WHOOSH!

That, my friends, is the sound of my teaching career going up in flames - in a "bomb exploding spewing massive amounts of razor sharps bits of shrapnel" flamey kind of way.

Yesterday, which I was initially under the impression would be my last day in my friend's classroom, was an unmitigated disaster. Truly horrifying in an almost comedic way. I got there in a fairly good mood - thinking, again, that it would be the last time I would have to subject myself to its torture - only to find my friend, Monica, freaking out and saying that she spent the whole morning throwing up. She said that she had just had a meeting with the asshole 1st grade teacher across the hall and the principal and they wanted the two of us to split the class in half for the whole day. Nice that there was a meeting about what I was supposed to be doing at this school that I wasn't a part of. Real nice.

So Monica hands me a math worksheet to work on with my group for an hour, and then a big Health book to do for another hour. The school day for the kindergarteners is, roughly broken up into 4 blocks, so I would take half the kids in the morning and do 2 lessons with them for the first 2 blocks of the day, and then Monica and I would switch kids after lunch, and I would do the same 2 lessons with the other half of the kids. That way, all of the kids would be cycled through my 2 lessons and Monica's two lessons. Half an hour before school started this was all sprung on me. I scrambled to get the room next door in some order - setting up tables and chairs, frantically picking a couple of books for read alouds, formulating some lesson plans for my 2 blocks, gathering the necessary materials, etc. The kids are brought into the room in the morning and I take half to the room next door. 11 kids - much better than the 25 as a whole. My morning lesson involved making patterns [red, blue, red, blue, etc.] with linker cubes - not SO bad, since this was the same math program that we used in Miles' class last year, and this was a lesson that I had done in his class, too. The second block was going to be more challenging. I was given the health book and told to talk to the kids about "safety". Ok. I had other things planned, some counting games, a LONG read aloud book, etc. just in case I needed some stuff to fill the time. Well, the first block went alright. Some kids still had problems following directions. I swear, you can talk as loud as possible and these kids still don't hear you - it's bizarre. It's like they have tuned their brains so that your voice just becomes white noise to them. Anyway, it's recess time and I take my kids out to recess and I hear from someone that Monica is really sick and is probably going to take the rest of the day off. Shit. Another teacher watches the kids at recess so I went up to Monica's room only to find that she isn't in there. I found the principal and she told me that Monica was "resting" in the extra room [the room that I was using]. Sure enough, Monica is in there lying on the floor saying that she'll do everything that she can not to screw me over, but that she is majorly sick. I told her that I wasn't surprised, "You are exhaused - totally spent - mentally and physically." She then proceeds to start crying and saying, "Dude, I just don't know how I'm going to do this. I don't think I can do it." I comforted her as best I could, and then ran downstairs to see how things were going on the playground.

Monica ended up going home shortly after our discussion, and I was left with this batch of monsters. Monica had no lesson plans for me, no ideas of what I could now do with the whole class. I was perfectly prepared to do the same two lessons with both halves of the class individually, but now I had to find things to do with EVERYONE at once. In the hallway, the woman running the Book Fair [who said the nice things to me the other day - see previous post...] handed me some papers and said, "Can you have your students draw pictures of a 'Fairy Telling Bird'? We're having a contest and I haven't received very many submissions. The winning entry will get $5." Well, there is something that we can do when the kids get back from recess. The kids noisily filed back in [as usual] and I grabbed a book written by Jamie Lee Curtis about emotions to read with the kids before getting to work on our time-wasting drawings. Yep, Monica got me to help her, but who did I get to help me?? One of the girls in class said, "No, read this one," so I ended up reading this cool book about a spider seducing, and then ultimately devouring, this female fly. It was a little advanced for the kids, with flowery poetic language, but it was about spiders and flies so the kids kind of liked it. After that, I had the kids go back to their tables, where we would then start our drawings. Well, the noise level got out of control rather quickly, and they just weren't listening to my instructions. So, I turned off the light and hollered. ALRIGHT! I NEED IT COMPLETELY QUIET RIGHT NOW! They got quiet, and I paced around the room looking into each and every eye as I made my grand speech: "I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS. Ever since that day that I walked into this room you have all acted like complete animals. You are all WAY better than that. This may work for your other teacher, but I'm not going to have it anymore! This is KINDERGARTEN, not preschool. We listen when spoken to here. We keep our hands to ourselves here. I want all of you to go into 1st grade as if you are so smart that you could probably jump to 2nd grade. But, we can't do ANY learning if you keep behaving the way that you have been behaving. You are all incredibly special, intelligent, wonderful people, and I know that you are all capable of MUCH better than what you've been doing. Now, you are all going to start behaving better. Got it? GOT IT?!" Most muttered, "Got it," and then proceeded to start acting like animals again.

You know, at this point, I kind of felt like this might be my big break. Maybe Monica would just quit and they would offer me the job. This could work. Well, I knew that it wouldn't work when I picked this one particularly disrespectful girl up and screamed in her face, "SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW!" only to look over and see the principal standing right next to me. From that moment on, things just kept going downhill. It was now lunchtime and the principal, with the assistance of the jackass 1st grade teacher, led the kids down to the lunchroom. I followed, tail between my legs, and said to the principal, "I'm really sorry. It's just rough in there. If you don't want me to finish out the day I completely understand." She said to me, "Well, I just want to be sure that you can keep things under control in there," and my heart sank. This was the end for me. It was all over. Everything that I had worked so hard for just flew out the window and blew up in a firey ball of flame and smoke. I felt so small and horrible and incompetant. Truly, a low. And, since I had to throw together a plan for the rest of the day, I didn't even get to eat all of my lunch.

