Number Seven Pick

This week in things that are a little messed up but mostly funny:

The seventh grade is taking 50 children to New Orleans to do Katrina relief work and also fun stuff like alligator swamp tours and crawdad bakes.

We announced it to the kids and their families about a month ago by showing what we imagined to be a moving slideshow of the city immediately post-Katrina. One slide showed a grave family sitting on top of their mini-van in a flooded street. A nervous parent (I believe the trendy term is helicopter mom) stood up and asked, "Will they be going on water rides?"

I think this trip will be good for our kids (and their parents), most of whom have barely left Brooklyn.

Personally, I'm stoked about the trip because a) I've never been to New Orleans and b) I won't have to teach for a week.

There's a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that chaperoning 50 kids on an airplane and then in a muggy new city might not actually be that fun, but I try to banish the thought when it nags too hard.

But that's not the messed up/funny part. Although, I'm sure it will be a week from Monday.

There are seven chaperones for 50 kids, so we have to split them into groups of seven. Check that division. The split is done strategically and meticulously, but lacks compassion. Kids were given no preference.

There's a draft. Straight up.

On a classroom whiteboard is taped a picture of every kid who's earned the trip. We come into the room prepared, serious, our picks in hand. We've contemplated who we really don't want and who we'd kill for--which combinations have potential to make or break our weeks in the dirty dirty.

Before the draft officially begins, everyone gets one veto. I picked a kid who, although not outwardly offensive, has made it his mission to ruin my first year of teaching. I also think he looks vaguely maniacal, so I'd rather not drive through a swamp in a nine-person van with him sitting shotty. The other teachers thought my choice was weird considering the bevy of other possible vetoes, but I stood my ground.

In a rule that does not mirror baseball (at least I don't think), first picks were given to those who showed up on time to the 1:30 meeting. I was there at 1:38 after mediating a minor spat at recess, and so was handed last pick. All's fair in love and war.

There were various strategies. Some went immediately for the shy kids, others went for personality. Some picked based on which random combos would yield the most hilarious results. One teacher carefully collected a group of misfits (I tried not to think about Flannery O'Connor). A particularly kind-hearted math teacher picked based on which kids would learn the most from each other. Isn't that beautiful?

My first five draft picks were perfect: three sweet girls and two nerdy boys. No one had dated, no one had ever fought outside the McDonald's under the JMZ and no one makes regular trips to the school counselor.

But my planning was hasty. As the draft came to its nail-biting conclusion, and the wall of pictures was rapidly depleting and getting more and more nasty, I realized the error of my ways.

My last two picks were unavoidable, and they were not pretty. A sassy girl who'd been suspended for the past two days for fighting, and a boy who wears transitional sunglasses and makes a point of telling me I look pretty every morning. While I know it must be malicious, it's hard to trade consequences for compliments, and so he persists.

Overall, though, I'm pleased. Despite the aforementioned outliers, my group has potential. Well, potential to be semi-normal, which is asking a lot from seventh graders.

I notice the six other teachers doing the same thing: contemplating their draft picks, predicting what the season has in store. Strangely, everyone seems mostly content.

Lesson learned? Some teachers' trash are other teachers' treasure? That doesn't sound quite PC, but it's basically true. Some kids mesh with you while others don't, but that doesn't mean those kids are bad kids. At the end of the draft, every kid in the seventh grade had one adult who was willing to fight for him or her. Willing to say something redeeming. It's comforting to know as I'm doling out demerits or watching a gradebook score add up to F, that all kids have good qualities, even when I fail to notice them.

Even my veto kid. Maybe...