More stories from the second week of school

On August 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching4 Comments

Today started and ended rather poorly, with some not-bad shoved in the middle. I had a moment of pure assholery from one of my anger management cases when the simple act of saying “good morning” less than a minute after walking into the building earned me an eye-roll and preadolescent stomping away. They try to train us to not take this personally when it happens, and I do my damnedest, but fuck it’s 7:30 in the Goddamn AM and I don’t need this shit this early in the morning.

I had a similar moment with another kid earlier this week when I was supposed to escort a line of them somewhere else in the building. I didn’t know most of them, and I asked the first kid in the line what his name was, intending to segue directly into Okay, Jimmy, I need you to walk to this corner and stop, and the motherfucker told me he didn’t know his name.

I blinked at him a couple of times and repeated the question, trying to assume he hadn’t heard the question.

“I ain’t got one.”

Goddamnit I am neither in the mood nor do I have the time for this shit. I asked you a simple and friendly question, you little fuck, and it’s a goddamn crime that I’m not allowed to resolve this situation by just punching you in your stupid throat and then asking the second kid what his name is, assuming that your crumpled, gasping body would give him some evidence as to whether he should answer the fucking question or not.

This; this is the shit that makes me not want anything to do with this job anymore. I know intellectually that this kid’s life has got to be fucked in some way because no one is this goddamned noncompliant and aggressive over simple shit for no fucking reason. My problem is that it’s not even September and I’m already not even close to the point where I can care any more. I’ve been in the trenches for fourteen fucking years. That’s enough. I need one kid who has a shitty home life and awful parents and needs someone with some compassion around him and instead I have hundreds, and I just can’t fucking deal with it any longer.

Thank fuckin’ God my homeroom is so nice. It ensures I still have some patience left when my much more problematic afternoon class comes along, because that’s the class with the special ed kids and the behavior problems. I found out today that one of my afternoon girls is the second child of the lunatic at the end of this post, a fact that does not surprise me at all given her behavior, because Mom has absolutely no ability to deal with anything in any way other than swearing and cursing and screeching at the top of her lungs. She’s been issued a restraining order by the school I worked at in that story, in fact. The very first time she tries this shit with me will be the last, one way or another.

(I mean, Christ, does this shit actually ever work for you? What the hell kind of life do you live when swearing and screaming like a lunatic at life’s every setback is your only way to cope? Does getting arrested and kicked out of/banned from ever reentering places all the goddamn time appeal to you? Because I know this nonsense isn’t getting you what you want.)

I’m glad it’s the weekend, is what I’m saying.

In which everything is awesome

On August 27, 2015August 27, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek15 Comments

Just spent about half an hour outside playing with one of these babies:

That’s a Phantom 3 Professional quadcopter, with a 4K camera on a goddamn gimbal, meaning you can swoop past things at an angle and the image stays smooth and level. The shots look outstanding; I haven’t pulled them from the SD card yet to check them out at full-res, though. I did make a dumb mistake where every picture I took shows my address, so you don’t get to see any of my footage yet, but I’ll keep fiddling with it this weekend.

It’s not mine, sadly. We bought it with the last of the grant money last year, and are going to use it for our media productions class– the camera is that good. But someone had to learn to fly it first, so I demanded first right of geekdom and brought it home. It costs roughly $usedcar, so I need to be damn careful I don’t screw it up. But damn, was that fun.

A question

On August 27, 2015August 26, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching9 Comments

Who was the best teacher you ever had? Tell me about him or her in comments. Define “teacher” as widely as you like, from preschool to your Ph.D advisor.

The holy water story, plus some other stuff

On August 26, 2015August 26, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching5 Comments

I have some really angry kids in my class this year.

That’s new.

I should explain. I’ve had plenty of kids with anger management issues. I’ve had plenty of kids who had explosive tempers. That’s part and parcel of working in an urban middle school, and frankly is probably part and parcel of working with middle schoolers no matter where you find them. But I’ve got a handful of girls in my afternoon class for whom pissed off at the world seems to be their only available emotional state. They walk in angry and they somehow manage to stay angry for the entire time they’re in the room. That’s the weird part. Kids get angry all the time; they get angry at me all the time. I’m used to that. They don’t stay that way for long. For a kid to keep up an angry mood for three successive class periods is exceptionally rare, and to do it for multiple days in a row practically unheard of. Being mad is hard. It takes work. Most of them don’t have it in them.

And somehow in this group I have more than one of them.

I’m being weird today. My son’s birthday was last Sunday, and today he got a gift card for Toys R’ Us in the mail from my aunt, so the three of us went to the comic shop (it’s Wednesday, after all) and to the toy store after I got home from work. And the toy store managed to depress me. I don’t even know why, but I’m still fighting it off.

I owe you two stories, I think. The first one is the Holy Water story I teased the other day. One of my girls in my afternoon class– not one of the angry ones– came up to me on Monday and asked if she could go to her locker. Later in the year this will be met with a near-automatic “no” except in case of emergencies, but they’re fifth graders and they’re not used to having to bring all of their stuff with them into classrooms so I’m being nice. I do generally ask what they need, though.

