If you look just right...

If you look at a calender just right, the boxes stack together to look like a train track. A winding relentless train track that we are all slowly traveling along. There are no acceptable options for trying to jump off the tracks. This is really a good design because otherwise I would have jumped off of the tracks by now and fallen out of time. And I am a meddler, so having me wander through time would just end up with me messing up the future. As it is, I am pulled along the train track of the new year and look forward trying to see what is coming.

That might be why I didn't see 2009 coming. January and February have hit me like a train.

My classroom has melted down in the time since Christmas. Students are not invested, behind, not working, touchy, and looking to fight. Parents are exhausted and just waiting for their kids to get promoted to middle school where the teacher won't "bother" them so often. And the teacher, well, he is fighting himself, his kids, and his team. Convinced that all the parts of this train wreck need to be overhauled before it will actually be good for the kids.

The other night I was grading papers while watching House with my roommate Austin and one of the characters said, "You are unbelievably lucky to be certain that what you are doing is right." Austin and I talked about that for awhile and I realized that is part of my problems. I know that my mission is pure. I don't feel like what I am doing is right because I haven't managed to find my balance in my classroom. I am overtly negative most of the time. I set goals to be positive and then no one does their homework, or kids fight and yell at each other, or my lesson goes wrong, or something else happens and I am sucked back into that negative place. And it continues day after day. I revise my whole class trying to find ways to invest the kids and teach reading and show them that the reason I am doing all this work is that I care- despite acting like a crabby angry bear most of the time. This worked last year. It has only worked for like 5 kids this year. So I return to the same challenges day in and day out. Kids that fight are hardly punished, parents are unreachable, kids fall into predictable traps and I am hardly convinced that what I am doing is right. The mission is noble, the actuality is jarring.

This last week I started a new plan, that worked very well for 2.5 days. Which is a HUGE step in the right direction. It is a system of Positive Points. A discipline system based solely on rewarding kids who are doing what they are supposed to or being role models. There are no punishments. I give PP's when i catch students being good. Students can use the points to buy Friday afternoons after school with me- football, video games, movies, and fun science experiments are on the schedule. The students worked harder than before to get these points, and 1 small "Delia gets a positive point for standing right" gets far faster results from my class than a minute of yelling and taking conduct points from kids.

If my class gets a compliment from anyone in the school i add it to a chain and if the chain reaches the floor we get a class party. They got 7 this week! (7 times more than before)

However the week ended with my kids making fun of an ancillary teacher's accent, 3 fights, and a pencil being buried impressively deep in a boys arm.

Despite the post Christmas Melt Down, my life contains many of the same positive glimmers it always has. Some are even glimmering brighter than they usually do. But in the train wreck that has been the beginning of the year in my classroom, those moments look like broken glass shimmering in the remains of a sunrise train wreck; beautiful, but hard to hold onto.

Some glittering glass to remember:
I still have an amazing group of people that I live with.
I have been hired onto a new campus next year as a Reading/Writing Teacher! A brand new campus. It will only be a sixth grade. Here is a website explaining the campuses mission: http://www.yesprep.org/about/index.htm this interview process was exciting and thrilling. I am officially hired, I accept and am excited to go somewhere to be part of a team and have the feedback i need to improve my lesson planning so I can make the jump from good rookie teacher with a lot of intangibles that make him strong- to actual kick ass teacher.
I have started working out again and being more careful what I eat, and I am far away from my goal, but am making good progress.
A group of friends and I play tackle football every Sunday afternoon.
Some of the kids amaze me time and time again.
Calling home and hearing my family's voice.
Not having given up.
Keena's support and smile.

So, it is Sunday morning, time to pick up my rucksack and keep marching through the wreckage. There are lessons to plan, papers to grade, and football to play.