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.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

2

We rotated the kids throughout all the different 8th grade classrooms for "Game Day." It didn't really work; as soon as the kids hit the hallway, they went wherever they wanted and did it on their own time. After the first couple of "rotations," we decided to just keep the group we had for the rest of the day.

Mr. W stopped me in the hall. "We're not rotating anymore, right?"

"Right," I confirmed.

"Good. That was a disaster. I had Mr. E's kids and it was AWFUL. I couldn't take it."

I smiled sweetly at him for a few seconds.

"...Oh yeah...those are your boys too," he said sheepishly. "Sorry."

Don't apologize. Now you know what we had to deal with ALL day EVERY day. I actually feel a little validated by others' acknowledgement of how different it is to teach that particular group.

Today while I was playing Uno, Malik randomly and urgently posed a question to me:

"MS. M! YOU CATHOLIC OR BAPTIST!??"

"Umm, neither, actually. I'm Presbyterian."

"Oh, oh yeah! I know 'bout dat! That man be wearin' dem gowns when he be walkin' down the aisle."

I stared blankly at him.

"But he be spillin' dat wax on me when he holdin' that big candlestick. He be walkin' down the aisle talkin' 'bout some 'Hoooollllyyy Gooodddd Ouurrr Faaaatherrr Hmmmmm'"

He sang and pranced through the classroom holding an imaginary Paschal candle, a clumsy cross between an altar boy and a chanting monk.

Clearly he's never rolled with the Presbos.
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