New year, new school, new blog

Hello America.

Last year, my first year working in an urban school, I (sort of) kept a semi-underground blog. I titled it Hungry, Bored, and Tired—based on the self-reported psycho-physiological state of my students throughout the day.

Now it's a new year. I'm at a new school (down the street from my old school), I have a new apartment (down the street from my old apartment), and I'm in a new position (from assistant teacher to associate teacher). But really, despite the geographic and phonological similarities, this year could not be more different from last. So different that I had to start a whole new blog.

I've moved on from the tutor cabin into a regular-person apartment and have 5 percent as many housemates as I did last year. We buy our own dish soap and pay our own rent. I'm teaching fifth grade instead of middle school (my new school is K-8) and am subjected to 99% fewer Rick Ross lyrics per day. But the biggest change of all is the students. The demographics and, as mentioned, location of both schools are about identical. But my new students... They are not hungry, bored, or tired. They are downright well-fed, engaged, and alert. Three major causes, in my sociological opinion: 1) We have snack time. 2) Fifth graders are far enough away from seventh grade—the year when the soul goes into hibernation*—to still be adorable and kind. And 3) If I may talk serious education business rather than wacky kid stories for just a moment, the fundamental difference is that the students I teach now have been attending this school—a consistent, rigorous, nurturing school—since kindergarten. At my last school, our kids came in as eleven- through fourteen-year-olds. On top of being in a period of temporary soullessness, many of them already hated school and saw no reason to buy in to a new set of structures and expectations, much less the entire grand concept of the value of education. A five-year-old, on the other hand, can be convinced of anything. Everything you say sounds true to a kindergartner. Last week, one of my afterschool kids thought she was legally married because she put on a veil in dress-up. I swear at least one child asks me to weigh in on the existence of the tooth fairy each day.

Which brings us to the wacky kids stories.

A case-in-point of the authentic intellectualism of my current students is a girl I will call T., which isn't even her initial but I'm really paranoid about student privacy laws. Anyways, T. is going to be president of the United States.** I can't put her name here, but trust me, you'll know who I mean in 2048—the woman who wins the election, that's her. T. just finished reading The Devil's Arithmetic. It's a Holocaust book, middle school reading level. She is 10. Today she came to school with a large cardboard box. Inside, she had constructed an accurate and aesthetically impressive diorama of the book. This was not an assignment. She just made a diorama of her Holocaust novel for kicks.

Another girl, F. (also not her real initial; watch for her on the Supreme Court), has been reading the dictionary, also for fun. This didn't seem that remarkable until I realized that she is actively reading the dictionary. As in, I observed that while reading Webster's the other day, she took a moment to nod with a knowing smile on her face. I later learned this is her second dictionary.

Of course, the children are not perfect. This is from a recent vocab test. They had learned that the root word "meter" means "measure," and I wanted them to apply that knowledge to this question:

The best part? The student gets credit because her answer included the word "measure."

*Lest this sound too judgmental, quote from an actual sixth grader at my school last year: "I can't wait for seventh grade. In seventh grade you get to be bad."

**T. was not born in the U.S. but both she and I consider this a nonissue in terms of her future presidential prospects.