Week of Weird

This week was a little odd- okay, most weeks are odd, but I decided to write about it this time because I realize I seldom write on happy days.

First of all, the majority of my students had no idea that we had Thursday and Friday off, which suggests that Thanksgiving is not a big deal to this community. I was appalled, because when I was in high school, I always knew when the next break was; strangely enough, that much hasn't changed now that I'm part of the faculty. In retrospect, I regret telling them because I had a lot of kids say that they just weren't going to show up on Wednesday, which I can say was apparently somewhat true today.

Secondly, some of the things these kids say are just ridiculous. In a conversation with Kheyon yesterday, he asked me if I was "all white," to which I gave a confused look. He clarified by saying that most of the "white" kids at the school only looked white and were really half Mexican. I guess Mexican is the trump race then when you're half and half... I responded that I guess yes, I am entirely of European ancestry, and he replied, "cool- you're only the second completely white person I've met." I hope I'm setting a good impression in his mind for the entire white race. I feel so much responsibility now!

Not to be outdone, my entire 5th period class (which is strangely 95% girls) really wanted to hear about my weekend. I told them I got a substitute on Friday because I had a wedding to go to, and they ran with it, asking me why I hadn't told them I was getting married. It's hard to say if they were kidding or not. Gotta love these kids, but they are so gullible. A handful of them still think I used to play for the San Jose Earthquakes soccer team. I had fun making up that elaborate story to them - sometimes I make up little lies to them about my life just to see what they will believe. They've narrowed down my age to 23 (still wrong), but even then, I had someone today ask me if my son goes to Richmond High. Apparently there's a student that looks like me; even so, I decided not to get into a conversation about the possibilities of me - in my early twenties, having a kid that is 15. Needless to say, my kids have a long way to go in the common sense department.

Speaking of common sense, my students and logic do not get along. Today was a minimum day and I didn't know what to expect or how many students to expect, so I'll admit: I gave a semi-unprepared lesson, if you can even call it that. We did a word problem and some (really easy) sudoku games, which overloaded a lot of my students with "too many numbers and too many rules." My question is: how do you teach logical reasoning to them. Today was a return to my thoughts earlier this year of "how do you not understand this?" Oh well- today wouldn't have been a good day anyway for a lesson because our clock stopped working (but PS: most of these kids can't read an analog clock anyway, so it was only me that was affected).

And to top off this short week, we had a student-faculty volleyball game in which I played, and consequently landed myself in the position of boys' volleyball coach. At least that's what the principal and the sports coordinator think. I had to explain to them that while I'm honored and will think about it, I really don't know that much about volleyball - only that I love to play it. Boys' volleyball is in the spring, so we'll see I guess. But that just goes to show the lack of leadership around here if they are willing to put me of all people as the head of the volleyball team...

This is definitely a unique place, but I think I'm finding my niche and the students are coming around to me. I had to take Monday off too for a meeting, so when I came back on Tuesday, I had tons of students saying that they missed me! Well I'm not naive; I just choose to disregard the sarcasm in their voices. They love me.

Now if I could just get them all to learn math.