Last night we did an additional parent-teacher conference for ELLs only. I'll tell you the truth--I didn't expect much of a turnout and brought a book. I was all set to sit around reading crappy fiction all night, but to my surprise, people showed up. One of the people who showed up was a girl I'll call Sylvia. She showed up with her dad.

I was pretty happy to see them. I've called dad and left messages for him, but I never knew whether or not he listened to them. Evidently he did. Sylvia ended the semester with a 67 average. I'm sure I passed her, but not by much. She failed the last test or two, and I'm worried she'll fall too far behind by the end of the year.

My beginning class contains two groups, and two groups only--speakers of Spanish and Chinese. My goal is always to get them to mix as much as possible, because English is their common language. If I can get them to cross-speak with one another, they'll have pretty much no choice. It's hard, though. Imagine if you and I were in China, learning Chinese. It would be our natural inclination to stick together and speak English, even if it hindered our Chinese. It's the same with my students.

Sylvia has always looked kind of shell-shocked and terrified, so I've been pretty easy on her. I won't place a non-disruptive student at a table with students who don't speak her language if I think it will make her miserable and uncooperative. But last night she surprised me a lot. Dad and I were speaking Spanish, and she was very sociable and cooperative. When I spoke of her coming late and missing homework, she copped to it all and hid nothing.

She also showed a sense of humor I'd never seen before, laughing at things her dad and I said. I told her she'd made a big mistake by showing me who she was. Now that I knew, I'd hold her to a higher standard. I wouldn't hesitate to move her seat. Her days of sitting with her friend and hiding out were numbered. I also told dad that any problem would result in a call home. Now that I know there's someone actually hearing my messages, I don't feel like I'm wasting my time.

Sylvia, like a lot of my Spanish speakers, is from El Salvador. I don't know if this is will sound like a bad thing, but I'm very careful with my Salvadoran students. This is because frequently, when I speak to them alone, or when their parents come in, they have horror stories you'd never anticipate. Once, I brought a girl out into the hall, and I don't even remember why. Whatever the issue was, it paled in comparison when she broke out in tears and told me she'd had a brother murdered before coming here.

Another time, I had a boy from El Salvador who had trouble passing tests. He would do the homework, sometimes, but I couldn't understand what he wrote. I recommended him for special education. Eventually I heard that he came here after being beaten so severely by some gang that he was permanently brain damaged.

These are the people Donald Trump wants to keep out with a wall. Trump, unlike my students, has never been beaten. I'm glad they've escaped from the violence and misery they knew, and I'll work to make sure they're happy here.

Except for Sylvia. She made the mistake of showing me she is intelligent, capable and unafraid. Now she has a problem. I hope we can work it out to our mutual benefit--she excels, and I get to watch her do it.

Sometimes I struggle all year to pronounce a Chinese name. They have, for example, a "u" sound that I've yet to master. I say the student's name and all his paisanos laugh out loud at my feeble attempts. Sometimes they try to teach me. I try to mimic their pronunciation, but it only provokes more hilarity as I fail over and over again.

Maybe I deserve it. Who knows? I've heard my name mangled by a variety of accents and I may have mimicked them here or there (though not in front of the students). Sometimes, though, I spend seven months trying to pronounce a particularly difficult name only to find that every one of the kid's teachers except me calls him, "John." I ask him if that's his name. He says, yes, that's his American name. I ask why he never told me, and he says I never asked.

It doesn't occur to me to ask whether students have alternate names. I'd be shocked to learn that all the other teachers did, so I wonder how exactly I managed to miss the memo. Did every single teacher other than me question every single student as to whether or not they have multiple names? Are they really all that much more careful than I am?

This brings me to one of my students this year. Since September, I've been calling her Maria. Why? Well, I get these attendance sheets every day, and all of them say her name is Maria. Whenever I call on Maria, she answers. So we had a pretty good thing going in terms of basic fundamental communication. Or at least I thought we did.

A few weeks ago we had a parent-teacher event for ELLs. The first night, when the school paid me big bucks to sit for hours, no one actually showed up. The next day, though, on my actual work hours, I got a few customers. I think there were three. The first was Maria.

