Story #20: Dance Time!

Yesterday I was in a Second Grade class doing some literacy work with a small group of students while the classroom teacher was meeting with kids one on one to conference about their writing. Halfway through the period, the teacher rang a chime and a cry went up from the class: "Dance Time! Dance Time!" I had never seen them move so quickly and with such a concerted effort. Everyone stood up, put their books and papers in their desks, tucked in their chairs, and struck a pose. But, really.

"Ready?" the teacher asked, finger on the portable CD player's PLAY button.

"YEAH!" the kids replied.

And what do you imagine came out of those little speakers? At HIGH volume? Nothing less than Jailhouse Rock, by none other than the King himself, Elvis Presley.

Even better was the fact that as soon as the music began to play, the students sprang into action. Because, you see, they have a choreographed routine that they dance through, as a class, to this song. And swim, two, three, four...and Twist! Two! Three! Four! What could I do but join in?

And so there we all were, stretched out across the carpet in front of the whiteboard, Chorus Line-style....Snake Eyes! And, Jump! At the end of the song they all struck the standard Elvis pose, one leg extended to the side and the other knee bent, finger pointed skyward. I could no longer control myself and burst out laughing at all of us, as King-ly as we were going to get without capes. "Okay! Back to work!" the teacher said, clicking off the CD player, and without talking they all went back to their desks and sat down, picking up right where they had left off.

On his way back to his seat one of the boys I've been doing literacy work with pulled on my sleeve and motioned for me to bend down so he could talk into my ear. From behind a cupped hand, he whispered. "Hey, Teacher--you can really shake it!" And giving me a wink and a thumbs-up, he headed back to finish his journal writing.

Story #19: Sick

I have not written for a week and a half because I was sick. Oh, but so sick! It all started the night of Friday, February 6th, when my cousin was in town and we all went out to Foreign Cinema for dinner. The entire meal I was hot and cold at the same time, and couldn't hear anyone talking because the throbbing sound in my head was so loud. I think I drank an entire decanter by myself...and that was just before the salads came. Oh, my throat hurt so much.

The next morning, feverish and unslept but delighted with the fact that I finally HAD health insurance after three months without any, I called the Kaiser appointment line to request a visit to the Weekend Clinic only to be told there were no times available that day. I begged the representative to let me come in and was eventually transferred to an advice nurse on the unit who told me no one could actually see me but that if I came between 10:30 and 4:30 someone would swab my throat to test for strep. Awesome.

So, at 2 p.m. on a sunny Saturday I found myself where everyone wants to be at that time: sitting on a paper-covered exam table, a nurse coming at my fiery throat with that LOONG Q-Tip. Yowch. As she was packaging it for me to take to the lab, she said, "You know, I don't think you have strep. Adults come in all the time with sore throats, and they think they have strep, but really just they have a runny nose and it's irritating their throat or something like that. I think you should probably just take some ibuprofen and drink some tea, and the lab will call you tomorrow, but probably it's just a virus."

"Well," I said, "I know most adults don't actually have strep when they think they do, but I'm an elementary school teacher."

"OH!" she replied, "Why didn't you say that in the first place?! Here, let me write you a prescription for penicillin and you can just get it filled at the pharmacy on your way out. That way when the lab calls you with the positive report tomorrow you can just start taking it then. And I'll write you a work note, because you won't be able to go to school for two days at least. Teachers are the sickest people I know. I have no idea how you do it."

Um, yeah. Neither do we.

So that is the reason for the radio silence: lots of fever, many boxes of tissues, endless popsicles. Thanks to all my friends for deliveries of flowers and soup and new toothbrushes for once the contagious period ended and I had to throw my old ones away. Turns out two of my officemates had the same raging infection the same time I did. We are all back now but this type of illness, streptococcus group A, can linger in the system for up to 21 days so our little workroom is full of tissues with lotion to ease our sore noses, gallons of Purell to sanitize our hands, and boxes of baby wipes to sponge off every hard flat surface we touch.

But fear not, the stories have been saved up in draft form and the publishing will begin anew soon. You will read about the swift and dramatic end that came to the kung-fu fighting, as well as an unwelcome visitor in the lunchroom and the very surprising chance I had to go swimming at school. Oh, and a fire drill thrown in for good measure plus maybe even a story or two from life outside of school too. Just let me have one last popsicle, and I'll get write (ha!) down to it.

