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| Mom Huang |
4/29/22
Today in school: I have one student who was in a state all day, dysregulated, and totally out of sorts. I have different hand signals I taught the students so they can ask for things they need during a lesson without disrupting the lesson (a tissue, to use the bathroom, etc.) I was teaching math, and he came right up to me waving 3 fingers on each of his skinny little hands frantically. 3 calm fingers at your chest means you need water. I looked at him blankly. 'I don't know what 6 fingers mean. Do you want 2 cups of water?' He burst into a huge grin, the first one of the day.
4/28/22
Working with Ms. Day's class, 22 students were smooshed on the carpet grasping their mini whiteboards and markers as I taught them how to represent place value addends on a place value chart drawing dots, or using the chip model. I gave a quiet signal, and they did not respond appropriately. I walked over to give myself a point on the whiteboard. I came back, and Jonathan's hand was up. 'Yes?' I asked him. 'When you were walking over to the board, Gabriela smelled your foot.' I didn't know how to respond. I have been working on being kinder. I looked at her. 'How did it smell?' She does not speak English. Jonathan translated for her. She told him she was looking at my toenail polish. She liked the flowers. Clearly there are multiple competing lessons happening during my math lessons. I have to have faith that some math will sink in, despite the colorful distractions.
6/30/22
Summer school: Half the students, but twice the diversity of learners. I am doing my best to introduce a new art lesson every week. Yesterday I cautiously led a lesson in self-portraits with chalk pastels. My students are 7 and 8 years old, and all of this is brand new to most of them.
I modelled step by step how to draw each facial feature. I had many students stumped on how to begin drawing an eye, even after the demonstration. I modelled on their papers directly, with their permission, in hopes of them using this extra support to draw their second eye. For some, this was all they needed. For others, something was still holding them back from attempting to mimic the eye sketch in front of them. I hadn't anticipated them not being able to do this. I had been dreaming of being my school's art teacher for a while now. This moment made me seriously reconsider the potential for joy in this dream. We had 30 minutes until dismissal time, and we hadn't even gotten to the messy chalk coloring part yet. 'OK, what can we add to our eyes? We need upper eyelids and eyelashes.' As I started demonstrating a method for quickly drawing eyelashes, Alvin said in his brusk monotone voice, 'I'm not a girl. I don't have those.' In actuality, he had long curly eyelashes. 'It's not a boy or a girl thing, Alvin- most people have eyelashes. They protect your eyes from things getting in them.' He looked straight ahead to process what I'd said, and then let me help him draw some inoffensive looking little whisps above the round little globes on his page that were his version of eyes.
The last 10 minutes of the school day were a countdown in major teacher-pressure. Realizing that I would need to put the room back in order without enlisting help from the students was helpful. I needed to focus on helping them clean off the chalk from their hands and packing up in an orderly fashion. None of this felt calm. Somehow we pulled it off. With one minute to go, I opted to draw a winner from our weekly raffle ticket can. Isaiah won the tiger keychain. There was an eery quiet in the room. The kids knew I was stressed and barely reacted. Our usual exchange of positive reflections-routine at the end of the day had been replaced with a stressed-out teacher barking orders out. I felt like I'd let them down.
The next day I reflected. How could this have gone smoother? Breaking the lesson into two parts would help; as would giving the students more opportunities to practice drawing themselves with easier materials first, like pencils and crayons. I also considered my own comfort level with chalk pastels. I really like using them, but it definitely takes a few tries to feel comfortable and confident with them. I sat down today and spent a little time working on a portrait to see what I could learn. I worked off of an image (something I hadn't given my students.) I really like this photograph on the cover of Eddie Huang's 'Fresh Off The Boat' memoir. An awesome candid family photo where everyone looks serious except him and his mom- his mom is smiling like she has a secret joke, and he is making some goofy face while eating a snack. I drew his mom.
What did I learn: Kids (and grown ups) need time to find their groove with new materials, with low pressure (read: the adult is not on a time limit to have everyone create a masterpiece and have their hands immaculately cleaned within 30 minutes.) I need to set more realistic goals, give more time, maybe have a helper during art, and definitely break it down into multiple sessions. I think to be realistic, with messy materials like paint and chalk, I should ideally have a 1:5 ratio of teacher to student. OK, there's a start.
