The Real MVP

To my immune system:

Thank you for not giving up on me and for keeping me from getting that nasty 48 hour flu that literally everyone else around here is getting, because the only thing worse than writing sub plans, is writing sub plans when you're dying.  

Have you heard the figure of speech "bouncing off the walls"?

Teaching in a junior high has shown me that it's not just a figure of speech. My kids are literally bouncing off the walls with excitement for Christmas break.  How many days until summer?

That Time I Couldn't Believe What Came Out of My Mouth

I know what you're thinking and no, I didn't swear again.

There have been countless days where I just have to shake my head at myself and think "I cannot believe that came out of your mouth" because of the extreme ridiculousness that happens in my classroom.  Here is one example:

Last year I had a particularly hellish class (there's always one) that liked to sag their pants. Typically I don't say anything about dress code violations because it makes me uncomfortable, but today was a bit different.  I honestly can't even remember how it happened, but the guys were joking about their sagging pants and trying to see who could get their pants the lowest and then suddenly there were pants hitting the floor.  I shut it down real quick, but I had to say "The next person who pulls down their pants in class is going straight to the office."

Why is that even a thing that needs to be said?

Finding notes on the floor is my favorite thing. (3)

"So are you gonna get revenge? Does he have a hot brother, cousin or dad (jk)? I would tell you to makeout with some guy infront of him but I dont want you to get introuble."

How I feel when students raise their hands during independent practice:

I'm good with it.

If you ever want to lose all of your faith in humanity, have 9th grade students write difficult words like “satisfied”.  

I had my students write the sentence “I am satisfied (or unsatisfied) with my current grade because…”

They get points for creativity for sure. Here are some of the versions of “satisfied” that I got:

saticfid

staticfyd

satasfid

satisphide

satisfiete

sadify

sadifide

Some of the wiser students just avoided the word all together and told me “I’m good with it.”

If You Give a Kid a Paper -by Every Teacher of Teenagers

If you give a kid a paper and you tell him not to write on it, he will draw penises all over it.

The end.

Today I nearly had a heart attack

when one of my students started running straight for a wall and then ran up the wall and did one of those wall flips.

He looked like this:

I looked like this:

Teenagers say the darndest things (5).

"Ms. teacher, don't you think it's ridiculous that I got grounded for telling my mom that she sounds like a squirrel when she yells at me?"

Teenagers say the darndest things (4).

"Shut up bitches! *GASP* I'm SO sorry Ms. Teacher, it just slipped out."

I totally understand.

That Time We All Went "Au Natural"

The health classes were learning about natural beauty and the health teacher challenged the entire school to go "au natural" yesterday, meaning no make up, only simple hairstyles, and simple clothing. You can imagine what a challenge this was for a junior high school population. The interesting thing is that most girls didn't do it. They just were incapable of coming to school without make up on.  The other interesting thing is that I was one of those who couldn't do it. I tried, but when it came right down to it I was not comfortable enough to walk out of my house without make up on. I kept asking myself what the issue was and who I was trying to impress at the junior high, but I just couldn't talk myself into it. What does that say about me and also our society?

The feminist in me was also pretty frustrated that the boys looked exactly the same as they do on any other day.  This is a difficult world to be a woman in, where we literally have to wear "masks" every day.

I don't know if this qualifies as one of the struggles of teaching, but it's a struggle in my life and I'm a teacher so I'm posting it.

How I feel when I come to school and find out my projector lamp burned out:

It's like a piece of me died. I don't even know who I am without a projector.

Teenagers say the darnedest things (3).

"Yesterday I stepped on my own finger.  I was leaning down to pick up something and just took a step and stomped right on my finger."

This is creepy but also really accurate of how my feet feel by Friday afternoon.

That Time I Subbed for the PE Class

My first hour is prep which is a little rough because anytime a teacher calls in sick at the last second and the office can't find a sub immediately, I get asked to cover their first hour. Yesterday I was covering for a girls PE class, which was something new for me for sure.

It started out okay, I took roll, they did their warm ups, I split them into teams, they started playing basketball.  About half way through class a girl slips on her shoelaces and crashes to the floor. It was obviously not a bad fall, but still an embarrassing one (because everything is mortifying in junior high) so I watched her to be sure she would shake it off okay.

She didn't.

