Hell Hath No Fury Like a 17-Year-Old Scorned

Today during 2nd period there was a quick knock on the door and a lady stuck her head in the door. She looked like a psychologist, and, as I found out later, she was. A light-skinned black lady, well-put together, wearing all brown. Boots, a skirt, and thick-rimmed glasses.

She asked to speak to T, one of my (female) students. T is a junior and the emotional equivalent of a black hole and a tornado combined.

So, I told T to go out in the hall. She initially refused. "I'm taking a test," she said, which she was. I told her to cancel it (it was one of those computerized tests). After basically prying her hands from the computer and sending her into the hallway, I continued class.

About one minute later, T waltzed back into the room with one of those smug looks on her face. Since she always looks like that, I just told her to have a seat. But no sooner had she sat down than the psychologist burst through the door. She was almost crying.

"Excuse me," she sputtered. "I hate to interrupt class, but I want to give this girl a demerit." She gestured at T.

It was sort of an odd request, but I didn't even have time to respond before T exploded.

"What she be talkin about? This woman be tweakin! Don't come up in here with that! She a clown!"

And so on and so on.

Amazingly, the psychologist fired back. "This girl is being disrespectful towards me and blah, blah, blah."

"T," I said. I gave her my best teacher look, which isn't saying much. "Just stop. Just stop talking." She did, for a second, and then kept going. She was literally insulting this woman by calling her a clown and other ridiculous things.

The rest of the class was both interested and embarrassed at the same time. They sat quietly. The woman just kept yammering, at me or at anyone who'd listen, and T just kept on and on.

Finally I was able to get T to be quiet and extricate the psychologist from the room. I had a whispered conversation with T that would make no sense to any rational person, but at least sort of calmed her down.

The whole thing was insane. I mean, who's the crazy one, really? The psychologist who was reduced to tears by some 17-year-old girl? The girl, who is perhaps the most angry person I've ever met in my life? Or me, for putting up with this and acting like this is any kind of normal job?

The odd thing is that it was barely a big deal to me. T acts like this pretty much every day of her life, and I have to deal with it. The only difference today was that instead of mediating between T and some random girl in class, I was mediating between T and some 40-year-old psychologist who should know better. I'm no teacher, I'm a babysitter.

West Chicago Ave is a Vision of the Coming Zombie Apocalypse

Lincoln Park has newly paved streets, organic grocery stores and salt on the sidewalks.

Humboldt Park has gaping potholes, crumbling corner markets and sidewalks slick with ice.

Trash is strewn everywhere. In the roads, on the sidewalk, in the tiny yards. People lurch around in half-aware states, wearing overlarge clothing. A constant smell of frying food and burning plant matter hangs in the air. Everything is gray. Signs are hand-painted and the words on them are misspelled. Intermittent gunshots.

You can stand on West Chicago and watch the drug deals go down. Puerto Ricans in windowless fifteen-passenger vans selling to stumbling black men in black jackets.

This is the wasteland. Just be happy you only have to look the other way when you drive through it, and not live in it.

In Which I Meet a Fellow Traveller

I was able to convince a student at my school to read Feed, one of my favorite books that I've read in the past year or so. He took it home on Friday. Today I asked him if he had started (most of my students never read at home).

"I'm about 20 pages from the end," he said. He went on to explain that he really loved it, and we were able to talk about our favorite parts of the book (imagine!).

This kid, Michael, has read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We talked about how much we loved to read books, and he said that I should start a book club at Rowe-Clark.

I wanted to kiss him on the face and thank him for being such a beautiful person. These moments are what make me keep going. I love my life.

A Conversation

Some guy at a party: So, I heard you say you're a first-year teacher.

Me: Yeah. I just graduated this year.

Guy: Oh, wow. You look older. You must've taken a few years off before college.

Me: Nope. I'm 22.

Guy: Oh, hmm. Well you must get that all the time.

Me: Uhm. Not really.

No More Mr. Nice Mr. McAlister

On Thursday I went all crazy on my 4th period kids. I implemented a new seating chart and gave out a lot more demerits. It worked brilliantly well and the kids were more silent than they'd ever been before.

Today was even better. That class, ordinarily my worst, was by far my best. The students were mostly silent and well-behaved. Silent reading time was a dream - better than it's been in any class, ever. And, oddly, the kids didn't seem as pissed off at me today as they were on Thursday. There was still some grumbling about the seating chart, but the kids seemed to appreciate the structure. Of course, this might have been an illusion, or maybe we were just having a good day.

Tomorrow I'm unveiling a seating chart in every class. I'm also going to be really strict, especially on my freshmen. They've been getting by far too easy so far. My intent is to scare the crap out of them and cripple them with demerits if I have to. I just can't afford to keep losing the battle of classroom management. It's wasting everyone's time an costing me far too much energy.

