From the "I Can't Believe You Just Said That!" Files

I was observed teaching the other day by one of my boss' who will, for the sake of my job, remain nameless. I felt like I had had a good day that day and I wasn't too worried about how my post-observation chat would go.

I went in this morning to talk to this woman, who has decades of experience over me, and we started off in a really pleasant way. She was told me I was on the right track, showed potential, etc.

Then, in the delightful way that things tend to do, everything went surreal.

"There is one fairly big problem with your teaching style..." Boss X began. "It has to do with your use of sarcasm."

Me, sarcastic? Never! Oops, I was being sarcastic just then. I thought this may come up at some point. It has been mentioned to me in the past. I was told early on that kids don't "get" sarcasm and it takes too much brain power for them to figure it out. I just heartily disagree. I think that my students find my sarcasm funny and I think that the way it catches them off-guard and makes them think is healthy and educational. Not to mention the fact that I find it absolutely impossible to delete sarcasm from my way of being...I just swim in it all the time. I was taught to be sarcastic before I was taught to walk, probably. But I wasn't going to argue.

"Yes," I agreed. "I have been told that I should tone it down. I'm working on it."

"Well, perhaps it has worked for you in the past. You see, sarcasm works for the smart children," she began, as I smiled and nodded in affirmation. "...the white children. It just doesn't work for the Blacks."

My smile froze and my nodding head kept bobbing up and down senselessly. I hate these moments and I have them fairly frequently, here. Where I am relating to someone or having an innocent conversation and suddenly I am trying to figure out how to get out of it quickly and whether to say something about how awful I think the person is but feeling very much the foreigner and just ending up staring like a deer caught in the headlights.

I can think of a lot of people I know in the Bay or in Portland who would tell me that I can't let racism go unchecked...that I should stand up for what is right. In fact, I myself have a poster in my classroom that reads, "Stand up for what is right; even if you are standing alone" and I spout that to my kids daily. But I just never know what to do here because I do feel like I would be terribly unsupported if I said anything. I wonder why these teachers work with the population they do if they feel the way they feel.

The rest of the conversation went something like, "And I should know because I have worked with the Blacks for many years...blah blah blah." I had stopped listening.

I know that it is good for me to get out of the bubble of the West, where people just don't say that kind of thing-- not out loud and with immunity, no matter what evil really lurks in their hearts. It is just still so shocking to me that these folks just assume that I will be with them in their beliefs about non-white people.

And the kids got on my nerves today. But tomorrow is Friday. And we all know how much I love the weekend.  ¶ 5:10 PM

  I had a dinner tonight with a bunch of other TFA'ers and realized something terribly heart-warming: It is really a lot of fun to make fun of kids in a group!

Today, when I was saying something to the class, one of my students parroted me in a dorky way. I told him, "Don't make fun of me when I am standing right here! Wait until I can't hear you to make fun of me...the same way I wait until I'm at home to make fun of you." He looked shocked and asked, "You don't really make fun of us, do you?"

Well, yes. I do. I make fun of most of my kids when I am at home. And tonight I found out how much fun it is to make fun of students with other teachers. I think it is really cathartic. I, in reality, really love my students. I would never make fun of them and make them feel bad. But it sure is funny to do little impressions of them to teachers who have had one too many glasses of wine.

I can't believe that the year is going by so quickly. People I know are already busy making plans for the summer and beyond. I'm still very uncertain what I am going to be doing, but it looks really likely that I am going to get my transfer to the Bay. I am just letting things be and hoping they all work out...which is my way, I suppose.  ¶ 9:35 PM

  Everything I need to know I learned from Michelle Pfeiffer.

I have gained this affinity for movies where beautiful celebrities enter classrooms and change the fates of entire schools. I don't remember caring one way or another about movies like "Dangerous Minds", "Lean on Me" and "Stand and Deliver". But now I watch them with a zeal I never would have imagined.

Tonight my roomate and I watched "Dangerous Minds", a movie where Michelle Pfeiffer comes into a terrible situation with out of control teens and in one semester bonds them like a family, gets a pregnant girl to stay in school, and teaches them all the meaning of life and death through Dylan Thomas' poetry. Ah, perhaps I like it so much because it is so realistic! No, that can't be it.

I guess I now watch these movies the same way real doctors must watch "E.R.". I look for obvious errors and feel superior when I find them.

"No way would all those kids talk one at a time like that!" I hollered indignantly during one scene.

"Yeah, as if a principal would fund all those kids to go to an amusement park." My roomate snorted cynically a few minutes later.

There is something comforting about watching Michelle Pfeiffer get pelted in the head with balls of paper, even though she gets to save the world a mere half and hour later. I did get a couple of good ideas from the movie, though.

Tomorrow I get to give my kids their practice end of the year test...yes, the fabulous high stakes testing game! I am excited and grateful that we have a practice so that I can find the weak spots in their learning. This will be helpful. I am also thankful for the full day of them testing so that I can do some planning for the week. I did none this weekend, but I socialized, which makes me a better and nicer teacher.  ¶ 8:27 PM