Happy Place

Usually, I shy away from sharing much when things aren’t going smoothly in Room 43. This week, though, I feel like I need to be a little bit more honest. Not vent, and not whine, but share honestly. I am struggling. The insane thought hit me Sunday night that I could just call in sick yesterday and not go in. I have sub plans for this very reason, after all. I thought about it for about three minutes too long, and then got convicted and realized I couldn’t do that. I’m an adult, and I have a job, and I’ve got to show up for it. I think that yesterday was especially hard because that conversation had taken place in my head the night before. First block was bad. What’s funny is that they weren’t that much worse than they have been, and nothing too crazy happened that should have pushed me over the line. But pushed over the line I was; I finally just snapped. “Middle of February, haven’t had a snow day all winter, my kids are incredibly rude” snapped. After being interrupted and ignored for half of class, I stopped talking, wrote an assignment on the board, and sat down at my desk. I was so done. So done with putting my heart and soul and so much of my personal time and money into this and being treated like dirt in return. So done with explaining something or teaching something and hearing other people’s voices. So done with trying to implement one of the millions of research based strategies and methods that I spent 5 years learning at one of the best educational universities available, and having them literally balled up and used as weapons, never to be completed or read. So done with looking around my classroom and seeing trash and pages torn from the books that I used my own money to buy and graffiti on my desks/walls/boards. I was so, so done.

It was a long, painfully reflective evening – with one of the best listeners and encouragers that I could ask for fighting beside me – and I walked into school this morning with a different attitude, and a little bit different of a perspective. I do too much for them. I work too hard and invest too much and I hold their hands through every task (even though I say all the time that I’m not going to hold their hand through every task). It’s time to cut some ties and give them the opportunity to either sink or swim, and to either start owning this thing or not…but they’re going to make that decision themselves. I gave them the vocab words this morning, but not the definitions. They get to look them up themselves. I gave them a poem to analyze and study and the questions I want them to answer, but we didn’t go over it together and I didn’t give them the answers. Class was silent this morning in 1st and 4th blocks, and they did their work in silence. At the end of class, some kids turned in their work and some didn’t, but they made that choice for themselves.

Six kids in my 5th block did their work but the rest of them didn't even seem phased by the fact that I literally didn't speak to them at all. Tried to start class, got ignored, put the assignment up on the screen and walked away. Six kids came and asked me questions and did the work and turned it in, and everyone else ran around the room and talked and threw things and thought they had free time. But those six kids who chose to do their work and who chose to learn rather than ignore responsibility will be an example for the rest of them. It nearly killed me to sit at my desk and ignore them while they destroyed my room and ignored the assignment on the board today, but I'm making a point. I'm going to get mad and I'm not going to hide that from them, and I'm going to take three steps back and let them decide (like the adults they act like they are) what kind of student they're going to be.

I’m going home this weekend to see my family and celebrate my birthday. I have a three day weekend, a four day work week next week, and two days worth of a 7th grade field trip next week that cuts my class size to half both days and allows me to do the same thing two days in a row. All of these things are the light at the end of the tunnel, and a spirit week where kids are out of uniform and misbehaving is what’s keeping me from it. But in the meantime, I’m staying in my happy place: Mumford and Sons and my new cowboy boots and hugs from that really great listener/encourager. It's the little things.

Just Kind of Depends.

Yesterday in 5th block, a student tried to kick down my door because she was late and I had started class and I wasn't going to interrupt myself and the beginning of class to let her in. She did, after all, have eight minutes to get to my class on time with the new bell schedule. In my homeroom, we did the moment of silence four times; they wouldn't shut up and I was tired of it so I started the timer over every time someone talked, sat down, or made an obnoxious noise. But I also had a kid get his pinky finger stuck in the handle of a window in my room during notetaking. I guess he realized it fit in the tiny hole and I'm sure he thought it was really cool until he tried to take it out, and it was completely stuck. He tried so hard to be discreet about it, but he was sitting near me and when I saw I couldn't help but laugh just a little bit at him. I did, though, get up and get my lotion out of my teacher bag and hand it to him without saying anything and without stopping teaching. When his good friend from across the room realized what was happening, though, it was all I could do to get the crazy little hyena to stop laughing.

