Professor Noob's Daily Disquisitions

Well, I feel like a bitch - and stupid, to boot. Not only do I vent my spleen at a tiny minority of my students and then completely fail to post about any of the wonderful things that have happened in the past few weeks, I do it on a blog that's linked to my university, so everybody knows who I am and can henceforth label me as the student teacher with the Bad Attitude. Nice.

I'm not apologizing for what I said. In fact, I'm glad I finally stood up and declared, "This rainbow-and-sparkles-I-want-to-adopt-all-my-students crap? This is bullshit." What's more, when I privately conveyed my rage and hurt at my students' behavior to Perfect Mentor, I received none of the censure that I expected.

"Oh, yeah," she said knowingly. "There will always be students that you can't stand."

What? This is normal? I'm not supposed to be some sort of weird science, genetically altered, Dead Poets Society and Freedom Writers spouting android? And if that's the case...why didn't we talk about this sooner?!

This is my formal suggestion to my professors at the College of Ed: Please, please, please discuss this more. In modern society, teachers are required not only to teach but to mentor, defend, accomodate, nag, shield, comfort, support, sacrifice for, and (platonically) love our students. Those are all good things to do, and I don't think we should stop. I'm just asking that there be more discussion about the emotional toll that takes, because as it is too many of us student teachers are made to feel guilty for not getting all the students to stand on their desks and recite Whitman, let alone disliking a few of the teenagers in our classes.

What I am sorry about is that I've let the behavior of a few of my students influence my views of teaching in general. I was very bitter for a long time after that outburst, and because nobody told me to "Shut up, stupid," (and I really wish they had), I just kept talking on and on about my own self-righteous rage. It wasn't until I went on a rant at my parents' house that I started listening to what I was actually saying - and was shocked. I couldn't believe how disparaging I had become.

A few months ago, I had been an idealist who came to the Reservation to experience a different culture. I had never expected it to be easy, but I did expect my students to understand the concept of homework and to automatically treat me, their teacher, with respect. They don't.

So what?

I used to pride myself on being pragmatic. "Deal with things as they are, not as they should be." And now there I was, raving continuously about how students "should" do their work and "should" read quietly and "should" not be so rude and "should" actually try to pass. It's true, they should - but wishing and complaining and whining about how things "should" be isn't going to make them better students. Only dealing with things as they are, not as how I'd like them to be, can accomplish that.

So, with that in mind, some of the things I'm really pleased about:

1) The Poetry Slam
At the end of the poetry unit we had a slam, where students drank coffee/hot chocolate, read their poetry and competed for prizes. A few of my students refused to read (and were graded down for participation), but the rest stood behind the podium and shared their work, some of which was excellent - not just excellent for high schoolers, but flat out excellent. That event (the coffee and the silly prizes) set me back half my food budget for the week, resulting in some funny meals. It was worth every penny. In fact, the slam was such a success that we're having a much bigger, school-wide slam at the end of April.

2) The Zines
We're reading The Giver at the moment, and since it is in the Top 100 Banned Books list I'm having them study it through the lens of censorship. Not only are we looking at why people ban books, we're also studying the censorship within the Giver, and why people need information in order to make choices.
At about the same time we started this unit, I got turned on to Bikini Kill and the Riot Grrrl scene. Those ideas smooshed around in my brain and spat out an (I think) excellent idea. Zines (photo-copied, self-published, DIY magazines) are used to combat media censorship and to share personal experiences - why not have my students make a class zine? Each student gets a page, and on one side of the page they write an article, and on the other side they write a Giver-style memory. Put together, each zine becomes a repository of the knowledge and experiences of each class, functioning a little bit like the Giver does in Jonas' community. It also shows them how to express their ideas and convictions without risking censorship or having to tailor their beliefs for the mainstream media. And it's fun. So sue me, I like to have fun.
The articles were okay, though some were too picture-heavy to really even count as articles
(made those students re-write them). But now the memories are being turned in, and once again I'm awed by my students. They are not shying away from this assignment. They are taking my instructions to "choose a powerful memory" very seriously, and some of their memories are...horrific. But well-written, and stirring, and exactly what I wanted - and, I think, what they needed to write.

Woot.