Story #18: Hanging with my Boys

As part of my new job, I do recess duty. LOTS of recess duty. Every day, at lunch, from 11:20 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. That is five rounds of recess. Whoa.

It starts with the little kids, K and 1st, and involves a lot of coat-zipping and shoe-typing and suggestions to go into the restroom and wash the rest of your lunch off your face because I can see, you had PB&J today, didn't you? After the first two rounds it's 2nd and 3rd, along with the related reminders not to jump in the puddles and yes that is the rule every day it rains and no I know I am not the first teacher to tell you this. And, I know he's chasing you, did you tell him you don't like that? No? Why don't you try telling him. I think that might help.

Then is 4th and 5th, the biggest kids, and of course as teachers we never have "favorite" of anything, not related to school anyway, not favorite kids or favorite subjects or anything that would make us appear to be something besides 100% unbiased. That said, I really like the 4th and 5th grade recess a lot. There is gardening happening in the back corner of the yard, against the chain link fence, and something about kids gardening in this tiny scrappy little piece of ground with the freeway and the jail in the background does my heart good. There are always two simultaneous, side-by-side games of double dutch going on and I will stand there and cheer with the best of them, a smile on my face and hope in my heart for the kids who taught me to double dutch all those years ago in Fontana, those second graders who are in college now if they tricked poverty and fate and even made it as far as high school.

And, at the 4th and 5th grade recess there are my boys. They are in fifth grade, and it didn't take long for them and I to find one another. We met my third or fourth day at school, when the five or six or seven of them were screwing around in the back of the line at the end of lunch and I walked over to stand by them. Proximity, you see, is the most powerful of all student management tools :) They wanted to know who I was ("Hey! You a substitute or something?") and what I was doing there ("You getting us in trouble? We didn't do nothing!") but when I stuck my hand out and told them my name and made them tell me theirs and explained that I do Ms. L's job now (the former reform facilitator and current assistant principal) they had a new and more accurate sense of who I was. And when I used my famous line, honed from years of practice ("I'm not getting you in trouble, your choices are getting you in trouble, now line up please") they knew I was on their side.

Let's pause here for some background information: I am good with boys. This is part of my professional reputation. I never set out to build this skill, I think it is a combination of natural affinity and experience gained over time with many different students, but wherever it comes from it is very real. For better or for worse. I am like a Boy Whisperer. The kid who almost got kicked out of school for sticking pins through the top of his teacher's shoe and into her foot while they were sitting on the carpet for circle time? Yeah, he was in my class the next year and hugged me goodbye every day of the week. The kid climbed into his cubby and refused to come out every morning because he hated class so much, who banged his head on his desk as an outlet for his debilitating anxiety and who would run away and hide at recess? By winter break he was waking his parents up at 5 a.m. to make sure he would get to school on time. Somewhat given to extremes, that one. And I loved him so much. And I love them all.

More than once I've been told I'd be great at an all-boys school, but there aren't that many of them and it hasn't really ever come up as a professional option. And, I haven't sought it out. I figure there are plenty of boys wherever I go, and my new school is no different.

So back to my boys, these fifth grade boys: ever since that day I met them in the back of the line, we have been fast friends. They see me at morning assembly and in the hall and completely free of the self-consciousness that I know will come next year when they go to middle school, they shout my name and wave. They come up to me at lunch and look in my canvas Whole Foods bag to see what leftovers I've brought from home and brag that their school lunch is way better. They high-five me in the morning and hug me in the afternoon. And, at recess we fight.

Not real fighting, of course, because real fighting is Not Allowed At School. That is how this whole thing got started. A few days after we met, I was doing recess duty and they were fighting so I went over to talk to them. "But, we're not really fighting! We're just pretending!" And so we all sat down together by the fence and I had the talk with them about how pretend fighting looks like real fighting, in the same way pretend cheating looks like real cheating and pretend kissing looks like real kissing. We talked about how all of these things can start out being pretend and can easily become real, and also how it can be very confusing because one person can think something is pretend while the other person thinks it is real and then it can get out of hand.

