A New Ecology

This is one of the high school courtyards.

Soon it will be filled with 400 students in blue uniforms.

Today there were no meetings or trainings. The staffs, “new foreign hires,” the “returning hires” and the “local hires,” were given the day to prepare our classrooms and materials for the first day of school.

Preparing the classroom was easy…wait, what? This sort of ambiguous task is not supposed to be easy for new teachers. After I rearranged the desks (out of standard rows and into the somewhat standard U shape), I looked around for other things to do. It didn’t take me long to remember that I had never had a classroom before and realize that I didn’t travel with any inspirational posters or colorful books.  Some of my colleagues had a similar experience, and they stopped in to ask “now what?”

Rob, a colleague from Wisconsin, would remind us to ask more than “now what?” He would encourage us to ask “what do we need to know in order to do what needs to be done?” We didn’t get that far. The air conditioning started to drip, pour. So I took some time to practice Spanish with the maintenance crew.  And we know that the students and teachers constitute a classroom, not posters and books.

The process of preparing materials has/had a familiar kind of ease. The first day of school should be very interesting without a handbook of school policies or class lists.

The only information I have about the student body has come from teachers returning to the chaos of school after their relaxing summers on the beach. Even though I don’t believe that all students will “be spoiled rotten,” will “steal tests,” will “hack my computer to change their grades,” will “refuse to speak English in English class”…this is all I have. I also have some advice on how to be “more credible” : dye my hair black. I’m not sure what to do with that.

Please Note: Sharing minor annoyances in the form of generalizations that begin with “All of our students (insert negative character trait or extreme one-time occurrence here)…” and end with “…and there is nothing we can to do change it. That’s how it has always been.” is distracting and scary for this new teacher. I think you are trying to be helpful. I appreciate that. I just wish you would also tell me why you are sharing these fascinating tips. Now that I know some things that might be true for some students, what should I do?

…yes, fishgarbage.

• We watched “Shift Happens” in an assembly.
• We use three-ply carbon paper forms to check out books and requisition pens.
• The science department is going paperless this year.
• The English department is buying classroom dictionaries.
• A scanner has to recognize my fingerprint to get into school every morning.
• Our guards play cards in the shade and lean their homemade armory against the gate.