Do You Want a Cookie?

There are moments where I feel proud of my students. Sometimes it is over small things, like getting 100% on a grammar test or actually answering a question correctly. Sometimes it's bigger, like when they decide to not rip out the hair extensions of the girl they are fighting with or not beating up one of the private school kids that go to school next door just to get a pencil. There really isn't a day that goes by that I am not proud of at least one of my students. Working with inner-city kids is special. There is a fine line between making them feel proud of their accomplishments and making them feel entitled to the rewards that come from being good little students. It's difficult because some of the students have really difficult lives, they sleep in the park, live in fear of being deported, or having their hot cheetos go stale.

The teacher across the hall from me had all of her students show up to class one day. None of them skipped or were tardy. She had that moment where she was proud of them. So she told them all that she would buy them pizza. I was ok with this because hey, I'm across the hall, and the chances of me scoring a slice or two were pretty good. But she and I share some students and they started whining in my class. "Ms, how come you never buy us pizza?" I may have ranted a little, but this was my response:

Pizza? For being on time? I don't buy you pizza because you don't get rewards in life for doing things that you should be doing anyway! It's your job to show up on time, not something that I should reward you for. You know what I give you every single day when you are here? KNOWLEDGE! You're on time? Oh, let me make you a smarter person. There are starving children in Russia who don't get knowledge for being on time to class. You think you deserve a reward for doing the bare minimum? You're breathing right now, do you want a cookie for that? Sit down and prepare to learn something!

I then proceeded to teach them about pronoun-antecedent agreement. I'm not really sure about the starving children in Russia, but I did love the line about breathing to get a cookie. I'd like to think that they were happy about their reward of knowledge, but they probably just thought I was crazy.

It's getting close to the end of the semester. This means that there are some students who are finally deciding to care about their grades. I take their grades from the second quarter and average them with the first quarter to make their semester grade. This means that to pass the class you must have had at least a 22% in the first quarter. Otherwise it's mathematically impossible to pass the semester. Every year I have students who fall below that line. One student, we shall call him Jose, got a 12% the first quarter. The thing is, he is here every freaking day, he has no reason to be failing other than plain old laziness. So Jose came to me the other day asking for make-up work. He has a 33% for this quarter. I momentarily thought that I should tell him he has no chance at passing. But no, not this teacher. If you are going to come to class everyday and make my life as miserable as possible, I am going to give you work. So I gave him a huge stack of papers. He won't pass the class, but at least he will have gained some stinking knowledge so next time he takes the class he might pass. That, and I like torturing students.

And to end the post, this conversation:

Student: Ms! Why is there salt in the ocean? Me: A very long time ago, an ancient Chinese man spilled all the soy sauce in the water to give it flavor. It's tasted like salt ever since. Student: Wouldn't that make the ocean a funny color? Me: Soy sauce used to be blue, but he changed the color so no one would figure it... out. Student: Sneaky Asians! He was smart!