Harassed.

Well, I'm still alive.  I've been a "real" teacher for about a month and a half, and it hasn't killed me.

What follows below is heavy on dialog.  All of mine is in bold.

I had a fun experience a couple days ago.  As regular readers might recall, I have taught summer school classes the past three summers.

Earlier this week I was walking around the local big, blue, box-store, when I noticed one of these students behind me with her mother.  I never know what to do in situations like that, so I pretended like I did not see them, and turned a corner.  The next aisle over, I heared the student loudly yell,
"No, mom, don't!"
I think, "okay... this should be interesting."
The mother turned the corner and quickly moved to stand right behind me, not saying anything.  This seemed a bit weird, and now I really wasn't sure what to say or do, so I ignored it and walked further down the aisle.  She followed, and stood silently behind me again.  Now I turned and asked,
"Hi, can I help you?"
"Do you know who I am?"
"Well, I saw you with [student], so you must be with her?"
"Yes, I'm her mother, and I'm also black."
I did not respond to this.  At first I wasn't sure that I had heard her correctly, or even where she was going with the statement.  After a few seconds of silence she continued,
"You kicked my daughter out of your class because she is black."
"I did ask her to leave my classroom.  She wasn't registered in any of my classes."
"You let other kids stay in the room"
"At first I let my kids have guests in my room.  They couldn't handle it, so I revoked the privilege.  After that, I kicked a lot of kids out of my room."
"You're a liar."
"Okay... what would you like to achieve here?"
"I want you to understand that not everyone has to live by your petty, elitist  little rules, and you're not king of the world.  I also want you to know what it feels like to be humiliated and singled out, like you made my daughter feel."
"...alright.  Well, it was nice meeting you."  And with this I turned and walked away from her.  It turned out she wasn't done though.  As I walked away, she followed me while singing at top volume, "this guy harassed my  daughter!  This guy harassed my teenage, high school daughter!  This guy hates black people!"

So, what do you do in a situation like this?  I thought about calling the police, but what good would that have really done?  I didn't want to escalate this, or take up any more of my time.  I also couldn't imagine that she would stick around long enough for the police to be any real help anyway.

I decided to call my mentor teacher.  She's someone who's always been able to give advice/suggestions when it comes to academic related stuff.  I figured she might have some words of wisdom.  As I pulled my phone out to dial, the woman chides,
"I think the number you're looking for is 911.  Maybe the police can help make this 'scary black lady' go away."
I ignored her and dialed.  By the time she picked up, the woman had ran away.  Once I explained what had happened, she assured me it was a "once in a lifetime experience."

When I told my administrator at the alternative ed school about this, he told me I should have filmed her and put it on YouTube.  Maybe if this sort of thing ever happens again, I'll think to do that.  Maybe.

Probably not.

A Summer School Teacher (6)

I've got one more week of summer school left.  I can't believe how quickly it has flown by.

I got a rather gruesome surprise while collecting papers from the library printer the other day.  Mixed in with some stuff was a photo of a man, laying dead on the ground with a very gory head wound.  Brains splashed onto the ground and everything.  One of the lovely students must have printed it out.  It's good to know that the school's internet filters won't let me get onto history.com, because it is a "video site," but kids can still get that sort of thing.

Also, I've got an interview on Tuesday, for a middle school English/History job.
Maybe I'll let you know how it goes.

A Summer School Teacher (5)

Yesterday was the first day of the second half of summer school.  I had two students, each taking a different level of American History.  I had another girl add today, giving me a grand total of three students, each taking a different class.

I can't imagine what the other summer school teachers think about my class size.  The English teacher has about 20 kids, and the math teacher has 30 or 31.

One of the kids is taking American History A, which I taught last session.  This is my first opportunity to ever really re-use previously created lessons on a "year-long" scale.  I do have to make a couple tiny modifications to them, but for the most part I only have to worry about putting together material for the other two kids.  It's nice.

Lastly, the quote of the day...
American History Student, talking about Andrew Carnegie's philanthropic tendencies - "Obviously that charity wasn't important, since Wikipedia doesn't have a real page for it."

A Summer School Teacher (4)

Today was the last day of the first secession of summer school.  All we had on the agenda today was to catch-up on missing homework and take the final exam.  Since I only had four kids in the room and had three hours to work with, I let them decide for themselves when they wanted to take the exam.  We were done by about the second hour of class.  Many of the kids from the other classes were also done early, so another teacher set them all up with a movie in his classroom.  It gave me plenty of time to put together a report on final grades, get the classroom cleaned up, and leave right after the kids.

Now I've got a month off from school.

I recently accepted a job in a local photo studio.  I'm sure that will make the summer interesting.

Will there be a "Mr. C. Pretends to be a Photographer" update in the future?  Only time will tell.

A Summer School Teacher (3)

I can't believe that the second week is already over with.  Next week is the last day of this session.  I'll start back again the first week of August.

I had a girl actually use the line, "my dog ate my homework."  I told her that there was no way I would ever accept that excuse, but either way she'll just have to turn it in late.

Some seniors had just finished up some testing which allowed them to graduate on time (or at least a month late), so they put on a mini graduation ceremony.  Since I'm one of only 3 teachers in the building right now, I had to participate in part of the ceremony... which pretty much just meant standing in recognition at a particular time.
I also got some free pizza out of it.

A Summer School Teacher (2)

I've now finished my first week teaching summer school.  Two students have already dropped out of my class.
I've now got three US History 1 students, one Economics student, one World History 1 student, and one World History 2 student.
I'm finding that teaching four classes at the same time, all day long is rather trying.  Also, packing 12 weeks worth of material into 12 days seems to be more content at one time than these guys are used to.

This is going to be a very educational summer... hopefully for more than just me.

A Summer School Teacher

As I said on Friday, I just accepted a job teaching summer school.
The position lasts a total of six weeks.  Three weeks now, through the end of June and another three weeks in August.  8am - Noon.

Today was rather hectic.  It got easier about halfway through when I got some textbooks and a scope and sequence for most of the classes.
I've already got the rest of the week sketched out, so it should go much smoother from now on.

Seeing as I'm looking to find a part-time job to fill in the second-half of the day, I don't think I'll have time to do daily updates.