Breaking the Silence

Yesterday I defied my principal: We ate Rotell (a cheesy dip) on the “D.L.” on the last day of class. And earlier, a student threw a roll of toilet paper at my back. Overheard in Transition last week: “I was a crack baby,” “I’m taking anger management,” and “Man, I should be in Algebra II!” My students told me not to bring the Rotell; they were convinced I couldn’t make it!

I found a student typing this in the computer lab a couple weeks ago:

I hate this class. I hate this world. I hate Mr. A_ because he gave me this hard work to do and I can even do it. I hate school tomorrow I am going to drop out. I hate Cleveland MS I hate algebra I hate my hair. I hate this life I want to move to Pakistan! So I can kill myself then I won’t have to get mad at nobody anymore. I want to stab myself in the brain letting all my gut and sense waste out. I am useless. I hate school I ahte my life [sic sic sic]

I turned it in to the V.P. Last week the same student almost came to blows with another girl in the middle of class; I had to block the doorway between them to keep the two from getting back at one another. Imagine class after that happens! She has cussed me out, she has erased names off my board, she has been in and out of suspension all semester long. But I love this Little Mermaid. She can be my best student in that class when she feels like it. And this morning she wanted to hug me and told me she missed me.

Lately Detergent and I have grown closer. We even watched a movie by that title (i.e. “Closer”) together. It was not really very good. I like the way she sleeps on the floor in order to avoid the routine of waking up in the same place every morning. She’s always asking, “Do you see what I’m saying?” to which I always answer, “Sort of.” It makes life interesting. When I tell her not to blame herself too much for things at school, she hates it. She can’t decide how many layers of armor to let me see past.

Since my last post, I have been to: Little Rock (a five-mile hike in the middle of the night), Los Angeles, Honolulu, Dallas, and Savannah, Georgia—far too many adventures to fit inside this humble blog! In Hawaii, I saw Air Force One take off. I watched sharks swim casually in circles around the fish ponds of a hotel. A hot surfer chick insisted I hold on to her leash and let her paddle me to safety away from some so-called “rocks.” Saw my younger cousins the Marine and the 96 percentile MCAT-getter at their mother’s remarriage. Ate orange-flavored chicken at Panda Express and loved it. Watched an old man on the beach at Waikiki apply sunscreen to his same-age wife and kiss her shoulders tenderly when he finished.

In Savannah I followed a random artsy, secondhand clothes-type girl down the street and into a cemetery. She was an intriguing character to say the least! In this Revolutionary cemetery, in whose crypts Civil War soldiers once sought refuge, she walked in zig-zags, and it became an ever-fascinating game for me to follow at some neutral-looking distance and half-pretend to take photos of the tombstones and Spanish moss. Yet when I turned to leave, she suddenly came my way and walked past me, then turned down a pointless ally—as if daring me to follow. We had spoken not a word to each other the entire time. I wish I had at least asked to take her picture or something. That’s my problem when I travel: I’m too silent with strangers.

Later that evening, one of my best friends and mentors at school went out drinking with me at an English-style pub beneath shelves and shelves of hand-painted beer mugs in the shapes of famous Brits. (The bartender claimed the ceramics cost $300-$1000 each!) Mr. B is the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program coordinator at my school. A white man nearly my father’s age, he taught for ten years at the other (majority white) public high school in town. His students there had all kinds of success in state competitions, but to make a long story short, he heard the calling and decided move on. I respect him massively. Besides a teacher, he is also a runner, a photographer, a motorcyclist, a Methodist minister, and a connoisseur of the $80 “ashtray” (as another colleague would later put it). The two of us together had barely managed to find “ShopSCAD” beneath the giant brass letters of Savannah College of Art and Design. But we couldn’t manage to persuade the shop attendants to sell us the giant light-up Americana sign arrow propped against the wall.

We went to Savannah, courtesy of Federal grant money, to attend an IB Middle Years Program training workshop. It was good. This MYP thing is all about holistic education; it emphasizes context & creativity, community, responsibility, internationalism & multiculturalism, curiosity & reflection, etc, etc. Once it really sank in for me what this program is all about, I realized everything that MYP champions are the very elements most lacking from my teaching. So I feel motivated to give this thing a shot and plan a couple MYP-style units for next term. By the way, this Federal grant driving the MYP at my school, according to Mr. B, was written (before his time) with the premise that MYP will actually drive white parents to send their children to our school for the superior education. (Hah!)

The day we came back, we had a surprise (to me!) school-wide debate that took the entire 4th block. The students debated abortion. Neither side debated intelligently at all. The “debate” consisted mostly of the two sides reading prepared statements at one other they probably copied off the Internet. Their challenges to each other were little more than asking the other side to define terms no one had even mentioned yet. It made me feel sad but also slightly relieved in a weird way to know that I am not the only teacher who has a hard time getting students to think.

At the end of the debate, students booed the principal as he took the floor to make announcements. Ever since then, I have made it a special point to greet him warmly and quietly show how much I appreciate him.

So today—or rather yesterday, technically—was the last day of school. Next January is a whole new year, starting fresh again with all new students. I’m not sure which is greater, my eagerness for the fresh start or the responsibility and my fear of f-ing it up.

We had a 60% day to finish up exams today. After the last block, the kids were supposed to dismiss orderly, get their sack lunches from the cafeteria, and return to the classrooms until the dismissal bell. But of course it never happened like that. The whole school rushed the dining hall at once. My students who returned—about a third of them—said it was “rough in there.” The we sat for nearly thirty minutes until it was time to go. I just relaxed and enjoyed the end of the year listening to my students talk. They laughed about eating Hot Pockets and Cup-A-Noodles at home and joked whether you are “black” or not if you don’t like all the soul food like collard greens and “CONE-bread.”