day 33

February 1, 2010

 

 

Day 33:

 

 

            Today was an interesting day. I started the day by taxiing to Copy Masters to buy colored paper and colored pencils for the kids to start drawing out their stories. After the lady finished sending her text while I was waiting to check out, she bagged the stuff up in a plastic bag that ripped before she even handed it to me. I asked for a double bag. She gave me another flimsy corner store plastic bag which also ripped. She then took the supplies I bought, still being carried in two ripped thin plastic bags and put them all in a Hello Kitty firm paper bag. I just laughed.

            There was a lady working out in the gym when I got there, and my time as short because of the time I spent in Copy Masters, so I just took a warm shower and left without working out. After that I went to get breakfast. I got the usual: silver dollar pancakes, bacon and hash browns. The hash browns weren’t impressive today though. I usually thoroughly enjoy them but not this morning.

            When I got back to school I introduced how the kids were to work on their pictures. My third period class was very excited about the opportunity to color and draw. I was always in favor of coloring days in school. About half of them were at the stage where they could start drawing but the rest of them weren’t yet. By the end of the class most of them were cleared to start drawing. They were clearly motivated by the pink paper and colored pencils.

            Fourth period class, not so much. There were only about four kids who were at that stage and they worked fine. But the others, mostly the girls, just did not want to work today. I had to tell them continually, “Get out your notebook and write Carissa,” “Certhina, what are you doing?” “Burlyann, how are you writing with a backpack on your desk?”. It was quite exhausting. By the end of class, the girls hadn’t done anything and I called them out on it. They just looked at me, giggled innocently and went on about their business.

            After school I went to the high school teachers’ lounge and worked on the web for a while. Then I decided to go to Play practice since basketball didn’t seem like it was going to ever happen, and gospel choir doesn’t have drums to practice with. I was beginning to feel like my activities outside of class were running very short and quite honestly I’d much rather be busy than bored. So I went to play practice and I was there for about three minutes talking with Derek when he informed me that basketball tryouts were going on at that time. So I made the walk out to the courts and stood and watched tryouts. I got there for the beginning and so I saw the whole thing and I must say, this was a unique tryout. I’ve tried out for many teams in my day, but none of them were quite like this. They started out by running suicides. Now, most of the boys still had on their school uniforms so they’re running in long black Dickies and a polo with a t-shirt underneath it. Many of them rolled their pant legs up to below their knees. Most of them don’t have gym shoes so they were running in thong flip flops; some thong flip flops and socks. So they run like 6 suicides to start tryouts. Then they do lay up lines. Now, I realize there isn’t a square on any of the backboards to help out with where to put the ball but some of these kids couldn’t make a layup. They didn’t understand the concept of slowing down so that the ball doesn’t hit the backboard and fly back to half court. I just stood there and watched stoically. Then they switched to left hand lay ups. THE WORST I’VE EVER SEEN! And mind you, I work basketball camps all summers beginning at age 7. The 7 year-olds at Dwight Howard’s Camp did lefty lay ups better than the 17 year olds at MIHS try outs. It was abysmal. People jumping off their left foot to do a lefty, people running with the ball in their left hand from the three point line with no dribble, people trying to finger roll with absolutely no left hand motor skills, it was terrible. But I just stood there. Next they had three lines and a ball in each. Then the first person would sprint as hard as they could to the other end of the court dribbling with his left hand and then come back and pass it off to the next person. I figured this would be ugly. And it was. Some kids would just crossed over the whole time. Some ran so fast that they couldn’t stop in time to not fall off the elevated concrete court. Some passed the ball off from half court so they didn’t have to dribble lefty. Then they broke up into teams and scrimmaged. No shooting drills. No big man drills. No passing drills. They just started playing. And the style of play is just so different. I think I mentioned it before but no one shoots outside of 15’. I think its because the wind is usually blowing so they all just get to the basket; regardless of how effective that is. They are VERY generous though. They will gladly pass up a shot to pass it to a teammate that’s guarded by three people but closer to the basket. There were two guys that stood out in my mind though. One guy is Josh, he’s in the play. He was the tallest kid out there and he was by far the best athlete. He blocked anything around the rim on defense and got every rebound when he was on the court. He powered the ball up a few times. By far the best player. The next best player I saw was a little point guard. He just had great court awareness. He set up his passes with ball fakes. Had good handles. Didn’t try to do too much. He was certainly the best/most effective passer there.

            While they were scrimmaging I was going to go over and talk to Tony, the guy running try outs. He kept moving though so I decided to just talk to him afterwards. Tony ended up coming up to me and the conversation went a little something like this:

            “Hey, are you a teacher around here?” He asked me.

            “Yes sir, I teach here at the Middle School.” I answered.

            “Oh okay, my name’s Tony.”

            “I’m Kyle. I was actually going to ask you if you needed any help coaching.”

            “Yes, actually I need one coach because we will have two teams: a varsity team and then a team of freshmen and sophomores.”

            “Oh okay,” I answered. I wasn’t expecting to have a whole team to myself but it started looking that way. “Well I’ll let you get back to tryouts and we can talk after.”

            “Okay, Kyle.”

            So Tony ran off and did whatever it was he was doing. Then after tryouts he called all the guys together and asked me to introduce myself.

            “Hey, I’m Kyle. I teach 7^th grade here at the middle school and I’m going to be helping out with the basketball team.” The guys applauded and such. The kids that I knew hooted a little.

            Then Tony spoke again, “Kyle’s going to be coaching the varsity team and I will be coaching the freshmens and sophomores.” He looked at me for approval to which I nodded. He then went on in Marshallese some more and I just stood there. Afterwards he asked me if that was okay and I said it was. He then told me there was a coaches meeting tomorrow and that I should come with him. We set up a meeting place and time and then I left.

            Back at the trailer Eric was fixing Tuna steaks. I had never had them before. They were okay, not my food of preference but they were okay. Since my kids are drawing all week, I don’t have any immediate lesson planning to do. So I worked on my Spring Fling letters some more. Then I went to the library to get some internet and get some much needed information. Then Edie and I watched two episodes of Friends, “The one where everybody finds out” and “The one where Joey gets hit”. After that I passed out.

            I made it public today that my goal before leaving the Marshalls, if there’s one thing I’m remembered for I want it to be “throwing up the deuces”. For those of you who don’t know what that means, it merely means using the two finger peace sign as a salutation. Whenever I see the kids I throw up the deuces or give a fist pound. But the deuces is catching on. There are many kids who I’ve never seen before and are much too young looking to be in middle school who see me from the back of pick up trucks and just throw up the deuces. Girls too. Everybody’s doing it. So today I’ve made it my mission to bring the deuces to the Marshalls.