Finals

My seventh hour students are working on their final exam for my class. I asked them to write a reflection about their experience in my class this year--what did you learn? What was fun? What really sucked? What skills have you developed (yes, I've seen Napolean Dynamite; yes, the knuchuck skills could apply here)?

Watching them sort through what they've learned is fun, but I'm always surprised when I read final reflections. The student who I thought learned a lot says he learned nothing new. The student who resisted everything we did in class feels like an authentic learner. I can't count on a single sure thing when I comb over these to adapt my lessons and activities for next year.

Little do they know that I had my own final yesterday--my summative evaluation. I almost quit my job over it. Walking out into the bright sunlight after being under flourescents all day would have been marvelous. But, instead I hunted down the princi-PAL and started the review process. He says: Let's start with any questions you have.
Me: Well, I would like for you to explain to me why I earned progressing on these first four items. I would like to start there.
Him: What? (Takes paper and looks at it; shakes his head.) Oh, no. Oh, Leslie, no you didn't earn progressing on those. You didn't get any progressings.
Me: Oh, okay. Okay, good.
Him: Oh, I'm so sorry. I bet that's a relief. No, you've done a great job this year. I'll go over your strengths with you--and you probably have a lot more, this is just what I've seen. (Lapses into some strengths I have: my sense of humor, my willingness to develop professionally, my ability to work with students until they understand everything.)

The walk between picking up the evaluation and straightening out the evaluation seemed quite long. It's good to be praised sometimes at the end of the year when you think you're drowning. I hope my students feel as though they've been praised a bit this week when they're finishing their freshman year.

Heaven's Picnic

Right now I think my grandma, instead of being aware that she's stuffed with tubes, bloods, medicines, and breath, is enjoying a leisurely picnic with my mom, my aunt, and my grandfather. My childhood dog Bandit is there as well as all of my great aunts and my even one of my cousins who dided in infancy.

In the heaven picnic there aren't onions in the potato salad, and there aren't onions in anything becuase she hates onions. It's the perfect temperature and the ants that are there are traveling in a single file line to crumbs that have been left for them instead of smuggling through all the fresh foods and trampling along the picnic blanket.

On the third floor of St. John's, my grandma has tweny-two medications pumping into her veins to help her breathe, help her kidney functions, and help her do everything else she was doing this time last week. This time last week when I talked with her for a few minutes about how she was and what she was doing. Before she had Tastee Freeze for dinner on Tuesday. Before she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure on Friday.

That Zebra Got a Reprieve

On the commute to school there's a small pasture where animals have been grazing on and off all year. Yesterday, I saw a zebra kneeling over a wired hay bale, grazing. It was definitely weird to see the zebra out in a cow pasture; his stripes were dingy and he looked completely out of place. How I feel sometimes in school. That my views, while not too far left, are completely far fetched from those around me.

Each day I am more and more surprised by how little awareness students have and how quick they are to make a bad choice. On Monday I had to sub for Brandy (who left school promptly after arriving because she was having false labor pains). Picture Chris--typical high school gamer. Doesn't want to do anything, and doesn't do anything. At one point, he literally had a zero in English. A zero. Wears black, has black hair, and is pale. Chris imagines that he's smart, but he doesn't' prove it through his actions. Like on Monday when the principal comes in to light a fire under Chris to do his science project. Chris refuses. Principal says in a sterner voice to get to work. Eventually, Chris erupts into a "This is fucking retarded!" And leaves the room mumbling, then screaming "Later!"

I never would have dreamed of a principal overhearing me cursing, much less cursing at him--but that's Chris for you--never thinking about a point from which there is no return. Before he said the F word, he had a window where he could have gotten up and pretended to work for a few minutes. There were fifteen minutes left in class. He could have gotten a reprieve.

When I pointed out the zebra to Laura, she said, "you're joking right?" No, I tell her--pretty zebra eating grass. Right between the gas station and the tax place. "At the meat packing plant?" Well, yeah, I guess it was the meat packing plant. "Well, that zebra won't be around later." Then it hits me. All year I've seen animals in that pasture. This zebra, a few cattle, a horse, some ostriches. There for a few days--then an empty pasture.

This morning when I saw the zebra I sighed a breath of relief. He had earned a reprieve for at least one more day.