So...you know...you take some and you lose some.

"Such a Hater"

First of all, I need to say that I have never gotten so behind on my television shows. I’ve watched one episode of Parenthood since Christmas. I’m finishing one episode of Parks and Rec as we speak. Oh, I guess I did watch one of New Girl. The point is, though, that having a boyfriend means that shocking priorities change. I’ll catch up eventually, but for now I kind of think it’s funny. I think my mother loves it. Time for some random stories and anecdotes from the week.

My kids will not shut up about the stupid Super Bowl. Actually, it’s probably more fair to say that the world won’t shut up about the stupid Super Bowl. Apparently it’s a big deal or something. But when the two teams in the Super Bowl are the Patriots (gag) and the team that beat your favorite stupid team out of the Super Bowl, you get a little grumpy about all the hype. Yesterday in fifth block, someone brought up the stupid Super Bowl….again. One of my students, whose favorite team is the Giants and who is also the student I told to get out of my face the day after they beat my team, was laying on his stomach on my back counter with his head laying on a pillow (just painting the Friday afternoon picture for you). When someone asked me what I thought about the Super Bowl – knowing full well how I felt about it – I said immediately and casually “I hate the Super Bowl. I hate both teams. I hope they both lose and they all spontaneously break their legs.” Giants fan on the back counter just shook his head and said “You’re such a hater, Miss Melchione.”

With a new nine weeks, I started some new policies. I started Tuesday off saying that since we’ve now spent a whole semester together, I am very aware of all the things that they do that make me angry and I’m now going to do something about it. So I turned their attention to the bulletin board behind my desk, that had two pieces of paper on it. One said “I was late,” and one said “I didn’t read,” and I explained that it’s a three-strikes policy where their name gets written on the list the first time and checks next to their name the second and third time, and then I’m writing a report for the Assistant Principal. Throughout the day, I added three more sheets of paper as I saw more things that make me angry: “I didn’t put my journal and/or book away,” “I didn’t come to class prepared,” and a bathroom list where they only get three trips for the marking period. LOTS of whining commenced. And continued. If you saw my face right now you would see how little I care. One of my girls – family and frequent readers: yes, THAT girl – got really mad Thursday when I wrote her name on the “I didn’t read list.” She had asked me if she could lay with a pillow on the back counter “just for silent reading time,” and I said yes, just as long as her butt was back in her seat as soon as I start class. She read for two minutes and then slept for 18 minutes, which to me means that she didn’t read. She disagreed. So she spent all afternoon Thursday and all morning Friday whining to me and the other teachers about how I had the nerve to write her name on the “I didn’t read list.” I figured she would bounce back by reading the whole twenty minutes yesterday to prove to me that she does her work and it was my mistake to try to fault her for her nap. But how did she respond? Oh, she slept for the ENTIRE class. Walked in, fell asleep, and woke up when the announcements came on and everyone was stacking chairs and putting things away. She missed silent reading time, a test, a music video, a classwork assignment, and me reading aloud for ten minutes. She did all of this in the middle of me yelling the whole class period, not because I was mad and they were being bad, but because their volume is much louder on Fridays and so is mine. She woke up about 17 times – I watched her – and rolled over to go back to sleep. Yeah, that’ll show me. I put a check next to her name on the “I didn’t read list.” (And in case you were wondering: no, it’s not my job to wake up my sleeping students. They’re big kids. Sleep through my test or notes or a classwork grade? Take the zero. That’s life, kid.)

Two conversations that happened yesterday:

Student: Miss Melchione, can you take me to Chipotle?
Me: No.
Student: But there’s a Chick-Fil-A right there. You can get yourself something too.
Me: …no.
Student: There’s an Arby’s…a Starbucks…come on Miss Melchione.

