30 posts tagged “school”

Interested in being interviewed for a research paper on Sex  Ed in the U.S.?  What was your experience in high school?  Leave a comment or email me at bukokat@gmail.com. 

I’d been tutoring Dee and Bri all year, watching these girls gain more confidence in math and celebrating when Bri got an A+ on a test. One day, one of them said something about the lattice method of multiple digit multiplication, and got a chance to ask them how it was done. I’d seen students doing it all year, and was baffled by it.

Dee got out a sheet of paper and wrote two large numbers on it, then set up the “lattice.” “You multiply each number like this, and then you add up those answers like this.” She set up another lattice for me, and I tried it. After I got my answer, we double checked with a calculator. It was right.

“Good job, Ms. T,” Dee said, patting my shoulder. “You’re a good student.”

“I have a smart teacher,” I told her, and she grinned.

Whatever happens to the rest of the kids I've worked with, these two will kickass in high school. 

We had a field trip today to the UofM Arboretum, and I actually had a blast.  I had ten kids in my group and they were all pretty fun and funny, and most of them had a great time.  Some of them whined a bit, but in general it was great to see a group of teenagers turn into a group of KIDS.  They ran about, they played, they goofed off.  One of the other chaperones thought I was being too lax on my group (because I let them run through sprinklers -- but so did other chaperones), but I was like, "Dude, they live in the middle of Northeast and don't get to run around like this.  As long as they don't hurt others or themselves, I'm fine."  I think it worked, because my group claimed they had fun -- and these are middleschoolers, who are bored by EVERYTHING.  All the time.

The highlight was having lunch with some of my favorite students, including A+ girl and one girl who is moving to Georgia over Memorial Day weekend (much to my utter dismay - this girl is so rad I can't bear to think that she won't be around after tomorrow).  And they asked me to join them!  I think probably because they knew I wouldn't be drilling them about what they learned today, and they probably (rightfully) suspected that I would share bits of the box lunch that the chaperones got with them.  And they chatted with me and with each other and talked freely about boys they liked and American Idol and what they wanted to do this summer.  Teenage girls are so refreshingly the same, no matter where you live, no matter what era it is.  They just have different technology now.

The bad part of the day was that I had to break up a fight between two girls who weren't even in my group.  It was as we all were heading back to the busses -- I heard yelling, but then kids are always yelling.  Then I heard thumping.  I was the only adult nearby so I bolted towards them, screaming, "BREAK IT UP RIGHT NOW!"  A boy thought I was yelling to him, so he jumped in and pulled one of the girls out.  A few other girls pulled the other pugilist out of the fray, and she bolted from the scene.  I grabbed the one remaining, who was screaming her head off at her retreating foe, and told the boy who was holding her back to get her to the bus.  He did so, saying to her the whole time, "It's not worth it, it's not worth it!"  (And apparently spent the whole busride home talking about it, the 7th grade math teacher told me later)  After we got back to the school, the girls ran at each other again -- but someone had radioed ahead to the principals and behavior staff, so those fights were stopped instantly.

Fights don't happen as often at the school as one would think -- most of the kids are the yelling type.  I prevented two fights earlier in the year by recognizing the signs and jumping in like a good ref, but this one happened without warning.  When it does happen, the fighting upsets me deeply. Because, well, these are kids, and what is it that drives kids to fight like that?   

They've turned on the AC in the school, even though it's been a fairly cool spring. But the calendar says it's late May, so on goes the air.

One of the eighth graders I work with shivered and asked me why they turned the air on.
"Well," I told her, "Every other bureaucracy I've experienced doesn't think like a reasonable person.  MPS looked at the calendar, saw it was May 20th and said, 'All right, this is as good a time as any to turn on the AC.'  They didn't even consider that it's not even 70 degrees outside."

My eighth grader looked at me with the sort of outraged incredulity that everyone experiences when they realize things in the world are intentionally fucked up.

"They need to be punched in the face!" she exclaimed vehemently.

Teacher: No calculators for this one.  You have something far more powerful than a calculator with you.
Student: What?
Teacher: Me!

7th grade boy: OOOOOOOOoooooOOOOH!  You got MATHED!

