PLVS VLTRA

Well, I just wrapped my last teaching day at institute.

I’ll try to write a more comprehensive wrap-up post sometime soon, but I thought I’d share two things for now.

First - institute has introduced me to a strange new world of adult pleasures. That’s not half as raunchy as it sounds, either. The tiny, boring minutiae of existence are now intensely gratifying after a hard day at school. Shining my shoes, laundry, organizing my room, ironing - all that stuff actually brings me a feeling of deep satisfaction. I think this means one of two things: either I have taken an unexpected baby step toward adulthood or I have developed a real, honest-to-God mental illness. I would probably say the latter is more likely.

The other thing I want to share is the feedback I got from my end-of-course student surveys. The final two questions on the survey were “What was Mr. C’s biggest strength as a teacher?” and “What could Mr. C improve on?” (Note that my kids actually use my whole last name - I don’t do the Mr.-initial thing. I was told not to write it out because they’d Google me.)
Listed below are all of the responses I received.

What was Mr. C’s biggest strength as a teacher?

“Getting over on us”

“He made everything easy”

“He’s a loud speaker”

“Reading”

“I don’t know”

“Everything”

“One on one conversations”

“He helps us understand the lesson.”

“Being calm”

“Keeping my attention”

“I Really dont like you”

“Good at everything”

“Why you asking me that.”

“Sarcastic, funny.”

“Dont no”

“Explaining things”

What could Mr. C improve on?

“Speaking”

“He can write more on the board instead of just explaining it out loud”

“Giving people slack”

“I don’t know”

“Nothing”

“There was alot of writing.”

“Be more fun.”

“The way he teaches”

“Speaking a little louder and try better at keeping control”

“Don’t let power go to your head.”

“Nothing.”

“Ask Ms L.” (my collaborative partner.)

“Don’t know”

“Dont no”

“Talking”

Last Thursday, I experienced what was easily the single most ludicrous event of my entire life. While I know that a good number of people at the New York City institute have already heard this story, I will attempt to retell it here one final time in the hope of preserving a single, definitive account of the event.

Let me do some brief set-up. The scene is last Thursday, July 16th, 2009, in my classroom in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s about 9:40 am, and I’m in the first half of my lesson. The students have been really tense throughout all of Emily’s lesson - she’s presented her content really well, but the entire room is in a funk. There seems to be a little resentment simmering among the kids. They’re completing their work reluctantly if at all.

Hoping to exorcise the demons from the room, I start my lesson by declaring that I want the kids to write for five minutes - about anything. I just want them to write about whatever happens to be occupying them, and I tell them that they can dispose of the paper afterward or hand it in to me or send it to a pen pal or whatever, I don’t care. I just want them to write for five minutes.

So what I’m attempting to do at this point is reel the class out a bit. We’d had them in tight - they’d been following highly structured (but necessary) activities, so I allowed them a little free time to placate the desire for independence and control that seems fairly typical of the North American High Schooler.

It works pretty well. The kids seem notably calmer, and I begin to proceed with my lesson - transition words. Not riveting material, but certainly important, and I plan on covering it pretty quickly so the kids can move on to the drafts of their final essays.

And then it happens.

What I want you to do, reader, just briefly, is to imagine the opening notes of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”

Whrruuuuuuuuuuunng~~~~!

WHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING~~~~!

WHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!!

For some reason, my students begin raising their sleep-sodden heads from their desks one by one with a degree of enthusiasm that suggests some stimulus other than transition words.

I glance around the room. My instruction trails off as I attempt to detect the object that has so suddenly commanded my students’ rapt attention. A giggle or two. I squint, looking for a note being passed or a cell phone.

Fortunately, my confusion is quickly resolved when a student yells “THAT LADY NAKED!”

As a herd of my fuzz-stached 15 year-old boys stampede across the room, I glance out the window to my right ever so briefly and instantaneously determine yes, indeed, that lady naked. There is a 20-something blonde hipster sitting, fully nude, in her window some twenty feet away from my classroom windows. I’m not talking about accidentally passing in front of the window, she’s sitting in it. Like, motionless. And I’m not talking topless, this is full-on, 100%, National Geographic naked.

“SHE NAKED! SHE NAKED! LOOK, THAT LADY NAKED!”

“OH SH*T! LEMME SEE LEMME SEE LEMME SEE!”

“EWWW SHE NEED TO PUT SOME CLOTHES ON! LOOK AT THAT, SHE’S JUST CHILLIN’!”

“WAVE AT HER! WAVE AT HER!”

…

There have been previous situations where I’ve lost control of my class, and it’s generally a nerve-wracking and profoundly draining experience. Now, I had no reasonable expectation of getting my kids’ attention back, and for a moment I allowed myself to revel in the utter absurdity of the situation. Out of all my institute training, there have been no Naked Lady In A Window sessions. I look to the back of my classroom where two other corps members are observing my lesson and both of them are agape, hands clasped over their mouths.