They were very dejected and disappointed because let's face it, these are scrappy boys who are not going to grab a rake and go work in the garden or get in line for double dutch. So, seeing their disappointment, I made them a deal. They can fight at recess. Not pretend fight, not real fight, but STAGE fight. I will be their director and they will be the actors and for five minutes every day at lunch recess we will enact a dramatic martial arts performance. We will use what we've learned playing video games and watching The Matrix and we will do some vigorous kung-fu fighting. Okay? What does everyone think about that, do we agree? Good. Come on, let's fight.

"Teacher! Just one thing," one of them insisted, grabbing my wrist and pulling me back down to the blacktop. "We have to make a rule that if someone fake-kills someone while we're acting, that they bring the person they fake-killed back to life. Because that doesn't happen in real fighting. Like with my cousin. When he got killed he was dead for real and nothing could bring him back."

*deep breath*

Okay, I replied, of course. Good point. Can we all agree that if anyone gets fake-killed while we're acting that the person who fake-kills someone will bring them back to life?

"No! That's not good enough," another one of the boys said, shaking his head vigorously. "If someone gets fake-killed, we'll all stop acting and come over and bring him back to life, together. Let's say it takes everyone together to bring someone back to life. That way we'll all be really careful not to fake-kill anyone because if we do, everyone will have to stop playing and come over and it will be annoying to be interrupted."

Really? Are you sure? I wanted to know. This seemed like kind of weird logic to me, but they were all nodding yes. Group resurrection, group consensus. Who am I to say? If this is what they think will help them self-monitor and not fake-kill someone else then okay. Never mind the fact that fake-killing is indeed that, fake, and that in the end it is really up to the person supposedly fake-killed if they are going to fake-die or not. That's not what it's about. It's about group accountability and being responsible for your actions, fifth grade-style.

So now every day we fight at lunch recess. Hanging out with my boys is one of my favorite parts of my day. And you know what? We haven't had even one fake death, yet. Turns out it's a pretty good system after all.

Story #17: The Player to be Named Later

Remember the photos of my famous, pregnant best friend Rebecca and her husband Mark? They are still very famous, of course, but they are not pregnant anymore. This is their daughter! She was born yesterday. When she is a week old, they will have a baby-naming ritual and unroll the Torah to the portion of the week from when she was born, and then wrap her up in it like a burrito, and then tell us her name. But not until then. So crazy, us Jews! But, I know what it is. Not because they've told me but because Rebecca and I used to talk about these things---like girls do, sometimes. So not only am I so, so excited to meet the new friend (who I was told I get to hold whenever I want because I wash my hands SOOO often that I am pre-qualified on the cleanliness front) but I also feel like I have a fun secret since I know what her name is :) How beautiful is she? So beautiful. Brucha haba'a, chaverah katanah...welcome, small friend!

Story #16: Arun Mixes it Up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XAkJ8hcG1s

My student teacher from last semester is one of the most incredible people I have ever met. I knew he and I would get along the day I met him. I was in the school office working on something and he arrived, ten minutes early for our initial meeting. Another teacher came to get me to let me know he'd arrived and that she'd let him into the classroom he and I would be sharing. "He's so sweet!" she stage-whispered as we walked back towards the classrooms. "And he's tall, and bald, and he said he'd just sit in the class library and read until you got back!"

During the time we spent together I learned he is not only tall and bald but also that he does yoga, cooks amazing gourmet meals with combinations of incredible things from Berkeley Bowl, volunteers as an educator at the Oakland Zoo, has lived and rescued crocodiles in India, is married to another teacher who happens to be one of the most beautiful people on the face of the entire earth, and oh yeah--when he's not saving the world by being an elementary school teacher who is also a man who is also a person of color, which is huge in a profession dominated by white women, he's a rap star.

Check it out, yo...as if I didn't have enough admiration for him already, he rhymed the phrase "scientific method". Respect.

Story #15: Casual Carpool

I live in Oakland and work in San Francisco. I have a car, but it is against my religion to drive it to the city, both because that is not good for the Earth and also because that is not good for my blood pressure. I am already an excitable person. I do not need to add navigating the Bay Bridge to the mix.

