Lesson of the day: Spend a day in the rain with people you love.

I started the week off at the doctor’s office with the words “You have bronchitis, strep throat and an ear infection. Didn’t you know that young people are not supposed to get this sick?” All I could think was, “I’m just glad I didn’t get the stomach thing going around…”. It is one of the deep dark secrets of teachers; we catch everything our kids get. If they touch it and turn it in, those germs are now ours. Whoever said teenagers don’t like to share? Because, my kids share way more than I would like them to. But aside from being sick this week, something really special happened. For the first time ever, I got to chaperone a field trip! It was pouring rain and the trip was to Knott’s Berry Farm…but I got to go! More than anything, I had 5 kids with me that were my kids, and it was special because they were my kids. It made up for all of the really hard stuff this year has thrown at me. As I was sitting watching them eat nachos and drink hot chocolate, for the first time this year I felt like I made a difference. I felt like I had done my job. I was sitting there with these 5 kids who really aren’t kids anymore and realized that sometimes life rains on us. Sometimes it feels like the rain is so strong that it is going to wash us away. But if you spend a day in the rain with people you love, the rain isn’t such a big deal. It is just there in the background of what you are doing, while you are with the people you love. 

Teachers are bigger versions of their students...

So I had yet another training to go to... And, if you have ever read my blog before, you know how much I hate going to these things. It is a slow painful death. The teach sitting next to me kept saying "I can't believe it's only...(insert time)" and repeated this every 20 minutes for 7 hours. It was like the never ending road trip, "are we there yet?" At one point it got so bad that my assistant principle wrote a haiku about me...

Cupcake love can kill
Caring for the underdog
Adams took the hit

Now I am sure that you are wondering with great anticipation what I was doing... Well wait no more... here is what I was doing with my time....


1. taking random photos of stuff on the table

Post-it notes are on sale at Staples... Look at all the pretty colors...

2. Asking myself meaningful questions like...

Just so you know, there is a lot wrong with this scenario. For example, the hundreds of dollars that my district paid for us to go to a training in which they taught us NOTHING!!!!

3. Trying to pretend that i was paying attention and following along...

Hmmmm...interesting (nod head and do the thinker pose)

4. My favorite part of the day, evaluation time. I put a lot of effort into this...

Stuff Korean Moms Like: #58 Korean School

I have to say that this is quite possibly my favorite blog of all time....

Stuff Korean Moms Like: #58 Korean School

So we thought the tiara was a the biggest problem…I wish

You remember that kid in elementary school, the one that would wear strange outfits and thought that they could fly, would eat glue and always seemed a little off? If you were that kid, stop reading now…I don’t want to upset you with this story.

So the super hero girl has achieved a new nickname at school… Demon Bat Girl…hmmm… “why?” you ask, well let me recount the events of last Friday at approximately 2:10 PM in Perris CA. There I was, standing like I always stand during the passing period, greeting my kids so that they feel welcome and loved. I had noticed that though the brutal heat of Perris in the summer had remained, the sun had disappeared and yet another thunder storm was about to hit.

Seems like a pretty normal thing right? Well that is how all American gothic stories start, with something normal, but there is always a glint of foreshadowing in the weather or something…and that is when things go horribly, horribly wrong. I’ve read enough Poe, I should have seen it coming… Screams of terror begin to rise into the oppressively moist filled air. I turn, in expectation of a “physical altercation”, when I realize that the “super hero girl” has thrown herself on the ground just to the left of my class room and is sobbing out the words, “You are a MURDERER”. By this point a crowd had begun to gather, like flies to honey… stupid teenagers, they didn’t even see it coming.

“Apologize! A-pol-O-gizzzzeee!!!”, she yelled at the top of her voice, and began to run after one of the senior boys. “You killed it! It was a defenseless animal and you killed it… APOLOGIZE!!!”, and as any though guy would say, “No! It flew at me. It attacked me! I didn’t mean to kill it, but I won’t apologize that I killed it”. (Apparently a fruit bat had flown at and attacked the senior boy, who smacked it to get it away from him…and he killed it. Really, she had the bat in her bag and took it out and it went crazy. Because despite the fact that bats are cool, they can’t be out in the 112 degree weather during the day. They are NOCTURNAL!!!)