It's like my kids know JUST how much bullshit I can handle before they decide to throw me a bone and be fucking awesome.  I've been working with this one eighth grade girl for the whole time I've been at the school -- she was a lot quieter than other students and I started pulling her and two other girls aside to work with me, since they were getting lost in what's a pretty wild classroom.  When I started working with her second quarter, her average in the class was a D.  This was because she couldn't understand the homework, no matter how hard she tried... so I got in the habit of checking her homework with her once a day before she turned it in.  Her grade started to rise a bit and though I still help her out everyday, she definitely has more confidence in math.

This isn't just any eighth grade math, this is like, stuff with exponents and shit that baffled me a bit when we started on it.  I actually had to reteach myself how to do it so I could help her out.  Last week, the day before the "check-up" (what they call tests), she and I sat down for a few minutes so I could explain with her one-on-one the difference between using x as an exponent and just multiplying a number by x, and when to write the exponent as x-1, and how to enter this in a calculator so she can read a table.  And, you know what?  Apparently I taught it WELL.  Because she ate that test for lunch.  She pwned it.  She got an A+.

"I'm so stinkin' proud of you," I told her.

She grinned at me, which was great to see because she's normally a very stoic teen.  "Thanks!"

And then I had to reteach myself scientific notation so I could explain it to her.

I know I mostly present my kids as quirky, fun and insightful characters -- and for the most part they are.  But I downplay the fact that I deal with some shitheads, and I tend to assume that because MOST children are normal, ALL children are normal. I'm just saying, while you're out there looking for positives you will occasionally fail to realize that one of these kids will betray your trust and hand you a "joke" electro-shock pen that jolts the FUCK out of your hand and is probably more dangerous than a Swiss Army knife. 

What do you do in this situation?  You confiscate the thing, haul the kid's ass down to the principal's office, is what.  And you feel fucking awful that you had to do it, when you look at his somewhat frightened eyes, but so wildly justified in your actions because what the HELL did he expect you'd do?  Laugh it off? 

"It doesn't shock that much!" he protested, and I was like, kid, I've been struck by lightning and I've touched a metal doorhandle in winter, and it was closer to the former than the latter.  That's not a prank buzzer and MY HAND IS STILL SORE!  And when the principal called his mom, well, it became apparent that this was already A Matter Of Discussion At Home, re: I Thought I Told You To Not Take THAT To School.

So he got suspended.

The rest of the kids I worked with that day wondered why I was a little more crabby than usual. 

Me: It's ok, I have some pens.
7th Grade Boy:  OH!  I want this one *snatches at a pink pen*
Me:  You like pink?
7th Grade Girl: You is fruity, fam.

---

Tiny Asian 7th Grade Boy: MISS T!  Are you going to be here next year?
Me: Uh, I don't know... yet.
Tiny Asian 7th Grade Boy: You don't KNOW yet?  What kind of answer is that? *punches me in the shoulder* I don't like you anymore. *punches his best friend who is standing next to him in the shoulder* You too.

Slightly ADHD 7th Grade Boy: Miss T!  I heard you do this weird thing with your eyes!
Me: I do. *remove glasses, show crazy eye trick*
Slightly ADHD 7th Grade Boy:  Whoa.  That's crazy.  Can you do anything else?
Somewhat Spooky 7th Grade Boy: She can also beat the crap out of you!!

Lyz tagged me in this meme:

The idea is that you pick from page 30 of your novel or page 3 of your picture book, find the fifth sentence and post the next three, then tag five people. If you don't have a WIP or you don't want to post from it, find the nearest book, flip to page 123, find the fifth sentence and post the next three, then, of course, tag five people.

I don't have a work in progress, so here's the nearest book -- Barbara Kingsolver's "The Bean Trees"

"Oh, I believe she did.  This is how Americans think."  He was looking at me in a thoughtful way. "You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it."

As for tagging, what, five people read this?  You're all tagged.  ALL OF YOU!  Behold as my ruthless tagging lays waste to the internet!  I RULE THE TUBES!
 --

Teacher: Next question -- nine times one hundred.
7th Grade Boy #1: (quietly) Is it nine thousand?
7th Grade Boy #2: You can write 9,000 if you want, fam*, but you'd be wrong and we'd all laugh at you.

*Apparently this is what Kids These Days are saying.  That and, "DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG BILLY!"