Matching Tracksuits

fun in fours

education and teaching

Friday

Friday 28 March 2025

A week of working with thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds comes to a conclusion. Three thirteen: the announcements are about to come on, and an almost palpable sense of relief comes over me. Twenty class periods of laughter and frustration, of hard work and hard moments of disorder or even disrespect -- all come to an end, and the two days of freedom from all these stresses shimmer like a mirage that I’m only now starting to think might not be a mirage after all. 

A boy skips down the corridor into the neighboring academic team’s area of the hall (something I’m charged with preventing), and instead of calling the kid back, I let him go. It’s Friday -- I’m exhausted and not looking for a confrontation. A girl yells up the hall to a friend, raising the volume of the hall noticeably: I should say something, but I don’t. A kid out of dress code walks by me, but it’s three fourteen, so what’s the point even if the kid has managed somehow to make it through the whole day in dress code violation. A girl chases a boy down the hall, screaming after him to give her phone back: they’re not supposed to have their phones out until after announcements are concluded, and she shouldn’t be screaming and adding even more to the eighth-grade cacophony, but it’s Friday and easier to ignore this.

Through the Blossoms

Thursday 27 March 2025

Cherry trees are blooming in the courtyard between the seventh- and eighth-grade halls. The other day, I walked the kids that way to lunch: it's out of our way, but I thought I might enjoy some fresh air. Perhaps they would, too.

"Mr. Scott, can we walk through the blossoms to lunch again?"

Now, we do it every day. At their request.

Monday Return

Monday 24 March 2025

Monday after break is always a bit of a mystery. No one really knows how the kids react; for that matter, nobody really knows all the adults are going to act. Some of the kids are reluctant to go back to school. and it shows in the apathy some of the adults are more reluctant to go back and it shows in their snarkiness having spring break. This relatively late in the year is also tricky. We’re into our final quarter, but with benchmark testing, in the beer, testing, access testing, probably some math testing for some students field trips, field days, half days, and like we really only have about seven weeks or so of school after having a week off it’s difficult to get motivated for seven more weeks. It feels like an afterthought

For me, with this being my last year at Hughes, it hits a little differently. Some of the kids were routing; some of the kids were focused; most of the kids were somewhere in between. The day slipped by relatively uneventfully and I returned home a quarter as of course 45 days long. I closed my car door and said aloud, “44.” 44 more days in Greenville County schools 44 more days these kids. 44 more days to wrap up 17 years. So both a little sad about it and quite excited at the same time.

It was, of course, the first of many last, and I’m glad that I am aware at this point that this is the last time I’ll be doing some of these things. The honors kids are finishing up little roaming and Juliet papers for all. I know that may be the last time that I run through the particular assignment with a group of students. After next year, I will have the option of going back to English, but if things go as well as I’m hoping, I don’t know that I’ll want to. In English 8, we will soon be starting The Diary of Anne Frank, and that would be the last time we run that unit. We read the play, and we act out most of the first act in class. While I’m not sure how much they learned about English and how they learned a lot about the holocaust a lot about the horrors of living under Nazi occupation, and since they are the same age, they learn a bit about themselves as well. It’s always been one of my favorite units to teach.

So today was a bit of a mixed bag. It was fun and exciting: it was so exhausting.

This final quarter is also another last for our family, and this is much more significant: this is the last quarter Lena will be living with us during the school year. That ending has come all too soon. It’s a parental cliche to wonder where the time went, but when you’re living at it it’s not a cliche anymore.

Groundbreaking

Friday 14 March 2025

The new school I will be teaching at next year doesn't even physically exist yet. For most of next year, we'll be operating out of a high school. Today, though, was the groundbreaking for the new facility.

Ramadan Thoughts

Tuesday 04 March 2025

Four sweet, dark-haired, dark-eyed girls crowded around me and asked, almost in unison, “Can we go to the media center during lunch?” It’s Ramadan, and my four Muslim students (three are from Afghanistan and one is from Syria) are eager to avoid even the sight of food while they are fasting. They cluster together throughout the whole day: the guidance counselor purposely made their schedule so that they have almost every class together since they feel safest with each other.

Of course, I agreed for them to go to the media center: growing up in a strange Christian sect that borrowed all the Jewish festivals, I had to fast one day a year during Yom Kippur, though our sect preferred the translated name, the Day of Atonement. I have a slight sense, then, of the challenge my Muslim students face, though only a very slight sense: we didn’t go to school or work on the Day of Atonement, and it was only one day. I can’t imagine what it would be like to fast all day and to go about one’s regular schedule at the same time, so I’m certainly sympathetic to the difficulties they face this month.

When we got back from lunch, the girls were waiting at the classroom door. They came into the room and immediately asked if they could go pray. “If we don’t pray while we’re fasting,” one girl explained, “it doesn’t count.”

I looked at them quizzically: “Why didn’t you pray while you were in the media center during lunch?”