Subaru aside, there are a number of options for getting to work:

•take the AC transit (East Bay bus system) #12 to 19th Street BART

•walk for twenty minutes to 19th Street BART, carrying all my school stuff

•ride the TransBay bus

•...or, drum roll please, Casual Carpool

Casual Carpool is a system that sounds incredibly unreliable and actually potentially dangerous in theory, but one that in practice runs like a well-oiled and completely unattended machine. When I first heard of it I was sure it was an urban legend, but it is completely true and without it I would not get to school in the morning. If Casual Carpool is not something with which you are familiar, I will now offer you an explanation.

The Bay Bridge connects Oakland to San Francisco. There is a toll to cross it headed westbound and there are also very long lines at certain times of the day. Morning commute traffic is known to be especially heavy and slow. If you have three or more people in your vehicle, however, you get two special privileges to reward you for not being one of those people in their car all by themselves: you are exempt from the bridge toll, and you fly past the maze that leads up to the toll plaza because you are in the carpool lane.

Throughout the East Bay (Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Richmond, Fairfield, and the like) there are locations where people rendez-vous to get their Casual Carpool on every morning. Drivers pull up and wait in line, while riders queue on the sidewalk. When there's a driver, and two riders, the car leaves. The driver saves the price of a bridge toll, the riders save the price of a BART ticket to the city. Simple as that.

I get into Casual Carpool at Grand and Perkins, half a block from my house. I have never had to wait more than two, count them, minutes to get in a car and go. Rides have ranged from a scary Scooby Doo-style conversion van in which I was sure I was being kidnapped, to this morning's sage-green Prius. There are rules for Casual Carpool: no talking unless initiated by the driver, no cell phone conversations, no eating or drinking, and no radio unless it is NPR and even then the driver gets to pick whether you listen or not. Everyone drops off at the TransBay Terminal in the city, just at the bottom of the Fremont Street off-ramp, unless you are at the two Casual Carpool locations that also have a Civic Center option for the destination (um, I wish that was the case for my CC spot because that would shave about 20 minutes and one MUNI Metro ride per day off my commute).

I will now begin posting updates each day about which scary kidnapper van, or supah-fly sports car ride, I end up with for my Casual Carpool each day. Because, you might not care but the way my day begins is directly influenced by this luck of the draw. Think of me each morning at 7 a.m. PST, and keep your fingers crossed for no dog-hair-laden backseats. Ewww.

Story #14: Part-Time Jobs

Almost every teacher I know has, or has had at some point in the past, an additional part-time job. This is of course ridiculous on many levels because teaching is WAAY more than a full-time job already, plus as the mentors of tomorrow's future promise of the leaders of the hope of the tomorrow, shouldn't we just get paid enough for the one job we all already have? There is a great book about just this very topic, and it is called Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America's Teachers. Soapbox aside, I highly recommend it. One of the things it describes is this very phenomenon, that of teachers and their hyper-employed lifestyles.

Here is a list of actual jobs that have been held while also teaching full-time, either by me, by one of my colleagues, or in some cases both:

tutor
test prep teacher
exam proctor
curriculum developer
lifeguard
umpire
aerobics instructor
waitress
bartender
babysitter
dog walker
camp director
day trader
Mary Kay consultant
international tour guide
dancer (yes, that kind)
t-shirt folder at Gap

...and, these are only the part-time jobs I know about.

Now that I have a full-time job once again, I have to concentrate on finding my next part-time job. So I was looking on craigslist, where all good part-time jobs are found, and I came across this post. I have done many, many things for money in my time but this is not one of them and I just can't forsee that it ever will be. But, hey--never say never, I suppose. Read on:

Captain
Reply to: xxxxxxxxxx@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-01-31, 9:14AM

Part time Captain. Near coastal license required. Must be on 2nd issue of license. 100 ton minimum. Radar endorsement preferred. Must be clean cut, well groomed.

* Location: Pier 39
* This is a part-time job.
* Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

There are a lot of very unique skill subsets that are part of classroom teaching, but none of them have to do with radar. Oh wait, do the eyes in the back of my head count? Maybe I do qualify for this job, after all! I should check into it.