Friday, March 15, 2013

Laughing and crying at work

First the tears.  I have a student who needs to graduate this year.  He's 18 and is more than ready to move on.  After some initial stumbles in his high school career, he has worked incredibly hard during his senior year to get himself to graduation this spring.  This has included going to night school 4 days a week for an entire semester.  But there's this final hurdle of the state reading test.  He has to pass it to graduate.  He's been taking it regularly since 10th grade.  He's Somali.  English is his 4th language.  He started learning it in third grade when he moved here and went to school for the first time in his life.  He's learned it so well, and been here long enough, that he has been 'exited' from the English Language Learners program.  Meaning he has to pass this test in English to get a diploma.  He's a good reader and determined to pass.  He created a plan to work with an adult at Avalon most days for several hours on reading strategies.  Now that night school is over, he stops by his old school on his way home at least once a week to get extra tutoring from a teacher there.  He's good.  But he gets tripped up sometimes.  Dumb things get him, like one set of questions was based on an add for a chili cooking contest.  He had no idea what chili was.  Didn't know that it was spicy.  Got all the questions wrong.  Then there was the section about a girl who wanted to get a gift for her sister returning home from college for the holidays.  So she made here a scrapbook.  My refugee-camp raised student had no idea what a scrap book was, nor was he connected to a world where siblings left home- all 9 of his live with him still.  And he certainly didn't know that if you wanted to learn more about scrap booking you would:  C) go to a library to check out a book about crafts.  Come on.  I have trouble thinking that scrapbooking would be in a craft book.  How would my student?  So he gets tripped up.  And then the pressure of having to pass adds anxiety.  A few weeks ago he took the test again- his second to last opportunity before graduation.  

My student was so nervous he hardly slept.  Neither did I.  He spent three hours working on the 40 questions.  Then came out of the room, sweaty and tired.  I waited nervously for results.  The testing director passed by the room I was in and gave me a sad thumb's down.  Two questions from success.  But it's an all or nothing situation.  Damn.  Now I had to tell my student.  He was sitting at his desk in the advisory wringing his hands.  Telling him felt like kicking him in the balls. Then punching him in the gut.  Then slapping his face.  He shrunk with the news.  Got teary.  So did I.  Damn.  One of the worst days of my teaching career.  We have a plan in place to make it through this hoop at the next opportunity.  I hope it works. 

Good thing my job also brings me to tears of joy.  Shortly after this sad testing experience I overheard this conversation between two burly, mechanically-minded, fabulous boys:  "You know, I've tried them, but I've found that skinny jeans just do not fit my lifestyle."  "Yeah, I know what you mean."  They were all serious.  I could not keep a straight face.

Another laugh came when a student was reading a section from her essay in class.  She had decided to write about the problems associated with school aged girls being sexually active.  But then got into a section that was clearly plagiarized.  Because it was all about a study that talked about 'sex during the golden years'.  I figure she thought she was living the golden years.  She about died when I told her that her paper was interesting, but I didn't know when she changed her topic to being about sex amongst old people.  Favorite plagiarism busting ever. 

How did that happen?

Somehow over the course of this snowy winter, my boys became downright respectable shovellers.  I think it started when our neighbor offered to pay them to shovel her walk if it snowed while she was out of town.  We ended up getting a foot of heavy powder.  Jon and I did not oversee the job, but they were out there for quite a while, with Theo even going out to tidy up after noticing spots that were not to his liking.  She paid them handsomely.  Shortly thereafter I had a day that started long before daybreak and ended by ferrying Jon to the airport as bedtime approached, with nary a minute to breathe in between. I had no time to shovel up the new layer and asked the boys to take care of it before I got back from the airport.  I returned to a clean walk.  Well done guys. 

Independence

The other day I got a text from Jon toward the end of my work day.  Boys were excited by the late winter snowstorm and were walking over to the sledding hill to meet friends.  They'd be home by 5:30. 

Wow.  Sledding by themselves.  Why had I never thought of that before?  We did it all the time in our youth- most of the time right out the back door in the 'fields' that abbutted our home, but sometimes the crew would head down to the park and the big hill by the 'Green Bugger'- a playground in the woods.  But my boys had always been chaperoned, mostly because the nearest hill was a half-mile yonder. 

When they got home they were wet, exhilerated, and full of stories about the mad mom.  Mad mom?  Apparently they were harangued by a woman who thought they were crowding out her young daughter.  Now, I know my boys do sled aggressively.  They love what they call 'sled wars'- a game that involves jumping from sled to moving sled and trying to throw people overboard.  And I also know that as tweens they are fairly focused on themselves and don't always think of others.  But they also have a lot of young girl cousins and friends and are quite caring.  From their report they had seen the girl in question and had given her wide berth.  Their wide berth clearly was not wide enough.  Sounds like they took the screaming mom fit in stride and politely waited their turns there after.  Or so they report. 

I want to believe them.  I really think this was a case of a mom seeing unchaperoned tween boys and thinking the worst.As a teacher of teenagers, I know that it happens often enough.  This woman was just letting perception trump reality.  Or maybe not.  They very easily could have been wild and endagering others.  But in the end I think their biggest thrill was not sledding in the new snow, but in languishing in the glow of the righteousness of being unjustly accused.  

