The Dark Side of the Chalkboard

Continuing on a Technological Track

2012-01-27T23:08:00.000-08:00

Well the snow melted, and school resumed, and finals were bumped back a week, so we ended up having several days in the computer lab to work on the final project - creating an outline of a persuasive paper. The reason I had the kids write an outline is that I feel if the kids can identify and write the various parts of a paper separately, it will be easier for them to later construct a WELL-written paper, instead of a hodge-podge of partial thoughts and illogical sentences. And I am sooooo tired of reading mashed up research papers that make absolutely no sense...they make me frustrated and angry.

Parts of this project went better than expected and parts of it went worse. First of all, the kids really struggled with making an outline. They have a tendency to put a lot of extra words around the main thought and have to really fight to get it down to a stripped-to-the-bone main idea. In addition, only about 10% of the kids understood how to make an outline. The other 90% tried to write it in paragraph form.

On the flip side, as I am grading them I am noticing that once I convinced them to get those extra words out of the way, most of the kids so far seem to be doing pretty well. I think part of that is that I stood over them for a lot of this project. We were in the computer lab for 3 days straight. On the first day I went around to each kid individually and checked their thesis statements, redirecting when necessary. On the second day I went to each kid individually and checked the explanation portion of their outline (where they explained how the supporting detail supported their thesis). I think this really helped the kids work out some of the kinks and kept them moving in the right direction, and allowed me to get more one-on-one time with them.

In addition, I had the kids send me their papers electronically instead of printing something out. This is something that every other educational institution in the free world has been doing for years, but my district blocks EVERYTHING, including all non-district email access, and they don't provide email addresses to the kids, so up to this year, there wasn't really a good way of getting electronic files from a to b. But last summer we were given teacher websites hosted by the district, and it came with a direct email button, so all the kids simply emailed me their projects on Thursday. Of course, this resulted in my inbox jumping from 100 emails to 220 emails, all with the same subject line, but it was really nice not to have to deal with paper and printing.

And another bonus...I am finding that I am grading these outlines faster, since I can use the Microsoft editing function to edit both word and powerpoint documents, allowing me to leave better, more detailed, and more legible feedback. Yea for technology...better late than never, I guess.

Take What You Need

2012-01-24T17:04:00.000-08:00

Today when I got to school, this was outside my classroom.

I'm not sure what was on the missing piece, and there was no information about who had put it up, but by the end of the day, this is all that was left.

And once again, I remembered why I love what I do and how thankful I am to be surrounded by amazing kids and passionate colleagues.

Snow Days Don't Really Mean No School Days

2012-01-18T18:51:00.000-08:00

This is a shot off my balcony...which is as far as I ventured outdoors today. Last night we received a "significant snow event," which always makes me laugh because it usually consists of a few inches of snow that effectively shuts down the entire region (mostly because Seattle is all hills and doesn't have a lot of snowplows). Meanwhile, my aunt in Alaska has been posting pictures of -20 degree weather...it's all relative, I guess. School was a late start on Tuesday, was cancelled today, and we just got word that it is cancelled again tomorrow, because it warmed up just enough to start melting the snow and then froze again.

For me, while I like snow, and am perfectly fine with snow when I am prepared for it (which I was), I prefer that it happen on a weekend. Especially when it happens the week before finals, and my kids need to work on their final project.

Here is where technology pays off...As soon as I heard we were missing school again, I immediately figured out how I was going to adjust the final project (which I gave the kids on Tuesday) and tweeted that out, asking the kids to retweet the information since not all my kids follow me. One of my kids tweeted me a clarifying question about the project, which I also answered on twitter. I was able to email my students parents from home, so that between those two mediums, 90% of my kids SHOULD know the adjusted expectations. In addition, all the information I gave them in class on Tuesday is on a classroom website hosted by my district.

Online, other teachers posted on facebook that they had texted the principal to ask if we were planning on moving finals (we aren't) and we discussed alternative plans and suggestions for finals. The other ASB coordinator and I were on the phone today for almost an hour, talking about plans for the spring, which we normally would have discussed at school, and I did spend a little time grading, and will finish that as well as entering grades tomorrow.

After I sleep in, drink more hot chocolate, and continue my Doctor Who marathon, of course.

Fine. I'll tweet you.

2012-01-02T18:37:00.000-08:00

Although I had a brief fling with myspace and have had a facebook account for years, I have never felt even the slightest twinge of desire to jump on the twitter bandwagon. The name stops me, first of all. I will forever associate it with the Disney classic Bambi, in which one character declares another character to be "twitterpated." The word "tweet" is ridiculous to me and while I can control who sees my thoughts on facebook, I cannot control it on twitter...and I don't really have anything that profound to say.

But then, another teacher mentioned that her students had asked her if she would set up a twitter account for homework reminders and so on, and it suddenly clicked. That might actually work.

So I contemplated it over break, and asked my kids about it (and got an overwhelmingly positive response), got a phone that will actually support a twitter app, and decided to just see how it works. The goal is to tweet things like "homework due tomorrow!" and "don't forget to sign up for the blood drive!" you know, lame stuff like that. =)

Meh....we'll see.

book review - Driven Out

2011-12-01T18:28:00.000-08:00

Driven Out: the Forgotten War Against Chinese-Americans by Jean Pfaelzer

I don't normally choose books from the American history side of the library aisle, but nothing on the Africa or Asia shelves was catching my eye, so I picked this one up. I am very glad I did. I knew some of the history of Chinese Americans in the United States, but had no idea of the extent of the hatred and violence that was perpetrated against this particular group of people in the 1880s. Pfaelzer gives a detailed explanation of the motivations and specific actions taken against Chinese immigrants, especially in California, and takes a brutally honest look at the repercussions that still echo today.

This book made me angry and disgusted. I generally read while on the treadmill and my heartrate went higher than normal more than once while reading this book. It really brought home to me the fact that people may talk about life "in the good old days" but for many MANY people, the opposite is true. In fact, from what I can tell, it seems that being anything but rich, white, and male meant little to no justice would come your way until the later 20th century. Did you know that while the enslavement of African-Americans was made illegal in 1863, Chinese women were openly sold on the streets of San Francisco well into the 1890s? Did you know that despite mob violence that drove out thousands of Chinese sometimes overnight, little to no damages were ever paid to the people that lost their homes, lives, and property? And did you know that Chinese immigration into the United States was prohibited until 1943, in a deliberate effort to keep the Chinese people from becoming part of American life (and it was only lifted then because the US government hoped to use the Chinese to help fight against the Japanese during World War II).

This book is amazing, powerful, desperately sad, and angry. It is one of the most powerful historical books I have ever read and I would highly recommend it.

Book Review - the Last Jews of Kerala

2011-11-30T18:32:00.000-08:00

This year is going pretty smoothly, school-wise, and I find myself without a lot of blog fodder. But I have been able to get back to reading down the history aisle at the King County Library, so I thought I would do a little book report here and there.

The Last Jews of Kerala - by Edna Fernandes

I didn't really know what to expect when I picked up this book and even getting into it I wasn't sure for the first 50-60 pages. The author writes at first as if this book is a novel. It is very descriptive, and several times she tells part of a story, hints at an issue (for example when referring to the flooding that hit Cranganore) that only gets finished 50 pages later, which is kind of annoying, but I did get into the book and it ended up being really interesting.

This is the story of one of the few Jewish settlements remaining in India. What made it more interesting to me was the fact that the area being discussed is the southwestern, or Malabar, coast of India, an area that we had just finished discussing in my world history class. The author spends time with the "white" Jews of Mattencherry, the "black" Jews of Ernakulum, and finishes by spending time with Indian Jews who emigrated to the then-new country of Israel in the late 1940s.

This book reads as a wistful and nostalgic story of a group of people that have nearly disappeared, and will probably be gone completely within 50 years. As an Indian herself, the author has a lot of sympathy for the culture and history of the area, and seems to be fluent in the language spoken in the area, which for me, made reading this more interesting.

I would recommend this book, it is not particularly scholarly, but it is interesting in a quiet, meandering, philosophical kind of way.

It's official

2011-11-28T17:39:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday morning I found out that I am officially a National Board Certified teacher. In an ironic twist, I have been feeling particularly unsure about my teaching methodology lately, and as a result, have spent most of the last two weeks in a blue funk, questioning whether or not I should be a teacher, whether I am actually teaching my students anything, and whether or not I will ever be able to do things that normal married people do, like buy a house or travel.

Or retire.

Ugh.

Anyway...kudos to me...whooo.

Renaissance Art Day

2011-11-11T11:07:00.000-08:00

Each year in my class, I spend a day talking about Renaissance art. It doesn't always totally fit exactly into the curriculum, but I think that art is so cool, especially from this time period, and it is more accessible to the kids than later artistic styles. I love to see them start to find details and meaning, where they had been afraid of art before. At the end of class, I had them fill out an exit slip and I asked them to tell me what their favorite piece of art was and why they liked it. Here are some of their comments.

Raphael - School of Athens

* I liked this because it had a lot of artists and philosophers in it.
* This is beautiful and it seems like everyone is happy. It's somewhere I would want to live. The other paintings are dark and have dark messages.

Hans Holbein - The Ambassadors

* I liked this because he did more than put two and two together. He was very creative.
* I liked this because of the conflict shown between traders and priests and the three levels of life between them.
* I liked that there were different ways to interpret the items in the painting
* I liked that this painting was hard to explain
* I liked that you had to look at this from a different perspective to really see things correctly

Jan van Eyck - Arnolfini's Wedding

* I like that the artist painted himself in this backwards
* I like the significance of the mirror
* the mirror was so amazing, so small but he drew very beautiful
* I like that it represented loyalty
*I like that all the detail and the symbols all mean something
* this painting is a symbol of life, love, lust, and death

Michelangelo - the Mona Lisa

* I like the background
* I think it's cool that her eyes follow you
* this is a real-life painting
* she is really ugly (disclaimer...we had talked about how Michelangelo painted real people, they aren't made to look better than they are)
* She attracted me with her smile the first time I saw her

Artemisia Gentileschi - Judith Beheading Holofernes

* This showed how strong a woman can be when she's been hurt
* Female dominance rules
* this captures the angerts and hatred, and portrays the strength that a woman has
* it shows how a woman can stand up against the bad guys
* her background gets my attention (Gentileschi was raped while in her teens)

Caravaggio - David with the Head of Goliath

* I'm not sure why I liked it, but something about it intrigued me
* David has a look of accomplishment on his face
* it shows David being powerful and heroic

My favorite part of Renaissance Art day is how the kids interact with the paintings. At the beginning of the period they aren't sure about things but before long they start finding symbols themselves, things I haven't even seen. It's a great activity to do the day before a break and I love opening their minds up to the possibility that art is not scary.

Community Irritations

2011-10-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

"Nothing good ever comes out of South Seattle."

Those were the words I heard from a security officer at the Homecoming Dance on Saturday night and it unfortunately reflects the opinion of far too many people in this area. I love this city with all my heart, but Seattle is snobby. I have, more than once, received "the look" from people who live in Seattle when they find out that I don't live within city limits. Aside from the neighborhood snobbery, there is a definite cold shoulder given to the south end of the city itself...which happens to be where I teach.

I hate this attitude. I deal with it all the time; from comments on local news stories that happen to mention my school or the neighborhood I live in, to people in the grocery store who hear where I teach and give me the raised eyebrow and the sympathetic head shake.

You know what comes out of South Seattle?

First generation college kids whose parents are immigrants who didn't graduate from high school and don't speak a word of English
Kids who help opposing players on the football field and basketball court back to their feet after a hard hit, and then compliment them on a great play
Somali refugees who arrive from a country with no functional government and one of the lowest literacy rates in the world and leave as high school graduates who then return to help others in their community
Girls who finish high school with a baby on their hip, even though their mothers didn't make that same choice
Kids who choose their teacher to be their "parent" at a recognition, because their parents are working three jobs in order to support their family and allow their kids to go to school instead of go to work
A football team that has learned a hard lesson about picking themselves up and getting past a seemingly insurmountable hurdle....and has learned how to lose gracefully
Kids that have learned how to accept blame, learn from their mistakes, and move on
Kids that can clearly articulate problems in the world today and suggest solutions that make sense
Kids who graduated from my school 5 or 10 years ago and come back to teach there again, because they went away, grew up, and came back to give back to the people who made them who they are
People that are funny, beautiful, quirky, diverse, and compassionate

Now to be fair, there are some problems in South Seattle. Just like there are problems in North Seattle, in Magnolia, in downtown, and on the East Side. But labeling an entire community like that irks me...especially from someone in a position of authority.

So here's to ending snobbery, keeping an open mind, and looking for nontraditional beauty in the community you live in.

Coasting

2011-10-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I last posted and I was thinking the other day about why this is.

this year has been going so smoothly that I don't really have any angst to dissipate here
I found out my principal reads my blog and it really freaked me out
I am behind on grading (shocking, I know)
I redesigned two units and am having to redo everything in those units, which takes a long time

So suffice it to say, things are going smoothly, I need to grade, and I am very glad we have a day off of school tomorrow.

