J U N E 0 3
Much like a fine wine, the June 2003 entries taste better with age, as well as displaying a robust texture and delicate shape. This was the one-year anniversary of dave2n.com, so Dave and Jeff gave their retrospectives. We had three huge TFA Chronicle chapters: the first, second, and third quarters. Jeff and Dave both threw huge parties, one for Jeff's new house and one for new TFA corps members. Dave remembered filming Good Morning Robinson and was happy that school was almost over. Akshay151 was relased to the insatiable masses and Don thought it rocked his world while starting the gears for the world-famouso Okay Samurai reunion in July.
Dave's Teach For America Chronicles / Chapter Six: Third Quarter
As an uncertified teacher instructing in Baltimore City Public Schools, the agreement the city makes with an organization like TFA is that we have to be working towards our certification. Because of this, I had to take education courses at Johns Hopkins University. When you think of Johns Hopkins, you think prestige, right? Johns Hopkins Hospital is known nationwide for being incredible. My second semester JHU class, however, was the most worthless and poorly instructed class I have ever taken in my life (including Mrs. Branch's 3rd grade class, where God only knows how I learned multiplication). It was a class on reading, taught by a woman who had been a reading specialist in the Baltimore City system for many years. She had a knack for showing up late or not showing up at all. The two times that she didn't show up at all were unannounced, so we waited around until the famous college "15 minute rule" went into effect. Even worse, she never gave any explanation for her absences in the following weeks.
No one had any idea what grade we were getting in the class - some papers got number grades, some got checks, and barely any had comments written on them. Nick was so sure that the professor didn't read our papers that he turned in one assignment twice, simply changing the names in the first paragraph to reflect the new article we were critiquing. Some of her classes were "e-classes" where she met with us for five minutes and vaguely told us to find "20 reading strategies" on the internet by the next week. Then, after one of her unexplained absences, she lectured us about how unprofessional our work was. When she couldn't pronounce "Saddam Hussein" and called the teaching practice of differentiation "differation," our standards for this so-called graduate level "reading" class were lowered. The Tuesday night class mainly consisted of our TFA friends, and all of my roommates were enrolled with me, so their sense of humor was the only thing that kept me smiling. Well, that and the time we drank during class (which apparently caused some ripples in the TFA office, but trust me, it helped alleviate the pain).
The little optimism that I had from working with Daryl at the end of the second quarter seemed to domino into more good things. The school's problems were at a fever pitch, with the administration as unresponsive as ever, but I was almost getting used to the things being thrown in my class or the names I was called by students roaming the hallways. I started to take things a little less seriously, because all I felt that I could do sometimes was laugh. I remember one time when I was reading a story aloud to my students and a crowd of about 10 hall wanderers decided to hang out and be as loud as humanly possible in the sixth grade hallway. Then the fire alarm went off, then more kids ran in, and then the lightswitches starting flicking on and off - you know, the usual. I stood up on my desk and never stopped reading. Two of my students positioned themselves with their textbooks by the lightswitches in my room and matter-of-factly turned the lights back on whenever they went out, without even being asked. They were also used to this insanity, but their willingness to keep reading and learn was admirable to me.
A student from 705 gave me my first present of the year, for no particular reason - a miniature statue of a wizard that looked similar to Dumbledore from the Harry Potter books (sometimes I would talk to my classes with a British accent, which always got their attention and sometimes quieted them down). Scribbled on the box was "To the best teacher ever!" I thanked him and kept the statue on my desk in the sixth grade planning room, a reminder that there was good amidst all the bad. The depression I was feeling over the second quarter was slowly crumbling. I started giving rides to work to my coworkers and neighbors Matt and Randy, whose company in the mornings was especially nice to have. Visits from my college and high school friends helped keep me in good spirits over the weekends, especially a particularly wild weekend with my old bandmates Don and Jeff. Things were gradually getting better, which of course meant that something bad was bound to happen soon.
A first-year writing teacher that I had immense respect for, Ms. Zimmer, quit her job at Northeast in a flurry of tears. When the "state" guys in suits came around one day, she handed them a huge stack of papers documenting how the administration had responded questionably to certain incidents. Those papers may have been the catalyst for something that eventually happened during the fourth quarter, but we'll get to that later. Two more teachers quit and they sent in two replacements; the replacements quit too. One teacher was asked to leave after supposedly hitting a student. Even the librarian left. The 6th grade assistant principal left temporarily for bereavement. Our staff numbers were dropping fast and several teachers that were sticking around had poor attendance. So what happens when you don't have enough teachers and the substitutes don't want to come to your school? The administration or the few office aids we had left would cover the classes, or certain brave teachers combined their classes with the teacher-less classes. But sometimes the classes didn't even have a teacher at all. The open space in the eighth grade wing, now vacated by Mrs. Zimmer and an older teacher that left after her husband passed away, seemed at times like an unsupervised war zone. I saw paint splashed onto dividers. I saw a trashcan thrown at someone and trash covering the entire floor. I saw kids wrestling in the empty rooms and substitutes looking helplessly at me. I heard the frustrated janitors cursing under their breath, or sometimes out loud.
An "emergency meeting" was announced after school one day. We had elective classes at our schools, classes like art, music, health, and Spanish, but the students hadn't been switched over to their new electives at the end of the first semester like they should have. These schedule changes were the supposed reasons for the meeting. I came to the meeting a little late because of some after school students, and sat down in a familiar plastic orange cafeteria chair. Mrs. Jones, the Prinicipal, was just finishing saying how we should congratulate Mr. Coury on being so flexible. Mr. Coury, Matt, was one of the people I drove to work every morning. I later found out the he would now be teaching all new classes in a new subject, Language Arts, instead of Social Studies to fill a vacancy in the eighth grade. She followed this announcement with a comment about thanking me on being flexible too. Wait a second...what was going on here...why was I flexible too? And just like the end of the first quarter, a new xeroxed schedule was placed in front of me. As of the following week, I would be losing my seventh grade classes and teaching all sixth grade classes.
I called Camika, my TFA Program Director, and just said that I needed someone to talk to. She listened as I told her how my classes were completely changed again, and the frustration that I was feeling with never being able to hold on to my students. No more Daryl. I was losing 704 - my homeroom, my favorite class, the one with Sierra in it. How was I expected to make significant progress with my students when the school took them away from me every three months? She helped me cool my mind, and I ended the conversation feeling a little better about the situation - maybe it was a blessing in disguise. It solved the problem of being the only 7th grade teacher in the sixth grade wing. I had taught one class, 608, during the first quarter, so at least there would be some familiar faces. I would get to talk to the other 6th grade teachers during lunch instead of locking myself up in the planning room alone. Luckily, this change turned out to be the best thing that happened to me all year.
