Thursday, You Magnificent Bastard

Yeah, Thursday. No real escaping it. But, despite all the running around, and getting kids set up to do a stock market simulation, and returning books and checking out books, there was time for “The Sneetches.”
It’s an assignment I give to my seniors over the summer–watch the old CBS, 12-minute video and then detail three meanings you can attach to it. It’s your basic assignment of claim and evidence, but it does come in the form of a video, and not two articles that have been annotated. My regular tenth-graders watched the video well enough, but I’ll have to see later what meanings they came up with.
I saw some Sneetches at school today when I went into classrooms to pass out information on APN for next year. Without even a second glance it is painfully obvious as to the separation of kids in high school. No, they don’t have stars on their bellies, but they have hats on, and sunglasses, and phones, and, depending on the clientele, certain classes just have a different zeitgeist to them, based solely on the way they carry themselves.
It’s been many years at North since I’ve taught kids who not only don’t want to be in school, but don’t want to do any work. And I try to mix it up every day, searching for something that will resonate enough to snap them out of it. I ask myself, Is this the divide in school these days? How much harder do I have to try to reach kids who may or may not want to be reached? Are the honors classes filled just with students who are acting like honors students?
However, to be positive, some kids just aren’t in a good place and it has nothing to do with the teacher or the class. The students just are not ready to be productive in the way we desire. It hasn’t stopped me from offering private blogs, showing videos of anything that might stimulate them, talking to them, having them speak, to try something new, and to keep up with Unbroken, which we’re reading right now.
The great Carole Shakely once said, “It’s not what you teach them; it’s how you treat them.” Some days I can be a little sarcastic (I know–me!), and other days a little bitter (curs’d Thursday), but most students get that I’m in there battling for them.
Perhaps I will find Sylvester McMonkey McBean tomorrow and see about getting some stars on some bellies so that everyone, at least, will look equal.