The Last

Yes, I played “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper. No one needed that extra noise in the hall.

Yesterday, a senior who had spent many days sleeping through class, came in to do some more work in hopes of graduating in July. I put on “Wayne’s World” and I told him it was the movie I quote the most. I was both distracting him from his work, and enriching my own environment. He coulda gone to another room to work.

“What did you think of it?” I said, as this was a thing I could say that wasn’t infuriated or vengeful.

“It was good,” he said.

We had another senior this year who only showed up about half the time. This person “will come on Thursday,” I said. “Just you watch,” I told my colleagues.

I was wrong. This person came to school ON THE LAST DAY.

We were all like, exsqueeze me? Baking powder?

He went around to the teachers whose classes he hadn’t passed, and one of them, bless ’em, was like, it’s a no from me, dawg.

“What happened?” I asked. “We’ve been so worried!” I said, because this was a thing I could say instead of “Can you not just show up and sort of do some work so you can fucking graduate from high school?”

“Aw, nothin’,” he said shyly.

In various ways these two have frustrated me enormously.

Perhaps most of all on the days they would secretly throw paper balls at each other, or one would turn Eddie Haskell and say over and over, “Do your work!” to the colleague who was trying to do work.

A student wanted to be the one to scoop our class fish out of the tank for his ride home. This seemed like a pain in the ass to me, on a day I was boxing up final thisses and thats, but I did go get him, and he came in and was very gentle, letting Sunny get past the cup. “Be aggressive,” I said, a thing one doesn’t say at an alternative school.

He didn’t get aggressive, and Sunny tentatively swam into the cup.

I carried Sunny around so everyone could say goodbye to him.

The student who named Sunny said, “I’m gonna miss you,” in a silly voice. That kid has definitely had drug issues, and has the kind of parent who leaves town and relies on an older sibling to keep a much younger one alive. That kid loves to draw, though, and wants to work in a kitchen. It could be a life that works.

I asked kids to carry things to my car. (I carried plenty myself, too, don’t worry.) It feels a bit vulnerable to lead kids to your car. In this part of the world, your car is your horse, and you love your horse.

When I was in third grade, my teacher, Mrs. Huddleston, said I could come back after school was out and help her clean out her classroom. Maybe she was retiring? Perhaps you understand that I was thrilled! That going back to school, after school was out, and helping the teacher was the most fun I could imagine!

Supernerd.

I helped her roll up posters, I remember, because she ended up giving me several posters. I got old pages of a Hummel calendar (elegant!), and a poster that showed a Queen Anne style house, with its parts labeled. I was thrilled with that poster. I was a Victorian house. I would live in one, when I chose my own house, that was for damn sure. (My homes, chosen, alone: all over 100 years old. And one of them was an apartment in a legit Victorian house, albeit without a tower.)

I boxed up my speakers, when I was supposed to bag them. I packed 42 boxes for our school’s move. I figured I probably had one of the highest totals, because I’m awesome, and I’m a big believer in props. There’s always stuff to do in my room that isn’t English. Stuff you can do when your work is done, or if we have some random free time for whatever reason. I have the cup I use to teach “The Lottery,” with lottery slips in it. And the stuffed animals who serve us, Dr. Frog (who demonstrates bad behavior) and Mike Wazoski (who serves as a pillow at times).

We wait in line, all of the staff, to check out. We have been raising kids together, and then we won’t see each other for months. It’s such a strange turn.

Twenty years in, I try to predict and build supports for myself to ride these teacher waves. I have groceries, and a pretty clean apartment, to collapse into today.

I drop off a box at the Salvation Army (books that are good but we had too many copies, mostly), and I go get a cup of coffee. I want to go over a list of things I think are important, and consider how they went this year:

Emotional health: I had kids check in with their feelings every day. I have toyed with the sheet to try to get useful information out of kids– they won’t circle “anxious,” but they might circle “hyper.” I’d like to add feelings identification to our reading THAT’S A GREAT IDEA, remember that one! Got some kids stuff they needed. Got some donors. Good stuff.

