Today was my first break from teaching since I started, so I think it's time I cataloged my victories and defeats for the year up until now.

Victory 1: I learned all the students' names within two weeks of class starting. This one was difficult, since I hadn't met any of the students before this year. I'll call a student by the wrong name once a week, but I'm going to chalk that up to faulty wiring rather than not knowing the actual names.

Victory 2: Students occasionally enjoy the warm-ups I prepare for them, and they tend to get invested in answering the questions correctly. I have become the master of warm-ups, and I really think it helps the students remember the material better than they would otherwise. Plus, it gives me a chance to assess what they know, what they don't know, and what the hell they think they know.

Victory 3: My spirit is intact. Back when I was working at Mackubin Consolidated Widgets, my spirit was nearly broken. While I've worked at the Wobegone International School of Culinary Arts, my students have punched, kicked, stomped, and electrocuted my spirit, but it has brushed off all assaults. The joy in seeing them do something correctly is a fine salve for any spiritual wound.

Defeat 1: The students still respect Frau Funkenhaus much, much more than I. I'm not entirely sure what I could do to change this, but I'm going to spend the rest of the year trying to figure that out.

Defeat 2: I'm still staring down the barrel of a test-passing rate of about 65%. Some of my brightest students get Ds on tests. How is that possible? Among the myriad reasons, the ESL problem and the "don't give a flying rodent's posterior" reasons seem to stick out. Motivation is key, and I can't figure out how to motivate them. Reading comprehension is key, and I can't teach them how to read.

While there have been more defeats, I'm going to keep the list at two because I want this webberly blog thing to be upbeat and happy. At this point, I'm rocking a 3-2 record, and that'll get me in the playoffs in the NFC North.

I haven't been entirely honest with you.

While I say that I'm a teacher, I am in fact a co-teacher. I do not have my own classroom; instead, I'm one-half of a two-headed monster of educatifying. We're like Cerebus after a terrible guillotine accident, but less barking and more teaching.

This co-teacher of mine has been at WISoCA for more years than I have fingers and toes, so I'm in a sort of master-apprentice relationship. This has led to me learning a lot about the classroom, but it has also led to a number of problems.

Problem 1: Though I am a fully licensed teacher, students may be under the impression that I am merely a student teacher. We tried to nip this in the bud early, but it's not always easy to convince students of such things. They never have co-teachers, so they try to put the relationship within a framework they know, and the only framework they know is the teacher-student teacher.

Problem 2: Since it's not my classroom, I don't know the correct procedures for how the class should do things. I know how I would want things done, but I don't want to step on my co-teacher, Frau Funkenhaus's, toes. Frau has certain ways of doing things, and those ways are completely and totally acceptable. However, those are not the ways I would do things, and as such I'm always at a disadvantage when talking to students. Furthermore, as I don't have the sort of organic knowledge of processes necessary to talk candidly with students, I'm forced to send worried glances to Frau in order to get information about where we want students to write their names on their papers.

Problem 3: If I were running a classroom, it would basically be run completely different from how I am currently running it. While this may be a good way for me to see different teaching styles and to practice getting outside of my comfort zone, it will not prepare me for my own classroom (hopefully) next year. This is the big problem right now. Boo-hoo.

I've never considered myself racist.  The last week in school, however, made me start hating one particular race of students: white kids.

Of course, I am white myself, which makes this bit of racism all the more troubling.  Ought I to start making snide comments about myself to myself behind my own back?  Should I grab my girl and pull her tightly to me when I see myself walk by a window and I catch a glimpse of myself in it?  Would it be wrong for me to burn a cross on my own yard?  Should I call myself a credit to my own race, or am I an Uncle Tom for caring about how whites present themselves in school?

Ridiculously premised, grandstanding jokes notwithstanding, there is a serious undercurrent to all of this that I picked up on at the end of last week.  Most of my classes have, at most 2 white kids.  The Wobegon International School of Culinary Arts is quite a diverse campus, so it's not at all odd to have a melting pot of different races represented in each classroom.  About this, I have no qualms.  In fact, I really enjoy the diversity of the school, and I think that being in an environment like that is going to make me grow as a person.