So reader, guess how well that went over. Your literary skills are impressive, but I doubt that even Faulkner could have guessed what would happen next in this tale. “If you don’t apologize, I’m going to put a curse on you!” to which he replied, “Go ahead, I don’t believe in that crap anyway”. So what do you think she did? She started going off in some strange gibberish and then said she cursed us all and the school. And of course, because I always get the weird ones and she has my class right after this incident… she comes storming over to my room. But after she just cursed us all and wished evil down upon us, there was no way I was letting this one into class. I moved from my greeter position to block the door with all you’ve got position and told her no way was she coming into class. I yelled for security and told them to take her to counseling. So they come over and take her away as she looks back at me with hate in her eyes. But what was I supposed to do? The entire class saw her acting crazy and cursing us. Try calming down a room full of teenagers, mostly who are Catholic and have all pulled out their rosaries and are praying for their lives. I even had a kid ask if I would pray with them, that is when the wind and thunder storm hit…

It’s going to be a loooong school year…

“Cho hommie where you from” and “I can make you have a bad day”

So there were some really funny things that happened this week aside from the caped crusader, that I just have to share… and proof that it may be time to stop working in the ghetto.

1. Walking into campus I hear a boys voice yell, “Cho hommie where you from?”. Now, in the ghetto this is calling someone out. This means hommie you’re about to get cut, so run or fight. Fight or flight reflexes kicked in and apparently I was ready to fight because I turned around and yelled, “What did YOU just say to me?”. Of course as I said it I thought, you have worked in Perris for too long if someone yells that and you know they are talking to you… turns out it was two of my cholitos joking around. River-side-ah, so back up hommie!

2. After being called out in the parking lot… First period I am privately reprimanding a student for cursing in class, when one of his friend stands up and yells “don’t tell him what to do”. And before I could control myself I had in a calm voice told him, “If you think you intimidate me just because you’re 6’2”, you’re wrong. So get your butt back in your chair and mind your business”. THEN his other friend says, “You know I can make you have a bad day!” And again before I could control myself I said, “Really, because if you think you can make my day bad you can’t imagine how bad I can make yours. Shall I start the process of making your day really bad? One more word out of your mouth and we’ll see just how bad I can make it…” Apparently I put them in check because I got an apology from all three and a twix the next day. 

Ummm…. Ivan, is she wearing a cape?

The first week back was nothing short of really insane. Just to show you how insane it was, let me tell you about today.  So I'm standing at my door and greeting my kids when this girl walks into my class. And I think to myself, “hmmm… somethings not right”, but for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on it. So the bell rings and I come inside to take attendance, and that is when I realize what it is. My student is dressed in a full on superhero outfit. Cape, tiara and for whatever reason black electrical tape on her face… and all I can do is look at my T.A. and say, “why me?”, to which he said, "seriously" and we both sighed in the knowledge that this was going to be the strangest of all my classes. You can’t imagine how hard it was, since today of all days was my teacher student confrence day. There I was thinking as she walked up to my desk, do I tell her to take the tiara off, since I don’t allow hats in my room? Or do play that ignorance is bliss and pretent that the child infront of me does not have electrical tape on her face? I chose avoidance, but could not help but laugh when she told another one of my students to get out of her force field. 

Back in the saddle again

It has been a while since I wrote… and maybe I need to explain by just saying that this was the hardest year of teaching yet. And I am firm believer that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all… so I have not said anything for a while…
But now it is summer vacation and I am ready to start writing again, because graduation and a few weeks of vacation reminded me why I am a teacher. I thought that I would write my first entry back in the blogging world about a student I wrote about earlier in the year. He was expelled for which I won’t go into detail, but it broke my heart. That was only the second time that I have ever let my kids see me cry (the other being when a close friend died). I was devastated, because I felt like I had failed as a teacher and mentor.
And then the next day came and I had to take what I had learned from the loss of that student and apply it to the kids that I was left with. But for the rest of the year I hoped that he would not give up, and I hoped that I would see him again. But in my line of work, we don’t often see the kids that we lose again. And for that reason you cannot imagine what it meant when I saw him walk into the graduation stadium in his gown. (Our school is so small that we combine with adult ed for graduation, which is where he went after his expulsion.) My heart stopped for a second, I was so proud of him.
There are no words really for that feeling. It was like someone gave me back something priceless that I thought had been lost. And for all the hardship of this past year, that one kid reminded me why I do what I do. There are a lot of kids that walked that day that reminded me, that no matter how hard it is, they deserve to have someone fight for them. Even if it is just fighting to help find them a place to do community service;)