Jennifer is a strange and wonderful little girl. She came into my class a few weeks into the schoolyear so she wasn't on my original roster...all her information was scrawled messily on a yellow slip. Whoever wrote her name made the J look a whole lot like a Y. And at that point I was much more motivated and energetic than I am these days, so soon all her books, all the classwide tracking systems, her desk and her mat spot...they all bore the label, "Yennifer." She didn't show up on my attendance sheets until several days later, and somehow, in that interval, the girl became convinced that her name was actually Yennifer. It's at the top of all her classwork, it's at the top of all her homework, it's how she signs out to go to the bathroom, the other kids in the class refer to her as "Yennifer with a Y"... Poor J/Yennifer! I don't know if clearing up the mistake would be more confusing now or not.

Jennifer's job is the Teacher's Assistant. I am now seriously regretting ever coming up with such an ambiguous and potentially-high-responsibility job and almost get rid of it every day. But, as of today, Jennifer is still the Teacher's Assistant. She is always hustling and bustling around the room, straightening tables and organizing books. To my dismay, she has also decided that she is allowed to give Table Points and move people up to Perfect Pink. I gave her a serious talking-to when I realized at lunch that, right before the kids had gone down to the cafeteria, she had gone around the room with a sharpie and labeled things from my sticker container to my easel to every single slate (there are 24) to the pens themselves with "Ms. Powell." I knew she was taking the job of Teacher's Assistant too far, though, when I found, on her desk, on some of the books in the library, in the closet, labeled "Ms. Yennifer."

But she means well. Which is why I find the following stories endearing instead of irritating. Last Thursday, I found a note in the complaint box (see previous entry) from J/Yennifer. It read: "Ms. Powell, my sweater is tickling me." ??? What did she want me to do about it?! Especially since she knew that I don't check the complaint box until after the kids go home for the day! And last Friday, we were working on writing "Small Moment" stories (you look back on your recent life, choose a little episode, zoom in on it and play it like a movie in your mind so you can capture all the details). She got up from her seat (BAD) and came up to me (BAD) to tell me that she couldn't think of anything to write about. "Ms. Powell," she said, "when I close my eyes, all I see are flowers. Everywhere...flowers." I guess there are worse things to see when you close your eyes.

Last couple anecdotes. A. (oh A.) left a note in the complaint box that read: "Ms. Powell, D. stuck her tongue [probably not spelled that way] out at me. She was very very very very very very very very very very bad." A. and I have started a dialogue journal because she is extremely emotional in a distracting way but doens't open up in face-to-face conversations. I hoped that the journal would give her an outlet where she could write about her feelings and really explore them. So far, though, every entry (there have been about 5) has sounded like this: "Ms. Powell, I am so happy. I love you, Ms. Powell. You are nice and beautiful. Ms. Powell, you are so nice. You are so so nice, Ms. Powell. I am very very very very very very happy today, Ms. Powell." And then she refuses to go back to her desk, refuses to get in line, and bursts into tears.

I guess I vastly overestimated how much time/energy/desire I would have for writing about teaching, after spending every waking hour of every day teaching or thinking about teaching. I turn to this Blog in desperation now. I want to quit. Sometimes I want to die because it seems like the only way to quit, guilt-free. But I don't want to write about all that depressing stuff.

In an effort to think positive, I offer up two adorable anecdotes from the past few days.

1) Ten of my students, along with the rest of the second graders from my school, are in a bus. We are on a field trip, headed back from a musical version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe put on at Lehman College. My students ask me how old I am and I make a math problem out of it..."I was in college for 4 years, I just graduated from college, and I was 18 when I started college." Then we start talking about growing up. They're saying they don't want to grow up...that it doesn't sound like very much fun. "But," I say, "There are lots of cool things about growing up. You get to live on your own and decide what to do with your time. And you get to have your own cat." Y., a bubbly little girl with about 7 pigtails popping out of her head (each held in place by a different color ribbon), decides she agrees. "And you get to be less annoying!" she exclaims.

2) I have started a complaint box in the classroom because, as I tell my students, "I can't deal with the one million little dramas that are happening every second. Don't interrupt me to tell me that he is kicking you under the desk and she is chewing gum and they are calling each other mean names." If the kids are seriously hurt, seriously scared, or seriously unable to learn because of whatever is going on...then they should tell me. Otherwise, they need to decide it's important enough to get up out of their seats and write a formal complaint for the box. This didn't work out exactly as planned...in just one afternoon there were literally around 30 complaints crammed into the box. A lot of them centered around M., a new kid that the others are ganging up on. He is fighting back, apparently, by telling them to shut up a lot and calling them stupid a lot and sometimes kicking them under the table. My personal favorite M. complain, however, came from A.: "Ms. Powell, I have to tell you. M. licked his shoe."

Ms. Powell

When I introduced myself to the 5th graders who would receive the demonstration lesson that comprised the main part of my interview at P.S. ABC, I accidentally instructed them to call me /mihs/ (rather than /mihz/) Powell. I learned my lesson later, when the members of my all-female a cappella group let me know that this characterized me as an anti-feminist bimbo, rather than a strong and independent woman. Luckily, I got the job anyway. I discovered the good news last week but, busy finishing up senior year, I haven't had much chance to let it sink in or celebrate or prepare. All I really have time for, at this point, is a little psychological readying. To distract myself from studying for finals, I'm not playing computer games or looking at pictures of puppies. I'm Craigslisting Manhattan apartments, talking to my boyfriend about how we'll live together without going crazy, and generally trying to think of myself as an adult. What seems to help the most is whispering to myself, "Ms. Powell, Ms. Powell, Ms. Powell, Ms. Powell, Ms. Powell."