Epiphany in Baltimore

2001-04-12

Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com

Lead teaching is now over. I will miss it. Mostly, I will miss the kids. Even though I will be in the room and around the school for the rest of the month, it won't be the same. I might even let them start calling me "Mark" starting Monday. Some of them do already, on the side. I don't feel the need to obtain respect by the title "Mister" - I think respect is earned and I think I have. Grades are due Monday. Right now, I'm frustrated with the whole grading process. I feel like I can assess these kids efforts and abilities without adding up a bunch of points and dividing by the total amount there. There is no way that Larry is not an 'A' student, for example. He's intelligent, works his ass off, and spent more than half of this semester staying at school until 10pm as he was the lead in the play. I know what these kids deserve. I guess I'm going to have to add up all the points, but I certainly can't promise I won't fudge things a bit to help some kids. My focus class took their final over "Of Mice and Men" today. The class average was a 90%. I'm so proud of them. My heart is swelling with pride right now. These are the "general" kids, the kids not expected to do much, not seen as college bound. But they kicked ass on this test. I'm so happy for them. I think the mock trial helped. This is the class that I get to keep through the end of the month, so that means I've taught them from the first day of school in August through the last day in April. It will be a very emotional and sad day for me when I leave that room for the last time. I think the hardest part of teaching will be seeing the kids leave every year. I'm not even sure how I'm going to handle it this year. In my sophomore class, I find I like the kids that give me the most trouble - Paul, a Mexican kid with a fetish for throwing things (I caught him today doing it and pulled him aside and asked him, "What's the deal with you always throwing things." He got this sly grin and said, "It's my signature". Yesterday, I told him to turn around in his seat, and he said, "I am turned around. My head's just on backwards." I love this kid); Jimm, the Vietnamese kid with a quick grin who instigates the whole class but has the roll-on-his-back-and-whimper move down to a tee - the kid knows how to get away with things. I'll even miss Matt, the kid with the most severe ADHD I've ever encountered. It's been a very good week teaching, and I'm becoming more and more adept at filling in space when what I have planned is not timed well and I have too much time. My poetry tournament ended with a Paul Beatty poem (he's my favorite poet, but it wasn't even a poem I liked... I just included because it happened to be in the book I was copying out of) beating out Nikki Giovanni, Countee Cullen, and Emily Dickinson. I'm going out and haveing fun with Erin and Gale on Friday, for the first time in about two months. I'm excited. We're going out to dinner and bar-hopping. It will be fun. Life is good. The weekend is here.