Quid pro quo

The resilience of the human spirit is a refreshing thing.

I am a cynic. Some people, if they knew the true shades of my character, would characterize me as a brooding two-faced misanthrope. I say things to people when I don't mean them at all, only because they seem to be the right thing to say. I smile when inside I am angry, absolutely spiteful of vitriolic hatred. I like to pretend I am something that I'm not.

In other words, I'm a fit for teaching in an inner-city school (sarcasm).

Today was a complete disaster. Students were presenting their transparencies that they had prepared detailing examples of people using fish-farming to alleviate hunger and poverty in developing countries. During these presentations, the distracting rattle of conversation was expressively audible despite my shouts for quiet. I was tired, it was late afternoon, and my energy reserves were running low. The unexpected robustness of the defiance to my pleas for quiet made me so angry that my mental switchboard became oversaturated. I became so livid from frustration that I couldn't scream or think clearly any more.

The sharks, smelling blood, swam closer. The conversations continued without any hesitation. For once, I broke character and screamed at them at the top of my lungs,

"IF YOU CONTINUE TO TALK AND DISRESPECT ME, I WILL GIVE THIS CLASS A QUIZ!!!"

You'd think that they'd stop, but they didn't. I wanted to follow through with this quiz, but I could no longer think coherently at this point. Even worse, being the needy kids that they are, I had at least 3 students calling out my name during the presentations--

One needing to go to the bathroom,

one needing to get a pencil,

and one needing to get a handout because she lost the handout yesterday.

An unknown student started making high-pitched hyena-like noises. Once they realized that these noises irked me, the rest of those kids started chiming in, a chorus of squeals echoing through the classroom. Of course, they utter these noises when I'm not looking at them, shutting up as soon as I look in the direction of the perpetrator. They were like gnats on an elephant, painfully biting without fear.

So what did I do? I was furious. My heart pounded and I felt my face turn red. But I was rendered immobile because I was overloaded, pushed past the breaking point. I could no longer yell. Thus, I had to endure a painful twenty minutes, rendered incompetent and humiliated. Then I had another equally as bad class, the hyenas licking their chops in eager anticipation as they pounced on their teacher in his weakened state. But the bad feelings from the first class lingered longer than those of the second.

At the end of the day, when I finally regained my senses, I deliberated on which of three choices I should proceed with.

Option #1: do nothing and hope for a better day tomorrow --> I'm no longer naive enough to believe that this would work.

Option #2: refer the students who I believe were causing the disruptions to the dean --> while I have a good idea who was to blame, students would accuse me of being heavy-handed and unfair. Being the pathological liars that they are, they would vehemently deny that they were the perpetrators of the chaos.

Option #3: Bring down the hammer and blitzkrieg their asses!

In the end, I felt compelled to bring down the hammer. Never before in my teaching career have I resorted to such a measure. My teaching fellows advisor, who had introduced this concept in training, told us to utilize the calling the homes of the ENTIRE class only when all other things had failed. But as they say, "desperate times call for desperate measures."

I pulled out my phone and thumbed through the school's student directory. I proceeded to call the homes of twenty students in that first class. I did not discriminate, calling not just the disruptive students but also the students who behaved themselves. What I did calibrate was the message that I told the parent, from the commonly heard "your son/daughter is a disruptive influence in class" to a more rare "your son/daughter, while being in a bad class, is paying attention and doing the work necessary."

In addition to commenting about behavior, it was quite appropriate to update parents on other tidbits of their son/daughter's academic progress. Many parents were surprised that their offspring was not the poster-child of academic success that they thought they were.

One conversation went along like this:

"Your son has done one out of the twelve homeworks due in my class."

"Really? I ask him everyday whether or not he has done his homework and he tells me that he did it at school or he has no homework."

"Well, your son is lying to you."

*GASP*

I think I ruined someone's weekend plans. Nothing like some vindicative justice to make me feel better.

Fancy Things Club

This stretch of the year, in between February break and April break, is notoriously killer. I just know that if my classes were in the state of chaos that they were in last year, I would have developed a nervous involuntary tremor (a tick) by now. But by the curious powers of fate, the ship I captain has remained upright (although it has sprung some leaks and lost some crew on the way). As I strut into my classroom, my kids eye me with some trepidation and stop (or at least tone down) their misbehavior. The continued order and structure that exists precariously in my classroom alleviates some of the stress in my life, allowing me to maintain my sanity.

At times, there are attempts to inject some civility into the greater entropy of the school. A group of my colleagues recently started a weekly book club. I imagine that it happens like this: they sit down and spend an hour discussing a piece of literature (A Thousand Splendid Suns being the first book that we were expected to read). I suppose they eat crumpets and caviar too. They might also sip on some red wine, while they analyze the themes, motifs, and symbolism found in the novel. Of course, they must do this all in character, wearing the garb or costume that is representative of a character found in the book. After reaching a mutual consensus on the topics at hand, they adjourn their meeting with a secret handshake and decide on which chapters to read for next week.

We also receive "words of the week" sheets in our teachers mailboxes. On these handouts are a series of vocabulary words that we could use in our speech to encourage students to expand their diction from the everyday "f*ck", "sh*t", "motherf*cker", n-word, "OD", "snitch", and "dead-ass". I am going to admit to you that I actually look forward to getting each set of words. Immediately after grabbing hold of the sheets, I look over the new words of the week, and pick some words to use in my conversations with students and teachers. So far I've used "conjecture" and "defenestrate". Guess which one I've used when talking to a teacher and which one I've used when berating a student.