(after I said something about Facebook)
Student 1: You have Facebook?
Student 2: Oh yeah! She’s got Facebook.
(all other students in the class nod and agree)
Student 3: Yeah, I found you.
Student 4: My brother was searching for you and we found you. Did you know there’s a man in your picture?
Student 5: The bald one.
Student 6: Wearing a yellow shirt.
Me: This is why all you can see is my profile picture. And why I will decline every single friend request.

So what? I'm still a rockstar.

When my kids are being difficult and/or I feel very bad things towards them, I don’t blog as much. I don’t want to be that blogger that thinks that because she has a blog she gets a free pass to whine and complain about how terrible her job is. And I don’t want to be that employee that goes home at night and whines and complains on the internet about how unhappy she is with how she spends her work week. So when those phases come (and they are just phases), I keep quiet, ride it out, and wait for funny stories to surface again. If you’re one of the approximately six people who look for my blog posts regularly, that’s why you haven’t seen one in a while.

I should have seen this valley coming when a student walked into class one afternoon, asked me if she could go talk to the band teacher, and then responded to my “no” by throwing her book across the room. That should have tipped me off that my kids were about to spiral back out of control, but for whatever reason I didn’t catch on right away. You can bet that I caught on, though, when I found myself kicking kids out of my class, yelling much more, and ending last week with two classes in which I didn’t teach. Tried to start class and they wouldn’t shut up, so I just calmly went back to my desk, took attendance, and started grading papers. I did this in my homeroom and set a timer to see how long it would take them to catch on…and twenty minutes later I got up without a word and passed out the quiz. Once everyone had one, I said loudly “Number one…” and read the first spelling word. That shut them up. After the quiz I casually collected them, placed them on my desk, and said “So let’s talk about the fact that only ten of you passed the benchmark yesterday.” Silence. I didn’t mention that everyone who failed was within a four question window of passing, which really excited me…this was reality check time and I told them the positive spin a different day. It was awesome. They were actually quiet and respectful the rest of the class. I tried to accomplish a similar thing with my infamous 5th block and it didn’t work…oh well. After trying to get them quiet several different ways, I ended up trying to have the “a whole lot of you failed the benchmark” talk with them and when a student made an extremely rude and sarcastic comment in response I just told them to put their heads down and I didn’t want to see or hear them for the rest of the class. And that’s what we did. Until the announcements came on and they left for the weekend. I patted myself on the back for not killing that kid or any of his classmates.

Eventually, my kids are going to get it that I’m not playing.

Things have been better, though. I think this week has been a lot better…everyone usually starts new marking periods with better attitudes. I know I do. Right now I’m all “I love poetry! I’m so organized with this research paper I have to teach them! I have so many great activities for The Westing Game!” I’m fully aware that in a few weeks I’ll probably be saying “Poetry is stupid. Teaching kids how to research is impossible. Who has time for fun activities?” But…we’re not there yet. And everyone is happy. And mad about the “Unsatisfactories” that I put on their report cards that keep them from playing basketball (heeheehee) so I’ve got these boys following me around like little puppies trying to help me and be great and sweet so I tell their coach that they’ve improved. Life is pretty good.

Womp Womp

This morning I went into school after a three day weekend to make copies. Everything I'd planned for the day - a really good lesson, btw - needed to be copied, and the copier was broken. I can't even tell you how annoying that is. I had three minutes to come up with something else to do with my 90 minutes with my kids. And then I came back to me room, stressed and freaking out about this new turn of events, and remembered that I rearranged the desks and made a new seating chart that I needed to somehow give to the kids. So I'm walking around the room frantically putting sticky notes on each desk saying who sits where, and I look up and one of my students from 5th block who loves the Giants is standing in front of me, with a huge smile on his face. I looked at him and said "I don't want to talk about it. Get out of my face."

