At church last Sunday a man told about his recent rare phone call to his uncle, an important brother figure for him not much older than himself.

The man had known his uncle had become bitter about a number of things; the man prayed that his call would serve the uncle well. In their conversation, though, the uncle warmly reminisced about the man’s parents and, by chance, even the uncle’s old favorite teacher, Mrs. Clark.

The man couldn’t help but bite his prayerful tongue, for he had for years felt bitterness toward his parents, and he had for years felt bitterness toward that Mrs. Clark, who had in some way humiliated him, back in middle school.

It’s inevitable, I suppose, that teachers win some and lose some, and though I’d rather just win them all, I don’t. Take this week. On the same morning, I received two emails, one saying that my youngest guitar student (I give private lessons in my classroom after school) would not be continuing lessons after December, and this one, from a parent of a guitar student who is also in my English class:

Mr Jacobs,
   From the moment when I picked Lily up after school today I could tell something was wrong. Upon getting home she confided in me with what had happened in Language Arts class today. Apparently, her “incorrect” completed assignment was placed in full view for all student peers to see in comparison to another student’s “correct” assignment of the same nature. Both student names were exposed for all to see AND she was even referred to at the time of this exercise. Humiliating. In any classroom setting this would cause great embarrassment. Especially in front of peers, especially for a student who is quiet, especially as a middle school student. Feelings of embarrassment and humiliation do not in any way foster an environment for creativity but rather hinder. How can one maintain confidence when something like this happens…they most likely lose any confidence that may have been difficult to attain, especially with someone as quiet-natured and as sensitive as Lily. 
   Today is Lily‘s birthday. No special salutations are necessary. Just please keep the above in mind. Her father and I are very concerned about this occurence. Lily asked me NOT to email you but we felt it necessary so please DO NOT let her become aware of this communication. It will simply cause more embarrassment       

I would have liked to explain how essay workshops sometimes work in my class, and that many students were in a position to benefit from Lily’s and my dialogue about improving her paper, and that she hadn’t been purposefully singled out as much as randomly selected from a pile, but the bottom line of Lily’s hurt would have remained. I replied with just this, and haven’t heard anything since:

Thank you so very much for writing and telling me this. I feel I owe Lily an apology, but I won’t mention it to her–please accept my apologies on her behalf. I will try to be more sensitive to this in the future.

Having a student teacher wasn’t really my choice, this year, not after my experience last year with a guy not eager for but in great need of constructive feedback.

It didn’t help, last year, that a week after signing out a teacher laptop for him to use, I noticed on the screen a folder named “pics of girls.” That day after school was out and he had left, I took the laptop to my assistant principal.

“I don’t know what this is,” I said, “but I thought I’d better bring it to you before checking it out.”

“Yes. It sure doesn’t look good,” he said as he clicked on the icon–and found photos of two young girls in their Easter dresses, the daughters of the teacher who had previously used the computer.

But that clearing up of my suspicions didn’t mean he instantly convinced me or anyone else of his teacherly potentials. A couple weeks later, my principal said to me, “How’s your student teacher doing? We always laugh at him because he leaves right after school, and he doesn’t take anything home with him. When I did my student teaching–and that was just keyboarding–I had boatloads of work to do every day.”

When I later received a job application reference form to complete about him, I sorrowfully but with few qualms stated that I would not hire him, if deciding were up to me. I did it for the children.

All things considered, at the end of last year I deliberately declined supervising for this year; there’s something special about having my own classroom and students be, well, my own.

However, one summer day my other assistant principal called to ask if I would please take on a student teacher this semester; they were very much in need. I put aside my put out feelings and agreed–and now have an enthusiastic student teacher whose greatest strength is learning. She wants constructive criticism, and she implements changes even as the day progresses. She’s a hard worker, too, who has wanted more and more responsibility; I’ve been busy shopping online and working on other ideas.

I’ve been playing body guard, too, since the supervisor of her previous placement, who is currently supervising a couple other student teachers in the school, has not adhered to appropriate professor-student boundaries in past weeks even after being told that she would rather he not contact her.

One day last week he struck me as a fawning adolescent just waiting patiently for excuses to talk to his crush, hopeful beyond reason that the girl who scorns him would swoop to his open arms, knowing that if they crossed paths just one more time, she would fall for him. He appeared to be hanging around for much of the day, in whichever part of the building my student teacher was.