Maria actually has two English teachers, me and a colleague who's fluent in Chinese. The majority of my students speak Chinese, so the majority of our parent interviews (most of them occur on the regular parent-teacher conference night) take place in Chinese. I'm always confused by translations. Sometimes the parent speaks for ten minutes, and the translator speaks for 30 seconds. Sometimes it's the reverse. But here was a Spanish speaker, I was gonna be the translator, and my translation was gonna be perfect.

So mom went on for a long time. Yolanda came from here. She did this and she likes that. I always talk to Yolanda about these things and I hope she does those things. Yolanda has a long history of doing this and that, here and there, and here's what I'm worried about...

She went on for a while. Now my student was sitting right there so I was pretty sure that this was her mom. Maybe she has a sister. Who knows? I politely waited for Mom to finish before I asked the question.

"Who's Yolanda?"

Mom looked at me as though I were an idiot. Then Maria said, "I'm Yolanda."

"I thought you were Maria."

"Well I am, but everyone calls me Yolanda."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You never asked."

"Did you know her name was Yolanda?" I asked my colleague.

"Of course I did," she said.

So it's the end of January, the year's half over, and I don't even know my student's name. Not only that, but it wasn't even a difficult name. Had I known it, I could have pronounced it easily. I even know other people who have that name.

The next day I started to ask the students what her name was.

"Yolanda," they all said. Even the Chinese kids knew what her name was.

Last week I gave a quiz. I looked at the papers. One of them said, "Maria" on top of it. Not only that, but she got 100. (Sometimes she crosses herself before handing papers to me. Perhaps it works better than I'd suspected.)

She's a very nice girl, actually. I wouldn't imagine she'd do something like that to taunt me. But if that were her aim, she'd have been doing a great job.

I teach a lot of students from China. Sometimes I ask them "Why?" and they reply, "No why." It's a mysterious thing, but it's a great answer as far as they're concerned. They can pretty much use it anytime, and it sounds a lot better than my standby, "I don't know." Of course a lot of people have trouble saying that, for reasons that I will never quite fathom.

But once my students get started in the negative, it's tough to turn them around. My afternoon class is usually pretty cooperative, though a little quiet for my taste. Yesterday I wanted to do an activity in which they get up and ask each other questions.  I improvised a lead-in that, in retrospect, was an absolute disaster. I said, "How come I always stand up and you always sit down? Let's do an activity where I sit down and you stand up."

They were having none of it. "No," came the response, from various corners of the room. Heads shook in resolute refusal. I decided to explain that I would stand too, but at that point it no longer made any difference. It was no, no, and no, and that was that.

In the midst of this, someone determined the room was too cold. "Close the window," she said. I told her she could close the window if she wanted it closed that bad. "No," she replied. All of a sudden, everyone wanted the window closed. "Close the window," demanded the shyest girl in the class, the one who almost never says anything.

"Listen, you are all healthy and 15 years old, and I'm an old man with one foot in the grave," I said. "If you want the window closed, get up and close it."

"No," said many voices, though not quite in unison.

The shy girl repeatedly demanded I close the window. I had finally gotten her to talk, and just for this. I said, "OK, I'll close the window if you guys get up and talk."

I closed the window. "Okay, now get up and start asking questions."

"No."

I should have known. I said, "OK fine. Don't get up. You can shout at one another. But there are 12 questions and you have to ask 12 different people. Good luck."

Several of my students started shouting at one another. Some actually got up, eventually, and started asking each other questions. But it was pretty scary standing there with all those kids in full mutiny. Who would've thunk a bunch of relatively quiet kids could muster such determination?

There is some sort of fundraising going on in my school. Everywhere they are selling sausages in cellophane. They are kind of like Slim Jims, the sort of thing that may have appealed to me when I was 12 years old but no longer makes me jump up and down. I see kids everywhere eating these things.

Only one kid has approached me about them, though. He comes in when I'm finished teaching my 8th period class. A few days ago, he asked, "Do you want to buy one of these things? They taste really bad, but I have to sell them." I asked him why anyone would want to buy anything that tasted really bad. He kind of shrugged his shoulders and moved on. In fact, he sold a few right in front of my face.