However.

One of my classes has a higher-than-average number of white kids in it, and they are the brattiest, most unrepentant snots this world has ever seen.  These curmudgeonly little koalas (yes, I realize I changed consonants, but it's the alliteration that matters...) are unproductive, verbally abusive, ridiculously entitled young men and women.  I have never had a group of students who felt that they were better than the instructor.  It's not that I think I'm better than them, but I do believe that we should respect one another, and that one should respect his/her teacher.

The little koalas talk back, refuse to do work, and generally decide not to devote any energy to class.  The saddest part about all of it, though, is that these are supposed to be the best students in the school.  My little koalas are tops of their class, are in all of the advanced classes, yet they can't manage to spend forty-five minutes staying on task, treating one another with respect, and taking an interest in their own education.

When I got into this teaching thing, I was told a lot of things re: the different races of students within my fair inner-city district.  The first week has completely blown these expectations out of the water.

Please realize that my semi-offensive statements earlier about my racism were not intended solely for humor's sake.  One of the things that Caucasians tend to ignore, either wilfully or not, is that we are privileged.  The fact that I'm saying this about this group of students didn't make my fellow white readers out there believe that all white kids are like that.  Instead, they figured that I just happen to have an annoying group of kids in one room.

What if I had told the same story and said that the students were black?  Would those of you out there who dismissed the little koalas as an anomalous group of spoiled kids have instead been unsurprised?  Would it merely have confirmed your prejudices, however latent?

The nice thing about being white, as many people have previously pointed out, is that your actions as a white person do not reflect upon your race as a whole.  Since we are the dominant culture, we get to set the expectations for everyone.  If a member of the dominant culture falls short, it is overlooked.  Woe to those in the minority, however, who make a mistake, since their mistake only confirms the internalized prejudices of those who notice.

Given that I have a special ed class, that WISoCA has a large deaf and hard of hearing contingent, and that the student body is incredibly diverse, I've had numerous novel experiences in my first few days.

The oddest experience, or at least the most surreal one for me so far, was trying to respond to a student with physical disabilities.  I wanted to be helpful to my precious little petunia without being condescending, attentive without being overbearing.  

I don't want to get into it too far, but my precious little petunia has significant difficulty doing anything with their (yes, this is a plural pronoun, but there is no way to do a nongendered pronoun in English without resorting to the neutered "it" that dehisces the humanity from the subject, so suck it.) hands.  Our class agenda was to create a notebook template that would be used for the entire year. Creating this template required a lot of taping, gluing, and cutting paper.  For this reason, I began to hesitate with regards to how to help this student.  

After the students had all picked up the template papers, I asked the petunia if I should go pick up papers for their notebook, and they assented.  I dropped the papers off, but then realized that they would have a difficult time taping, gluing, etc.  This left me with a choice: hover over my precious little petunia until they asked for help, or offer the help and risk being rejected.

Now, this is a problem for me, since my whole life is a study in the constant pursuit of acceptance, and by that rubric any rejection is a disruption of my life plan.  Asking the student if I should help, then, was a huge leap in the direction of dynamic personal rejiggering.  

Luckily, my precious little petunia of a student is a real class act, and they confidently answered that it would be helpful if I would put the notebook together for them.  

Thus, my trepidation was relieved, my fear of rejection abated, my life as I know it confidently run and confidently lived.  Or something like that.  Another day, another challenge.

First Day, Woo.

I've been blessed to have moved from the LoLMEECoA to a full-time job at the Wobegon International School of Culinary Arts (WISoCA). Instead of teaching the precious petunias in 7th grade, I've moved up to the big leagues, teaching the gruff giants of upperclassmen.

At this point, I have no major observations, other than the fact that I'm working with a completely new age group of students, and I am no longer confident that I can body slam them.