Horray! It’s friday and I’m back in the city getting ready to find some eats. The cats are good and it’s supposed to be 20 degrees here this weekend. I smell a cookout tomorrow! If there’s one thing we’re good for this far north, it’s going hard when spring finally hits and not wasting a moment.
Anyways, today was great. In Bio, we were talking about bioethics and I can’t remember how it came about, but one of my female students asked how old you had to be to adopt a kid. I said I didn’t know and then a boy proposed adopting a 17 year old with the intentions of marrying her. This gave me an excuse to call him a “gross little pervert”. Class erupts in laughter and we talk about ethics until the bell rings.
Gym was kind of a pain in my butt because some of the kids really couldn’t care less that I was in charge. It was friday, I told them they could do the activity or sit in the office. The girls said they’d rather do yoga.
In science the kids got a unit test. They were freaking out and I think they were anticipating a much harder test. After they were done we made cell walls out off bubbles and screwed around until the day was done. Everybody wanted to split today. I think it was that taste of 2 free weeks that’s making everyone even more anxious to get out of there.
Just something interesting I thought I’d share before I sign off, and really the main reason I’m blogging today. A follow up on that link I posted to garbage island. Since we can’t depend on the mass media to keep us informed when it comes to the things that are truly detrimental to our well being, (see: CNN’s report today on why Heather Mills dumped water on her lawyer’s head), the folks at Vice continue to impress me with their guerrilla reporting. You’ll remember them from that like I posted to their documentary on the oil sands. This month, they posted an excellent feature on actually sailing out to garbage island in what I’m pretty sure is the first thorough investigation of the mass. Check it out! Yet another reason to curb our consumption of plastic crap that ultimately ends up littering the planet with particles that will take eons to break down.
The last couple of days, whooooweee, where to begin. Ok, so the vegan teacher has picked himself up and dusted himself off. I have no choice. What, am I going to let extracurricular drama affect my last semester of this? That would be insane, I’ve come too far and can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Besides the content I’ve been going through with the students and some floor hockey I’ve been playing on the side (where I attempt to play goal), a certain experience has caught me off guard. Let me elaborate.
So I’m supervising this student, shooting the breeze with him while he’s chosen not to partake in the day’s activity, when he starts misbehaving. Like, really badly. I tell him to cut it out and he challenges me. “What are YOU going to do?”, he goes. “Send you to the office”, I says and the little hellion replies “you wouldn’t dare”. Really. REALLY, I’m thinking. So I go, “give me one more reason to”. He knocks it off for a moment, then his friend joins him and they start screwing around. I tell them to knock it off and they give me the funniest line. “Why should we listen to you? You wear your pants as high up as they go”. (A note, the boys practically had their pant-waists sitting below their boxers). After I explain to them that when you’re my age, the goal of fashion is to not be at risk of flashing anyone your wiener, I send them to the office. “Alright, get outta here, I’ll see you two after school”. The friend says something to the effect of how I’m not his teacher and blah blah blah, but the broken record technique prevails and both of them head to the office.
After class, I meet with them and ask if they can give me a solid reason why I shouldn’t tell my mentor teacher about their bad deeds (he was away during class due to an appointment). They start going on about how I’m their best friend and how I’m nice or something. “Boys”, I go, “I don’t want you to butter me up and I’m certainly not your friend. I want you to explain to me why I sent you to the office”. They continue not getting it and I end up letting them go and informing the teacher.
Turns out, they’ve both had a hard go of it and after I learned the details, it cast them in a different light.
20 minutes later a teacher walks in and tells me that she just handed out two behavioral slips to one of them. At the end of the school day it’s like, kid, go home already!
Anyways, today I get to school ready to start off new with the two boys when a few minutes after my arrival, I am informed that the two were caught being mean to an animal. It wasn’t even 8:00 yet. Seriously! So my mind is blown, we all know people who abuse animals when they’re young have serious issues that need to be addressed, and the staff are fully aware that this one kid in particular needs some guidance. It was a lot to take and my first real experience with this kind of thing. (On a related note, did you hear the one about the marine that threw the puppy off the cliff? I wish I were joking and could say the military doesn’t strip people of their compassion).
So I don’t know. We’ll see what transpires with this whole thing. The staff are fully aware and no one’s turning a blind eye, so I’m interested to see what will be done about these two boys. They’re good kids but they’re having a rough go of it. Fortunately, they are still young enough that they’ll be able to change if someone gets through to them. But it’s really weird when you’re dealing with kids who don’t respond to any positive feedback and only know how to get attention by being little turds.
So enough about the drama.
At the end of today I caught one kid doing laps in the hallway. I queried him on this behavior. He tells me that they’re watching a movie on racism and the ignorance of the fascists being interviewed is really getting his goat. We get into an extensive conversation about racism, sexism, homophobia, capitalism and the failure of the electoral system in the time span of about 20 minutes. Then he asks me if I can burn the new Constantines record for him. For sure. It makes me happy to know some of them are so passionate about making things right, and these are the moments that keep me hopeful.
