Crisis Averted

Yesterday at school, I made a fairly sizable mistake regarding a test I had given the 8th graders in December. In retrospect, that was quite a week...I was probably not in the best shape to even make a key for the test that would be accurate.

So I messed up on the key to my own test, but in addition to that I had accidentally begun to grade half of the tests with a 7th grade key, and then had to cross everything out and start over. Another clear sign of fatigue before Christmas break. I guess you are supposed to sleep and eat at normal times and think about things besides history and connections through time. Seriously, point taken.

So I admitted that I had made a mistake...or two...or three. And we had that conversation about human error and this is what it feels like when people in education talk about having 1 teacher for 31 kids...they couldn't all talk to me. Some were trying, and I stopped that very quickly. I was also getting the stink eye from a few of them, and so then we talked about how the grade would be changed, and 'Lucky you, you get three more points on a test', and also "Give me a break and take a deep breath. It feels like everyone's blood pressure is sky rocketing."

Somehow lately with this class a conversation about their blood pressure always seems to crack them and they laugh and become normal again. It makes me wonder what they'll do later in life with such strong tendencies toward precision. Yesterday I thought I might be hanging out with the world's future surgeons and engineers.

I made sure to be smiling and fake feeling calm, and then there was lots of names being scribbled furiously on the overhead before the bell so I could make the changes in the gradebook. In these moments, I felt totally vulnerable because you could tell how my mind processed information. It was very abstract, and I could tell these precise little people had no idea what was happening. Sometimes I wrote their full name and began talking to myself. Sometimes I could only remember their initials. You could tell which girl seemed to me to have too many vowels in her name...I started with the first letter and ended up scribbling the rest.

Like I was a 5 year old.

I realized that I was a non-detail oriented person in a room full of people who clearly had no idea why scribbling nonsense actually made sense to me. But it does sometimes, and it worked. Problems solved. All 3 of them. The bigger feat was getting 31 intense people to calm down at the end of 2nd quarter.

It's not fair of me to lump 30 kids into the same future profession. I did it. I know I did. But you can very quickly figure out a vibe with people. And sometimes it really does feel like I'm teaching people who will go into very specific fields. I've told kids that no class is like the other, and it's very interesting and good, but I never say too much more than that. I don't want any comparisons and there is so much miscommunication in the world already.

But I will say that in this moment where all 32 of us discovered 3 mistakes, I could tell that my classes would react differently. In one class it feels like I'm spending time with future teachers and counselors. Sometimes they'll interpret what I say in a way that another teacher would say it, and it is eerie and cool. The aforementioned future surgeons and engineers are impressive to me because of their exactness and intensity and curiosity for learning. Oh yes, in this class a few people also want to be the president.

The last class I teach...well, I admitted my mistake right away when they came in yesterday and they are such a different collection of people. They just shrugged their shoulders and we fixed the problem and talked about the first five administrations in the American presidency. These people all seem like they're going to write plays and the next great American novel. They laughed when I said they're dreamy and far away and would probably write novels someday...this is what many of them want to do.

So there it is. One hour of the day described in quite a lot of detail.

On a totally unrelated note, I've been loving again the old song sung in a modern way. It's singing itself inside of me today as I teach.