I have recently discovered that I am cool. This is not a first for me; I was cool in the sixth grade when I had the good fortune of being--among the seven boys in my grade--neither that crazy sociopath kid who talked to trees nor the fat kid (who was, you know, fat). In seventh grade, there was an influx of students, and I became very instantly uncool. By high school, I was pretty tight with the fat kid, that Marilyn Manson kid that everyone else was almost too scared of to pick on (except not really at all), and all the other dorks and misfits who picked theater over sports for after-school activities.
I mean, I've always been cool, from my fourth grade school picture in my Harley Davidson t-shirt to my years in New York City playing rock star to empty venues on Friday nights. I'm, like, a totally rock 'n' roll, non-comformist, anti-establishment, heavy-metal-punk-rock-Bruce-Springsteen-and-Black-Sabbath dude, y'know? It's just that I'm SO cool that for most of my life I've been the only person cool enough to see how cool I am, see? Lightyears ahead of the curve and such.
Anyway, I've been observing/student teaching once a week at JHS all semester, where my host teacher leads a journalism class. I do not know what I have done or said in that class, aside from having a giant beard, but those kids have decided that Mr. Beard is THE COOLEST! Sounds awesome, right? Don't all teachers want to be the cool teacher, like that suave motherf**ker in that crappy Rose McGowan horror flick that was on TV the other day--that dude was helping young damsels-in-distress with their lockers, beating flunkies in half-court for the wager of an A in his class ("I believe you owe me an A."), making out with his smokin' hot girlfriend in front of students, and then--and THEN--he was like, "Call me Pete." Now that is cool. Who doesn't want to be that teacher?
I don't. That guy was a douche, every aspect of his behavior was inappropriate and should have been grounds for firing, and by trying to be a peer instead of an elder he completely undermined his own authority. Good thing he was a good basketball player, I guess, or he might have had some classroom management issues.
Well, I'm 5'3" in my teacher shoes, and I don't shoot hoops. I'm glad kids like me and think they can relate to me (they seem to value my opinion, and that's certainly a plus), but it's like they're so convinced I'm cool that they forget I'm a teacher. One of them actually started to say something really crass about my host teacher right in front of me! Look, if a kid is dissatisfied with the way he's being taught, I do want to hear about that. I can learn from that. But how did I let that interest get mistaken for, "Hey, I'm the cooool teacher. You can talk crap about your other teachers in front of me. Don't worry, I'm coooool."
You know what happens when you forget your place because you're too busy trying to be cool? You become Michael Scott from The Office. I don't want to be the Michael Scott of teachers. Sure, I want the kids to like me, but not because they think I'm like a kid or I'm on their level; because I give them the chance to come up to my level and behave like and be treated like adults.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Reading Response: Looking For Alaska
This blog contains spoilers. You have been warned.
I have a confession to make: yesterday, I was that bad substitute that mostly ignores the kids while he sits and reads because of this book. I had started reading it a tiny bit at a time during the week, but during a planning period yesterday (which combined with lunch to form a 90-minute block of freedom in the middle of my day) I had my first chance to start reading in earnest, and when the kids came back to class I couldn't quite pull myself away.
At first, it was the humor in John Green's narrator, Miles "Pudge" Halter, that hooked me. Pudge and his friends are quintessential teenagers with the intelligence to make their teenage-ness really hilarious. My private high school in Jersey certainly didn't have everything in common with Pudge's Alabama boarding school, but I felt a lot more connection to that experience than to the ECE class I was charged with for the day--populated by kids who mostly seemed smart enough for comprehensive classes but too resigned to failure and too determined to hate everything about school to prove it to anyone. I do love the way that teenagers see the world and interpret it; that's one of the bigger reasons I'm going into high school. What I love more is teenagers who can back up their attitude with brains, who aren't all backtalk and self-absorption. These are the characters John Green creates in Looking For Alaska, and that got me.
Then the book stopped being funny, and it hit really close to home. I had a friend in high school who was a mystery like Alaska. She was that dark, sad, beautiful girl who smoked to die but laughed and smiled in a way that made me want the first day I spent with her to last forever and made me act a fool that whole day just to keep her laughing. She only used payphones and usually hung out with a group of people I didn't want to be around, and so we mostly lost touch when she left my school and went to live with her father. A week before her 18th birthday, she took a train into New York City with some friends for a night on the town. Late that night, she overdosed and died at the hospital. I hadn't seen or talked to her in seven months, but the day she died I was thinking about calling her--I couldn't remember her number.
After Jill died, my friends and I were left with a lot of the same questions and feelings as Pudge and his friends. Like Pudge, I had had an infatuation with Jill that never had a chance to blossom. Even as distanced as I had become from her before she died, I had guilt to deal with; maybe if I hadn't let her slip away things would have been different, maybe if I'd been a better friend to her she wouldn't have spent so much time with those friends I never liked. More than anything, I had to deal with the fact that I'd been clumsy with our relationship and would never know if she died knowing how much I'd loved her--and with never knowing how she really felt about me.