Citizenship: I’ve done a lot of good work on this. For my current kids, a lot of it is convincing them not to be selfish assholes. Of course, many of them are very kind, but others have suffered abuse of a type that can make them bitter and very defensive. We do this mostly by modeling. I think that’s the best way. They can be bitter, but not selfish assholes. We usually make a lot of progress with this, as a team.

Curiosity: I did a good project with freshmen where they did their own research, and a good one with juniors that had some educational value, but sophomores didn’t get to. I did use the art calendar to show kids pictures, randomly, each day. I also got a bunch more visually-focused books on enticing topics I’ll try to use more next year, and maybe add in free reading time again.

Manipulatives: I added a lot of props for creative writing. Hopefully I get to teach it again. Now I have a bag of fake trash, plates with images of food, scent jars, pieces of fabric for writing about texture.

Celebrating success: This year I added in more days we would celebrate finishing a unit or a book with food I brought in, themed to the unit. We didn’t do it for the last units because I was like I can’t buy a can of sweet potatoes or order African food. I just can’t. That was okay. We discussed doing weekly check-ins more with kids next year.

Writing strategy: I worked hard on a modified district model (RACE, which I hate because… “race”). I used ACE(Answer, Cite, Explain). The curriculum doesn’t pull the idea through everything because it’s dumb, but I made posters, and tried to go through it many times. It’s worked into next year’s curriculum much more. Of course the district has changed the acronym everyone is supposed to use. I had been at my school for two years before anyone thought to mention to me, “Hey, we use this acronym and system to teach writing.” So I can’t exactly follow their lead.

Grammar: I added editing practice back into my curriculum, having AI write paragraphs about the basic topic we are covering(one itty bitty useful thing AI can do) , so we can do both editing and building background knowledge together. The geniuses who write the curriculum tend to just use some random topic, and include almost no editing practice, as kids are expected to have mastered that by high school school. Hahahahaha. Expecially with our kids, some of whom have been in trouble so much that they’ve missed a ton of education before they come to us.

Similarities & differences: Last year I did a better job of having kids pull quotes from texts and put them together to find and support a theme, and set up contrasts. The curriculum only does this a little bit, but I think it was very valuable last year.

Cultural reinforcement/celebration: set out my books for Latinx and Black history months, and Women’s History. It would be nice to have an activity to go with those, as well.

Revision: I have really dropped this. Didn’t even do it with my creative writing class. But they were some high-maintenance, grouchy kiddos. It’s always hard. I feel bad.

Physical movement: I continued to not do this in my classroom, but still had kids go on walks, and to the playground, occasionally. I hope to do more walks in our new school, if I can. I had a kid who used our pedaling machine and that helped him. A few times, I had a kid do push-ups. I should try that more often. It would be awesome to have a pull-up bar….

Unusual information/lies/headlines: I added quite a bit of this. A crazy source on the “Pacific Tree Octopus” to talk about sources, and we did the Lottery as usual, but sophomore and junior year could use more of this kind of thing.

Controversy/debate: I feel like our kids are often so debate-focused (debating with US) that I don’t get into this nearly as much as I did. They tend to either say “I don’t know” or present an opinion that is solid and without support. Also sometimes our classes this year were so small there wasn’t another kid to debate with. I want to work on this….

Self-development and growth: again, I would like to return to measurables more, and at the end of the year. Perhaps have kids do the vocab quiz to see how many words you know again. Also: please, please, go through the annual testing (not the state testing) with kids, to show them that what we do actually does make them more educated and more skilled.

Bringing the outside in: Had my first speaker brought in, which was GREAT. I want to more of that. One struggle is that places are set up for field trips, but our school works much better if they come to us. Already researching people who would come. Also this would be part of better career prep for us.

I devour an extremely buttery, toasted everything bagel, and sip most of a latte. Outside it remains overcast and dim, offering the promise of a nap, and cocoon building.

Let’s get this fish home. C’mon, Sunny. No more pencils, no more books.