This is what a good day feels like.

2004-11-09 at 7:29 p.m.

Doncha just miss algebra?

Today's lesson was--it was awesome.

Yesterday I taught in Teach's classroom, and it was chaos. The kids were clearly yanking my chain, the lesson plan was just too hard, I was getting flop sweat--and all in front of one of the teachers I really super respect. All I could think was, "Why me, why now, why here, why won't Schlitzy over there just shut up???"

Afterwards, Teach did a debrief with me, and he wasn't nearly as harsh a critic as I was (that's always the way). Other than some mechanical advice ("Don't get in the way of the overhead.") his advice was to start simpler. We left with him saying, "I don't think it went nearly as bad as you think it did."

Hmm. I'm not entirely sure how to take that, still.

But today I went in armed. I was set and I was going to nail it and I was going to be good.

And hot damn if I wasn't great.

I love this classroom. It has Fang, a sweet quiet freshman with his bottom lip pierced in each corner. Fang would sit quietly and never say a thing until one day I asked him about his Metallica t-shirt--I'd asked if he'd seen the movie Some Kind of Monster. It was almost a magical transformation. His eyes lit up. We started talking about Metallica and that led on to the first concert he'd gone to that summer, Kiss. Since then, he's taken pains to show me when he has new concert shirts. And he does a great job on his homework.

This class also has Schlitzy. Alas, poor Schlitzy. He's not so bright. He's not bright enough to know he's not so bright. He keeps saying stupid things that he thinks are going to get kids to like him, or laugh along with him, and all they do is alienate the kids. Last week, the football team had their last game. As the game was announced, Schlitzy blurts out, "Awww, our team sucks. They won't win."

The quarterback (a freshman!) and the star receiver sit together, one row over and one row back.

Schlitzy also wants kids to see him doing well, so he announces he's done with his homework and gets up and roams around the classroom when he's "done" with his homework. Guess how well that strategy's working?

There's also Princess, a sweet kewpie-doll girl with huge eyes, hair down to her butt, and a bag grafitti'd in magic marker to Kiss, Metalica (sic), and Korn. She's so upbeat in class it makes my eyes hurt, even when she's struggling on the homework.

Yesterday, Fang went to sleep on his desk, Schlitzy kept 'making funny', and Princess put her head in her hands, mumbling, "I'm so confused!" Oy. It's like a bad sub day, except that the real teacher was right there watching and seeing and thinking and judging.

Today, though, Schlitzy raised his hand, participated and took notes. Fang asked questions, and had two great insights. The whole class was involved, in on the progression of the lecture, asking questions, figuring things out, anticipating, and discovering.

I felt ten feet tall when the star receiver muttered under his breath, "Hey, all the y's are the same! cool!" I felt twenty feet tall when Fang asked, "Do we have to do it that way? Can we do it this way?" and went on to describe a pretty cool insight. I felt a hundred feet tall when Princess looked up at me and said proudly, "This is easy!"

Hot damn, y'all! Hot friggety freak damn!

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