Yesterday, I am standing by my computer taking attendance while the kids do their do-now, when across the room hurls a giant apple. It smashes into bits and rains all over me. The three boys in the back, without me saying a thing, start arguing over who did it, and determine that one boy, (who grew up in a East African country and still has some cultural barriers to cross) did it and blame him. One kid gets so upset, (again, I haven't said anything here), that he says he "doesn't give a shit about this class," and storms out. Okay.
Security comes and removes my East African boy, and while I know that the boys have guided him into making bad decisions in the past (they got him to pull the fire alarm once), I don't really think he did it this time..... I think he is their scapegoat.
Right before the bell rings, one of the same boys (not the one who left, and not the East African boy, but the third one) saunters across class, and I can see he has something in his hand. I assume it is glue. I say something to him, he ignores me. He pretends to do work for a minute, and then when I am no longer paying attention to him, I hear commotion, and the word "slap cam." I see what now appears to be white lotion all over my East African boy's face.
My girls inform me that slap cam is when you slap someone really hard while someone else is recording, so you can play it back, funny, in slow motion. You have to have something in your hand though, she says. Like lotion or cool whip or something.
Seriously?
This is what's happening in my class right now?
Outrageous. The bell rings, the kids scatter, none listen, and I am pretty sure one of my other girls got the whole incident on her phone. Sigh.
I don't know how the classroom environment got to be this bad. Well, no, actually that's not true. I know how. I have no legs. There are no consequences I can give that matter, and there are really....no consequences.
At my school, it seems as if any structure at all, or any consequence at all (aside from the totally random suspension), is deemed "white oppression." So, we have no sweeps. We have no detention. We have no ISS room. We have one small security guard who patrols a GIANT, sweeping school with many, many small alcoves and nooks and crannies and unused classrooms......
What we do have is some sort of form of "restorative connections" which means that two seriously overworked people are supposed to manage all of the kids that need to be removed from class, and have heart to hearts with them about their actions and their futures and etc.
But no rules.
You can come to class super high, 50 minutes late. You can walk in and out and around. You can walk in and out and in and out while slamming the door over and over again. You can visit other teacher's classrooms to bother your friends. You foam up all of your spit and drip it all over my tables. You can throw glue bottles across the classroom. Or broken crayons. Or anything else. You can call people bitches and shove past teachers. You can threaten others with your gang affiliations and flash your signs and call your tattoos. You can say, "I don't have to listen to you! You're not my fucking teacher!" every day, to someone who actually IS your teacher. You can stand in the doorway and put both middle fingers up for a solid 5 minutes at your teacher. You can say, "Fuck off, pigface!" to your teacher and leave. You can basically do whatever you want. Because absolutely nothing is going to happen if you make a bad choice.
I mean, beyond the obvious. Your future is going to be screwed. Your potential is going to be squandered. Your life is probably going to be a lot harder. But hey, kids have fully developed frontal lobes and are really good at making long-term plans and investments into their futures, and predicting the effects of their actions, right? And not giving consequences, surely that will get RID of the oppressive institutionalized racism that actually does exist, right? This will totally teach them how to navigate the world and be successful role models for the next generation.
In my last class, I have one student passing. One. I brought in cupcakes one day to bribe them into trying (which is something I hate to do, but when you have nothing else to try..... you do food). 9 of them did. 9 of them did AWESOME work and I got to make a big deal out of it...and then they got cupcakes.
And then I was told I needed to stop being the "cool" teacher and follow the rules and not give the kids food, because I make it harder for everyone else, and basically, I am screwing everyone else over. Of course, this coming from someone who has never been in my room, who has never seen all of the other positive incentives I've tried, who also doesn't see me taking away their phones, or telling them to throw out their food 100 times a day. This person who doesn't see me pick my battles with kids who regularly curse me out. I should just stop trying to be cool.
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