My mother urged me to take down the last post, and so I did. My apologies to anyone who found the obscenities offensive. I was mainly enthused by the fact that the kids seemed to care about what happened in The Scarlet Letter. For those unused to the linguistical reality of an urban classroom (or, quite possibly, any classroom), the profanities that colored my students' conversation might have appeared more alarming than exciting. For the record, the kids were off the record, meaning they didn't know their private conversation was being transcribed. Obviously, those expressions would have been prohibited if they were to attempt to articulate them during a class discussion (which those students wouldn't have). Sorry if anyone found it offensive!

Speaking of profanity, I drove myself hoarse trying to curb it in the classroom today. I taught a sophomore class that I don't normally teach, and two of the students in particular were especially unhappy with the change. They decided that my presence meant that they could swear up a storm at each other and, of course, at me. When I informed them that their language was inappropriate, one responded, "Miss, I'm from the hood. You can't take the hood out of me."

"You don't have to bring it into this classroom," I responded through gritted teeth.

"Whaaaat?!" he cried back. "First of all, I don't even know what profanities are!"

(I know, the non sequiturs never cease to amaze me either.)

He then proceeded to go through every swear word on the books and ask me if those words counted as profanity. After two words, I walked away and directed my attention to other students who were also cursing loudly to each other.

However, even though I ended up almost losing my voice trying to get everyone to focus and stop cursing, I didn't feel completely crazy by the end of class. My mentor teacher told me she was shocked at how composed I looked when she came back into the classroom. (Normally, whenever I have to teach that particular group of sophomores, my distress expresses itself so obviously in my body that I end up looking like a walking train wreck.)

So that was a small triumph! Apparently, I am acquiring something akin to resilience in terms of my interactions with out-of-control classes. In the best case scenario, I would learn how to prevent the out-of-control bit, but hey--I'm just happy I'm not a shaking mess of adrenaline. Woo-hoo for progress.

"

I broke up my first fight today. Here's how.

Tired and incoherent (my new physical and mental status quo), I was trudging down the building's front steps when I noticed an unusual mass of kids and cops right in front of the school. Normally cops patrol the front street and the T stop when school gets out, but something out of the ordinary must have been going on because all of the cops were clustered around one small area. It wasn't long before I heard the school headmaster, a tall, burly man with a booming voice, yelling at the kids to "get the hell out of there."

Because I am often mistaken for a student, I figured I should probably take his advice to heart; I hustled to join the mass of students streaming from the site, absentmindedly noting the flood of curses issuing out of kids' mouths as they protested the headmaster's directive. I kept walking until I had almost reached the end of the block--when all of the sudden, my heart dropped.

There in front of me pulsed a huge circle of kids chanting. As I strained my head above the circle, I could see in the center the outlines of two girls attempting to strangle each other. I looked all around, but to my dismay, all of the cops who normally patrol the intersection were otherwise occuppied in whatever was happening at the front of the school, and there wasn't another adult in sight. I took another look at the girls and before I knew it found myself plunging towards them through the crowd. As soon as I reached them, I grabbed a hold of each of their arms and commanded them to stop. As I struggled to restrain them, I vaguely registered the word "teacher"floating through the crowd as the circle started to dissipate.

Then, to my astonishment, the girls stopped fighting. Within miliseconds of pulling away from each other, both girls were whisked away into the crowd by a swarm of friends--but not before I saw that each of the girls was bloodied and missing clumps of hair. I tried to suppress a nauseous upsurge as one of the girls turned to glance at me; blood was trickling out of her eye, and it looked like parts of her face had been gauged clean out. The fight must have been going on for a while. By the way the girls stopped fighting so quickly, I could tell that they must have been somewhat tired of fighting. I would have been too, if I were in their condition.

As soon as the fight stopped, panic replaced adrenaline. What to do now? The fight was over, but the girls were quickly disappearing and I didn't know any of their names. I was sure there must be some type of protocol to follow in cases such as this, but I was totally unaware of what that was. Operating on default mode, I called my mentor teacher and left her a somewhat incoherent and slightly hysterical message. By the time I finished talking, the crowd had almost entirely disappeared. Finding myself almost alone, I did what I always do when in semi-hysterical states of panic: I called my mother.

After spilling out my situation, I listened to her maternal clucks and cooes until I felt somewhat calm again. In the middle of that conversation, I spotted another teacher who works at my school but to whom I had never introduced myself.

"Mom, just a minute," I said abruptly, right before I attacked the teacher with an onslought of questions regarding Fight Protocol. His response was surprising.

Apparently, because they or the students could get hurt, teachers are not supposed to physically intervene with fights. Instead, they're supposed to stand aside and call in either the school authorities or the police. Wish I would have known that before I put my life in jeoperdy. Oh, well. I suppose 911 will have to wait until next time--although, when I think of the state of those beautiful girls' marred faces, I fervently hope there is no next time. At the same time, post-fight me is a tad bit (guiltily) exultant that I might be capable of exuding teacherly authority after all.

Now I just have to figure out how to channel those authoritative instincts in a classroom. Sigh.

The classroom management workshop I went to this week was so inspiring that I was almost (almost) disappointed that my classes were actually pretty well-behaved this week. I kept waiting for a moment when I could try out one of the shiny new routines Scott (classroom management guru) guaranteed would quench the majority of the problems I'm facing as a hapless student teacher. Right now, I anxiously anticipate the next time I vainly attempt to capture the class's attention--only to be defeated by a roomful of 15 year olds intently focused on chatting their ways up the all-important ladder of social hierarchy.