Candid Camera

One day this winter when it was really really cold our furnace did us the favor of burning out.  We might not have even noticed as we turn it down so low at night and usually leave before it really gets going in the morning.  But Theo likes to curl up on the radiator first thing.  He recoiled in horror when it was cold to his touch. 

After I got everyone out of the house I stuck around to await the repairman.  I had to do some jumping jacks every now and then to keep myself from freezing.  It wasn't all that bad as we do have a fireplace that I can turn on with the flip of a switch- but that only heats the living room.  Anyway- as I was waiting I was thinking about broken furnaces and wisps of memories of carbon monoxide poisoning started drifting through my mind.  Isn't there some connection?  Faulty furnace and sleeping people who never wake up?  Just then an alarm started beeping upstair.  Crap!  The monoxide alarm!  I knew it!  But it was just making a beep, not a full fledged blare.  My rational mind told me it was just the battery dying.  My irrational mind said, "What's the chances of that?  The battery dying within hours of the furnace dying?" My body froze.  After all, it was already half way there due to the temp being in the 40s in the house. 

After several false starts I went up and checked out the beeping alarm.  Seemed as if it wasn't in full fledged warning mode, but the rabbits sure were.  Everytime the alarm beeped the rabbits would start thumping with all their might, shaking the top floor of the house.  Don't doubt me here.  Remember Bambi?  So there we were, alarm beeping, rabbits thumping, me flooded with adrenalin.  Fight or flight?  Was I getting light headed?  Wasn't it getting harder to concentrate?  How many minutes did I have?  I figured the rabbits were my canaries in the mine and with their smaller bodies they would surely die before me, so as long as they were thumping I had time... I got up on a stool in this state and unscrewed the alarm.  Once it was dangling from the ceiling by wires the beeping increased dramatically in volume.  The thumping got wild.  I saw the battery compartment but it had a warning sign and involved pulling out live wires.  Just then I saw a button which I swear said, "Hush".  I pushed it.  The alarm really went off.  Fire! Fire! Fire!  pause  Monoxide! Monoxide! Augh!  I jumped off my stool and rushed downstairs to the circuit board and threw the switch for upstairs.  Silence.   Pierced only occasionally by the original beep, which now seemed like a lullaby.

This time I stepped boldly on to the stool, pulled out the wires, popped open the battery compartment and threw the damn battery down the hall.  Replaced it with a new one and was greeted with blissful silence.  Just in time to hear the doorbell ring and my repairman call out hello.  So glad he hadn't arrived 5 minutes earlier and witnessed my frantic dumbness. 

The competitive spirit never dies

A couple weeks ago we were up at my parents' house for a friendly family get together.  It was nice to hang out with my brothers and their peeps.  Although we all live fairly close to each other, lives are busy and we don't always make time to see each other. 

During lunch Theo mentioned that when he had been downstairs he had seen a new item my dad had purchased (more on Rodger's purchasing habits later...) called a Bongo Board and wondered what it was for.  What is it for?  Don't ask my dad that...  But I explained the general idea to him and went on eating.  Moments later I noticed my brother Pete had slipped away from the table.  In the middle of the meal.  To go downstairs and get in some covert practicing on the Bongo Board.  Couldn't wait til after the meal.  Had to get a jump on it as he knew there would be a competition coming soon.  That's what we Sages do.  It was no fair that he got the extra practice in, as he already had an advantage with his dorky log rolling shoes he was wearing.  That's right, my brother owns log rolling shoes.  He had accidentally had them delivered to my parents' house (I'm sure the UPS driver knows the way there) and was thrilled to find them when he arrived.  Slipped them right on and asked us at regular intervals to admire them. At first I scoffed.  But then when I found out about the Bongo Board I became enraged!  The playing field was no longer level! 

I don't want this on the permanent record

The other day Jon and I did our Returned Peace Corps Volunteer duty by talking to Theo's class about our PC experience.  We had to shake the dust off of our memories and dig around for some pictures.  I even found a powerpoint I had made a few years ago- but we didn't use it as the class projector was broken- which was fine, made it more true to the spirit of our experience as there was no powerpoint back then.  Hardly any internets at all. 

We got a little sidetracked from our presentation when I mentioned that as a teacher in my school in the Caribbean I could have whipped my students if I had chosen to.  I didn't.  Not sure Theo's classmates believed me. But they explored every possible infraction a student could have been whipped for.  Turned out to be much more interesting to them than stories of climbing trees for mangoes, toting water from the corner pipe, doing laundry by hand, lizards climbing around the roof, or even horses scratching their backs under our stilted house.  Even tales of a Class 5 hurricane could not alter their dedication to the topic of whipping.

Eventually we closed off the questions, turned on some good old Soca music by the Antiguan band "The Burning Flames" and handed out some fruit from the local grocery, but that also grew near our house in Antigua.  All in all, I thought it went fairly well.

At home that evening I asked Theo if we had embarassed him.  He said no, after a pause, then said, "I suppose it could have been worse."  I pushed it then and said, "Come on, you have to admit that maybe your parents are even a little bit cool."  His response, "Maybe they are, but I would never admit that as I don't want that going down on the permanent record!"  Too late Theo!  Recorded.  In the late winter of 2013, when Theo was 10, he admitted that there was a small chance that we might be the slightest bit cool.