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Story: Teaching III

If you are a substitute teacher, all you can offer is self-control.

Less is more. Here's how it works. Here's how it works when you are in the middle school.

(1) The project is, invariably, YOU ARE AN IMMIGRANT! WRITE IN YOUR JOURNAL! It doesn't matter which school you're at, it doesn't matter whether the philosophy is progressive or conservative...The project is always: BE AN IMMIGRANT! That little creative-writing twist seems to give everyone a warm feeling. You see: The kids aren't ACTUALLY immigrants! But they are PRETENDING! They are PRETENDING to be immigrants!

(2) The girls are smarter than the boys. If it's a little gay boy, then he may have his sh*t together. Otherwise, there is a wide and stunning gulf between the girls and the boys--every time.

(3) There will be three levels of writing quality. The weakest projects will belong to the boys. The boys can't quite wrap their heads around the creative writing component. So their projects will say: "My immigrant is named _____. He came from ____ in _____. He came by ____." The weariness with which they have done their typing seems to leap off the page. It seems to leap--and to infect you. With their weariness, they seem to be punishing their teacher. They seem to be mirroring back the very weariness that the teacher herself felt as she drafted the project parameters.

The middle-quality assignments: These come from the girls. They get that they are supposed to be a fictional character. "I know!" says one girl, momentarily inspired. "I'm going to do three parts. Part One will be preparation for the journey. Part Two will be ON THE BOAT. And Part Three will be AT ELLIS ISLAND." Exhausted by this burst of industry, your student will stall right there. "What happened on the boat?" you ask. Exasperated, the student simply stares at you. Soon, she will begin murmuring to a classmate about a web site you've never heard of.

The brilliant assignment: There will be one genius student. She will be female. She will have invented a living, breathing character: full cloth, from thin air. This character will speak with rage. Her journal entry will drip with sarcasm. "Oh, great," the writer will type, "I have to IMMIGRATE. Good grief. Steerage class: That sounds fun! I can't believe my so-called PARENTS are doing this." And there it is: That one phrase, "so-called PARENTS." That's ballast. That will buoy you. It will get you through the day.

(4) Discuss teaching in therapy. Your shrink will say that you should never make your frustration evident. If you are going to deploy frustration, it should be stagey, exaggerated frustration. It should be Disney-on-Ice frustration. Meryl Streep, delivering a carefully-calculated version of faux-frustration. Your shrink is a very wise man.

(5) Ask for help. Just put it in an e-mail, to your overlords. Document the experience. Show them you care...

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