The past few days

Today is a 'record-keeping day' which means students only have a half day of school, which means that barely any of the students show up. The few students who are here are quietly working on their project and need little help from me, which generally makes me extremely bored. Since I have finished all my grading and have already inputted my grades I am going to write about the past few days.

Wednesday - April 1st

• I wrote a short email to Michelle Rhee requesting a meeting to discuss the future of the Academy and some of the suggestions I have about how to fix it. And 40 minutes later the meeting was set up. A+ for efficiency. I want to meet with her because I believe the Academy is in major trouble and I think that with a few changes (namely: leadership) and/or a proper focus we could turn it around and give the students what they deserve. I think this will take a lot of effort on the part of our staff (which I am not convinced they are willing to give) and therefore I want to see what options there are in mandatory meetings over the summer (like what other schools do) amongst other things.

• The DC Debate League lost the building they were going to use for April's competition and sent out a blanket email asking debate coaches to ask their principals if it would be possible to use our buildings. I asked our principal (without expecting much) and he was very gracious and said that it should be fine. So now it appears our school is hosting our first debate competition! (This would also be the first competition we have ever attended)

• I was asked if I had suggested I wanted to join the staff of our host school. I do not believe I had ever expressed that wish to the principal, but I have certainly thought about it. This possibly means that if I have to escape then I have at least 1 fallback option (although it would be very awkward to be in the same building as my current program but not on the staff)
  

• I had a long conversation over email with the woman who runs the Model United Nations program in DC about how I can join that program next year, and she had a lot of good ideas and I intend to implement them next year.

Thursday April 2nd

• We had our first fire (see previous post)

• Two students decided to act like wannabe gangsters in my 4th period
  

Here's how that went down:

• Student 1 (happens to be the student who instigated me getting hit in the face last year) walks into my 4th period class (which he does not have with me) and begins yelling at Student 2 who is sitting across the room. A female student is trailing him and telling him to back down and leave the classroom (happens to be cousin of student 2). The female student is actually trying to be helpful and diffuse the situation.
  
• Student 2 stands up aggressively and whips out his cell phone
• Student 1 yells "I have people too!" and other things about how it wasn't ok that student 2 had threatened to kill him and his family
• Student 2 says something along the lines of "I will f***ing kill your mother"
• Student 1 yells "don't bring my mother into this!"
• During this time I am trying to get student 1 to leave the room and telling student 2 to sit his ass down while standing between them
  
• The students are about 3 feet away from each other
• I am about to call the Director to help me deal with them since they are clearly not listening to me in the slightest
• She happens to be walking towards the room (not sure if she already knew something was happening or it was just very lucky)
• She tells the students to give her their cell phones (they're still both on them calling "their people")
• Student 1 yells "hell no I ain't giving you my phone"
• Student 2 says nothing but is not giving up his phone
• They both end up heading towards the office after the Director as she yells at them about how she was done with them disobeying her
  
• Student 2 ends up back in my classroom at some point, I didn't actually see him come in, but he sits quietly in the back doing nothing and I have nothing to say to him.

I don't really know what to make of this situation. I have been extremely lucky and this is really the first time this year I have almost had a serious fight (as opposed to a joking around kind of fight). I do not like what the students were saying at all, they both seemed very serious. I have no idea where this problem came from. I warned my class that if they were participating in this that I had no sympathy and would have very harsh consequences for anyone caught up in this feud. I'm don't really know what I could do, but they could tell that I basically would have no love for them if they got mixed up in that petty, ego-tripping business.

Today I am giving the students a survey about their perceptions of me and my classroom. So far everything is positive but with these kinds of surveys you have to worry that they're just feeding you what you want to hear and not the truth. I really need them to be honest with me if I ever expect to grow as a teacher. I don't quite know how to communicate that I like hearing what is wrong and what they don't like because then I can make sure to either not do it again or change it in some way to make it better.