Preamble: Things are generally good in my life at the moment.  I’ve got a couple of creative outlets, I’m in touch with a couple of dozen new friends from the summer Scotland trip, and as of Thursday, I’ll have the best brakes in the county, if not the state*.

However, I find myself driving home from school in a stressed-out state.  I’m annoyed at the immaturity of a few of my students, who insist on ruining it for everyone.  I’m annoyed at the endless staffings at which I find out that the student being discussed is “a good kid,” “easily distracted,”and “wants to do well,” with no suggestions from the guidance counselor or special ed teacher as to how to help the kid.  I’m annoyed at insulting staff development events that assume we’re incompetent and/or illiterate.

Therefore, I resolve to focus on the good parts of my job: the students who want to learn, who are looking for feedback on their writing, who have ideas and can share them without insulting people or boosting their own egos.  Students like the two who came to see me at the end of the day, two boys who are sick and tired of having their time wasted.  One wants a recommendation to move up to the honors level for next semester; he’s a shoo-in unless he completely falls apart and/or kills a classmate.  The other asked about moving to my other section so that he can concentrate on improving his skills (he’s in the much louder of my two sections). It’s sad to me that it’s come down to requests for a move, but talking to these two students today made me realize that there are plenty of students, even mid-level sophomores (our school’s forgotten caste), who are looking for an education and aren’t impressed by juvenalia.

On Thursday, we’re starting a digital storytelling project about slavery in both the antebellum South and in the modern world.  It is going to take maturity and independence on the part of my students as they create their PowerPoints (influences on this project are here,  here, and here), limited to one sentence of text per slide, and including images, music, and voiceovers.  It’ll take maturity to read modern slave narratives, maturity to look through image banks for runaway slave ads, independence to create meaning out of all of it.   I’m a little concerned, but I am going to focus on the students who are trying to do the right thing.  I can help them.

Download Video: Posted by jcwasserman at TeacherTube.com.

Progress reports are due tomorrow, and though I have fewer students failing at the moment, some of the grades are going to be ugly.  Participation counts for a lot in my classes, especially the writing classes, and those who waste my oxygen will not like what they get.

Wish me luck.

* Or at least I hope to, as I’ll be spending a lot of money on them.