Well, I finished out the day, and the principal ended up sending TWO helpers into the room with me. Humiliatingly enough, one of them was a STUDENT TEACHER from the 1st grade classroom. Luckily, these two helpers got so see just what a challenge this group of kids is. At second recess I said to the student teacher, "You know, this morning I realized why this class is so difficult. I had heard from a seasoned teacher that a lot of elementary level teaching is teaching students socialization skills, but with this group that's ALL that it is right now. I just can't believe that most of these kids come here without ANY conception of how to behave in public. Did their parents never set boundaries? Was there any discipline at home? It makes me sad that some of these kids just don't know hot to behave themselves AT ALL."

So, I barely made it through the day. I got them out at the end of school and stuck around until the very last kids got on the bus and were picked up by a family member - I was out there FAR longer than any other teacher at the school. I walked back into the room and tried to gain my composure and straighten things up. It got to be an hour or so after school, and NO ONE had come in to the room to talk to me about how things went, or whether or not Monica would be back the next day, or whether or not they even wanted me back there at all. I was ticked off, so I ended up calling Monica. She told me that she was sick as a dog, implying that it was some bug that she picked up - yeah, right - and that she wouldn't be in the next day. I told her that I wouldn't be coming back, but I would draw up some sub plans in her place. Frustrated with everything, I went to talk to the principal. I told her, "I apologize for today, and, that said, I think it's best for all involved if I don't come back tomorrow. I know in my heart that I am a great teacher, but it's REALLY tough in there, and the whole situation has been odd from the start. Monica is a great teacher, but her methods are not at all my methods. It's strange to be in there and know that I would do things in a completely different way, but have to follow her ways. Monica has been throwing herself into this job and, frankly, I think that the reason she is sick is because of just sheer exhaustion." I was also proud of myself for telling her that I was disappointed that NO ONE had come to me afterschool to talk to me about the next day. I also said that I was upset that NO ONE explained to me from the get-go that I was there for more than just "extra support", but that it was expected that I would be planning and taking half of the class.

The thing that busts my butt the most about the whole situation is that I came out smelling the worst in the whole deal. I'm the one that now looks completely incompetant because I didn't want to bad mouth a friend. Well, what was I supposed to do, go up to the principal and tell her that Monica is, probably, having a bit of a nervous breakdown, has no control over the kids either, and that she frequently seems to just kind of "wing it", only coming up with lessons at the last minute? That there is very little structure in the room, and that there are no classroom rules posted and that it doesn't seem like she even came up with a student-generated list of rules, and that there isn't a real daily schedule posted, and that she doesn't seem to be following the language arts or math curriculums, etc. Sure, I can sit here and say, Wow, I would do this and that SO differently, but, who knows? I just know that I wouldn't walk into that room everyday without know EXACTLY what we were going to be doing at every moment in the day. Our community circle, EVERYDAY, would talk about how we should value listening, mutual respect, etc. - all of the things that these kids NEED to be reminded of CONSTANTLY. Also, I wouldn't have let them get away with ANYTHING from Day 1. If, on the first day of school they couldn't get into a straight, quiet line [and I would also put a piece of brightly colored tape on the floor by the door so that they would know EXACTLY where to stand...] then we would go back to our seats and try it again, over and over and over and over until we got it right. And, because I don't want to blame anyone else, or make a friend look bad, I come out smelling the worst...

On a somewhat related note, Monica got another NEW STUDENT one day before the 10-day cutoff [yesterday] whereby all students above the limit of 20 in a class needed to be placed elsewhere. As far as I know, today there were still 25 kids in that room. Monica said that she went to a new teacher training session last Saturday and met a Kindergarten teacher who only had 14 [FOURTEEN!] kids in her room. This district is stupid... and blows.

This morning, a guy finally came to look at our stove. Two days ago, I called the landlord-rep woman after a shitty day at school. I was not in a good mood, and I was prepared to rip this woman a new one if she didn't get on the ball. She proceeded to tell me that repairmen have tried calling us but haven't gotten us at home. "Well, they should LEAVE A MESSAGE. We have voicemail!" I told her that we were sick of their waffling and that if we didn't get some quick action that we were going to be writing a letter to the rent board. To this she responded, "What are you saying?" "I'm saying that you are our landlord and you have to respond in a timely fashion when something in our apartment isn't working." You know what she said next?? "Well, you guys broke the stove."

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??

I ripped into her as promised: "Look, lady, we didn't break anything. This is from normal wear and tear. Our stove is an old relic and there is no way that we can fix it ourselves. We aren't going to be toying around with gas lines and risk getting blown up. This is YOUR responsibility, not ours." Well, so the guy came this morning, and, of course, as if on cue, the oven - WHOOSH! - started right up. The guy muttered something in broken English and left. Naturally, as of the time of writing this, a mere matter of hours after the guy was here, THE OVEN WON'T COME ON AGAIN! AARGH?!