Treading on Eggshells

2011-09-25T18:42:00.000-07:00

So far, this year my kids are awesome. I am afraid to mess things up, which is why I haven't posted anything lately, I'm a little afraid of jinxing things. =)

It's true! My kids are sweet, friendly, and very nice. There is one kid that is minorly annoying, but all the other kids in class simply ignore him, so it doesn't bother me at all. I have quite a few special ed kids this year, so it is nice to be able to give them a little more attention.

Um....this posted by accident. TO CONTINUE....

It is nice to be able to have some time to breathe. My goals this year are:

to take better care of myself
learn to understand my money and budget better (how else will I ever be able to go back to Hawaii?)
work more on curriculum development

Goal 1 - I joined a gym (after an extremely traumatic visit to another gym, I joined a Bally's close to my house) and have been working out most days. I would like to be able to afford a trainer to teach me how to use all the machinery, but that is out of my price range at this time. In addition, I am once again participating in the "Biggest Lose" challenge at school. As far as cooking goes, I am struggling a little with that, but am experimenting with taking salad to school each day instead of something hot.

Goal 2 - Ugh. This is my NEMESIS. But now that my car is paid off and I am within a year of getting the last of my credit cards paid off, I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am experimenting with a method of budgeting using digital post-its on my desktop, so we shall see how that goes. This month did NOT go well, but I had some unexpected expenses.

Goal 3 - I hate grading and I wish someone could do it for me, but I am still in "training mode" in my classroom, getting the kids used to my expectations, so it is important that I have them turn everything in at this point, to get into the habit of DOING things, and it is important that I look at everything they do so I know what their capabilities are. All that to say that I am behind (AGAIN) and doing curriculum falls by the wayside when I don't stay caught up on grading. I am hoping to get back to my schedule of going somewhere to work on Saturdays this school year, it worked well last year while doing my national boards, and could work well again this year if I make it into a habit.

In other news, I signed up again to tutor my Somali kids at the apartment complex each Tuesday. It will mean there is one day a week that I will not be able to work out, but I think this is worth it. And while I am not going to be a class advisor again for a while, I am now officially an assistant to the ASB/Student Council advisor (one of my best friends at school) and am kind of excited about that. I think I will be in charge of organizing volunteer opportunities, which is something I am really interested in.

So to sum up....So far, so good. =) Fingers crossed.

Teacherpower

2011-09-03T14:53:00.000-07:00

I saw this on Pinterest today and immediately stole it.

Debrief

2011-09-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

School started on Wednesday for the freshmen and yesterday for the rest of the kids.

All in all it has been a good week, and I think I have at least partially recovered my mojo. My classes are a little smaller than I was expecting and have been pretty quiet.

I was a little concerned when the zipper on my pants broke between 1st and 2nd period on the first day of school, because starting the school year by flashing 130 sophomores is Frowned Upon, but it all worked out. (Thank goodness for long shirts!)

I am glad for the long weekend, however, it will be a nice ease into the school year.

Year 10

2011-08-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I am about to start my tenth year of teaching. I started teaching when I was 22, barely 4 years older than the scattering of seniors in my sophomore classes. This feels like a big milestone, but on the other hand, I don't feel that my life has progressed any further along than it was 9 years ago.

It might be for this reason, or possibly the stress of last year, or possibly the stress of family stuff, but for the first time, I am really struggling to be ready to start school. School starts in 2 days and the words that come closest to describing the way I am feeling are "apathetic," "burned out" and "tired." But I don't know why.

I am discouraged by this feeling. I want to be excited. I am hoping that the kids will change my mind once they hit my classroom. But I am worried that if I am struggling this much in September, I am really going to crash in January. I am choosing to be positive because I know that will help, but while it is normally something that comes naturally to me, I have been having a hard time with it recently.

I hope something amazingly positive happens soon...

Saying Goodbye

2011-08-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

I have a relatively large extended family on both sides. Growing up, until I was 5 or 6, every single one of my four grandparents, four aunts and three uncles, their spouses, and all 15 of my cousins lived within an hour's drive from my house and even now, the majority of us cousins still live in the Pacific Northwest. While I have fond memories of both sides of my family, for the rest of this post I am going to focus on my paternal grandparents.

The core of my family, on both sides, is my grandparents. My paternal grandparents lived exactly half a mile from my house, and family get-togethers were common for holidays or random Sundays. I remember many Christmases, Thanksgivings, Easters and summer Sundays spent playing with cousins...in the barn, climbing up on the haystack, checking out the cows, swinging on the rope hung from the barn rafters, playing in the corn bin, looking in the windows of the chicken house, exploring the old milking barn, playing house under the big split maple in the front yard, setting up the marble run in the front room, and playing with the dolls from the chilly back bedroom.

I remember my grandma making clothes for my sister and I. Her sewing room was a room that was off-limits to us kids unless she was in there and when I go to my grandpa's house, I still instinctively stay away from that room. The living room had a sliding-top cabinet radio and record player that I absolutely love, and sitting on top was a revolving light with Niagara Falls that when you turned it on, would look like the water was actually falling. My grandma had a master touch with plants and 15 or more African violet plants thrived by the massive front window overlooking the garden and fields that stretched all the way to the hill several miles away. My grandpa was a farmer and my grandma was a housewife. They had a huge garden, that my grandpa was able to keep miraculously weed-free. We used to joke that the weeds just knew to stay away. There were always cookies in a green tupperware in the corner of the kitchen, and orange marshmallow peanuts or candy corn in the cabinet above the counter. When we ate dinner at their house, dinner was never complete without canned peaches, applesauce, bread and jam, and a tupperware of cheddar cheese slices cut into 1" squares.

My grandpa was born into a German Mennonite family, and spoke only German until he went to school. When he was frustrated, he would speak in German and then shake his head and chuckle. He wore overalls every day but Sunday, with a plaid or blue chambray shirt and work boots. On Sundays, he wore a gray suit and black dress shoes. Until I was in high school he wore a pocket watch on a shoestring that was tucked into the front pocket of his overalls and I vividly remember playing with it many times. He wore a John Deere or straw hat when it was hot, and never ever unbuttoned the top button of his shirt or rolled his shirt sleeves up, except to wash his hands in the big metal basin in the garage. Into his 80s, he could buck hay with us young'uns (throwing 40-50 lb bales of hay 4' or higher onto the back of a moving wagon) and until 2-3 years ago, actively farmed along with my dad and uncles.

When I was in elementary school, my grandma had the first of many strokes. Her personality started to change, and it is harder for me to remember her before this point. My strongest memories of her after this point involve her sitting in her recliner in the family/dining room/kitchen, nodding and smiling as we cousins talked and laughed. She gradually lost more and more of her personality, and while I was too young and self-absorbed at the time, looking back it must have been so hard to watch her go. She had beautiful snapping black eyes, like no one I have ever seen before, and gorgeous silvery hair that she wore pulled back in a bun. She always had a half-smile on her face, like she was just listening and enjoying what was going on around her.

When I was in 9th grade, she died, more or less unexpectedly. That was hard. No one in my family had ever died during my memory, except my great-grandmother. I don't really remember much about it, except seeing my grandpa cry openly and brokenly for the first and only time in my life.

After that point, if it was possible, we got even closer. Even as we cousins grew up, we still had family Christmases and Thanksgivings together. Every Christmas and for my birthday 5 days later, my grandpa gave me a card with $10 inside, and he did this for every one of my cousins, their wives, and their kids, in varying amounts. He got quieter, but he appreciated humor and smiled at our jokes and laughed at the stories when my dad and uncles teased him. My cousin took pictures of him that I still have on my dresser. One time when I came home from college, he took me out for lunch and the waitress told me that he was cute, and that all the waitresses there looked out for him when he came for lunch.

After I moved back to the Northwest, when I went home to visit my parents, I would sit with him in church; seven rows from the front, on the left hand side. He never said much, just smiled and moved over. I used to watch his hands in church, gnarled and scarred, with short nails. I have some pictures of those hands on my phone and my ipod, and my computer. He would open the hymnal and sort of hum along, then listen to the sermon. Sometimes I nudged him awake and he would silently grin at me, shake his head, and blush a little.

A couple of years ago, he fell and broke his back. He was in a collar and brace for a while, but healed faster than expected and was back weeding the garden.

Over the past year, I've had to help him find the hymn a few times and he doesn't smile at me quite as easily. He seemed frailer when I would put my arm around his shoulder and dad would tell me about another skin cancer spot that had been removed at the doctor's office. His hair got thinner and he seemed to be...leaving.

Dad called Friday. It's cancer, and it's spread, and hospice has been called.

My aunt has flown in from Pennsylvania. My cousin's wife posted on facebook this afternoon that he's in pain and told another cousin that lucidity is rarer. Discussions are happening about funerals and I have made a lesson plan that can be done on any day just in case.

I'm struggling with this.

I know that my grandpa's faith is deep and unshakeable. I know that he has wanted to go home for a while now and that he knows where is is going. I believe he is going there, and I want him to be free from pain and loneliness. But he's been such a big part of my life for 32 years and I am having trouble letting go.

Ironically, I can't bring myself to go see him. I know I'm being selfish, but I don't want to see him in pain. I don't want to see him forget my name. I don't want to say goodbye.

I want to remember the grandpa of my childhood - the one that wrestled hay bales, taught me to drive a truck, let me sit at his feet in the combine, sat next to me in the seventh row, and fed me 1" cheese squares and home-canned peaches.

Per Our Conversation....

2011-08-23T17:41:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about this after a conversation with a friend this afternoon.

My Bucket List:
1. dye my hair with purple, pink, or blue streaks
2. get a tattoo (don't freak out, dad, I haven't done this)
3. spend 6 months traveling around Europe alone (cliche, but nonetheless true)
4. go to Vegas and people watch
5. go to New York and be a tourist
6. live in a really old building/industrial space
7. volunteer for a community organization
8. own and fix up an old house
9. visit Boston
10. get married (I think I live in the wrong city...)

Jobs I wouldn't mind doing
1. personal assistant (shopping for other people? Awesome!)
2. teacher coach (all the good parts of teaching, none of the grading)
3. personal chef (if only I could cook)
4. translator at the UN (if only I could speak another language)
5. teaching English overseas (if I wasn't such a weenie)
6. being a tour guide in Seattle (I could actually do this one)
7. being a tailor (I like sewing, so sue me)

Places I would like to live
1. on the beach almost anywhere
2. in a houseboat on Lake Union
3. on the shore of Lake Washington
4. on top of Queen Anne
5. in Ballard
6. in Wallingford
7. in Magnolia
8. in West Seattle

Tiled.

2011-08-22T10:02:00.000-07:00

School starts in 9 days.

This is hard to believe for many reasons. First, we are starting in August for the first time ever. Second, and more importantly, I haven't been in my classroom in over a week.

That last detail is not my choice.

Several years ago, probably twelve or fifteen years or more at this point, my high school was completely remodeled. It looks fantastic on the outside, the building is about 100 years old, so it looks kind of like a red brick castle, complete with turrets (one of which is where our printer lives). But the inside is not so great. The overall picture of the inside is pretty good, but a combination of 1200 kids tramping around for 181 days every year and not the highest quality of materials used in the remodel means that on the third floor (where I dwell), the tile floors keep falling apart and the kickplates on the stairs keep falling off.

So this summer, the plan was to re-tile the third floor of my building. I am not totally sure how this works, but I know that there is glue and tile involved and that it takes a while for the glue to set.

Just as a reminder, we got out of school on June 22. Officially, teachers do not have contracted work time between June 22 and August 25. Realistically, you can find. someone there most days, but the lowest chance of finding teachers there is during July. In August, teachers start coming back, with more and more there every day as the month progresses, so that by the second and third week of August, you have a good chance of finding most teachers at school for at least part of the day every day. During the last two weeks of August, everyone is there all day getting ready for school to start.

So then logically, the best time to retile the entire third floor, cutting off access to all social studies and language arts classrooms is clearly the last two weeks of August.

Making it worse, the original plan was to retile the floor last Monday, giving us access Wednesday, maybe thursday at the latest. But then, SOMEONE WALKED ON THE FLOOR before the glue was dry, messing up most of the hallway, and requiring a major repair. Which consequently bumped our access back to today.

But on facebook this morning, teachers who went up to school posted that the third floor is STILL closed off and will probably be that way until THURSDAY. I may or may not have torn my hair and gnashed my teeth at this.

While I understand that officially, we are not contracted to be at school until August 25, meaning that the contractors have access anytime between June 22 and August 25, I wish that the district officials who plan these things would use a little logic. After all, a lot of them used to BE teachers.

The Limitations of Language

2011-08-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I get frustrated with in my classroom are the future plans of my kids. It is not unusual for an elementary school kid to want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a basketball player when they grow up, but by the time they are 16, two years from being launched into the adult world, they should have a more reasonable expectation for their future, or at least have a more specific plan for how to get what they want. The majority of my kids are still planning on being a professional sports player or a professional entertainer (singer, model, and actor, in that order), but there are generally between 20-25% of my kids that fail my class, with another 20-25% that end the class with Ds or low Cs.

Last year, towards the end of the year, I overheard one of my lower-level special education students talking about her future plans to another student. She said, "Well, I haven't decided what I am going to do yet, but I will either be a doctor or a lawyer." This student had a 12% in my class and at the end of her sophomore year in high school, only had 2 credits...meaning that she had passed only two classes in two years of high school. So how is it that she is still planning to be a doctor or a lawyer, two careers that are completely out of the realm of possibility for her?

