rubinc in nyc!

Today was picture day, and just like last year I spent a hellacious forty-five minutes in an auditorium full of picture-frenzied seventh graders wishing I had something to gouge my ear drums out with. Two students (including the Sidewinder) couldn’t even be photographed, because they refused to take off their hats. And now one of my classes is a lesson behind the other three, which always drives me and my OCD scheduling exceptionally crazy.

I really don’t know what to make of the Sidewinder. 99% of the time I absolutely despise him and everything about him, but every now and then I get a brief glimpse into his inner workings and feel kind of bad for him. Like today, his class got to my classroom with about 10 minutes left in the period because of the picture day craziness, so I just put on “The Future is Wild” to give them something to do before having to shove them out the door. He got really excited, and started yelling “I LOVE THIS MOVIE! I LOVE THE ANIMALS! I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!” Except, he literally could not control his excitement, and ended up having to sit in the hallway for the video, because no one could hear it over his shrieks of delight. I really feel like that is not normal for a mentally/emotionally healthy kid his age. I guess I should save all my rage not for him, but for his delinquent mother who - despite the fact that every single teacher he’s had since kindergarten has submitted him for an evaluation - refuses to acknowledge he needs any extra help or counseling.

In celebration of Thanksgiving eve, I gave my kids a quasi-break and showed them The Future Is Wild movie that was such a hit last year. As expected, they loved it; also as expected, they could not restrain themselves from screaming out “That looks like [name of classmate]!” every time a new animal came on. At least no one got in a fight or threw paper balls, so I’ll take what I can get.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

He really does, because they are so enraptured by his antics that they don’t even think of doing any of the crazy stuff they try during regular lessons, and since I have them take notes on him they actually learn quite a lot (I’ve had it happen more than once that a kid will surprise me with knowing something I never taught them, only to have them tell me “I learned it from Bill Nye, duh!”). He also seems to inspire them to say the funniest things. Today we watched the one on the Earth’s crust, and for one segment Bill was digging in the ground very energetically. In more than one class I had a kid ask “Why is he stabbing the Earth?!? You should love the Earth!” There was also a part where a girl is speaking about the Earth in fast forward, and again I had multiple students exclaim “She sounds like Ms. Rubin!!”

The other interesting student comment from today was when a few kids were shoving each other on the stairs, and I got frustrated and yelled “All you have to do is keep your hands to yourself! You’re in seventh grade, it’s not that hard!” One kid, in a very sincere and not smartass way, said, “Actually, Ms. Rubin, for us it is hard.” On the one hand she made me feel a little bad for losing my cool and being so snippy, but on the other hand I really don’t think it is an unreasonably high expectation for seventh graders to be able to walk up stairs without touching each other.

Today was a bit frenzied because it was the first day of our SQR (school quality review). All these fancy high up DOE people come in to observe classrooms, interview kids, and generally send everyone into a panic. I got observed last year and it was pretty nerve-wracking, thankfully this year they’re observing Ms. L instead

The only funny thing that happened today was that now, in addition to 2012, my students have started to panic over the looming “Black Friday.” I guess they’ve heard it referred to enough to infer that it is something to be feared, but not enough to realize it only has to do with shopping.

First and foremost, the notorious Caesar has officially moved to Brooklyn and been removed from our school’s register! Apparently he actually was living in Brooklyn with his mother for awhile, but commuting to our school (and only showing up half of the time). His family finally switched his enrollment to a closer school, so I hope he shows up there enough to actually learn something. First Lauper, now Caesar, if only the Sidewinder’s family would get out of town then the seventh grade would be just about perfect.

My next favorite thing that happened today was when there was a silent moment in class, and a kid decided to break it by saying “cricket! cricket!”

My third favorite was a kid who I found out thinks “oh my goodness” is actually “oh my gooseness,” since that’s what she said aloud and refused to believe my attempts to convince her otherwise.

And last but not least, it’s Friday! Happy weekend!

A week ago today, the lovely Ms. L got a rather nasty email from a student:

lol Ms. L you are an ugly teacher you are a fukin bitch

The email came from the account of Abdul, a student who never so much as sets a toe out of line, so we doubted it was from him. The next day my AP cornered him, showed him the email, and asked who else knows his password. Abdul basically peed himself, and instantly gave up the name of Saeed, a somewhat nasty kid who had been mad at Ms. L on the day in question over a low paycheck. When we asked Saeed if he knew anyone else’s email password, he freaked out and asked, “WHY WOULD I SEND EMAILS FROM SOMEONE ELSE’S ACCOUNT?!?!” So, he did it.

