A resounding victory

So, Corky and I pitched the Star Wars themed test prep pep rally idea to the literacy coach, who pitched it to MoLo, the AP in charge of upper grade curriculum, who pitched it to Principal Peeves himself. And the response was one that I never could've anticipated in like 8 million years.

Not only does he want it to be a school-wide assembly for all three testing grades, he himself had the following brainchild: At the end of the assembly, he will come out and say to the kids, "You want a challenge? I'll give you a challenge! If you do well on these tests, I'll throw you a carnival!"

I was pretty blown away by this revelation, and undoubtedly wasn't the only one. (My shock was especially pronounced in light of my overwhelmingly negative past experiences with PP, notably him verbally belittling me after my first stunningly unsuccessful year of teaching, and more recently, unleashing his petulant wrath on my homeless student and her mom.) He is recently a grandpa, however -- perhaps this is gradually softening his heart of stone.


So, this is pretty much a high point of my teaching career I would say. Of course now there's a lot of pressure on this ridiculous skit idea, and I hope it isn't a flop. But that doesn't even matter to me so much. More important to me is that it has sort of tilted my thinking towards believing that change is possible? And that maybe the mission of the Teaching Fellows is not so far-fetched or unattainable after all... their whole "thing" is trying to bring positive changes into public schools a little bit at a time. This is maybe the first time when I have distinctly felt that my being there will have made a noticeable difference in the lives of the kids, that I am maybe making a mark, (even in the somewhat unconventional form of a star-wars- based assembly program) like my being there will have mattered in the long run. At last! Evidence that I am more than an infantry woman in an unjust war way bigger than I can wrap my head around, or an underpaid assembly line worker in an education factory.

Anyway, speaking of far-fetched and unattainable, I have a huge stack of report cards that need some attention, a doubly brutal task to face in light of my slightly addled state of mind from too much, ahem, socializing yesterday.