Who Am I?

I am a first year teacher with no previous educational experience. I am a Literature and Creative Writing major now teaching English III and Intensive Reading at a rural Florida high school. For all kinds of legal purposes I will remain simply “I.” The innocent, guilty and stupid will be herein renamed. I suppose I could just say that everything that follows is fiction, a flight of fancy, the product of an active imagination—that would make it easier to sleep at night. So why not: everything you read here is a work of fiction, any proper nouns resembling real-life entities are entirely coincidental. But really, between you and I, it’s all true.

Something else you should know. This is not going to be a diary-style blog, meaning there will be no day-to-day updates on such mundane details as the status of my cold sore. Rather than log every little detail, I prefer to let the events of the day sit for a while, reveal new meanings, and give me time to make connections to other events that may not have occurred to me had I sat down and wrote a reactionary entry on why I want to bash a certain student’s head into the wall. Not to say there won’t be a good rant or two. But, generally, I plan to use this blog to express both abstract feelings on teaching so-called “at risk” kids and very specific scenarios that I find amusing or disturbing. You’ll also find armchair philosophy, obscure details, references ranging from Fiddy Cent to French New Wave, borderline pretentious remarks, an acceptable level of guff, and some good old-fashioned storytelling. My goal is to entertain and enlighten. Still interested?

Then let me continue with some more introductory information… the school where I teach houses grades 6 through 12, a whopping total of 500 students. To give this figure some scale: I had more than 500 students in my graduating class. Some of these kids live on dirt roads. Some of them don’t have a floor. All of them manage to have a myspace account.

When you read “at risk,” your initial thought might have been, Okay, how long will it be before someone gets shivved? “At risk,” in the sense I’m referring to, means at risk of failing. My worst students will not be able to read and comprehend this blog. My very best students could understand what’s being said here after an intense and dedicated session.

My school has what the entire county refers to as a “discipline problem.” I find this fact amusing considering my interview involved a confession of my anticipated difficulty with discipline. (I’ve never had to discipline anyone in my life. What would I do?) But this “discipline problem” does not refer to the myths one hears of razor blades hidden in weaves, students being dangled by their ankles from the roof (our school is only one story), or your general guns, gang and riots. The biggest problem where I teach is basic: respect. These kids do not know how to raise their hands, stay in their seats, keep their hands to themselves. They do not know what talking back means. They do not know have to behave like normal, functioning human beings attending school.

This reputation, developed over the past ten years, has not only kept teachers away, it has driven unsuspecting suckers to insanity. Last year, a teacher quit on the first day because the class gave her such a hard time. This year there has been about a 50% turnover in staff, including a new principal and set of counselors. Some of the new teachers are new to teaching (me), a few of them are middleweights, some have taught for 30 years. Most of us were not familiar with the county, thus the school’s reputation. None of us have ever seen anything like the behavior at this school.

The man who resides across the hall from me is a jolly and white-bearded social studies teacher. He previously taught for 30 years at another rural school somewhere in Central Florida. One of the Deans of Discipline, who happens to also be his neighbor, convinced him that he would be a good fit. At the end of the first day we walked to our respective thresholds, heads hanging, to watch the students race out of the building. When the halls cleared he said to me, “I came out of retirement for this shit?”