Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2003
The best laid plans of mice and men..., posted at 9:18 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Today is PSAT day, meaning it's a day when I proctor a test and hopefully get caught up on the huge amount of essays I have to grade. I worked out this morning - the first time since my trip in the mountains - and it felt damn great. I hope today is productive. Since I work a double today, I need all the productivity I can muster today.I've been reflecting a lot about the school year so far, beginning to wonder about why I feel a mild sense of disillusionment. Sure, I'm busy, often eclipsing 100 hours a work week with the two jobs. But that shouldn't be all of it. My students seem far worse than last year, and I'm not getting to know them as well because I see them only every other day. I received a letter in my mailbox yesterday from a student I had two years ago, saying I was the teacher that had the most profound impact on him while he was here, and how he'd be honored if I wrote him a college recommendation letter. It made me feel good, of course (how could it not?), but it also sort of reminded me that I don't feel as connected with these current students yet. I've even found myself getting a little bit angry with classes lately, something that rarely happens. I played them Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" the other day during my discussion of Of Mice and Men and the American Dream and Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., something that kids generally are rapt for, and while it has worked well in the other three years I have taught it (and, indeed, it did in the other two classes that day), one of the classes wouldn't stop laughing during Tracy's song, their comments denigrating from "Is that a man or a woman?" to worse. I turned off the song halfway through, after a throng of warnings, and gave them a speech in which I said, "In my four years of using this song in the classroom, this is the single most immature reaction ever to it, and if your minds are so closed that you can't listen to music that is slightly different than what you're used to, then I just feel sorry for you, and I hope this level of maturity is not what I'm going to see the rest of the year." I was pissed, and they knew it, but, looking back, my comments were probably too pointed, too angry, even if I didn't raise my voice.
Last night, I went home hoarse, after attempting to talk over every class. I feel like they have been too used to substitute teachers who tolerate that sort of disrespectful chatting, but it's still frustrating, and I'm thinking about doing my third seating chart of the year because of it (I went from my modified circle arrangement to setting them in groups of four, but feel like they need my continuous eye contact to not engage in conversation, so it might be back to my circle. Which I prefer anyway, but I share my classroom, and the woman who shares it likes the groups better. Of course she would, as she teaches advanced Juniors and I teach low-level 9th graders. So I shouldn't feel bad about changing it again, right?).
All in all, it's just a little frustrating that I barely know my students yet, am still far behind in grading, and can hardly even discern what my students' strengths and weaknesses are. Having 150 students at once instead of 75, and seeing them every other day, has not been a boon to my teaching.
I start teaching Romeo & Juliet for the first time on Nov. 3, and hope that gels my creativity a bit. I'm bored with Of Mice and Men; I can't even muster much excitement for the mock trial next week. I'm going to begin campaigning for a different incoming 9th grade summer reading book. While it's a good 9th grade book in a lot of ways - the kids basically like it, it's readable and accessible despite being part of the literary classic canon, the characters are vivid, it moves quickly, it allows students to study foreshadowing, theme, and characterization fairly easily - it's also relentlessly depressing, and Steinbeck's view on the lie of the American Dream is not the worldview that I want these students (great kids, but for the most part poor and destined to become the first member of their family to go to college, hopefully the eventual benefactors of the social mobility that the U.S. can sometimes afford) to get for their first experience with high school literature. Besides, while the kids do basically like the book, does anyone actually love it? Hate it or love it, but can we get a book that people/kids are really passionate about either way?
The rest of the English I curriculum, which I designed, consists of works dealing with justice or coming of age, and follow a question of "How does a person come of age in an unjust society?," and the rest of the literature we read - Romeo & Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Lesson Before Dying, (one of In the Time of Butterflies, Yellow Raft in Blue Water, The Bean Trees, and The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera), The Odyssey - focuses on this and the journey theme. Of Mice and Men doesn't fit that well. I like it better for the 10th grade.
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I watched that new show, Skin, last night, and was a little disappointed. I expected it to grab me like The O.C., but it didn't. Ron Silver's performance holds the show together, but I was hoping to be able to recomend it to students for a Romeo & Juliet connection, but so far there's not a whole lot to recommend; nothing goes beyond the commercials.
On the other hand, it was much better than what was on at 8. Is there a worse time for television than Mondays at 8? In previous years, at least we had the flashy mediocrity of Boston Public, but now that it's moved to Fridays, we're left with either crap (that crummy sitcom with Anthony Clark in it) or trash (Joe Millionaire, which I actually watched a bit of last night, and have no idea what people see in that sort of show) or both.
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By the way, has anyone read Life of Pi? I really want to.