A Clash of Titans Idiots

Although the "March Madness" which stemmed from the NCAA basketball tournament is over, the madness at our school has spilled over well into April. With 24 days left for seniors, and 8 days until spring break, the "knuckleheads" (the polite term used by the administration) are in supreme knucklehead form.

Today that was brought front-and-center.

After an oh-so-exciting lecture on using completing the square to solve quadratic equations (yawn), I gave my 4th period class time to get started on their homework and ask questions while they worked. Standard operating procedure. I wandered from cluster to cluster of students as they got into the assignment.

And then...

I'm working with one student, and I hear a scuffle of some sorts so I look up. I see one senior, let's call him RJ, standing, and he pushes another senior, the Big Baby (a term used frequently by the vice principal when describing him), who is seated. It was quite a push, and the desk the Big Baby (who easily weighs 230 pounds) was sitting in fell to its side, with BB still in it.

BB, face beet red with embarrassment and anger, gets up and starts screaming at RJ, "I'm gonna fucking kill you!" and goes right after him. I try to get between them before anything happens, but am not successful. They try to throw some punches (uncoordinatedly, for sure) and over my shouting, end up in a heated melee. RJ is tall and has an athletic build, so this was no ticky-tack fight.

Eventually I'm able to get a good hold of RJ and pull him out of the fray. As I'm doing this, and RJ has stopped fighting, the Big Baby, still beet-red in the face, stands up holding RJ's foot. I shout at BB to let RJ's foot go, and eventually he does.

At this point, the two doors to the adjoining rooms have been opened, with the teachers from those two rooms standing in the doorway. My entire class (of 30) is speechless - staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the scene. One of the teachers (Smiley) takes RJ and puts him in his room for a minute before taking him down to the office, while I take care of BB.

The Big Baby proceeds to apologize for "fucking up your classroom" and calmly takes all the desks which had been moved around in the fracas and puts them back in their original spots. I walk him down to the office, and he repeatedly insists, "I'm cool, man. Whatever. No big deal."

Of course word of this fight spreads like wildfire throughout the school, and for the rest of the day, teachers and students were coming up to me and making comments.

Teacher: "Heard you had a little excitement this morning."

Student: "OK, Mr. Eyerman, tell me exactly what happened."
Me: "Did you hear the version of the story that involved the Uzi?"
Student: "What?!"
Me: "Yea, I brought out my gun to settle things down."

Female student (who was in the class): "I thought it was really funny, but I didn't want to laugh."
Me: "Funny?"
Another female student (also in the class): "Yea, I thought it was funny too..."
Me: "Sorry girls, I can't say I saw the humor in the situation." Except, of course, when the goof-ball Big Baby apologized for "fucking up the classroom" and calmly and neatly replaced all the desks.

Male student (who was in the class): "Mr. Eyerman, that was awesome!"
Me: "Yea?"
Student: "Yea, me and Chris were all about to jump in and help you, but we were all the way across the room..."
Me: "Uhh... k...."
I walked out of that last conversation chuckling to myself - man, I must have some serious street cred now.

On the serious side of this, a teacher told me that I shouldn't break up fights. I shouldn't "touch the student." When asked why, two reasons were given. For one, if I restrain one kid, and that gives the other a chance to wail on the one I've restrained, I could be held liable for either picking sides or "letting" one kid beat up the other. The other reason (equally dumb) is to protect myself from a kid saying, "Mr. Eyerman touched me..."
Apparently what I'm supposed to do is call the office or one of the designated members of the staff who has been trained in "Physical Restraint" so they can come in and break up the fight.
The reason I editorialize that the reasons are dumb is that if I do that, several bad things are bound to happen. One, the fight will continue, and one or both of the students involved, or even another student in the room, could get seriously hurt. Or school property (like the super-expensive heating system) damaged. Also, the school is pretty damn big. By the time I get the right phone number of someone on the list, call them, and they get to my room, plenty of time will have elapsed.
In addition, if I do nothing, how can I stand in front of the class the next day and have any sort of respect from the students? "Oh, Mr. Eyerman was there for us - he made a phone call." Puh-lease. Isn't it far better for my students to think, "Mr. Eyerman was there for us - he got involved and tried to break up a dangerous situation." Which do you think sounds better?
I understand the politics and the "cover-your-ass" spiel I've heard countless times by many veterans in education. But if I see a fight - particularly in a place I'm supposed to be managing - damn right I'm going to get involved to protect my students. Screw politics.

