rubinc in nyc!

Sorry for not posting yesterday, the plan was to fly to Chicago after school and then post from there, but instead I got stuck sitting on the tarmac for three hours thanks to Chicago’s awesome weather. By the time I finally got in I decided sleep was more important.

Yesterday was pretty uneventful, except for getting a few presents from kids. My two favorites were the boy who quite bashfully gave me an (obviously plastic) necklace and earring set and proudly told me that “it’s real diamonds”, and the girl who gave me a stress ball with a card saying “I hope this helps you deal with our class!” Also, my Asperger’s kid gave me a hug, which I thought was pretty awesome.

And last but not least, I am officially sick of Brendan Fraser - or as Sidewinder calls him, “MY HOMEBOY FROM THE MUMMY!!”

Happy Holidays, and I’ll be back in 2010!

Not at school, at my apartment - it’s currently dark and cold, and I’m using a complicated web of extension cords from the one functioning outlet in my kitchen to power my router and a desk lamp, while trying to pack for winter break by the light of my cell phone. So this will be short.

Today and tomorrow I’m showing them Journey to the Center of the Earth, and having them keep track of how many accurate and inaccurate things happen in the movie based on our study of what is actually in the center of the Earth. It’s been pretty uneventful so far, except for the tedium of having to watch the first 45 minutes of the same movie four times in a row without ever seeing the end.

Also, I ran into a student after school when I stopped at the bodega for some groceries, and she was very taken aback - “But, Ms. Rubin! This is a Latino grocery store!” Yes, as evidenced by the very Hispanic Wheat Thins and peanut butter I was buying. It was almost as good as the kid last year who told me “you can’t be Jewish, you’re white!”

I found out of the weekend that two of my students are suspended until September 2010 for bringing a BB gun to school on Friday. I can’t say I’m sad to have seen the last of one of them, who constantly hits other kids, picks fights, and often refuses to even pick up a pencil. But the other kid, who apparently was the one holding the gun but not the one who brought it, has worked really hard and come a long way from September. He is very proud of his job grading Do Nows for his class, and once very seriously asked my how long before global warming destroys the Earth, because he didn’t want to have kids if they wouldn’t have somewhere to grow up. I’m crushed that he let himself get caught up in such a bad situation, that this will be on his record forever and probably destroy his chances of going to a good high school, and that I’ll likely never even see him again.

On a slightly lighter note, there was an enormous and really gross fly in our classroom today, and Krystofer, who is on the basketball team and often brags about his “quick hands,” impressed us all by swatting it out of midair, Obama-style. I just wish he hadn’t used a textbook.

We recently had a project funded on Donors Choose, and got a ceiling mounting kit for our classroom projector. This is awesome because our projector currently sits on a bulky cart, which takes up a bunch of space in the middle of the room and gets bumped every five seconds, which results in all the kids screaming “Fix it! Fix it! FIX IT!” every five seconds. Today I had them write thank you letters to the donor, and of all the reasons they came up with to be grateful my favorite was definitely “it will make learning from the Smart Board easy because certain students are DUMB and start to put their hands over the projector.”

However, the best letter overall came from a student with a pocket thesaurus:

Thank you Sir, you are a paragon of integrity. The projector was a problem. It was impossible to see and the Smart Board couldn’t take because of all the bumping. Now because of your kind deed we could move that big metal stand crowding the room. It is safe to walk around without getting in the way or bumping something. Thank you good sir, I say again.

I wish someone would call me a paragon of integrity.

On an unrelated note, when I was walking to the subway after school, I suddenly heard running feet coming up behind me and a little kid voice say “Okay lady, give me your bag!” I turned around to see one of my favorite kids, the uber-dorky and very far from puberty Edwin, grinning from ear to ear with his own cleverness. Then, just to make sure I wasn’t going to call the police on him, he said “Don’t worry, Ms. Rubin, I’m only joking. I didn’t use my deep voice because I didn’t want you to get scared.” What a cute way to end the week

One of my classes has decided that for Christmas they want to get my Bill Nye. As in, they want to assemble all the notes they’ve taken on his videos and send them to him along with my phone number, at which point he’ll be so impressed that he’ll call me and we’ll get married. I said that it sounded like they were just trying to get rid of me, to which one kid responded, “No, Miss! We just want you to get married and have a beautiful life!”

Then another kid commented that “It’s kind of weird how Bill Nye always has all those kids in his lab, is he doing experiments on them?” and ruined it.

However, my favorite kid quote from today was when I was telling them how global warming is threatening the habitats of certain species, and to drive the point home I showed them this picture:

They were all kind of sad, until one of my craziest students yelled out, “Of course polar bears are going extinct, how can they make more of themselves IF THEY’RE HUMPING ICE?!?!”

