At least, that’s what I thought before I started teaching them. When I do Chalk It Up, I have so many people rave about the artwork I’m doing. Teenagers will say “sweet!” or “sick!” or some other modern term of enthusiasm. So I thought, well if they like my work so much I should teach them how.

The reality, at least in a public high school, is that for the most part it is very uncool to indicate you are even a tiny bit impressed by your teacher. Some spend their entire time in class trying to show their friends how ridiculous you are. One or two will even laugh uproariously when you reprimand them or another student, like it’s the most ineffective and ridiculous thing they ever heard.

If you do actually do something impressive, like draw something well right in front of their very eyes, the most likely reaction is dead quiet. They cannot bear to admit that the teacher has done something cool.

One of the vice principals here told me that the appropriate approach is to not try to impress, just teach. Be goofy all you want because the students don’t see you as a “real person” anyway.

But it is a let-down. I thought I would have such a rapport with teenagers. With some I do, I guess. They say hi and smile to me out on campus at lunch. One even waved to me yesterday, enthusiastically and with a big smile, as I was driving out of the parking lot. He was with a small group of friends, not surrounded by 31 other classmates. Because of this difference in attitude it’s like he’s exaggerating, but I hope the moment was genuine. He seems like an up-front kind of kid.

I’m told that things change once you’ve been at a school for a few years. The students stop testing you. Hopefully by then I will have passed their little tests, and I will get more respect and cooperation from them. But they’ll probably never admit that they’re impressed.

Comments (0) | Permalink

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Male student: “I like your shirt, Miss Pedersen.”

Me: “Well, thank you!”

Male student: “It reminds me of Larry the Cable Guy.”

Comments (1) | Permalink

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Every day I feel like a cop in the classroom. You know, always trying to enforce the rules.

Today I actually enabled the felony arrest of a student.

Lunch had just begun, and this kids noisily filtered out of the second-floor hallway outside my door. Then I heard a scream and some other muffled sounds – the kind of goofing off a teacher hears day after day.

But then I heard blood-curdling wails and someone cry, “you’re bleeding!”

I raced out of my door, as had another teacher down the hall. A girl was on her back, hand up to her face, full of gurgled cries. Another girl standing there said “someone just came and punched her!” I asked which way the assailant fled, and she pointed down the stairs. I jogged down them and asked a student there if she saw someone run out of the building. She said yes and pointed out the door. I took off. I ran in the only direction available out that door and soon saw another teacher. When I asked if he saw a student running out of the building, he pointed behind him. He remembered exactly which girl it was. Luckily she had slowed to a fast walk.

I ran again, hollering to have him call security. Another building over, I caught up with her. Careful to avoid touching her, I asked her name. She replied and slowed down slightly. I asked her if she would come with me to the admin building. She began walking quicker again, not the direction I wanted. Luckily, we ran across a Vice Principal. I got her attention, and the VP managed to cool the girl’s jets and get her to walk back with us to the admin building. It could have gone much worse, but it turned out very calm and I don’t think any of the students around figured out what was going on.

I followed behind the VP and the girl. I heard the VP, who had her arm gently looped around the girl’s, say “this is a friendly arm, not a restraining one.” Along the way, the girl admitted she had punched the other girl in the face. When we arrived to the VP of Discipline, he asked her why she did it. She said, “I had my reasons.” That’s all he needed to hear. She confessed to a brutal assault. Soon two eye-witnessed arrived and I was dismissed.

A little later, a security staff member said a restraining order was already somehow involved. And then another security person asked me what happened (before she asked for advice on designing a children’s book she was writing.)

I feel good that this girl was arrested rather than disappearing completely into the cafeteria crowd. I had something to do with that.

The victim had been so stunned by the attack that there was urine on the floor in addition to blood. She changed into a friend’s spare clothing after her nose stopped bleeding. I saw her being walked toward the health office, and she looked so completely miserable. I hope she will be all right. I don’t know her name, but one of her friends is a student of mine. I will ask her next Monday if her friend recovered okay.

——————————————————

I was punched once in high school. Actually, the girl hit me two or three times. She and a friend had cut in front of me at the snack bar. I said something irritatedly under my breath. Girl 2 asked me to repeat it, obviously spoiling for a fight. I said, “nothing.” She kept badgering me so I finally replied, “I said ‘bitch’.”

*Wham* Girl 1 had punched me and I was sprawled on the cafeteria floor. Then I really screamed something rude at her. She punched me in the forehead, and perhaps one more time.

Was she immediately arrested for felony assault? No. The Dean had even recommended that I not press charges. He said it was to avoid any retribution from her, but really he had taken her under his wing and was trying to protect her. My father and I said, no way. I don’t know what happened after then. I was never asked to appear in court or anything, but I think she went back to Juvenile Hall. I have forever after been absolutely appalled by that Dean – that he should think I should go easy on her when she punched me multiple times with no aggressive precedent on my part. I didn’t even know those two girls. I don’t think I had even seen them before.

——————————————————–

The really weird thing is that today’s incident was the school’s second call to the police that day. That was also a felony assault – a senior boy punching a random freshman boy in the back of the head.

Oh – I forgot the punchline to all this.

Soon after this happened I was deciding how I would write about it in my blog. Fifteen minutes later, I realized what T-shirt I had worn today.

This one.

Comments (1) | Permalink

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Paleo-Future: A Look into the Future That Never Was

This is an awesome blog full of artistic ideas from the past about what the future would be like.

Here’s a sample from September 10:

Flying Firemen

The National Library of France (BnF) has an amazing collection of prints from 1910 which depict life in the year 2000. They are credited to Villemard.

There’s speculation that they were included with “foodstuffs” of the era, much like the German postcards we looked at back in April.

Comments (0) | Permalink

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Here on Edmeeting.com.

Thanks, guys!

Comments (2) | Permalink

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.