KM is a bright, exceptionally moody student whose mom switched her from my first period class to my third period class in order to avoid certain of her friends. Before the change, KM was often defiant; since the change she only infrequently isn’t.

She hates after-school detention, so recently she’s done pretty good at keeping her tardies in check, but her grades are record low and I dare not try to awake her or tell her to stop talking and do her work or anything of the sort unless I’m up for a stream of belligerence and further noncompliance.

Example:
Me: “KM, please stay after class a moment” (to talk about that thing you just did).
KM to the world in general: “No. I’m not staying after anywhere to talk to him.”
Bell: “Ring.”
Door: “Can I slam closed in front of students trying to walk out of the room without permission, or is that against the rules?”
Me: “Sigh. Here goes another office referral.”

The other day KM’s mom came in for a conference with KM and me. Her math teacher dropped by, too; KM said, “Oh look, here’s my favorite teacher.” (And the math teacher had good things to say about her, too.)

Anything having to do with English or me, though, brought out a stubborn glare. While her mom maintained a polite and supportive appearance about being respectful and doing classwork, KM said, “I don’t get it” or slouched lower in her chair or let her bangs fall over her eyes.

Her mom reassured her: “I didn’t enjoy English, either, until I had a really good English teacher.” (Ouch.)

A bit later her mom reassured me: “Just to let you know, it’s not just you. I get this all the time at home, too.” (Figured.)

I did what I could. To KM I said, “It would be great if you liked me. I think you’re a great kid, and I like you. But it’s not about me; it’s about you. And these failing grades don’t show well for you; you are completely capable of straight A’s in my class.”

She listened respectfully while I explained the work she needs to do to bring up her grade.

Her move.

Yesterday I received this email from my team’s most veteran teacher:

Dear Chester,


For the record-you are an amazing team leader. You help us to run the team efficiently and professionally. To steal a current phrase…You keep us calm so that we can carry on.


I cannot believe all of the work that you have to do, and yet, we never hear a complaint. This leadership position demands a lot of your time and energy, both of which are in short supply with this type of job and especially when you have children.


Thank you for not only doing this job for us, but doing it well.

At the faculty meeting a Relay for Life team representative pleaded for participation.

“One thing that brings a lot of support,” she said, “is a dunking booth–especially if the dunkee is a principal.”

AS, a teacher at my table, whispered, “That would rake in the money. I’d take out a loan.”

I have been aware–in myself and more generally among faculty–of not insignificant discontent with aspects of my school’s administrative team; other teachers around AS knowingly chuckled.

Later in the meeting, an assistant principal reported on the Safe Schools Audit finding. Nestled in among recommendations to keep all doors locked and have no personal lighting in classrooms was a one-line comment lacking any explanation: “There is a lack of respect among students, teachers, and administrators.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” piped up AS, a teacher at my table.

The assistant principal said, “This is the findings summary; I don’t have additional information about that.”

The principal said, “This came out of a small group of students and teachers who were selected for the focus group discussion. A few teachers voiced that.”

“What are we to do with it?” AS piped up again.

The assistant principal shrugged. “It’s part of the report to be aware of.”

We moved on, and the mainly pointless meeting lasted a total of over ninety minutes.

That evening I had a brilliant idea: I could volunteer to collect thoughts from teachers who would remain anonymous and create a summary of recommendations for the administrative team for building respect and trust among teachers and administrators. That would give me ample opportunity to add my own thoughts: respect teachers’ time by having short, to-the-point, meaningful meetings.

(The principal knows that short meetings are good: at our recent two-hour team leaders meeting, he even said to keep our team meetings to half an hour–out of respect for teachers’ need for time.)

“You would have to frame that idea very carefully,” M said. “How could you even bring it up without stepping on toes?”

All at once a brillianter plan hit me: As a team leader, I coordinate six teachers who teach half of the seventh grade. While I have absolutely no authority over anyone else and have felt over the years a comfortable respect among my team of teachers, I could on my own initiative model what I think the principal should do.