“I need to put something in my locker,” she says.

Ah. This is automatically lower-priority than needing to get something from a locker. “What do you need to put in your locker?”

“My holy water.”

Um.

“You’re carrying holy water with you?”

“Yes.”

Parts of my brain immediately start a cage match with other parts of my brain, doing their best to starve the entire thing of any residual oxygen.

“Why, my dear, do you have holy water with you in class?” Because Holy shit this is actually a new one.

“It helps me concentrate.”

“And… you have decided that you don’t need to concentrate any longer? We still have an entire class period left after we finish with math.”

“No. I’m tired and I think I’m done concentrating for today.”

“I think your holy water needs to stay with you, then. Perhaps it could use a recharge this Sunday; it appears to be losing some of its potency.”

“So I need to keep concentrating?”

“Indeed.”

She stands there and stares at me for a minute.

“Back to your seat, dear.”

She turns and leaves.

Today, as we’re working on two-digit multiplication, a concept they all appeared to have a decent grasp of until I began trying to teach it, one of my girls came up to me and demanded that I yell at her.

“Why do you need me to do that?”

“Because you yelled at me yesterday and I went back to my seat and did my work.”

I think about this. I didn’t yell at anyone yesterday. In fact, I’ve made a big deal with this class that I didn’t even need to raise my voice on Monday or Tuesday after a reasonably rough first couple of days.

“I don’t remember yelling at you yesterday.”

She thinks for a minute. “That was my teacher last year. Sorry. Can you yell at me anyway?”

Brain, cage match, starving, etc.

“Honey, I don’t think–”

“I really think it’ll help.”

What in the blue sadomasochistic fuck is going on right now.

She finally got me to bark GET AWAY FROM ME RIGHT NOW at her, at which point she smiled, thanked me, and literally skipped off back to her seat. I watched her for a moment and then looked over my shoulder, fully convinced that one of my bosses would have taken that moment to appear in my classroom for the first time all year. No one was there. The kids all looked shocked for a moment, then realized what was going on and went back to what they were doing. They were so blasé about it, in fact, that I find myself suspecting that this was a regular move that this kid pulled last year. Which… hell, I don’t even know what to do about that.

I’ll stop being tired all the time soon, right? How the fuck is it 9 PM already?

All I’ve got right now

On August 25, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Music3 Comments

It was a good day, but I just did like 20K words of editing and I cannot brain anymore. Have a video.

Why not. Have two.

Hey!

On August 25, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

remind me to tell the holy water story later.

Suddenly I’m bright and breezy

On August 24, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

True colors are beginning to pop, as I had a couple of kids end up with their first steps toward an office referral today, but both were in my afternoon class, meaning that my morning remains stubbornly angelic. They all beat me to the classroom this morning (this will be a regular thing, as my morning duty means that I follow the last group of kids upstairs) and they were all in one quiet line outside my classroom when I got there. I don’t know what to do with them. They’re too good, and I’ve never said that about a class before.

Also had my first lice check today. The girl wanted me to look through her hair, an opportunity I declined, but at least she was honest enough to admit it had been an issue in the past. The nurse was unable to find anything and diagnosed her with mild psoriasis, which I assume she prefers to the lice. I spent most of my afternoon sitting with my paraprofessional and figuring out IEPs so that I can stop breaking the law every afternoon, which so far has been happening just about every day so far.

I need to have all of their names down cold by tomorrow. I’ve got my homeroom 90% locked, at least when they’re in the room with me, but because of how our schedule works right now I have an extra hour with them every day which makes it a lot easier. So far I don’t have a lot of specific stories but I’m sure those are coming. Pretty soon I need to get back on the horse about the books, both of which have been languishing for several weeks. I’d like to have Searching for Malumba out in October, which means it needs to be ready to go within a month or so. (And, dammit! I had a subtitle for it last night and it’s gone. I knew I should have written it down.)

The book sale is still live; Skylights and The Sanctum of the Sphere are both $2.99 at Amazon until tonight or tomorrow sometime. Go grab ’em if you haven’t yet.

So, this weekend…

On August 23, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy11 Comments

My cat died, my wife probably broke at least one toe (again!,) I spent a couple of minutes shouting at my mother-in-law at my son’s birthday party and exiled myself to my bedroom to angrily fold clothes until they left, and I massively oversalted my grits somehow, making them inedible.

Granted, one of those sounds like a way less big deal than the others, but goddammit I was in serious psychological need of some god damn comfort food and managing to screw it up in such an unprecedented and inexplicable way really did not help.

Screw this weekend, is what I’m saying here. I want a mulligan.

I also have no lesson planning done for next week– mostly because I can’t convince myself that I actually really do have to do it– and I can’t watch FTWD tonight.

And I didn’t win a Hugo.

Bah.

But hey, at least I sort of got a blog post up today.