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.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Slow Jams and...Salmon

Je'Cory: "I wonder what is white people's holidays like anyways, Ms. M. Y'all listen to slow jams? I bet y'all like eat calamaris or salmon [pronounced SAL-mon] and stuff. And y'all act all proper and stuff wit' yo pinkies out."

Me: "Umm--"

Je'Cory: "An' if y'all eat chicken, it's all grilled. I bet you ain't never eaten a fried chicken before in yo life!"

Me: "Je'Cory. I'm from Alabama. The dirty dirty south. And we don't eat chicken UNLESS it's fried. I guarantee my grandmother could beat yours in a collard greens, fried chicken and pinto beans cook-off."

Je'Cory: "Oh wow. We got more in common than I thought! Maybe we related...what's yo grandma's name?"
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