If you had seen me walking down the street on my way home yesterday, you would have never guessed that it's been a rough past two weeks. You would have seen me walking briskly down the sidewalk in the sunshine, smiling a little bit to myself. Some Joanna Newsom circa 2004 was playing on my ipod and although I had semi-permanent dark circles under my eyes and the slacks I was wearing hadn't been washed in about two weeks, I otherwise looked and felt refreshed. For the first time in a while, I had a feeling of warmth, the feeling that comes when you feel, without a whole lot of evidence to necessarily support you, that everything's going to be just fine.
My classmates and I have bonded significantly through all of this--sometimes I have to remind myself that I've only known these people for a month. I suppose when you spend so many of your waking hours with a small group of people and in stressful circumstances, you break through barriers with people pretty quickly. You learn to share the good and the bad with equal candor, and you find that you can pull yourself together at a moment's notice for someone else when comfort is needed.
As you have probably picked up from my posts, there's a lot of ups and downs that happen in my world from day to day and from week to week. That seems to be a general theme among the fellows. Tuesday, for instance, my classmates and I all had bad days with our summer school classes. It seemed that for some unknown reason, all of our kids decided to act out on the same day, in different schools all across the Bronx. My fellow Fellows and I converged in the afternoon and swapped stories and frustrations. One friend had a mini-meltdown when describing the scene in her classroom that morning. We all felt disheartened and sobered. Wednesday, though, most of us had markedly better experiences in our classrooms, which led to a triumphant tone back at our university in the afternoon.
Thursday was another rocky day in my summer school class. Two girls, who both seemed to be having a bad day in general, got into a screaming fight; one of the girls may be getting kicked out of summer school soon, in which case she'll be repeating the eight grade. I learned earlier in the week that she was suspended for three months this past year for hitting an administrator. Oddly enough she's one of my favorites--I guess I'm lucky that she likes me, too. I've been trying to encourage her to work harder in class so she can pass, but now I'm worried that she won't be allowed to finish the course. She's already 15 years old.
I realize I've made an accidental habit of ending my posts with a quote, but I think I like this trend. To continue it, here's one from a classmate about his first day of student teaching. I've thought of what he said several times. Like my class, his is also comprised of eighth graders who are far behind in math but being passed on to high school. It's easy for me to identify with his sentiment on good days, and although I have to think about it a little harder on bad days, I've noticed that when I've calmed down and assessed the day as a whole, I identify with it those days, too. I think that's a good sign. I obviously didn't write down what he said, but this was the gist of it:
"My kids, you know, they're rowdy. They've got lots of problems, and today was a hard day but at the end I stepped back, thought about it, and I thought to myself... you know, I can do this."
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