Super Sleuthing

Today I played detective, and while the results of my work made me very angry, I was pretty satisfied anyway.

I was checking homework, which was less-than-thrilling because it was an extra long assignment and an extra long weekend. I noticed that one student had submitted work that was not her own. I check homeworks for completion, then check off names as I go. For some students, I see the name and know it's perfect anyway. For some students, I need to make sure every question was completed, because they try to get away with stuff, and any incomplete assignment means detention. This student was inconsistent with her work, so even though I had a few pages to flip through, I was going to look at every single question.

The first thing I noticed was that the work was not in her handwriting. Her handwriting is not quite that of a middle-schooler, although she is new to North Star, so we've forgiven her as long as it's legible. This homework assignment, however, was written in perfectly neat, girly handwriting that not only didn't match this girls previous assignments, but also didn't even match the name on the top of the page.

Wow, she had someone else do her homework for her. What does that take? A really good friendship? Money? Candy? I'd probably do it for candy. I flipped through a recent quiz, and pulled out a couple of papers that had similar handwriting (I matched a funny "e"). In between answering questions in special ed math, I carefully compared papers to see who might be completing this girls homework for her.

Then I found the answer: at the top, where she had written her name, I noticed that I could see another erased name on top. Someone didn't do her homework for her; she had literally STOLEN someone else's work and passed it off as her own. I could see the other girl's name and team name, both of which had been poorly erased.

I was furious.

The girl was pulled out of class and given a two-day suspension. She spent the entire day sitting in the dean's office, alternately weeping and temper-tantrum-ing, coming out with such offensive remarks as, "I swear on my grandmother's grave that I didn't do it."

By the end of the day, we found she had stolen her history homework from another student, who was wrongly assigned detention.

I can't believe she would do that. She's one of our most struggling students, failing every course and often skipping out early on detention or homework center for a doctor's appointment or other event with her mother.

In brighter news, though, my day went smoothly. I was able to teach the students how to organize notes in the I, A, 1, a, etc. format, which is surprisingly difficult to teach. They picked it up like champs, though, and after my first class, my IL made me tape my next class to see how my improvements have changed the pace of the class and quality of student work. Okay!

Thanksgiving weekend was nice and family-y, with lots of food (and drink) and even a friend I hadn't seen in a while. I had my first pain-free week of 10 miles run, including an awesome 4-miler along the Charles River. I'm starting to make my triathlon plans for next summer.

Threes

Although I've been a little less motivated to blog lately, I tend to want to write when I've come up with three things worth mentioning.

The first is another awesome encounter with the principal. She popped into my class yesterday after lunch, which is not terribly unusual. She walked through, and then left. I figured it was because I had mentioned that I find that class the most challenging, and she wanted to check it out. After class, she approached me in the hallway and asked how I was feeling. What? Oh! On Friday, during our check-in, I mentioned that I thought I was coming down with a cold. She was actually checking to see how I was doing. She cares about me. Crazy. I'm getting spoiled here.

I've noticed I've been getting sick less. I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but last year I was sick about once per month. This year, I had one real cold, and suffered through a few sniffly days of school. I also had two almost-colds that never really panned out. Not bad, considering Thanksgiving break is almost NOW.

This week we had about a dozen visitors from a TFA-related charter school in North Carolina. They were gracious, observed politely, and left us thank you notes. They also LOVED our school (as they should) and took notes about a lot of the awesome stuff we did. And then we swapped stories about some of the more challenging schools.

This afternoon, I had one of my favorite things happen. Twice. After each of my two afternoon classes, a handful of kids demanded to stay after class to ask me more questions about stuff only tangentially related to class content. It was awesome. I got to talk even more about science, and they eagerly swallowed up every little bit.

And then I exhaustedly drove home, and had a nice jog on the treadmill. Since dealing with various pains (shin, knee, etc.), this was my first continuous 2 mile run. There was no pain at all. Not only that, I've been taking it really "slowly" by running fast. For the last month, I've been running short intervals (1-8 minutes at a time with walking breaks in between), but faster than normal (10 minutes per mile). Today I ran 2 miles at 10 min/mi. It's one of my best paces, and it was on a treadmill, and my headphones fell out after the first mile. I can't wait until my new headphones arrive in the mail from Hong Kong sometime soon.

This weekend I'm going to Boston with my parents. There will be good food, good drinks, good museums, and hopefully some good running adventures.

