Flat

Well, I didn’t get in.

This is a pancake layer of disappointment on top of so many other layers. I am positively stratified with disappointment.

No Writing Project for me, I guess! It’s too bad, really. I would have been a really good addition. They really could have used me. I have expertise that they want, and passion that they want. I know that they are banking on me applying next year. I suppose I will. But I wonder if they know that they are gambling on the possibility that someone will even be a teacher the following year? What if the one thing helping you hang on through that rough patch – that “most teachers quit the profession within their first three years” patch – was the thought of joining this community, and then they reject you?

As it turns out, I am not very good at being rejected. In all honesty, I haven’t had much experience at it. I guess it was just my turn.

On top of that, I don’t know what this does to my MA, other than screw it all the hell up. I’m on a strict three-semester schedule, and now that six of my credits have gone up in smoke…

God, but this has been a week. Or a fortnight. I don’t even know how long things are lasting. Parent-teacher conferences tonight, all day tomorrow, and tomorrow evening. Grading essays like a madwoman up to the very end. Having to file for an extension on my own schoolwork. Mr. Bees lost his job. My allergies have kicked in, and the inside of my mouth is lined with stress-induced cold sores. Some, er, personal plans of mine are being sidelined due to schoolwork and conferences. Friends and family members raising my blood pressure over politics. I’m feeling flatter and flatter. How flat, you ask? The only thing getting me to and from work every day is my eponymous Third Eye Blind CD, blasted at top volume. Talk about angsty teenage flashback.

Okay. I have 20 minutes until dinner, and conferences start in 80 minutes. Got to clear off my desk, brush my hair, and load up the laptop. Ready… break.

Lacking Community

My interview for the National Writing Project was this past Saturday.

They brought about eight of us into a conference room, with another half dozen or so alums of the project, and broke us into small groups for “conversations.” They were careful to say that they were not judging us as good or bad teachers, or good or bad writers. They’re trying to create a group with a particular distribution of elements: different teaching assignments, different subject expertise, different amounts of experience, different parts of the state. As a second-year high school English teacher in the capital city, I’ve got four strikes against me. Then again, they’re taking 1/3 of the applicants, and I tend to be a good interview, so here’s hoping.

Before they interviewed us, though, they explained what the NWP was. I knew that it was a summer institute, that it included aspects of a writing workshop – things like that. I didn’t know that it was a bigger thing than that. I didn’t know that it was a community of teachers, of writers.

Basically, they’re looking for teachers who will help perpetuate a cycle of teachers-teaching-teachers. They want teachers who are passionate about certain elements of their craft, who will share that passion with others. And they’re looking to provide said teachers with community.

“Being a part of networks is a key factor,” the local director told us,  ”into whether a teacher leaves the profession within the first few years.”

When he said that, several things happened. The first was that a lightbulb went off over my head. Oh, I said. So that’s why I’m unhappy.

Then a surge of yearning went through me as I realized how much I wanted to be a part of this program.

And then, like a kick to the gut, I realized that I very well might not get in this year. That’s when I really understood how much I wanted to be picked.

They say that many people apply for 2-4 years before getting in. I feel good about my chances, but in the end, I can’t control what they’re looking for or whether or not they liked what I had to offer. However it goes, I should know within a few weeks…

My Students, If Mutants

I was nominated for the local Invitational Seminar of the National Writing Project and need to fill out an application and do an interview before being selected as a participant. If I’m selected, I’ll go to a summer workshop that includes a mountain getaway and earn six graduate credits – credits that actually apply to my degree! – free of charge.

It’s a pretty exciting opportunity.

One of the questions on the application is, “Please describe the students you presently work with and teach.” I had just finished grading a quiz on which the last question was, “If you were a mutant, what ability would you want?” While walking from my classroom to the restroom after school yesterday, I wrote the following response for my application:

When asked what mutant superpower they would like to have, nearly 20% of my sophomores responded that they would prefer the ability to become invisible. A closer look at the respondents shows that they are subdivided into two camps: those (mostly male) who would use their newfound powers for mischief, and those (mostly female, and a larger group) who would use them to vanish forever into the wallpaper. That’s a fact about many of my students that bugs me in contemplative moments. What makes a fifteen-year-old kid want to withdraw from life so badly? What will become of them?

(One girl, to be fair, wants invisibility so that she can hear if people say rude things about them and “kick there booty’s!!”)

The invisible kids are in contrast to the 13% who would choose flight – many for the sheer joy of it, or for convenience (“I wouldn’t have to get a driver’s license”) but some, they admit, so that they could fly far away. From what, I don’t know, but I can guess: poverty, frustrated parents, tedium of seemingly irrelevant schooling, fears about uncertain futures. They’re harder to spot in the classroom than the ones who want to vanish, but it shows up in the inbox when their assignments don’t.

Twice as many girls as boys would like to be able to read minds; more boys would choose mind control, and two of them want it expressly so they can convince teachers to cancel quizzes and tests. The gender split is equal among the 9% who want superhuman strength; most of them are student athletes, but two are meek girls from migrant families, and I wonder what they would do with their powers. Five times as many boys as girls would choose superhuman speed; since they’ve mastered working and moving in slow motion, I’m in favor of this particular mutation.

More interesting is the boy who picked enhanced flexibility so that he would be a better break-dancer. He’s a taciturn young man with relatively little English, handsome with chiseled, aquiline features that lead me to suspect he has Cherokee ancestry. I have a hard time picturing him doing the worm, and I wonder what else is going on inside his head as he struggles to understand the reading.

One girl wants the ability to control others’ emotions. Another wishes she could speak all languages. Another girl, whose eyes are sad even when she smiles, wants to read minds so that she’ll always know the truth of what people are thinking.

One of their male counterparts thinks smaller, and would like to be able to snap his fingers and have all his homework completed instantly. I’m perplexed by a serious young man’s choice of the power to draw himself. Another boy chooses “the ability of absolute feminine attraction”; I suspect he meant “female,” but who am I to judge? 

Sixty percent of the students in my school qualify for free or reduced lunch, and we provide complementary breakfast to everyone; I know many of them attend school simply to get two square meals a day. None chose the ability to manifest food or to never feel hunger. Six, however, wish they could control fire or the weather. It is 28 degrees at night, and many of them have two unemployed parents. 
 
My students make me crazy with frustration when they earn single-digit grades by “forgetting” to turn in any work. They baffle me when they profess, as sophomores and juniors, to have never learned what a verb is or how many feet are in a mile. They gray my hair when they proffer bald-faced lies when I catch them cheating or texting. But my students make me smile when they walk into the room, when they act like hyperactive fifth graders at a school dance, when they come up with some startling insight far beyond their perceived cognitive ability. I’m rarely impressed with their writing ability or work ethic, but I’m often overwhelmed by their heart and by the responsibility I, or some other adult who touches their lives, have in guiding them to become adults.

One of my juniors just told me that he’s going to be a father. I’d bet a shiny nickel that he’s gay. He’s mad at me because I took his cell phone – how was I supposed to know, before he told me, that he was texting the mother as she sat in the doctor’s office? He’s a tender, angry young man whose life, as he’s known it, has just ended. And he is my student.

(And, because I’m a geek – and no, I didn’t include this with my application – here’s a pie chart. Click to embiggen.)