Teach for Hysteria: Things Kids Say

So I got up at work time, though I didn't have to go to work today, but I am starting to develop my grandmother's appreciation for the wee hours of the morn. I fed my resident mousecatcher, Dylan Superstar and walked the-purely-for-companionship-as-she-is-terrified-of-everything Sage. The Gate were lovely in the snow. At some point I will figure out the pictures thing, and you can see them, but for now you are going to have to use your imagination. It's alright.

I slept most of the middle of the day away and then got on the computer and started reading all these different education sites, blogs, chats, articles. I started thinking about the things that kids say. Two come to mind:

Three of my seventh grade students were discussing how mean I was. They had detention (like five minutes but of course they act like it is an eternity) because they hadn't completed their work in class and were instead fooling around. So they had detention until it was done. I was helping one of them, and the two others were sitting at their desks. One says with a snarl, "She so mean!" And the one I'm helping chimes in, "Yeah! I wish she would get a new job!" looking at me to see if I react, and of course I don't, and instead ask him if his lead paragraph is effectively setting the reader up for what is coming later in the article (it's not). The first commenter, responds, "Yeah! She should get a new job!" and, looking at the third, who hasn't yet said a word, says, "Right?" The third one looks up at me, taps his pencil on his cheek,as he does when he is thinking, and says, "Yeah, she mean, but if she got a new job, then we'd have a WHITE teacher."

The other two look up at me and nod. "Oh, yeah."

*

Then I wanted to share this note written to me by one of my 8th Grade students last year. I'd had her in 7th grade, and had to call in the counseling team in response to her first journal entry,"I hate myself. I want to die. I think about killing myself all the time." Sigh. but we got her hooked up with a great counselor and she started feeling a lot more positive about herself. However, in 8th grade, they took her out of counseling (no good goes unpunished) and she went into a slump where she literally, no matter what any of us did, would not do any schoolwork. It was particularly frustrating for me because I felt really connected to her and worried about her. But she would help herself to the markers and write these multicolored notes, with each word in a different color and give them to people, other kids, teachers, whomever. Well, I found one of her unsigned notes in a pocket this summer. This one, though, I keep on my wall:

Ms. Soucouyant,
I want
to let
you know
that I
am your
mother.


Make of these what you will, dear reader.