That's more than three things, but that's how I roll. I start the writing, and it finishes itself.

Baby-Gay-Writing

This week was busy. There was a lot of getting used to our own space again, but there were also special circumstances.

Our special education teacher had a baby on Monday (!), and I've been covering one of her classes. It's an easy classes, more a test of patience than a management challenge. There are only three students, and it's math. Two of the kids are pretty good; I set them in the right direction and they work through the 90-minute block. The third is an adorable, sweet girl who is very, very slow. I have to constantly monitor her to see whether she is thinking slowly, or lost. I'm happy to get to teach her math, and I'm a little excited for her assessment on Wednesday. Fortunately for my schedule and stress level, we are (most likely) hiring a temporary special ed teacher starting after Thanksgiving, so I'll get my morning back.

Tuesday morning's seventh grade circle was exceptionally heart-warming. I was a little nervous when the principal brought up the concept of a state referendum, but she rallied the students' utmost professionalism and led a grade-wide discussion on same-sex marriage. She introduced the idea in a clever way: Think about the person you care about most, whether it is your mother or sister or cousin or uncle. Then think about what would happen if that person were sick, and you couldn't see them in the hospital.

In 90 seconds, the principal had gotten a room full of 12-year olds invested in the concept of marriage and civil rights. The next 10-15 minutes were serious and motivating, and ended with a great comment with a student who said something along the lines of: Just like in Virginia vs. Loving, these referendums created great opportunities for civil rights, because Americans have voted to support something that may make them a little uncomfortable, but represents freedom and equality.

That is a pretty special seventh-grader.

This year, I "introduced" my kids to persuasive essays. As it turns out, they've been writing them for years. Not only that, I was similarly impressed to discover that they were not new to writing workshops and excellent at giving and receiving criticism. They spent about 10 minutes in deep discussion of each others' writing, in a rigorous and respectful way. I loved every minute of it.

Now it's the weekend. I have to take a test tomorrow, as part of the Great Certification Saga, but I can relax after that.

College

This past weekend I went back to college. It was a reunion for my co-ed literary fraternity. Despite some of the frustration about hearing college students complain about how busy they are (I only wish I were that busy again), I had a really good time.

I got to catch up with about a dozen of my friends from school. It's so much fun hearing how everyone is making their way in the world, as everything from a literary publicist to medical student. It's almost as exciting to hear about as it is to share my life updates (almost).

For the first time in a while, I got a chance to do some writing. I got to spill my innermost thoughts onto paper, without the expectation that you would be reading it. It was nice, and relaxing. It helped me figure out some stuff that I wouldn't have otherwise. You get a watered down version. It's politically correct and usually pre-thought out, during the 40-ish minutes I have to drive home and the short jog or drink or dinner. On Saturday, I got to write just because. And I figured out how I feel about things. I'm very happy with my life, but very overwhelmed with work. I'm generally exhausted, but still enthusiastic. I ended up with something along the lines of, "There's no greater feeling than watching a room full of 12-year olds finally understand why the ocean is salty, except maybe feeling well-rested enough to enjoy it."

I guess that's how I feel.

I love every minute, and some things are really exciting, but I also can't wait until Thanksgiving break.

I also got some really positive feedback from my IL today, which made me feel good.

Appreciation

I had a tough day today, but only inside my head. The kids were good and I had an easy day (long quiz and short reading assignment). I was exhausted. I was up way too late on Tuesday night (Yay Obama!) and had a rough evening last night (it took me three trips to the gym to find an open treadmill, and other things). My back was hurting and my foot was hurting as well. I think the floor at our "new" school is harder than what I'm used to. It was just a long day. This week has been challenging and exhausting.

I still can't talking about how much I love my job, though. My mom pointed out that this year's blog talks a lot more "we" than last year's. That perfectly sums up my year so far (finishing week 10). I'm part of a team. We work together to education children. We help each other all the time. We work to help each other improve and to make our lives easier, because we work hard enough as it is. Not only does it make us happier, it makes the school better. It helps us educate better and it helps our kids go to college (and graduate college!). I didn't have that. I was working alone, and a school full of teachers working alone. It was much more challenging, much more stressful, and much less successful.