I drafted this email and introduced the idea at my team meeting yesterday before sending it out:

Hello team,

In response to the Safe Schools audit note suggesting we at FJH need to build respect between students, teachers, and administrators, I would like to invite your feedback about how our team functions and my role as team leader.

While I most appreciate direct communication, in order to include varying comfort levels I have asked MT [one of our teachers] to accept your comments and to put them into an anonymous, general summary for me that will not be shared with anyone else.

Specifically, I am interested in knowing answers to these questions (although other thoughts are welcome, too):

1. In what ways can I as team leader be more respectful of each team member?
2. What suggestions do you have for how team meetings are conducted? Other team events/activities/processes?

I am not expecting feedback beyond what was said at my meeting:

“This is unnecessary. If I were you, I would want people to come directly to me, and frankly, you’re not the problem [in this school],” our most veteran teacher said.

“I think you’re doing a great job,” said someone else.

“You are kind of harsh sometimes,” a new teacher piped up.

“I feel like this team is very respectful,” said another. “We would be comfortable coming to you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I just want to be able to respond to that faculty meeting statement in some way. If nothing comes of this, that’s fine.” I didn’t add that I think that if the administrative team is worth its salt it will follow suit.

As I adjourned the meeting, I reminded everyone, “Complain to MT.”

“Hey MT,” said another teacher as they left the room. “I need to talk to you about one of the teachers on my team…. Can’t grow any hair.”

At the end of the day the other seventh grade team leader, who receives copies of my team emails and is great friends with my team’s very talkative science teacher, mentioned she liked my idea and was thinking about doing that herself.

Let the word spread.

No students entered their privilege tickets into the worthless prize of the week contest all day, until last period.

That may have been because I first showed them the prize–a pair of hospital socks–and said, “I don’t know where I got these, and the person who wore them may or may not still be living.”

In last period, however, I displayed the socks only after inviting entries into the contest.

“Anyone interested in entering the worthless prize of the week contest?” I asked, waving around the drawing container with the socks tucked away inside.

“I do!” said JT, giving me his ticket.

“Anyone else? You sure? It’s a worthless prize, after all! You’re going to let JT win without any competition?”

“What’s the prize?” someone asked.

“I haven’t shown it yet. Anyone else?”

MD shook his head in disbelief and opened his folder to find his ticket and handed it over.

“Nobody else? It’s your last chance!”

RJ blurted out, “I’ll do it, too,” and handed me her ticket.

That seemed to be the end of interest, so I showed off the socks.

“Oh! I want those!” JT said.

At the end of the class, I drew a ticket: MD’s. He promptly handed the socks over to JT.

“I’m glad I didn’t win,” said RJ.

The talk these days is about “increased rigor in instruction” and the like, so I’ve been doing more of what I’ve been doing all along: giving the students choice in relatively open-ended projects.

BV is a very big boy, almost as tall as me and, well, big. He’s the one who, when I tell him to stop talking, says, “I wasn’t talking! Gosh. Did you just give me a strike? I hate this class.”

He’s had a hard time getting into sustained silent reading this year, mostly opting for the magazines I have in my classroom for students who don’t bring their library books with them. This is fine by me, as it is supported by Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide.

Actually, BV has had a hard time getting into anything academic this year in my class, so even his opting to leaf through a magazine–“I just look at the pictures,” I heard him say to someone recently–is a step in the right direction, especially since on two consecutive days he’s come to me to ask if I could get additional issues of the National Geographic (and no, the several issues I already have don’t have any naked people in them….as won’t any I add to my collection).

And then today he came to me during the reading time and said, “Mr. Jacobs, I found a mistake.” His face showed a mixture of pride and uncertainty as he pointed to a National Geographic photo caption about China’s Hunan Province.

“Good catch,” I said. “It looks like it should be human, doesn’t it? But actually, that’s correct–it’s the name of the province.” (Then I told him about the Hunan restaurant I could barely bring myself to look into as I walked past years ago when I lived in the city, for fear of cannibalistic evidence.)