In case you were wondering, I managed to improvise enough to use about 3/4 of the block, and then passed out the mountain of papers sitting on my desk, and then read Green Eggs and Ham. Just for fun. It had nothing to do with my lesson and there wasn't even an attempt to link it to content. I just read Dr. Seuss. And it was awesome.

The Almost Mental Breakdown

To start, a couple of conversations:

Student 1: The Packers are going to the Superbowl again and they’re going to LOSE.
Student 2: To the Saints!
Student 1: They’re in the same conference, stupid!

Me: Hey, the Steelers lost.
Student: I KNOW. I was like Teboooooooooow!

Student 1: Miss Melchione, what’s an ox?
Me: Have you ever played Oregon Trail?
Student 1: No, what’s that?
Me: It’s an old school computer game.
Student 2: Two big problems there. One: old school. Two: computer game. There’s a 360 now and a PS3 now and all kinds of other great things.

Also super amusing, one male student wrote during an exit ticket for the Hunger Games that a cause in the novel was that Katniss pretended to love Peeta, which led to the effects of Peeta being mad at Katniss, Katniss feeling lonely again, and no more kissing.

Something not so amusing happened today during 5th block. I’ve talked a lot about 5th block and all the not so amusing things that have happened in the last several weeks, but this time it was different. I had an interaction with the extremely difficult student I’ve mentioned before…she was just having a bad day and no matter how hard I tried to calm her down and keep her in the room – which , trust me, was pretty hard – I finally gave up and let her go talk to the Assistant Principal. Who then put her in In School Suspension for the rest of the day. She came back afterwards to apologize and talk things out with me, and we’re good again. She wasn’t the real issue. The real issue was that after she left the rest of the class continued to be terrible. After silent reading time (which was neither silent not involving any actual reading), I felt like my options with this class were either 1.) try a new approach with them or 2.) have a mental breakdown. So I went with the new approach. I asked them to open their journals and to spend a few minutes writing about what they think they’re getting out of school right now (if anything). Then I had them write about what they think high school is going to be like if they ignore middle school. Then…I told them that I can’t care for both of us. I told them that no matter how hard I care, I can’t make them care. And I told them that I care a LOT. I told them that I wanted to share a little secret with them: this is my first year teacher, and so they are my first actual students. I told them that that means that I care a lot about their success, and that I put an incredible amount of work and passion into our time together so that they are successful. I told them that I’m not exaggerating when I say that because they’re the first students that have ever been officially mine, I honestly think of them as my own kids. And that when they show up and act like jerks it ticks me off. I finished with saying that if they go on to high school and drop out because they wasted their time in middle school, it will BREAK my heart.

I wish you could have seen the facial expressions and heard the silence. I think it might have made a difference. Time will tell, I suppose, but they seemed...different, afterwards. Chatty and goofy and loud, but also productive and compliant and respectful. They were also extremely interested in interrogating me about the rumors that have been flying about whether I have a new boyfriend or not, with several of my boys responding in an incredibly protective manner. One boy told me to tell him that he’s stronger than he is, and to be scared. Another boy told me to tell him that if he ever breaks my heart he’ll kill him. “No really, I will. Tell him that I will KILL him.”

I never really thought that I would experience some of the things I’ve experienced this year. I never thought I’d hold onto students’ cell phones for the day, not because they’re in trouble but because they told me that they had them and I asked if they wanted me to hold onto them so they’re not tempted to use them when they shouldn’t. I never thought I’d have three of my girls come into my room in between Encore classes to chat, avoid going to their next class, and drop half of what they own onto my desk, under my computer cart, and onto my back counter for safe keeping. I never thought I’d use Lil Wayne to teach what a climax is. I never thought I’d argue with students over how I want them to stay in my classroom when they’re misbehaving horribly rather than go to the Assistant Principal because I’d rather work out our issues with them myself. I never thought I’d have students from my Homeroom sneaking into my other classes throughout the day and whining with me as I’m physically pushing them back out the door, saying “But Miss Melchione! It’s my favorite claaaaaass!” I never thought any of these things would happen, just like I never thought I’d tell a class full of students that I see them as my own children. It’s all true, though, and I honestly wouldn’t change any of it.

