One Semester Later...

I’ve been thinking about this blog for some days now, something over a week. In fact, one morning a few days ago I woke up from a good night’s rest and for whatever reason, immediately started thinking about my high school teaching experience thus far. It’s been crazy. It’s been hellish. Ridiculous. Exhausting. Oh and yes, painful. It’s even managed to be painful. But thinking of how I feel as a teacher right now, I think I’ve come a long way. Or have I??
Back to that morning I was talking about: I woke up thinking about how I’d changed since 1st term. I remembered these big boxes of student folders, info, homework and tests that I would carry from my car to my classroom and back at the end of the day. I remembered the pauses I would take in the middle of some spiel I was giving because I forgot what I was going to say next (though I made it seem like it was because what I was saying was VERY important, of course). I reminisced over 1st term and then realized I was no longer the same. I used to stress that school bag was slightly more than half full; now it’s almost constantly filled to capacity when I go home every day but somehow, I’m okay with that. I just recently found out the testing schedule for semester exams and it totally messed up al my end-of-year plans for my students. Last term, I would’ve been on the verge of breaking down. Now, I’m just kind of going to bed.
I thought of all this with my head still to the pillow. And then I realized what was going on. I’ve gone numb. Numb to the feeling of inadequacy, of never getting anything done. Numb to always thinking of a better way to teach a concept after I’ve already taught it. Numb to the paper work I never/always do (…right)… Numb to the lesson plans… oh the lesson plans… Numb to the paper mess that has become of my two desks (it starts on one and spills over to the other). And I’m most definitely becoming numb to my students. And some of their parents too…

It’s like spraining your ankle. Imagine you’ve just joined a basketball team or something similar, and you’ve been training for some decent amount of time but not nearly enough to be a pro. Then! The coach sends you into the game during the first period of the first game of the season. You’re not ready to play, but you fake like you’re good to go, you look confident enough. So what happens? You get onto the court, go up for a lay-up, come down on your ankle and sprain it (and no, you didn’t make the shot). The team could be all the teachers at your high school, the coach is your principal, and the proverbial “game” = teaching your students all year. As a first year teacher you get hurtled into this craziness that takes you for many loops and can hurt you emotionally, physically, psychologically, all the –ly’s you can think of. So when you do get hurt, you’re sprained. So you put some ice on it and eventually it goes numb. You’re numb. And then, you can pretend to function. You don’t put too much pressure on that ankle (or whatever you’ve sprained), but some of that swelling’s down… Eventually that body part will be fully functional again (although, have you ever noticed how long it takes for your ankle to look like it used to after it’s been sprained? Just saying…)
So what am I saying? I’m saying that teaching is crazy. And it can hurt’s you pretty badly. I started of the year with all parts of me intact, but I’ve been hurt pretty bad, sprained some things… I’ve been putting myself on ice for some time now and it’s beginning to do the trick: I’ve numbed. One day [in the far distance probably], I’ll be working as well as I used to.

Sticking to my guns… so to speak…

The idea of making myself enforce my rules consistently for two weeks straight seemed decently close to impossible. I’m the kind of person that hates looking at or thinking about a lot of [hard] work and therefore, procrastinates. So just thinking about being consistent with all my consequences just made me want to curl up in a ball and watch movies under the covers… or something. But it had to be done. And then I thought of it! I could just work at one consequence at a time! I recently created a rule saying that there was absolutely no eating or drinking of any kind in class with the exception of water. My students even have to ask me before they have a cough drop. Otherwise, the consequence is immediate detention (bump the warning). I spent all of 1st term and at least 1/3 of 2nd term arguing with students about chewing gum in class or drinking Cherry Coke all the time. My kids were getting really out of hand with the food… there would be napkins left on desks, wrappers and empty drink containers on the floor… Once I even found a large mound of empty potato chip bags and candy wrappers in the back corner of the room behind the broom I left there. Entonces, no warning. In each class, I made an announcement explaining the food rule and the consequence of breaking the rule. Then I asked the students if they understood, and when they said “yes” that was that. Every single time I saw a student eating gum or a honey bun, it was detention. A sip from that coca-cola (at 8:45 am, mind you…): detention. Needless to say, the number of students in my detention has grown exponentially, but that’s a good thing. My students hated me for it for about 2 ½ weeks, but they’re used to it by now. At this point, the situation is pretty under control: I don’t find plastic bags or wrappers on the floor anymore and I don’t have to waste time in class explaining why a student is receiving detention (because the student and everyone else in the class already knows why).
Now that I’ve gotten this consequence under my consistency belt, I’ve moved on to another one: “bad words” and copy assignments. I no longer permit words and phrases like “stupid,” “shut up,” “idiot,” “dummy,” etc., and every time a student says one of these words, he or she receive a copy assignment. I’m beginning to go back and forth between giving students a warning for using a “bad word” before giving the copy assignment, but I’m sure I’ll work that out soon enough.

(As a side note: today three of my students asked me if they could have a cough drop. I told them to show the cough drops to me: two students had cherry cough drops and one student had lemon ones. I told the students they could have their cough drops with a straight, serious face, but in the back of my mind it made me smile.)