Anyways, we decided to have some fun with the situation. We looked up Saeed’s address, and put the Google streetview picture of his apartment building up on a SMARTboard. We also got some latex gloves and tweezers from the science lab, printed out a copy of the email, and put it in a manila envelope labeled in giant letters, “CONFIDENTIAL.” With the stage set, we called Saeed up at lunch time and staged our own little courtroom scene. We started by asking him if the picture on the board looked familiar, since we had traced the origin of the offending message to an IP address in that building. The climax was when my AP used the tweezers to remove the email from the CONFIDENTIAL envelope and confront Saeed with it. We were all biting our lips to keep from laughing.
Despite all of our theatrics, Saeed managed to last the entire lunch period without cracking. Disappointed, the teachers had to go pick up our classes from the cafeteria while my AP kept working on Saeed. About halfway through the next period, however, he poked his head into my classroom to let me know “Mission accomplished.” Apparently Saeed will be joining us again at lunch tomorrow, to apologize to Ms. L and all of us for wasting our time by lying to us for an hour.

I wish I knew how to type the Law and Order “dun dun” noise.

I have a handful of students who fervently believe that the world is going to end in 2012, and over half of all my students are at least somewhat nervous about the possibility. I had several students who asked me about the world ending last year, based on vague urban legends they had heard about “some ancient tribe predicting it will end in a few years” - I’m guessing they mean the Mayans? But this year, thanks to the advertising onslaught for the movie “2012,” it is an ever-present concern for many of the kids in my classroom, who seem to think that the movie is some sort of documentary.

The problem has become even more pronounced now that we are on the Earth Science unit, because basically every time I introduce them to some new feature of the Earth, some kid calls out “IS THAT THE PART THAT IS GOING TO KILL US ALL IN 2012?!?!” and all the others start to freak out about it. I really don’t know what to do, because despite my constant reassurances that 2012 is just a made-up movie and that as far as we know the Earth is fine, a lot of them seem to genuinely believe we are on the verge of Armageddon. Stupid movie advertisers.

I don’t even want to think about what it will be like to teach this unit in 2012…

The second day of PTC is in the afternoon, so it’s only a half-day of school for the kids. I guess half-days are better than regular days in that the kids are only there for three and a half hours, but its pretty exhausting (and basically pointless) to hurtle through the schedule in double time (in order for the day to count, all the kids have to get lunch; we basically do the regular schedule in fast forward). It’s very stressful shoving kids in and out of classrooms every twenty-five minutes, not to mention trying to get them to do anything productive while they’re in there.

No conference was quite as dramatic as yesterday’s menstrual sleuthing, but one mom did offer to come and sit with her son every day if he couldn’t stop talking without her help. Another mom, who has a ridiculously nice daughter, turned out to be pretty ridiculously nice herself - every compliment I gave her kid she turned right back around to me (”she’s only doing all her work because you inspire her“), and she began and ended by earnestly shaking my hand and telling me how thankful she is that I “work so hard to teach my daughter.” When she asked me if there was anything she could do to help her daughter, I wanted to ask her to go to a few other kids’ houses and start raising them too.

Today was the first day of parent teacher conferences, which was nice because it was an excuse to not have to go to grad school. I’m kind of exhausted from smiling and shaking hands with thirty families, though, so this will be short.

The happy highlight was telling one mom that I had “nothing but good things” to say about her amazing daughter, who got a 97 in my class on her report card, and the mom crying because she was so happy.

The hilarious highlight was telling a mom that her daughter cut my class to go hang out in the bathroom, the girl defending herself by saying she had a “feminine emergency” and didn’t have time to get my permission, and the mom calling her daughter’s bluff by taking her into the bathroom to inspect her panties and check if she was actually having her period. Awesome.

The lowlight was actually after the conferences, when I was on the subway platform near school waiting for the train. A guy who looked to be in his late teens or early twenties was there with a two or three year old girl, who was crying about something the way that little kids do. The dad (I’m guessing, though he could be a brother or something) kept telling the girl “shut up! shut up already!” and “cut it out! stop crying!”, and when she didn’t stop (because she’s a little kid, and that’s what little kids do) he got right in her face and started yelling at her to “shut the fuck up already!!” It was painful to watch, especially knowing that in about ten years she’ll be in someone’s seventh grade class telling her neighbor to “shut the fuck up already!!” when they annoy her.

I intercepted an awesome note today, it was a paper that had made it almost all the way around the room and each kid had written their AIM on it. I really, really wish it would not be unethical for me to post those AIMs on here, because I cannot even come close to imitating them the way I usually do with pseudonyms. I have never seen so many crazy spellings, alternating capital and lowercase letters, and gratuitous z’s in my life.

Don’t be too disappointed, though, because I got an even better piece of paper later in the day. I have a student who as a running joke says that I am “evil,” for doing things like giving homework and making him sit at a desk. He’s a little bit crazy, but in general I like him. Today he gave me probably the most awesome student drawing of all time: