I was attempting to do some review work with my third hour class (they have a test tomorrow) when a bunch of my boys abruptly and simultaneously lost their minds. Turns out they had located a piece of what appeared to be cat shit on the floor near one of their desks. While I’m fairly sure this isn’t the first time that there has been poop on the floor in my classroom– I feel like there was some sort of post-recess insanity at some point or another– it was probably the first time for that particular species. At any rate, I got my broom and cleaned it up and went about my day, chuckling at the ridiculousness of it all.
A quick warning: this story will not end neatly. But prepare yourself for Part II anyway.
PART II! I had finished my lunch and was walking to the office to complete a couple of small tasks, including but not limited to a human shit, when I discovered, to my great surprise and mild amusement, what was definitely a second piece of cat shit, this time in the hallway, about halfway between my room and the office. Why the certainty? It had litter embedded in it, implying that it had traveled to be in our hallway and not that we had a rogue cat shitting up our building. (There are a lot of strays in our neighborhood, so this isn’t as insane an idea as it might sound.). I left it there for a few minutes, taking care of business in the office, then cleaned it up the same way and waited outside my room, a giant grin on my face, waiting for my assistant principal to finish up with his lunch duty and walk back to his office, as he always does. I have never been looking forward to a facial expression more in my entire life, and prefaced the story as “the most middle school story of all time.”
I told him that I didn’t have any idea what he should do with the information I had just given him, or even if he should or could do anything with the information that I had just given him, but that I couldn’t in good conscience find two pieces of non-human excrement in two different places in the building, especially when one appeared to be imported, and not let someone know about it.
“You make more money than me,” I said. “This is why.” Then I patted him on the shoulder, turned around, and went into my classroom, hopefully to enjoy the rest of my day poop-free.
Really freaking rough day at work today. The day started off with an emergency staff meeting. As you can probably imagine, an emergency staff meeting, this one called on literally three minutes’ notice, is never a good thing, and this one was worse than most, as we lost a student over the weekend. Apparently she had a massive seizure while in the tub. Halloween was her fourteenth birthday, and was also the day her parents decided to take her off life support.
She was not one of mine, and not a kid I knew, but the building was a messas a result. We were given a statement we were asked to read to our second hour classes, and there were grief counselors in the building all day long.
And as much as I would like to blame that for my kids’ academic performance today, I really can’t do that, as once again a huge percentage of my students decided to pretend today that they had not only not attended a single second of any sort of 8th grade Math class, they had spent their entire lives living in a small, dark box and had never encountered the concept of numbers in general. Far, far more kids, unfortunately, than could be reasonably presumed to have known this girl. Plus it was also happening during first hour, before anyone knew what had happened.
I don’t know if non-educators can really understand the frustration of spending an entire month of class time talking about solving equations every single day, and then to wait a week and have a solid majority of your students act as if they have never encountered any such nonsense before. Or to ask an eighth grader what three plus nine is as part of explaining an admittedly somewhat tricky story problem and be greeted with a blank stare and three obvious guesses before you finally pry the answer to that first-grade math question out of them.
I still can’t figure out how it is fair that I get judged on the academic performance of people for whom being a moron is aspirational. “When am I going to use this?” indeed; you will never in your life use anything, and I wish I could get across to you how intensely depressing that all is.
Are there standardized tests later this week? Of course there are. They are never fucking dumber than right before something that is important to me, but not to them.
I returned to work today, although I was unable to tough it out and go to conferences. It became clear after a couple of class periods that all I was going to be capable of doing was preventing any of them from killing themselves or each other, and a twelve-hour day simply wasn’t happening today. It’s 8:30 PM as I’m writing this, and I feel more fully human than I have in a week, although I still haven’t managed to eat a real meal. Lunch was half a package of saltines, a banana, and a couple of cups of applesauce. Dinner was some mashed potatoes and a couple of pretzel sticks.
I am hoping to eat a salad for lunch tomorrow without paying for it. We shall see.
I had one of the more bizarre conversations/arguments with a student today that I’ve had in a while; I don’t remember exactly what got us on the topic, but two of my fifth hour girls had come back to my desk and the topic of my son came up. One of them appeared completely bewildered by the topic, and even more bewildered by the notion that I might be 50 and have a fifteen-year-old.
“He’s adopted, though, right?”
Uh … no. He’s mine.
“But was he … born?“
I swear that’s what she asked, and that got her a weird look from both of us.
Yes? My son was born. I was there. Watched it happen, at least sort of. They put you behind the curtain when there’s a c-section, but there wasn’t a baby one minute and then there was a huge hole in my wife and a baby, so I kinda made some assumptions? Plus the whole pregnancy thing that ended right away.
“But … you’re gay.”
It is worth making clear here that this child had not one trace of doubt in that statement. None. It was apparently more logical to her that I had somehow conjured my own son than that I was a heterosexual married to a woman.
“I promise you I’m not. Married to a woman and everything.”
“You told us you were gay!”
At this point her friend literally shakes her head as if she can’t quite believe what she’s looking at and is trying to clear the cobwebs. It was kind of hilarious.
“He never said that.” “I never said that.”
“Yes you did! You’re gay!”
“He has a wife,” the other one hisses at her, clearly mortified.
At this point I produced my phone (did I mention I decided not to order the Duo? I didn’t order a Duo.) and showed her a family picture. I swear she was no more than a moment or two from telling me my son’s graduation picture was AI.
Now, here’s the thing: I am certain a nontrivial portion of my students assume I’m gay. The room isn’t exactly full of pride flags, nothing like it was at my previous school, but they’re there, and they all know I run the school’s LGBTQ club, and I come down hard on homophobia in my room. And, and this is my fault, and I should probably fix it, there aren’t any family photos prominently displayed anywhere, so a casual observer of my room couldn’t be faulted for jumping to a conclusion. I make it real clear to the Gem Club kids that I’m cishet because I don’t want them feeling like I’ve misrepresented myself, but I genuinely don’t care what the rest of them think– and I think the fact that I don’t make a big deal out of it when kids do ask if I’m gay doesn’t help. I’ve never had a kid ask with any sort of hateful or disgusted feelings attached to the question, and a lot of the time they’ll apologize beforehand. I always tell them the same thing, more or less– yes, I’m straight, but I’m not bothered by the idea that they thought otherwise at first. I will be okay. So will they.
This is, however, the first time that someone has argued with me about it.
QUICK STORY 1 of 2: I walked to Bree! Sort of. Every so often an ad for this app called The Conqueror will scroll across some social media or another, and I finally decided to bite and try the first Lord of the Rings challenge they offer. The idea isn’t super complicated: walk 145 miles, over whatever time frame you personally desire. You get access to an app that helps you keep track of your walking and after 145 miles they send you a medal that says you walked from the Shire to Bree. There’s a little miniature ring inside that envelope on the back of the medal. There are several more of these, of varying lengths; the next one takes me to Rivendell, and eventually all the way to Mordor itself. There’s also one that lets you follow Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas’ road instead, or you can do all of them. I just signed up for the one at first, because there’s a cost to it and I wanted to make sure the medal felt like it wasn’t a piece of junk, and it’s not. It’s a decent little display piece, and it’ll look even cooler with seven friends on it. So: off to Rivendell!
QUICK STORY 2 of 2: I had my first real referral of the year today, for something I’ve never written a kid up for before: starting a fire in class! With a lighter he’d managed to kludge together by stripping some wires on a vape! I would be impressed with his ingenuity if it wasn’t being used in the pursuit of such sheer stupidity. He rolled up a piece of paper into what looked like a joint and lit that, so it wasn’t a big fire, but as it turns out that’s not an especially salient detail when you set a fire in a school. Even small ones are a problem! You’re not supposed to do that.