Yesterday he tried again. "Do you want to buy one of these things?" I asked him if they still tasted really bad, and he assured me they did. I asked him how he expected to sell them if he went around saying that. "Well, I have to be honest," he said. Wouldn't it be a better world if all salespeople were like him? No more lemon automobiles, no more used equipment going into new boxes, no more empty promises to get you to purchase some piece of junk...

Can you imagine a world where advertising had to be true? Please come to the Eva Moskowitz Academy so we can discredit public schools and eventually make Rupert Murdoch even richer than he is. Please vote for Scott Walker so the Koch Brothers can pay starvation wages and add on to their already overflowing buildings full of cash, gold, and whatever bodies they stomped across to acquire it... Please continue to vote against your interests and keep tinhorn politicians who don't represent you at all in office...The possibilities are endless.

Anyway, I asked him how much of it he'd sold. Two boxes, he said. I asked him if he was sure they really tasted that bad, and he assured me again that they did. I asked him if he'd tried them and he said he had not. How did he know, then? His friend told him. My thoughts flashed back to Arne Duncan and John King selling us educational programs that they would not use for their own children, and I decided something was not right here.

"I'll buy one of those things, but you have to eat it," I told the kid. He absolutely refused. I tried to appeal to his sense of salesmanship. "Maybe it doesn't taste as bad as you think it does. I see people all over the building eating those things." He wasn't having it. They tasted terrible, and he knew it, even though he had never even tried one.

He might have a future as an education reformer. If Eva Moskowitz or someone wants to hook him up, my email's just to the right.

Every time I get observed, some kid calls me a big fat liar. I'm not sure precisely what in my classroom culture leads my kids to do that, but it seems to happen every time a supervisor walks in, like clockwork. In fairness, the last time it happened, a few days back, another kid corrected the first one, saying, "MISTER big fat liar." The first kid repeated the accusation with the honorific attached. I'm not certain that will aid in my rating, but it was something.

My students don't know a lot of English, so they don't speak as often as I'd like. Still, they tend to sense what I will and will not put up with, so there is a little freedom there. One time I was being observed, and I was talking about some grammar or writing thing, I have no idea what, when a very vocal student stood up and demanded, "Why did you give me an 85 in participation?" I had just begun to put my grades online, and I said, "Wow. You actually LOOKED at it." She said, "Yes I did and I'm not happy at all." I was thrilled anyone had actually examined the grades I put up, and I raised her participation grade to 92. I figured taking interest in her grades rated as positive participation.

Last year I had not yet been kicked out of the trailer, and I spent many inclement days in the auditorium. On one such day, a young girl saw fit to point out to me that I was a big fat liar, and did so in full hearing of the principal. I asked, "Did you hear that girl call me a big fat liar?" He immediately sprang to my defense, asking, "Well, what is it you lied about?"

I like to think my classroom is a happy place. Of course, not everyone is happy all the time, not even me. But I always hope to make kids feel free to express themselves. Sometimes kids, after ten years of being told to sit down and shut up, take a long time to open up. Sometimes it's very hard to coax a smile out of a kid whose idea of school is a place where no one ever talks. And by the way, the no one ever talks thing is a particularly awful way to teach language. That's why I often get kids who have studied English for years but can barely squeak out a coherent utterance.

Most ESL teachers I know don't like to teach beginners. You have to really exert yourself to reach these kids. You don't get to sit around and debate profound ideas. But there's a rapid progress that you can see and sense, and a huge difference in these kids from one year to the next. It's almost like watching children grow up.

One kid who was in my class about 7 years ago has come back and is working as a math teacher in my building. I'm extremely proud of her. She's a big reason I keep fighting for sanity in a world full of Cuomos. I think it's important that I be nice to her because any day now she will probably be my boss.

It is for me, at least. My classroom is kind of a mysterious place for me right now. I haven't quite gotten to know all the kids' names yet, and even when I do, I don't know who they are. I'm seeing flutterings of kids opening up. I'm noticing smiles here and there, and I really like seeing that some of my students are starting to feel comfortable.

