Tactical Advantage

Actual names are not used in this, or any post.

Friday marked the end of the first quarter and the start of intersession, Monday next we will return to school. I have already planned my bulletin boards for the next quarter and have a lame excitement for it. However, the final school day before a break is hectic.

We normally plan rather judiciously on our team. We make ourselves aware of what the other teachers are doing, when. This week was not one of those weeks and our students are generally good kids in every respect – despite their noted and referenced aversion to deodorants and bathing – were wound up in a bad way. They contended with the twin evils of impending release from school and an avalanche of project deadlines and test dates. In short, we had thrown everything at them at the precise moment their attention was elsewhere.

I decided that since I had so much fun at Bar Trivia on Monday night with the Music Teachers that I would give my students a break and model their test off Bar Trivia. This was a huge mess, noisy and probably a poor way to measure their learning but I submit that when they have several other tests that week and mammoth projects due (and for the large part done) that I was not going to get a better gauge of their progress.

First the students had to chose clever names for their teams, my favorites being: Spit out your gum; Get out a pencil; Ask Meredith – we don’t know; Skip us, we don’t know either; Arm Wrestling Sissies; Drop-Kick Justin; Don’t say ‘shut up;’ and, It was her idea, not mine. However my favorite students picked the name #$%&!, which you can parse in your own imagination but I am confident that they would be as beloved by Chaos Bean as they are by their teachers.

The second process was projecting their test questions onto the Smart Board and having them answer them on tiny slips of paper, which a runner would run to the front. I kept a running tally on the whiteboard of their scores. This actually went really well compared to the Herculean task of trying to students to focus on work on the eve of vacation.

We had two major interruptions that were really funny. The first was another student who is pretty good had written ‘tactical’ completely illegibly and when his teammate tried to read it, in confusion spat out that “The Confederacy had a testicle advantage.” This embarrassed these otherwise dour students but the third member of their team is impish and this spread about to a point where there were references to ‘tacticals’ for the rest of the day. In a moment of extreme professionalism I even offered that instead of my standard offer of dropkicking Justin that I could just kick him in the tacticals. Other teachers would have handled that better but as their only male teacher during the day I feel like the boys should have a tactical advantage somewhere. School is a woman's world and I am for all intents and purposes some sort of safe haven, a home for boys outside of gym class.

I was also giving myself a break, we had three contentious IEP meetings where I had to remain professional and not actually kick anyone in the tacticals. I really, really wanted to kick one individual in the tacticals but he made it abundantly clear that he has none.

The other interruption to an otherwise pleasant day happened when, triumphantly, one of the students who performs poorly by choice shouted, “Hey, we learned about this!” It was hard to be furious with him, watching his face glow with pride, but I found it within my heart to do it. Before I could speak one of the children said, “Mr. Spritopias – cover your ears,” then addressing his peer said, “You are retarded! Of course we learned about it, why the hell would he put it on the test!”

Many things were on the tip of my tongue but I muttered something about not calling someone retarded – which is about as hypocritical as answering my cell phone, which fortuitously rang at about that time. Thank goodness for Suburban Island and her misunderstanding of time zones! I would probably have let loose and looked like a retard myself. I have to give the kid credit, it takes a lot of something to shout to your teacher, “I HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION FOR SIX STRAIGHT WEEKS!”

In the end, I was amazed. The kids really did know the information on the test. As an added bonus we noisily interrupted the remedial reading class on one side and the regular Language class on the other. I am not sure this is a valid measure of their learning, but we had a fun school day. In this day and age those times are few and far between.

Comments

[Alex V]

Now that you mention it, I think the Confederacy DID have a testicle advantage.