Seeing little other alternative, I let the circus continue for about a minute before trying to raise my voice above the din of frenzied adolescence. “ALRIGHT - ALRIGHT, I KNOW THIS IS - I know this is completely ridiculous. I know it’s Thursday and your weekend starts tomorrow and I know there’s a naked woman in the window. Yeah yeah yeah. But I really need everyone’s attention back - we’ve got too much left to get done. I know that naked lady is tremendously exciting, but that doesn’t compare to transition words, right?”

Oh, the uproar.

“Come on,” I said, “I know most of you have cable TV. It’s not so exciting. C’mon now, eyes back up here.”

Remarkably, a fair number of my students managed to get back on task after a few minutes, despite the fact that the woman remained completely naked, chain-smoking in her window for the next half hour. One or two kids, though, were utterly transfixed, and thrust their heads under the hastily-closed windowshades when they reckoned I wasn’t looking.

I confronted one kid, Andre, who is really bright and persuasive and also a perpetual disruption in class.

“Andre,” I said, “I know this is completely ridiculous, right? I know. It’s not like I’m going to pretend a naked lady sitting in her window is normal by any stretch of the imagination. But you really have to get to work. I don’t want to assign this stuff for homework and I know you know how to do it. Lemme see a little self-control.”

Andre looked at me with utter, piercing sincerity.

“Mr. C, - dawg, that’s a naked white lady. How often you think I get to see that?”

I just - I - wha - I mean, you - what? Pshffrrgfffhhhttttt…what? What?

How did this become my life?

And am I allowed to laugh at that?

I’ve been putting off this blog post for a while because I feel like I could write a dozen pages for every day I’ve spent in the classroom. Trying to condense everything I’ve experienced into a few paragraphs, the process of selecting the events I deem to have been the most important - it’s pretty intimidating. So I’m not going to think too much about it (as best I can), and I’ll just give a brief overview of the past two weeks.

To begin with, I don’t have “the students” or “the kids” anymore. Those were my standard verbal references for the first couple of days, but now - somehow - they’re “my kids.” I’m not sure what else I can say about that. It’s an immense thing to think through.

The first week was pretty rough. We started off with about 40 kids in the class, and as the week progressed, we were pushing 50. This is 1) strictly illegal and 2) taxing in every conceivable way. Hackneyed though it may be, that old saying “get knocked down seven times, get up eight” kept running through my head - but not necessarily in a positive way. I wasn’t just getting knocked down, I was getting TKO’d, sweat, blood and teeth afly. I mean, each day really did feel like a physical assault. The students knew I wasn’t entirely confident in my abilities, and they responded accordingly. I hadn’t yet gotten any rudimentary feel for lesson planning, and there were times when my own anxiety set my kids off like sharks after blood. Each day I would wake up enthusiastic, get absolutely railroaded during my instructional time, and then gradually work up a modicum of confidence again before I went to bed - only to be similarly wrecked the next day. It was rough. It was really rough.

I have never considered quitting - given the person I am and the significance this undertaking has developed, it’s simply not an option - but last week, I worried about the person I might become after two years of that kind of punishing, incomprehensible failure.

The problem, though, as I came to realize - with not-insignificant guidance from my fantastic advisor Mahaliel, was that I wasn’t being myself. I was trying to be some sort of archetypal teacher, the proto-teacher I’d mentally developed from my own years in school. But I wasn’t modeling my behavior after my favorite teachers. Rather, I was the bland sum-total of every person who’d ever stood in front of a white board and passed out assignments. As a result, I sucked. I really did. I sucked, and I wasn’t myself.

After that realization, I went into this week with a completely different mindset - though I was even more tired from hours spent planning better lessons, I started each day listening to happier music and getting into an enthusiastic and determined mindset. Before, my mindset had been “okay - just make it through. You’re tougher than these kids.” The truth is, though, I’m not tougher than these kids. If it comes down to sheer tough, I lose. These kids have seen things that are absolutely, unfathomably foreign to me. But I came to realize that these kids don’t necessarily need me to be tough - they need me to care. I need to be tough about some things, sure - I need to keep on them until they reach their full capacity for achievement, and then I need to push them even harder. But they don’t need a badass who’s interested in maintaining a perfect, silent class and firing off consequences for every minor infraction. That’s not me, and they knew it - whenever I felt my authority slipping away, I would crack down harder and make my voice that much louder. But a lot of these kids have seen mean before. They’ve seen loud. It’s not impressive. What seems to work - judging from this week - is me being a real human being. Not surrending control of my class - keeping that line firm and inflexible - but not being a capital-T teacher all the time.