The two students were each suspended for a few days, and when they're back, of course they'll be sitting on opposite sides of the room, for the 18 or so days they have left in my classroom.

But I'm curious about tomorrow morning, when I have this class again. The fight happened right at the end of the period, so that class ended as I was escorting the Big Baby down to the office. Of course the students are going to make it a topic of conversation. I'm sure I will have to address it. I'm not really sure right now what I'm going to say. I know I will address it and have to put it to bed - I can't let the entire class get worked up over it again, and can't take the entire period tomorrow discussing the idiocy of two over-testosteroned 18-year olds.

Apparently the entire thing started because BB moved his desk and RJ's arm got pinched between two desks. Then a meathead conversation ensued. Something like:
"Hey, watch what you're doing!"
"Well, you shouldn't have your arm there."
"What the fuck? I'm sick of you."
"Yea? Well, what are you gonna do about it?"

Once again, yes, you can't make this stuff up.

"We work in a zoo."

Quipped the woman I share a classroom with.

There is a new "You can't make this shit up" story.

Here it is, as told to me by another member of my department, Mrs. Months.
"So this girl apparently used her phone to take a picture of her..." pause for effect, "...crotch and then proceeded to send it to 'a boy.' Now, we're not sure if this boy was her boyfriend or not, but it proceeded to spread like wildfire throughout the student body. There is a claim going around that it was her boyfriend, and one of his friends took his phone and sent it around before he could do anything. That part is unresolved."

I'm fortunate that I don't have this girl in class. I'm also fortunate I don't even know who this girl is. If that weren't the case, how could I possibly look at her in class and respond to her without this action coming to my mind? This is something most certainly that will follow her around for the rest of her high school career. Fast-forward two years to her senior prom.
Guy: "So you're taking her to the prom?"
Other guy: "Yea..."
Guy: "You know what she did?"

The above story exemplifies the insanity that has spread throughout the school in the past few weeks. There are countless more stories I could relate, but none of them compare to that one. No one is exempt - students or faculty - from the growing frustration and angst throughout the school. So I feel as if it's not my place to complain about students' erratic, lazy, or whiny behavior to my colleagues. However, someone said to me not too long ago - "Man, this is one of the worst years for student behavior that I can remember. And this must be doubly hard for you, having to still battle through your first year."

Earlier this week I decided to take a personal day on Friday. I was torn on this - I felt odd taking a day for myself. It felt so out of place to be that selfish, in a job where I'm responsible for 110 or so people. Where my absence, in a way, lets them down for a day. I'm not there for them. Granted, most of them upon walking in the door and seeing a sub, grin widely and let out a sigh of relief. Just as I did when I was in high school. It was nothing against my absent teacher, just that it meant a light period. Maybe there was some work to do, but there was no class lecture.

Still, it took me a while to accept the fact that it was in everyone's best interest for me to take that day to myself. It's easy to rationalize that if I'm not at my best, the problems will be magnified. Students will sense something is off, and when they act out, I will likely not respond in the most professional way. Or my lecture of new material will not be as clear as it would if I were fresh. But however it can be rationalized, the feeling of guilt that stems from putting my own wants before my students' (particularly for someone who has made a concerted effort, for years, to be more considerate of others' feelings, wants, needs...) is hard to shake.

Once that decision was made, I was hoping the week would be easier to deal with, because I knew that I was there only through Thursday. However...
Wednesday morning the bipolar head-case star athlete of the school, who I had issue with the first day of school, and who later transferred out of my class, transferred into my SAT Prep class.

I berated two of my classes Thursday morning because they have chosen the typical teenage path of whining and complaining over studying and earnest effort. I basically told them that although they think the end of the year is near, things are going to get harder. The math we're going to be working on is going to get more complicated, and the concepts I am going to take for granted they have mastered is going to continue to grow. Clearly that applies to me as well - the rest of my year is not going to get easier... nay, the challenges I will face will continue to grow and become more complex, building on the knowledge the first 7 months of this job have taught me.

In any case, the third term of the school year ended yesterday. 45 days left.

Whoops

We all know that we changed clocks a couple weeks ago. The week before we did, a couple of us at school had a conversation about what was going to happen with daylight. The confusion was over whether it was how changing the clocks was going to affect sunrise and sunset. After much discussion, we finally realized that the sun was going to rise later in the morning, and set later at night. Whoopie.

