On my 2nd day...the COPS were CALLED

HALLEJUAH! I made it through my very first week EVER of teaching!...
There were some HIGHS…and there some, well, I won’t use the word LOW, but just some very ODD moments that perplexed me. However, there was one WTF moment that involved the police. Yes, I said, the police! Stay with me here…

Just so you know, although I am to report to school each day by 9:10am, I don’t start teaching each morning until 10:45am and I get out at 3:20 (w/ a one hour lunch break…you do the math on how long I work!!..lol)…Anyway, I have the morning as my free/preparatory time. Many of you all know I am a morning person so I had all this mad energy my very first morning that was not being directed towards anyone but myself in the teacher’s lounge!

Minutes before my first class I headed to my classroom. I felt like a bag lady because I schlepped through the hall with about 4 pieces of cardboard paper, a box of markers, a huge purse and a bag containing my stereo system from home. YES, I brought my stereo system! J The first class was an all freshman class who entered the room in a single filed line with the look of death in their eyes without me even instructing them!! They were quiet and terrified! I was like, “WHOA…I think I can get with this!” lol I got them to loosen up SLIGHTLY after I asked each individual to go around the room and introduce themselves..LOUDLY! After 10 mins of that, a few knuckleheads in the back decided they thought it was cool to TALK while I was explaining the rules. I stopped what I was doing, busted out in a laugh then suddenly a grill face and said,
“I AM WHO? YOUR TEACHER!
YOU DO WHAT? LISTEN TO ME.
YOU DO NOT WHAT? DISREPECT ME!
YOU WANT TO TRY ME? THEN FINE…IT WILL BE ON AND POPPIN BECAUSE THIS IS NOT A GAME!”

I saw some kids swallow a big lump of spit in their throats and one kid was like..”ya’ll, shut up…now”!! I was dying laughing on the inside because my bark is much louder than my bite! My tactic is to put my foot against the side of necks from jump this entire week with ALL of my classes! …and my principal gave me the green light for sure! Because if there is chaos in the class, I can’t teach them.

I soooo surprised myself because generally I don’t like telling folks what to do, and I thought I was going to struggle with that coming in as a new teacher. However, I didn’t scare them so bad because over half of them left the classroom saying, “see you tomorrow!” or half of them were eager about the topics we were going to later discuss throughout the year! So that warmed my heart. What DIDN’T warm my heart but rather disturbed me was an incident that involved the po-po.

So it’s the end of my 2nd day and I’m leaving the school heading towards the train station. I arrive on the outdoor train platform and I see a fellow teacher that I work with. She calls me over, points in a distance and says, “do you know that curly haired kid?” I respond and tell her, “yes, that is Pete and he's one of my students. (I’ll call him that for my blog..just for a visual, he’s a lanky Spanish Goth kid with black painted nails).

She informed me that seconds before I came on the platform that Pete leaped onto the train tracks, sprinted full speed on the tracks and climbed back up laughing! I was like “WHAT?..are you SERIOUS”? My mouth hit the floor! As she is telling me more of the story, I happen to turn around to look at where Pete and the other group of kids are standing …ONLY TO see something that SET ME OFF COMPLETELY! I see Pete on his knees bent over backwards onto the train tracks being choked by some big black girl! …and THE TRAIN WAS COMING IN A DISTANCE! (To get a visual…60% of Pete’s body was bent over backwards onto the area of the train was going to be arriving..not on the tracks but suspended in the plane where the train meets the platform.) I DROP all my bags. I race over towards them screaming and yelling (all sorts of ungodly things, I’m sure)! The kids run away but I am yelling at Pete to come over. By the time I get to him the train is much closer and he is laughing up a storm….like it was a game! (now, I’m not CRAZY…but I surely thought the kid was so I position myself away from the tracks so that if Pete had any funny ideas of pushing me towards the train…that was not even going to be an option…shoooot!). The station guard contacted the metro police…they came out. I contacted my school officials and the boy’s parents were brought in the next day.

Turns out Pete has tried to commit suicide 3 times now and he was off his medicine when he went and did those foolish stunts. His mom said that behavior is normal when he’s off his meds. I thought to myself, “WELL HELL…can I get a memo to notify me that he’s on medication and will have tendencies to flirt with death??" Good grief!

Aside from that major accident (I couldn’t believe it myself…just nonsense on my 2nd DAY!), the week was all gravy. I have 4 classes that are general education classes, the I have 3 other classes that are mixed with general ed and special education. A few kids left me speechless when they went to locate the continent of Africa on the world map and they placed it on Antarctica! about 30% of the class thought that Queens was another STATE! (I nearly passed out!)

Then in my politics class, one kid said that being Haitian was a religion…not a nationality! (and no, those kids that misidentified those items were NOT special ed!) However, I can tell I have a hand full of EXCEPTIONAL scholars…very Ivy league types in my public speaking class! One girl cracked her mouth open to talk about the state of black people in America, “ she used such words as misogyny, genocide, epidemic, cultural imperialism”..I WAS LIKE WHAT..YESSSS??? She is 14! It put a smile on my face..of course the rest of the class was like..”who is the girl speaking Chinese?” lol…My first lesson was based around Common’s song on his album BE called, “It’s your world” and I played the end of the song for them and explained what a hyphen on a tombstone stood for. How it stood for "life" and what you do in your lifetime determines your legacy...and how public speaking can add to your legacy!. They LOVED IT..(thanks Dave for the hyphen lesson!)

I’m excited about my journey! I can honestly say that it is the best decision I have made so far in my life and I thank God for giving me the gift of being able to touch kids out the gate! I love those kids and I don’t even know them yet! I have 221 kids…yes 221 kids. The classrooms are overcrowded and the rooms are hotter than hell, but I can truly say that I can’t wait until I wait up tomorrow to go teach the ninos!!!!