rubinc in nyc!

Parent-Teacher Conferences

rubinc — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:28:39 +0000

I think my whining about parents yesterday upset the school gods, because I burnt my hand making cookies for today’s PTC bake sale and this morning a desk fell on my foot and it hurt

But on the bright side, one mom gave me a hug and a kiss when I showed her daughter her (quite high) grade, and another mom was chomping at the bit to meet “the teacher who inspired my daughter to be a scientist!” (That one was actually a little awkward, because she kept pushing her daughter to “tell Ms. Rubin how you really feel,” since she was shy at the meeting but apparently raves about me at home). I also made one of my shitty students cry when I read out loud the log I’ve been keeping of his ridiculous behaviors to his mom - is it bad that I can take such unbridled joy from the suffering of a child?

The highlight of the evening was definitely when I had a lull between parents, and one mom was having trouble getting through her conferences because her 20 month old daughter kept needing attention. I volunteered to watch her daughter for her, and end up getting to spend a good 15 minutes playing with the cutest baby of all time. Uterus envy!

Constant Flux

rubinc — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:11:40 +0000

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!

I Wish I Was Good at Sports

rubinc — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:14:45 +0000

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!

The Mystery Deepens

rubinc — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:48:21 +0000

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…

Catch 22

rubinc — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:18:22 +0000

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.

ARGH.

Stink

rubinc — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:14:10 +0000

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!

Spring!

rubinc — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:32:16 +0000

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!

Waste

rubinc — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:03:04 +0000

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.

Good Omen

rubinc — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:48:56 +0000

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

She missed three questions.

Holy crap.

Fake Out

rubinc — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:17:05 +0000

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!!”?