Teachers really love Christmas break too.

Christmas break has come and gone, and we were back at it this week. I have to say that going back to school on Tuesday was the worst. I had the absolute worst attitude in the world when I walked into my classroom that morning, and it didn’t really help that all 90 of my kids had equally bad attitudes. Needless to say…there wasn’t a whole lot of happiness and productivity that day. Wednesday was better, Thursday was much worse, and Friday was a Friday. Since being back, it’s felt a little bit like a whirlwind. I’ve dealt with a student taking a half hour bathroom break, a student breaking into my colleague’s math class to ask if her brother has been misbehaving, a fight involving two girls that happened inside my classroom during the ten seconds I was out in the hallway, students throwing everything another student owns onto the floor in a huge mess when I was helping someone across the room, a surprise informal observation by my Assistant Principal during my worst class, a student refusing to give me a cell phone he had in the middle of class (don’t worry…he got it), three cell phones, an iPod and a PSP all confiscated within the span of two days, and two students who were kicked out of the library because they were too loud and then decided to take twenty minutes to walk down the one hallway to get back to my classroom (they got it too). It’s been a little ridiculous and I’m fairly certain my children are nuts, but I still love them and they still manage to make me laugh out loud. Time for some recorded conversations, both overheard and participated in yesterday?

(while studying for the vocab/prefix quiz they were about to take, female student who will be called S and male student who will be called J had this conversation about the prefixes “intra” and “infra”…and yes. I’m evil for giving them both of those on the same quiz.)S: Intra.
J: Infra or intra?
S: Intra.
J: Infra?
S: No, intra!
J: Oh. It means below.
S: No, that’s infra. I said intra.
J: WHAT? No, intra is below and infra is inside!
S: No! You’re backwards!
J: MISS MELCHIONE! Is intra below?
Me: No, that’s infra. Intra is inside. Like intrastate. And intramural.
J: That’s what I said. Intra is inside, and infra is below.

Student: Are you going to go see “The Devil Inside” tonight?
Me: Nope.
Student: But you could meet a guy there! You could do this! (cuddles up to an invisible guy)
Me: What if I don’t need to?
Student: YOU COULD GO WITH ME!

My fifth block has been horrible. HORRIBLE. And it’s gotten to the point where it’s not even just about the fact that they’re disrupting my ability to teach them. It’s transitioned into this whole new realm where I’m truly disappointed in them and the decisions they are making that are changing who they are. This is such a vital time in their developmental process, and they make so many decisions right now in middle school that could potentially shape who they become as high schoolers and as adults. And it ticks me off a little bit to watch my kids start the year as wonderful, sweet, thoughtful kids turn into rude, mean, and destructive. So when they hit their pinnacle of frustrating on Thursday, I told them that. All of that. They were a little bit quieter the rest of the class period…and they were a lot better yesterday. We’ll see how it works in the long run, but I’m going to be having a lot of heart-to-hearts with my kids because I just refuse to watch it happen and not do anything.

They WERE better yesterday, though, and because of that they earned Friday free time for the first time. Ever. I wish you could have seen their cute excited faces. The funniest moment of my day came during that cherished free time, when male student who will be called E called to me from across the room SO excited because he had made an M out of dominoes on the desk in honor of my name and he wanted me to come knock them over. As I was making my way across the room to knock them over, male student who will be called K calmly and expressionlessly threw a Sharpie from across the room at the dominoes, sending them scattered in a million directions across the room. Usually, I try to keep my laughter at the children inside as much as possible, but at this point in my Friday afternoon and after the week it had been, I lost it. I honestly couldn’t stop laughing. E went ballistic on K and they pretend fought with E calling K some mildly inappropriate names (see the drugstore scene of the movie “Signs” as a reference). It was a good time. Welcome to 2012.