She let out this ear piercing WAIL and then launched into full blown sobbing. As I run over to her I am thinking in my head "Great job, you sub for the PE class and you break a girl." She is literally thrashing on the ground when I reach her and I ask her what hurts. "My back! I think I broke my back!" I quickly check her, no signs of broken things, and at this point I'm pretty sure that anyone who is actually injured isn't going to be thrashing around that much anyway. I look around at the other girls trying to gauge if this is the usual in their PE class or if they're concerned. Most of the girls paused for just a second and then carried on with their games so I'm guessing this girl "breaks her back" on the regular. I help her up and she limps her way over to the bleachers (so, it was her leg that hurt?).  I tell her that I'm pretty sure people with broken backs can't walk and ask her if the pain is going away. She is still literally wailing and she says no and tells me (between sobs) "My hip is broken!".  Again I reassure her that people with broken hips can't walk, but we'll call her mom anyway.

The "broken" girl wouldn't walk to the office ("I need a wheel chair.") so I had to send another girl down to the office to tell someone there that a girl got hurt in PE. (While she was gone broken girl started massaging her arm and telling me "I know my arm is broken, I heard a crack.") I don't know what the girl said to the office, but the secretary came running down to the gym in a panic. When she got there she must have recognized the girl from previous injuries because she just said "Oh". She got the girl to (fake)hobble to the office and the rest of the class went on without incident.

Sometimes I wonder why I am a math teacher, but now I can say "At least I don't teach PE".

Teenagers say the darnedest things (2).

"Stop flicking my adam's apple! It's very sensitive."

Woops.

I accidentally left the windows in my classroom open last night so if you don't hear from me later it's because I froze to death.

Professional Development

A lot of teachers complain about having to go to professional development. They say it's boring and a waste of time. They are probably right but here is what I know: it's way easier than teaching.

I am supposed to be at a training right now. I put in my absence and requested a sub literally a month ago. No subs will fill it because subs don't want to teach at the junior high and subs don't want to teach math.  Other teachers at my school put in their subs a week ago and got their sub jobs filled. Not cool man. Everyone got an email yesterday explaining a little bit about the training. They don't have to be there until 8am (one hour after I was here this morning), they get an hour and half for lunch (an hour and 10 minutes longer than my lunch is today), and they're done at 3 (half an hour before I am allowed to leave). And the training is supposed to last two days.  That sounds like a lovely vacation. I want to goooooo.

Past students make me sad.

On the first day of my second year of teaching I found out one of my students from last year died that morning. The teacher who told me said "It's always so hard when one of them dies."  That wasn't something I had thought to worry about. I had spent all summer worrying that I didn't actually like teaching that much, I just liked that particular group of students I had my first year. I worried that the next group would be as annoying as people say junior high students are and we wouldn't get along and teaching them would be awful and tedious. I didn't worry that the students I loved so much would die.

Yesterday I found out that one of my past students is missing. He got sent to rehab and he escaped and ran away and no one knows where he is. He was a handful for sure. He's the one that we would all talk about in the faculty room and sing praises if he ever decided to be absent, but we were secretly sad on the inside because we know his home life is awful and he just needs to be loved. 15 is too young to be missing.

Why are some students' lives so sad?

I got a kid suspended yesterday.

So that's how my Monday went.

To be fair it wasn't TOTALLY my fault. In teaching we talk a lot about students who are "can't's" and students who are "won't's".  This kid is definitely a "can't". He can't sit down, he can't do his work, he can't stop talking, he can't stop singing, he can't stop whistling, he can't stop yelling, he can't function unless every single student has their attention on him.  He gets kicked out of my class more often than he lasts in it because I can't teach with that kind of a distraction going on. Finally yesterday I tried to kick him out (we have a system where disruptive students get sent to sit in another teacher's room) and he got mad for getting kicked out so often and refused to go and said he was going to the office instead (which is hilarious because as if the office is going to be like "You're right man, that was so unfair of your teacher to kick you out. You just march right back there and tell her to straighten up.") and was apparently a punk to them too (surprise, surprise) so he got suspended.

I would be completely lying if I said I wasn't completely excited to teach today without having to deal with him.

Update: In a very strange and awful turn of events the suspended student showed up for school today and since the administration was all gone at meetings the secretary didn't know what to do with him so she sent him to my class for In School Suspension (ISS) all day.  What fresh hell?!

He made this to flick little paper footballs through, which from a STEM perspective is actually pretty impressive, but from a do-your-math perspective is not so great.

We survived, but by the time 6th hour came around both of us were sick of each other.  Mein leben.

Happy Halloween!

"Oh Ms. Teacher, only you could pull off those tights."
Rough Translation: "You're a witch."


Male Student: Ms. Teacher, I LOVE your legs.
Class: *cricket cricket*
Male Student: I meant your tights!