I have thought about this question a lot and while the answer is complex, I think it starts with the limitations of the English language. American kids are told, from day one, that they "can do anything you want to do." What we mean by that is that they have the RIGHT to do anything they want to do. What they interpret that as is that they have the ABILITY to do anything they want to do, and that is where the delusion begins.

Then comes reality tv. Using the premise on every reality show, the only thing you need to do in order to be famous (and therefore rich and successful) is to be obnoxious. There is no real (or perceived) work or skill that goes into these shows, and kids are once again getting the message that you don't need any foresight or plan in order to be successful in life.

Add to that the political incorrectness associated with "tracking" in a high school, and the sheer idiocy of NCLB, and suddenly all kids are being forced to the lowest possible level, instead of being in an environment that reflects the real world, where some people work hard and are successful, some people work hard and struggle, and a tiny fraction of a percentage are lucky and win the lottery. Over the last 20 years, we have created a situation where everything in their environment has told our kids that hard work is not part of the equation of their lives and success comes to those who wish for it. I recognize the validity of the argument that some kids don't find their feet right away and tracking can be harmful for those late-bloomers. But I also think that the fact that we don't have any kind of job training or vocational skills traning for kids who don't have the aptitude for college is a gaping chasm in our educational system.

Do you know that the only vocational or job training available to most high school students comes from joining the military after high school (or being in self-contained special needs classes)? And that manual, or "unskilled" labor has the highest amount of demand for jobs in the US today? But that is another issue altogether....

I think that the first step in changing how kids plan for their future is changing our language. Having the RIGHT to do what they want to do is so very different than having the ABILITY to do what they want to do, but the word "CAN" is confusing because it means both. We have stopped clarifying this difference, and it has been detrimental to our kids.

Finding that thin line between encouraging kids to work hard to get what they want and breaking the news to them that they need to consider other options is a hard line to walk, but I think it is necessary for our kids sake that we suck it up and just do it.

Hawaiian Food

2011-07-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

One of the things I was most looking forward to and a little nervous about was Hawaiian food. I really dislike tropical fruit, especially pineapples and coconut, but I love seafood, so I had mixed feelings. I was determined to try whatever I could though, and I did, including a bite of fresh pineapple (better than I was expecting, but still tasted like pineapple). My favorite things were the shrimp trucks though, I could have eaten lunch there every day, no problem. Our first day, we just stopped at the first one we saw after leaving Hanauma Bay and the only shrimp on the menu was garlic shrimp. There was SOME garlic on it.....but sooooooooo good.

When we were in Haleiwa, we stopped at Macky's, which was recommended to us by a friend. K got garlic shrimp again, but I got the lemon pepper shrimp and it was amazing. And the shrimp were enormous!

On the day we went to Pearl Harbor, we stopped in Kapolei on the way home and had lunch at a place called Aloha Salads. They use all local ingredients. I had an ahi tuna wrap that was vaguely Greek tasting, and really good.

Because we were on a budget, we only ate lunch out each day, and ate breakfast and dinner in our room. This meant that we went shopping a couple of times. Of course, since we didn't want to spend money on good knives, and only brought carry-on luggage, it presented some interesting issues. We bought the ingredients for sandwiches, then realized that plastic knives don't really work so well. This is our ghetto cutting board.

We also didn't have bowls for the cereal, so we used the coffee cups. They only held about 1/4 cup of cereal, but it worked!!

Overall, I really liked almost everything I had in Hawaii. I didn't like the macaroni salad that came with the plate lunches and there were a couple of things at the luau that I didn't care for, but overall, great.

Flora and Fauna

2011-07-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things about Hawaii was the massive amount of animals and plants we saw. There were birds EVERYWHERE (but, oddly, no seagulls), more tropical fish than I have seen anywhere, including in an aquarium, and everywhere you looked were animals that reminded me that I was on an island in the middle of the ocean. We saw a little squirrel-like thing that we couldn't identify and didn't get a picture of (and I can't find on google), that we named a Haweasel, since we couldn't figure out what it was. Also, the resort had at least two peacocks, although we only saw the smaller one once. This one ripped a piece of bread right out of my hand. I took it back. I can pin a 16 year old boy to his seat with a glare, I can handle a stinkin' peacock. However, I may or may not have thrown the last piece of bread far away and then locked the patio door..it was kind of a large bird.

This is a bird, sitting on a bird of paradise plant.

This is a crappy picture of a really cool bird with a red mohawk. He came and got food from our table when we ate outside at the resort, and stalked me at the pool a few times.

These are plumeria blossoms, which were everywhere, in a hundred different color combinations. They were so cool, and I love them.

The mountains on Oahu go straight up for 1000 feet or more. This is the north side of the Makaha Valley, where we stayed. The building at the bottom looked like a Soviet apartment building, but we think it was some kind of resort (not ours).

Of course, one of my favorite flowers, the hibiscus. I used to grow these in Texas, but I think it is too cold here. They are huge in Hawaii, some are 6 or more inches across.

I've seen palm trees before, of course, having lived in Texas, but these were so perfectly perfect. And they had these weird feathery things growing out of them below the fronds.

Blue flowers, seen in Haleiwa

Yellow tree...those are all blossoms, but I don't know what it is. So pretty against the blue sky though!! Also seen in Haleiwa, although I did see these here and there all over the island.

In Haleiwa, we stopped at a shrimp truck and saw these chicks running along after a hen in the parking lot. They were so cute!

Lotus blossom, seen at the luau

And of course, the amazing sunsets. This is one of about 30 sunset pictures I took over 5 days. This one was taken from the restaurant at the resort.

Honolulu

2011-07-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

On our last day in Hawaii, we didn't have to get to the airport until about 6 pm, so we spent the morning by the pool, then went into Honolulu. It was raining off and on, and kind of humid, so we tried to find something to do indoors. We ended up at the Aloha Tower, which was cool for a while. I don't really know what this tower is for, but it overlooked the harbor and looks pretty. Also, there is a mildly decrepit outdoor mall at the base which was interesting to wander around for a while.

When you get inside the base of the tower, there is a free elevator to the top of the tower, so we went to the top. The tower is situated on the northwest side of Honolulu, not too far from the airport, so on one side you can see Waikiki, one side is downtown Honolulu, one side is the harbor, and the other side is Sand Island. This is the harbor as seen through the "A" of Aloha.

This is a working harbor, so this is a view of Sand Island, with a ship being towed out to the channel.

One of the things I REALLY wanted to see was the statue of King Kamehameha that stands in front of Ali'Iolani Hale (today, Hawaii's Supreme Court). When we got there, we only had 6 minutes of street parking, so we made it the fastest tour EVER. This was shot from across the street. When I go back to Oahu, this area will be one of the things I spend a whole day doing.

Across the street from the statue is Iolani Palace, the former palace of the Hawaiian kings (and queens). This is the plaque on the front of the gate. The inscription is the state motto of Hawaii and reads "ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono," which means "The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness."

This is the palace itself, which looked really cool. Again, we had no time (down to 3 minutes by this point), so we just took some quick pictures of the outside. The cool thing about it being kind of late was that there was no one on the grounds.

We had only about one minute left when I looked over and saw this really cool building (summer house?) over on the lawn of the palace. I don't really know what it is, but it looks really awesome, and I think the juxtaposition between the delicacy of the palace and the hard modern building behind it is really cool.

We ended our day at the airport, where Hawaii sent us off with a beautiful, intensely colored rainbow arching over downtown.

Aahhhh...Hawaii, how I miss you.....

Paradise Cove Luau

2011-07-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

When we initially researched Hawaii, K and I thought that a luau would be too expensive, so we were going to forego it. But we eventually changed our minds, and after some research we settled on the Paradise Cove luau at Ko'Olina, just down the coast from our hotel. We got tickets for Monday night, which was our last night in Hawaii. One of the reasons we chose this luau was that there were a lot of activities to do before the meal and show. This is a picture of me getting a "tattoo" on my left arm, while the girl and I talked about Seattle. =) I was sort of hoping to freak out my mom when she picked me up at the airport, but it wasn't like henna, it was oil based and was gone by the next morning. =(

There were also stations to learn to dance the hula, play traditional Hawaiian games (which we didn't attempt), have your picture taken with parrots that would lay down on their backs in your hand, and make your own wrist lei or crown out of orchids

They also had demonstrations of various traditional (?) Hawaiian skills, like climbing palm trees (he is throwing down orchids), rowing a traditional Polynesian outrigger canoe around the lagoon, and throwing/collecting hukilau fishing nets. These were cool to watch.

It was about this time that my camera announced that it was about ready to die, and it was too dark to take good pictures with my little point and shoot, so I didn't get a lot of pictures of the show itself. It was pretty decent, all things considered, with a good mix of dances from Samoa, Polynesia, and Hawaii. Dinner was pretty good as well....they had green salad (good), pasta salad (disliked, I don't like mayo), salmon and tomato salad (too strong for me, salmon was raw), poi (weirdest stuff ever), purple potato rolls (good), fish in cheese sauce (my fish didn't taste fresh...sad), fried chicken (good), and of course the main dish of steamed? pork. I normally really dislike pork, non-grilled meat, and barbecue, but this was AMAZING. I could have had an entire plate of just that and been perfectly happy. They also served some kind of white jello (really, we had no idea what it was, it just tasted white, and looked and felt like jello...), coconut cake, and chocolate cake. Just as they served dinner, the sun set, and it was a beautiful sunset. That's a sailboat out there in the center of the picture.

I really only have one picture of the show, which was really cool. The dancers were really good, and it was really awesome to watch them. I wish we could have sat a little closer, but we still had decent seats and it was worth it to go. All in all an excellent end to our Hawaiian adventure.

Haleiwa and the North Shore

2011-07-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

On Monday, K and I drove up through the center of the island to the North Shore area. During the winter, this is the area that surfers go for the really big waves, but during the summer, it is just a great place to see. The center of the island is where pineapples and sugarcane are grown, although we didn't see any sugarcane (not that I would recognize it if I saw it). We stopped at the Dole Plantation, although we had little interest in going on a tour (I hate pineapple and I have moral oppositions to Sanford Dole, the plantation system in general and the subsequent takeover of Hawaii...). I took a couple of pictures, but my friend Stacie has a much better description (and far better pictures) here. This is a decorative pineapple, by the way.

I did learn a few new Hawaiian words while I was there....Mahalo was one of them. It means thank you. We spent a grand total of about 20 minutes at the Dole Plantation, and continued on to the North Shore.

I took this picture just for my dad...this is apparently some kind of pineapple harvesting apparatus. There was nowhere to stop, so I took it out the car window as K was driving.

When we got to Haleiwa, we were a little early, and in Hawaii "open at 10" could mean 10, or 10:30, or 11, or whenever, so we just walked around from one end of the main street to the other. Haleiwa is apparently one of the main stops on the Japanese tours of Hawaii, K and I were some of the only white people there. This was especially apparent in this little coffee shop we stopped at, where the menu was in both English and Japanese.

Down the street a bit was a collection of buses that apparently belonged to Ron Artis and his reggae band. I do not know anything about Ron Artis, but he seemed to be quite famous on Oahu anyway. I thought the collection was interesting.

Down the street a bit more was a really cool, presumably old church, beautifully framed in a coral block (?) archway. The archway itself was completely wrapped in blooming cactus (more on that later) and it was really pretty. Next to the church was the graveyard and if we'd had more time and it wasn't quite so hot, I would have liked to explored a little bit.

One of my favorite things about Hawaii is that it is so easy to see what it would have been like in the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the luxury travel era. It is this fascinating mix of midcentury retro, hippie surfer, and ultramodern. We saw more than one bright pink, neon yellow, grass green, or sky blue car or pickup while we were there, as well as many MANY variations on the Volkswagon Bug or van. This is one of my favorite pictures from Haleiwa.

After we wandered around Haleiwa for a while, we went out to Mokule'ia beach, which was recommended by a friend (thanks Pseudo!) and sat on the beach and read for several hours. Of course, since we were still sunburned, we sat under a tree, but it was still really relaxing and awesome. There were several kite surfers out there, who were really cool to watch.

I love sitting on the beach. I like watching the water, the clouds, the people, and the wildlife. This was a great beach and a nice, relaxing day.

Pearl Harbor and the Honolulu Swap Meet

2011-07-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

K and I spent all day Saturday nursing a sunburn in the shade by the pool, but were feeling better by that evening, so we decided to go to Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning. Part of me didn't want to go, because sometimes going to a museum feels like work, but I am glad we went. Because we were on a budget, we decided not to go to the parts that you had to pay for, like the Bowfin submarine, the Battleship Missouri memorial, and the Pacific Aviation Museum. Also, I am kind of claustrophobic, in a way that makes the thought of going on a submarine intensely terrifying. The Pearl Harbor museum is free, and so is the USS Arizona memorial, so we just did that part.