Some of them are feeling free to speak spontaneously, but they're a distinct minority. I want them all to know they are free to say what they like, to answer questions, to be right, to be wrong, to speak their minds.

One of the really good things about teaching ESL, about teaching language, is you're successful if you can get students to produce it. On the other hand, it's one of the toughest things you can do. Kids come from other countries and they're set in their ways. What's more basic than speaking your native language?

But then they see me and I tell them NO you may NOT use your native language AT ALL. Not ONE WORD.

And thus there is the girl who sits in the back of my afternoon class not uttering anything whatsoever, the girl who yesterday spoke three times in her native language. On the third time, after having warned her twice, I moved a boy who does not speak her native language between her and the girl with whom she was speaking. He was pretty happy to be sitting between two girls, but she was having none of it. I asked her a question today and she responded with cold stony silence. It didn't seem a good idea to press the matter.

But my kids will speak English or nothing. And the problem, really, is that the latter option is almost as unacceptable as use of the native language. So I have to trick this girl into speaking English. She can't know I'm manipulating her. I think I will make her do it in the end.

But right now, I have no idea how I'm gonna do that.

Yesterday a girl in my class got a 44 on my test. It freaked me out a little, because the test was fairly easy. In fact, it was a multiple choice test, which I don't usually give, and she filled in eight "E" answers, though the options were only A, B, C, and D.

This is the third test I've given this year. She was absent for the first one, and was out for three days in a row. In the rush of beginning the year, I failed to follow up on that. But the second time she missed a test, I got a guidance counselor who spoke her language to call home. Since then, she's been early for class every day and hasn't missed a single moment.

However, I have 34 kids in that class, and being the last one in, she's been happily seated in the back. I walk around and look at the work kids do, and have been correcting her a little more than I should be at this point. My class is level 2 ESL, meaning near-beginners, and I was thinking of moving her down to level one. But when we checked, we found she'd been here for three years. It's remarkable to be a teenager in a country for three years without acquiring the language. Usually it's either someone who was not educated in L1, or someone who was dragged to the US kicking and screaming. Sometimes it's both.

I found she was in an AP's class, and the AP also spoke her language, so I went in and asked how she was doing in his class. She seemed to be doing OK, but he teaches in her native language. He called her in and asked why she marked so many "E" answers on a multiple choice test.

"I was indicating none of the above," she responded, serenely.

I started banging my head against the wall.

"Look," said the AP. "You're giving Mr. Educator a heart attack."

"That's nothing," she replied. "He has heart attacks all the time."

She's right, of course. I am melodramatic from time to time. But the fact that she was so quick to observe that shows me she has a little sense of humor, or irony, or something. I wonder how she manages to keep such a placid demeanor while she's doing so poorly in a basic English class. As I walked her back to class I asked her what she thought she could do here without English. Was she planning a career in dishwashing? No, she was not. How does she maintain that Zenlike composure in the face of such appalling results?

"Maybe she knows something you don't know," commented my supervisor. She certainly must. I wonder what on earth it is.

You know, if you read the papers, you probably think teachers hold up hoops for kids to jump through, and throw them fish if they make it through 90% of the time or higher. But alas, high test scores are not the fondest memories in anyone's class.

In my class, we were reviewing past tense and present perfect via stories about the Olympics. The article I was using placed great emphasis on American and Canadian champions, as it came from an ESL book designed to sell in those markets. Naturally, I bragged about how wonderful our Olympic champs were, as though I had anything remotely to do with our success. Some of my Chinese students protested that they had champs too.

"Who?" I asked, but none of the kids could name one. They made me take out my iPad and look it up. I found a 15-year-old female gold medal recipient named Ye Shiwen. When the kids pronounced her name, it sounded a great deal like, "Yeah, she won," so we got a lot of mileage out of that. It's very gratifying to see my beginning students so amused by wordplay.


Later, some of them returned to my later class rather than go to lunch. The trailer I'm in during the afternoon has functional AC and the lunchroom is a veritable hellhole. How could I send them to suffer, after they baked in my trailer with no AC during the AM.


