Hey! Teacher!

Jekyll and Hyde

Monday after school:

I hold one student after (as per a parent teacher conference where I told her mother she was way behind and needed to retake the quizzes she got a 30% and 10% on). She give me so much sass I can hardly stand it.

In walks another one of my students. He’s been in the US for about 2 years and is making incredible progress. He works really hard and comes to tutoring after school – mostly just to practice his English and make sure he’s reading the math problems correctly. Honestly, he’s one of my favorites. I’m just so impressed with his work ethic and attitude.

There I sat – literally between two polar opposites, giving myself whiplash trying to deal with their COMPLETELY different issues.

To my right:

“You just need to show me how you got that answer… No, circling does not count as work. Remember when I spent ten minutes going over how we show our work to get full credit? No… this work does not look anything like the work I showed on the overhead… How about this? Start by showing me how you set up the problem… add… subtract… multiply…”

To my left:

“Okay, so read this sentence again. Very good. So how do you think you’re going to solve this? Add. Okay, what are you adding? So you’re going to add 22 beads to 1/4 inch? You mean that doesn’t make sense? Okay. What are you going to do? Multiply. Show me. Wow! Awesome!”

Back to the right:

“I’m not showing my work. I already took these quizzes. I’m not coming back for tutoring. I hate math. I’m never going to use any of this stuff ever. I’d like to see you try and keep me here ’til nine o’clock. Fine. Call my mom. I don’t care. I’m not going to do it.”

Back to my left:

“Is this the answer? I’m done? Thank you, Miss. Bye.”

I have to remember that not all my students are going to sit on my left and that I got into Teach For America so I could teach kids like the one on my right.

… sigh.

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