december 9, 2000. "Good thing those lesbians knew CPR." Sigh. I really need this weekend. As the week went on, I began to fantasize about soft beds and unhurried meals that I wanted to eat. Friday was the worst, though. I was scheduled for observation first period, when I taught the 12's a lesson about the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, "Babylon Revisited." I was up late on Thursday, preparing like mad and swilling no name diet cola like it was going out of style. Despite my late bedtime, I couldn't sleep. I think it was a combination of specific anxiety, general stress and poisonous cola. The next morning I had something close to a freak out when I realized that one of my fun handouts had completely disappeared. Finally giving up on the damn thing, I grimly made a note in the margin of my lesson plan and began to write up an overhead. My supervisor arrived in plenty of time, and we chatted about the past week. It's funny - I don't care all that much about being supervised. When I'm standing in front of 33 17-year-olds, suddenly I care much less about my mark in the program and a great deal more about getting and keeping their attention. The class itself was a difficult one. Their attention was elsewhere, for one thing. For another, very few of them had read the short story. I had anticipated this, so I had organized the lesson around whole class summary, a little bit of thematic discussion, and finally some good old "compensate for the loser" group work. This went reasonably well. I had a bit of problem with inattention, which only increased when I didn't provide notes for copying. The group work had a rocky start: we counted off, and several people weren't paying attention or gave numbers out of sequence. When someone asked if they could pick groups, I ignored it completely. That was a very conscious decision, by the way. I had spent the whole week letting them tell me how incomprehensible the hero lesson was and getting extra days to work on the (almost pathetically easy) paper. The ones who were fighting me were the incredibly vocal ones, and they weren't being won over by leniency, so I knew I had to come out swinging with the group work. As I say to myself, they have to know that I'm the head monkey. During the group work, I was blissfully happy. They were talking about the story! All of them! Although maybe one person in each group had actually come prepared, they all seemed to have an opinion on it! The bliss faded during the reporting, however. None of them would listen to the group reporting. I had to ask for quiet four times before I gave up & ended the exercise. But it was during the assignment that the real rebellion broke out. Kids snarled, protested and nearly spat at me. Never mind that it was a creative exercise that they had just done all the groundwork for in the discussion period. They were mad as hell. It was only when I moved the due date back a day that the hostility receded. Jesus, that got under my skin. I couldn't figure out what had gone wrong - yes, they were probably right to ask that the due date be Tuesday. But I couldn't figure out if I had made a major pedagogical mistake, made a minor error in judgement or just experienced extreme backlash from a class that is characterized by inattention and unwillingness to work. I got so wound up by the end of the period that I was crying in the staff bathroom as soon as I escaped. The blackly hilarious thing is that both my supervisor and my co-operating teacher think that the lesson went fine. My supervisor only found a few minor points to discuss with me, despite the backlash of hatred in the last five minutes. I just can't figure it out. I'm not looking forward to the next two weeks of teaching the 12's Fifth Business. I've got to win them over again (not that I think I had them in the first place.) How am I going to do that? Haven't a clue, constant reader. Haven't a fucking clue. Two things did brighten my day, however. At the end of the 5 Minutes of Hate class, a kid started telling me about a party he's having tonight. I asked if I could bring my husband, and he said sure. "Bring some booze, too." "Yeah, cause I can legally buy it," I laughed. I can just picture this party, too: a whole roomful of kids who dislike me, drinking beer and wondering how they could have fun with a teacher there. It made me think of the many good house parties in which I drank my way through my last year of highschool. Although the people at those parties are now going to strip clubs and hitting the gym, I'm still nostalgic for those days of yore - when curfew was 1 a.m. and I wasn't too tired to socialize throughout the whole night. The other thing that cheered me up was that when I walked back into class after my crying spell, I was greeted with the relatively friendly faces of 30 grade 11's. I haven't lost them yet. Taking a hint from Meghan, I took my doubts to the Bible. When I asked the Bible, 'am I doing a good job with the Grade 12 class?' the Bible replied with a scrap of Leviticus. LEV 11:35-7 And every thing whereupon any part of their carcase falleth shall be unclean; whether it be oven, or ranges for pots, they shall be broken down: for they are unclean and shall be unclean unto you. Nevertheless a fountain or pit, wherein there is plenty of water, shall be clean: but that which toucheth their carcase shall be unclean. And if any part of their carcase fall upon any sowing seed which is to be sown, it shall be clean. I take this to mean that my class is a bunch of punks (that they're the unclean carcasse in other words), but that the knowledge I wish to give them (the sowing seed) should still be sewn. Or something like that. The Lawyers (not to be confused with my old university pal the Lawyer) were even more supportive. When asked the same question, the answer was In response to your query "Am I doing a good job with the Grade 12 class?", we believe the most applicable phrase to be "with the permission of the copyright holder". I think that means that if my co-operating teacher and my supervisor (the copyright holders) think I'm doing okay, then I should just relax. Of course, if I understand the students as copyright holders...then I think I'm in trouble. One of the things we did today was brainstorm movie projects for Mel Gibson to further express his dislike of the British. He's already made 3 movies, why not just give up the pretence that his career is about anything other than Limey distaste? We came up with: Mel as a reluctant Afrikaner soldier during the Boer War (which would make four continents of dislike) Mel as a reluctant Chinese participant in the Opium Wars Mel as a reluctant German soldier under Kaiser Wilhelm and finally... Mel as Ghandi The interesting part of the exercise is that it's difficult to find a culture or continent that the British haven't had a colonial hand in. We're still looking into South America, however.