I said goodbye to my 7th grade classes at the end of the week and welcomed 611, 607 and 608 at the start of the next. My new classes were smaller in size and the students seemed better behaved. 611, my new homeroom, was the class that we had to create because of the saturation of kids during the first quarter. Although they were my smallest class, they were the most difficult to control. Several personalities clashed and there were a good amount of consistent talkers. But they were more manageable than Daryl's 706 class, and 607 and 608 were angels when compared to my seventh graders. I was a little more motivated to be creative with these classes and try some techniques that they would actually listen to. To help teach cause and effect, I secretly told a student in each class to come up and tap me on the shoulder when I started teaching. When they did, I unexpectedly drew a plastic lightsaber out of my pocket and swung it out, stopping inches in front of the student's face. Yeah, THAT got their attention. I copied off an interview from Vibe magazine with the popular rapper 50 Cent and we talked about his use of metaphors and whether dissing Ja Rule on his records was personal or just part of the culture. Teaching became a little more enjoyable, dare I even say fun on some days.
My students were doing classwork in 607 one day when a group of three hall-wandering boys started yelling things into my class. I asked them politely to leave, and suprisingly, they did. Ten minutes later, one of the boys came back and began talking through my flimsy divider walls to a female student in my class. He proceeded to walk into my class, walk in the back of the room, and start pushing her. I sighed as the lights began to flicker on and off and I walked to the back of the class. "I'm gonna fight you," he kept on repeating as he grabbed her arms and pushed her around. Now out of her seat and cornered against the wall, I asked my student to please sit down and asked this student whom I had never seen before to please leave. Both ignored me, and the boy's behavior was becoming increasingly more physical, shaking her back and forth. In an attempt to distract him, I noticed that he was wearing a hat indoors - which was against school rules. I took his hat and told him once again to leave. Like a moth to the flame, he stopped pushing my student and pushed me as I swung his hat behind my back. "Give me my hat back," he muttered, continually pushing me until my back was against the wall. 607 started to get out of their seats and stand up. Very patiently, I continually repeated that he needed to please leave my classroom. He backed off and started to swear at me, calling me every racial slur and word imaginable. This caused one of the teachers in a nearby classroom to open her door and see that there was a problem. She called down to the office for help via the intercom system in her room. The unknown male student went to a nearby stack of textbooks and my reading club books and threw them to the ground in anger, still swearing at the top of his lungs. He snatched one book and motioned once, twice, and three times like he was going to smash me in the face with it. I stood my ground, continuing to ask him to please leave my classroom. He then threw the book down as hard as he could at the ground and attempted to grab his hat again, this time even more enraged than before. My back to the wall, I sandwiched the hat and continued my repeated message quietly.
He backed up a step, yelled something, and punched me with a closed fist in the left side of my head, directly behind and above my ear. The other side of my head slammed into the wall right behind me, and a burning sting seemed to echo through my skull.
I stared at the faded blue carpet for a second and then looked back at the unknown student. Everything inside of me was screaming to punch him back. Instead, I held the hat tighter than before and quietly said, "Please leave my classroom." The boy walked away, swearing and stomping down the hall. He threw open the sixth grade doors and left the wing. "I'm fine, I'm fine," I said to break the awkward silence of 607. "Please just sit down." A minute passed, and the boy came back through the doors, now yelling about how he was going to shoot and kill me. Help finally arrived in the form of a male social studies teacher from the opposite side of the wing, who grabbed the kid and dragged him into the sixth grade planning room. It was close to the end of the period, so I lined my class up and walked them down to lunch.
As soon as I dropped my class off, Mrs. Jones asked me to come to her office. I talked to a school police officer on the phone - he was busy with a high school, so he wasn't able to come down to Northeast. He took my incident report and information verbally and informed me what I needed to do if I wanted to press charges against the student. One of our assistant principals rushed in and said that the student had left the building after she handed him his suspension papers. He was an eighth grade student. I filled out some official school forms and listened as Mrs. Jones called in six students from 607. They individually gave their testimonies as to what happened, and then filled out some forms too. One of the students was the girl who he had been trying to fight in the first place - and she revealed that she didn't even know him; the first time she had seen him was when he was yelling from the hallway. After about an hour and a half in the office, I left and slowly walked up to join the sixth grade teachers for lunch. As I walked back, I began to second-guess myself. I should have just given him his hat back. I should have called down to the office when the three boys were first yelling things into my room. I walked into the planning room, sat down with the unusually quiet sixth grade teachers, and gave an abbreviated version of the story I had written down several times downstairs. They offered their support, which was comforting. When everyone left to prepare for their last period classes, I sat at the table alone and stared at the cabinet door I used to swing open to hide behind during the second quarter. I heard the familiar yells of students roaming in the halls. I ran my fingers through my hair, feeling the bump that was forming underneath it. I remember continually looking at my fingers, thinking that I would see blood after I felt the unnatural sticking of my hair. I stopped my second-guessing but forced myself not to process everything that had happened yet as I walked out to teach 608.
I started class with the story of what had happened, since they had all heard someone had punched me but I hadn't punched him back. They were full of questions, and everyone wondered why I hadn't hit back. I wasn't sure, I said. I told them that I didn't know what consequences would have been brought up against me for hitting a student, whether I acted in self-defense or not, but that I didn't want to risk losing my kids. They class went on normally, with one boy asking for the student's name so he could go beat him up with his friends after school. I didn't, but thanked him just the same. After school, several teachers, especially the TFA teachers, gathered in my room as one of the assistant principals held another "emergency meeting" about the events of the day. Suggestions, comments, and opinions swirled around me, but I didn't say anything, absorbing the urgent voices. When someone commented on how slow and non-existent security help had been even after being called down to the office, the assistant principal suggested using a code word for calling to the office with extreme cases - "Code Word Buffalo."
A mental avalanche of the lack of administrative support I had been experiencing for the entire year drifted through my head. They were quick to help me immediately after the incident occurred, but why was there an eighth grader in the first place skipping class in the sixth grade wing when it was the third quarter of the school year? They knew that this was a problem and nothing was ever taken care of. Now their solution was "Code Word Buffalo?" Where was I teaching? Why was I here, continuing to feel depressed and being tossed around to different classes every quarter? Why was I staying and listening to this painfully clear lack of leadership? Three TFA teachers took me out to a bar afterwards and we thankfully didn't talk about school - mostly about their past boyfriends actually, if I remember correctly. I drove back home to my family in Burke, Virginia that weekend. While being stuck in rush hour traffic, I began to look back on my year and think about how honestly unhappy I was. My loyalty to Teach For America's two year commitment was mixed with my realization of how mentally and emotionally drained I was, whether that was due to my inexperience or my environment (but probably both). I thought about an information session that I had gone to at UVA about a graduate school in Atlanta called Portfolio Center, and how I had left the meeting enthusiastic, motivated, and happy. It was always in the back of my mind, a place that I thought I would look into after my two years in Baltimore. But its appeal rocketed to the front of my mind during that car trip home, and I decided fairly concretely to leave teaching when the school year ended.
Why didn't I quit right then and there? So many other teachers at our school had, veteran and new alike. Most people were surprised that I even stuck around to teach 608 after being punched in the head, thinking that it was perfectly acceptable to leave school and take a few days off. The truth was, I hadn't missed a day of school, only really because of something the TFA Summer Institute had said about the importance of being there every day for your kids. At the same time, the TFA corps member inside of me said to be stronger and that, no matter what happened, the fight for equal education was more important. I was never someone to give up, and something inside me told me that I wasn't trying hard enough or that I shouldn't take any excuses. Because the kids didn't have a choice. This was their education, like it or not, and they couldn't just walk out and quit. Some may call this TFA cult brainwashing, but to this day I feel that it's at the very heart of their mission and a cause worth fighting for. But for me, mentally, physically, and emotionally, I was exhausted and turning into someone who I didn't want to become. Two years was TFA's number; one was mine.