The museum was pretty cool. They hand out free timed tickets to the memorial, on a first come-first served basis. We got there early enough that we got a fairly early appointment to go to the Arizona, so we had the perfect amount of time to go through the museum, which was pretty interesting. Pearl Harbor is still a functioning naval base, so while the Parks Department runs the museum, the Navy runs the boat that goes between the south side of Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona memorial, which is part of the base. The ship below was sitting at anchor just west of the memorial. The white thing floating in the water is the farthest tip of the Arizona.

One of the things that kind of clicked for me while going through the museum and watching the video was that World War II was the war when the aircraft carrier became more important than the battleship. One of the reasons that this bombing was so destructive was that the ships were anchored in pairs right next to each other. The mooring posts are still there in the harbor, and the closeness of this one to the wreck of the Arizona shows how close she sank.

The Arizona is really close to the surface...I think the harbor is only 45 feet deep. This is actually one of the reasons the US thought that the harbor was safe from torpedoes, which were unable to detonate correctly in water that shallow. The Japanese modified their torpedoes with wooden fins, allowing them to dive to a depth of only 40 feet, then rise to a depth of 10 feet before exploding. Combine the shallow harbor with the clear water and it explains the tropical fish swimming all around the wreck.

This statue, called The Tree of Life, is by the museum, and the shape is echoed in the top of the Arizona memorial in the harbor.

Normally, I'm not big on flag pictures or rarmpant patriotism, but I do think this flag picture turned out pretty cool and the museum wasn't as western-slanted as I was expecting, which was a nice surprise. They had a nice balance between life in Japan in the 1930s and life in the US in the 1930s and were pretty neutral about almost everything, including getting primary source information from all sides concerned. It was a well done museum, in my mind.

After Pearl Harbor, we went to the Honolulu swap meet at Aloha Stadium. This was one of our best decisions in Hawaii, it was really awesome and it is where we got all of our souvenirs. It was MASSIVE, with fantastic deals on everything. We weren't there super long, maybe 2 hours, but if it hadn't been so hot and we weren't still dealing with being sunburned, we would have stayed longer. It is definitely a morning activity if you can manage it. I spent less than $40 and got all my souvenirs as well as some things for me.

Because of the traffic around Honolulu (awful) and the driving habits we encountered (interesting, to put it mildly), we didn't spend a lot of time driving around Honolulu, but these two things were definitely worth it and I would recommend both activities, although not perhaps, for kids.

Hanauma Bay

2011-07-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

It is surprisingly hard for teachers to go on vacation, at least cheap vacations. Because we are off when all the kids are off, it is hard to get away, especially if you are looking for a deal. However, thanks to websites like Living Social, Overstock, and Groupon, it is easier and easier to find vacation package deals, and websites like Bing Travel and Kayak.com are helpful when looking for flights and car rentals. As I wrote earlier, I found a deal to Hawaii a couple of months ago, and last Thursday one of my best friends and I met in Honolulu for 5 days of sun and relaxation.

We both had been traveling for a while, and I had been at the airport for 5 hours waiting for her (want information about the Honolulu airport??? I got it!!) and so after we picked up the car we just headed northwest along the windward coast to Waianae and then went up the Makaha Valley to the Makaha Resort. During daylight savings time, Hawaii is 3 hours behind Seattle, and 5 hours behind Lubbock (where she's from) and it actually worked in our favor in this case, since we were able to get up early Friday morning (5 am) and drive down to the southwest tip of Oahu to go to Hanauma Bay to go snorkeling. Hanauma Bay is one of the coolest places I've been. It is a nature preserve and full of fish and turtles. This is a picture from when we first got there. All those dark spots in the water are rocks and coral.

We saw a LOT of fish, from ones that were only about 1" long to one that was about two feet long. There were so many different kinds and I had only seen some of them before. It took me a little while to get back into the snorkeling habit and it took me a while to figure out how to float rather than swim. I highly recommend going here if you ever get to Oahu, but be aware that because it is a nature reserve, they close the gates when the parking lot is full, which usually happens by 9 am (this is why we left at 6 am...gates open at 7 am). On the other hand, it also means that it isn't as packed as the more popular beaches at Waikiki and so on. The day we were there the surf was really high and it was pretty windy, so the water close to shore was pretty murky...which is why when I saw a sea turtle about 18 inches in front of me not too far off shore that I choked on a giant mouthful of seawater. I do not recommend this, it was icky. I don't have any pictures of the fish, because I didn't buy an underwater camera, but it was very incredibly cool, definitely one of my favorite things we did while we were there.

However, the sun in Hawaii is pretty strong, and while I did put sunblock on twice, I didn't get it quite high enough on my legs, and forgot to reapply after the third time we got out of the water, so both K and I got really sunburned. This made the rest of the day (and all of Saturday) fairly painful.

It was nice to get back to the resort and chill out. This is the view from the restaurant at the resort. The resort itself was old, but clean and very quiet. It was really a great place to stay and I couldn't be happier with the deal we got. It was very relaxing and exactly what I needed. More to come....

What I Did on my Summer Vacation - Bainbridge Island

2011-07-02T20:45:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, especially on glorious summer days, I am nearly overcome with a love for this place. I truly love living in Seattle. I can't, at this point in my life, imagine living permanently any other place. Yes, I love to visit other places, but from the first time I came to Seattle in junior high, I have known that I wanted to live here. I don't even feel this way about Oregon, where I grew up. I love this place. It has been a long winter, and I won't soon forget that, but in all honesty, the incandescent summers here make the grey and drizzly springs a distant memory.

Today mom and I went to Bainbridge Island. I have never been there and it seemed to be a place that would be pretty cool to wander around. It was, with a few caveats...all of them on my end. We left late, so waited in line for the ferry for a really long time. In addition, I thought you only had to pay one way for the ferry, but you have to pay both ways, which was unexpected and expensive. All together, we paid almost $40 to go there and back. The main drag through downtown is under construction, which was not attractive, but it still worked. Parking on the island is free and easy to find, which was nice, and the people were really nice. There is an obviously concerted effort among business owners to promote themselves as a group and to work hard together to attract customers. That being said, I would like to go back when it is not a Saturday, not the middle of summer, not a holiday weekend, and not with a car, but I would like to go back.

This is the ferry terminal in Seattle, with the Bainbridge ferry pulling in.

The wash from the ferry

Looking east towards Seattle

One of the businesses on Bainbridge Island...I liked the ivy

Mt. Rainier, which is south and east of Seattle

What I Did on my Summer Vacation - Point Defiance

2011-06-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

Today mom and I went to the Point Defiance zoo and aquarium. I love this zoo, which is kind of small, because I always see a lot of animals, you can get really close to them, I think the aquarium is pretty cool, and it's included in the price of the zoo! We got there early, right when the zoo opened, and the animals were very playful. These two are year-old tiger siblings, and chased each other around their enclosure like my cats do. Their mom had been separated from them and was yowling fairly continuously.

This siamang (?) monkey was curled up in a sun-warmed hammock and was totally zonked out. He barely opened his eyes once. I am not a huge fan of monkeys but he was really cute all curled up.

The penguins were all lined up on a warm rock. Seriously, it's been a reaaaalllly long winter here in Seattle. It's the last day of June and we didn't even hit 70.

The zoo has three walruses, although I only saw one today. He is freaking HUGE. Probably 15 feet long and at least 3000 pounds. He swims on his back and deliberately rubs up against the viewing window while circling his lagoon.

The polar bear exhibit has two large bears in it. This one was standing on an underwater rock so that the water level hit him about mid-body and he stood there the entire time I watched him.

My camera does not do well with low light, so this is one of the only pictures I got in the aquarium, but I think it is really cool. The aquarium has a tank full of different kinds of sharks, as well as some massive tuna, and a really awesome seahorse exhibit.

Outside the zoo is a very well-kept garden and duck pond. There are a lot of baby ducks in various stages of development. This was one of the smallest ones, working hard to get the water out of those nooks and crannies.

The zoo and the gardens are on one small piece of Point Defiance Park, which has several miles of roads and even more miles of hiking trails and beaches. Mom and I drove the loop and about a mile in, we started seeing raccoons. And not just one or two, a LOT of raccoons.....at least 25-30 of them. Most of them had clearly been around humans quite a lot, and they would run out to meet the cars, stand up on their hind legs, and hold out their paws for food (we didn't give them any). The first one we saw almost jumped into the car. Later, one of them ran out in front of my car (which was stopped) sat down on his butt and refused to move. I am always a little wary of wild animals that aren't afraid of humans and raccoons can be pretty vicious, but they were kind of cute. You can see the side of the car in this picture, as this raccoon walks disdainfully away...

It was at this point that my camera died completely, so that's it for pictures, but if you are ever in the Seattle area, don't overlook Tacoma. Point Defiance is just one of the really cool things to do there.

What I Did on my Summer Vacation - Ballard Locks

2011-06-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

Today I took Mom to the Queen Mary tea room for lunch. She loves tea and all things related to it, so I knew she would like it. The food was good and the decorations were cool and I'm glad she liked it.

After lunch we headed over to Ballard to see the locks and the fish ladder. I have never been there before and it was pretty cool. This sailboat was coming through the locks as we arrived.

Because the locks are built between Puget Sound and Lake Union, they actually disrupt the salmon runs, so the original lock builders installed a fish ladder to help the salmon get through. There are also salmon slides installed, which is what these are. The slides are designed to help the baby salmon get back to the Sound after they hatch.

The fish ladder, on the other hand, is there to help the spawning salmon get upstream (ladders go up, slides go down). There are 24 (22?) steps on the ladder, and on step 18 there is a viewing window where you can see the fish going through. This is sort of the end of the salmon run season, so there weren't a lot of fish, three large (24" or so) and one fingerling (about 3" long) going through. This isn't a great picture, but it is really hard to get a picture of a wild salmon swimming frantically upstream.

Outside the fish ladder is a pretty cool sculpture of waves.

All in all, a pretty cool day. Mom and I just sort of wandered around, went to some little shops in Ballard, and wandered around the gardens next to the Locks. I unfortunately forgot to put my card in my camera, so was only able to take a few pictures.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation - Museum of Flight

2011-06-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

It's hardly a stretch to put a pretty decent flight museum here in Seattle, after all, this is the home of Boeing and one of Seattle's nicknames is "Jet City," not to mention that this was the home of the Seattle Supersonics until 2008. Mom and I went to the Museum of Flight today, and I would recommend it, even if I did spend most of my time reading about flight attendant fashion rather than engine specifications and windspeed.

This is looking down the nose of something. Seriously, I didn't really read any of the information. Since I am a history teacher, sometimes going to museums, especially military history museums, is a bit difficult.

View of the planes suspended from the ceiling of the main hall. They all are facing the same direction and it looks very much like they are flying away.

The original Boeing manufacturing building (1917-1919) is on the grounds, and it is a very cool wooden building where they later designed and built specific parts of the planes. There is a timeclock on the wall that I thought was really nifty looking.

This piece of machinery was also in the original building. No, I don't know what it did.

Across the street was a retired Concorde jet, a retired Air Force One, a 747, something from NASA that wasn't labeled, and a few other planes. The shot below is a shot of the walkway going to that part of the museum.

The Concorde was not fun. Most of it was closed off, and they had put plexiglass over all the seats in a curved shape that made it almost impossible to walk through. I don't really get claustrophobic except underground, but that made me very much so and I left fairly quickly. I did get this shot, of a prime example of government spending habits.

This was on the side of the thing from NASA, a lot of people signed it. As I stated previously, I have no idea what it is, or why everyone signed it. But it looked cool.

There was a traveling exhibit on planes used in World War I and World War II. Mom was getting really tired so I didn't go upstairs to the WWI planes, but I spent several minutes trying to get a decent shot of these.

This sticker was on nearly every propeller blade in the entire WWII wing and I liked the way it looked on the black wing. Unfortunately, it was also quite dark in the exhibit, so I had a hard time getting this.

I thought that Air Force One was really cool...it was the plane that was used by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, and was the one that Nikita Khruschev used on his trip to the US in 1959. It was also the one that was used by Johnson to fly to Dallas to be sworn in after the assassination of JFK. No, I didn't get any pictures of it. There was lots of plexiglass and not much room to maneuver.

American Education...53 Years Later

2011-06-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

Today I was at the Seattle Museum of Flight (more on that later) and was flipping through an exhibit on the space race that took place between the US and the Soviet Union. This particular part of the exhibit was a series of space-related articles and pictures from Life Magazine during the 1950s. In the middle of the articles was one from 1958 that compared two boys of the same age; one in Moscow and one in Chicago, specifically their comparative educations. Only parts of the article were there, but there was enough to see some very familiar complaints (all emphasis is mine).

I could swear I've heard some of this same stuff recently, but wait.....wasn't education better in "the good old days?"

Interesting how things have, and yet haven't, changed.

Unmotivation

2011-06-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

I've been curiously unmotivated to write for several weeks...about school or anything else. It's sort of like my brain has gone a little blank. School ended, that was nice. It was like it was coming, coming, coming and then BAM...I was at home in the middle of the day on a Wednesday. I think that part of the problem was that my house was unbelievably filthy. I live alone, so I have no incentive to clean, but when my surroundings are too cluttered, my brain doesn't function clearly either.

I don't mean just a little cluttered, either.

