My nose is running and I attribute it
to days of smokey air. I take an antihistamine. By the time I get
to school I feel a fever coming on and I use up half of the single
box of Kleenex that the district allots me for a school year. I go
on teaching, attempting to discreetly step out the classroom door to
blow my nose and stuffing soggy tissues in my pocket. Recounting this
I remember to empty the pockets of my jeans before throwing them into
the wash. There are two pain in the ass tests that have to be
administered in a single week and one class session is slashed by two
hours for a teacher's meeting. It would be too late to get a sub and
the deadline for the second test would be blown. I try to handle the
test materials as minimally as possible. It's been ages since I've
had a cold and I realize how infrequently in my pre-teaching life,
that I am crammed into a small room with 40 people who don't get flu
shots. I'll stay home next time I'm sick but even with the best sub
a setback is inevitable. Like most of my students, I have no sick
leave or benefits. But of course, if I miss a few hours of work,
there will still be food on the table and my phone will stay
connected.
I expect to lose a lot of students
after Thanksgiving vacation but most of them come back. I am still
smitten with the Ethiopians and am recognizing a handful of the other
students with that certain glint. There are always students I
particularly like and a few whom I'm a couple degrees below being not
crazy about. In a “too many tests and too little time” week I've
reacted slightly harshly to a rather churlish young man who is
slightly fucking with my administration of tests. Perhaps if I pay
him a bit of extra attention when he's not showing off it might
satiate his need of attention.
I am being observed by an administrator
on Tuesday night which is a cause of slight agitation but otherwise
the coming week is light, with only two full nights of instruction, a
museum visit on the third night and a school dance to celebrate the
holidays and the three week vacation. I am told that it is expected
of the teachers to dance and I actually dread this more than having
my teaching evaluated.
This phase of my life will be
associated with feeling stretched, as my daytime hours are consumed
by CNN and clicking from the New York Times, Washington Post,
Politico, The Guardian, Huffington Post...while I work at my office
and prepare lessons. Then at night my world is a group of mostly
undocumented students. Housekeepers. Cooks. Gardeners.
Custodians. Mechanics.
There are always a couple of entrepreneurs,
in their thirties and forties. Their spoken English is pretty good
and they're eager to hone their grammar and learn some basic writing.
They run small businesses and have skilled trades. They exude a
trustworthy earnestness. The older male students are courtly. They
pick up things that I drop and rein in the occasional rambunctious
younger student.
While it's a hotbox, I'm with people I
admire. I try to make sure they know that here in California, they
are welcome. Perhaps the location makes them somewhat less
vulnerable than in other parts of the country with regard to being
undocumented, nevertheless the atmosphere since the election is
changed. The city would come to a halt without the labor of
immigrants, largely undocumented. My students get this. Despite
being vilified and disrespected, my students know that their cheap
labor keeps things humming along. When I'm not with them I obsess
on Trump, and delight at every new sign that his demise is
inevitable. There is certainly personal gratification as the Russian
onion sheds more skin but it is particularly comforting when I look
out at my students and know that it won't always be like this.
Yolanda is one my favorites. She has
the highest test score in the class and, but for a reticence about
speaking, she would be in a much higher level course. Once in a while
I pass out a word search at the beginning of the class. I never both
to print the key because I don't waste time with them solving the
puzzle. I say, “Take it home and finish it.” They hover over
the puzzles, rapt and they require no attention from me while they
try to solve them. I'll attempt the puzzle myself just to see how
hard it is. Yolanda is a machine. She solves the entire puzzle
before I've found only a few words. She marks student papers more
scrupulously than I do. Her eyebrow arches slyly when she's amused
and she's one of a very few who gets all my jokes.
Most of my fellow teachers teach two
classes. They grunt at me when we pass and watch the clock and
squirm at meetings. My classroom is used in the morning by a friend
of a friend. I pick up after him and he helps me navigate the
idiosyncratic administration. I attempt to initiate collaboration
with others who teach in the low levels but my overtures are largely
ignored. The advisor who could potentially be the most helpful is
curt and officious. I do appreciate the quick maintenance and repair
of classroom technology but I am hobbled by the lack of support and
surprised that there is so little sense of community.
I am looking forward to a three week
vacation. I still think all the time about quitting. And then some
lesson I've slaved over will go right and they'll actually
demonstrate that they've learned something. How could I not do this?
The verdict now is that I'll soldier on until I'm too burned out to
be effective. The bureaucracy is so dispiriting but so many of my
students model persistence that will likely buoy me indefinitely. As
will witnesses the inevitable downfall of POTUS, his sleazy family
and cronies.
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