I made plans that weekend to visit Portfolio Center over my spring break. I talked to Camika for the first time since the incident when I got back to Baltimore and told her my plans. She said that she supported me in whatever decision I would make, but to give it some time until I was 100% sure. She sent me a card later on, just letting me know that she was thinking about me. I returned to school with a strange new interest, knowing that this year of teaching was my first and now my last. I remember talking to a veteran seventh grade math teacher during a planning period and having her tell me very candidly about her troubles separating the professional from the personal. It made me very emotional to see this older woman tell me that she didn't really like who she had become after teaching for so long at this school, especially after she said that this had been the worst year that she had ever seen. "You're lucky you're still young - you can run," she said.
I never taught Greg, one of the few Caucasian students at our school. I saw him in the hallways sometimes, cutting class, hanging out with a few of my seventh grade girls. I heard rumors about drug dealing and abuse, but never above a whisper. On a Monday morning when a student told me Greg had been murdered over the weekend, I was in disbelief. When the student proceeded to tell me how he had been killed, I was even more shocked that my 12-year old student was describing what she knew and saw to me. With respect to Greg's memory, I won't write about how or why he was killed. I went to the viewing with two other teachers and a student during our planning period. Greg was wearing his favorite sweatshirt in the casket, a toy red bike propped up against the hinges. One of my students once told me that my blue eyes were "pretty just like Greg's." Now I was staring at his eyes, closed forever. It was difficult to watch this single student we had brought with us, a friend of Greg's, coping with death for the first time. The sixth grader buried his head in Ms. Jacob's arms and we left after 15 minutes when he told us he was ready to leave. The school had a difficult time responding to the tragedy as well - "RIP WBG" was written all over our school - Rest In Peace White Boy Greg. Students seemed almost justifiably wilder than ever, and Mrs. Jones made several announcements about respecting Greg by behaving and not vandalizing school property. Mrs. Jones was interviewed on our weekly television announcements and said something about Greg looking down from above on students roaming the halls saying "No, go to class, don't misbehave like I used to." I stood silent in my classroom while my kids watched, eyes transfixed on the television screen. Was she really using Greg in an attempt to cut down on her problems with the hallways?
But the story of Mrs. Jones doesn't end there. At a faculty meeting shortly thereafter, she referred to the students as "diamonds" that the teachers were not helping to "shine." She was blaming the teachers for the state of our school, admitting to no responsibility herself. During the meeting, a younger teacher snapped at an older teacher about how she couldn't control her classroom and was sick of her telling him what to do, storming out the door. The diamond metaphor was stretched as far as it could possibly go as I sat silent through a two-hour argument. "You can't make diamonds without pressure," one teacher quipped. As usual, we left the meeting no better off, with no solid solutions to improve our school. Morale was at an all-time low, no matter who you were or what your age was.
A former Northeast TFA teacher named Tim e-mailed me and said that he would be in the area soon, and wondered if he could stop by and informally observe me and just talk. My first paranoid reaction was that TFA was sending him in to save me from leaving, but common sense told me that this was not the case. He immediately reminded me of John White, my role model from the New York Summer Institute. He was very good with the kids, and had an infectious positive attitude that brought my school morale back up several notches. We talked for most of the planning period after my 607 class. He asked what my plans were for next year, and I told him. Instead of trying to convince me otherwise, he simply asked how he could make my last three months better. We talked about different concrete strategies and ideas to help me become a better teacher and enjoy the last quarter more. He encouraged me to sit down over Spring Break and think about everything that I ever wanted to do as a teacher, and what I wanted to get out of that last quarter. When he left, I felt extremely motivated to do something BIG. Something that would truly teach these kids Language Arts skills applicable to their real lives.
Third quarter was my turning point. It was the time that I decided that I needed to leave while also being the time that set me up for my most successful and happiest quarter of teaching yet. I never pressed charges against the student who punched me. After a little research, I found out that both of his parents had died and he was on medication - medication that he had not received on the fateful day (but also for quite a while, it seemed). They weren't excuses, but they were enough to extinguish my anger. The student had been expelled and moved to another school, and I figured that was enough and put it behind me. Whatever compensation I would have received or whatever mark went on his record seemed irrelevant. I began sketching an idea during my lunch breaks, an island with the 6th grade teachers' names as various cities, mountains and rivers. I scribbled down a brief outline of a grading and teaching system that I wanted to implement. One idea led to another, and pretty soon I had two pages of scrambled notes all about what I wanted to do fourth quarter. If I'm going out, I thought, I'm going out with a bang.
(Dave's TFA Chronicles are eight short stories about Dave's job as a Language Arts teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools from 2002 to 2003. Read the other chapters: one two three four five six seven eight)
Monday, June 30 at 6:47 PM
Akshay151 Indeed...Hooks a Brother Up!
I will start by saying Akshay151 totally ROCKS!!! Nice work, I'm hearing a little mix of James Taylor/Stephen Stills guitar, meets Coldplay keyboard, with pleasant background harmonizing and organs, coupled with an energetic innovative rap section that could only be concocted by the creative master himself, daveeda. Obviously it incorporates the typical background drinking section with a toast, followed by what sounds like a dog's "arf". Love it. I'm at work and have been listening to it all morning while doing a meeting writeup. Today is Dave's last day of teaching for TFA... I know its been quite a wild emotional coaster ride from talking to him and from the chronicles (which I have enjoyed), which leads me to a series of questions. Dave, what are you doing this summer? Staying in baltimore or coming back to burke? Andrew, did you get that job with the Patent and Trade Office or another job? Where you at? Jeff, haven't seen you since the shindig, sup? I need to catch up with you guys, its been way too long!!! Eugene, you gotta come hang out with us bro! Just like old times. When listening to Akshay151 song it has totally energized me and I suddenly have the desire to rock out, and jam in the basement of doom. I'm reminiscing about all the awesome shows we played and how much fun we had just jammin until our ears rang, then playing video games and making fun of andrew. I want to get the band back together and rock out this summer before Dave heads down to Atlanta for Portfolio Center. I dont want to sound sentimental, but I really miss it. I'll give you guys a call soon, lots going on with me... way too much to write. Going to the Allman Brothers concert at Nissan on friday, should be tight. 
"Akshay151" (Dave Werner)
Wednesday, June 25 at 6:49 AM
Akshay151!