A victory in two ways, I say: He willingly read in spite of himself, and he just learned something.

It seems every year someone says, “This is the worst group of students I’ve ever seen. Do you have JC? He is terrible.” But while maybe JC was in fact on my roster and was pretty much a handful, I’ve always scoffed at the ever-worse trend.

Then there was last year. In the first weeks of school, the sixth grade teachers encouraged all seventh grade teachers to retire if at all possible at the end of the year: “I have never seen anything like this,” they said. “The students won’t be quiet, and they are so disrespectful.”

At the end of last year the principal advised the seventh grade teachers this year not to turn our backs to write on the board in front of even our best behaved classes, at our own peril.

“There’s something about this group of kids that is different,” he said. “I’ve never seen this level of–I don’t even know what it is–before.”

And then at the bank this summer I talked with a teller whose daughter was in That Class, and she said, “Oh, WR had a wonderful year last year!” That’s not something that a parent of a member of a That Class would ever say, I didn’t think, so things couldn’t be too bad, right?

Pretty much right, so far, here at one eighth of the way through the school year.

In one class there is RD, of course, so disruptive and disrespectful that I can’t even send him out of the classroom because he refuses to go (I have to page the principal to come get him), and there is DD, who is extremely smart and won’t be quiet, but there is also WR, who, now that I’ve met her, I realize would have a great year no matter where she is (whew…my class shouldn’t be too much of a let down), and CC, who always asks if she can touch my head (“No, but thanks for asking.”), and WN, who multiple times a day asks if she can sit beside CC, and lots of other studious kids who are a lot of fun.

That’s my middle-of-the-day class. In the morning I have the compulsive tardier, the compulsive back talker, the compulsive talker (“Vegetarians can, too, eat meat–it’s called the veggie burger.”), the compulsive denier (“I wasn’t talking! Gosh. Did you just give me a strike? I hate this class.”), several other compulsive talkers and back talkers, and more, but that class also has quiet OB, whose mom just died and who works really hard, and SA, who is perfect in every way–it’s true!–and HC, a very small boy who plays bass fiddle in his family band and, like only one other student before him, thanks me every day as he leaves the classroom.

My final class is home to one of the worst nightmares of last year. I often saw him going to in-school suspension (which then was next door to my classroom) muttering, slamming the door, etc. Of all the students who had to be sent from that room to the office, I think he was the most frequent flier. But so far this year I haven’t had to discipline him at all other than maybe one “Fowl” because he does speak rather aggressively to other students in the class (who I agree are very annoying). He’s in his own little world–Should I be the one to break it to him that you don’t press return after every sentence?–but works really, really hard, and I’m going to sap that for all it’s worth.

“He is having a great year,” the guidance counselor said at a parent meeting last week, and he surely is.

Also in my final class is HA, who for a few days refused to speak to me (but, according to her rules, could write a one-sentence note to me per day) and now almost daily asks me, “Guess what.” “What?” “I’m tired.” or “Guess what.” “What?” “My rabbit’s fat.” There’s also the drama queen KM, who wrote on my band’s YouTube channel, “You guys are actually good” and whose essay about not having milk for on her cocoa puffs may have been the funniest student essay I’ve ever read. And there’s RJ, the daughter of the local commonwealth attorney. She’s a rather perfect student, too, as are boys JT and MD. It’s a good end-of-the-day class.

Across the board, disruptive talking is the biggest problem. To curb disarray, this year I’m going overboard with SSR (sustained silent reading). Last year I decided to begin doing it more; this year I’m starting every class period with twenty minutes. It’s great–I’ve read five young adult novels so far this school year–and once the kids settle into reading, it establishes a sane plane on which to build the rest of the activities of the day. Students don’t complain much about it, either–it might be their best twenty minutes of the day.

