rubinc in nyc!

It seems like this year more than last I’ve had more kids moving in and out of my classes. I’m not exactly complaining - it was a godsend that both Lauper and Caesar moved away early in the year (and rumor is that Darling’s family may be moving soon too!) - but it is sort of difficult to deal with the kids that show up in the middle of the year. There have been five new kids in the bilingual class that don’t speak a word of English, as well as two new non-English-speaking kids in the first grade class, all in the past month or so. I’ve also had a few kids that I liked move away, and just today found out that one of the nicer kids is moving to California over the upcoming spring break. And in addition to the kids who move, there are kids whose families pull them out of school for extended periods of time for vacations (I had a set of twins miss six weeks to go hang out in DR, they were the most egregious).

I just find it hard to understand the reasoning of parents who think it’s okay to pull their kids out of school for a month for vacation, or to move (sometimes more than once) in the middle of the school year. I understand that not every move is 100% voluntary (the family going to California is going to move in with another branch of the family, because they can no longer afford to live here independently), but… so many parents claim that their child’s education is their top priority, but then they yank them out of school to stay home and be free daycare for younger siblings, switch their school multiple times in one year, and can’t even be bothered to make sure they’re doing homework.

I guess if I was a better TFAer I’d find some way to get the parents more invested in doing their job, but I’m getting tired of calling houses every day just to be fed a bunch of excuses for why a kid can’t be bothered to do work… Ugh. I need to get over this anti-parent funk, because unfortunately tomorrow is parent-teacher conferences!

Today was another Staff vs. Students after school competition - this time it was rugby. I got a lot of vicarious enjoyment watching other teachers tackle some of my least favorite kids, but I have to say that I wish I was competent enough at athletics to get in on the action myself. Unfortunately, given my lack of hand-eye coordination and the fact that I’m smaller than many of my students, I know I would end up getting tackled instead of the other way around. Sigh.

Two weeks until spring break!

Upon arriving at school today, we found that the godawful stench was gone from the math teacher’s room! However, it had appeared in full force in the English teacher’s room next door. So maybe the custodians somehow managed to push the elusive corpse out of one area of ventilation and into another? Or maybe the decomposing thing isn’t actually entirely dead, and is doing some sort of death crawl through the fourth floor heating system? My room is on the other side of the hall from the two that have been affected so far, so I’m hoping that whatever mechanism it’s traveling by can’t cross hallways…

I can’t write a DonorsChoose field trip grant to go to Bodies until I have a confirmed reservation to go there.
I can’t make a reservation at Bodies until I can pay for all the tickets ahead of time.

Not much to report today, except that something apparently curled up and died in a top secret location in the seventh grade math teacher’s classroom. He’d been complaining about the smell for a few days, but the custodians hadn’t been able to find anything and told him not to worry about it. Today, however, the stench was so bad it was permeating the hallway and leaking into the neighboring classrooms, so they could no longer ignore the fact that something is decomposing in there. We ended up having to shuffle around the schedule so that he could teach his classes in the science lab for the day (it’s a very bizarre feeling seeing someone else teach in your room…sort of like having someone else cook in your kitchen). When I went home at the end of the day the custodians still hadn’t found the carcass, and were starting to dismantle the radiator in his room… here’s hoping they find the body before we start having to evacuating adjacent classrooms!

It’s amazing how much difference nice weather can make. I had my second scissor-fight in as many years today and was in a foul mood over it, until I stepped outside at the end of the day and was greeted by the most awesome spring weather ever. After the long, harsh, two-snow-day winter, it is so nice to wake up when it’s light outside, be able to leave my building without a parka and snow boots, and have it still be light outside when I get home after work.

Adding to my cheery outlook is my recent realization that there are less than four months left in the school year - I’m just over 80% done with my TFA commitment. Four months isn’t entirely trivial, but… June 28 here I come!

Today one of the office ladies delivered six enormous (like, as big as a wall) periodic tables to me and Ms. L. Apparently there was some money set aside for science, and some random office person or administrator decided that was the best way to spend it.

I have to buy pencils for my kids, but whatever… six extra periodic tables is cool. The two we already have were getting pretty worn out from all the looking at them.

Miranda took the math section of a practice ACT at lunch today.

She missed three questions.

Holy crap.

You know how middle schoolers are like lemmings, except more susceptible to peer pressure? And remember how last year the trend of piercing the skin under your lip to create the impression of perpetually having food on your face spread like wildfire at my school? So imagine my alarm when six girls showed up to first period with matching tongue studs. Six! I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how they all simultaneously got their parents’ approval and/or convinced the tongue piercing people that they were over 18. Thankfully at the end of the day they revealed that the piercings were actually magnetic (who even knew they made magnetic tongue studs?), and they weren’t as ridiculously dumb as I had first thought.

Speaking of fake things, my kids are obsessed with identifying any and all movie trickery - such that any time we watch a video I have to stop at least three times to deal with kids screaming “THAT’S SO FAKE!!” It is beyond annoying, because 9 times out of 10 they’re screaming about something that is actually real (like Bill Nye sucking the air out of a bell jar and the candle in it going out), and the tenth time they’re screaming about something that is intentionally super-obviously fake, for example:

Do they really think that anyone would mistake this for real if they didn’t scream “PHOTOSHOPPED!!”?

I stayed after school today to watch the Shawshank Redemption with Miranda today, and man that movie is awesome. I think the part where the warden throws the rock at the poster gets better every time I see it… Miranda loved it too, she told me it reminded her of a book she read once, “The Count of Monte Cristo, have you ever read it?”

I am super excited on the Miranda front, because for awhile now I have been working to get her set up with the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. It’s a really great program for gifted middle schoolers, where they can take online classes during the year and spend the summer living on a college campus and taking classes. I participated in it as a young nerdlet, and spent one summer during college working at the summer program as an RA. It’s a great opportunity for smart kids to get to do work that actually challenges them, but I think the most important part is meeting other smart kids over the summer and finding out that you’re actually not an alien species - something that is even less obvious to Miranda than it was to me in middle school, given her surroundings.

Anyways, it’s been kinda tricky figuring out the financial aid, and it didn’t look like we’d be able to get her registered to take the qualifying test before the June test date, which would be too late for her to go there this summer. But I just talked to the CTY outreach guy on the phone today, and he said that they’re having a special extra test day March 20, and Miranda can take it then! As long as she scores well enough, she could go to the program this summer!

So we’re going to spend every lunch period between now and March 20 doing ACT practice tests, eee! I know that Miranda is definitely smart enough to excel in the program, my only worry is that I know urban students tend to not do very well on standardized tests. Only thirteen school days to get ready, wish us luck!