Firsts

At a day and age where it feels like youth is corrupted with unlimited texting, Jersey Shore, and the internet, it's nice to know that there are still some firsts left to be discovered. Like the movie The Sixth Sense, which I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of students had never seen.

This is a fantastic movie to teach foreshadowing with, given that all the heart-stopping scenes (ie. ghastly pale Mischa Barton with vomit trickling down her chin) are removed. There are pivotal scenes that lends itself to giving a overarching synopsis of the plot.

I only had to show about 20 minutes of the movie, and I stayed quiet as they debated what had occurred at the end. I was watching one student clarify, in sheer annoyance of another student's confusion, explain the twist ending. And watching the listening student's jaw drop at the sheer novelty of the plot, made my day.

Parts of the Whole

A student who accidentally pronounced "cigar" as "cigger".

A male student who finds humor in every insignificant thing and twitters like a bird in the front. And yet, moments later, I find myself doing the very thing that annoyed me enormously at a faculty meeting.

An entire period who thought that the story was about the characters Bob and Dimmy because I have a tendency to write my capital J like a lowercase d. Forget that proper nouns always begin with a capital letter, no, this must be a story about dimmy. Their names should be dimmy.

These are the moments where the class erupts into laughter, and I have to pull back the reins, shushing them left and right, all the while rolling my eyes. But these are the moments that crack me up later in the solitude of my own home. These are the parts of the whole that I love.

Glass Half Full

"These two visiting teachers were the gold and silver sun-splash in the great muddy river of school days, days made up of dreary hours in which Teacher made her pupils sit rigid with their hands folded behind their back...if all the teachers had been like Miss Bernstone and Mr. Morton, Francie would have known plain what heaven was. But it was just as well. There had to be the dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background its flashing glory."

-Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Open Your Eyes

Open House, for me, follows a predictable routine. First come the jitters where I question my decorating, organizing, and teaching abilities. Then the elbow grease starts flowing as I scrub my room with a focus that parallels a marine’s. Finally the short but exhausting 2 hours of talking to parent after parent takes place.

Usually, it’s a much ado about nothing. That is, until a former student comes back to visit.

There’s just something about witnessing the former ghosts of a gawky, impossibly immature 7^th graders develop into near adults that overwhelms. From the way they carry themselves to the thoughts they express, I can’t believe the bloom that has occurred over the years

Tonight, I found out that one of the biggest troublemakers in my 6^th period is the younger brother of a student I had 4 years ago. She came to me and I remembered her instantly because of her eyes. She has a pair of deep, luminous, compassionate eyes. She was telling me how she worried about him, while he mimicked and cursed her, telling her to shut up. When their mom stepped him, he spat out words of anger till I intervened and told him to leave, because no one should treat their family like that.

She described how her mom can’t control him and how their family has a lot of things going on right now. He’s on his way to being expelled, and she just wants to find a part time job right now to help her mom out. It hit me that while I have to “deal” with this student for only three more months, he will be a part of that family forever.

Hearing that formerly forlorn, scrawny girl saying more than I ever heard her say in a year amazed me. Her eyes had told the story all along, but I never understood it. While my heart was filled to see her as a responsible, caring 11^th grader, it was broken at the same time.