’m not scared of you! I’ll do what I want!

I finally gave up and sent him to the AP, which he was equally charming about (”Mr. M can’t touch me! I’m not scared of Mr. M! I’m gonna be even worse for you tomorrow!”). So now I’m filling out all the paperwork to refer him back to self-contained as fast as I can, but given my previous experiences with the process I think Ms. L will be lucky if she doesn’t have him in her class next year.

On the brighter side, I also had this conversation with a former student in the hallway today:

Jean: You look really nice today, Ms. Rubin!

Me: You mean I don’t look nice every day?

Jean: But I don’t get to see how pretty you are every day anymore! That’s the problem!

And I don’t give her grades anymore, so it wasn’t even (entirely) brown-nosing!

Today started out with me sitting down at a table of first-graders, only to have my neighbor throw herself onto me with a giant hug and kiss. Later investigation proved that she doesn’t even know my name, or why I’m in her classroom. I cannot get over how much I love this grade!

Today was kind of a weird day, because two of the seventh grade classes were on a field trip. We wanted to take the kids to a ropes course to build some trust and respect between them, but the place we wanted only does two classes at a time. So two homerooms and their teachers went today, and the other two (including me) will go next week. As a result, the two left-behind classes could not follow the regular four subject rotation, so I basically chilled with my bilingual class all day. I love those kids; at one point they started talking slightly louder than a whisper and I guess I looked annoyed, because they all started hushing each other with “Be quiet, you’re giving Ms. Rubin a headache!!” Also, one of them apparently went home and built her Rube Goldberg device last night; she came in today with a memory card containing a video of it. I didn’t have anything to play it with, but I’m bringing in my camera tomorrow and can’t wait to see it!

As fun as today was, it was kind of a waste in terms of actual instruction. It’s stuff like this, and the 37.5 minutes of small group instruction that is actually 25 minutes of entering the classroom and taking off jackets and 12 minutes of giving directions that never get carried out, that furthers my recently validated obsession with charter schools.

PS I owe a big shout out to my sister, for once again coming through at the last minute with her awesome Spanish skills to call a kid’s house and talk to parents for me!

In keeping with our current unit on energy and energy transformations, I decided to show my students this.

My intention was for them to write down all the types of energy that they saw, but they were too transfixed to do anything but stare slack-jawed. Then I showed them this.

And despite several yells of “that’s fake! that’s fake!” they were equally enthralled.The finale was having them design their own Rube Goldberg machines that used all the forms of energy we learned about and had at least five energy transformations. I was nervous about how it would go since I didn’t do this lesson last year, but they got reallly into it. I had kids using everything from dominoes and slinkies to live chickens and baseball players. I think it was the most excited I’ve seen students about an assignment ever; they were all begging for more time at the end, and also for us to actually build their designs. A few of them left vowing that they were going to go home and build their contraptions, now I’m sort of worried that I’ll be getting angry parent phone calls about destroyed kitchens and broken windows…

Thanks to my own awesome high school physics teacher for doing this lesson with me five years ago* and giving me the idea!

*Except he actually made us build our devices, which caused enough anxiety and hair-pulling for me to rather emphatically deny my students’ request to do the same.

Adorable aww:

Today’s Do Now: What classroom job are you interested in having this year?

Kid 1: I’m not interested in a job thanks (too young)

Kid 2: Teacher helper. I want to make the teacher job easier.

Pity aww:

Quiz: List, in order, the five sections of your science binder.

Kid: I don’t know (give me no points for this question).

Self-congratulatory aww:

Okay, so I can’t quote this one because I don’t have a copy of it, but one of my students from last year (Betty!) showed me her English report she was about to turn in on her favorite teacher - me! It was two typed, single-spaced pages about how I am the best teacher ever, and it actually made me cry a little bit. It is my goal to somehow acquire a copy, either from Betty or from her English teacher, so I can read it every time I have to resist the urge to strangle this new kid who apparently cannot resist his constant desire to grab his crotch, thrust it, and sing the Meow Mix song at the top of his lungs. I am not making this up.

I cannot overstate how much I love first grade. Today their teacher actually had to utter the phrase “Not now, Terrence, you have to wait for your hug.” I can’t imagine having to tell my students they have to wait to get to hug me. Also, one of them wasn’t sitting on the rug the right way, and all his neighbors started freaking out - frantically jabbing him and whispering “You’re breaking the rules! You’re breaking the rules!!” The typical seventh grade response to rule-breaking is to gleefully join in once the precedent has been set.

My students did have a few endearing moments today. The kid who said he was going to shank me the other day apologized, and said that  “in the hood, where I’m from, you know, shank means ‘hug,’ so I mean I was gonna hug you.” He’s actually a pretty charming kid, and for the rest of the day whenever he saw me he’d shoot me a grin and a friendly “I’ma shank you, Ms. Rubin!” When another teacher overheard and looked puzzled, he repeated his “shank means hug” explanation. So far there has been no actual hugging, however, except from my bizarrely affectionate former hellions.
I also got called “evil” today for my strict notebook grading policy, which I took as a compliment. And another kid found out my birthday is coming up and got all excited, then said “I’m gonna get you, I’m gonna get you…a…a…a calculator!” Yes, apparently all teacher would love nothing more than school supplies on their birthdays.

And on a bad yet hilariously dumb kid note, remember the girl whose mom was supposed to come in today? Well, the mom showed up as planned, only the kid wasn’t there. As in, she decided to skip school on a day that she knew her mother was coming in to check on her and would therefore know and immediately report that she was cutting. So now we are having an extra special meeting with her, her mom, and the administration tomorrow, instead of the pretty mild meeting we would have had today with just me. I love it.

Oh, lastly, a super crazy student I had last year got into fight with a new kid who showed up today, as far as we can tell on the sole basis that new kid has the same name as him. So stay away from me, alternate Ms. Rubin, or I will beat you up!

Many veteran teachers informed me that all of my students from last year would love me this year, no matter how we actually got along in class. I refused to believe that students like Yenesey, Larissa, Tareque, and my two on-trial-for-assault 16 year olds, would ever be in that category, but apparently this is a parallel universe and suddenly all of my former students do actually like me. It is extremely bizarre to have kids who cursed me out multiple times last year run up and give me hugs, or tell me that they miss me. I can’t even walk into wherever Ms. L is teaching to get something, otherwise they all have to frantically wave and yell “Hi, Ms. Rubin!!” I’ve even had kids who absolutely hated me last year tell me they wished I was still their science teacher, but since Ms. L and I are basically the same teacher I assume that it’s because she is still actively disciplining them and anything I did to them is a hazy memory. Ms. L actually showed me a really funny Do Now from one of my less-than-lovable alums that demonstrates our similarity nicely:

Prompt: What is your favorite subject of 8th grade so far and why?

So far I like science because my teacher reminds me of my science teacher from last year, Ms. Rubin, who I liked. I secretly think she and Ms. L are sisters.

An unrelated, but also bizarre, experience: I called a kid’s mom about constant talking just so the kid would know that I’m willing to call home, and got the response of “Okay, what time do you want me to come in tomorrow?” I tried to tell her that I didn’t think a parent meeting was really necessary this early in the year, but she insisted. I decided to take advantage of the situation and have her come in before her daughter’s period ends, so all the other kids can see that I make parents come in and be intimidated accordingly. Someone has to be the example…