My other classroom sanity push has to do with consequences. I assign strikes whenever a student misbehaves; those add up to Fowls, which result in lunchtime or in-school suspension and other bad things. In an effort to make myself look better at classroom management, I’ve tried to reduce the number of Fowls I assign by giving “privilege tickets” to students earning zero strikes over five consecutive days. Quite a few kids have straightened up in order to try perfection for a change, and those who were already perfect have eagerly redeemed their tickets for Talons (school money) or in order to listen to music during silent reading, leave class three minutes early, have me make a positive phone call home, etc.

A new option on the tickets this year is “Entry into the worthless prize of the week contest.” On Monday six kids entered to try to have their name drawn for a corked, empty, glass, 4-ounce honey jar. It was sealed pretty tight; I couldn’t easily and so didn’t remove the cork.

“It might be antique air, in there,” I said.

“Yeah right,” my compulsive back talker said. “Someone probably farted in it and when you open it up it’ll”–here she made motions of air flooding over her face–“and you’ll die.”

It was a moment of clear thinking. My mother-in-law had just questioned that my least favorite part of teaching is students.

“It’s not that I don’t like them,” I said, and here was the clarity part: “It’s just that teaching middle school is about working with kids, when I want to be working with English.”

I was on a kick last week–and it’s appearing to continue this week–of needing a job that challenges my creativity and demands hard work of me; I think I’m on the downhill side of reveling in the workings of a room full of fidgety children.

In some ways I consider myself an artist, a bit of a writer, a bit of a musician. But I love making spreadsheets, too, and Google forms, although analyzing data is not my cup of tea. Organizing is fun. Delegating jobs to other people is fun. The idea of starting my own business really appeals to me, if the business involves adequate money, only a little stress, and mainly activities that I enjoy.

The trouble is, most any career change is going to be more limiting. Working for a newspaper, a job I once very much enjoyed, would take more time and attention away from my own creative endeavors–and could never afford the family time that teaching does.

Would playing the lottery help? Probably not; I just read in Ecclesiastes that “Sweet is the sleep of laborers, whether they eat little or much; but the surfeit of the rich will not let them sleep.”


I took an informal poll of my table mates at the church potluck: three of the four of us are professionally paying the bills and would rather a different job; the fourth is a school-district plumber who only wishes his job kept him busier. Who am I to think I can rise above the humdrum and find paying fulfillment? 


And so for the foreseeable future I’ll still be a teacher, but one with his eyes on the lookout for something ideal.

Recently I have wondered–a lot–about what kind of job I would enjoy most, but I always count the trade offs as not worth giving up teaching: most jobs give but two weeks off each year (last year I got that much time off for snow days alone–paid), require evening or weekend work, lack stability…you know, all those things. Teaching affords me the money and schedule to prioritize family, which in turn occasionally allows me to pursue my other creative endeavors.


What really sounds appealing to me is having a creative space laboratory and a benefactor, someone who pays my salary for five years while I write a book or work on music. Kickstarter wouldn’t cut it: I don’t need supplemental cash as much as a stable, cushy salary with traditional benefits and no strings attached. eHow’s How to Find a Benefactor pointed me to an arrangement seeking website which wasn’t quite what I’m looking for, either, given its gentlemanly tendency of calling benefactors “Sugar Daddies” and touting Playboy‘s endorsement. 


I clearly need an alternative; in the meantime, I’m trying the next best thing: giving what I want (sort of) to others. I surveyed my students, “If you could do anything you wanted to do in this class–and it has to be related to English and Reading—what would you do? I want this school year to be meaningful for you, so give me your ideas. How do you want to show  your creative productivity? And how do you want to be graded? What materials would you need?”


Students seemed interested in giving their ideas, of which quite a few sound a lot like assignments they would have completed in late elementary school, some are already in my plans, and too many have relatively little value when it comes to learning to read and write. Others just might work as new options.


At this point in the year I know little about my students, but their responses–and one boy’s situation, in particular–suggest either the same need that I have for self determination and creative liberty or a dire lack of originality: CG, who I’ve heard that, due to an incident involving his dad that nearly resulted in CG being removed from the home, which really scared his parents, is always sent straight to his room after school so that his parents won’t be in danger of doing anything that would risk social services’ involvement again, wrote that he wants “quiet space” and to be graded with an “A+.” (He clarified a bit later that the quiet space would be for reading and that the grade would be for “how much i did or if i did it.”)