Another confession (or two): While six ECE students alternately slept at their desks, toyed with the idea of actually doing their assignments, and watched rap videos on YouTube, I teared up behind the teacher's desk reading this book. After dismissal, I cleaned up the room a bit and sat down to read for a few more minutes before writing a note to the teacher about my day. So yeah, I liked the book. A lot. One of the quotes on the back cover says, "The spirit of Holden Caulfield lives on," but Holden Caulfield was not this reflective, not this purposeful. Looking For Alaska asks the questions teenagers have to start thinking about for the first time and admits to them that they will probably never have any more answers than what they choose to believe. It is literature as much as it is adolescent, if not more, and I wish I had had this book eight years ago, when I was dreaming of my lost friend's uncatchable ghost and kicking myself in the ass for never pulling her as close or holding her as tight as I always wanted.
I have a confession to make: yesterday, I was that bad substitute that mostly ignores the kids while he sits and reads because of this book. I had started reading it a tiny bit at a time during the week, but during a planning period yesterday (which combined with lunch to form a 90-minute block of freedom in the middle of my day) I had my first chance to start reading in earnest, and when the kids came back to class I couldn't quite pull myself away.
At first, it was the humor in John Green's narrator, Miles "Pudge" Halter, that hooked me. Pudge and his friends are quintessential teenagers with the intelligence to make their teenage-ness really hilarious. My private high school in Jersey certainly didn't have everything in common with Pudge's Alabama boarding school, but I felt a lot more connection to that experience than to the ECE class I was charged with for the day--populated by kids who mostly seemed smart enough for comprehensive classes but too resigned to failure and too determined to hate everything about school to prove it to anyone. I do love the way that teenagers see the world and interpret it; that's one of the bigger reasons I'm going into high school. What I love more is teenagers who can back up their attitude with brains, who aren't all backtalk and self-absorption. These are the characters John Green creates in Looking For Alaska, and that got me.
Then the book stopped being funny, and it hit really close to home. I had a friend in high school who was a mystery like Alaska. She was that dark, sad, beautiful girl who smoked to die but laughed and smiled in a way that made me want the first day I spent with her to last forever and made me act a fool that whole day just to keep her laughing. She only used payphones and usually hung out with a group of people I didn't want to be around, and so we mostly lost touch when she left my school and went to live with her father. A week before her 18th birthday, she took a train into New York City with some friends for a night on the town. Late that night, she overdosed and died at the hospital. I hadn't seen or talked to her in seven months, but the day she died I was thinking about calling her--I couldn't remember her number.
After Jill died, my friends and I were left with a lot of the same questions and feelings as Pudge and his friends. Like Pudge, I had had an infatuation with Jill that never had a chance to blossom. Even as distanced as I had become from her before she died, I had guilt to deal with; maybe if I hadn't let her slip away things would have been different, maybe if I'd been a better friend to her she wouldn't have spent so much time with those friends I never liked. More than anything, I had to deal with the fact that I'd been clumsy with our relationship and would never know if she died knowing how much I'd loved her--and with never knowing how she really felt about me.
Another confession (or two): While six ECE students alternately slept at their desks, toyed with the idea of actually doing their assignments, and watched rap videos on YouTube, I teared up behind the teacher's desk reading this book. After dismissal, I cleaned up the room a bit and sat down to read for a few more minutes before writing a note to the teacher about my day. So yeah, I liked the book. A lot. One of the quotes on the back cover says, "The spirit of Holden Caulfield lives on," but Holden Caulfield was not this reflective, not this purposeful. Looking For Alaska asks the questions teenagers have to start thinking about for the first time and admits to them that they will probably never have any more answers than what they choose to believe. It is literature as much as it is adolescent, if not more, and I wish I had had this book eight years ago, when I was dreaming of my lost friend's uncatchable ghost and kicking myself in the ass for never pulling her as close or holding her as tight as I always wanted.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Reading Response: The Lightning Thief
Of the "teen lit." or "adolescent lit." books that I've read so far this semester, this has probably been my favorite. Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief is the first in a series about a boy from New York who finds out around the end of his sixth-grade year that the gods and monsters of Greek myth are real, and he's one of them--a demigod, in fact, half human and half god. Among the mysteries Percy (short for Perseus) Jackson must solve is the question of which god is his father, so I won't spill the beans here.
As the story unfolds, Percy sets out on a quest to find and recover Zeus's stolen lightning bolt, a personally important task for him because he is the primary suspect on Mount Olympus (which, by the way, has moved from Greece to the 600th floor of the Empire State Building). Along the way, he has dealings with more mythical creatures than I knew existed, even in myth, and discovers how the Olympians, their monsters and friends, and their offspring continue to be the driving force behind "Western culture."
Riordan writes from Percy's perspective, with a convincingly naive yet adaptable voice, and the action and mythical references never let up. I've read a couple of series books this semester, and this is the first one that's made me want to continue the series. It's definitely adolescent, perhaps moreso than it is literature, but it's informed and fun--adventure with an education--and I kind of like the idea of seeing ancient gods in the modern world.
As the story unfolds, Percy sets out on a quest to find and recover Zeus's stolen lightning bolt, a personally important task for him because he is the primary suspect on Mount Olympus (which, by the way, has moved from Greece to the 600th floor of the Empire State Building). Along the way, he has dealings with more mythical creatures than I knew existed, even in myth, and discovers how the Olympians, their monsters and friends, and their offspring continue to be the driving force behind "Western culture."
Riordan writes from Percy's perspective, with a convincingly naive yet adaptable voice, and the action and mythical references never let up. I've read a couple of series books this semester, and this is the first one that's made me want to continue the series. It's definitely adolescent, perhaps moreso than it is literature, but it's informed and fun--adventure with an education--and I kind of like the idea of seeing ancient gods in the modern world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