So on the day we changed the clocks, before I went to bed I made sure that my clock was right. Triple-checked it. Made sure the alarm was set right. I had adjusted my alarm the previous Friday because a student was meeting me early at school to make up a test. So I reset the alarm to 5:30, and went to bed, confident I'd be up at the proper hour.
Monday morning I woke up feeling quite refreshed. I got a good, long in-bed stretch, and thought, "Wow, I feel great! What a great night's sleep I had! AND I woke up before my alarm! What a great way to start the day, and the week!"
So I open my eyes, roll over, and then I realize that it's light out.

Waaaaiiit a minute here... I pull focus, and my brain realizes that no, I'm not dreaming. I quickly turn towards my alarm clock, and note the time: 6:55AM.
School starts at 7:30. It's 40 minutes away. And I'm in bed, unshowered and unclothed. The number of times I said "shit" in the next 30 seconds might have been a record.

I call my department chair, Mary. A raspy male voice picks up her cell. Odd, I thought. "Hi, can I speak to Mary?"
The raspy male voice responds, "Hi David, it's Mary."
"Holy crap Mary, you sound awful!"
"Yea, I'm out sick today."
I very quickly tell her the situation, and she recommends I call JT (who happens to have first period off). I do.
"Hey JT, you at work?"
"No man, I'm out today."
"FUCK!"
I tell him the story. It's now 7:02.
Hang up with him, and it took two more phone calls to get in touch with someone in my department who was actually going to work. I tell her there's a worksheet on my desk, already copied, to be done by my kids first period. OK, first problem solved.

I leap into the shower, get rid of bed hair and wash the important parts, and get out in record time (at most, 2 minutes). I get dressed by grabbing the first things my hands reach, not caring at all if I wear something completely clashing, and grab my briefcase (thankfully, I had packed it the night before) and run to my car. 7:08.

I FLY down the road. Seriously, once I hit the highway, I was doing 80-85 (90 at times) through morning rush hour. Not really the smartest move. As I was laughing at myself the whole way down, I did think that getting pulled over by the cops would not have been a good thing to add to my morning. Thankfully, they were all busy with something else, and I made it to school un-ticketed.

I finally pull in to school at 7:45, and rush though the building to get to my classroom. I walk in, adrenaline pumping, getting smirks from the couple teachers who knew what had happened, and see my first period class completely bored out of their minds.
Another math teacher, who also has first period off, was teaching my class. Apparently her lectures are dry and boring in general, and so first thing Monday morning, they're pure torture. So the scene was set: completely eyes-glazed-over students on a cloudy Monday morning with a super-adrenaline-amped teacher. The glazed-over looks gave way to looks of "WTF happened to you??" If only I could catch my breath to tell them.
I figured that during second period (when my students were taking a test), I'd be able to calm down, catch my breath, and go about my day as normal. However, I wasn't able to. I was pacing the entire class. Not really helping the test-taking environment.
As it turned out, I wasn't able to calm down until the end of the day, and so when I finally got home, I did a face-plant on my couch and laid motionless for a couple hours.

When I finally came to, I made my way to my bedroom to took a look at my alarm clock to see just what had happened.
Time set properly? Check.
Alarm set properly? Check.
So wtf happened? Then the light bulb goes on over my head - I never turned the damn alarm on.

What a way to start the week... and what week it turned out to be. (to be continued)

On Being Young

Being a young teacher is a dual-edged sword. There are several teachers under 30 on staff at my school, and I've spoken with most of them about the ups and downs of being young educators.

A vast majority of them, simply due to the fact that they are teenagers, want to be older than they are. That's completely natural and understandable, and I remember feeling that way when I was in elementary, middle and high school. But they are so overfed with the MTV definition of "older" and "cooler" - namely, drunk, naked and partying all the time, that they don't have adults who show them that, "Hey, you know what? You can be adult, and cool, and not have to be a wastoid." It's been remarkable to be of late how much they feed off my reaction to situations. The word "shit" slipped out of a student's mouth earlier this week, and I counted 5 heads (out of 8 in the room at the time) who immediately whipped their heads around to await my reaction.
It's beneficial to have strong familiarity with the internet, cell phones, and all the other techno-devices they seem to be handed the day after they come out of the womb. The kids know I'm good at picking out the ones who are texting in class, and daily I hear, "Oooooh! Sniped!" after I ask someone to put away their phone.

But being young also means that the kids don't necessarily give you the automatic respect they give my colleagues with gray hair and wrinkles. It means that some seniors, and even some juniors, who have been in the building for a longer time than I, feel they own the place, that they are the Big Men On Campus, and that they own the place more so than the rookie teacher. That has certainly caused some friction between me and several students throughout the year.