Tomorrow is the last day of school, so what better way to celebrate than listening to the just-released recording of Akshay151? It's available as a free mp3 download in the Okay Samurai audio section. A few people have heard the song before at the February Brass Monkey shows, but there's a new "obligatory rap section" and some more instruments thrown in. Akshay151 was recorded this weekend using my computer with good ol' Sound Forge 4.5, a Martin acoustic guitar and the Yamaha CS1x synth. Hey, in other great news, Baltimore TFA corps memebers Johanna and Joe have asked Mike and I to play at their wedding in August 2004...as long as "Tall Paul" doesn't sing Rapper's Delight. I'm extremely honored and excited. Hope you enjoy the song!"Wasting Time" (Jack Johnson), "Right Here, Right Now" (Fatboy Slim), "Another Brick in the Wall - Part 2" (Pink Floyd), "All I Ask of You" (Phantom of the Opera - trying to transpose an acoustic version), and oh, about 19 hours worth of "Akshay151" (Okay Samurai)
Tuesday, June 24 at 5:48 PM
Dave's Teach For America Chronicles / Chapter Five: Second Quarter
For second quarter, I kept 704 (Sierra's class), dropped 604 and 608, and added 705 and 706. Planning with two different curriculums daily had been difficult, so I was relieved to stick with just the 7th grade. 704, my homeroom class, was still manageable but had a few new students added in after the schedule change. 705 was the most well-behaved class I had encountered over the entire year; 706 was the absolute worst-behaved class I had encountered over the entire year. Go figure. The good news was that I got to move to the vacant open-space class adjacent to me, which meant I had more room, board space and better desks. I took all my palm fronds and vines down and moved them to the new location.
I basically got to start over again with 705 and 706, which was great. I could be strict with consequences up front and start a new tone. It worked with 705, but not 706. I called most of their parents on the very first day. These guys were off the hook much more than my 6th graders had been. Now, instead of students just talking while I was trying to teach, 706 students liked to get out of their seats, play "trashketball", hit each other and complain that they got hit. Daryl in 706 became the bane of my existence. He was always in hyper-crazy-go-insane-swearing mode. My first-year mentor came into my class and helped me with some of the behavior problems, sometimes taking five or six of the troublemakers into a different room to complete assignments alone. Usually, though, I dreaded that last period 706 class. I never seemed to leave school on a good note.
The after school drawing club was losing its initial appeal, so I decided to start something new: a reading club. My parents gave me boxes of my old books, and I created a class library. I added a few incentives to stay after, like free point tickets or snacks and soda. It sold well, and I had about a dozen kids stay after during the first day, including some of my old 6th graders, and some kids who weren't even in my classes. And again, the "bad kids" liked to stay after with me. This is where I met the infamous Prince, a name I had heard teachers yell all over the school. Prince started to come visit me in the mornings too and borrowed some of my old Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books.
The school as a whole was getting more and more out of control. Now I was faced with an extra challenge: as the only 7th grade teacher in the 6th grade wing, I was on a different schedule than the surrounding classes. This meant for half of 705 and all of 706, I was the only teacher in the 6th grade wing. So all hall wanderers, all lightswitch flickers, and all friends in other classes knew that they wouldn't get caught in the 6th grade wing during those times. Almost every day things were thrown over my dividers when students entered the vacant classroom next door. Textbooks, paper, eggs, pencils and pens, trashcans, carrots, chairs - I saw them all airborne at some point, all hovering in what seemed like slow-motion over my students. The school was changing from just being out of control to dangerous. Even the well-behaved 705 class started to deteriorate after dodging projectiles from students hiding behind dividers. After one particularly bad incident where my student got clocked with a textbook, I had the students write about the lack of safety in the 6th grade hall and turned in the responses to the principal. Jordan, an absolutely brilliant student and just all-around good kid, wrote "I was scared today. I hid under my desk because I was afraid of getting hit by books." Regardless of our cry for help, the throwing continued.
Winter break could not have come at a better time. I needed a week to relax and think everything over, and then finish up the remaining month in the second quarter when I came back in January. On the day before break, Daryl from 706 came into my 705 class, saying that he had been kicked out of math. Not wanting him wandering around the halls, I sat him down in a corner and gave him paper and a pencil to draw with. As I was lining the students up for their next period, Daryl joined a group of my 705 students who weren't getting up just yet. They were playing paper-rock-scissors. I asked them to line up twice but they were too caught up in the game. Soon Daryl had added a new element to the game: hit the person on the back of the head who loses. Everyone laughed and thought that this was a great idea. By this time, I went over to the table and asked each student individually to line up. No one responded; it was like I wasn't even there. I turned around and decided to start taking the rest of 705 to their next class and hoped the paper-rock-scissors crew would quickly get up. I had made my way to the front of the room when I heard yelling, and I turned around to see the crowd of kids all getting their punches in for the loser of the game - a kid named Darnell.
And then I saw Daryl grab Darnell's head and slam it into the edge of the desk. The laughs turned into shock, the rest of 705 and the now-approaching 706 raced to the scene. "Get help now" I whispered to the nearest student, who ran downstairs. Blood covered Darnell's face and more blood on the desk was dripping onto the chair and carpet. I stood in absolute disbelief, unable to move or even process what had just happened - how Daryl could have been so cruel and violent as to intentionally do what he did. A teacher later criticized me for not immediately rushing to Darnell's aid. Another teacher criticized me for not breaking up the flurry of fists dished out to Darnell. I can't explain why I stood frozen there. I felt more powerless than ever in a place that I didn't want to be in. Darnell got stitches that afternoon.
The break was a reflective time. I thought about the year so far; what I had done wrong coupled with what kind of a world I was teaching in. I began to think about everything from quitting to moving to a different school to leaving after finishing the school year. I had never felt this unhappy before. When school started back up again, things seemed to be even worse. The ever-present hall wanderers were having races down my hallway. The water fountains were cut off because a study showed the pipes contained high traces of lead. Bathrooms had to be locked up because students were using the walls instead of the toilets (and yes, for #1 and #2). And then something unexpected happened in my personal life, and I suddenly felt alone at the most challenging point of my year. I spent my lunch periods locked up in the 6th grade planning room with my head down and my eyes closed while I listened to the yelling in the hallway outside. I would open a cabinet door slightly to block me so it would give me enough time to pretend I was eating if someone walked in the door. As a thin person who couldn't afford to lose much weight, I lost ten pounds.
The teacher next door to me was a woman originally from Trindad named Ms. Jacob. She had a thick accent that caused the kids to call her "Miss Cleo," but even they knew that she was an excellent teacher. She was only in her third year of teaching, but she was always someone that I could talk to for a direct, honest answer. She came up to me one morning, sensing something was even more wrong than usual, and asked me about it. I was writing an objective on the board, chalk in one hand, clipboard in the other, and just started crying. The kids began to walk in, and she took me to the 6th grade planning room and closed the door. We talked until the announcements were over and I composed myself again, but when I walked back into the classroom, I wished I was anywhere else but there. There was no such thing as a "good day" at Northeast. The days got progressively worse.
I know very little about the clinical nature of depression, but the days dragged on and I had no idea how I was going to survive two more quarters of this. I had exhausted myself on discipline, phone calls, making worksheets and instruction, but worst of all, I felt like I wasn't teaching these students anything. My save-the-world dreams of teaching had been reduced to a battle to survive. Second quarter was ending and few things made me happy. I had received a Nintendo Gamecube video game system for Christmas, and it frequently became an afterschool outlet, as did writing music and drawing. I met with Camika, my Teach For America program director, for a one-on-one midyear meeting. She had heard about the daily challenges from the other Northeast teachers, since everyone was having an extremely difficult time with the administration and our environment. I basically talked for 45 minutes, answering a list of questions about my year, and Camika gave me some ideas, strategies, and phone numbers to call.