Finding notes on the floor is my favorite thing. (2)

"I know that you can't help it, (I can't either), but you're still so sexy, ;) and always will be!"

How I feel now that I don't have lunch duty (for at least a term):

I also do really luxurious things like walk to the drinking fountain on the other side of the school that is cold and doesn't taste like rust to fill up my water bottle. 

Career Day

We had a career day last week. Students could come to school "dressed for success" which means dressed in the clothes of whatever future career they wanted.  There were lots of interesting careers. Most students just wore their dad's oil field hat (because actually getting to wear hats is the best thing that can happen to a junior high student).

One of my very best honors students came dressed in her mom's shirt from Denny's. I asked her if she wanted to be a waitress when she grows up and she said "Maybe".  This girl is smart. She understands the math more quickly than most of my students. She needs to go to college and be an engineer. More than likely she'll get a job working at Denny's as soon as she's old enough and then never even consider going to college because no one she knows went to college and college is expensive so why would she?

How do you tell a student whose parents never went to college that they are too good to not go to college?

Finding notes on the floor is my favorite thing.

I pretend to not care about the random drama going on in this school, but the truth is that I love every bit of it. It's like a really pathetic soap opera.

"I didnt know what love was until I met u bae PLZ dont tell Kaylee were together shell ruin it."

Are strange gifts better than no gifts?

The student who drew me this picture said on his way in to class "I was bored in my last class so I drew you a picture of a guy with a cone head."

It doesn't count as propaganda if it's true, right?

Actual words that came out of my mouth yesterday: "People who oppose the common core only oppose it because they are uneducated about the common core."

That was after a whole-class discussion about why we take tests and one student said "I hate the common core."

It's a good thing no one reads this blog or else I might have haters.

Nobody listens to anything I say.

I explain the directions for the day. I write the directions on the board. I explain the directions again. I have them turn to their partners and answer questions about the directions (like "What do we do with our tests when we're done with them?" "What voice level is appropriate?" etc).  I ask individual students questions about the directions. I read the directions aloud one more time.

I still have 7 kids per class try to hand their test to me when they finish it instead of leaving it on their desks like I asked.

What test day feels like to me:

No teaching for the entire day? Yes please!

That Time I Swore in Class

*this blog contains language that may be inappropriate for children, unless those children go to a junior high, and then the language is actually pretty tame*

I would be lying if I said I don't have a bit of a potty mouth.  I feel like teaching junior high makes it so there is a constant chorus of "What the hell?!" ringing in my brain. I never know why the crazy shenanigans are happening at any given moment in my class, but for the most part I try to keep my swearing on the inside of my brain.

One day we had a lock down drill. It was actually super scary.  They always tell us when to expect fire drills but we hadn't heard anything about a lock down. My brain started thinking about how I was going to have to sacrifice myself to save these kids when some crazed gunman came barging into the room... It was not a good experience.

When the speakers came on and announced that we were in a lock down I rushed my kids to the back corner of the classroom and hushed them. I was trying really hard to look like I wasn't losing my cool.  After about 10 minutes of silence one of my students timidly asked "Ms. Teacher, where is Michael?" I blinked at that student for a second and then realized in a panic that Michael had taken the hall pass and was somewhere roaming the halls during the terrifying lock down. I wish I could say that I handled this situation with a calm and collected suaveness.  Here's how I actually handled the situation: by yelling "SHIT!"

It's a good thing that this  was just a lock down drill and not an actual lock down because my class lost it.  "DID YOU JUST SWEAR?!" "Oh my gosh, I am texting everyone I know immediately." "I didn't think you were the type of teacher that swears." "My mom makes me pay her a dollar when I say that word." "I have so much more respect for you now."

I didn't know what to do about Michael so I army-crawled my way over to my desk and typed a quick email to the administration explaining that I lost a student.  Don't worry, Michael came back after the lock down ended. He said he spent the lock down in another teacher's room and they ate candy and played on their phones.  Everyone told Michael that even though he got candy and played on his phone he missed out because they got to hear the teacher swear.

Eventually I just started pretending like the swearing incident never occurred. Anytime one of my students brought it up (which happened a lot) I would gasp, all horrified, and say "I would NEVER speak with that kind of language," I figure if it comes down to me or my students people are most likely going to choose to believe me, even if I am lying liar.

How I feel when you sleep in my class instead of taking notes and then ask me questions after you fail the test:

School pictures are today.

They're every bit as awful as a teacher as they were when I was in junior high. Of course I wake up this morning with a face that is zit central and frizzy hair. People tell junior high kids that these things get better when you get older, but it's all a lie.

