Black like me?

Mondays always seem to leave me with a head so full of...stuff? that all I can do is come home, drink lots of water, stare at the TV (on or not) and then writing things like "stuff" before falling into bed. Today was great, especially considering that it was raining for the too-many-th day in a row (or maybe indoor recess just makes it feel that way). I left for 15 minutes to gobble some lunch only to come back to a shrugging PE teacher surrounded by some hostile looking fifth graders. Before I could deduce what had happened, someone told me that we were all out of incident reports for "the box". When I left for lunch, there were about twenty blank reports left. I knew that we were in big trouble.

A side note - After trying all manner of disciplinary techniques throughout the course of the year, one that I have settled upon for arbitrating minor grievances works like this: A student who has an issue with someone else records the pertinent details along with the names of all involved on an incident report. Before recess, I go through "the box" (quotation marks compliments of the ever dramatic 5th graders). All parties not mentioned may go out for recess, and all others must stay until things get sorted out. If nothing else, it forces the students to consider whether or not their problem is serious enough to warrant missing part of recess. Also, I find that by keeping all relevant persons detained, I have a chance to get all aspects of the story before rendering, or arriving at, a potential solution. A copy of the blank incident reports (4 to a page in the interest of the environment and the encouragement of brevity) can be found by clicking the link below.

Blank incident report

So, anyway, apparently someone touched someone who said something about someone who in turn said something about someone's Mama. Yep. Hence the indoor recess brain overload.

Bedtime is upon me, but I don't feel like changing my ingenious title of this post, so one last story for the night. David is doing his country report on China, which led to a discussion of Chinatown in DC. Amazed to find out that there are real, live Chinese people living in his city, David comments, "So, it's like black people and Chinese people, mostly?" I look at him a little sideways and try not to laugh as I boggle his mind further.
"Well, there are other people, too. For example, by Naisha's house, there are lots of people from Mexico and other Spanish speaking countries." (Insert brief digression on the part of Naisha re: loud dance club and parking shortage in her neighborhood.)
"They speak Spanish in Mexico?" David asks.
Trying to distract myself from thoughts of my failures as a social studies teacher, I say, "And, I mean, I live in DC, too."
"So?" says David, looking quite confused as to the point of my comment.
"Well," I say, now somewhat confused myself, "I'm not black."
"Then what is you?" (Yep, there go any illusions about my grammar teaching as well).
"Naisha," I say, wanting to be sure that not all my students are as ethnocentric(?) as David, "How would you classify me, racially speaking?"
"Um, I think, uh, you're just white, right?"
"Yes, yes, I am."
"You is?" (David, again. At least, I tell myself, he stopped saying "I'm am" about mid-October)
"I am. Why did you think I was black? Am I just cooler than most white people you know?"
"Yes."
Well, okay then. Where were we? Oh yeah. The landforms of China. At the very least, I will tell myself as I fall into bed tonight, I allow my students to fully flesh out their misconceptions before I attempt to unravel them. And, at least, as white people go, I am pretty cool.

P.S. I wrote a paper in college about how I did not wish to racially identify myself based solely on my skin color. I got a B- and a comment from my TA that it is a privilege of the white race to be able to decide not to racially identify oneself. Three years later, I am happily unsure of what box my students might check for me. Go figure.