Demon Possession and Bad Moods

For the most part, these last three weeks with my kids have been amazing. Other than minor disturbances here or there, the kids have been well behaved, friendly, inquisitive, not annoying, etc. Until sixth period Thursday. If this has been a Friday, I would have understood. But this was a regular, run-of-the-mill, ordinary Thursday afternoon. Which is why I am convinced that during sixth period, my seventh graders were possessed by demons. I was tempted to find myself some holy water, ala Sam and Dean style to see what I was dealing with. I have no idea what their problem was. They were talkative, noisy, they refused to settle down and, this is my biggest pet peeve, did the whispering and shuffling through things while I tried to talk. it got so bad and they wasted so much of my time that they ended up spending 4 minutes after school. I haven't had to do that with them in literally months! And the following day, they were fine!!! Ridiculous! I swear, demonic possession or satanic influence must have had something to do with this.

On the same sort of note regarding the major changes from day to day, I was in a horrible mood first period yesterday. I haven't been sleeping well, I had a major headache and the majority of the students hadn't done their homework. So basically, it was a "don't piss Miss Yadlin" off day. And they pissed me off. So first period was pretty tense. The rest of the day got better but the entire time I was praying that things just went up from this point, that the horrible first period wouldn't be the high point of the week. So this morning, I was in a much better mood, things were good and one of my students comes in and is like "Miss Yadlin, you're in a good mood this morning!" And I replied, "Yeah, I know, I was kind of in a bad mood this morning." And she replies in return, "Um yeah, we could tell." Nothing like the words out of the mouths of babes to put you in your place.

Final closing remarks- Thursday is my last day with my seventh graders! I'm so bummed! But i am looking forward to hopefully an even better crew next semester. Keeping those fingers cross and keeping that holy water in hand, just in case.....

Recap and Update

So I haven't written in a week not because things have been bad but maybe because things have been good. These last two weeks (two weeks? sometimes it seems like it's been longer, sometimes shorter...) have actually been amazing. I was incredibly worried about how the kids were going to react to being back at school after break but I have been blown away. Every day has been great. I have no idea what's going on differently or what's been changing but it's been fantastic. We've been having a great time in all classes and I've been feeling really confident. In the eighth grade classes, I've been doing more of my own lessons which I hope have been keeping them entertained and the end result of their test seemed better than before. I need to try and get an average for all the tests and see how they did and see if I can make some sense of teh data but yeah, in general, I've been feeling REALLY good.

CHANGE IS GOOD!

So my friend Megan and I were talking over hot chocolate and Daphne's tonight. One of the things that we ended up talking about was the idea of change. It's a long story about how we got there but in a nutshell, we were talking about how brutal junior high was. If you weren't in the cool crowd, your life could sometimes be miserable. If you weren't one of those kids who wore the right clothes and knew the right people and did the right things after school, forget being popular. And for those of us who were on the outside, we had such a fascination for those girls in the cool crowd. Even though you knew that your smarts and your brain would take you so much further in life, there was still this obsession, as Megan said, with those girls. And it wasn't as if they were nice.... even if you were on their side and you pissed them off or did something, they would give you up in a second. Presby and I were also talking about that today. A student got arrested at our school today and they knew it was him because his seven friends gave him up. They were all asked to write down on a piece of paper who did it and they all wrote down "It was John" except for John who wrote "It wasn't me." He told me that in junior high, it's every man for himself, you look out for yourself and there's is absolutely no loyalty. He paired this with a story from the high school where he sat with some high schoolers at lunch every day for a month trying to get them to tell him who stole a dictionary from a teacher's classroom and they just wouldn't budge and wouldn't give each other up.

In high school, this obsession just seemed to get worse. In a way you longed to be a part of the cool crowd but on the other hand, you really didn't want to be friends with them because they were mean and they drank and they talked behind peoples backs. Yet we knew every single detail about their lives. I know for me, I would always be really quiet around them, especially in class. They would use me to ask for help and then forget about me and talk about their inner social life and I, being the awed person I was, would just sit quietly and listen. I knew all the details of their inner circle and really, as much as part of me wanted to be a part of them, the other part knew that I would be miserable.

Fast forward now to college and post-college. All these people are still friends! And here's is where the Change is Good phrase comes into play. I'm not saying there's anything bad about being friends with people from high school. Heck, I still am friends with friends from my high school. But I've also branched out. I've grown. I've found out who I am. I've found what makes me happy. I'm totally and completely happy spending more than six hours a day with 150 squirmy, ADD, hyperactive, sometimes unmotivated kids. I love and adore the friends that I've kept from high school. They were an integral part in helping me find out who I am. But I've also made new friends. The friends that I've made in college and beyond far outnumber the friends I had in high school (and I am not that popular). I look at the people in that cool crowd in high school and junior high and I know that they're always going to have each other. But I wonder if they're going to be happy. I wonder if they've been caught up in this same social circle for so long that they don't know how to get out. I don't think they realize that change is good. Moving on is good. Meeting new people and making new friends and having new experiences is good. Being exclusive for the rest of your life is not going to get you anywhere. Part of me wonders if in twenty years, they're going to be looking back at their life and wondering where it all went wrong....

I'm not entirely sure where exactly I was heading with this when I started writing. In general, Megan and I had a really great conversation about the idea that changing is good and it was really great to talk and share with someone who was kind of there in the same place as I was, in a totally different school. It definitely made me think about my kids later when I got home and I hope for all of them that they can take those steps out of their comfort level, that they should strive to push the boundaries of their confinements. Overall, I want them to know that sixth period history class in seventh grade is not the rest of their life, junior high is not the rest of their life, college is not the rest of their life, it's just the steps that are being taken on this long road that we do call life. I want them to be able to lookg back at their life one day and be proud of how they lived, be proud of what they accomplished and most importantly, be proud of the changes that they saw over the years.

