I finally got to see the Liz Phair video for "Why Can't I?" Liz Phair is my female Justin Timberlake. I have her picture as my wallpaper on windows. No joke.
I am sick. I haven't been sick in ages, but Justin got sick, so now I'm sick. Luckily, the timing was pretty good since we had conferences the last two days, so I didn't actually have to teach. Now I have this weekend to rest up a little.
You learn a lot about parenting from meeting the parents of your students. It is true that usually the parents of the "good" kids come, but I had some parents of "bad" kids come, too. It's also true that usually the parents of the good kids seem really nice, and like really good parents. However, there are some exceptions. For example, parents of kids who have A's, but lecture them about the one assignment that they are missing, or lecture them about an assignment that they got a poor score on. Yesterday I had the parents of this kid I absolutely love come in. This kid is one of my top ten favorite kids (perhaps of all time). He is in my dream period (ninth period), and he is sweet, funny, and participates in class. Well, let's call him Nathan Rodriguez (his mom is white and his dad is Latino). So he comes in, smiling, and says, "Hi, Ms. Boombastic!" I pull out his grade printout to show his parents, and he has a B. He is missing two things--his previous grade printout that needed to be signed by his parents and returned, and one reading log assignment. His parents proceed to go OFF on him hardcore. Apparently he missed one or two assignments in another class as well. He stands there meekly answering them, "Yes, yes, yes." His mother actually said, "You should be saying sorry to your teacher because you disrespected her by not turning in your assignments." I was so embarrassed for him as he apologized to me. His dad also asked me if I could give him more work to do at home. I explained what the assignments were that they do at home, but he wanted more. I explained that I don't offer extra credit usually. He said he wanted work for Nathan to do, not for points, just so he would have more work to do. I finally agreed (under great pressure) that if Nathan wanted to do some extra work, I could come up with something for him. Finally, they asked about his behavior, and I took that opportunity to tell them how wonderful their kid is. I truthfully told them that he is one of my best students, that he is always sweet and polite, always willing to share in class, and I told them a story about how he had such good, helpful behavior in the library that the librarian gave him a treat pass. I just couldn't believe how they were acting as if he was the scum of the earth when they have a GREAT kid. I believe in having high expectations for kids, but I was appalled by the way these parents were acting.
On Wednesday, one of my most frustrating and infuriating kids told me, "Ms. Boombastic, I was at the counseling office and I told the counselor that you are a really nice teacher." I was shocked. This is a child that during the first days of school wrote a poem about me that went, "Boring, boring, Ms. Boombastic, is boring." (I was so honored, that's the first time that a kid wrote a poem about me. HA HA!) Yeah, you guessed, it this is one of my angels from eighth period. Anyway, he seemed as if he was being completely sincere in his "nice teacher" comment, so I took it that way and thanked him.
Did you know that I haven't seen The Matrix? Everyone seems to find this completely astounding. Justin actually owns it on DVD, and he just bought the second one, so he is dying for me to watch it so we can watch the second one together. I just feel like I'm not going to be into it.
One fun thing was that I got to know my fellow team members a bit better during conferences, because we weren't very busy. The way it works out is I usually kind of hang out with my team leader, the male teachers hang out together, and then the math teacher is sort of in her own world. This time I hung out with both the special ed. teacher and my team leader. It was nice getting to know the special ed. teacher a little better. I really like the people on my team, but there is this unspoken thing about the math teacher. It isn't like she has done anything exactly, but she gives off this vibe like she doesn't want to be on our team, which is really weird. I don't know what the deal is, because one-on-one she is really nice and I actually like her a lot. There are all these weird politics surrounding teams, I think, but hopefully it doesn't get all tense.
The other thing that is uncomfortable is that the kids really don't like her. They announce to me in class that she's mean and they hate her, and then we go through this whole thing about how they shouldn't talk about people who aren't here to defend themselves, etc., etc. I have had many conversations with them about how to deal with a teacher that they don't get along with. I just think that she is one of those people who thinks she has to be really mean to get them to respect her, which I think is pretty sad. I always tell them how bad I would feel if I found out that they were talking smack about me, but they assure me that no one does. Hmmm...This is horrible to say, but when they talk badly about her I feel bad, but at the same time I am just glad that it isn't me, you know? Teachers want to be liked, everyone knows that. And I may not be everyone's favorite teacher, but I know most of them like me.
I'm almost done reading User, which turned out to be pretty good, although it has some graphic sex scenes (but really, who doesn't like graphic sex scenes?)
I had a really good conversation with Jasmine the other day, and I realized that I am glad that I stayed friends with her, despite some of her flaws. She is a good person overall. Since I have decided to be friends with her, I owe it to her to be a real friend and not focus on the bad parts of her personality.
I should probably go work on some stuff for school. Yeah, right.