Did I mention that he’s retired, and his kids are out of college?

At any rate, she has but two weeks left, my student teacher, after which I’ll have Christmas break. Then, after the turn of the year, I’ll actually have to do work again.

Bring it on, I say–after I finish her letter of recommendation.

My school system has hired an outside survey company to gain an understanding of its employees’ perspectives.

At a called, after-school meeting yesterday, teachers were advised that the survey takers would remain anonymous and that our honest answers were coveted.

Then my principal checked his notes and added–and restated several times–that we should also remember that the results of the survey would be “affordable information” and would probably end up in the newspaper and all over Facebook.

A teacher piped up: “I’m only going to say positive things,” he said.

We had parent conference day a few days ago, on election day, as usual. Students stayed home from school, and teachers were available to meet with parents from noon until seven o’clock. It works out nicely this way: teachers can vote in the morning, and in the afternoon and evening a few parents trickle through, and teachers like me have some time to work on other priorities.

This year three of our school board’s five members were up for re-election or replacement, including the board chairperson, who is the mother of both one of my current and one of my past favorite students and who is the representative for our area’s and my school’s part of the county.

In the morning M and I and the girls shopped largely unsuccessfully for boots and coveralls for me and a few other things before stopping for M and me to vote at the local poll, where to my relief, I confess, we didn’t run into the campaigning board chairperson. Then I ate a quick lunch and headed to my classroom to read the manual for a new digital recorder I bought for our band, shove some digital paperwork back and forth and even print some of it, and say nice things to the good parents who came by.

That’s how it is, much of the time, on parent conference days: The parents who take the time to come in are mainly the same parents who have taken the time to raise their children with attentive care. Conferences take on a rhythm of accoladation.

Like the school board chairperson.

“How are you doing today?” I asked her. “Nervous? I’ve never thought too much about this aspect of being an in un in el-un a el. In an elected position.”

“I’ve had to develop a tough skin,” she said. “The last few weeks especially have been pretty harsh. But I have good, close friends, and wonderful family, and faith, and so all of that is all that matters. And I’ve gotten to meet so many good people all over the county.”

I smiled and nodded and showed her her daughter’s essay about horseback riding, and hoped my eye contact and voice were suitably steady.

She lost the election by three votes. If two of the people who voted for her opponent would have changed sides, it would have been a game changer.

In my first teaching job interview not that many years ago, a principal asked me, “How will you differentiate in your classroom?”

I’d never formally studied education–my plan was to be hired under a provisional license based on my English degree and then take the required education classes–and had never heard of “differentiate,” so I asked something like, “What does that mean?”

My interviewers exchanged looks and at the end of the interview I was told, “We have had many highly qualified applicants.”

On Thursday this week, after leading a literature discussion, my student teacher said to me, “That’s really hard. I don’t know how to ask the right questions. You’re good at that.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It helps that I’ve taught these stories so many times before.”

The next day a colleague told me that her son, who was in my class a couple years ago, still talks about my class. This was particularly nice to hear because I often fear I don’t challenge my most brilliant students.

“That class was a high point for him,” she said. “He can still recite the poem he learned, the television one. And I remember that when I observed your class back when we all did walk-throughs I was impressed that your discussions included different levels of questions, facts from the story for some students but higher thinking for others. You were able to include everyone at their own level.”

For the second time this year my principal called me out of my room. He was chuckling again, as he was not so long ago when he told me I couldn’t beg. But this time the charge caught me off guard:

“I received a call from a parent,” he said, “who said that their student was distracted during a test because you were singing.”

Now, at times I do sing out in class; sanity breeds boredom, I believe, especially in a middle school classroom. But during a test? Did I really?

“I don’t generally make it a practice to do that during tests, but it’s possible I did, although I don’t remember. I don’t suppose it was more than a line,” I said.

“She said it distracted her. It’s alright if you sing when it’s part of a lesson, but not during tests.”

Only sing when it’s relevant to the lesson? What about congratulating students on turning in late work or doing something nice by singing lines from “The Wind Beneath My Wings”? What about easing the early morning classroom doldrums with eye-roll-inspiring outbursts of select lines from “His Eye Is On the Sparrow”? What good is torture, anyway, without music?

I managed to move on to another topic with the principal–how I plan to approach the article about positive relationships at my school that I’m writing for the local newspaper’s educational insert–but all day I continued to seeth at what I later reasoned was my principal’s own teeth-cutting insecurity manifested in boss-man directives that instead could simply have been a polite, “I just wanted to let you know of the parent’s concern; try to keep it in mind.”