I mean, seriously. Who does this?? See that pile in the front? That's EIGHT MONTHS worth of shredding to do. That brown stuff in the middle of the floor? A pattern I cut out then left strewn about for several weeks. It now has several holes in it because the cats apparently didn't feel a strong need to launch themselves into the air every time they crossed the living room. Here's my dining room/sewing corner...

That is a huge pile of fabric over there in the corner and the remnants of several projects in every corner of the room. I refuse to show you pictures of the kitchen and the bedroom, and I didn't even let one of my best friends into my house because of the bathroom alone. Shudder. But after three days of cleaning, 8 loads of laundry, 6 bags of trash and recycling, and one trip to the Goodwill donation center, it looks a little more livable.

Aaahhhh...blissful cleanliness. Don't mind the weird pink and blue lumps in the middle of the floor, they are these stupid vaguely mouse-shaped things that the cats insist on dragging around. I feel like I can actually work again. Not on school stuff, of course, but still.

So here's to a summer of relaxing productivity. I am not planning on doing anything school-related at all for all of July. My mom is coming today to hang out for a week, then I leave for Hawaii, then after a week back in Seattle I'm heading off to Texas for another week. It's been a long year and I'm really looking forward to relaxing.

Tested

2011-06-11T10:13:00.000-07:00

Today is the culmination of my part of the National Boards process. In half an hour, I am leaving to go to a testing center where I will spend 3.5-4 hours writing to answer 6 questions over the entire history of humankind. I didn't know what to study, so other than reading a couple of AP study guides, I haven't. If I pass these tests, I will be done with the National Boards process for ten years. If I don't, I will have to repay and retake bits and pieces of it until I do pass it.

Fingers crossed!

PS. If you are like me, you have been seriously frustrated when trying to post comments on a blogger blog. To fix it, when you are on the internet, go to Tools, Internet Options, Privacy, Sites, and enter http://www.blogger.com/, then click allow. Close everything, then reopen the internet and it should work.

Aloha Goals

2011-05-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

Generally, at this time of year, I am making goals for the next year, planning, thinking, etc. But this year, nothing is happning. This scares me a little, since it can be a sign of burnout.

Every night for the past month or so, I have been coming home, checking facebook, my email, and google reader, and then getting onto google earth and zooming to various warm places around the world - the southern coast of India, Key West, the Bahamas, Hawaii, Playa del Carmen (Mexico), Greece, Italy, Egypt, etc - and then getting online and checking airfare to that location. This was pretty much just wishful thinking, as being a single teacher living alone in a low-income district in a city with a very high cost of living means that pretty much everything is out of my price range.

Then one night about 2 weeks ago, things kind of came to a head. It was raining again, the weather had not (until this past week) broken 60 degrees yet this year, and I was feeling particularly stressed. I was online with a friend who travels frequently, asking him for advice about cheap travel, and I happened to check the Living Social website instead of just reading the emails they send. There on the left, under Living Social Escapes, was a deal for 5 nights for two at a resort on Maui for less than $400. I checked airfare...not fantastic, but doable, so I texted one of my best friends and asked "Hey, do you want to go to Hawaii in July?" She texted back "ha ha right." I texted back "actually I'm serious" and sent her the details...and 10 minutes later we had bought a trip to Hawaii.

This is the thing carrying me through the rest of the school year. It is the goal I am looking forward to in order to get through my national boards test (which I should be working on studying for right now), it is what I think about when I am so frustrated with my 4th period that my teeth are the only thing keeping my temper from escaping, and it is what I think about when it starts raining yet again.

I am doing other cool things this summer - hanging out with my mom here in Washington, going to Texas to visit my best friends, and doing some Seattle things I have never done before - but I have to confess that this is the adventure I need the most. To some people, the thought of laying on a beach for 5 straight days is excruciatingly boring. For a teacher (or this teacher at least), the thought of laying on a beach - where no one asks you for help, no one needs things Right Now, no helicopter parents emailing, no adminstrators need an activity adjusted again, no meetings to go to, no grading to do and no whiny teenagers (at least none I am responsible for) anywhere close to me - is my own personal definition of heaven on earth.

Money will be tight; we are planning on eating out just once a day and bringing food with us for breakfast and dinner,and we won't be doing anything like swimming with dolphins or renting wave-skimmers, but I am really looking forward to this. I am getting into the Honolulu airport 5 hours before K, so my nerdy history teacher side kicked in when I realized that Pearl Harbor is only 10 minutes away, and that quite a lot of it is free. If nothing else, I can walk around in the (glorious, delightful, amazing, warm) sun, even though it will be crowded.

I am also accepting donations. =)

So here's to goals and gifts.....goals of getting to the end of this interminable year, and the gift of being able to afford this escape. Aloha!

19 Days and Counting

2011-05-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

I have to confess something....this has been a really tough year for me.

I haven't connected to the kids the way that I did last year, and am very frustrated with my 4th period. That class has not matured to the same level that normally occurs with sophomores by this time....in fact, I'm pretty sure they've actually regressed. Today, I had to kick two kids out of that class within 5 minutes, because one was threatening the other and the other kid refused to stop running his mouth (which was inspiring the threats). I can't deal with them anymore, so I called security and had them removed. I saw them both wandering the halls later in the day, so I'm sure they'll be back in class tomorrow.

Working on my national board certification was incredibly stressful for me. It took me a long time to figure out how to write the way I needed to, and I am still very unsure about the quality of my work. In addition, I am actually not done with the process, as there is a content based test to take in less than 3 weeks, and I have not yet had time to study for it. Since it covers world history, US history, economics, geography, government and current world issues, I need to study, but feel really overwhelmed about the entire process.

I am frustrated with the lack of skills acquisition with my kids. We have been working on thesis writing for the entire year, and on the last paper the kids turned in, I still have kids not writing thesis statements, not following instructions, not doing this thing that we have worked on for so long. It makes me really discouraged, makes me question my ability as a teacher, and makes me wonder if I am in the wrong profession entirely.

I am the senior advisor, and last weekend was prom, which was stressful, and in about 2 weeks is graduation. I had nightmares about prom for several days beforehand, and although it seems really petty, none of the kids really said thank you.

An opportunity has presented itself to assist the ASB (student council) advisor next year, which both of us would really like. She is too busy and is doing her national boards next year, and while I do love the social aspect of being an advisor, I do not want to take charge of another class for a few years. The problem is that we are running into obstacles with the VP. It's too long and complicated to go into here, but it is frustrating and I don't know what to do that will annoy the fewest people.

The same VP observed me a few weeks ago, and in my evaluation stated her belief that I need to do more direct instruction and not put the kids into groups (they currently sit in groups of two). On the one hand I am trying to recognize that she has an alternative point of view and sees my classroom with different eyes than I do. But on the other hand, I think that she's wrong. She told me that there were several students off task while she observed me, and that they were distracting to everyone else in class. What I saw was a class of 17 boys, who for once didn't talk about basketball for longer than 10 seconds, who got back on task as soon as I gave them the stinkeye, and did a difficult assignment in small groups while talking quietly about the assignment. I am frustrated with a less than stellar evaluation (although she didn't mark me down in any category, she did spend 2 paragraphs talking about how I could improve by using more direct instruction) and a feeling that for the first time I have fallen short of some set of expectations that I don't want to measure up to, but feel the compelling urge to conform with.

I am tired of the incessant rain that we have had this winter. I love Seattle and most winters I think that we get a bad rap about the weather. Normally I think the weather is beautiful here. But for some reason this winter I have really struggled. I don't know if it is a combination of the issues mentioned above as well as the unseasonably long winter, or simply the weather, but I am done with rain. This year, more than any other, I am ready to see some sun.

On top of everything else, I haven't been sleeping very well. I am so tired that I sit down and fall asleep....(including for about a minute during class yesterday - embarrassing!) but when I go to bed, my mind races and I toss and turn for hours without sleep. I got only 3 hours on Sunday night, and not much more than that the last two nights.

There are only 19 more days of school, so I think I will make it, but at this point it's a bit of a toss-up. I could use some good news.

Teacher Appreciation Week Fail...

2011-05-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

It's teacher appreciation week, and I am so busy that I didn't get organized to do anything this year. But do remember to thank those teachers who made a difference in your life. =)

Why Spring Break is Important

2011-04-25T17:54:00.000-07:00

...because my students commented today that I looked happy. (they also asked if I was going on a date after school, but that's a different issue)

...because I seriously could not have made it one more day without losing it with one of my students

...because my facebook post the Monday before Spring Break said "if no students die of random bear maulings this week it won't be from a lack of wishing on my part.' That seems like a dangerous sign.

...because I work at a job that has a high stress level and I don't want to burn out

...because there are still 42 days until Spring Break and I really want to make it through to the end

...because it was finally sunny in Seattle, and all the sunny days were during Spring Break. I can't imagine having to spend spend those days indoors.

...because my national boards test, prom, and graduation are rapidly approaching

...because the last day of school isn't until June 22, and there is only one day of break between now and then

...because, despite what the media says, I deserve it.

A Letter

2011-04-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

I don't normally email congressmen but the state senate published their proposed budget for the upcoming session and I simply couldn't say nothing. Here is a short version of how the budget proposal would affect just MY district (summarized by the district):

The Senate budget cuts the district by $3.2 million
The Senate budget will force the district to choose to cut either:

6 days out of the school year
Eliminate sports (football, baseball, swim/diving, track, etc.); eliminate music, Discovery, transportation, other extra-curricular activities

The Senate budget cuts teacher and staff pay by 3% by directing districts to furlough staff using layoffs or unpaid leave of absence days
Districts—just like the county and city governments—must make cut to salaries by reducing the amount of time employees are at work (Federal employment laws prohibit employers from demanding employees work for no pay)

Counties and cities close libraries, offices, parks and other services to cut pay for staff
Closing schools for 6 days equal a 3% pay cut for all school district staff

The Senate budget will also change how funding is provided to school districts:

We would use a California-model called Average Daily Attendance
No funding is provided to districts for students who are absent
District very likely will have to hire additional staff specifically to track student daily attendance to comply with new state model
Senate will work with state education office to define how average daily attendance is calculated
The California model has been proven not to work—California’s dropout rate is 21.5%; Washington’s dropout rate is 5.1%

So it seems, basically, that some teachers would be laid off and those remaining in place would have a fairly serious cut in pay, and we would have to hire more people to keep track of attendance. As an alternative, the House budget proposal would cut $1million from the district.

My email went like this:
Senator Keiser;

I am a high school history teacher and I am begging you not to support the Senate budget proposal introduced earlier this week. This is my 9th year in public education, and my 4th year in Washington. I work at a high needs school with a 48% mobility rate, and 54% of students on free/reduced lunch. School provides a safe haven for many of my kids. Many of my kids get their only solid meal of the day in my school. Many of my kids stay after school because it is dry, warm, and safe, and they would rather be at school than at home. My students trust me, learn from me, and teach me to be a better person. The last thing they need is fewer days in school with fewer teachers that are even more overworked. I spend every school day working to get my kids to understand the basic democratic principles we believe they need in order to be good citizens of this country, followed by going to meetings to fill in the gaps left by overworked parents who can't or won't participate in their child's education. I spend every weekend grading, planning instruction, and modifying curriculum for all my students - even those with 1st grade reading skills who are expected to pass my 10th grade class. I spend every summer reworking curriculum, developing better lesson plans and going to classes to learn to be a better teacher. These activities are interspersed with reading the latest attacks on public education and its "failures" and reading about how my profession, this thing that I pour my heart and soul into on a daily basis year-round, is allegedly full of lazy slackabouts who do nothing but sit around and wait for retirement in between 3 month summer vacations. I am tired of hearing that someone lucky and/or rich enough to attend an Ivy League school can do what I do with minimal effort, despite the shockingly vast amount of evidence to the contrary. I am tired of hearing that our free public educational system, which was founded on the belief that all citizens in a democracy should have the right and responsibility to be educated participants in an electoral system, should be converted into a system founded on a belief that rich people are the smartest people, and should therefore be respected because they are rich. My students can tell you that that belief is called Social Darwinism, and is what led to things like racism and the Holocaust. I am tired of testing companies and their lobbyists convincing my government to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on more and more tests that accomplish nothing except unnecessarily stressing out students, angering parents, spreading false rumors about education, and driving an even deeper wedge between schools and the communities we are part of. If you want to save millions of dollars for the state of Washington, get rid of all standardized tests for one year. It would be far more effective than the Senate’s proposed budget, which retains all standardized tests but cuts both teacher positions AND teacher pay. Thank you for your time and consideration of this important issue.

I know it's long, but it could easily have been longer, and it's my first time. I don't know if politicians or their interns read these or if they simply go into a pile marked "support" or "don't support" but it is sent, nonetheless. Here's hoping it makes a difference.

Socialism Island

2011-04-14T21:56:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about why education has come under such heavy fire lately, and this week, while teaching elemental socialism and capitalism to my sophomores, it finally clicked. I know this isn't a new thought, but it just suddenly made sense to me.

Pure capitalism advocates a system where each individual person is responsible for himself, and the harder you work the more rewards you gain. In a pure capitalist system, there are clear winners and clear losers, and there are endless opportunities to make money as long as you create a product that people desire.

Social service providers - like teachers, police, firemen, foster care workers, etc - form the core of a socialist island in the middle of a capitalist sea. We don't really produce a product (especially one that people desire), and we provide services that people would rather not have.

