template devised during my summer training at Mercy College, I had created a âbiography/autobiographyâ unit as an introductory meet-each-other literacy endeavor. For a model, I had a great kid-friendly biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. I decided on the spot that rather than read the whole book (an invitation for disruption), we would crawl one page at a time, charting the important elements of a biography.
PAGE 1: Birth date and place. Family background.
PAGE 2: Life before age 5.
PAGE 3: Life in elementary school. Friends, interests.
PAGE 4: An important experience or adventure as a young person. This may be a hint for something important the person does as an adult!
I stopped in the middle because after four and a half hours in the room together, we had made it to lunchtime. The kids jumped and pushed en route to the cafeteria. The mood was frantic and hungry and bore no resemblance to the beginning of the morning.
A phenomenon that lives only in our military, prisons, and elementary schools is the crucially serious transit
line.
I hated walking in line as a kid. I thought that if I could show I trusted my students to walk calmly and decently together, they would respect my trust and respect each other. Trust begets good teamwork.
When I reflected on the first hour of my first day, I realized everything I had done in that brief honeymoon period would come back to haunt me. My âteamâ spiel and my desire to offer everyone an evenhanded shake and social contract of respect were disasters of nuclear proportions. With my good-faith gesture, I had put myself in a position to be defied by one charismatic rebel, which of course happened immediately, opening the floodgates. Before I had won therespect and command of the class, I had allowed myself to be drawn into a graceless power struggle with the attention-seeking subverter.
From the Floor to the Moon
felt miles away.
Counter to my hopes, my lack of stern watchfulness during the first lineup enabled them to loudly screw off during future hall-walking time, since I had sent an initial impression that I was not fatally serious about our line. This resulted in a constant public fracas of shouting and shepherding the noncompliers during those formative first weeks. The disorder in the hall spilled wildly into the classroom, turning each morning, each return from lunch, gym, and computers, and each dismissal into an unwieldy and dangerous mess. I had been
too nice.
The first day finished with forty minutes of doling out jobsâsweeper, dustpan holder, boysâ line leader, girlsâ line leader, botanist, three librarians, two popularly demanded assistant librariansâand cleaning the floor, which had somehow become a cyclone scene of shredded papers, tissues, and pencil shavings. I handed out an exuberant welcome letter and supply list to parents that I had revised endlessly over the previous week.
I dismissed the kids out onto the subbasement-level blacktop as a gallery of legal guardians watched and waited behind the chain-link fence above. Seeing the adults waiting for us, my mood changed on a dime. I suddenly felt proud to be a leader in this procession of children, the first nip of excitement since my stairwell descent before the day even started.
The kids scattered immediately, and I headed back into school for the weekly eighty-minute Professional Development session. As soon as I hit the steps, I felt a shot of dull fatigue in my knees, as if they were about to give out. My heart throbbed and I felt a steely pounding in my wrists and forearms.
Barbara Chatton, my in-school mentor, advised me, âIt's never as good as you think it is, and it's never as bad as you think it is. The day's over. Think of it as one door closing and another door opening.â
That night I recounted the fiasco to everyone I knew. My roommate, Greg, and my neighbor Kadi wanted to rip Fausto apart. Their rage was contagious, and I started to feel worse.
PAGE 1: Birth date and place. Family background.
PAGE 2: Life before age 5.
PAGE 3: Life in elementary school. Friends, interests.
PAGE 4: An important experience or adventure as a young person. This may be a hint for something important the person does as an adult!
I stopped in the middle because after four and a half hours in the room together, we had made it to lunchtime. The kids jumped and pushed en route to the cafeteria. The mood was frantic and hungry and bore no resemblance to the beginning of the morning.
A phenomenon that lives only in our military, prisons, and elementary schools is the crucially serious transit
line.
I hated walking in line as a kid. I thought that if I could show I trusted my students to walk calmly and decently together, they would respect my trust and respect each other. Trust begets good teamwork.
When I reflected on the first hour of my first day, I realized everything I had done in that brief honeymoon period would come back to haunt me. My âteamâ spiel and my desire to offer everyone an evenhanded shake and social contract of respect were disasters of nuclear proportions. With my good-faith gesture, I had put myself in a position to be defied by one charismatic rebel, which of course happened immediately, opening the floodgates. Before I had won therespect and command of the class, I had allowed myself to be drawn into a graceless power struggle with the attention-seeking subverter.
From the Floor to the Moon
felt miles away.
Counter to my hopes, my lack of stern watchfulness during the first lineup enabled them to loudly screw off during future hall-walking time, since I had sent an initial impression that I was not fatally serious about our line. This resulted in a constant public fracas of shouting and shepherding the noncompliers during those formative first weeks. The disorder in the hall spilled wildly into the classroom, turning each morning, each return from lunch, gym, and computers, and each dismissal into an unwieldy and dangerous mess. I had been
too nice.
The first day finished with forty minutes of doling out jobsâsweeper, dustpan holder, boysâ line leader, girlsâ line leader, botanist, three librarians, two popularly demanded assistant librariansâand cleaning the floor, which had somehow become a cyclone scene of shredded papers, tissues, and pencil shavings. I handed out an exuberant welcome letter and supply list to parents that I had revised endlessly over the previous week.
I dismissed the kids out onto the subbasement-level blacktop as a gallery of legal guardians watched and waited behind the chain-link fence above. Seeing the adults waiting for us, my mood changed on a dime. I suddenly felt proud to be a leader in this procession of children, the first nip of excitement since my stairwell descent before the day even started.
The kids scattered immediately, and I headed back into school for the weekly eighty-minute Professional Development session. As soon as I hit the steps, I felt a shot of dull fatigue in my knees, as if they were about to give out. My heart throbbed and I felt a steely pounding in my wrists and forearms.
Barbara Chatton, my in-school mentor, advised me, âIt's never as good as you think it is, and it's never as bad as you think it is. The day's over. Think of it as one door closing and another door opening.â
That night I recounted the fiasco to everyone I knew. My roommate, Greg, and my neighbor Kadi wanted to rip Fausto apart. Their rage was contagious, and I started to feel worse.
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