I've been holding it in...Boys stink

As any teacher will tell you, each class has a different personality. You may teach the same grade for 30 years, but each class will have some characteristic that makes them different from the one before or the one after. My first year teaching my 4th grade girls drove me crazy with their cliques and mean girl attitudes. There was a stretch in there where weave was rolling down the hallways like tumbleweed after a girl fight. One girl latched her nails into another girls weave and managed to lift her off the floor. At the end of that year, I thought "Man. Eight years of all girl's education did not prepare me for this. Bring me a class of boys." Well, ask and ye shall receive. My second year in 4th grade was probably my favorite overall class, although it wasn't without issues. I had some sweet boys, a lot just full of anger.

Well, this year my boys are full of something but it sure ain't anger. 

Boy #1: Mark

Each morning, we have a whole school assembly. Classes line up around the gym, cheer, sing, and get ready for the day. Last week, I approached my early arrivers and was overwhelmed with a smell. Not a smell, a STANK. All the kids were giggling and looking around when I noticed that little Mark's backpack was wet. And leaking. As I approached his backpack, he got really defensive of it.

I try to model the right kinds of behavior for my kids but I just couldn't hold it back -- when I opened his backpack, I had to gag. A pencil had punctured a chocolate milk carton he had placed in his backpack. Based on the smell and texture of the milk, there's no way that that he'd picked up that milk that morning. I tried to see if there was a way to clean it out, but I couldn't keep it open long enough to clean it out. I hate throwing away my kid's things because they place a lot of value on material things, but this was past redemption. 

Boy #2: David

I've been having an issue with my little friend David. He's incredibly talented at mimicry. However, recently he's decided the emulate The Hulk, complete with grunting and attempting to lift things like classmates. Needless, sometimes it's difficult to keep the other kids from paying attention to his antics. Just when I thought we had been making some progress, he's developed a new skill.

He has learned how to make himself throw up and has done it daily. For a week. 

Boy #3: Gerald

As I was getting David settled in his time out at recess, a gaggle of girls ran over to me. "Ms. A, Ms. A, Gerald's peeing on the tree!" I looked at another first grade teacher out on recess duty and we just kind of stared at each other like "Is this real life?" Gerald was hiding on the playground at this point. I managed to take his hand and walk over to the tree and, undeniably, there was a wet spot that stank of pee. The conversation went a little like this

Ms. A: Gerald, what happened here?

Gerald: PEEEEEEEEE

Ms. A: Who peed?

Gerald: PEEEEEEEEE

Ms. A: Gerald, did you pee on the tree?

Gerald: I peed on the tree. It needed to grow.

[It needed to grow? This was not what we covered in the unit on living things]

Ms. A: Did you not use the bathroom before we came outside?

Gerald: I didn't have to go

Ms. A: Why didn't you come find me?

Gerald:  I PEEEEEEEED

Needless, this was one of the more strange parent phone calls I've had to make. As he was crying on the phone with his mother, I wondered: How many people saw him? How many of my students saw him peeing? Oh god, what kinds of calls am I going to be getting from parents tonight?

Then, I realized I'd held his hand.

Boy #4: Kenneth

My class is a mix of 1st and 2nd graders (although more heavily on the former).  Normally, it's not a big deal but we're doing standardized tests and they have to be separated. When Kenneth returned from his testing, my co-teacher told me that there had been an accident during testing. Seeing as most of the kids haven't taken must standardized testing, my initial reaction was that perhaps something was wrong with his materials that I'd given to Ms. T

My curiosity got the better of me and I went to ask Ms. T about what happened. Turns out that while Kenneth was testing, the proctor noticed something unusual and called Ms. T over. Kenneth had peed his pants. Not just a little woops, but dripping down the chair and puddling on the floor. Apparently they had to call the janitor in the middle of the standardized test. Yet another reason why small children should not be getting standardized tests.

So there you have my evidence. Mark. David. Gerald. Kenneth. Conclusion? Boys stink.