9th grade boys talking about the pains of shaving:

I am pretty sure I have more hair on my face than you do.

Big black balls

was a topic of conversation in my class yesterday. Yeah.

We were talking about lines and how solutions are the same thing as points and how there are an infinite number of solutions (points) on any line.  I had a picture of a line up and we were naming points on the line and I was putting a black dot on each point a student named on the line. Suddenly one (very innocent) student understood what I was getting at and raised his hand and said "There are an infinite number of big black balls all over that line!" My class (and I) lost it.  For the rest of the day any time I asked how many solutions a linear equation has I would have a chorus of "infinite big black balls" shouted back at me. I guess at least they'll never forget.

I did really well on my evaluations.

It seems like that would be a good thing and honestly I am proud of myself because it took a lot of work, but I can feel some of the faculty members turning on me.  "Way to make the rest of us look bad" kinds of things.

One of the things that surprised me the most when I started teaching was how political everything is.  I wrote this huge long post about the politics at a public school but then I realized that someday someone might read this blog and connect it back to me and be offended by it and make my life awkward at school, so I deleted it.

See? Because of the politics in the school I can't say what I think about the politics in the school.

Powder Puff is rough.

Those girls take that crap seriously. I saw at least 6 girls cry as a result of the game today. I'm not sure how many of those were injured tears and how many were emotional scars from losing.

Sometimes junior high kids are the best.

Yesterday I took my 6th hour kids to a nearby elementary to do a service project. (Don't worry, I'm not a crazy overachiever, completing service projects is a requirement from the administration.) We played with the adorable 2nd graders at recess and then talked to them about troops that have been deployed and then helped the kids write cards to deployed troops. It was all so adorable that I nearly died.  My 9th graders totally stepped up and took charge. They loved those little kids and by the end of the hour those little kids worshiped my 9th graders. Honestly I got a little teary eyed, partly because I am exhausted from staying late to get ready for parent/teacher conferences tonight, but mostly because I love when junior high kids show me just how awesome they are.

I'm not sure why my classroom always smells like moldy fish sticks.

But it's actually really disturbing.

There is a custodian at my school who is very wise.

Every time I talk to him I feel like I am in an ABC Family movie and he is the slightly crazy man that gives me the inspiration to live my life and go after that thing (probably a man, because it's ABC Family) that I love.  The kids call him Jesus Janitor because he has long hair and a beard.

Here is an actual conversation from a couple days ago:

Me: Hi there.
Jesus Janitor: Hello, how are you?
Me: I'm great, how are you doing?
JJ: Well I think I am good.
Me: That's great.
JJ: The reason I say "I think" is because I don't know.
Me: Ok...
JJ: Because how can we really know, you know?  Everything we know could be different than what everyone else knows.
Me: Yeah, totally.
JJ: Maybe what's good for me isn't what's good for you.  We all need to seek out what is good for us and make that a reality in our individual lives.  I seek to know what is good for me and I pray that I can experience that every day.
Me: Mmkay, yeah! Good luck.
JJ: Thank you, good luck in your journey too.

I'm worried that the guy who teaches across the hall from me is going to quit.

One of the first things he ever said to me was "I haven't interviewed for a job in 20 years.  People just call me because they want me." I guess he was like a school flipper. He would go into poorly performing schools and flip them and make them better. It sounds like a great reality show to me. One of the second things he ever said to me was "The last school I was at started out in the 5th percentile and ended up in the 75th percentile." Congrats sir. Really, that's impressive.

I guess he thought that meant he knew how to be a teacher?  He's struggling. 

Every day he has a new thing to complain to me about (while we stand in the hall between passing periods).  His classes are too huge, his projector doesn't work, there's no air conditioning, there are stupid kids and smart kids in the same class, the grading takes forever, he can't figure out how much lesson will fill up a class period, the internet goes down on the regular, etc. etc. etc. It's exhausting listening to him because I don't know what to say. Those things are realities. That's just how it is.  You roll with it anyway because that's what teachers do. 

I wonder how he lasted as a school flipper for 30 years without realizing that sometimes people mow the lawn while you are trying to give a lesson and you just keep teaching anyway. 

Teenagers say the darnedest things.

Me (noticing the kid has been transfixed by his elbow (not kidding) for 10 minutes): Hey! You okay back there?
MALE student: I'm bleeding. I got blood all over everything. I got blood all over my pants! I GOT MY PERIOD!
Class: *complete chaos and laughter*
Me (laughing on the inside and maybe a little bit on the outside): Get out of here!
Student (on his way out the door): This is my third pair of pants this week, my mom is going to kill me.

