i'm still here

I hope you haven’t given up on my blog! I almost did. This past month has been nothing short of insane and when I have free time I just am not in the mood to sit down and type. But I will be seeing many of you soon and I should probably update you a little bit.

But I have a meeting in about 2 min so this may be pretty short.

Not long ago I realized how much I really do care about the students I work with, it started with my 6^th period math class.  A female student who gets distracted pretty easily, but does what I ask her to unless she’s having a really bad day. This particular day she was sitting very quietly and looked close to tears so I asked her what was wrong and she just shook her head, because if she tried to talk I think she wouldn’t have been able to hold the tears back. Then I saw folded on the corner of her desk her progress report.

“Is it your grades?” I asked, at that point she pulled her sweater above her face and began to cry. It took all my effort not to cry also. I started recalling all of the times I was in the same position; frustrated with school, my grades, afraid to show my parents and thinking that there would never be a way to understand the material (especially math). I started telling my student about this and reminded her about our after school homework help. She still couldn’t talk but shook her head yes and now our relationship is better than ever.

But that wasn’t the moment I realized how much I loved my kids. That same evening we hosted what is called a “Family Engagement Night” where we invite the whole school and there families to come and participate in different games and activities and then we provide them with dinner and give out prizes.

One student who came stayed afterwards to help with clean up. I really like this kid, he gets bullied a lot because he wears nail polish and reads all the time. He is a little odd, but he’s in my drama club and very respectful and we joke around a lot, some times when he has a lot of aggression I let him punch my hands for awhile and that actually seems to help him a lot.  Anyway, I’m digressing.

Turns out the reason he stayed so late was because some students have been threatening to shoot him as he walks home (he lives about 3 blocks from the school)

I cannot comprehend a 14 year old having to stay late after school because gang members are threatening their life.

Also the weekend before another student I work with was shot and missed a week of  school because he was recovering in the hospital. I have so much more to say but there is still a ton of work to be done before I can finally come home. I love and miss all of you, God bless and I’ll see you soon!! 

no pictures

sorry for the lack of pictures, I was unable to go to the museum as planned so I will have to postpone the picture update. This weekend however, I'm looking forward to the tree lighting ceremony and will most definitely bring my camera for that. This week is pretty nuts; we are planning for a "vip lounge"
The "vip lounge" is a lunch we will be providing for students who started out with poor attendance but have improved a great deal. This first "vip"is introducing the incentive, we are providing them with pizza, putting on a skit and playing some games with them. It should be a lot of fun but we are having problems getting food donated for the event, originally we were going to get wings for the students but the restaurant backed out at the last minute. Now we are trying to get pizza before Thursday...yikes. donations are hard to come by.
Here's another crazy story that happened a couple of weeks ago. I didn't witness any of it so it may be exaggerated but here goes-
A student was misbehaving in a classroom to the point that the teacher decided to call the parents. Well apparently the father did not take the news well because in 6th hour the dad came into his sons classroom and started hitting his son (the term I heard was "beating") in front of the teacher and all the students. A few moments later the child's mom came into the room and started hitting the father until the security finally had to come and get involved. I have never heard of such a thing and I think it's safe to say that situation was a first at our high school.

new experiences keep coming

I don't have any new pictures for you yet but this weekend I am going to the contemporary art museum so be on the look out!
Now before I tell you this story, you should all know that so far I am having a terrific week and I am safe here at this school!
but...
 Monday in my first hour class things were going a little less than ideal but Mr. E and I were managing. After about an hour I heard some yelling and desks being moved in the classroom next to me. My friend/coworker is in that class and through the brick wall dividing our classrooms things sounded pretty serious. So I ran out of my room to see what was happening. All the doors are locked so I could only see in the window. There was one security guard in the room already who had a student in a headlock. I shouted for more security and two came running, unlocked the door and grabbed another student. Apparently there had been a fight between a guy and a girl. The situation seemed handled so I went back to my class. Unfortunately, because my class could hear what was happening they became riled up and wouldn't calm down. It was a bit of a mess. Then a junior girl who had obviously snuck out of her class was looking into our classroom and throwing gang signs at my students.  So I opened the door and asked her to get back to her class and said "don't ever throw gang signs at my kids again, you know we (the school) has zero tolerance for that"
Well she freaked out and started cussing me out saying "F***you, you don't know me and I don't give a f*** who you are! So you better watch your back cuz i finna f*** you up next time I see you" she continued to cuss at me, the  security guards were occupied so I just smiled at her and said "I just want you to leave my students alone, so you need to walk away" I was ready to go get a faculty member to bring her down to the office because use of gang signs is an automatic suspension; but then my coworker who was in the classroom that had the fight came out of her room and I thought she might need someone to talk to. So the student who threatened me walked away and there was no more trouble from her.
It's crazy to me that a 16 year old girl would threaten an adult (or anyone) like that. I don't know if I handled the situation as well as I could have, but my skin is sure getting thicker.
I have to keep in mind that I don't know what is going on at home (if they have a home) with these kids and when they react so quickly with hatred its a defense mechanism, and it actually does work pretty well.  Who wants to talk to a student or try to get a student to do their work if they are just going to yell at you and become violent? Not me!
...but I've got to get past that, some students have lowered their wall a little for me and let me sit, talk  and work with them and it doesn't take long for them to become somewhat attached to me. The first step is to break down that wall!
God Bless and love you all!

