That being said, today played out in such a way that I chose to drive home with the radio turned off. I needed the 30 minutes of silence to cool off. In truth, I had forgotten what these days felt like but now all at once I remember the feeling of being totally disrespected as a teacher. The thing is, on these days, it's never one big thing that happens, because I can get over single outbursts of craziness super easily - in a matter of minutes, really. The one thing - besides incompetent adults - that makes my blood boil is the feeling that somehow, someway, all of my students had a meeting before school and democratically voted that we would not learn anything today and that we would neglect all respectful social norms. But misery loves company, and when I walk dumbfounded into another teacher's classroom during their prep period to figure out how I'm going to make it through the rest of the day, my colleagues know exactly what I am talking about. I feel like our school culture is very bipolar. By third period each day, it is very clear if we are experiencing academic Richmond High or chaotic Richmond High - and all teachers are in it together. Unfortunately, with this week being spirit week for homecoming tomorrow, the latter school personality has made far too many appearances. And tomorrow is a rally day. Woohoo.
I almost wish I took a child development or a child psychology class in college because I want to know about the brain activity that is preventing these 15 year-olds from understanding what is and isn't socially acceptable. But seriously I do know that there is some brain development that goes on at this age that is very related to their apparent inability to keep their god forsaken mouths shut. Beyond this, the laundry list this week includes all too many "gay" comments and one student who decided that it would be smart to randomly say out loud, "I'm going to go to homecoming and get raped." Clearly a teacher's patience always has its limits.
Other news of the week: my 12 year-old student will remain in my class for the rest of the year. I don't want to talk about it.
Oh, and I thought this story would be funny in its lack of foresight: every year the freshman class gets to pick a class color that they pretty much only wear on rally days, so what Richmond lacks in school spirit we make up for in class spirit. And I use the term "spirit" very loosely, seeing as how out of control the class competitions get; plus, there is a little too much hatred that goes around for it to be true "spirit." Anyway, this year, the freshman class picked red, which surprised me a little considering the implications of red and blue colors in that community. But I'm sure whoever was in charge was aware of that and made a conscious decision to allow red to be a possible choice for them. However, that decision was made before realizing that the freshman class graduation year is 2014 - and for anyone unfamiliar, red and blue are the colors of the Norteno and Sureno gangs, respectively, meaning "northerners" and "southerners." They are Latino gangs and needless to say do not get along. Surenos typically mark their territory with a 13, X3 or XIII to represent M, the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, which stands for the Mexican Mafia, with whom they are associated. The graffiti of nortenos on the other hand use 14, X4 or XIV for N, the fourteenth letter of the alphabet, which just stands for Nortenos (I guess they would not like to be associated with the Mexican Mafia - also known as "la Eme"). I have all too many XIII and XIV's etched into my desks in class. It's kind of scary if you think about it. The funny part to this whole story though is that now after all the die hard class spirit students got their red outfit all ready for the rally tomorrow, the administration is holding the stance that anyone wearing red will not be allowed into the rally - the freshman color is now black. I predict super chaos tomorrow egged on by the drama of this whole color issue... and that is exactly why I just spent all my evening planning time writing this entry; I have no idea what I can expect from my students tomorrow.
It's weeks like these that make me wonder why I subject myself to such harsh emotions every single day... Do you think it's too late to call a sub for tomorrow?
No comments:
Post a Comment