It's Quitting Time

No, not me. I'm still here. But the return from Fall Break has been rough for everyone. It was like a respite from work reminded people of how much they give up to work as a teacher and the realization has set in a discouraged feeling. No one has ever quit the Nashville corps, but if you talked with any first year corps member they will probably tell you that they've thought about it, some more seriously than others. Coming back to starting a new graduate class that actually is trying to get us to do a teaching practicum on top of our regular job didn't make that feeling any better. Now, it's only half an hour a week, but the logistics is perhaps what made people most frustrated. I've only quit a few things in my life and let me tell you, it has not been accomplished without serious guilt and second thoughts.

Now, in contrast, I came back from a great back catching up with friends from back in college. While I know that teaching made for a difficult first year out of school, I realized how many of the things I'm feeling and going through are not unique to my job. Many of my friends feel overworked, exhausted, and are not entirely pleased with their jobs. I'd often wondered if I'd been part of the St. Louis corps if I would have been happier because I have so many friends in the city, but I realized I probably would have hung out in the same places and just felt guilty for not seeing my friends as much as I wanted to. One of the girls that I interviewed with about a year ago who was placed in St. Louis has already quit the corps there which was hard to hear.

When I came back, my uncle was in town. Now, now he and I had had dinner during week 1 of my teaching and this was week 10, beginning of the second quarter. We talked about a lot of things, including how teaching was going, and he said that he could tell from how I was talking about things that I sounded more confident. And I realized, I do feel better about teaching. I'm still struggling in a lot of ways, but since the beginning of the year I've figured a lot of things out. Do I still wish some things would change that I have no control over? Yes. Of course. Do I realize that some of the people I thought would be helpful aren't the best channel for advice? Yes. For sure. Is my data showing the kind of results I was hoping it would? No, not exactly.

They say that teachers hit a low in October, but then it begins to go back up. While I know that many of my friends here are struggling (despite being in one of the best ranked regions holla), I'm starting to feel like maybe that turnaround is starting. Did I put in an insane amount of work this week? Yes. I've taken to underestimating how much work I do for our Americorps hours out of habit as if no one would believe me that I put in 16, 17 hour days on a regular basis. But even though I'm exhausted, there's this new kind of energy that's pushing me through some of the work that I'm doing. Who knows how long it's sustainable, but I'm going to ride it however far it takes me.

So about the title to the entry? I'm quitting thinking about quitting. I'm quitting thinking about all the other things I could have been doing. I'm quitting thinking about all the things I wish were different that I have no control over. And finally, it's something I don't feel guilty about quitting.

You are drinking a liquid candy bar

I've been going to lunch with my kids all week because their behavior was so bad that I felt I needed to be an extra pair of eyes and ears in the lunchroom. While I was a huge fan of Jamie Oliver's miniseries on cafeteria lunches in the US, I hadn't had much experience with public school lunches since, well, I was in the 4th grade.

While the food itself isn't always what I would select as the most appealing, what makes me sad is the small percentage of my class that chooses flavored milk. I have 25 students right now, so it makes the percentage pretty easy to calculate. On my first day in the lunchroom, 1/25 students chose regular milk or as the kids call it "white milk" -- a name which makes it seem like we are so far removed from the actual product of milk, that stuff that comes from a cow, that out children don't even recognize the original.

I told some of them sitting near me that their flavored milk had as much sugar as a liquid candy bar -- at 160 calories, that might only be a small candy bar, but it's just about the same. I know that getting kids to drink any milk at all is a big success, but when the option is available to have "white milk" I do believe that we should encourage children to drink that. The next day, 3/25 students were drinking regular milk. Small successes.

I'm not alone in this debate over school milk. The NY Times just wrote a piece about the debate. I do wonder about the study that says that without the option of flavored milk, students will drink less milk overall.

Why the sudden interest in what my kids eat? Because I'm not being very healthy myself -- I have a pretty particular diet and I have been doing incredibly poorly at following through on it. That, and being surrounded by children with some kind of stomach virus/flu, means that I'm getting sick. We had one 4th grade teacher with a substitute last week and I saw what happened when you don't prepare for a sub -- either with lesson plans or have procedures down. The children acted as though they had not heard of any of the school rules. We have testing this next week that can't be administered by a substitute, so forgive me for not calling you if promised -- I've been trying to save my voice.

Now, to figure out what to do with 24 children while we conduct reading tests all day Monday....