teacher tip: be Mary Poppins. or Marty Poppins, if you're a dude.

Purses and man-satchels are magic. We’re lucky we’re humans and get to use them! Can bears and chipmunks carry around cool stuff in decorative pouches? If you’re not couting giant paws or cheeks, heck no!

Take full advantage of whatever bag you tote and stock it with things that would make a singing British nanny sigh with wonder. With a gleam of cockeyed optimism in your eye and a bit of roominess in your bag, you may just become education’s answer to McGyver.

Helpful items to keep on hand/in yr fanny packs:

-A digital camera. Duh.

-Pens and/or pencils. Double duh.

-Paper. Always. OMG, get to the good stuff right? Hold on to your satchel. I’m getting there.

-Novelty keychains/the odd finger puppet. There are a million things you can do with a finger puppet. Storytelling exercises, having kids put on mini plays, heck, even therapy sessions can be aided by a little bit o’ adorable. If Mac mania isn’t proof enough, everybody, no matter their age, loves toys. Keep one on you and see if it doesn’t get put to some creative (NOT GROSS) use soon enough.

-MP3 player + Headphones. You probably have this on you anyway, and it’s a great go-to if you want to have an impromptu soundtrack to your class or a song show + tell. I enjoy lording my headphones over kids who are required to turn theirs over before class starts, and lend them out as a privilege. Cruel to be kind, yo.

-A colored Sharpie Marker. They make middle schoolers think you’re cool, and are good for randomly inspired poster-making sessions. Yes, the latter happens.

-A slim, age-appropriate book. Sometimes having a solid book on hand is enough to calm a restless student, engage a brooding or bored one, or use to punish a wild one into the joy of reading. You can’t go too wrong with The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros or any of the Runaways comics by Bryan K. Vaughan.

K. Best of luck diffusing boredom bombs and spoonful of sugaring knowledge.

If you'd like to read more musings on the teaching lyfe, please visit the blog I cheat on this blog with, http://girldetectiverie.tumblr.com/.

"I feel like I'm always learning my opponent."

My friend Philip has been a teacher and writer for longer than I have, and is an undeniable hotshot in both fields. He's all the things good teachers and writers should be: kind, creative, honest, funny, and tough. Plus he's won awards, written under the advisement of the dude who wrote Hotshots, does Kung Fu, and has a downright oldtimey mustache.

Philip: he's pretty great.

So it was great to get to vent and moan and be all the things good teachers and writers are in their off hours with him. To let all the cuckoo-clock-wound muscles unfurl and show their strain. To talk solutions, small losses and wins. To know other teachers have hit walls too, beg signs of life from a sea of blank stares and don't get so much as blinks. To hear of other Larissas and Philips giving up or doubling down, finally walking out or finally getting through.

Philip said something earlier about a cage fight he recently attended. He said, "the guy we were rooting for didn't win but he fought a good fight. He really dominated in the third round, was stronger in the second, but the first...I dunno, it took him too long to learn his opponent."

Earlier, in class, the kids and I were talking about conflict and conflict resolution. It was a great conversation, blooming like the rose at the end of some serious scrub-brush season. It got heavy, with kids opening up about a lot of the hardships they face and wondering about the effect small losses have on the psyche of themselves and others.

One kid said, "well even if we never win, we've still got to try."

I said, "Yes! Why??"

I looked around the room at twenty faces screwed up in thought. Finally, another kid piped up.

"We just have to. Right?"

"Right." I said. Then looked out at the class again. "Right?"

Twenty kids shrugged and nodded. The sound of a small win symphony.

"The Day I Lost my iPod Forever"

"the day my DS was robbed out of my sister's hands"

"the time I was embarrassed because I fell in the toilet at my birthday sleepover"

All entries in one of my fave 7th grader's composition books.

I guess even when my job sucks, it is awesome.

conversation with 5th graders about The Future

We've been working on Future Self portraits in Art.

Me: So who can tell me some of the things that might happen in the future?

Class: Flying cars! Robots! Living Underwater!

Me: Okay...and what about something more personal? Who can tell me about a personal future thing?

Lavell, a genius ten-year old, shyly raises his hand. I call on him.

Lavell: Exploding chickens.

Me: Okay, Lavell. Please explain how exploding chickens are personal.

Lavell: ...It's their business.

AWESOME.

Yo Teach

I started a new teaching job last week, and it's been rough.

Not just The Kids Like Klimt Better Than Ernst, How Do I Get Them Interested In Ernst rough. The Kids Have Never Had An Art Class in their Lives rough. The Kids Are Sick of Being In School With No Breaks Except for A Half Hour Feeding Period rough. The Kids Think They're Stupid and So Does Everyone Outside of Their Immediate Neighborhood rough. The...the emphatically capitalized letters could go on.

There's only so much taking shit from 7th graders on the chin you can do without feeling something internal start to twist or crack. Today and last week have been a test, of what I am not sure. I knew this would be an "intense" bunch but didn't realize how much threatening, promising, cajoling and handclapping would have to be done to gain even the most pathetic purchase on the 7th/8th grade psychological stomping ground. I'm not a teacher. I'm a candy-briber. Detention-taunter. Square.

It's a wholly bizarre experience to be the authority figure to a group of people who were born when you were in 6th grade. Also: to help said people with math. I'm very far from them in age and maturity, but not so far that the girls shy away from touching my clothes and snatching my tattooed wrists, asqueal with delight at the fashion options available to them once they get out of junior high. The boys ask if I'm romantically involved with virtually any male teacher over the age of 35 (the mean age of most of them), which actually isn't as outlandish as it seems in the moment.

Still, my name gets forgotten. I'm not one of them, not in age or race or style. I'm called Miss...Miss...Mrs...Uh....or Teacher. I had to swallow my giggles when I heard my first Yo Teach, and my bile when called Mrs Lady Person.

Not all of this is completely new, but this time I'm catching a whole new group and dynamic at a time when they would rather do anything but stumble through the next set of algebra problems or Outsiders chapter. They're tired, they're annoyed, they're disheartened, and the scary part is they have every reason to be. These are the kids my friends are afraid of, even though they're sweethearts and nerds and goofs. These are the kids that will grow up hard, either slow or all of a sudden.

These are the kids it's EASY to call stupid, mean, jerks, little shits.

They're not, and I know they're not, but in the middle of getting conspired against and lied to and tricked and begged for candy and sneered at for ruling with a soft lead fist the stuff you know darkens in the bright light of the swift, mean, blinding part of you. Because it's easy then. Because fates were already sealed, far before you arrived on the scene.

So I buy the candy and I do the work and I calm the shrill in my voice. Smooth the hipster librarian sweater out and focus on three things:

1)The good true part
2)What I can do
3)the compliment Juan gave me on my brooch.

there's a little flier that says this at the school where I'm about to teach

Watch your thoughts, they
become words.
Watch your words, they
become actions.
Watch your actions, they
become habits.
Watch your habits, they
become character.
Watch your character, for it
becomes...
your destiny.

"Be kinder than necessary,
for everyone you meet
is fighting some kind of
battle."


The flier hangs in a line of baseball cards, under a display case of dreamcatchers.

For this reason and many, I am really looking forward to teaching at this school.