That’s not to say I’ve got everything figured out. I certainly don’t, and I’ve got a long way to go. But last week, I actually said at one point - no lie - “I need silence in this room!” This week, when one of my triumvirate of attention-seekers goes off in class, I address their outburst quickly, quietly and efficiently, and then I go crouch by their desk and talk to them. What’s up? You seem like you’ve got a lot of spare energy today. Are you bored? Does this interest you? Could I get you a different story, maybe, that might be a little more challenging? What are you interested in?

Our advisors tell us all the time that student-teacher relationships are critical, and it sounded like every other dry piece of advice we’ve received - something that sounded nice on paper, but didn’t translate into my class. Only now am I beginning to see how absolutely crucial those relationships are. When I can pull Javier (not his real name) out in the hall and tell him that I, too, got bored with my reading assignments in high school and offer to make him copies of one of my favorite short stories - that’s the difference between Javier presenting a major behavioral issue and Javier developing his very real intellectual curiosity. When I pass Esteban on the street after school and he comes up to shake my hand and says “Hey, Mr. C!” I know that I’m doing something - no matter how tiny - better than I did last week.

I still don’t know if my mind has completely wrapped itself around how profoundly different my life is now. I think I subconsciously hold the full realization at bay. I’m still forced to confront it in glimpses, though - like this Thursday when I had one of my problem students out in the hall, pacing, frantic, explaining how much he hates school, as one of my very best students threw up into a trashcan nearby due to morning sickness.

It’s moments like those when I can’t help but think, you - you, the kid I have known and have been all my life - aren’t a kid anymore. You’re a real adult facing very, very adult challenges, and if you’re anything less than that same adult you are now posturing to be, you - and your kids - will fail. It’s an honor, it’s a challenge, it’s a thousand different things that I am not prepared to confront yet will anyhow, trusting my previously untapped reserves of inner strength and my deep care for my kids to see me through.

This has been a long entry and my thoughts are off in all directions, so I’ll close out with some statistics.

The average score on my class’s pre-assessment was a 27. Two weeks later, the average score on the mid-assessment was a 66.

It’s not perfect by any means, but they’re getting there. I’m getting there.

Here’s a brief institute anecdote.

So the sleep to work ratio is unreal. The vast majority of us stay up til at least midnight, and many people stay up significantly later than that. This wouldn’t be a problem if we didn’t have to wake up at five in the morning. Point is, we don’t sleep much, ever. We get on buses to our schools at six in the morning, we arrive at our schools at seven, we teach and attend sessions until four in the afternoon, we get back to St. John’s at five, eat until six, go to a night session from seven ’til eight thirty and then generally lesson plan until we go to bed. Rinse. Repeat.

I’m mentioning this for two reasons. First, because I wanted to get the oh-my-God-we-never-sleep thing out of the way early. It’s the big institute cliche to talk about how grueling the schedule is. Yes, it’s unrelenting. The surprising thing is that, despite being unrelenting, it’s really not so awful. Between activity, camaraderie and the obscene amounts of caffeine we get through, and we’re all accustomed to running on little sleep at this point.

The second reason I mention our sleep schedule is that it plays a major role in the anecdote I intended to start about two paragraphs ago. Last night I went to bed around 1:30 am - not great or awful by institute standards. I set my phone alarm for 5:30 am and fell asleep almost immediately. A few hours later I notice my phone alarm going off - I’m not sure how long it’s been going, but I glance at the clock and see that it’s half past the hour. Oh, expletive, I think, I missed the bus - I glance across the room and see my roommate has missed the bus too. I spring out of bed, still muttering obscenities, and dash to brush my teeth (while in the bathroom I attempt to simultaneously wash my hair. This is not a combination of activities that is possible for human beings.) I’m freaking out - I still had a little printing left to do, I don’t have my clothes put together, I don’t have the money for a cab. I finish brushing my teeth and run out into the common room of the dorm suite, shampoo lather still unwashed from the back of my head, and everyone else is gone. Of course. I wasn’t sure what else I was expecting.

I go back to my room to wake up my roommate and begin wondering how we both slept in accidentally - maybe the power outlet in the room? That doesn’t make sense, though, I realize, because my cell phone wasn’t plugged in, so the outlets shouldn’t have affected it. I decide to look at my room clock to see whether or not it’s still got power.

My room clock still has power. It still has power and it reads a dim “3:40 AM.”

At this point I feel really stupid. Just hugely, terrifically stupid. My phone alarm did go off, though, so I check to see what was wrong with my phone. Turns out my alarm didn’t go off. It was my text message notifier.

I had gotten an automated text message from Soulja Boy. At 3:30 in the morning. It read as follows:

“Get my brand new SBTE Romplr iPhone app n rmx Swag On, Crank That and Hey You, *Fab new MS tools!”

Mr. Tellem, you are a fab new MS tool. Fair warning to those of you considering making a phone call to six seven eight triple-nine eight two one two - you might get kissed through the phone in the wee, wee hours.

