Hello friends, family, and strangers (I flatter myself)! I am a recently-graduated girl finding my way in the "real world" (apparently, I've been floating around the fake world for the past two decades). Many of my friends' "real world"s consist of cubicles, nine-to-fives, marriage, babies, and other such grown-up things. My real world looks a little different. Yes, I still get up and go to work every morning, same as they do. But instead of battling fax machines, computer programs, disgruntled spouses and dirty diapers, I arm myself against a legion of 14-year-old boys. Well, 83 of them to be exact. You see, I teach 8th-grade boys' Science in an inner-city, high-poverty school. What it is not: glamorous, prestigious, boring. What it is: humorous, heartbreaking, and the most challenging thing I will ever do.

The stories I tell and the people I describe are real; you can't make this stuff up. If you are new to my blog, I hope you'll start at the beginning and fall in love with its characters, just as I have.

Monday, October 4, 2010

What are these children eating for breakfast?

Speed?
Surge?
Cat nip?

Whatever it is, I need it. They come in in the mornings talking a mile a minute and bouncing off the mother effing walls. Mrs. J suggested we feed them Niquil in the mornings and tell them it's candy, which would be a brilliant idea if it weren't so expensive.

I kid, I kid.

Ms. S stopped me in the halls today. She's our science facilitator, and she's very difficult to please. I like her, but last year I always got the feeling she didn't really like what she saw in my classroom. Hell, can I blame her? I didn't really like what I saw (heard, felt, experienced) in there either. ANYWAYS. Today she greeted me with a grin and announced that she had just seen my data (aka my students' growth data and EOG scores) from last year.

"It was really good. Impressive for a first year teacher."

Whaaa?

Huhhh??

Now if THAT'S not evidence that God is good and that he WILL accomplish great things under the most doubtful circumstances (through the most incompetent people)...then I don't know what is. Sometimes I think that's one of the reasons last year was so terrible. If it had been good or easy, I know I would have been tempted to think that it was because I had done something right or possessed some kind of merit.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.
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