With the help of an assistant principal, I was finally able to get in touch with Daryl's mother. We sat down with Daryl in the 6th grade office and talked for a half hour. It was visible that Daryl's mom was trying hard with him, but now she seemed helpless. "I don't know what else to do anymore," she said several times during our conversation. "I even took Christmas away from him." The kid inside me slumped as I looked at Daryl's gaze at the wall. His mother and I left the meeting with more questions than answers. During one particularly difficult day at school, I dropped 706 off but asked Daryl to come with me. We sat down in the 6th grade office and just talked. We talked like two kids, especially about video games. And Daryl pretty much told me his life story. He sometimes saw his Dad, and his older brother worked at the BWI Airport. He had to go to court once a month because he had told a teacher he wanted to kill her. This was after she ripped up his drawing of Pikachu that he had worked hard on. So I asked Daryl if he wanted to stay after school on Wednesdays for a couple of hours to do extra work so he could pick up his grade, but also to play Game Boy Advance video games. He agreed and asked me to call his mom for permission. I did, and she thanked me.
Second quarter ended with the same things being thrown and the same battles being fought, but connecting with Daryl was the first bright point of teaching that I had seen in a long time. The first day he stayed after, we read an textbook story about Jackie Robinson together and played Bomberman Tournament by linking our systems together. Again, what was it with me and this attraction to the so-called bad kids? I always chalked it up to my inexperience and thought they liked me just because they could get away with anything while I was around. But Daryl was starting to change my mind.
(Dave's TFA Chronicles are eight short stories about Dave's job as a Language Arts teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools from 2002 to 2003. Read the other chapters: one two three four five six seven eight)
Sunday, June 22 at 5:06 PM
End of Days!
Four freakin' days of school left! And it turns out that I'm not teaching summer school, so Northeast screwed me over one last time. I've applied to two summer jobs at the Sylvan Learning Center, but I might sell my soul and do some temp work or look into being a waiter. The quote of the week comes from 611's India, helping another student with her parts of speech: "Time isn't an adverb...where the -ly at?" Although a close second was 611's Sheena saying, "These black children are crazy!" To which another student replied, "...But you're black." And Sheena said, "No, I'm caramel." Kids say the darnedest things!
In response to Jeff's post that was buried by the massive fourth TFA chapter (#5 hits the shelves on Monday - bring it on, Harry Potter), the answers are soon and yes. By soon I mean I'll add Northeast Island to my portfolio soon and throw in a few new sketches. By yes I mean I'm currently recording Akshay151 and am hoping to complete it over the weekend. But thanks for asking the questions, Jeff. I like having more conversation between posts, especially when people make fun of each other. Therein lies so much comedic gold. Maybe someone should check out the Friday Five and post their answers here...
Thursday, June 19 at 1:32 PM
Dave's Teach For America Chronicles / Chapter Four: First Quarter
"You're going to be an example we'll use in the future for someone who is flexible," a Teach For America employee told me. This was after she informed me that I was finally placed at Northeast Middle School #049, after being previously told I would be at Fallstaff Middle School and then Dr. Roland Patterson Academy. Every time they changed my assignment, the new school was closer to my home, so I didn't mind. My roommates and I settled into our house in Fells Point, a neighborhood that seemed to be gorgeous on one block and boarded up on the next. My room, the "football field room," stretched back deep into the house and gave me plenty of room for musical instruments and gear. It also had a door leading to a rooftop deck, a place where I'd eventually spend a lot of my nights watching the ships on the water and the airplanes coming to and from BWI Airport. I became much closer with my roommates. Nick and Tammer being great chefs and Mike owning a George Foreman Grill, we always had dinner together. Our stories and arguments were always something to look forward to.
Northeast held a new teachers' meeting a few weeks before school started, so I drove over and pulled up my plastic orange cafeteria chair into a group of about 12 other teachers. Mrs. Jones, our principal, led the meeting. This too was her first year as a principal, but she was energetic and excited about the newfound responsibility. The "Supreme Team" (as she dubbed it) of herself and the two assistant principals was going to make Northeast a "blue-ribbon school." It eased my nervousness and made me anxious to start decorating my classroom. After the meeting, Mrs. Jones opened up the supply room and pretty much said the equivalent of "go nuts." A world of construction paper, yarn, chalk, staplers, folders, tape and markers appeared on endless metal racks, and like the proverbial kid in the candy store, I grabbed anything and everything. For someone who has always loved art, it felt like I was looting a craft store to get these huge baskets of materials. Mrs. Freeman, the 6th grade assistant principal, gave me my schedule: Classes 704, 604 and 608 for 90 minutes everyday. It was one seventh grade class and two sixth grade classes, so she informed me that I would be teaching in two different rooms. When we walked upstairs, I found out that these weren't rooms; these were open-space.
From what I've heard, open-space was an idea from someone's college thesis that said schools shouldn't have walls or doors. The idea was, if a student in one class wasn't paying attention, maybe he or she would listen to and learn from the adjacent classes. Maybe it sounds good on paper, but it creates a cacophony in reality. Most teachers at Northeast taught in classrooms - the seven other TFA teachers at my school did - but each grade subschool had a large open space that was divided into three rooms by several partitions and dividers showing the perimeter. Mrs. Freeman showed me my rooms, which in both grades were sandwiched in the middle of the three open-space rooms. Luckily, I ran into my mentor, a woman whose job it was to help new teachers through out our first year. She convinced Mrs. Freeman to just let me have the room in the 6th grade wing so I wouldn't have to switch or decorate two classrooms.
And decorate I did. When I did Summer Day Care at Kiddie Country, we always had theme weeks where we would decorate the classroom. My perennial favorite was the outdoors week, where I turned the classroom into a jungle. So that's what I did here too. About 30 huge green construction paper palm fronds hung from the ceiling with green yarn vines strewn about. A cartoon monkey and a snake were hidden behind some leaves. Then I took a huge slab of cardboard from our house's Ikea purchases and created a sign that said "Welcome to the Language Arts Adventure...with your tour guide, Mr. Werner." Apparently word got around TFA quickly because a lot of corps members said they had heard about the jungle classroom. I had learned over the summer how important creating a positive classroom environment was to teaching, so I probably went a little overboard. But this was my room, my office, my domain. I loved it. I also took an old Bruce Lee college poster from Enter The Dragon and drew him a book and a "#1 Harry Potter Fan" tee-shirt. "Reading...it's a kick!" It was so corny and yet simultaneously so awesome.