I’m still learning to show that sort of graciousness in my classroom, too, no doubt. Not long ago, only a week after he’d asked me in the halls, “Mr. Jacobs, is there space in your class?” a student known for being extremely disruptive and problematic was transferred into my largest class. From the second he entered my room, he tried to seize control of the classroom.

“Mr. Jacobs,” he called out, “I have to go to the bathroom. What are we doing? I need a pencil. Hey, can I borrow a pencil?”

It was no mistake that his assigned seat was the closest to my desk, where I could sit on him with very stern and direct instructions that did succeed in shutting him down quite efficiently but left me wondering how I could replace suppression with respectful rapport. It took me a couple weeks, but this Friday I think it started happening when, during a quiet work time, he started talking across the room.

“J, come here,” I ordered. He rose from his desk and walked the two feet to mine and stood there with–as had proved typical–his dark eyes misted and forehead troubled. I was ready to launch into a “don’t speak in my classroom, young man” lecture as a followup to the “no talking, no getting out of your seat without my permission” instructions of the day before, but what came out instead was, “Please be mindful that I would like all of my students to work quietly during this time.”

“Okay. Sorry,” he said.

Problem solved (for that day, anyway).

But even if I am picking up gracious leadership, not being a bit crazy just won’t do, with herds of twelve-year-old students stuck in a small classroom. I tried to be especially mindful the rest of the week.

For a “quiz” after studying homophones, students wrote paragraphs using incorrect homophones, and then exchanged papers to make corrections. Building on a strategy I’d recently learned about, I had them switch papers by standing along the edges of the room and constructing either paper airplanes or snowballs (most students’ first choice) out of their paragraphs.

Then I stood in the middle of the room and said, “This is the only time in your preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle, or high school, college, post graduate, and doctoral studies that you’ll be told to do this: Throw your papers at your teacher.” I covered my head and cringed while snowballs and paper airplanes lightly pounded me. (Then they each had to find a snowball or plane that wasn’t theirs to read and grade.)

“Can we do that again?” one student asked.

“Can we use books next time?” said another.

Later a student asked, “Mr. Jacobs, May I please go to the bathroom? I have an eyelash stuck in my eye.” She pulled her bottom eyelid down so I could see.

“Just lick it out,” I said, turning back to my computer.

She gave a little toe pounce there on the floor, and said emphatically, “But my tongue’s not long enough.”

Still later we began a study of utopia and dystopia in literature by reading Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron,” in which the genius boy and beautiful ballerina leap “like deer on the moon,” defying the laws of the land as well as gravity and motion to kiss a TV station’s thirty feet high ceiling. I asked for a volunteer in each class to demonstrate; in each class someone had the insanity to volunteer yet failed miserably with mild kissing noises and feeble jumps.

And we all chuckled.

Remember how last spring I posted to my school division’s employee classifieds a want ad for advice and then, later, one begging for questions? I resumed the habit just last week, with this ad:

Wanted: Money
Small amounts of cash can be sent to me via interschool mail. To respond with large amounts of cash, please email me and I will arrange a pickup time. Checks can be sent to me via interschool mail. Please make checks payable to me, with the memo “slush fund.” Sorry, credit cards not accepted at this time.

The first response came back rather quickly, from my school nurse: You are SOO funny! 🙂

The second response was more involved: Do you accept high-fives? I have a stock-pile of them in one of my Swiss bank accounts that I need to move around. I could transfer them to your slush account as soon as tomorrow morning. They are available as single high-fives, two-handed high-fives, and I believe I have some pats-on-the-back left in one account. Just let me know.

The third response was more ominous: My principal knocked on my classroom door and interrupted my reading to my class in order to call me out into the hall.

“I get your joke,” he said, grinning.

At first I wasn’t sure what he was talking about; I’d considered telling him that I’d be willing to sign up for the still-open school wellness ambassador position but I was worried I’d have to go to cross-county meetings and therefore wouldn’t be able to ride my bike to school.

“But not everyone in the county gets it. We’re laughing about it downstairs, but another principal at another middle school is a bit up in arms about a teacher asking from money.”

“I can remove the listing,” I said, also chuckling.

“Yes, please remove it,” he said.

So I still have received no monetary contributions from colleagues.