Ever since I left the classroom management workshop, I've been fantasizing my reaction to this absurd adolescent absorption: As the students continue to chatter, the small smile on my face will slip into a look of withering boredom, and my perfect facial expression will effectively communicate to the class the severity of their transgression. Once they have quieted down, I will say, quietly (but with great authority): "We need to try something new. From this moment on, whenever I say 'I need your eyes on me, please,' you WILL stop talking and look at me. In order for this to work, we are going to have to practice this several times..."

..and then I will drill, drill, drill the class on our new routine until they get it. Maybe it's a residual effect from my piano days, but I LOVE the idea of drilling a new routine to perfection. Scott recommended drilling 2-4 times, but I daydream about drilling to the point where I have absolute dictatorial control. While I was doing my classroom observations, I saw a class so well-trained that the teacher controlled them with a squeaky toy. In my wilder fantasies, I aspire for that type of power.

No one goes into teaching because they want to manage a classroom. Discipline is kind of like instruction's evil twin--or at least its ugly sidekick. However, discipline also sets the groundwork for effective instruction...and after this workshop, I'm almost itching to get my hands dirty.

Thank you to everyone who made such encouraging, sweet comments on the blog. I've felt like I have an entourage of angels whispering kind words on this journey, and--perhaps even as a result--I experienced some of my first satisfying moments in front of a class today.

I re-taught one of the lessons that flopped last week--only today, the lesson went well. (Of course, I still experienced some bumps in the classroom management department--every time the noise level gets to a certain point, I find myself physically crumpling in front of the class; at these moments, my amazing mentor teacher steps in. It never ceases to amaze me how a word from her can produce absolute silence from even large groups of rowdy adolescents.) But after the students became quiet and the learning-teaching-learning process began, I became surprisingly aware of the change in my own interior state. For the first time, I did not ardently wish that I possessed Harry Potter's invisibility cloak so that I could discretely remove myself from shame; instead, I found myself actually enjoying (imagine!) teaching. Welcome sensation though it was, I was nonetheless shocked to discover that it is possible to feel joy in front of a classroom. Who would have thought.

I think it had something to do with the group of students. As we talked about "Young Goodman Brown," they seemed to experience no difficulty grasping the concept that this story functions best on an abstract level. In fact, they were incredible at analyzing and articulating the symbolic meaning of the story's literal action. Also, a bunch of the students seemed to have a pretty good handle on the Bible, and my guess is that they were probably thrilled at the opportunity to use such hard-earned knowledge to help them in school. As we attempted to extrapolate a working definition of evil from this story, some of the kids actually seemed enthralled by the intellectual task at hand. I was enthralled by their enthusiasm. By the time I left school, I was so happy that I actually felt kind of like I was floating. Really. I looked down to check.

So I decided to celebrate by taking myself to a really great Indian buffet. (I consoled myself after my most recent teacherly failure in the same manner.) It was delicious, and my post-buffet self now solidly obeys the law of gravity. I don't even need to check.

Intro

Learning how to be a teacher is no picnic, but the experience is worse when you happen to be a person who speaks two octaves higher than your students and finish your phrases with even higher tonal fluctuations. Not only do I speak in questions, but my body language belies underlying social anxieties which diminish my ability to authoritatively organize adolescents. On my worst days, they can eat me like a snack. On my best--well, so far my best is a phenomenon for which I patiently await. I may wait awhile; it's a good thing I am self-supplied in terms of the edible.

As a student teacher, I am just beginning to take over two classes. Today I taught "Harrison Bergeron" to the sophomores, and I attempted to teach transcendentalism, symbolism, the impact of Hawthorne on American literature, and "Young Goodman Brown" to the seniors. Both of these lessons flopped. Over. Dead. As I tried to convey the vast scale of my failure in a conversation with a friend and fellow student teacher, I honed in on my body posture as symbolic of all that went wrong.

"I was sitting crouched over the text with my nose almost touching the top of my desk while my knees hit the desk from the bottom," I miserably recounted. "And it only got worse from there! With every poorly directed question, my voice got quieter and higher, until by the end of the lesson I was substituting whispered squeaks for teacher talk."

"Ah," he replied knowingly. "You went fetal. I do it too."

I paused, struck by the aptness of his descriptive. "Fetal?" I responded. "Yes, I suppose went fetal."

My loose interpretations of teaching are probably more embryonic than fetal--but, in the sense that the latter term references the vastly underdeveloped, I approve of its application to my experience.

After I decided three hours ago to start a blog, I considered, among other titles, "cowering in the classroom," and any number of plays which involved the word "groveling." However, I decided on "The Paved Road" for several reasons. First of all, as much as I adore self-deprecating alliterative play, the phrases I came up with were trite and finite. "The Paved Road," while allowing ample space for downplay of self, also opens the possibility that this journey might not be confined to the realm of para-professional failure. (However, the emphasis still feels satisfactorily centered on the the vehicular nature of good intentions which unfailingly transport me to infernal realms.)

Secondly, "The Paved Road" has been trodden before. I am not the first aspiring teacher to encounter difficulty--nor am I the first student teacher to frequently fail miserably at the task of teaching. This path, however humiliatingly hot, has been trekked before. I tread in company.