Before the school year started, I began to learn about the paperwork outside of the classroom. This is the part that most people don't see. You needed to write a lesson plan every day following a specific format, with a learning objective written in a "know / by" format, like The student will know how to identify an adjective by completing several workbook exercises and participating in a group activity. Good planning equals good instruction, so I had no problems with that. Grade books, attendance books, a lesson plan book; still no problems. Then there was the DSA portfolio (DSA stands for something important, I'm sure), supposedly one of the items that would determine my evaluation rating at the end of the year. It had to consist of student samples, parent phone call logs, documentation of everything and show improvement over the course of the year. There were also writing folders, where students had to follow a cookie-cutter essay writing format and record and store all of their writing for the year. There was a list of content standards to follow (so if you're teaching prepositions, they need to follow standard 6.12.3.a, and that should be documented in your lesson plan). Individually, these all seem like good ideas. Together, they become roadblocks to actually teaching something meaningful. The state gave me a curriculum, told me what textbook stories my kids had to read and what skills they had to know, but didn't say how.
I began to plan for the year and quickly realized the immense challenge of making these things interesting for the students. Matthew Henson, among the first people to reach the North Pole and a prominent African-American explorer, had a 15-page biography that started out our year with a resounding booooooring. Someone falls in the ice and dies, but the excitement of finding the North Pole on page 14 wasn't going to wow these students. The worksheets and teacher's edition we were given continued the stale instructional trend. So I began making my own worksheets, following a lot of the same principals I used with the comic strip that I drew in college. Cameron and Ashley were joined by Marlon and Jasmine, and their cartoon faces appeared on all our work and their names were in all of our examples. I also hid a star on each worksheet and gave the kids an extra point if they circled it...anything to grab their attention.
The first day of school arrived with much anticipation and preparation. I did the standard "here are the rules and emergency contact information" routine while wearing a fedora hat and giving a tour of the classroom with an attempt at an Australian accent. We went around the room and the students introduced themselves too - everyone, in all of my classes, except for Paul. Paul didn't want to say his name or anything about himself. I accounted it to shyness and let it slide, but told him I'd be talking to his mother soon about classroom participation. It was a great first day, and some students were already winning my heart over. The biggest surprise was the roster for 604: they had 44 students on roll. Marshall and a few other kids had to sit on a stack of newspapers in the back of the classroom when we ran out of desks, but they didn't seem to mind too much. 44 students squeezed together in a middle open-space classroom made things tight, but we managed.
704, my 7th grade class, was first period every day. They had their share of talkers and attitudes, but I loved them. For the most part, they were a well-behaved class with mostly polite and intelligent students. I guess every teacher has that one kid who latches on; that one kid who comes after school to help you put chairs up or wash the boards. It only took about a week to figure out that Sierra from 704 was going to be that student. I saw Sierra just about every day before, during, and after school. I walked Sierra and another student home one late day after school and remember the thrill in going down the "shortcut" through the woods that all the kids used to get to school. 604 and 608 were just getting adjusted to middle school and needed a little more growth in terms of behavior and language arts skills.
Over that first month, things quickly began to change. Students began to cut classes and roam the halls, running and yelling during my instruction. With no door, and "walls" that could be pushed over, nothing was stopping these children from entering my room and saying and doing whatever they wanted. Security, in the form of two guys with walkie-talkies, couldn't possibly handle the exponentially-growing swarms of roaming students. The fire alarms went off at least twice a day, and soon everyone learned to just ignore them. The kids knew how to turn on and off the hall lights and I was soon flicking my lights back on over 25 times a day (but sometimes just giving up and resorting to teaching in the dark). I was extremely self-conscious of how loud my classes were getting, especially when I had to respect the teachers and classes on either side of me. And some of these classes didn't get along and liked to throw things over the dividers. I remember one instance when the class next door threw crumpled paper balls and an all-out war almost erupted, with almost every student standing up to represent 604 with flying textbooks and pencils.
Management always was my weakest point in the classroom, and my discipline and consequences never seemed to work. Written apology letters didn't work. Students didn't show up for detention and my administration didn't seem to have strict consequences for skipping - in fact, we weren't allowed to keep students for detention without a day's notice. Taking points off grades only affected a handful of students. The last resort, parent phone calls, were a mixed bag. Some days I would talk to 10 grandmothers, moms and dads and see immediate behavioral changes in their children the next day. But one day in particular I remember calling 32 parents and not feeling any difference during class the next day. Regardless, I kept it up. Parental interaction was always something I tried to stick with, even if it meant calling some students' houses every day. A lot of the emergency contact numbers were wrong or disconnected, which led to a cell phone or work number search that usually left me empty-handed.
By my nature, discipline was hard. I consider myself extremely patient, laid back and generally optimistic, but I was being pushed in another direction. Politeness had run its course. It started to get to the point where I felt I had very little power in my classroom; I would be teaching something and feel like not a single student was paying attention to me no matter what exciting worksheet I had created. Most were talking to each other, yelling across the classroom or asking to get a pencil. Using a technique from the summer institute, students had to trade me one of their shoes if they wanted to borrow a pencil. That way, I always knew I would get my pencil back at the end of class. These students never took responsibility for their own actions; it was always someone else's fault. They liked to talk back and start arguments about why they weren't sitting down. They're just sixth and seventh graders, I kept reminding myself.
I lost it one day, and only one day. I had class 604 settled and was going over a new discipline system with warnings and a specific chain of consequences for misbehaving. I finished my speech and asked for questions, and Terri raised her hand. She asked me why I treated Jared, a Special Ed kid, differently from the rest of the class. The day before, Jared had hit another student and all he got was a phone call home from me. What she didn't know, or did know but chose not to say, was that Blake and Shaheen were saying things about his mother that, as I'm sure you can imagine, were extremely cruel and graphic. When I tried to respond, Terri interrupted me and kept on talking. I asked her politely to be quiet. Twice. Three times. Four times. Seventeen times later, Terri was still talking louder than ever. I exploded. I yelled, grabbed her worksheet, ripped it in half, threw the scraps across the room and told her to get out of my classroom. This was something I never thought I would be capable of, something I never would have imagined resorting to. The principal, who was on the other side of the school, heard me from all the way over and made her way into my classroom. She gave a short lecture to the class about how hard Mr. Werner works to plan for you and how you need to treat Mr. Werner with respect and she should never have to hear Mr. Werner yell like that again. Terri was suspended and I got a grain of confidence back.
After a suggestion from my roommates, I started an after school drawing club. Sierra was always there, but for some reason, a lot of the so-called "bad kids" seemed to come too. These kids were absolutely horrible for me in the classroom but completely different in a small group setting in the library. Paul, the defiant student from the first day of school, showed up regularly. One day my group of about 7 stayed until 5:00, freestyling, learning the Harlem Shake (ask me to do it the next time you see me), drawing decorations for my classroom and playing tackle football outside. Another TFA teacher told me that I shouldn't let the bad kids stay after school until they changed their behavior in my class. It was a good suggestion and I probably should have followed it, but these kids were gasping for attention and my heart usually overpowered my mind. Tuesdays after school became the one thing that I always looked forward to.
In the continuing effort to improve my discipline, I attended a TFA workshop on setting the students up into groups. Groups were positively rewarded by buttons (or tickets) that could be cashed in for prizes at the end of the week. Group activities encouraged talking, but it was better to talk about a graded assignment than how you were going to fight someone during lunch. It gave me a new burst of inspiration and I tried it in my classroom. It worked for only three weeks, but those were some great three weeks. Every strategy I had seemed to work for a couple of weeks but then run out of steam.