Being a White Person is Unusual in Certain Ways

It's kind of strange to be white. I was stretching and my shirt lifted up a little and I was shocked at how pale the outside of my body actually is. I spent the next five minutes looking at my skin.

If you are white, look at your hands. Look at the undersides of your arms. Isn't it funny how you can see your veins through your skin?

Having white skin doesn't make much sense.

Dear West Side People, Please Stop Shooting Each Other

Yesterday morning, for the first time in my life as far as I know, I heard someone get shot.

The whole ordeal was surprisingly innocuous. It was about 10:30 I had just begun teaching my 2nd period class when we heard three gunshots. Everyone's eyes in the room got really wide, and we all had the same thought at once: oh shit.

I'm not really sure what I said, but I just tried to keep teaching. Pretty soon we heard sirens, and students tried to look out the windows. "Sit down," I said, and walked to the window myself. There ended up being about ten police cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance outside.

So I finished the lesson and that was about it. I kept an eye out the window and watched the paramedics bring a guy out on a stretcher. He was looking around and seemed okay. The police hung out for an hour or so, putting up yellow tape and talking to people on the sidewalk.

In a way, it seems stupid to be talking about context clues when there are people being gunned down all around you. I think students realize this as well. As I was talking, sirens blaring outside, a student raised her hand.

"Mr. McAlister. I'm not trying to be rude, but someone just got shot." She looked at me. "Are you really gonna keep teaching right now?"

I did, and I suppose I will, at least until bullets start flying through my classroom windows. At that point I'll take a week off, write a new blog post, and go back to work.

Attn:

Kanye West and Joe Wilson are a couple of geniuses. Within a few days of each other, both men managed to garner exactly 100% of news headlines. Never mind the healthcare legislation that will have a direct impact on every single person in this country for decades. Never mind the new iPods. Never mind football and Lady Gaga (GaGa?). News outlets have been covering West and Wilson to an embarrassingly ridiculous degree.

These guys are geniuses because they understand, consciously or subconsciously, that attention is power. Or at least it feels like power, and that's the important thing, really. We as people love it when others acknowledge us by giving us attention. Think about how you feel when people comment on your Facebook status. Think about the rush you get when you catch someone of the opposite sex (or the same sex, if that's your thing) checking you out. You love it, I love it, we all love it. I mean, why else would I have a blog? Why would anyone?

Imagine how it must feel to turn on the TV, or to get on your computer, and hear dozens of people talking about you. This is how it feels to be Joe Wilson right now. People are talking about how he is a buffoon, how he is noble, how he fits into the history and politics of South Carolina, and etc. and etc. He's never been happier in his life.

And Kanye West has geometric figures shaved into his head. A man with shapes in his hair does not care how you feel about him, he just care that you feel something about him. I promise you that Kanye is loving every minute of this.

We are playing right into their hands.

Inexplicable

I am 22 years old. I live in Chicago, and I come from South Carolina.

I have a blue clipboard to which I clip my lesson plans for when I teach a bunch of 14-to-17-year-olds who think I'm the lamest man who ever lived.

Every day I teach, I feel a bit older and a bit less cool. I suppose I started this blog as an attempt to salvage any shreds of coolness I have left. Also to pretend that I am more relevant than I actually am.

For my first posting, I wish to discuss the word 'inexplicable.'

I'm a big fan of Chuck Klosterman, and lately I've been reading his 2006 book Chuck Klosterman IV, which is basically a collection of articles and essays with a novella tacked on the end. As I read the book I noticed that this guy loves the word 'inexplicable' (and its cousin, 'inexplicably'). Seriously, in nearly every chapter he uses the word a minimum of one time. And he employs it to refer to nearly everything, from human behavior to events in music videos to business deals.

Apparently Klosterman feels that reality itself is inexplicable. This is a uniquely postmodern sentiment; indeed, a very few years ago, cultural critics sought to make everything explicable - that is, they attempted to understand and explain away pretty much every cultural phenomenon by tying it into some human need or deeper purpose. Nowadays us postmodern types look around and realize that this is a pretty inexplicable place. Nothing makes sense. American culture is so diverse that what makes perfect sense in some circles is completely insane in others. It is through supreme enlightened self-awareness that people like Klosterman are able to step back, look at all sides of this multi-faceted diamond we call popular culture, and pronounce it 'inexplicable.'

But still. It kind of gets old when it pops up in every other paragraph. And it's a bit condescending, almost inexplicably so. Klosterman's use of the word 'inexplicable' is his Achilles Heel. That little word is the only thing that keeps him from being a truly great writer.

So keep working on it, Klosterman, and one day you might find yourself at the top of your profession. And when you reach the summit, it will be anything but inexplicable. We both know that.