We had a special after school incentive trip today; we picked two kids from each class to bring to the Dave and Buster’s in Times Square, then to the tree at Rockefeller Center. It was a bit insane trying to drag two dozen kids through Times Square during rush hour, but fortunately we didn’t lose anyone and were able to have a fun time. It was funny because while we were at Dave and Buster’s the kids were running around like they were in heaven, playing all the games and earning tickets to buy candy, while the adults just sat at a table and watched the time slowly pass. Then when we got to the tree all the adults were oohing and aahing over how impressive it was, while all the kids were complaining that it was cold outside and they didn’t care about some stupid tree. At least each group got to do one thing they really enjoyed over the course of the trip.

Of course, my favorite part of the trip wasn’t the arcade or the tree, but my favorite part of any trip to Rockefeller Center - playing the 30 Rock music in my head and imagining myself as Liz Lemon. Liz Lemon with a large group of future talkative doormen with drinking problems.

I decided to do a lesson on extreme weather, thinking that if I explained how tornadoes/tsunamis/hurricanes actually happen it might calm some of my students’ 2012 fears. Big mistake. All I got all day long were variations of “BUT WHAT IF THERE IS A HURRICANE OF TORNADOES?!?!” and “WHAT ABOUT IF YOU HAVE TO GO TO HIGHER GROUND BECAUSE THERE’S A TSUNAMI BUT YOU ALSO HAVE TO STAY INSIDE BECAUSE THERE’S A BLIZZARD BUT YOU CAN’T BECAUSE A TORNADO CARRIED YOUR HOUSE AWAY, WHAT DO YOU DO?!?!?!”

Adding to the chaos was the fact that in the middle of lunch, the fire alarm went off. Usually fire drills are pre-scheduled, and if the alarm goes off unannounced it’s quickly followed by the Principal coming on the PA telling us to disregard it. But this time it went of for about a minute with no announcement, so we (the teachers I was having lunch with) started to leave. Then the office secretary came on the announcements to say disregard the alarm, only to have it go off again a minute later, accompanied by the office secretary telling us it was for real. I was beyond happy to not have had a class at the time, because the kids were off the walls during the evacuation. The 7th and 8th graders were in the cafeteria for the whole thing, and apparently they were screaming and jumping over tables. Anyway, apparently some construction near a fire box had mistakenly set the alarm off, and everything was fine. But the whole thing got the kids very hyped up, and they were unusually crazy for the rest of the day. Ugh.

I didn’t want to start unit four only to have it be cut in half by winter break, so I decided to do a week-long mini-unit on weather. Weather is supposed to be covered in sixth grade and is tested on the eighth grade state science test, but given that there is no sixth grade science teacher at my school the students obviously don’t do very well on that part of the test. Also, throughout the Dynamic Earth unit the kids asked me a lot of questions about the weather, so I figured it would be a good way to catch their interest while sneaking in some remediation.

Anyway, it did go pretty well today, minus one thing I hadn’t predicted: when I put all my pretty slides of weather systems and storm fronts on the SMARTboard and animatedly pointed out their various characteristics, I looked like a weathergirl. The kids couldn’t stop laughing and cracking jokes about me announcing a snow day or “handing it back to the news desk.” I guess I better embrace it, since I forecast that it will be like this all week.

Okay, I know I don’t usually post on the weekend, but look what just showed up in my inbox!

Subject: Happy First Day of Hannukah!

I might not be Jewish, but to pass on to one of my favourite teachers who’s Jewish. Happy First day OF Hanukkah!

I have noticed that my students like to whine for the sake of whining. Ms. L and I switch off between the lab and the classroom depending on which of us needs which room for the day’s lesson, so my students don’t always know which room they’ll be in on a given day. If I tell them that we’re going to the classroom, they whine because they don’t want to walk up the extra two flights of stairs to get there. If I tell them we’re going to the lab, they whine because they don’t like the desk setup in there and they think the room smells funny. It’s the exact same kids whining about the room every day, and when I say something like “you were unhappy with the classroom yesterday, shouldn’t you be happy we’re in the lab today?” they just whine more.

Similarly, I have one student who always whines about Bill Nye because he’s “mad corny.” I have her class for a double on Thursday, and I usually take the second period to show Bill Nye. When I was out yesterday, she emailed me to complain that “I missed Bill Nye because of you.”

I guess they whine because it gets them attention, and that theoretically they might stop if I never acknowledged it, but I don’t think that it’s humanly possible to ignore the persistent whine of a pubescent child.