NOT A STORY BUT I’M INCLUDING IT! I’m reading this book right now, and this is easily the prettiest author signature I’ve ever seen:
I really want to see the fountain pen she used. That had to be a fountain pen.
This isn’t the usual rant, although I’m pretty sure after 5,485 posts over the last thirteen-plus years, I’ve probably written it before. I locked grades for the first quarter today, and in keeping with previous practice today’s classes were given over to test retakes and missing work, or for doing nothing if you were satisfied with your grade.
Y’all, I only had twelve kids fail my class this quarter. That’s out of a hundred and thirty-four. That’s 8.9 percent. Thirty-two in my regular Math class are getting an A, plus seventeen more in my Algebra and Math lab classes. 36.5%.
I gotta admit, that number feels too high, although it’s skewed by my other two classes being Algebra and a Math Lab class that nonetheless is full of Algebra students. But even my regular Math classes managed 29.6% getting an A. That’s crazy.
To put this in perspective, I have had plenty of individual classes where more than 12 kids were failing. Typically if it’s below fifteen percent I feel okay about it. I really want to go back over the last few years and compare my grades during first quarter to see if I’m just remembering wrong.
So, what am I doing right now? Congratulating myself on, at the least, motivating more kids to get their work done, because it’s not like there’s anything I can do if they choose to do nothing? Marveling at how my command of my craft means that my kids are really learning this year, and that’s the reason grades are up?
Nah, of course not; I’m trying to figure out where I’ve gotten easier and lazier about grading. There is no good news in my goblin brain, and there are a million ways to take anything that looks like good news and turn it into bad news.
Tomorrow, I get to remind everyone that grades are starting over, and because of that when half of them don’t turn in their assignment tomorrow, that half will wake up on Saturday morning and find out they’re failing Math. I’m also super psyched about the way the good news is only going to last for about a day.
I wish I thought I could get away with posting work emails in full, because hoo-boy, did I have a doozy of a banger of an email thread waiting for me when I woke up this morning– waiting for me in the morning, because it was sent at 12:30 last night. A parent emailed thirteen different people because her darling sweetheart wasn’t eligible to play middle school football any longer, on account of his failing three of his seven classes, including mine. Has he been failing three classes for weeks? Of course he has. Do teachers have a way to see if parents have been checking their kids’ grades? Of course we do. Have they? Of course they haven’t.
This decision was “potentially affecting his future.” He is five foot two and 110 pounds, dripping wet. He will not even make the high school team, much less anything beyond that.
Now, as it turns out, I had him retake a test last week, which he didn’t finish. Had I been at work yesterday, I’d have had him finish it then; I was planning on him finishing it this morning, which he did, and which brought his grade up to passing. I want this perfectly clear: I was going to do this anyway, even if the email had never been sent. That didn’t stop the thread from continuing to escalate throughout the day, as she apparently thought that everyone involved up and down the command structure was just going to drop everything to make sure that little Billy got his ten minutes of playing time tonight. At least two of his teachers do not have prep periods and one has been out for the last two days; needless to say, nobody is making replying to hysterical FAFO emails their highest priorities. Also, literally none of us have a single drop of influence over whether he plays football or not, and I suspect none of us care.
Then Dad, who no one has ever heard from all year, got involved, and Dad decided to cc in the superintendent, who I can absolutely assure you neither has the time nor the inclination to give a single damn about whether a kid with three failing grades played football tonight. Mom’s email was, in its own way, reasonable; Dad’s very much was not, and trust me, sir, only showing up to gripe about playing time in football is not endearing you to any of us. Two of my kids ended up in the hospital after the last 8th grade football game, one concussed so bad that he hasn’t been back to school yet after a week. As far as I’m concerned the entire fucking sport should be banned.
The worst thing? Dad’s a teacher in our district. Which means that he knows, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he’s full of shit, and that no one is trembling at the thought of the superintendent stepping in. By the end of the entire mess Mom was hyperventilating about the kid’s IEP, which, needless to say, does not mention sports eligibility on any of its nineteen pages and also does not contain any particular restrictions on the grades we have to give work that is not turned in. Does he have extra time to get his work done and turn it in? Yes! But he still has to turn it in before that matters, and … well.
