Today was a good day, but it was hard to come ban to school after we had a three day weekend, especially since the students did not. So they were all, "where we're you?" And we were all "... Uh, sleeping..."
Except I was not sleeping! I had an all-day interview with Teach For America! I've gone back and forth on my opinion of the program and it's effectiveness at minimizing the achievement gap, but I believe I could be an effective teacher with TFA support, and I would especially love a community of young teachers around me for my first couple years. So, I hope I get the position! I'll find out on Halloween, and they'll make me an offer in a city they choose to place me in and then I can take or leave that offer. We will see.
So, anyway, today was a little hard. I made some progress with a few students though! For example, a student that previously told me to "shut up and get away" didn't ignore me when I talked to him today! Let's call him Charlie. So Charlie has been a big issue in class because he not only gets zero percent of his work done (literally all he accomplished one class period was scratching out the name he had written on his project the previous day) but he will talk incessantly to all of those around him thereby dragging everyone down. Normally, I try to be really real with him, taking the tack of "seriously? What are you doing? Do you realize that a zero on this project will be hard to recover from? Do you want to repeat this class? If you don't like it, te inky way to get out is to do your work" and his typical response is to turn his back to me physically and ignore me.
But today! He talked back to me. He told me I was annoying and asked why I cared whether he did it or not. So I told him it hurt me SO MUCH to watch him waste himself and let himself down by. doing. absolutely. nothing. I also told him that he could be as mean to me as he wanted, but I wasn't intimidated by him and I didn't think he was funny, so he might as well stop trying to bully me. He didn't sound impressed, but he didn't turn away, so I asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. He didn't give a straight answer, but I gathered that he didn't want to be a junior high student for life, so it was a little productive. And then, he cursed at another student, but apologized to me for doing so. That showed me that he respected me, however little. I can tell I'll be able to reach him, if even just cracking the surface.
Josue did not have a good day in class today but he asked if he could eat lunch with me, so I might try to do that tomorrow.
And the after school program started today!!! It was fantastic! The only hiccup was that a few people came who hadn't turned in permission slips, so they couldn't legally stay, but they took the slips to get signed so they can start coming tomorrow! I hope that it becomes the cool thing to do; I am proud to say that a few of the kids that I know are popular we're in attendance. It's only a matter of time. Muahaha.
A few of us stayed after after-school to help at the ESL parent night for parents of kids in our English Second Language program. It was awesome to see the parents and hear the principal speak to them in Spanish. Our school has so many great resources to help these students learn English!
AND our mariachi band played. That's right, our school not only has band and choir, but also mariachi. They were excellent, had their music memorized (4 songs!) and there was even some singing. I love San Antonio!
The only bummer of the day is that I got a blister from sharpening too many pencils. I know, happens to the best of us.
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