Teaching with Tim

My students always start out this way: a group of anonymous middle schoolers in blue pants and white polo shirts.  Looking at my classes for the first couple of days, they seem more like a homogenous group of ”kids” than like individuals with unique talents, families, wounds, and dreams.  But this uniformity begins to evaporate as the days go by. 

There’s a seventh grade boy, I’ll call him Luis, who argued on his classroom job application that he should be responsible for welcoming visiting adults to our room.  “I’m never afraid to be talking to a person of higher power,” he wrote.  My student survey asks whether students like to read for fun at home.  An eighth grader, Francisco, wrote “I don’t usually read anything if I don’t have to.  I’m a very busy person and I have social occasions to attend to.”  Another says he will “read anything.”  But then he qualifies that: “Anything that includes modified cars.” A seventh grade girl describes herself as happy, smart, and confident.  She wants to be a pediatrician.  A boy in the same class wants to study volcanoes when he grows up and likes break-dancing.  Another acts morose and depressed.  He says ”I don’t know” for every question and colors the worksheet black.  On the parent survey, a mother describes her daughter as “a diamond that must be polished to perfection.”  She says she can help out in the class any time she is needed. 

As each class turns from an anonymous group of students into a cast of characters, a collection of personalities, I feel a more and more pressing sense of responsibility for them.  I like them.  I want to be worthy of the trust and respect they seem to give me completely for free.  I hear them talking to one another about things I said in class, competing to prove themselves worthy, and I am awed by the power and influence I seem to have over their lives.  They drive me to become something far better than the B-minus educator I often fear that I am.   

So my sense of optimism about this year definitely remains.  But I can’t help looking back on vacation fondly from time to time… Here’s a picture that Liz took of me celebrating freedom in Philly.  Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, is in the background.  More updates soon.   

Well, I’m back at it.  I’ve been in the classroom for three days, and so far the kids have been good, the faculty culture has been positive, and my enthusiasm has been high.  I’m hoping this can last.  

I required my students to bring their binders and signed parent letters to class last Friday.  Most did.  But one seventh-grade girl brought a note from her dad: “Unable to buy the material now because of crazy situation in the U.S.A.  Certainly she will have it soon.”  I took this to be an allusion to the economic situation, and I gave her the binder.  Because I have some degree of insulation from the economic downturn, I can view it with detachment: it’s something for politicians to talk about, it’s in the news, it comes up in conversation, but it is not something I personally have to worry about.  I know that it hurts all those swing-state mill workers and single moms that McCain and Obama strike up friendships with.  But it’s easy to forget that it’s here in Los Angeles, too.  In my previous two years of teaching, I also required students to bring in binders, pens, paper, and dividers.  Maybe seven dollars-worth of materials.  I made it clear that I would find students the materials if money were an issue, but it seemed that they were all able to get them without a problem. Yet this year, in various forms, I have received at least four claims from students that they couldn’t get materials because of cost.  That could be happenstance.  Or the kids could be making excuses.  But I also think it could be a reminder that tough times hit hardest for those on the bottom half of the socioeconomic totem pole.  I have the luxury of viewing climbing prices and unemployment as mere news headlines, while to people in South Gate, many of whom lack college degrees and have large families to support, these things seem like a completely “crazy situation.” 

I don’t want to make any premature predictions about my third year of teaching, but  first impressions have been good.  To be honest, what concerns me about life in Los Angeles is not my professional life. Teach for America is over, Loyola Marymount is over, many friends have left town– I’m more concerned about a growing sense of isolation here.  A need to “move forward” and find “the next thing” coupled with a complete ignorance of what that “next thing” might be.  Maybe it’s international high school teaching, maybe it’s journalism, maybe it’s grad. school, maybe it’s more middle school somewhere new. Southeast is great for now, but I just can’t imagine living in a city this hot and congested much longer.  Seattle, siren of the north, continues to call my name. 

 I’ll stop before I draw any more parralels between my life and the wanderings of Odysseus.  For now, I’m excited about teaching, and that is a great feeling.  I’ll try to hold on to it.  More pictures and classroom tales to come.