Posts under ‘Teaching in Harlem, NYC’
“Teacher” comes from the Latin root for “anxious as hell”
This is the calm before the storm, I think.
Hours before I leave for upstate New York, I’m compulsively chewing rectangle after rectangle of gum. I intermittently sing single lines from whatever song plays on the SoundDeck. I have to spend the next few days solely with co-workers. I haven’t done anything like this since I was in a summer Shakespeare program in college that required me to spend days and days at a time at a bed and breakfast in the Texas hill country. We’d talk for days about theater and Shakespeare, only pausing to swat flies out of our faces. I can’t tell you how tedious I found it. I like talking to people who haven’t necessarily read “The Tempest.” I like air conditioning. I like watching Project Runway and laughing at Vincent.
Where, why, and how
In April of 2002, I went to a huge poetry slam my university sponsored. The Students Event Committee had squired some lesser known slam poets from NYC to come. I’d seen Slam and grown obsessed with slamming (watching, never participating), so I was a shoo-in.
The Big Three
In her blog, Kelly Kreth has documented her progress with the Big Three for years. Single women in NYC, Kreth espouses, are constantly fighting for the Big Three - the job, the apartment, and the man. It is rare to possess all three at once, and almost certain that you can’t hang onto all of them for long.
Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta
Yesterday was my last day at I.S. 666. It was tedious and not sentimental. I saw a few students I worked with throughout the year, but many left early or didn’t show up at all. The end of the school year was long overdue - report cards were turned in long ago and teachers have just been babysitting the last few weeks.
History lessons
Today I was grading eighth grade essays on the reasons for and difficulties of immigration throughout history. Most essays were pretty bland. The ones that stood out were racist and insensitive, just plain inaccurate, or ummm, pretty much right, but hysterical:
The wake
*Today was the wake for the I.S. 666 student who was shot a few weeks ago.
What you should know before you teach in an urban school
In honor of 6/6/06, I meant to write about I.S. 666. This didn’t happen, though, because I was tired and busy. Lately, I avoid the topic anyway, as I know my days there are winding down. In fact, there are only 14 left. Additionally, nothing out of the ordinary has demanded I write. So the school has no working discipline plan and provides students with an inferior education? This dysfunction is sadly banal. Why write about it more?
The hardest moves to make
Afraid of change,
afraid of stayin’ the same.
When temptation comes,
we just look away.
-”What A Good Boy,” Barenaked Ladies
Uh oh. Song lyrics to start an entry. Things must be bad.
Because no one subs for the sub
Bad, sick day,
huff out of bed,
cough and cough,
leave apartment
before realizing
woven shrug has
unwoven itself
at the sleeve.
Shirt, too, rebels
with mysterious
blue stain.