 So what am I doing inside a colon? My friend Justin and I (he's also a coworker) went to a nature museum in Lincoln Park. This portion of the the museum was called "Ewww...what's eating your body" and there were plenty on nasty pictures of worms, lice and close ups of other things that I am trying to get not think about.

 A more enjoyable part of the museum was playing with a bunch of reptiles, Like Snoopy the Snake, seen above. For some reason the owner looks concerned about how I'm handling her pet. But honestly, she talked to me for about 45min about all of her animals and how she wants more. I just wanted to move on to the other animals! Snoopy is a Ball boa constrictor, instead of coiling like most snakes to keep warm he wraps up in a little ball...cute huh?
Also in the building there was a butterfly room with thousands of different butterflies, I tried to take some pictures but  I would need a more high powered camera. Just trust me when I say it was pretty cool.

 Here is the founder of Chicago! Jean Baptiste; in all of Chicago this is the only statue of Jean, its pretty small and you wouldn't be able to find him if you don't know where to look. I didn't take a picture of her but to the left of him is a statue of Marilyn Monroe. Its a really ridiculous statue so I left her out of it (she stands at 26 ft, a little bit of an overkill if you ask me)

After watching some street performers (a dancer and a magician) I went to the movies with a couple other co-workers and when I got out here was a nice view I saw of the city. Pretty good saturday!

pickup

 Yesterday my team helped out with a college fair (We've actually been helping out all month trying to get college reps to come) and we got a lot of compliments from the the teachers and security guards, I think they are finally seeing how much we do here. One faculty member said "you all don't realize how much you change the climate of the entire school." another said that whenever they think of us they think of the most organized and put together group that works here.

It's a good thing someone is noticing that we are making a difference, because I must admit, many days I can't tell if I'm getting anywhere with these kids. They are so resistant to everything, in the classroom I can be their worst enemy, but in the halls I'm their best friend; wanting to give me high-fives, fist bumps, and even hugs.

Today there was no school because it was "report card pickup day", which to me was kind of silly to take an entire day off to give parents report cards. Especially because hardly anyone came. I know some parents have to work and other students don't have parents but only about 70 out of 900+ came. My parents came to every parent teacher conference, they looked at my grade cards, they had talks with me about how I could improve myself. They did everything.

Thanks mom and dad, I love you.

happy halloween!

Here's the situation; my job makes me fat. After about a month, the pants that are a part of my uniform started getting tight around the waist. So I  figured I could either keep spending more money on pants every other month or get a real cheap gym membership at the YMCA (my job allows me to pay only $16 a month). So now my evenings are all booked, so trying to keep up with this blog has become more difficult (I'm also having a hard time finding time to type it up at work) but I will continue to do my best!
 As I've already mentioned I was taken out of my senior class and moved to another freshman class. The new freshman class is a special education class. All the students have a variety of learning disabilities, but none that you would notice until after you sit down and try to teach them something. This has brought a whole new challenge; I am not qualified to teach special ed. students, so I am going to have to come up with effective ways to tutor this class. The students definitely can't be taught the same and it takes a lot of patience.
Audra H! I don't know if you read this but if so I'd love to talk to you about it sometime, I don't think that the learning disabilities are the same as the students you work with but I'm sure you have a better insight on how to work with students who don't learn the same way.
Well that's about all I have, Happy Halloween everyone, have fun and stay safe. love ya

a little more lingo

-if a student refers to  a "two piece" chances are they aren’t talking about a bathing suit but an order of chicken

-if someone was embarrassing me in front of a group of people, I would have been "treated"

-a students said "a lot of people are sleepin on pittbull*" and that meant a lot of people don't know who pittbull is.

So when I first started working here my hair was really short (as most of you may remember I shaved my head over the summer) but now my hair is coming back in.  The other day students were telling me how fresh I was looking with my hair and there was mention of me using "product". 

In sixth hour a girl asked " Hey Mr.V! What product do you put in your hair to make it look like that?" "Nothing" I said "I just wash it".  She looked at me funny, like she didn't believe me. "You don't do anything to make it straight or fluff like that?" "No" I answered, "This is just white person hair".  Apparently that was very a funny response and we all laughed, and after the laughter died down she asked if she could touch it.  To avoid starting an uproar  of students touching my hair I said I couldn't allow it, but I have a feeling a few are going to sneak a touch, these kids crack me up!

*pittbull is a rapper