“Okay, so you’re talking out, time to go to a buddy room,” I said, even as I said it thinking, wait, what?
I work with the most high-maintenance kids. The kids kicked out of regular school, but not messed up enough to be hospitalized.
And mostly I like it a lot, except when all of them whack-a-mole with “I hate this,” or “I don’t have a pencil,” or “She’s trippin,” or “I’m tired!” or “She won’t ever let us go to the bathroom!” or “Motherfucker.”
Sometimes I even like it then, but April and May are hard. We turn this sharp corner to where there is no slowing down, just edge of your wheels until, miraculously, there comes a day none of us have to go there any more.
Because our kids need a lot, we often have multiple adults working with them. This particular day, I had two other adults. When a kid doesn’t take direction, one of the other adults will usually follow up, so as to not inflame the situation further.
We manage student behaviors really well.
This day, though, the kid was not following my directions, and as different adults went back to quietly talk with her (quiet talk is the other thing I love at our school, lots of quiet talk), and the kid did not move.
I was, as one of my vocabulary words taped to the closet says, “apoplectic.”
I had this great lesson where we would annotate a rap and a poem and then write our own stuff. It was so motherfucking appropriate and open to their creative impulses, I should have been shot.
Anger has such upward motion. My soul shoots up from my body into the ether, where it checks out.
I kept working with the other kids, getting them going.
One of our great challenges, particularly at a school like mine, but also in the regular schools with regular kids, is students who won’t do anything. Many places I’ve taught, I was told that I had to engage the kids in what we were doing, and I had to do whatever it took.
I imagine the real-life events of an R-rated movie would probably do the job. School is not rated R, though.
Kids will put their heads down and sleep.
At my first school, I did not permit this. I would wake kids up over, and over again. Occasionally this made them very angry.
It’s more the theory at my current school that kids choose whether or not to do the work, and live with the consequences.
I’m not sure either answer is better.
I have a student currently who is so ill, and so medicated, that he has days he is basically narcoleptic. He falls, his consciousness falls into sleep, even while sitting up.
I told one of the other adults I was going to the bathroom. (Tremendous perk of working at an alternative school: I get to go to the bathroom.)
I sat on the toilet and put my head in my hands and a familiar script came: what I say doesn’t matter. No one respects me. No one gives a shit about me. What I want doesn’t matter. No one backs me up. I don’t have any help.
I washed my hands.
I stood there and remembered to breathe deeper.
The moment I opened my classroom door again, I thought, these other adults are here to help me, and they do.
The kid was still in my room, but another adult had emailed me why the kid had not been removed from the room. (Occasionally we have a security guard stand with a kid until they will leave the room, and rarely, we have a security guard secure a kid who is being physically violent.)
“Thanks,” I said. “I knew I was being crazy. Thanks for doing what’s best for the kid.”
I believed what I said, 95%, and about 5% of myself thought that no one ever helps, respects, or listens to me.
Which I guess doesn’t matter. My main growth into adulthood was accepting that what you believe doesn’t matter that much. It’s what you do that counts.
I think a lot, in the last few years, about how I was raised with expectations that weren’t realistic.
I believed I could do any professional job I wanted, and I would have job security and enough money to live middle class (support other people, have a car and vacations).
Nope.
I took a day off.
For a while, I sat on my balcony with both my cats.
The kitten, Lafayette, must be on a leash while outside. His sister, Leia, wants to attack and eat him. Still. He wants to meet her and wrestle! A lot!
She sits on the balcony edge, where I let her sit because even though it scares me, she’s a cat, and she was made for edge-sitting. It’s only the second floor.
He sits with his harness on, waiting for an opportunity to wiggle out and escape the leash.
I scoot my chair to the alley of sunshine on the south side of my balcony, put my feet up, and read Harvey Fierstein’s autobiography. Fierstein writes about the titles of plays written by a friend: “Turtles Don’t Dream, Awful People Are Coming Over So We Must Be Pretending To Be Hard at Work and Hope That They Will Go Away.”
These titles please me.
Going On 