While I can't speak for all the people in this group, I can speak from my own experience as a teacher. Teachers believe that all kids can learn. We treat kids with equality, but individualism ("from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" you might say...). We believe that the impact of the community is more important (or at the very least EQUALLY important) than the impact of the individual teacher. We believe that all people should be given access to quality education, and that the people who are best able to deliver that quality education are trained professional educators. We don't create a product that has any intrinsic value to others, but instead benefits society as a whole.

These overtly socialist beliefs present a challenge to the capitalist system we are a part of. Hence, the capitalist system doesn't know how to deal with them. A system that values winning doesn't know how to deal with a system that values equality. So winners and losers must be determined using some kind of measurement (hello standardized tests) and some kind of product must be created that others will want to buy (hello graduation rates and charter schools).

Now as my kids pointed out, under a truly socialist system, education would disappear. After all, the purpose of a modern education is to get a good job and make money (capitalism). In fact, our educational system was originally designed to support capitalism. In the beginning (mid to late 1800s), education and society was all about capitalism. Students were not treated equally (no such thing as special ed, and very low-functioning students were sent to asylums), and no secret was made of the fact that the purpose of education was to get a better job and make more money.

As the Cold War began to dissipate in the 1970s and the hippie generation of the 1960s grew up, education became increasingly socialist, while our society became increasingly capitalist. In the last 40 years, we have seen a dramatic shift in educational policy to emphasize equity and access in public education, while at the same time we have shifted as a society to pay ever greater homage to the wealthy and most elite among us. Students today are raised in an educational system that places a high value on equity, but they live in a society that places a high value on winning.

I don't really know if there is an solution to this dilemna, other than to say that I firmly believe that Newton's Third Law of Motion (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) applies to history as well as physics. I have to believe the pendulum will swing back and we will become less of something.

Until then, I guess I'll just do my best as an inhabitant under siege on Socialism Island.

Tiny Personal Tragedy

2011-04-02T06:06:00.000-07:00

In a school environment, especially a small school, your coworkers become like an extended family. In a small high-needs school, they become more like your fellow soldiers. We work together in the trenches.It's dirty, it's smelly, it's sometimes disease-ridden. We know all the kids and daily talk about what they need or the best way to get something difficult accomplished. We can read each other well, we know each other's strengths and weaknesses, and we are there to help each other through the personal stuff that we each deal with outside of this job.

These people are a version of family for me.

One of those family members is Larissa. Larissa is a tiny, brilliant, organized, hilarious, sweet Filipina, who wears sky-high heels every day and whom the kids absolutely adore. She got married to a great guy last summer, and found out in September that she was pregnant, due the first week of May.

In January, she had some genetic testing done because of a blood condition that runs in her family. While waiting for the results, she felt the baby kick for the first time. Two days later, she found out that her baby had a condition called Alpha Thalassemia Major. This condition is quite severe, and essentially means that the baby's blood does not produce hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is what carries oxygen in the blood, so the chances of survival are slim. Less than 1%, in fact.

The cruelest part of all is that babies with this condition are often carried to full, or close to full, term and are then stillborn.

Larissa and her husband Dan prayed for a miracle. They named the baby Ethan and focused on being positive and optimistic. Ethan seemed to respond to this, growing, kicking, and stretching. Larissa started going in for weekly sonograms to check on things. She is tiny, and that baby grew big. At 32 weeks, Ethan was measuring at 36 weeks. At 34 weeks, he was measuting at 39 weeks.

And it was at that point (last week) that the doctor told Larissa that the baby was measuring large because Ethan was swollen all over. She asked about a birth plan and the doctor said she wouldn't need one, and that he was actually surprised there was still a heartbeat.

Thursday, Larissa started having contractions, so left in the middle of the day to go to the hospital. She texted me later to say they were inducing her and it would be a while. This morning I got the message that she was ok, but Ethan hadn't made it.

While it is what I was expecting, it is never easy to hear something like that confirmed. Hope is a stubborn flower, with roots that go deep into your soul and entwine themselves around your heart. When it dies, it hurts.

I don't know what to say or do...a common lament in this situation, I would imagine. But as my alternative family, she has my constant prayers, my deepest sympathy, my utmost support, and my heartfelt wish that I could carry some of this hurt for her.

Reflections about the National Boards Process

2011-03-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

I believe I have mentioned this before on the blog but just as a refresher, I have been working on getting my national boards certification over this past school year. It has been an exhausting process, to put it mildly.

my special message on the back of my box....sent this morning

So, while it is still freshly, traumatically engraved in my brain, I wanted to write down my thoughts on this process.

Why did I do this?

One reason I completed this process was in an attempt to get a bonus given by the state of Washington to National Board certified teachers. It is a nice bonus, for a teacher, but halfway through the process the legislature proposed cutting it. It hasn't happened for sure, but most likely will. I also did this because I really do want to be a better teacher and other teachers at my school that had completed the process talked about how this was a great learning tool for them.

What is involved?

There are many different iterations of this, but in my version (Social Studies for Young Adults), there were four entries.

Entry 1 was an analysis of student work, and my ability to teach social studies writing
Entry 2 was a video of a whole-class lesson and demonstrated my ability to teach civic competence
Entry 3 was a video of a small-group lesson and demonstrated my ability to teach social understanding and civic competence
Entry 4 is a compilation of work that demonstrates my work as a leader or learner, a community partner, and as a collaborator.

I ended up writing about almost 19,000 words on 56 pages and collecting around 50 pages of documentation between all four accomplishments.

How do I feel?

I'm exhausted. My brain races all the time. I have nightmares. I've been going to bed around 11 and waking up between 2:30 and 4 am for over a week. I'm so tired that I'm shaking. I've gained weight, then lost most of it over the past week because I passed the point of stress eating and entered the land beyond, where nothing is appealing and I'm too tired to cook. I've had numerous emotional breakdowns both in public and private. My house hasn't been cleaned in months.

It doesn't help that I have also been doing the following this year:

senior class advisor, which involves the equivalent of herding 4 ADHD cats in one common direction
helping to organize the annual Multicultural Show (which of course, is happening this week), and which also involves the equivalent of herding 150 ADHD performing cats in one common direction
pushing my senior advisory class to just do their senior project and presentation already...and did I mention I got a brand-new senior last week?
working with the new district mandates (they do love their acronyms!)
oh yeah, and teaching as best I can

No personal life, you say? Well, something had to give, and that was the thing that did.

But I'm not done yet. Still to come...

Multicultural Week rehearsals are next week and there are 4 shows the week after that. There are three of us running things, but one is very pregnant with a high-risk pregnancy and one is in the midst of helping her Alzheimer's afflicted mother move into a group home, so I am on deck.
the next round of standardized testing in April
track meets once a week from now until the end of May
prom
the assessment center test for national boards, where I have 6 multi-part questions to answer about any subject in economics, government, US and world history, and I have only 30 minutes for each test
graduation rehearsal and graduation itself, which normally requires no effort on my part but my presence and help has been requested this year
not to mention all the usual school stuff - meetings, grading, planning, copying - apart from the actual teaching...

Have I mentioned I'm exhausted?

Fight Club

2011-03-16T19:11:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I got a new student in my 4th period class. This, in and of itself, is not an unusual occurrence. With a 48% mobility rate, it is a rare couple of weeks when I don't have students either withdrawing or enrolling. But my 4th period is a very high maintenance class. Not in the same way as my 3rd period, but in a highly dysfunctional and moody kind of way. If 3rd period is a diva, 4th period is goth and emo. It is my second smallest class (20 kids) but one of the hardest to manage.

This new student immediately - as in, within one day - clashed with my most annoying kid. This kid, I'll call him Aaron, is immature, loud-mouthed and generally obnoxious, although deep down I kind of like him. I will freely admit that he is seriously annoying, though. His biggest issue is that he was born in Somalia, but tries to act like he grew up in E. Compton. His personality is actually like a big, slobbery puppy, but he thinks he is Wesley Snipes and Usher all rolled up into one. He is so annoying that he has to sit completely separated from every other person in class.

The new kid - I'll call him Tamomo (Momo for short) - is a large Samoan who has had attendance issues and just moved in with his aunt in an attempt to make a fresh start.

The second day that Momo was in class, Aaron and he got into a verbal sparring match over something that I can't even remember and I had to move Momo when I noticed that his fists were balled up tight and he was about to lose it. I moved him to another part of the classroom, and left Aaron where he was. Last week I had a sub, who called me after school (NEVER a good sign...) to tell me that Aaron and Momo were arguing over a DOLLAR bet that one had apparently made with the other. They wouldn't shut up, so he moved Momo even farther away. The two of them then glared at each other from across the room and refused to work until the sub actually stood between them to disrupt their vision.

At this point, I emailed both guardians, then forwarded the emails to my vice-principal with a note that said basically 'look, something is going to go down between these two kids, please be aware of it...' I also pulled both Aaron and Momo out of class on the following day (separately) and told them in no uncertain terms that whatever was going on was going to stop Right Now and they were to ignore each other in my class from this point forward.

Today, the kids were working on kind of a cool project in random groups when tension started escalating on the far side of the room where Momo and Aaron were working in separate but relatively close groups. Momo is still getting used to the rules in my classroom - including no cursing in class - and had already been talked to about that once today. A girl in Momo's group was asking him about his name, and from what I could gather in the approximately 17 nanoseconds it took this to escalate, Aaron told the girl Momo's name was actually Hoho, and then laughed about it.

Momo, who had brought a ukelele to class, picked it up by the neck and got up, cursing at Aaron. By this point I was already on my way over, telling Momo to get out in the hallway and telling Aaron, who of course was still running his mouth, to sit down and shut up. Momo continued to advance on Aaron, who got up and retreated around to the other side of the group of kids working. I ended up having to push my hands against Momo's arms to get him to stop advancing on Aaron. I sent Momo to the hallway and pinned Aaron to his chair with my death glare, then called security and went outside to get Momo's side of the story. By this point he was actually crying, which shocked me, although I think he was doing it because he was so pissed off.

Security pulled him, Aaron, and the girl down to the office, and I RE-sent the original email I had sent to the VP last week, along with a short description of what I had seen in class today. She emailed me back after school to say that Momo was assigned to In School Suspension for Friday, but that Aaron told her that he didn't do anything, and DID do exactly what I told him to do, so she just gave him a detention. She also said that Aaron was coming by to talk to me after school, which mysteriously, didn't happen (Shocking, I know).

A pretty large chunk of me is annoyed by this, while the other part is a little befuddled. I warned the kids, the parents, AND the principal last week that this was escalating into a problem. It blew up into a problem, as I had predicted (almost like I am good at my job or something!) so I removed the participants and sent them to administration, as I was supposed to do. One of those participants were able to convince my principal that I was wrong and he was right, and on Monday I will again have to be on high alert because this WILL blow up again.

Fan - freakin' - tastic.

Counterbalance

2011-03-11T22:05:00.000-08:00

As you may have gathered, Wednesday was Not A Good Day. On Thursday, I was still irritated with the kids on my way to school, so I decided I wanted to do something to cheer myself up a little. 2-3 days a week the kids do an exit slip at the end of class. It is a good way for me to get instant feedback on whether or not the kids understand a concept and is a great way to end class without the kids packing up ten minutes early (punks).

On Thursday, since I had been feeling like the world's worst teacher (THANKS, KIDS) I asked the kids to tell me something they had learned in my class this year that they thought had made them a better student. Really, I was looking for a little pat on the back. And it worked.

I did, of course, get the requisite idiot answers (some prime examples....'nothing,' 'WWI was bad,' and my personal favorite... '1.'), but most of the kids actually gave me some good stuff. Here are some of my favorites (written verbatim):

I have learned to take good notes
Something I've learned this year is pick the best details to prove my writing, because it wasn't something I am good at before.
pointing out better details because these skills are going to be used for many more things in life
Something that I have learned is how to explain my thoughts
That I have to give a better deatails. So if I pick a quote, I have to give a good deatail
The essay thing helps me in other classes too =)
homework has made me a better student because I start doing a lot more homework and encourage me to want to learn more
Something that I have learned in world history this year that I feel makes me a better student is the way we take notes. It's really helpful and organizing.
Thinking about things at a deeper level
how to make a good thesis. I will use it several times
Finding specific evidence because I be getting unrelated evidence that doesn't go what we're talking. Now it really helped me, like the elimination thing (**teaching kids to eliminate the obviously wrong answers)
how to find good evidence because I used this everywhere in other classes, not only just one
be confident by myself because I feel better than before (from an ELL student)

I recommend this treatment for all burned-out teachers. =)

British Voiceovers

2011-03-10T18:27:00.000-08:00

This completely made my week.

Connecting the Dots

2011-03-09T20:55:00.000-08:00

First of all let me say that in the last month of the National Boards process, one of the last things I want to do is teach. I am stressed out, having nightmares, frustrated and extremely cranky. This process is driving me crazy and I can't wait until it's over. But I'll save that for another post.

