A Great Show of Talent

I'll go backwards this week.

Today we had a Talent Show, sponsored by New Visions and put on by the kiddos. I was actually extremely surprised at how smoothly it ran! Several of my kids sang (and were good, especially since I know none of them have formal training.), and danced (which in B'more consists of shaking your body as fast as possible, and occasionally flinging limbs in unnatural directions, while contorting certain joints far out of place). Several kids read poems, which were a little disturbing but quite impressive and very brave. And finally, there was a talent show, that was made mostly of my kids, and was amazingly well put together. Best of all, the kids behaved very well, and there was no profanity or lewdness during the show...what wonderful children!...which made up for the fact that they were unbearably obnoxious at the beginning of the day (because they had abbreviated class periods, which they took to mean "free time.").

Wednesday was an excellent day. The best thing that happened was that I let a kid teach 6th period. Teddy walked in to class after lunch claiming he was supposed to replace me and teach the period...so I gave him my clipboard, and told him he'd need to finish filling out the referral, and went and sat in his desk to do his classwork for him. Well, he lasted for a few minutes, and then Marcus somehow took over. I planned to step in if it got out of hand, but they kids still did what they were supposed to do. It was fun! I also learned a lot about what it's like to sit in my room as a student, and I think it was a good experience for Marcus. I let David Harris teach 3rd period the next day when he asked.

The other good things that happened just basically involved forming relationships with the kids. One of them stayed after class to talk to me about the fact that his father might die soon and he was afraid of what would happen (not that that's good, but the fact that he talked to me made me feel good). I also got Vernon in my room (he's not my kid, but he's almost always put out of class). Vernon has a big distrust of women and will usually only hang out with Tom and Tony, but he came to my room and was good.

The last piece of good news is that the kids ended up with pretty decent grades on their midterms, and only 36% of them failed the semester (as opposed to 50% for last quarter). Actually, the student support dean came to my classroom on Tuesday because she heard a lot of screaming...which was just the kids getting excited about their midterm grades. Silly kids. :-)

Basically the theme of this week was "I really AM a good teacher, and I love my children!" Let's hope some of that enthusiasm stays...