But that above paragraph relates to me, being a male. The junior and senior boys give me a whole lot different crap than they do the young women teachers. To me, they feel the need to testosterone-up, and show that they are tougher, meaner, and stronger. If they only knew what "strong" really means.
The girls, by contrast, really don't give me much sass. I think that the female equivalent of the male testoneroning-up is to be catty and bitchy. So that's the shit they give the young female teachers.

The young female teachers, unfortunately, get it from both genders. There are plenty of boys who make inappropriate and chauvinistic comments to them on top of the attitude they get from the girls. But there are certainly those boys who have crushes on these teachers, and the teacher can say, "Well, I'm really disappointed in you," which is far worse than anything I could ever say.

"Wait until your third year," a colleague advised me. He argued that at that point, I'll have been in the school as long as any of the students, and that I would have interacted with (either in class, in the hallways, or on the sports fields) with a vast majority of them. I'll have a reputation in the school, and while there will always be those boys who try to show me up with their excessive displays of testosterone, those numbers will most certainly decrease.

Overall, though, I'd say the pro's definitely outweigh the cons when it comes to being close to the age of my students. To be an adult figure in their life who they don't mentally clump together with their "out-of-touch" parents is of great benefit to getting them to succeed through the tumultuous years that are high school.

Weather Or Not

So it turns out there is a far better weather-detection system than if you were to put together all of the Dopplar 9000s in the world. It is the student body.

Even the most slightly aware person can vouch for the fact that their moods are affected by the weather. And that the average teenager experiences (and expresses!) their emotions very vividly. Put those two things together and voila! you have an amazing weather prediction system.

When it snows, students act as if they've never seen the stuff before. Clouds and rain bring out the moody, depressed sides of them all. And the couple days spring has shined its head through the winter doldrums, the kids have been off the friggin' wall.

I had a conversation with the principal today, and he mentioned that March is his least favorite month of the school year. He went on to say that most of the knuckleheads seem to pull all their stunts this time of year. That March is when all the idiots seem to shine, and make their worst decisions. Given that March has the nuttiest weather of the year (60 and sunny one day, 32 and snowing the next), that makes a lot of sense.

Everyone gets antsy for spring to arrive. February and March are long months as we await the warm spring weather, colors, and clothing. When the sun finds a moment to peak through the clouds, and tease us with the coming attractions of April and May, everyone (student or not) gets naturally excited. Put that in the mind and body of an emotional (and often unstably so) teenager, and that's when you get students damn near impossible to settle down, limit their jokes, pranks, and other wonderfully immature actions.

I feel for the principal, vice principal, and other administrators who have to deal with the mess left behind by the impending vernal equinox. Certainly I alone have given them several students to deal with - in the last week alone, I have sent 5 students to them for various offenses. I think in the 4 weeks prior, I had sent a total of 3 down.

Ahhh, March. Weather isn't the only thing that acts like a lion these days.

I must say that as crazy as the students are acting these days, I can't say I'm all that excited about when we're faced with beautiful weather in May, and the kids are restless, and mentally suction-cupped to the windows.

To React Or Not To React

So often things happen in school which require a teacher to step in and say, "Quit it." As a first-year teacher, I am often conflicted whether or not I should do that. In an attempt to be as honest and sincere with the kids as possible (and a most earnest attempt not to be the stereotypical out-of-touch old geezer of a teacher), I am often unsure whether a situation requires me to step in.

The things that transpire in school mimic those that happen in real life. If I am in the grocery store, and I hear someone curse, for instance, or get impatiently angry with the cashier, I can turn a deaf ear or a blind eye. In the case of cursing, I rarely even bat an eye, unless someone unleashes a litany of expletives. However, the school's rule prevents cursing, so I frequently find myself saying, "Watch your mouth," when someone lets slip a "shit" or a "fuck."

But I have yet to answer what the big deal is if they curse? They are expressing anger or frustration, or placing extra emphasis on their comments.

Of course there are degrees to this. If someone (and this happened twice to me last week), openly says to me, "That's fucking retarded," when asked to do some work, or stop tapping on their desk, their ass is getting sent down to the office. However, a more benign example is when a student asks a classmate, "Hey, when can I come over and grab my shit I left at your place?"

There's also the do-i-or-do-i-not-say-something dilemma when someone sleeps in class. Or is late to class. When someone comes late to my class, or decides to put his head down on his desk and not pay attention, who's really losing out? The student will miss any notes given, any test or quiz announcements, any homework announcements, or any of the other things which go on in the class. So if he chooses to ignore these things, it's his loss, right? And he'll pay the consequences later when it comes time to take the test, or hand in the assignment, or do any of the required classwork. So why should I say anything?