My chief non-National Boards frustration over the last few days has been an increasing irritation with my students' refusal to THINK. Yesterday they worked on a map of the world in 1920 (post World War I). I pulled 4 different source maps from the internet for them to use. One was a map of the Eastern Hemisphere, one of Europe, one of the Middle East, and one of Africa. They whined for 15 minutes because they were in different colors, and refused to think logically about a solution to that problem. Today they were in the computer lab working on a WWI webquest. One of the pages they looked at was a chart that laid out WWI deaths. In one column it showed the percentage of casualties for each country. I asked students to tell me the percentage that were NOT casualties. Most students asked for help or skipped that question entirely.

In addition, the kids will not read anything, from directions to textbooks. In the computer lab today, the directions asked them to find and analyze certain propaganda posters on a World War I website. In every class, various students claimed they couldn't find the posters, so I made them read the directions to me. In every case, students had not finished reading the directions. In some cases, they quit mid-sentence. I asked one kid to read the directions to me today and he read 4 words and stopped. So I said, "no, read the ENTIRE thing." He read 10 words and stopped (about halfway through), and then tried to do the wrong thing on the computer. I made him stop and finish reading the entire sentence and he got mad at me. So...I walked away.

The kids will not read to find information and they will not connect the dots between related ideas. I am so frustrated. Clark and I talked about this after school today and I feel better that his kids are doing the same thing, but it still is so unbelievably frustrating. I strongly feel that at the (more than) halfway point of their eleventh year of school, they should be able to do these relatively simple tasks. What is the most frustrating to me is that I know that they HAVE the skills to do it, but they WON'T do it, and I can't figure out how to motivate them.

I want this year to be over.

Straws that Break Teacher's Backs

2011-02-25T22:17:00.000-08:00

The week of mid-winter break should be a glorious interlude in the school year...the halfway point between September and late (very late...stupid snow days) June. Instead, late February turns into the low point of the year. Teacher despair hits an all-time low and this year there is more despair than usual.

There is, of course, all the problems in Wisconsin. And the proposal in Detroit. And teacher cuts in Texas.

In addition, I have been working on my national board certification, which involves approximately 57 billion words written in a specific format proving that I am, in fact, a good teacher and haven't irreparably harmed generations of teenagers, whom everyone is counting on to Save America, because the Kids Are Our Future. It's been a rough week, and while I am not exactly where I want to be, I am close.

I was talking to a teacher friend last night, a fantastic, committed, professional who has been at our school for quite a while. She told me that she is considering putting in a request to move to to a different school in our district. I asked why, and she said that she felt like she needed to take a break from the kids. The kids at my school are needy. They require a complex formula of hand-holding, coaxing, pushing, punishing, manipulating, and love that should be the job of their parents, but is in fact often up to us, their teachers. This formula is even more demanding for us. As an example, while compiling evidence for my national boards, I realized that in my 6th period, a class with 22 kids, I have 4 kids who read at the 2nd grade level, and 4 kids that read at the college level, and the class average is a low 7th grade level. How do I give them 10th grade instruction when their reading skills are so low? It's hard.

I've often wondered what would happen to my teaching if I wasn't a spinster, if I had a husband and kids...or even just a boyfriend. Teaching where I do is unbelievably demanding. It requires constant focus and effort and doesn't leave much room for a personal life. It's why teachers in low-income schools burn out so fast. Teachers in my situation don't leave because they get better offers from other districts. They leave because they're mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. My co-teacher Clark arrives at school by 6:15 am and doesn't usually leave until 5:00 or 5:30 pm. I often spend my weekends grading papers instead of going out with friends and I spend my summers in classes and rewriting curriculum.

For now, I'm committed. But it's hard to stay so sometimes.

Today

2011-02-14T19:46:00.000-08:00

I hate Valentine's Day for lots of reasons, but being a teacher, Valentine's Day is first on my list of Worst Holidays Ever In the History of Time. Hormonal teenagers, mylar balloons, chocolate, and Mondays make for a lethal combination...and it very nearly was for many of my kids today. For some reason they were just endlessly annoying today, so much so that I left school as soon as I was legally allowed to do so today, instead of staying as late as I normally do.

However.

The kids are working on the last week of a project that we do every year on the Congo. It is based on the Choices program from Brown University, although we have tweaked it slightly every year and added several things. The kids start by reading a pretty substantial packet of information about King Leopold II of Belgium, who had control of the Congo for about 20 years from 1885 to about 1905ish. He was cruel and greedy, and horrible things happened, which you can easily google. The kids then hold a debate in which they try to decide what Great Britain should have done in response. This is based on a real debate that was held in the British Parliament in June of 1904.

The debate is one of my favorite activities each year because the kids get really involved in it. This year I had two girls almost come to blows over something that happened 107 years ago. The debates are great. But Clark and I have added a few other things as well. For example, the kids also research what is happening in the Congo today and make a decision about what they think the biggest problem facing the Congo is today. They use websites like change.org, globalissues.org, and cia.gov to do their own research.

The research is what we did today, and while I was unreasonably annoyed with life today, I was also very impressed with several of my classes who I heard saying things like "why don't we hear about this in the news?" and "wait....the CIA site doesn't mention these rapes as being an issue in the Congo. Why not?"

This point of the year is when my sophomores start growing up. They finally get over that immaturity bubble that has plagued them since they were born, and start becoming adults, and it is on projects like this that I can finally see that happening.

Not in third period of course, they spent their time talking about basketball.

Grades and Comments

2011-02-02T18:48:00.000-08:00

I have spent the last two hours entering grades, a mind-numbing and depressing process, if I do say so myself. I entered teaching just as districts began switching to online gradebook systems, so I don't know what it used to be like. I do know that my student's grades would have been a lot less accurate if they would have had to depend on me and my math skills. The online gradebook systems that I have used are all fairly similar, and at the end of the grading period you enter comments, along with the grades, that will then appear on the report card. The comments are pre-set, which makes perfect sense, since I always wish that I could say what I really think, and that is most likely not the best option in the long run.

Pre-set comments usually consist of things like:

not working to potential
missing assignments
inconsistent work quality
absences affecting achievement
disruptive influence in class
does not manage time well
motivation and effort vary

But these pre-set comments simply don't capture what is actually taking place in my classroom. I need comments like:

sleeps in class - even standing up
has senioritis, and this sophomore level class will prevent them from graduating unless something dramatic clicks very soon
flirting is interfering with his/her learning as well as the learning of every other male/female in the room
comes back to class late after lunch, usually scarfing down the last scraps of a McDonald's lunch
completely and utterly unmotivated to do anything at all for any reason... ever... including impending shark attacks
has to sit in the hallway most days for being disrespectful or rude
calls me racist because I tell him to stop talking
has the maturity level of a 6th grader

I have realized that we as teachers create our own "teacher code" that makes perfect sense to us, but may not make sense to anyone else. Let me tell you what we are actually trying to say with those comments.

not working to potential - actually means "your kid is smart, but ridiculously lazy...they could probably get an A if they tried even once in a while"
missing assignments - actually means "seriously, your kid never turns in anything, even when I beg and plead"
inconsistent work quality - actually means "I see flashes of brilliance and then sheer apathy....but mostly apathy"
absences affecting achievement - actually means "maybe if you stopped keeping your kid home when they claim their 'stomach hurts' or taking off for three months for a family vacation to Samoa, your kid would pass this class. As it is, they never make up any of that missing work and then wonder why they aren't passing."
disruptive influence in class - actually means "I am considering quitting this profession because your child makes me want to rip off my own arm and beat them to death with it."
does not manage time well - actually means "two words: lazy and unfocused
motivation and effort vary - actually means "lazy unless you have yelled at them the night before"

I often wish I could be far more direct, but we live in a culture that doesn't really respect that as much as we claim and a culture in which we have been told "you can do anything" so much that we actually believe we deserve special treatment.

Grades for Parents

2011-01-28T15:24:00.000-08:00

I heard this on the news the other morning, but haven't seen it pop up much around the blogosphere, so I wanted to just throw it out there. A Florida lawmaker has proposed a bill that would require parents to grade the parents of their students. Grades would be based on three stipulations:

A child should be at school on time, prepared to learn after a good night's sleep, and have eaten a meal.
A child should have the homework done and prepared for examinations.
There should be regular communication between the parent and teacher.

Now on the one hand, I applaud the recognition that student performance cannot be laid completely on the teacher. While I am not a huge fan of Hilary Clinton, I do think the often overused saying that she popularized "It takes a village to raise a child" is completely right. And part of that village is the parents. I see far too many students come to school without eating breakfast, and of course they can't focus on school when their stomachs are growling and they have a headache. I would love it if parents supervised their students' homework. And just today I just attempted yet another most likely futile email to the parent of Levi in a desperate bid to make his father understand the seriousness of the issues Levi is dealing with.

On the other hand, I don't see this ever becoming reality. This is something that will cause only problems between teachers and parents. Like standardized testing, it is focused on punishment rather than positive communication. But it is an interesting take on public education.

Stats

2011-01-27T19:35:00.000-08:00

As part of my national boards certification, I asked the kids to fill out surveys with information that isn't easy for me to find...things like how many of them were born in the US, how many of them speak more than one language, etc. I started tabulating them today and thought the results were pretty interesting. 85 kids returned surveys over the last 3 days, so the results are not exactly scientific, but nonetheless, here they are:

76 % were born in the US
25 % were born elsewhere
60 % have parents who were born elsewhere
63.5 % speak more than one language
6 % speak at least three languages
36 % have moved at least 5 times in their life
33 % have moved school districts at least 3 times
33 % have been in the same school district for their entire schooling
39 % live in single parent homes
29 % live in multi-generational or extended family homes
Also interesting to me, is the fact that almost all of the kids understand that education is important...and they said that without being prompted or asked. A few said they thought school was boring, but for the most part they claim to like school.

Anyway, just thought they were interesting stats.....

Dear Deb

2011-01-24T19:41:00.000-08:00

I got this comment on a previous post and I wanted to respond to Deb here.
Here is her original comment:
***************************************
I think you might be an answer to my prayer!

I am a Canadian Grade 3 teacher and it sounds like our educational systems have similar ideals and similar budget problems. I have an unmedicated (diagnosed) ADHD student in my classroom of 18. Most days I feel that I have had little sucess in meeting his educational needs and those of the rest of the class and that he has had great success (though unpremeditated) in causing me to question my abilities as a teacher.

Recently I attended a meeting held at the end of a long and challenging day with no breaks either at recess or lunch and was presented with a list of 13 suggestions as to how I might ensure my ADHD student's success at school. This list had been drawn up by my Administration and a Board "expert" who did not speak to me or my student and did not do a classroom observation.

My response after listening to the others' comments on the list was a respectful and despairing "I can't". What I have done to date is implement an Individual Program Plan, set up and carry out a system of one-on-one (positive) time with the Principal and spend countless moments throughout the day explaining, reasoning, reinforcing and praising my student to the best of my ability.

Can I trust your graph? Will I move into a rejuvenation phase shortly?

My next step is attending a follow-up meeting with my Union Rep included (standard procedure, not my idea) with a view to establishing where we go from here.

I would appreciate any further wisdom you might have - even that you understand has lifted my spirits.

Deb
********************
And my response:

Dear Deb;
I don't know who you are but it sounds as if you might be a first year teacher? I am approaching this as if you are, or at least have not been teaching long. First of all, I do firmly believe that graph is true. I found it several years ago, and I think I have posted it more than once on this blog. It holds as true for me now as it did when I was a newbie myself. Every year I hit those depths of despair in November, every year I debate doing something else with my life, even though I KNOW this is my gift, and every year I climb back out and by the end of the year things look so much brighter.

Secondly, in nine years of teaching I have always had that One Kid, and that One Class that drive me up a wall and make me count the days until the end of the school year. Some years I have had Those Twelve Kids, but those years are few and far between, thank God. Each year you will have kids that will challenge you and make you grow in ways you never knew that you could and do things that they never taught you to do in college. I can almost guarantee that you will not appreciate that fact until that kid is out of your classroom, however, but the next time you get a kid sort of like that, it will go better, you will recognize those danger signs faster, you will intervene sooner, and while the problem may not improve, you will never be as frustrated by this particular issue as you are right now.

Thirdly, dealing with administration is a bit of a crapshoot. You never know quite what you are going to get. I have been extremely blessed in that I have an administrative team that have their feet firmly grounded in reality, but I know that is not the case in many schools and districts. As a new teacher, you can expect to be closely scrutinized and monitored, and in some cases this is a good thing. In your case, it sounds like you are being told what to do by an outside "expert." I think that the best thing you can do is the equivalent of nod and smile. Do try any reasonable suggestion, but oftentimes you know your students better than an adminstrator does. Try what they say if you can, and if it doesn't work, you can say that you tried. I would also suggest asking your adminstrator to observe your classroom for a set amount of time. Give them things to look for, or simply ask them to watch that one kid and give you suggestions. Ask for them to observe you for at least half an hour, and try to get them to come in the afternoon, or whenever your student hits the worst part of their day.