And still, I'm completely blown away whenever we're shown appreciation. We've had a rough week, but we've been working on a modified scheduled, so we've been able to go home a little bit after 4PM every day. Today, we had a faculty meeting planned at 4:30. I went to the prescribed location, and the group was waiting in the hallway. As we walked into the room, someone commented that it smelled funny. And we saw that they had laid out a table of plastic cups each filled with a little bit of champagne, and a sign saying, "Welcome back home, Vailsburg." We had a toast to our hard work this week, and discussed the logistics of packing up and moving back home. We also got to watch a slideshow of our adventures here.

Yet again, I love this place.

Homeless

The storm has been rough on everyone, but Newark was hit hard. Most of our students still don't have power, and neither does our school. Fortunately, North Star is willing to make sacrifices to educate our children, and today we made it work even though Newark Public Schools is still closed. It was frustrated to get started, but it was a good thing.

Over the weekend, the ops staff worked 24-hour days to move our school to another building. One of the North Star schools was only using half the building, so they cleaned the other half and moved in tables and chairs for our students. They also moved carts, projectors, doc cams, and office supplies. We arrived this morning to a school ready to go.

The schedule was modified so that all classes were an hour long (normal for me, but unusual for all other subjects) and there were no specials or after school activities. It was busy, but it worked. The school day also included a 90-minute study hall at the end of the day to allow students to do their homework in a warm, well-lit environment...and they were really excited about that. Crazy kids.

And it all worked out. Everything ran smoothly, which was a little surprising to all of us. I took a little while to get into my groove, but by my third class I was flying along. I even got cc'd on a a very nice email from a colleague to the principal and IL, saying how well I was doing. Not bad.

We'll be at our new home through the week, which will be rough, but I think we can handle it. The kids are happy to have something to do, and believe it or not, they love learning. The biggest problem was that they had all finished their books last week and had no independent reading books left.

The novelty will wear off, though, and tomorrow we get an added bonus: election. In a school that normally holds 280 students, and today managed to hold 800 students, will also be acting as a polling place tomorrow. It will certainly be interesting.

All in all, I was amazed at how well everyone came together and worked to teach our kids today, despite difficulties. It took the cooperation of the kids, teachers, and school leaders. I think our principal expressed it best this morning at our staff meeting when, right before the kids started arriving, she looked around the room with pride and burst into tears. We're pretty awesome.

Apocalypse

This week was the apocalypse. Well, it was Hurricaine Sandy. And it turns out that the apocalypse is merely boring. Not scary, not exciting, just terribly boring.

The weekend was uneventful, with a CPR class that was incredibly boring (and it's way easier to do it for real than on plastic mannequins) and wonderful Chinese food with my boyfriend's parents. They took us out to eat, then sent us home with a ton of food (chicken Parmesan meatballs, etc.). We hunkered down throughout the noisy, slightly scary wind Sunday night, as school was cancelled for Monday (only Monday). And we thought that was the worst of it.

Monday evening, the rain began and the wind was unbelievable. It's amazing what can this planet can throw together when it wants to. We lost power by 7PM, and went to sleep early (after watching some transformers blow out above the line of buildings). Tuesday cancelled.

In the morning, we drove around a bit to observe the aftermath. There were trees everywhere and electricity nowhere.

We ate too much perishable food, and read by headlamp. Wednesday cancelled. I drove back to Roslyn, passing many trees on the ground. No power, but a generator and a house full of friends and family.

I spent the night with my parents, though no internet, and headed back home. I had spent most of Wednesday at the fire house, but there was an empty house full of dirty clothes. We couldn't get a crew here for a few calls, because everyone was finally home sleeping, so I left for New Jersey. I wasn't sure if Thursday would be cancelled.

Thursday cancelled. Power still out. We lit a few candles, made some pasta (had to eat it all, no refrigerator), and watched some ER on the iPad by candlelight. It was romantic and a little chilly.

Thursday morning, we headed to the mall. I bought some clothes (pants size 4!). The food court was full of food service employees with no food. The power had just returned last night and they hadn't received food yet. We drove back to Piscataway, drove around a little more, and finally found an open bagel joint that didn't have bagels. I had a yummy omlet wrap. We spent the afternoon at Tim's friend's apartment, with hot water and cable. We arrived home, to end the saga, and to find that our electricity had returned! And internet! And Friday is cancelled! I finally get my one day of real, internet-ful, electricity-ful relaxing vacation, before Saturday morning's Praxis exam.

If only my shin splints could stop hurting...