Stories from Room 5

Teaching provides me with a wealth of experiences I could blog about. Unfortunately, I have not taken advantage of it. Every class I have ever taught has had its share of stories and funny, heart warming, thought provoking, scary or sad moments.

This year in particular has been a ton of fun. I look back now and regret missing the opportunity to share the lessons I learned and situations I lived through.

But I have two anecdotes that popped in my head that I think you would find interesting.

First, we had a student this year who introduced the class to the term, "salty." I have heard it before and in somewhat different contexts or uses, but these guys were apparently hearing it for the first time and it quickly became a room five catch phrase.

At its first inception, it was used in an effort to taunt. Seeing this I figured I had three choices as to how I would go about handling it. No way was I going to allow mean spirited taunting in my room. I especially wasn't going to allow this to creep in and disintegrate the positive vibe I had established and we all worked so hard to maintain.

Option one was to address it to the whole class and use it as a teachable moment regarding taunting and bullying and handling oneself with class and humility.

Option two was to pull the student aside and address the issue with him privately warning him and setting the coming discipline should he decide to continue the behavior and then go from there.

Option three, a bit more unconventional but appropriate in my mind due to the relationship I had with the class and knowing their personalities, was to turn it around on our good friend who introduced this term to us and make it a joke.

I chose option three. Instead of empowering him with a tool to anger other students, create attention towards himself and give him control of the word, I used it back at him. I knew he would roll with it because I knew him. Despite his questionable behavior outside the classroom, he kept himself out of trouble in the classroom and he had a great sense of humor and could take a joke with you. So I knew he would handle better than other, more sensitive students.

As I expected, he loved it and soon he and I would go back and forth with this term. I would purposely challenge him within our lessons and when he was correct, I got "saltied" myself.

I can take a joke too.

Meanwhile, rather than daydream or cause trouble, he was more motivated to pay attention in class and be ready to "get me."

Win: Mr. Huey.

So the class then joined in. At first I was worried this would take a life of its own, but other than a moment here or there, the class as a whole did not become consumed with it and its humor separate from the lessons.

Now that the whole class would use it and was able to handle it, the taunting aspect was diminished. The power of the word was neutered. And I did have that discussion about how we were not going to use it to taunt or make each other feel bad. We were only going to use it playfully. I led by example dishing it and taking it.

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The beauty of this class was that they presented great challenges for me. They were using what we were learning and taking it to the next level.

When we covered fractions, decimals and percents in math, they were amazed at how I could take almost any fraction with numerators and denominators under 100 and find its percent equivalent in my head to the hundredths place. They would do it on paper and try to beat me. We did this earlier in the year with large multiplication problems.

Anytime they beat me, (they on paper, me in my head) I was showered with "SALTY!" I smiled and played along. I beat them and showered them right back and they loved it.

In reading, I could hear them in groups proving answers by finding support in the text or looking various reference books to prove their accuracy.

It opened the door to debates regarding some hot topic issues allowing me to introduce how many times problems or disagreements don't have black and white answers that we can "salty" someone with. Many times, we have to deal with gray areas. And many times we don't have an answer but only a guess....just a better supported guess than another. So you have to do your homework to have the best support.

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This leads me to another cute story.

One of these moments of challenge they were so sure they were correct that they said I had to give them each a Jolly Rancher when they proved me wrong. I, in turn, said they all had to get me a 3 Musketeer bar when I proved them wrong.

No way was I going to hold them to that but I played along for the fun of the moment. I would have paid up though if I was wrong. Jolly Ranchers are the prize of choice of the class as a reward. I had a whole bag of them available at moments notice.

But I don't make bets with students. I motivate them.

Well at the end of the year, one of my two girls in the whole class shows up in the morning with a grocery bag. With a big smile she says, "For you Mr. Huey."

When I opened it, there was a bag of mini 3 Musketeers bars and a homemade card decorated in markers wishing me a "Happy Summer." Inside was a nice note about how much she enjoyed this year and how appreciative she was of my teaching.

What makes this the most meaningful is how the school year began for her. She started the year fresh from her home country learning English on the fly with a family doing the same. She was the ONLY girl in the class until late September. She was one of the younger students in the class.

It was an overwhelming start in an overwhelming situation for her and she would come home crying every night. But she showed up every morning, worked hard and never complained.

The progress she demonstrated was phenomenal. She did an amazing job and adjusted better than I think I ever would have. I would have wanted to quit countless times had I been in her shoes. Maybe she wanted to as well, but quit was something she did not do.

Seeing that letter and reading that she enjoyed the year was a very, very cool thing to see. I get to teach her again next year and I am eager to see how much more she grows now that she can start the year without having to make that same major adjustment as she did this year.

It is one of those things that makes teaching a wonderful profession despite the pay and amid all the political firestorms and negative banter about us.

You can't put that in a one word adjective to describe teaching. It goes deeper.

It is one of the many "stories from room 5" that I was able to enjoy this year.