I’ve compiled a number of the responses:


Straight from (I suspect) fifth grade: 
-“posters hands on projects and themes”
-“I would like to do these things were you take shoe boxes or any type of box, (depending on the size) , and find items that you could stick in the box that relates to a certain book……. You could make the box what you think is describing the book.”
-“We can do a children’s book on the computer.”
-“sculptures/diaramas that are based off of our ssr book.”
-“I want to read a book about horses and make a poster with cool facts about them.”
-“i think it would be fun to read a class book and go outside and play kickball but you have to answer a question about the book to be able to kick the ball.”
-“creating with wood sticks and glue and make a sculpture of what was in the book like a building or charicter.”


Already in my plans (more or less):
-“I would read because i think it is fun to read a book in the car and at my house i spend a alot of time a reading books when i really injoy.”
-“I think reserching projects would be fun.”
-“book projects that are fun.”
-“I show my creative process with multiple colors, and alot of orginization.”
-“I would like to do writing and to read stuff and discussed what i read to my friend and write about it.”
-“I would take a poster board and draw about rikki tikki tabby.” Graded by: “spelling and neatness.”


Possible and realistic new options that I’d maybe already thought about:
-“Write Music, Make a magazine, Make A newspaper.”
-“Make a magazine with articles and pictures.” Materials: “colored pencils, markers, lots and lots of paper, the internet to get pictures for the magazine/articles.”
-“I think we should show are creative by drawing and writing.I think we should make like, make a news paper or like a play. This is how I think we should get graded for preparation and good writing.”
-“I think that we should make movies slides on the computer and stuff that we can use the computers such as slide shows of a story on the computer or mini movies that we can make and show the class.”
-“make a movie of some kind and show it to seventh grade….I CALL LEAD ACTOR.”
-“write music and act in plays and draw and write.”
-“sing, wright, teaching Ukrainian.” Graded by: “how many things defined. neat. took time on it.”
-“I want to show my creativity by doing a project on the history of video games.”

Maybe….or maybe not:
-“By creating a game with boy vs girls involving dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedea. The teacher ask to find any word or a date or anther meaning and you have to pick if its one of the 3 books you have and find the word and write it down first one done win that round and gets a tally mark.” Materials needed: “1encyclopedea 1dictionary 1 thesaruse for each group and paper, Pencil and draw erase bored to keep in tack with tally marks.” Grading: “the teacher would look for who trying the hardest and who being the quietest and witch team is not cheating also who being neatest.”
-“by building things and have plays and git prizes”
-“talking.” Materials: “mouth tounge lips voicebox.” Grading: “if my voice is pertty.” (This student is nearly as tall as me, weighs maybe twice as much as me, and is, like me, male.)
-“I like to draw so when i get bored i draw and I like to draw and use old makeup to color my drawings with or old anything. When i am in a mood I draw about my mood.” Graded by: “The Creativity the Texture and the neatness.” (I’ve seen one of these drawings, by the way. It was great.)
-“by making a movie and have free time.” Graded by: “with a star rating (5 stars).”
-“i am much more creative when sitting next to C___:). the class is much more interesting when teachers read love notes from in the hallway. projects that we have to create all on our own and work on in partners chosen by us(c___).”
-“I’m more creative when listening to music and sitting with WN. Poster Board.”
-“i want to work outside.”
-“i want to write a small book with a group.”
-“wach tv.”
-“I would wan’t to show my creative productivity by just reading a book the whole block.”
-“By my spelling,by my creativity,by how many pictures I have,by how many words I have,and by my presentation.”
-“building models” using the materials “blowtorch welder hammer nales power tools” and graded by “how good i did it”

Three students gave me end-of-year gifts: a large mug that says “express yourself,” a bag of fair-trade coffee, and a card with two $5 gift certificates to a local ice cream joint.