Nice and Sunny

As a little treat I decided to take my students outside today. We're all ready for summer but here at DCPS we still have a good 5 weeks of school. I'm glad I let them lounge around on the football field as we read about the Holocaust (about to teach Elie Wiesel's Night) but I still had to deal with all the chaos of that school building and I GOT A SUNBURN.









You can't really see my rosy red checks and there's no real line, but my arms and face are on fire. My legs are still white as can be.

So let's see, the chaos for today. My students who are habitually 20 to 30 minutes late to class everyday just sat in my room insisting they didn't know where I was. We've talked about our lesson on the football field all week, and I wrote it on the board, and there was a huge note right outside the class (on the cabinet that serves as a 4 foot wall to my room). Apparently reading and listening are as important as promptness.

What else, oh near the end of 2nd period I heard a huge CRASH so I ran to the scene of the accident and found my trash can had been thrown 4 stories out the window. When I asked the teachers in my area if they saw the culprits no one had an idea. We're so accustomed to seeing kids trespass in our teaching space we don't even recognize when it is happening. But I figure it's safe to say the kids I continually kick out of my room everyday while I'm trying to teach in there still go harass the area when I'm gone. Have I ever told you how wonderful it is to teach at a school with no walls?

Oh and I learned the kids who walk the halls all day in side the building also walk the pavilion on the back of the school when the weather is nice. I seriously never thought I'd be the type of teacher to say to a kid "I don't know why you bother coming to school everyday when it's so obvious you just want to grow up and be a fool. You don't need an education to get the kind of job you're headed for." That's so awful, but it is so true! And it's so frustrating because, despite popular opinion, many -- actually most -- of the students in that building really come to class and try to learn. In an open space environment it just takes 5 idiots to ruin it for everybody. And in DCPS it takes about 100 trained professionals to try and get those 5 idiots out of the school. And even when we get them out, they always come back.

I never thought I'd be the type of adult who truly believes some kids aren't deserving of a free education, but some really aren't. And if that statement sends me to hell so be it. Bring on the ways of Asia, whip them for graffiti. Oh, this sums everything up well. When we talked about Hitler taking away German's right to free speech one kid described freedom of speech as "You're right to curse somebody out." So if the students really believe they have the right to curse out adults, why can't adults have the right to whoop their ass? Is that too much to ask?