During the break between classes, one of the girls who showed up started playing with an iPhone. I was kind of surprised she had it. She's kind of shy, and I don't usually give her a hard time about anything. But at that moment, I said, "You know, I don't understand why you have an iPhone and I don't. I mean, I have a job, I have a car, and all sorts of stuff, and I've just got this crappy phone. It doesn't seem right to me."


She smiled and said, "Well, it's OK. My sister bought me this phone, and she has a job, so you don't have to worry."

She put me in my place and all was right with the world again.

Today, one of my favorite students surprised me by getting the highest test score in her class. She's a good student of English. She has a good ear and likes to use it. But this test focused on grammar, something about which she is totally indifferent. She learns it, but only because she can't really avoid it. She tends to pass tests, occasionally not, but ranges closer to 80% for the most part.

The student in the class who usually gets the highest marks was horrified. He couldn't understand how she beat him. I couldn't either, to tell the truth. She's not the type to cheat, and in any case I had arranged the seats in three rows, so it would have been difficult to do. She would have scored significantly lower if she copied from the guy in front of her.

"Did you study?" I asked her.

"No," she said. "I'm very smart."

That was an odd response. She usually says, "You're very smart," sarcastically, whenever anyone does anything she considers stupid. I decided to follow up.

My daughter gave me a little keychain flashlight. I remembered the old movies where cops shined a light in people's eyes and tried to get a confession. I shined the ridiculous little light in her eyes and asked, "Well, how did you do it?"

A student stood up. He said, "No, mister, not like that. You have to do good, bad." He meant good cop, bad cop. I asked him what he wanted to be and he said good. I said okay and took a tougher tone, shining the light again.

"OK, spill it! How did you do it?"

The boy sat down and said, calmly and quietly, with a smile, "Listen, don't worry. Nothing's going to happen. Everything will be fine. Just tell us the truth."

We continued along this line for a few minutes. We learned nothing whatsoever. The girl wouldn't talk. However, she laughed an awful lot.

We will save this good cop, bad cop routine for the next time we need to conduct another serious investigation.

Yesterday, a kid came in who didn't bother coming in Wednesday.

"What happened on Wednesday?" I asked.

"Forget Wednesday," he said.

"But you weren't here."

"FORGET WEDNESDAY!" he cried, with a big smile.

There seemed little choice. He's almost never absent, and it didn't look like I was going to get any further. I was actually pretty happy he was expressing himself so clearly. Not all my beginners can do that.

In any case, at that moment the Chinese teacher walked in. She looked worried.

"Who's in my fourth period class?" she asked, quite seriously, ruining any possibility of my discovering why my forgetting Wednesday was so important.

Two Spanish-speaking kids raised their hands. I gave them extra credit for their senses of humor.

The Chinese teacher recited some Very Important Instructions in Chinese, which neither I nor the kids who claimed to be in her class understood at all.

But the Chinese kids nodded their heads knowingly, happy that none of the rest of us had the remotest notion what was going on. That's poetic justice, in a way, because all too often they're the ones with no idea what's going on. It's tough being an ESL teacher, because one of the first survival techniques newcomers acquire is the one that entails smiling and looking like they understand things they do not understand at all.

That's why, while many tests are simply nuts, I'd never advocate doing away with them entirely. It makes sense for me to find out once and for all what kids know and do not know. It makes sense for me to do everything in my power to make sure they know as much as possible.

But honestly, it makes no sense at all to blame me for those kids who came to this country kicking and screaming when they abjectly refuse to learn English. I can try and make it fun, I can show them I love it, and I can place them in a non-threatening environment with kids who are good role models. But I can't simply open their throats, force-feed them English, and make sure it comes out when the VAM tests come.

Assuming otherwise is nothing short of insane.

A kid in my level two ESL class doesn't really belong there. The second day of class I went to my supervisor and told her. He doesn't understand the work very well, and kind of sat there mystified. I thought it would be a good idea to move him down a level. But somehow, in summer school or someplace, he'd already passed.

I figured OK, I'll do the best I can and try to drag the kid where he should be. But then he cut the rest of the week, including a test, and things didn't work out. My class was at the end of the day, and learning English was of no evident importance to the kid, so he simply went home early---but--bad luck--somehow he got transferred to my midday class, and skipping out was no longer so convenient--he'd miss all those vital classes in his first language, the one he needed no instruction in whatsoever.