But there's a part of me which feels as if I'm supposed to say something when these things happen. Am I? What do you think?

The Story Everyone's Asked About

It seems that the idiocy of teenagers comes in waves. They seem to share an internal "let's be stupid" alarm that is very well synchronized. There may be weeks without much ado in the school, and then one week where their alarms all go off, and their collective stupidity, laying silently dormant, explodes onto the scene.

There was one such week in October. On one Friday, I gave a test to my Algebra II students. Some of them thought it was particularly hard, and a couple stayed after the period to finish it. One of them, the main character in this story, who has been dubbed Giggity by my friends, has his stupid alarm go off early, and he decides it's a good idea to speak on his cell phone. Everyone knows that cell phones are not allowed on a normal basis, but during a test, any cell phone use is immediately considered cheating. I say, "Giggity, what the hell are you doing?"
Giggity looks at me and has a mixed look of honest "What do you want?" and indignant "What's your problem?" I say, "You know that any cell phone use during a test makes the test a zero." He angrily replies, "You gotta be fucking kidding me!" Clearly I take his test and refer him to the office.

Upon coming into work the following Monday, I found out there was a fight at a party that Friday night between two students that landed one of them in the hospital.

Then during lunch on Monday, there was another fight, this time in school. This one occurred between the school's star athlete (a major headcase, and the same all-around prick who challenged me in class the first day of school) and a really good kid who suffered an amazing tragedy right before school started, when he witnessed his twin brother drowning. I know very little details on that fight, but certainly both kids don't need much to put them in a throwing-fists state of mind.

After school on Monday, Giggity stops into my room, and apologizes for his compound idiocy on Friday. He and I have a conversation about what it means to make good decisions, and I left feeling as if we had made some progress in his overall growth.

That was Monday.

Tuesday morning, there was an in-school student-to-student blowjob. This was not subtly done in a bathroom, instead this was performed in a small out-cove of a hallway. And they were caught by another student.
Now, having had such a (what I felt to be) productive conversation with Giggity the day before, I was surprised (but, in retrospect, not really) that Giggity was the recipient of the fellatio.
The fallout of the BJ produced two more fights over the next couple days. The first of which happened that afternoon, and was between the girl who found herself on her knees that Tuesday morning and the (very recent) ex-girlfriend of Giggity. That fight happened to be broken up by the same teacher who broke up the headcase fight the day before, and left all the teenage boys drooling over the idea of a cat-fight.

That was Tuesday.

Wednesday afternoon, I'm teaching my sixth period class and I see Giggity walk past my door. Nothing abnormal about that, but given the past couple days' of activity, my radar was up. All of 20 seconds later, I see him walk back in the other direction, and stop. Very shorty after that, I hear shouting in the hallway. I stop myself mid-sentence and rush out of my room, leaving my class alone, where I see Giggity and this girl (the one who caught him receiving the BJ) standing all of 5 inches from each other's face shouting at each other:
"What the fuck is your problem?"
"Why the fuck are you spreading rumors about me?"
"Rumors? You know what you did!"
"What the FUCK?!"
"What are you gonna do about it, pussy?"
"I want to punch you in the fucking face!"
Poetry. Pure poetry.

Apparently what happened was that Giggity, when walking back to his class, caught the eye of Queen Tell-All, who was sitting in her class. She made a gesture as if to say, "What are you gonna do?" to which he responded by flipping her off. She immediately got up and bolted out of her room and the shouting commenced. They were both suspended (since no teacher caught the act, he was punished for his language, and not for receiving the other tongue-lashing).

The aftermath of this among teachers I found pretty amusing. Everyone remembers the days of high school gossip and rumors and "What have you heard? I 'know' this..." It turns out that the teachers are as bad (and in often cases, much worse) than the students are when it comes to spreading gossip. I had several teachers come up to me and say, "So what do you know? Is it true?"
Waaaiiit a sec here... aren't we supposed to be the adults in this situation?

But of course, behind closed doors, the blowjob jokes amongst the teachers didn't end for weeks. A while after that week had ended, we were sitting at lunch and the music director was going through some scores as she was trying to pick some songs for the choir to sing. Reading the title of one, she chuckled and without saying anything, tossed it on the table for all of us to view. It was called, "Mouth Music."

As I mentioned before, high schoolers are a never-ended source of free entertainment.