eighth grade!

at the middle school where i work, we have just one eighth grade class. when the school started last year, the plan was to open with just sixth grade classes, and add a grade of students each year. but the parents that had earnestly petitioned our school leaders to start a charter middle school in the community of east san jose had children entering seventh grade that were struggling and falling behind in district schools. so one self-contained seventh grade class of thirty-eight students was formed, and that same group of kids now makes up one self-contained eighth grade class.

and that eighth grade class's teacher is having a baby in the next few weeks.

and on monday morning, march 24, i will be an eighth grade teacher.

i am incredibly overwhelmed by this job transition and new mammoth responsibility. i have spent the past month arranging for all of the work that i have done and developed as a learning coach and blended learning specialist at my school to be done by others or abandoned for the time being. it has been a remarkably stressful time as i've scrambled to both hand off those tasks and programs and to immerse myself in the eighth grade classroom. i've felt sad to leave my past work behind, very inadequate in confronting the challenge of thirty-eight students (who are certainly not angels) and all subjects (remember polynomials? and covalent bonds? and the technicalities of verb tenses? me either), and just convinced that my brain cannot process another element of classroom management (grading, parents, detention, field trips, planning, state standards, student performance data, homework systems...). it's just a lot.

last week i had a trial run teaching english with my thirty-eight eighth graders, who are currently studying shakespeare's as you like it. it just so happened that they were on act II, scene i that day, wherein the character duke senior, quite the brilliant optimist, gives this little speech:

and churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
even till I shrink with cold, i smile and say
‘this is no flattery: these are counsellors
that feelingly persuade me what i am.’
sweet are the uses of adversity,
which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
and this our life exempt from public haunt,
finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
i would not change it.

as we broke down shakepeare's words together, and students argued that this passage suggests that challenges make us stronger and difficulties have hidden benefits and hardship can be precious and beautiful (their words, not mine), everything aligned and my heart just sang. and later when i taught them math and history and advisory (we have an awesome social-emotional learning curriculum at our school), i felt exhilarated.

i am empowered to rise to the occasion and relish this new adventure. it is going to be really, really hard and probably completely consume my life for the next three months. but - sweet are the uses of adversity; the churlish wind will be my counsellor.

and i love those non-angelic thirty-eight eighth graders.


{two of these students are my eighth graders, and this video just came out today! - it totally makes me choke up. see more here.}