Welcome LeslieAnn!

On May 10 at about 5am, LeslieAnn Rosa Apodaca was born to my cousin Toni and her husband Antonio. It was Toni's birthday and LeslieAnn's due date, and she was stubborn and made her mama be in labor forEVER so she could be born then. Here she is!

  

This week in class was freaking awesome. Last week we finished Acids and Bases, which means we finished all but one of the state content standards. The only thing that was left pertained to Organic Chemistry, which was going to be the next thing we did anyway. Well, all year the brats have been going on and on about me talking too much, so this week I gave them all reading assignments and questions, wrapped up by a puzzle, so that I didn't have to talk at all. Wouldn't you know it - they complained anyway? "Ms. McCants, why aren't you teaching us? We aren't learning anything!" Ordinarily I would be sad that they aren't learning anything, but I think they're learning a much more valuable lesson - teachers are paid to teach, and teaching involves talking. So you either let your teacher talk, or you don't learn anything. I'm going to give them that final message this week after they complain some more.

I finished up my official semester of Hopkins, but now have to take a 5 week (6 hrs a week) summer reading class with a woman who is a suburban soccer mom who works for the state. On Thursday, she gave us a 90 minute power point about state reading content standards. I browsed MySpace while she talked. I despise her.

I confronted my computer thief, and it went much better than anticipated. I was all ready to say, "Look, you little shit for brains, I know you have the computer and if you don't give it back then I'm going to make your life hell for the next 5 weeks." However, once I pulled him into the hall, my TFA brainwashing kicked in and what I said instead was, "Look, I know you have the computer. I've known all along, but I was giving you the chance to do the right thing on your own. I'm telling you now because if the computer doesn't come back by tomorrow, I'm taking it to Dr. Peters or the police." He tried to deny it, but gave up when I said, "Listen. Don't try to deny it. You're not in trouble yet, but you could be. I have plenty of evidence." Then he wanted to be sure I wasn't going to bust him when he brought it back, so I said, "You are a good kid. You have been doing extremely well in my class and I don't want you to ruin your whole year over one mistake. I want you to correct the mistake and move on. Can you imagine what this conversation would look like if it was a different kid - a trouble maker - who had taken it? I would have told right away. But I'm just looking out for you." He caved and started making a call to his homeboy who he had given it to, but homeboy had already sold it, so my kid wanted to pay for the computer. This turned out to not be such a great thing when he saw it cost $1495. As of right now, he's going to try to pay it off by the end of the year. He's working at Burger King and he thinks he can do it. The whole situation makes me really sad, but I hope he learned something from it.

I also have a wonderful kid (incidentally, the one who got my blog address - now confident he's not reading) who seems really together and who went to Poly (a city-wide school, like the best in the state) before he played too much and flunked out. He stayed in my room a few weeks ago during 7th perod and spilled his guts about some stuff going on in his personal life. I was shocked because I always figure that stuff is only going on with the lunatic kids. Anyway, I listened, and that was what he needed. This week he stayed again and told me some other stuff. Then I had to leave, and when he came back there was a note by my computer that said "Bye Bye Ms. McCants. Thanks for the talks. They mean more than you'll ever know!" That was total validation and I completely cried at my desk when I read it.

On Saturday we had the TFA end of the year party and alumni induction thingy. A bunch of my kids were in the slideshow because I'd sent in the pictures - I bet they'll be happy when they hear that! It was nice to sit there and think "Next year this is us!" I can't believe there's only 4 weeks left until the end of this year....

One last thing - Dr. Peters, my principal, is not actually leaving next year. Now the kids won't freak, and at least I know what to expect, but I do hope that next year she can manage to be there more and be more consistent. I felt like I didn't even have a principal this year except when I was getting nagged. We're also going to semesters (4 classes, 90 minute periods, and all-new kids in January), so that should spice things up a bit. Now its time to wind down and try to figure out how to get the kids excited about next year....