The Kids Have My Back

This morning right after warm ups, my evaluator, Mr. Morris, walked into my room. Mr. Morris, bless his soul, is an ex-Marine with no teaching experience but lots of experience being a Marine. He and I have had an interesting relationship this year, based on a joke about hugging that got out-of-hand. Neither he nor I have very good social skills. Anyway, he's my evaluator and an assistant principal, and of course I've never scheduled an observation with him so in he walks today.

I'll tell you what, the kids have my back. First of all, he walked into the greatest class of all classes, my freshmen honors students. But if you didn't know that they were the greatest class in the world you might think that I had performed some magic spells on them to make them behave in extraordinary, intelligent, adorable ways. You might say that I was a miracle-worker in the classroom. I am not. They are just that good. They don't even really need me. They could teach themselves and do a better job. After warm-ups, in which the kids raised their hands and gave perfect little answers, I decided to move on to this week's vocabulary list. But before I did, I asked them if they all knew the testing schedule this week and where they were supposed to go.

(While I am not, philosophically, a proponent of testing, I do want my students to know where they are supposed to go and what the schedule is. It seems inhumane to leave them in the dark).

All of my students smiled and nodded their heads...yes they know the schedule and yes, they know where to go and no, they don't have any questions. Okay, I say, great! Le's move on then. During the vocabulary lesson, Mr. Morris took his leave and we finished up. I turned the lights back on and I saw a small hand go up in the back.

"Ms. Stutelberg, can you tell me what room I'm in for testing?" Sure, of course, I looked it up for him and was about to put the list away when another little hand went up.
"Ms. Stutelberg, can you look up my room, too?" Well, okay, yes, but I asked after warm-ups and you didn't say anything about it then. I told him his room.
Hand started shooting up all over the room. "We need our room numbers, too!" "What's the schedule tomorrow?" "Should we go to first period or check in at our room?" "What tests?"

I got a silly teacher look on my face and said What gives? No one had any questions earlier. Then Rachel smiled at me with her so sweet little smile and said, "Mr. Morris was in here, Ms. Stutelberg. We wanted you to look GOOD."

Probably, more likely, they didn't want to make themselves look bad in front of Mr. Morris. He's a little intimidating. But I do appreciate the sentiment.

And then I couldn't resist a joke on Eric. He was holding up his half-eaten bag of trail mix. "What are you doing with that food Eric?" I asked. "I'm offering Chelsea my nuts!"

"Eric, no one wants your nuts. Put them away."