Teachers are superheros.

I am a superhero.  My superpower is that I can go great lengths of time without ever peeing.  

At least I have a prep hour this year.  Last year I didn't have a prep hour. I taught a study skills class during my prep because I thought the money might be worth it (lol).  My prep is first hour, so I usually don't have to pee yet, because I went when I woke up at 6am.  I can't pee in between classes because I am supposed to stand in the hall and yell at children who run to class or eat food in the hall.  I can't pee during lunch because I have lunch duty where I stand in the halls and eat my lunch while I yell at children who dared to walk in that hall during lunch time.  I can't pee after school because I have bus duty where I stand out by the buses and yell at children who punch each other or (worse) make out.  I can't pee after bus duty because then I have a million kids in my classroom asking me what their grade is and why they are failing when they're only missing one measly test (lol again).  Those kids finally leave me around 3:30 (or 4 or 4:30) and then I get to go pee and usually it's a dire emergency by that point and also, full disclosure, that is usually the first time I have sat down since I got out of bed that morning and I linger on the toilet for a minute or two longer than I should because my goodness it's nice to sit down every once in a while. Even superheros have to sit down every once in a while. 

I hate parents.

One of my teacher friends has always said that the best school to teach in would be an orphanage.  Parents are the worst.

Usually they don't care enough. I call and email and call and email and send home notes and call and email and never hear back from them. They don't care that their son has been failing my class since the 3rd day of school and he won't graduate from high school. They still let him play video games all weekend.  They are useless to me and I've got administrators breathing down my back asking why I haven't contacted the parents on this "at-risk" kid.

Sometimes they care too much.  They send me angry emails about why I didn't call and tell them that their son was missing that one assignment. I'm sorry lady, I have 107 kids missing that same assignment. I put it into the grade book as missing so you could see that it was missing. I will never have time to contact you every time your lazy son doesn't turn something in.  Then end all their emails with "And PLEASE let me know in the future if he falls behind."  You know what, no! That's your job. Or his job. It really should be his job. I am just very positive that it's not my job.

Why is it always boy students that give me the problems? I never have problems with girls.  Is that a real thing or is it just because I am biased? I'm going to have to do some research on that and then maybe blog about it.

Teachers often complain about big class sizes.

I'm not saying they're in the wrong for complaining or anything, I'm just saying that it could always be worse. For example, when I was student teaching I complained about my one class that had 35 students in it because all the rest of my classes had less than 30 and 35 was just too much to handle.  It really is amazing what a difference 5 extra students makes.

When school started this year I had 33 desks in my classroom.  My smallest class size was 36.  My biggest class size was 42. I asked for more desks.  They said we don't have any. My students sat on the floor for a while. They handled it like champs. I felt cramped and flustered.

Students got sick of sitting on the floor and transferred out of my honors classes and into my regular classes. Then I finally got more desks. They found some dusty desks in a closet somewhere.  I have 40 desks in my classroom now which was great for a while because I had 40 kids in my biggest class. They just transferred two more kids into that class and now two kids sit at my desk every day.  We'll make it work.

I think it speaks a lot about the public education system in this state that we don't even have enough desks to cram into a tiny room and give our students somewhere to sit.

I feel like I'm constantly drowning, but it's okay.

Teaching is a lot like drowning in the middle of a lake when someone throws you 180 babies to save along with yourself and then someone comes along and yells to you "I'll be dropping by for some unexpected observations. Make sure to rock those or you'll get fired."

My first year of teaching I told myself to quit every single day until December. I was sure I was failing the kids and working too hard and killing myself.  All of those things were probably true, but by the time December rolled around I started figuring things out like how to not grade every single piece of work I assign and wait another day to answer that parent email and things like that so I could get home before 10pm.

Do you realize that I could have taken a lot of the same classes in college and graduated with a degree in engineering, rather than education, and be making literally 3 times what I am making right now? I wonder on a regular basis what is wrong with me mentally that makes me stay in this profession. I don't have an answer yet, but I at least know there is something keeping me here.

The drowning thing doesn't go away, at least it hasn't for me yet. It might eventually...but I think it's more likely that we just learn to deal with it. We're okay with that feeling of drowning all of the time. We know how to not drown and grade papers and plan lessons and straighten desks and count calculators and call parents and pass evaluations and fill in for sick teachers and get that one student that assignment they missed and help with lunch duty and scrub the swear word off the desk and make copies and buy more pencils and actually teach--actually make a difference in the lives of real people--all at the same time. It's terrifying and hard, but it's okay. It's worth it too.