After Month 1 of Student Teaching, I Confirm: I’m neither biracial nor Jesus (and “Glupker” does not sound like “Pumpkin”)

I’ve been asked my fair share of unexpected questions, and I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of bad pronunciations of my last name (the students asked why it isn’t spelled like it sounds…figure that one out). And if you are one of the people who peered closely at my face to see whether my eyes had grown more slanty after I got back from China, I’m letting you know now that I cringed inwardly even though you meant it as a joke. But no one has ever in my life seriously asked me if I am mixed.

Mixed with what? I replied.

Not black, the students confirmed.

(When you comment on this post, you don’t have to act surprised that I never confided in you that I’m all white)

Sure would have been nice if every day in my student teaching placement produced innocuously cheerful anecdotes like the one above. Week 1 was sort of a blur – a half-day walk-through just to meet and greet, and a school-wide activity called Challenge Day. In Week 2, my mentor teacher left me to fend for myself when she stayed home with her sick baby. We have 5 sections of 9^th grade English, and in every single one, I had to give a stern “I’m not a sub, so stop treating me like one” speech. In Week 3, I figured out that my students can’t tell a complete sentence from a fragment, but they can drop f-bombs at each other in the middle of class. Week 4 gave me my first taste of school politics, and Week 5 opened my eyes to the status of the students’ essay-writing skills (we have to type this?).

On any given day, there may be 14 students absent from a class period. Usually 3 or 4 will wander in late to each class. At least 2 9^th-graders will have in-school suspension every day. Two of our students were already given out-of-school suspension for fighting (10 days).

It’s harder than I thought it would be, and not just because of the students who frustrate me, or whose stories break my heart. It’s hard to be at the bottom of the learning curve, even though I know that by June, I’ll be in a much different place. It’s also no fun watching those videos of myself. Do I really tuck my hair behind my ears that much? And does my voice really sound like that?

I’m gonna post this quickly so I can catch the beginning of the game, but in case you were wondering about the Jesus thing, when I passed out a half-sheet of paper with a warm-up activity, I introduced it by saying, “Don’t worry: this is not a new essay assignment!”

Girl student: Thank you, Jesus!

Me: I’m not Jesus.