Back to the Grind

The school year has begun, so I'm back to teaching again. It's off to a pretty good start, too. I'm only teaching 9th graders this time around, so, by law, my class sizes are only half the size of the classes I taught last year. There really is little downside to this situation. Smaller class size offers me less students to manage simultaneously, less grading, less of a chance that a terror of a child will end up in my walls, more individual attention I can provide to each student, and a more personable classroom environment. Plus, as ninth graders, my students aren't too jaded yet. They really take to whatever tone I set for them, as long as I say matter-of-factly that "this is how high school is." My tenth graders last year entered with senses of entitlement. "We didn't have homework last year!" "We didn't have to write essays last year!" etc. Yeah, well, that's why you're pretty damn stupid, I always wanted to retort. It was a battle I was always on the losing end of. Sure I could fail them, and often I did, but it didn't actually help educate them. For the most part, my new crop are stepping up to the challenge.

I felt a bit fucked over by my school. At the end of last year, they told me my course load would be all honors, but a couple days before this new school year began, they shuffled everyone's schedule and I ended up with just one honors, three regular classes, and one for students still learning the English language. This switch was greatly upsetting to me since I spent so much of my time this summer lesson planning so I could be a good teacher this year. If I'm being entirely honest, I was kind of disappointed to lose my honors students. I like the smarties and I can relate best to the smarties. Plus, you can pretty much get them to do anything without having to stress about whether it's engaging enough.

I decided, however, rather than feel duped and be sour about my assignment the entire year, I might as well just embrace it, look at the positives, and make the best of it. So, yeah, I am basically making up what I'm doing as I go again, but it comes from a more experienced perspective, so at least I have that going for me.

My students are cute, funny, and, with some notable exceptions, reasonably well-behaved. My language learning class will undoubtedly be my real challenge. I wish I could have known about this in advance, so I could have prepared for it. Having not worked much with this type of student before, I don't think I have the skill set to provide for these students adequately. I'll do the best I can, but it's hard when the regulations for this class contradict themselves. I'm supposed to spend twice as long teaching the material to ensure understanding, but still cover the same amount of material as a regular class. If you can figure out how that's supposed to work, please let me know.

My 10th graders from last year, now 11th graders, swarm my classroom every day to visit me. Even, nay, especially the ones I had major issues with, they drop by like we've always been buddies and want to hang out. It's kind of funny how that works out. I've actually made it a goal to befriend some of my former low-achieving students this year, to see if I can offer them more as a friendly mentor figure rather than a teacher/disciplinarian. We'll have to see if that approach has any value.

Most of these kids are surprised to see me. Apparently some rumor went around during the summer that I got a job at the local last-chance school, where they dump students expelled from my school. I find this hearsay ridiculous for two reasons: first, if I can barely handle the kids, why would I sign up to tackle a classroom full of the worst of the worst?; and second, why are the kids discussing me in the summer? Surely that piece of news was not even juicy, so why would someone make that up, let alone spread it around? I had one student rush in today to say, "Ohmguh, Mr. [Kevin], you know what happened to me over the summer, right?" She really did expect me to know, too, as though I was part of some sort of social circle that would pass on this type of information. "No," I said dryly. "Everyone must have forgot to call me about that one."

Odder still to me are the students who want to take class with me again. For some of these kids, I had a legitimately shitty class since I offered nothing in the way of discipline and the class was so often disrupted. And here these kids are begging to get into my class (fortunately they can't, they're too old) and according to the counselors, trying to switch into my class anyway. I'm perplexed. It's not necessarily a compliment either, since they probably think they can get away with misbehaving and not doing work. But when they say it in front of my current students, it makes me look like some sort of champ teacher, so I can't complain.

It's only been three days, yet I'm already exhausted.