And then "the state" came in. They remind me of the Agents in the Matrix movies. Men dressed in suits approach in groups of three, walk around your classroom while you're teaching, take notes on their clipboards, ask some students questions about what they're learning, and then they're gone. They're paid more than teachers and many of them are former teachers, so tensions tend to rise when they appear. Here's where that extra paperwork comes in. Here's where those writing folders, content learning standard 7.3.6.b and that DSA portfolio need to be in order. I will never forget a lesson where I was teaching the students about facts and opinions and had them going through newspapers to find examples of both. A woman from the area office came in, sat me down, and informed me that I should have taught these students "newspaper etiquette" before the assignment; specifically, what a "gutter" was (the white space in between columns). The sarcastic Dave inside me said "Oh crap! I can't believe that I didn't think ahead enough during my fact and opinion planning to teach kids the life-saving skill of identifying gutters, but I'll try harder next time." Instead, I smiled and nodded.
Many teachers began to murmur about their disapproval of the way the administration was handling things. The same kids were roaming the halls and talking back to teachers, and nothing was being done. Kids were being given second, third, fourth and seventy-eighth chances and maybe a scary lecture. I was having a hard enough time controlling my classroom, let alone the dozens of kids outside of it at any given time. Punch a kid, get suspended, right? Punch a teacher, get expelled, right? Cuss out a teacher, get suspended, right? Well, okay, at least get detention or an alternative classroom setting? There were several instances of each of these, and sometimes no consequences were given by the administration. The consequences that were given were lifted when Mom came to school to complain about the unjust treatment of her child. The teacher next door to me was moved to another school, as was another teacher because "the state" said they were surplus. Three teachers quit, two women in the office were laid off, and one of our two security guards was taken away.
Nine weeks seemed like nine years for first quarter. My perceptions of this job before school and my reality now were on completely different ends of the spectrum. Grading was a simple system: above a 70% was passing, below was failing. Most kids hovered dangerously close to that percentage, and over half my students failed first quarter. I hoped it would be a wake-up call. Second quarter was about to begin, and the staff had an after school meeting to address some new concerns, specifically class size and student behavior. The enormous sixth-grade classes were broken up and a new 611 class was created. Because of the decrease in staff, many teachers' schedules were changed to pick up new classes. A xeroxed schedule was placed in my hand, and I searched for my name. To my surprise, Mr. Werner would now be teaching 704, 705 and 706 - all seventh grade. First quarter ended and second quarter, the most challenging part of my year, was about to begin.
(Dave's TFA Chronicles are eight short stories about Dave's job as a Language Arts teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools from 2002 to 2003. Read the other chapters: one two three four five six seven eight)
Sunday, June 15 at 6:50 PM
Is That The Sun?
Didn't even realize that it's been a whole year since everyone has been posting to the blog site. I am really glad that we still have this thing going, because sadly, I have lost a lot of touch with everyone in the band. The person I talk to most is Don, because he lives about 2 miles away from us, but, we don't talk that much. And I know he hasn't picked up a guitar in months! I've been playing along to the Ben Kweller album "Sha Sha". Favorite song to play on that album "lizzy". I have been trying to write some songs just because, and I'm in a huge rut. I have some licks, but I really miss being able to play those to the band and let them build on it.
Anyways, washed my car today, and not 2 minutes after I go inside and come back out, a bird has already crapped right on the roof. And then not 2 hours later, it starts raining. Oh well, what can you expect, the weather in 2003 has been well under par for being decent. Finally saw "The Italian Job" last night. It was really good, entertaining. I like robbery/heist movies though, they're always a lot of fun. Have yet to see Battlefield Earth starring John Travolta though, heard that one was a "must buy", what do you think dave or andrew? ha.
dave, when are you gonna add something to your portfolio? record anything lately?"Lizzy" Ben Kweller, "Ride wit me" MCLyte, "React" Eric Sermon featuring Redman.
Saturday, June 14 at 3:05 PM
One Year Later
Exactly one year ago today we started up this weblog. I wrote about Gameboy Advance and Nerf guns, and Don and Jeff wrote about their respective online personas, Edward Split and Furious Tiger. Like I said a couple of weeks ago, I mainly made it just as a way to keep in touch with the band. It started out as just a small part of the Okay Samurai site, but when it was switched over to dave2n.com in December, things started to pick up. Now it's updated at least once a week and has become a fun side-project / hobby of mine. We only get about 200 visitors a day, but unlike a lot of website designers, I'm not really concerned with how many people visit; it's more about who visits. Old college friends, TFA teachers and staff, family, roommates - for some reason, you keep on checking in with the extended Okay Samurai family and the very different directions our lives are taking us.
I didn't have a computer when I went to college in the fall of 1998, and didn't know much at all about the internet. We actually already had a website - when the band made CDs during our senior year of high school, we got a free webpage with our package where people could download these crazy things called mp3s and actually listen to our music through IUMA! I remember going to the Robinson Media Center, checking out this internet stuff and bringing up the site to show to people. But when I finally got a computer in February '99, I started to look into webpage design a little more, and the band and comic strip gave me a good excuse to do so. I immediately became interested in VRML, which I played around with a heck of a lot in that tiny first year college dorm room. But "computers are for nerds" was always sticking in the front of my mind, so I stayed away from programming and dealt mainly with creation and design. It was like designing the TV Guides or books or neighborhood newsletters or video game magazines I made as a kid, but now it was taken to a global level. And now dave2n really serves as a creative extension, a world to write, draw, and sing in that a couple hundred people take notice of daily.
This website has let people listen to our music, play a video game, or read archives of the comic strip and our journal posts. It has hosted an island adventure for a group of sixth graders and shown some artwork that helped me get into grad school. I wrote an unpublished blog for about three months during college, simply because I wanted to write a daily journal for myself and liked the convenience of typing and the weblog format. It was a lot more personal than this one because I knew that I was the only one reading it, but today it's great for me to look back on and remember everything I was going through. I think the same is true here; down the road, I'll want to remember my time at Northeast Middle School and everything that went along with this year. I'm already nostalgic about things like our Animal Crossing marathon, which was probably one of my favorite days this year. That story and the band stories everyone has told - from Eugene's "Okay Samurai Factoids" to Eric's take on the Espiritu Sessions - are going to be great to look back on one day. I have no aspirations of dave2n becoming anything more than it is, a simple personal website that just lets me keep in touch with my closest friends. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. I'll probably update the site even more next year since Hotlanta is the farthest I've been from home. And maybe I'll keep it for a few more years, until Eugene gets married, Jeff loses his brown warmup pants, Don goes sober for a year, Andrew saves the universe, Eric and Russ become music superstars or Mike stops trying to get in fights with people in taxicabs...who knows? Regardless, thanks for reading and staying in touch with us.