So he showed up on Tuesday. I gave him the leaflet I'd made up so he could do the work. At first, he responded. But he didn't like it when I made him repeat things. He didn't like it when I made him say things in an audible voice, and honestly, who the hell needs English in the United States of America anyway. So he walked up to my desk, dropped the leaflet there, and simply answered, "No English," when I called on him. That would teach me to waste his time with this ridiculous language nonsense.

It was pretty jarring to me. We have a two period class, and here's this teenager determined to do absolutely nothing. It made me tired watching him not answer questions, not mix with his classmates, and not do anything. I would not have the patience to sit and do nothing for 90 minutes, so in a way I have to give the kid props.

It's been a long time since I threw a kid out of class, and I toyed with the idea, but decided not to. I went to his guidance counselor, one who speaks his language, with a written description of his behavior. She told me he had come to her, complaining I was too strict, and saying he wanted to drop down a level. She told him he couldn't stay at level 1 forever, particularly since he'd already passed it.

The next day I was out, but she dragged the parents up for a conference. I don't know what she said or did, but the kid came in yesterday a new person. He's trying to do the work, trying to answer questions, and that defiance has disappeared absolutely. It's like she did magic while I was out.

I'm really lucky to know someone who can help me like that. And the kid is lucky to have her too, though he probably won't acknowledge it for a long, long time.

He strolled in 20 minutes late, like he owned the place. I had never seen him before.

"Excuse me?" I said. But he was too cool to answer.

He selected a seat and plopped down his bag.

"Excuse me?" I repeated.

Reluctantly he looked at me. He gave a tired sigh, weary of my ridiculous demands.

"Who are you?" I asked. Another weary sigh.

"New student," he replied.

It should be obvious. It should go without saying, Why is this idiot teacher making such endless, ridiculous demands?

"Did I say you could sit there?" I asked, getting all territorial and stuff.

The kid threw up his hands. Here I am. I told you I was new. What the heck more could you possibly want.

"May I please see your program card?"

This was too much. I mean, I take the trouble to show up here, almost on time, and this stupid teacher is nothing but demands, demands, demands. Alright, you wanna see my program? Fine. Let's put an end to this nonsense once and for all. I'm not gonna be trifled with by some New York City schoolteacher. Bill Gates says you're a bunch of losers anyway.

"You're in the wrong class. Go to the trailer on the other side."

My entire class burst into laughter. It's hard to look cool in the face of such a thing. Lost new kid muttered some incomprehensible comments so I'd know who was boss, and walked out, making several more incomprehensible comments to put me in my place once and for all.

I was screaming at one of my Chinese students the other day, probably because she made a subject-verb agreement error, or spelled "writing" with two Ts, or committed some other infraction I found absolutely unforgivable.

"How could you?" I pleaded, as dramatically as I could muster.

She laughed at me. Just sat there laughing out loud. I was shocked. How dare she?

"Aren't you afraid of me any more?" I asked.

"No Mister, I've never been afraid of you."

"Why not?"

"Because this is nothing. You just say one thing. But in China, the teacher yells at you for an hour."

"Really?"

"Yes, and they are way more angry than you."

"Okay," I said. I walked over to her, ready to try yelling at her for an hour, though I knew the class would be over well before that.

"Action!" shouted the girl next to her, gamely.

But the girl stopped me. "It's all wrong," she said. "You should be sitting down, and I should be standing up. Also, I can't look at you. I have to keep my eyes to the floor."

"Wow. Okay, I'll try."

"No, it's not good yet. You need to have a pot of tea. Then you pour yourself a cup. Drink tea, then scream. Drink more tea, then scream some more. And you can't stop until I'm crying."

With all the nonsense they throw at us, I have to admit I'm still glad to teach here in the United States.

Yesterday morning, one of my kids was complaining about me, and what an awful person I am. I tried to defend myself.

"Don't I call your house every time you're absent? What other teacher does that?"

"Only you, Mr. Educator. You ever call my house."