The last email was a “demand” that she receive a “clear and written explanation” about whether her son could or could not play in tonight’s football game and why. If she received any such thing, I was not included in the response; I look forward to seeing her in the office already as I walk in in the morning. Because I’m not even failing him anymore and I am genuinely looking forward to this conversation. Of the three of us, me and his sports-obsessed idiot parents, who do you think has actually read the lad’s IEP?
I’ve said this before– one of the fun things about teaching middle school is the sheer diversity among any community of kids in their early teen years. Two girls can be a month apart in age; one of them is still playing with dolls and wearing a training bra and the other is a makeup whiz who can waltz into any bar in the world without anyone asking any questions until she starts talking. Boy #1 is 6’3″ and 250 pounds with a beard, the kid in the seat behind him, a month older, is 4’8″ and has not a single trace of peach fuzz anywhere on his body.
This is exemplified in my third hour, which contains both my largest and my smallest boys; I’m not exaggerating about either of them. I’m glad that the big kid is a sweetheart because if he ever decides to get into a fight, I’m not breaking it up unless I need to haul someone else off of him.
We’re going to call the little one Morris. This isn’t a clever pun on his actual name or anything; it’s just a name that popped into my head. Morris is … different. He’s never been identified for special education, but … well, to be slightly cruel, he has the look about him, and his tiny height despite legitimately being one of the older kids in my room doesn’t really help.
I have been approached by multiple different teachers about him this year, all of them saying things like “You know Morris can’t add, right?”
Yeah, I’m aware. Morris has fourteen missing assignments already and when he walked into my classroom this morning he had a 20% in my class. He got a zero on his first test. Not because he got all the answers wrong; he turned it in blank. His name wasn’t even on it. I handed it back to him the next day and he gave it back to me at the end of that class still blank. He is one of those deeply frustrating kids who appears to know absolutely nothing at all, but also refuses to try or ever do much of anything, so it’s very difficult to actually give him any help. He won’t ask, and standing over his shoulder and insisting that he do something just results in a thousand-yard stare until you inevitably have to cut bait and help one of the other two dozen kids in the room (including the big guy, who isn’t my smartest kid but works his ass off.)
We had our second test of the year today. My tests are all open-note and this one allowed calculators as well. A few minutes into the test I noticed that Morris was reading a book rather than working on his test. I will note that this was, in some ways, a positive development; I wasn’t completely sure he could read.
“Hey, Morris, we’re taking a test. I need you to put the book away.”
“What test?”
“It’s literally right in front of you. I handed it to you. Your hands are on it right now.”
“Oh.”
A few minutes later, Morris is hanging out of his seat, contorted in such a way that his head is actually directly under the seat, not the desk part. I remind him again that, hey, maybe you might do something. Also, I don’t see your notes or a calculator. Maybe get your notes out and go grab a calculator? And a pencil? I don’t see a pencil either.
I get more stern during the third warning, where I note that he has yet to write his name on the test and still doesn’t have his notes out. He is staring intently at his fingertips and occasionally dropping his pencil on his desk, trying to get it to bounce on the eraser end. The hard-ass act doesn’t work either. Fuck it, I think, resolving that two straight zeroes on tests is enough data to refer this kid for a special ed evaluation. Everyone else is done with their test already but there’s only so long I’m willing to beat my head against a wall.
With eight minutes left in class Morris brings me his test. He has written his name on it! He points at the first question, which is fairly simple:
“I need to point the mouth toward the larger number, right?” He makes an alligator-bite gesture with his thumb and index finger as he’s saying this, a gesture that I’ve made dozens of times when discussing greater than/less then. I tell him yes. He gets the answer right.
Okay, that was 50/50, if we’re being honest.
He looks at the next question, pushes some buttons on his calculator, and … gets that one right, too. He looks at #3 for a second.