Debating and Discussing

I decided spur of the moment yesterday, admist discussions about the Electoral College and my realization that my kids realy know nothing about the world they live in, to assign my eighth graders a newspaper project where every week they get an article about the campaign and summarize it. I know that most won't do it but hopefully it'll get a few of them involved in what's going on and how the upcoming election will affect them. In first period, we ended up having a very long discussion about why they, as thirteen and fourteen-year-olds, they should be interested and should care who was president. We talked about policies that presidents have that will affect us- education laws, environmental laws, taxation law which, although mainly affect their parents, also affect them. But then we got onto teh discussion illegal immigrants and how illegal immigrants can't vote so why should they care. This got us onto a discussion of illegal immigration and why people immigrate and why Mexicans tend to do the more menila work and the American dream.
Anyway, this was a very long discussion and of course, you have to be INCREDIBLY careful about what you say. Usually I'm good at picking up when kids want to talk about "issues" but really just want to get me off-track but today, they were all really engaged and seemed extremely passionate about it, which seemed to make sense because a lot of it actually applied to them and their families.

Then, in fourth and sixth period, we were discussing Machiavelli. I love Machiavelli. I don't agree with nearly anything that he says but in generall, I think that what he says really rings true for a lot of people and certainly for a lot of leaders. The two main quotes that we were debating and deciding whether we agreed or disagreed with were "It is better to be feared than loved" and "The ends justifies the means". The best discussion took place in, obviously, foruth period. Most of them agreed that they wanted to be a combination of feared and loved. If you're feared than most of the things that people do for you are because they're scared but if someone loves you, they go it because they genuinely want to. I loved playing Devil's Advocate and pushing them to explain what they were thinking.

In fourth period, we were also able to talk about the quote where Machiavelli says "the only thing that prince's should learn is war and peace is just a time to breathe and get ready for the next war" (ok, so that's paraphrased, but the basic gist). This quote was interesting because we started listening things that rulers should be learned in. Students said things like history, theology, and then one kid speaks up.

Eric: How about philosophy?

Me: OK, good, philosophy. Why should they learn philosophy?

Eric: I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there.

Me: Eric, do you know what philosophy is?
Eric: No, no I don't.

Oh Eric.... :)

First Day Back

I was definitely nervous for my first day back after vacation. First of all, I had pretty much done nothing over the break, which was fine. I didn't really have anything to do, I graded the papers that I needed to (plus I offically finished and sent off my thesis... let's see what additional changes Maughan wants to make) but I was worried about the pattern of going to bed really late (darn West Wing episodes, Rob Lowe and Sudoku) and waking up late and then watching a bunch of West Wing episodes and listening to the Outsiders commentary during the day. Anyway, so I was worried about that, and I was also definitely worried about how the kids were going to be. I always remembered how inattentive I was during my first days back when I was in junior high and high school (even college) so I was worried about my kids. But in all honesty, it went really well. First period was actually a little rough but I think, no, i know that tomorrow will be better because my second period, I had hit my stride and the kids had hit their stride as well. And the majority of my seventh graders actually turned their projects in! I was looking over soem of them tonight and most of them are really great. I'm looking forward to the sixth period presentations tomorrow.

In other good news, fifth period has gone really great. Special Ed Boy is still acting up, despite supposedly being scared into submission but when hes's not aroudn or when he's quiet, then the class is so much better. I'm really looking forward to working more with them and seeing how they hopefully continue to improve. In even more good news, I pretty much have seventh grade lesson plans taken care of until... wait for it... wait for it... next Tuesday! Yes! We're testing next Tuesday and so basically, I have the entire unit planned out. So that's really nice and will help me to focus more on the eighth graders.

So all in all, it was a really great day, not at all as bad as I thought/expected/assumed, etc. And, January means three-day weekend. Thank you MLK for all that you did for Civil Rights and I'm sorry that you had to die for us to have a three-day weekend. But I appreciate it nonetheless.

Oh, and the final good news before I go. I think I'm going to Idaho during the second week fo April. This means I'll get to see my kids from last year! Yay!!!

Some pictures

These are SO late in being posted but I finally found time to download them from my camera. A few weeks ago, in my seventh grade class, we did an interactive activity which helped the kids know what life in Feudal Europe was. We arranged the classroom into four manors and a castle. The king or queen, depending on the class, got to sit on a chair on top of the table, wear a crown and be ruler of the class. The four lords got to sit on the tables, the serfs had to tie themselves to the table leg with a ribbon because they were tied to the land (and lord, did I not pray ever second of fourth andsixth period that there wouldn't be a fire drill....) and the knights got to travel freely from one place to another. The lords had to swear an oath of loyalty to the king in order to get their food and land tokens, each serf had to swear loyalty to their lord and give up some food tokens and the lords had to bid using food and land tokensto get the loyalty of the knights. It was a really fun activity (although some serfs moaned about being tied to the table because they wanted to be a lord- and then shut up when I told them that it sucked being born into a role, right?) We had a really great discussion afterwards and I really think that it helped them understand Feudal Europe. So enjoy the pictures.



Way to be king, eh????

The poor serfs tied to the land....

Explaining why he wants to serve this particular lady

Ladies swearing their oath to the King

Knight swearing oath to the Lord

One would think one would be a little more excited to be king, eh?