Month: November 2023

Smokin’ in the boys room

I’m on hall duty, spending most of my time near the boys’ room on the first floor, the bathroom best known for its – ahem – popularity. Things have been largely quiet and then, abruptly, they aren’t. Literally. Laughter and loud voices echo out of the bathroom and into the hallway. I lean towards the entryway – there are no exterior doors to separate the washroom from the hallways, though there are stalls inside – and raise my voice: “Time to go to class!”

Brief silence, followed by a reply:

“We’re smoking!”

Gales of laughter billow out of the bathroom.

I dutifully contact the VPs, who dutifully arrive, and we dutifully shoo the boys out of the bathroom, smoke trailing behind them. They are almost giddy with their transgressions. We move them towards their classrooms.

After the kids have been, um, relocated, I chat briefly with one of the VPs. Shaking my head, I say, “There must be something we can do about this.” She laughs ruefully, “If you figure it out, let me know.” We commiserate about how this is a problem in every high school we know of, in schools around North America.

Having done what little we can, we both move off towards our next destination.

I’m halfway up the stairs when the old Motley Crue song starts playing in my head: “Smokin’ in the boys room/ Teacher don’t fill me up with your rules…” That song came out in 1989 – and yes, I remember it. I shake my head again, this time with a little laugh.

If anyone out there figures out how to stop the kids from smoking in the bathrooms, let us know. Until then, I’ll spend most of my hall duty near the boys’ room on the first floor.

Refrigerator Art

He was hard at work in the back of the class and, ok, it wasn’t on an assignment, but at least it meant that for a few blessed minutes of class he wasn’t pacing, wasn’t calling out, wasn’t asking to go to the bathroom, to the Resource Room, to get water. And eventually I could tell he was listening to the audiobook – even though his back was to me and he was hunched over the desk, scribbling. I hadn’t actually had any pedagogical goal in mind when I’d asked him to test the markers; I just wanted a little quiet. I think he might have, too.

So when class ended and he gave me a sheet full of drawings, I was calm enough to be kind of tickled. He described each one. I told him – sincerely – that I wished I could put it on the classroom wall, but that probably the blood and (water) gun would be inappropriate, even though things weren’t as bad as they looked out of context. He agreed, glanced down for a moment, then brightened, “You should hang it on your refrigerator.”

So I did. Photo for evidence. I can’t wait to show him tomorrow.

Just the three of us

There were only two students in the classroom. I had guessed that attendance would be low, but this was far lower than anything I anticipated. The hallways, already nearly empty, settled into semi-silence, and I had to accept that this was it. 

Almost – almost! – I sat down to get some work done. Neither of the two were especially talkative students; neither seemed deeply invested in English. Still, before my derrière quite hit my chair, I stood again and walked over to them. I nestled into a nearby seat and asked what they wanted to work on. Nothing. 

I thought of my own child. He would be furious if he ended up in a class with only one other student – even if they were vaguely friends. If I, as the teacher, asked him what he wanted to work on, he would probably glare at me (although, if I were not his mom, he would probably simply shrug his shoulders and look away). I knew better than to start with such an open-ended question. I needed to try again.

“So, X, I noticed that you haven’t yet revised your 100-word memoir. Want to look at that together?”

Wait.
Wait.
Wait.

Resigned yes.

I try again with the other student. Similar results.

Soon, though, Chromebooks were open, and they were both at least looking at their work. With one student, I was able to clarify the directions for a missing assignment, and they got to work. With the other, I walked through the revision process while I revised his piece in front of him: I asked questions, wrote down phrases he said, and generally showed him what deep revision might look like. Then, confident that he had understood, I reverted to the earlier draft and sent him off to revise on his own. I like to think he wasn’t horrified. 

We also all worked a bit on our more recent project – Humans of Gloucester. We looked at the transcript of an interview one had done and talked about what part might be interesting to an Instagram audience. We considered how even a tiny piece of an interview can have a story arc. When the bell rang, we were all startled. 

Two students. Turned out to be a pretty good class.

(And follow us on Instagram: @HumansofGloucester – we’ve already got some good posts up, including the one from this day.)