“Each of these little marks is a tenth, right? And eight times 3.14 is … 25.12. So that’s like twenty-five dollars and twelve cents, so … A?”
I note that again he’s mimicking my speech patterns. I’ve been encouraging the kids to think of these decimals as money so that they don’t do things like say 25.5 is more than 25.10 because 10 is bigger than 5. But he’s right again.
This little shit ran through the entire test in eight minutes, asking a handful of questions that were entirely of the please validate my belief that this is the right procedure type– no “how do I do this?”, only “I do this this way, right?” And more than once, he phrases things exactly the way I’ve been saying them in class.
And he got every single question right, including a few that most of my students got wrong over the course of the day. The whole-class average on this test (all my 8th grade Math students, in other words) was 71%, which isn’t terrible but is lower than I like it to be. And he got a perfect score, and now I have to completely reevaluate every single Goddamn thing I know about him.
I may still do the referral. There’s something going on here. It’s just more complicated than I thought. And a hell of a lot more interesting.
I ask him, as the bell rings at the end of class, why he spent so much time screwing around and not doing anything, since he obviously knew what to do on this test.
I left the house ten minutes early today, wanting to get to work a few minutes in advance of the morning’s staff meeting, and promptly encountered a car accident on the highway that slowed me to a complete stop and got me to work at pretty much exactly the same time I usually get there– ie, a minute or two late, but not enough that anyone will ever notice or say anything. But God damn if it hasn’t led to me feeling half an hour behind on everything, for the entire day. I ran some errands after work and picked the boy up from school after a club meeting, so I didn’t get home until after 6, and then we ate dinner, and now somehow it’s 8:15 and I’m working on this blog post. I’m completely convinced it’s going to be 9:30 when I finish, no matter how long the post ends up being, and if you can’t tell it’s not like I have a ton of material to work with today.
(A brief digression, where I attempt to find a picture for this post, and find one that keeps getting more bizarre the longer I look at it until l realize that two different girls in the picture have extra knees and therefore the picture is AI. I’m not posting it, but feel free to Google “quiet kids sitting in rows” and see what comes up.)
(Also, Adobe, if something is AI-generated it cannot, by definition, be a stock photo.)
(I type “classrooms” into GIS looking for something generic and the first picture I see also turns out to be AI.)
(Fuck, and I mean that with every ounce of disrespect in my body, generative AI.)
Anyway.
Yesterday was not a bad day at school by any means but all of my classes have been wilder the last couple of days than previously, so I decided to pull back on the reins a little bit today and made everybody stay in their seats for the entire class period. Typically my move this year is that everyone stays in assigned seats for the instruction portion of class, and after that I don’t really care where you sit so long as you’re in the room and you pick a spot and more or less stay there. I wasn’t mad and didn’t act mad in class, I just said that they’d been a little rowdy so we were doing to dial back for a couple of class periods and then things would probably go back to normal.
Here’s how good my classes are: you could have heard a pin drop in my fifth and third hour classes during work time, and my sixth hour was quiet until 90% of them were done with their work, at which point a class discussion erupted that was entirely my fault and made it nearly impossible to keep everyone quiet. Which, again, wasn’t my goal anyway— I wanted to limit movement and chaos a little more than usual and cut down on the noise, but I’m rarely interested in silent classrooms unless I’m teaching or they’re taking a test. Silent classrooms full of kids creep me out, to be completely honest.
All that said, my honeymoon may be coming to an end, as the counselor pulled me aside this afternoon to tell me that a currently homeschooled student would be visiting my classroom on Friday (??) so that she could decide (???) whether she wanted to attend our school part-time (????) or go to the district’s alternative school instead. (?????) As none of this is usually the child’s decision– you have to have made some serious mistakes for part time or alternative school to be an option, and at that point the “option” is not usually your option, it’s the district’s– but I look forward to seeing what sort of bomb this is going to drop into my lovely, peaceful day.
I can only assume that I should have put homeschooled in quotation marks up there.