"I think you mean always."

"No,  I mean ever. I like ever."

"But it doesn't make any sense."

"Yes it does, Mister. What about forever and ever?"

'Well, the forever sort of means always. But ever by itself doesn't really work."

"But I like it. I'm ever going to use it," she insisted.

"No one will know what you're talking about," I said, "and people will ask who the idiot is who taught you English."

"That's right, Mister," she agreed, "forever and ever."

She cut my class day before yesterday. Well, that's not precisely true. When she didn't show up, I called her Mom, who failed to answer the phone. That was not a huge problem--Mom likely speaks only Chinese, and I don't speak it at all. But then I noticed she'd written her own cell number too, so I called her. She said she was on her way, and would make it for the second period of my double-period class. Half a loaf is better than none, so I told her to hurry up.

Only she never showed.

So yesterday, when she did, I told another girl to tell her I wasn't speaking to her, which the girl did with great delight. I folded my hands like one of those guys who sends the poor waif into the snow in an old movie. Predictably, that didn't work at all. So I asked her directly why she didn't come, and she told a sad story about security guards not letting her in or something. It sounded viable, but I felt the need to tell her she needed to show up, she shouldn't be late, and all that teacher stuff they pay me to tell kids.

But she just nodded her head and smiled, and I couldn't stay mad at her. I wanted to, though, so I enlisted the help of my friend who teaches Chinese. Once she gets yelled at in her native language, I figured, things would clear up immediately. But the Chinese teacher, who I know is well-equipped to yell (she yells at me all the time), seemed to lose steam in the face of the girl's smile. Where was the rancor? Where were the withering looks that turned crazy teenagers into shaking masses of jelly?

There was no hope whatsoever. This girl just kept smiling. Something inside her made her happy with herself, and no matter how we tried to shake her, she was determined to stay that way. Somehow, she was smarter than both of us. 

How dare she be like that at 14 years old!

That was the question in my beginning ESL class yesterday.

"Apples," said the first kid I asked.  Ask her, I told him, pointing to a girl in front.

"What's your favorite fruit?" he asked her.

"Chocolate," she replied without hesitation.

"Chocolate's not a fruit," I told her.

"What is it?" she demanded.

"Chocolate is chocolate," I replied, authoritatively.  "Actually I think it's a bean."

"I don't like beans," she replied.  "Are tomatoes fruit?  I like tomatoes."

"Well, yes they are, technically.  But most people think they're vegetables."

"I don't understand," she said.

"Neither do I," I admitted.   "Ask him, please."

She turned to the boy on the other side of the room.

"What's your favorite fruit?" she asked.

"Hamburgers," he replied.

Here's something Joel Klein doesn't understand, will never understand, and will never experience.

I have a girl in my afternoon class who I fight with all the time. 

"You are a troublemaker,"  I tell her.  "I don't like troublemakers."

She doesn't care at all.  "YOU are a troublemaker," she says.

"Oh, you call your English teacher a troublemaker?  How could you?"

"Because it's TRUE.  Ask anybody."

We've had a hundred similar conversations.  The other day, I looked around the room at these kids.

"You are a great class," I told them.  I'm really going to miss you."

"You are a great teacher," the girl said.  "I will really miss your class."

It's the first nice thing she's said to me all year.   But I treasure it.   To have someone as smart as she is give such a great compliment--it means a lot.

It made my day, anyway.

I'm not altogether upset when kids call me crazy.  In fact, I like it.  It's good if kids don't know precisely what to expect from you.  It keeps them on their toes, and keeps them from falling asleep more often than not.  It also makes them think twice before acting out in your class.

Sometimes, though, the kids make an accusation and back it up with evidence.  It's one thing when they just casually toss names about, but when they back them up, well, then it's harder to argue.

One kid, a former student of mine, was talking to my colleague and got into a lively discussion of who was the craziest teacher in the school.  Naturally, my colleague advocated for himself.  But the young woman was having none of it.

"Mr. Educator is the craziest teacher in the school," said she.

"Why?" asked my jealous colleague.

"Because he made all of us speak only English," she replied.  "And none of us knew how to speak English."

Game, set, and match.