“It was too early,” another of the girls explained.

The skeptic in me wondered if they will start asking questions at some point. Would a truly good god be so upset that you prayed a few minutes early? Would a fair god be obsessed with females’ modesty in clothing while ignoring males’ modesty? Would a wise god really be all that worried about what animal you eat? These were the same kind of questions I asked myself years ago, and when I dallied in Catholicism a few years ago, I didn’t find resolution to these issues; I just temporarily stopped thinking about them. But once they’re there…

Lit Circles

Tuesday 25 February 2025

Pending Exit

Monday 24 February 2025

Since I made it official that this will be my last year at Hughes Academy, I have noticed a change in how I view things. “Don’t check out these last few weeks,” Kinga said to me. I replied that this was the last batch of students I’m sending to local high schools, and I want my reputation to remain intact. Several teachers have told me that they can tell who my students are after the first major writing assignment. I don’t want that to change this final year.

Still, my stress levels on some things have declined greatly. Today, for example I saw a kid with his hoodie still on, and I told him to take it off. He said he was going off to PE and would take it off afterward. I knew it he is not supposed to have it at PE, but in the end I just let him go. Karma will catch up to him, I thought sure enough, an hour later, I saw him standing in the hall, being dressed down by the principal for wearing his hoodie.

Another example occurred last week. One student was extremely disrespectful with me, and this disrespect came immediately upon being told that he needed to vacate the hallway and make it to class. I’ve had encounters with a student earlier in the year, and none of them have been pleasant. I can only imagine how much chaos he brings to the classrooms he attends. I thought that perhaps I should write him up. That would be a mild blessing for his teachers because a day without his problematic behavior is like a day of vacation. You can get things done that you couldn’t get done otherwise. Still, in the end, I decided it was just not worth my time. I’d have to call his mother, and I’d have to find that phone number by going to this teacher or that teacher and tracking it down. I wouldn’t have access to it myself. All that being said, I just decided it was not worth my time.

Thursday

Thursday 20 February 2025

Old School

Wednesday 19 February 2025

Tech-free day -- which means students couldn't use any technology. And they had to look up a couple of unknown words...

First Draft

Monday 17 February 2025

For many years, the end of the school year was something of a relief. I had completed another year of instruction; my students were moving on to bigger challenges; and I would be able to rest for a while. The school year was always a challenge, but it was never anything insurmountable.

Then a few years ago, every school year started to feel a little more like the myth of Sisyphus. I was rolling the boulder up the mountain year after year, but at least when I got to the top, even though I knew it would roll back down, I always had some satisfaction that I had indeed pushed it up the mountain to begin with. Over the last few years, however, when I reached the year’s pinnacle, when I have pushed that boulder up the mountain one more time, I stand there, waiting for it to roll back down. Instead of turning my attention to summer break, I just watch the boulder tumble back down the hill as I think, “Well, I’m just going to have to roll it back up again next year.”

Part of that was a function of exhaustion, I’m sure. Yet part of it arose from the nervousness I felt, and I believe all teachers feel, as one year ends, and the next one begins. It’s been the same worry every single year: What else are we going to have to do next year that just feels like jumping through a hoop?

In short, I’m tired of jumping through hoops to provide data for people at the district office who need to produce something that justifies their six figure jobs. Reports and charts require data; we teachers provide that data. Lately, it’s all I feel I do. I’m sure it’s somewhat debatable how accurate that description is, but it is how a lot of teachers feel today not this in our school, not just in our district, not just in our state, but all across the country. All teachers are tired of the increasing administrative requirements, the increasing data analysis requirements (often analyzing data of questionable value to begin with), and the increasing number of silver-bullet computer programs and websites, which don’t solve problems, but usually only create more work. Teachers are tired of those who hold the purse strings dictating how things are going be done when most of those making legislative decisions have never been in a classroom to begin with. Teachers are tired of “solutions” which are nothing of the sort, but rather simply legislation controlling the one thing that we as a society can legislate about: teachers.

Teacher are leaving public education in droves these days, for the aforementioned reasons and likely many other others. I am afraid that I have decided I must join those ranks.

Effective at the end of the 2024-2025 school year, I resign my position at [this school].

I leave [this school] with a certain degree of sadness, to be sure. I have taught here for so long and created such a reputation for myself that it is quite difficult to give all that up. Students coming to my classroom know what to expect. Students who have older siblings whom I taught arrive expectations based on stories their older brother or older sister told them. Parents who have talked to the parents of former students greet me with smiles on Meet the Teacher night and tell me they are eager for their son or daughter to receive the challenge, which, according to my reputation, I am able to provide. Former students come to see me regularly, and it’s always a delight to talk to them. In leaving [this school], I leave all that behind. It is a sacrifice I don’t make lightly.

However, I believe I have accomplished everything I could have accomplished at [this school], and it is time for me to move on. Other challenges await, and I am eager to take them on.