Week two, day one - that most anticipated of days. The first day in the classroom.

I’ll refrain from editorializing for now - my feelings and perceptions are all over the place, and I’ll put up a genuine update in a few days once I’ve had a chance to sit and collect my thoughts. I will, however, list a few quick facts about my first day as a teacher.

* The class was, at its fullest, made up of 42 students. I think we leveled off at 38. It seemed to be mostly composed of freshmen, but we had a few upperclassmen too. The difference, as best I could tell, is that freshmen are dour, uncooperative and defiant, while upperclassmen just seem tired. We spent a good portion of the lesson shuttling extra chairs and desks to our room and a number of our students came in later than halfway through the lesson (which was a diagnostic pre-assessment).

* About half of the students live in Queens, and the other half live in Brooklyn. I had them compare and contrast the two, and we arrived at three definitive conclusions.

1: Queens has more trees than Brooklyn.

2: Brooklyn has more subway routes than Queens.

3: Brooklyn has more crack cocaine than Queens.

This latter detail was volunteered as “Brooklyn has more rocks,” to which I eagerly responded, “There! That’s great. That’s a concrete detail - there are fewer rocks in Queens.” Roughly fourteen seconds later I realized that the student was not, in fact, referring to pebbles, cobblestones or boulders.

* The students’ abilities vary widely, but the students who presented behavior problems today largely performed at better-than-average levels on the pre-assessment. Hm.

As a concluding point, I noticed one such student - clearly very bright, very independent and very bored - sitting with the pre-assessment on his desk, not making an effort to complete any questions. I tried to prompt him as best I could, explaining my motivations, recommending the short story included in the pre-assessment, trying to make the prospect of having a go at the test sound more appealing than just sitting, and suddenly the kid, previously silent, turns to me and says, “just give up, okay?”

Oh no no, my man. I don’t think that’s gonna be happening.

was stupid-fun. Granted, it’s not over - it’s only Saturday night - but I would imagine tomorrow will be spent getting ready for my first-ever day teaching real live students on Monday (scary).

So after an abortive attempt at having fun in Manhattan last night, I went back again today with a crew of CT corps people to see the free Jenny Lewis and Conor Oberst show in Battery Park. It was a good time, though I have to admit I was a little disappointed it was Jenny Lewis and Conor Oberst rather than Rilo Kiley and Bright Eyes. When playing solo, the two seem to indulge their mutual tendency towards Woodstocky, feelin’-it jamminess, which gets old awfully fast if you’re not significantly intoxicated (which I wasn’t).

That said, it was still a great time. I know it’s sort of cliched to say that Jenny Lewis is sexy, but uh - Jenny Lewis is really, really sexy. Unbelievably talented, fun songs, great stage presence. Monsieur Oberst was wearing what appeared to be a large black sunhat and was apparently suffering under the delusion that he was, in fact, Neil Young. It’s been strange to see his evolution - the last time I saw him was 2005. Back then he had angular bangs, a tight black hoodie and an alcohol problem and sang songs that flirted with folksiness while remaining essentially emo in character. Nowadays all that’s gone (except maybe the alcohol problem) and he sings songs about, and I quote, “makin’ love in the back of a Cadillac” and “seein’ Dixie.” If that passes for authenticity these days, consider me unimpressed. I’ve seen Dixie. It’s regular.

I met up with Seth there, and it was fantastic seeing him again - I’ve been grappling with the fact that I reject 98.9% of the time I spent at Furman, so seeing him - one of the people from Furman I’ve always liked without any qualifications - now that I’ve sort of rebooted my existence, that was great. He came to a restaurant with me and the rest of the TFA crew, and we got a few pitchers of beer and had a good time - the incredible thing was that when the waiter figured out we were TFA, he gave us two of the pitchers for free, because “You guys are actually going out there and goddamned doing something to make a difference.” That was a pretty cool feeling.

We wandered around for a little while until we noticed the Jersey City fireworks starting - we watched those for a while and they were really pretty (did anyone else see the cutting-edge smiley face fireworks this year?) until the much, much more impressive NYC fireworks started over the Hudson nearby. I have a lot of moments up here where I realize I’m really doing something new and radically different, that my circumstances have changed in a huge way, but seeing Fourth of July fireworks in New York was a particularly strong example. It was really a gorgeous night for being outside, and the fireworks display was a perfect addition. Just damn.

We went back to Queens, hit another bar there and talked some rubbish before coming back. I suppose I felt compelled to make a blog post about it all not because it’s particularly interesting - granted, the show and the fireworks and the free beer were all interesting enough for me - but mostly because today just felt really significant. Things are different now, they’re way different, and I really like that.

I have now been officially hired as a ninth grade English teacher at Hartford Public Schools’ Freshman Academy.