"i hope stephen lard is not a fatty" (end of the year reflection)

Six days left.  That's no more than 9 hours with any one student.  That's tomorrow and then ONE MORE WEEK.  With giving an exam on Monday and Tuesday, that's four days of instruction left.  Four days.  That's only six hours of planning.  Six hours of new material.  Six hours of worksheets and book work and review games and "shut your mouth" and "sit down" and "did I ask you a question?!?" and "say something crazy!" and "no, no, no."  That's six trips to the cafeteria with my lunch block.  That's six trips to the bathroom.  That's six times in the hall with a class.  That's six "BH why you late?" and six "AR have a seat" and six "JB calm down."  I can count to six in two languages.  I can estimate six things without actually counting.  I can eat six Newman O's in one night.  I can play six chords on the guitar.  I can name six kinds of tree.  I can name six countries I have been to.  I can drink six beers in one night (although definitely not a school night).  I can do SIX.

I began the year a scared and timid teacher, unsure of what to do, what to teach.  That timidness is not all gone.  But more often I am reminded how much I rock.  Especially in the past few months I have opened up to my students and my coworkers.  This has been a very good thing.  But before this, in February, I was decidedly not returning to teach. I had had enough disrespect and struggle with too few rewards.  I was not using my brain at my work.  I was too smart to teach.  Too good at math.  I could do statistics and really enjoy what I do.  Why waste another year that would suck (maybe not as much as this one, but definitely quite a bit)?  Why make myself miserable again.

I don't have two better pieces of advice for first-years than these: coach and try hard to appreciate the rewards.  Coach.  Do something extra-curricular.  Do something that the kids will enjoy, because your class will not be one of those things.  When you see a few kids in a different light, enjoying what they do, you start to see more and more kids in a new light.  Sooner or later the screw up kid gets on your nerves a little less.  You focus less on how unprepared these kids are and how little they care and you focus more on the funny and endearing things about them.  The ways they see the world.  How it makes you feel like a kid to be with them.  Few twelve year olds bring a smile to my face like my soccer boys do.  I love to see them because I see in them what they love.  When I started to see what my players love, I could start to see things like that in my regular students.  Some MTCers will urge you to stand a robotic distance from your students.  I will always walk a closer line to them.  Never the same one, but I will let them (and myself) know that our lines are not all that far apart.  Some of my kids appreciate it.  Some of my kids don't give a shit.  Some try to take advantage of it.  But this is the life of a teacher.  Interacting with kids is never perfect, but you should always try to enjoy it.

_______

Today we finished up the MCT-2, a trilogy of state tests given to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in Mississippi covering Math, Reading, and Writing.  Instead of jumping back into work, I asked my students to contemplate the test and the year as well.  I asked them what they thought we studied too much and too little, what I could have done better, and what they could have done better.  In the midst of our discussion I added a bit about teachers that students don't like.  These tend to be the student-teacher relationships that create the most trouble and the most disruption.  "You may not like a teacher," I told my class, "but you only have a few hours left with him or her.  Not just a few hours left of the school year, a few hours left of your life.  Some of you don't like me.  Some of you don't like my class.  In just seven days if you don't want to ever see me again, you don't have to."

The more I think about, the more I feel my life as a teacher has revolved around what I said to my fourth block: "I do not have a student I don't like.  I like everyone of you.  Sometimes, some of you drive me crazy.  Sometimes, I wish that some of you were not in my class.  But I like each and everyone of you."

I don't think my students hear words like that enough.  I didn't give them unconditional love, but I give them unconditional hope and advice and an ear to listen.  I give them an unconditional "hello" in the morning and a "good afternoon" on the way home.  Say what you will about me being naive or racist, but I felt a longing when I spoke those words.  A longing, as if these children do not hear this from their parents or their loved ones enough.  And I can see it in the way they interact sometimes.  A yell is a greeting.  A phone call is a hug.  A whupping is an "I love you."  I'm not saying that my students are not loved by their parents.  I would say that most of my parents love their children, but I would also say that most of these parents don't tell their children they love them enough.  Maybe my students want me to remember them.  Maybe they want me to think of them long after the summer vacation has gone.  Maybe they are worried that if I don't think of them in the years to come, no one will.

We all want to be loved.  It's why we tell jokes.  It's why we do nice things for others.  It's why we make conversation and listen to what others have to say.  It's why we show empathy.  It's why we enter into relationships, good and bad. We are worried that when the time comes to be remembered, to be loved, we will be left by the wayside, bothering no other person's thoughts.

I think this is what my students are searching for from me.  They disrupt my class, yell at me, cuss at me, threaten me, disregard my rules and directions, neglect my homework, holler "A LIE!" when I give them work, earn an 'F', get sent out, sleep, chew gum, eat food, talk in the line on the way to the cafeteria, shout out in class when it's not their turn.  They do all this because they want me to remember them.  And when it comes down to it, they are right.  I probably won't remember the kid who did everything I said and did all his work.  He has made my life easier, but he has not impressed on me the way the kid who tested my patience every day has.  That is the kid that I will remember for a long, long time.  I won't remember his face.  Maybe not his name.  But a part of him will stay with me for a long time.  And maybe this is what he wanted.  Because when it's all said and done, this kid will have some white guy from North Carolina, who came down for a few years to teach some poor black kids some math, who remembers him.  And maybe he will feel loved.  Maybe for the first time.  Hopefully not for the last.