By the way, I'm at a loss for the appeal of the stereotypical fat kid who sings a grown-up love song during talent search contests. You know the type; he sort of puffs around the stage and does a little growl thing with his voice while pointing at the audience and singing about his "baby" or "honey" or "woman" or what have you. I haven't even seen American Juniors but I swear that there has got to be a contestant like this on the show. The immediate reaction is always "Aw, he's so cute." Um, no, he's just a fat kid singing lyrics he doesn't understand. The reason I bring this up is that my sister was telling me about some girl at her school who performed an original song at the middle school talent show and how God-awful the experience was. The lyrics were something like "Hey boy, I kind of like you," or something creative-writing-class like that. Now, I don't want to be labeled as the skinny guy raining on the fat people's parade, but for the love of all things sacred, if you're under 12, don't sing "Honey, I'm gonna get 'cha!" or "I need a woman to make a man out of me" at a talent show. You may fool the elderly and the soccer moms, but I'm on to your game.
So...why do you keep visiting this site again?
Tuesday, June 10 at 9:07 PM
First Fiesta in the New Crib
Wow, what a great party. I must say, I haven't lost my touch since my golden days of college. haha. 2 kegs kicked in the perfect amount of time. Aside from the cops coming a total of two times throughout the night, thanks to our d-head neighbor, everyone had a great time. Started off with a few competitive games of foosball, and then don came around 10:30ish, donated a beer pong table, and the party shifted into high-gear until the wee hours of the morning. when the cop came the second time, we were all just inside watching Jackass:The Movie. He actually walked up to our backdoor, so I went out to talk to him, and he seemed more pissed that he had to come out for a false noise problem. He was like, "uh...we got a call about you all being noisy, but I don't hear anything." So in conclusion, the party was a lot of fun, thanks to everyone who came out.
distinguished guests in attendance:
lynda burnell - breaking 3 years of not seeing each other, not only makes an appearance, but stays for a few hours!
andrew werner - never misses an 891g, or 1524 party, but haven't seen him in a few months. also rocked the nascar visor, which i took the liberty of wearing for a bit.
eugene jung! - no, he didn't make it out, but we did talk to him on the phone for a bit, trying to convince him to come out.
over and out,
jeff
Monday, June 9 at 7:40 AM
Room 103 and More Monkeys
After another house backed out, the powers-that-be in Teach For America Baltimore asked the boys of 103 South Washington to throw the definitive TFA party (only to be rivaled by Jeff's housewarming party tonight, I'm sure). This past week was pre-induction for the next batch of corps members, and they were ending a busy week of interviews, training, and fun things like urine tests and fingerprints. So take the eh-nubian-eh-newbies, my year of corps members, and the second year corps members who are almost finished with their two years - you've got a total corps number that hovers around 250. Everyone was invited to our house on Thursday night (and yeah, we did have to teach the next day).
You may remember our Halloween Party, where Nick's "Spooky Punch" rocked everyone who came in contact with it and Joe Manko came dressed as a cow. That was considered by most to be the best TFA party of 2002, so we had to try to one-up ourselves. Our theme was "Room 103," so we turned the house into a classroom. Vocabulary words, drinking stations and a tequila shot process chart graced the living room walls, while snacks and punch were in the cafeteria (kitchen). Then people went upstairs to the principal's office (Tammer's room) before making it up through detention (my room) to the keg on our deck outside. We just put (working) Christmas lights back up on our rooftop deck and the weather was perfect, so most people spent a good portion of the night up there. Mike and I played a short three-song set around 11. It was good to meet all the incoming corps members (I was the greeter at our door most of the night), but they had a lot of questions about why I was leaving after one year. I think that Mike and I successfully scared a group of people on the deck with our combined collection of stories, but these new kids on the block still seem as energetic and young as we all were a year ago. Overall, the party was incredible and we kicked the keg before eleven, and Nick didn't even do any card tricks! ("There are two types of girls in this world, diamond girls and heart girls...")
Our nightly multiplayer matches of Super Monkey Ball 2 have now been replaced with a Gamecube game called Timesplitters 2. It's out for every next-gen system, and I'd definitely recommend it. It's made by the same people who made the Goldeneye game for N64, which I think I played once at a friend's place. I've never gotten into these shooter games like Unreal, Half Life or Quake, but now I can see why they're addicting. In TS2 there are 126 unlockable characters to play as, including our favorite: a monkey. After a long day at school, there's nothing like seeing a monkey do a backflip while shooting a rocket launcher (but the bear somersaulting with a flamethrower comes in a close second). One of the coolest features is a mapmaker, where you can design your own levels and then play in them with your friends.
Thirteen days of school left...except I think I'll probably be teaching summer school. The final 5 TFA Chronicles are coming every Monday starting June 16.
Saturday, June 7 at 9:45 AM
Good Morning Robinson!
During my senior year of high school, the morning announcements were switched over from just reading notes over the intercom to a 10-minute TV program. For the most part, it was boring. Different anchorpeople simply read pages of announcements every week while whoever was behind the camera used a million fade out / transition effects. So I was surprised when my Calculus teacher, Mrs. Jurinski, thought I should try being the producer for one week. I had just done another Mario Paint animated cartoon video project. I talked to the afterschool sponsor, a guy named Mr. Plath (see Eugene, I remembered), and stayed after one day to watch how it was done. Basically, the drama kids were in charge of things. If the drama kids at your high school were anything like mine, they were always showing off and treated each other like a class of celebrities. I watched as one guy, Shaun, brought down a new video camera and the drama techies drooled over it, treating this boy like Kubrick.
Suffice to say, we changed all the rules. Don and Eugene were my anchormen. Andrew usually had pole vaulting practice but he often stuck around for a while. First, I made an introductory cartoon on Mario Paint with They Might Be Giant's SenSurround rocking in the background. Every day, something new exploded in the cartoon, including a scene where a tank blew up the rival school, Lake Braddock. Then Don and Eugene would start the announcements, but add sarcastic comments after every other one. We also changed camera angles often, and even used some footage we filmed at home. Don came out of a sewer, Eugene lost in Connect Four and threw the pieces in the air, and I'm pretty sure we used the trampoline for something too. Then I made special advertisement cartoons, like when the school policeman, Officer Boffi, talked about the fabulous 3-for-$1 Otis Spunkmeyer cookie deal at lunch. We broke the anchor table when Eugene jumped across it for some unknown reason, but instead of trying to cover up the evidence, we aired the clip. We had Jeff Chin fill in for Eugene one day, and then Eugene came out unexpectedly in the middle of the announcements and punched him in the face before reclaiming his seat. Probably my favorite clip was promoting the annual "Ram Jam" concert by doing a voice-over for a video of Carson Daly talking to Matt Pinfield. Don Simpson's "Sports Machine" wasn't that bad either.
The drama techies were none too happy. We completely revolutionized the morning announcements, and some of the things we did (like camera angles, music and home video clips) were emulated for the rest of the year. I produced the show for two separate weeks, and during the second time, we got an absolute flood of announcements from organizations by Tuesday, because they knew people were paying attention to Good Morning Robinson for the first time. I almost got in a heated argument once with Mr. Plath over having to cut some of the crappy announcments to fit our 10-minute limit. But it was great to be behind the camera, putting everything together into an entertaining package while only my friends really knew I was in charge of everything. Somehow, I have a feeling I'll step back behind the camera someday, but we'll see. Okay Samurai, if you remember anything about the announcements that I forgot, go ahead and post it.
Sunday, June 1 at 5:18 PM
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