Which brings me to the next issue - the actual behavior that is driving you up a wall. Without knowing a lot of the particulars, it seems like you are doing what you can. I have never taught elementary school, and I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to have that child in your classroom all day. I can get rid of my problem child after 55 minutes. The only suggestions I can make without knowing the situation would be:

Make friends with the Special Education department (I am assuming the kid is sped?). Ask for help. Set up a meeting with just you and someone from that department that you respect or like or you have heard good things about. Set the meeting for a few days from now and keep paper with you to write down questions that you have. Be specific. Describe a situation that happened in your room that got out of hand and ask how to address it.
If you don't have a mentor teacher, find one. If there is more than one 3rd grade teacher at your school, find one that can help you...preferably one with several years of experience (like more than 5-6). If there is no one else that teaches 3rd grade, go find the 2nd grade teacher that had this student last year. Ask that teacher what they did, did it work, and what they would suggest.
I am assuming you have talked, or tried to talk, to the parents already. If not, try to talk to them, face to face if you can. Keep detailed notes of what is happening and ask them for help and suggestions that you could use. If you can, email weekly or even daily reports of both positive and negative things that happened. You might have to look for the positive, but even saying "Bobby stayed focused for 5 minutes today during social studies" can be a positive thing if he's never done it before.
Again, I am not an elementary teacher, but you could put together some kind of behavior plan for the kid? Like a behavior chart or something that he could earn, or lose, privileges or rewards based on very specific goals.

I don't really know how to help, other than to say it DOES get better, and no matter what it seems like, time does not ever stop, slow down, or go backwards. Assuming you are on roughly the same schedule as we are, you are halfway through this year. Every day that kid is in your classroom, you are one step closer to him not being in your classroom. =) If you want some encouragement, read some of the posts from this blog during the 2008-2009 school year---a year that you could not pay me enough money to repeat.

Malaise and Apathy
Major Malfunction
Class Clowns - the Scary Kind
This is Going to be a Whiny Post
Tappity Tappity Tap Snap
Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Bloodshed
Raisin Hell

And finally, good luck. You can do this!
Sincerely, Miss Dark Side

Excruciating Doesn't Begin to Describe It

2011-01-10T15:13:00.000-08:00

We spent three weeks working on a paper, the kids had everything scaffolded, wrote the paragraphs ahead of time, organized and laid things out in an outline, and spent a week writing a rough draft, editing, and typing a 2 page paper. These are some samples of what I am reading - typed exacty as I got them, and the picture on the left is a pretty good example of what their papers look like when I am done with them.

"There are many negative results of the protestant reformation for Africa (what? I have no idea what she is talking about...we did not mention the PR in relation to Africa even once.). The increase in the global trade was bad for the Africa. One reason it was bad was because their population went down. If their was disease and hard labnor Europe put them thru then their population is likely to decreases."

"Also there were many more results and a conclusion that you can conclude but this is what I thought was most important."

"Throughout parts of the global trade mark there were many good things they benefited from and also a whole other half that was not so beneficial in other words they were bad." (this was an OPENING sentence, one of 5 sentences that she typed in a 55 minute period)

"A positive result of Islamic reformation was Arabia Somali is created (second time I have gotten that term so far...they are corrupting Saudi Arabia). This was a positive outcome for Muslims because if samalic Arabia was created. Then Islam's can establish homes for them self's." (It makes me want to claw my own eyes out, seriously.)

"When I was In preschool I went to toddler tech and had to leave because my two cousins got kicked out for two much bad behaving." (students were taught - by both myself AND their language arts teachers this year AND last year - how to write an introductory hook. This one A) had nothing to do with change, and B) was the 4th sentence into the essay, falling smack dab into the middle of a paragraph about global trade. I cried.)
I'm not even done with one class. It gives me a headache to read these papers. I keep debating with myself if I should just let some things go, but seriously, how are they going to get better if I don't tell them how to improve? But it takes FOREVER to grade these.

Despair and Frustration

2010-12-15T18:05:00.000-08:00

There is a cycle of teaching that happens every year. You start out excited, motivated and enthusiastic. Then the kids come in and you remember that where you left off last year is NOT where you are starting this year and things go downhill from there. According to the chart above, I am right on track. I usually follow this chart pretty closely, despite the fact that while I have a dark sense of humor, I do tend to stay pretty positive about most things. But this year I am lower than usual.

While most of my angst is tied to the usual suspects - too much grading, not enough time, endless re-teaching, lazy students, paperwork, issues with special education and so on - this year it is a bit worse. This year I am working towards my National Board Certification. It is a long and difficult process, but an amazing reflective tool. I've been working hard, but one of the things motivating me was the incentive program in Washington state. Here, becoming a National Board Certified Teacher results in a yearly stipend that while not large, is quite helpful living here in one of the most expensive cities in the US. Especially since on the other side of the scale is the fact that Washington teachers rank at #42 on the pay scale. There are only 8 states where teachers make less than I do, and I teach in one of the most educated cities in the United States.

But all that changed in November, when voters here refused to pass any new taxes, and repealed several existing taxes. On the one hand, I totally understand. The government (and not just here in Washington) is far too used to spending what they think they MIGHT get rather than what they actually have, and the only way to stop that is to take away what they have. But on the other hand, those taxes pay for social services - and not just education. Taxes pay for health care for kids who can't afford it, social services for the elderly and mentally and physically challenged, drug intervention programs, parks, public transportation, and hundreds of other services that help everyone. Today, Governor Gregoire proposed a budget that makes $3.31 billion in cuts, and almost 1/3 of those cuts are from education. Here is an excerpt from the article:

The biggest reductions are seen in K-12 education, through both the suspension of teacher pay and class size Initiatives 728 and 732, as well as a 10 percent reduction to a state scholarship and student outreach program. Combined, they save the state $2.2 billion over the next two years. Also missing is $600 million that would have gone into additional spending on public education, the first phase of a multiyear plan that was dictated under a bill passed during the legislative session earlier this year. Gregoire also suggests a 6.2 percent reduction in levy equalization payments, which help K-12 school districts that have lower levels of property-tax support.

I'm not really angry so much as frustrated. I'm frustrated that people who have never been part of the public education system, or who haven't been part of it since they graduated from high school, are presuming to tell me that they know better than I do how to do my job. I'm frustrated by politicians who can't get along and who are so divided along party lines that they make decisions that go contrary to everything they truly believe in, simply because they vote with their party instead of the people they were elected to represent. I am frustrated that money has become such a driving motivation in our society that the most valued and respected individuals are people like Bill Gates; a man who is probably perfectly nice but is respected and valued for his money, not his beliefs or even his actions. I'm frustrated that no one talks about the elephant in the educational room; the fact that kids whose parents do not care about or support their education have a much more difficult time in school - no matter WHO their teacher is. I'm frustrated that no one recognizes that the charter schools that do work tend to require parent involvement and can both admit and expel students based on rules that no public school could get away with. I'm frustrated that the myth that teachers are overpaid and underworked STILL floats around today....I saw it this morning in the comments on the article linked above.

Yesterday I had an IEP meeting for a student in my 2nd period. IEPs, for those of you reading the blog who aren't teachers and are still reading (Hi dad!), is short for Individual Education Plans and are put in place for Special Education students. They are supposed to set individual learning goals for students dealing with issues like ADHD, dyslexia and other learning disabilities, or physical issues that prevent them from being able to do what is expected from other students. It's one of the beauties of the American public education system....our firm belief that all students can learn, that all students can be successful, and that all kids should be allowed to come to school for free. We do what it takes to make that happen.

The meeting yesterday was for a student I'll call Levi, who is unmedicated ADHD, and has ADHD so severely that he is almost unable to function. Having ADHD is like being on that old game show where you tried to catch money flying around a plastic box you were standing in. It was almost impossible to catch any of the money, and what you did catch was almost as impossible to hang on to. That is what an ADHD kid's brain is like. The money is the thoughts. They try desperately to catch those thoughts flying around their brain and it's really hard. If they do catch a thought, they can't hang on to it. The higher the fan is turned up, the harder it is to catch those thoughts. Medication turns the fan down, makes the thoughts slower and easier to catch, and easier to hang on to. Levi's dad doesn't believe he has ADHD and refuses to medicate him. In his words, "well, I was a little hyper when I was a freshman, and I grew out of it."

Levi's condition is so severe that he literally cannot do work unless a teacher is standing next to him pointing at the question. If someone does that, he can read and answer the question, but then has no capability to move on to the next step. He does not have the capability to work independently. Levi is in one of my smaller classes, but there are 24 kids in that class.The only way I can give him the one on one attention that he needs is to devote all my time and attention to just him and completely ignore the other 23 kids, including another high needs special ed kid. One solution is to put Levi in a different special education history class. But so much money has been cut from education, specifically from programs for struggling learners like special education and English Language Learners, that there is no money to do that.

I do not believe that money is the solution to the problems in education. However, I do believe that this is one case where more money would directly benefit my students. I want Levi to succeed. But it is not going to happen in my classroom. I hate myself for accepting that, but have no idea what to do, since the fact of the matter is that Levi does not have supportive parents, does not have access to a doctor that would deal with his medical issues, and does not live in an area where money is spent on special education services. And those points bring us back to the cuts that were made in the budget. Every cut will directly affect Levi.

All of this is the reason for my frustration, despair, and general malaise. I know things will get better, but it would be nice if something good happened soon.

Notes

2010-11-30T20:33:00.000-08:00

From time to time, for one reason or another, I get notes from the kids.

Sometimes, they're funny.

(It says "Time Flys By In Your Class....................................when I sleep")

Sometimes they make me want to rip off my own arm and beat someone to death with it. This particular gem came from one of the laziest, most negative children I have ever met, who has made no secret of her dislike for me and my class. She currently sits in the back with the other super negative child in that class, they sit next to each other because no one else in class can stand sitting next to them.

The heart on the bottom is the best part, I think. Do they really think that putting a heart on it makes it somehow ok?

(It says "to be honest, the way you teach things does not at all help me learn. So then I just give up. Not just notes, everything!" and then a big, sloppy heart)

Most of the time though, they are just awesome. This one was handed to me last week by a student as she walked by me in the hallway. She is an ELL student in my 4th period who was supposed to be in the ELL history class and asked to stay in my class instead of moving.

(It says "Thank you so much Mizz Darkside. Hi Mizz Darkside. This is a thank you colerful card for you. Thanks for being a nice respectful teacher! From all my classes, this is the class where I feel that I learn the most. Thanks for helping me. Your the best teacher in all _____high school! Also Mizz Darkside. Thank you! b/c from all my classes thiss is actully the only class where i feel that i learn. Your the best thank you!)

This one was my favorite and made me tear up a little...but I have no idea who it is from. It has to be one of the seniors in my advisory, but I do not recognize the handwriting and there is no name on it. I found it in my box this morning.

(It says "Dear Ms D I will never forget you. Ms D you are like a mother to me. U seen me grow up from a little freshman to a senior. U known me for the longest and you really know me. U listen to my problems and helped me in any way. Words can't thank you enough. Thank you")

and......cue tears now.

This one is from one of my loudest students from last year, a kid that seriously underestimated her talents and shot herself in the foot with her disorganization from time to time. I despaired over her at the beginning of the year, but she got her act together by the end of the year and is doing really well this year. It is one of the cool things about sophomores...I get to see them (well, most of them) finally grow up.

(It says "he Ms Darkside - guess who?! Yup....its me, your worse nightmare! lol. jk, jk. Well, I just wanteed to thank you for being a great teacher to me last year, even when I was a pain in your butt. You have taught me to work hard, time management, and surprisingly discipline. I apologize if I ever disrespected you last year. You truely are a wonderful teacher and for that, I would like to say THANK you! Keep it up. *PS - Thanks for caring")

These cards totally made my week. Well, maybe not the second one, but the others were cool. And in the interest of full disclosure, I think some teacher had their kids do these because I got 4 of them on the same day. I do get random notes from time to time, but generally not all in a clump like this. But it was still cool!

Snow Day

2010-11-22T14:06:00.000-08:00

When snow falls......

Teachers think
Please, no snow day! If I have a snow day it will throw off my whole unit, plus the kids will of course assume that a snow day means that anything we have scheduled for that day just will magically disappear into the stratosphere. A test scheduled for a snow day? Students will (and have) tell me that they thought we wouldn't have it since there was snow. And by the way, if we have a snow day, that means that we will not have a four day weekend in May when I am desperately going to need it. So no, please no snow day!

Kids think
AAH I SAW A FLAKE! I SAW A FLAKE! WHY HAVEN'T THEY LET US OUT OF SCHOOL YET? MISS CAN WE HAVE CLASS OUTSIDE? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! OMG IT'S SNOWING! WE'RE PROBABLY NOT GOING TO HAVE SCHOOL TOMORROW SO I'M GOING TO DRIVE MY TEACHER LITERALLY CRAZY BY BEHAVING LIKE A TOTAL MORON AS LOUDLY AS POSSIBLE.

Total snowfall so far? an INCH.

What if....

2010-11-17T18:42:00.000-08:00

I eat lunch with a truly fantastic group of teachers. We are all language arts and social studies teachers, and all fairly young (35 or younger). I have spent more than one lunch literally crying with laughter. This year, when one of us has a bad morning, we will come in to lunch and announce our declaration to give up teaching and work as a Department of Transportation Sign Turner - you know, the people that stand on the side of the road with the "Slow" and "Stop" signs in construction zones.

Today, someone asked what would happen if the same restrictions that apply to teachers were to apply to the sign-turners. Here's a short list of what we decided:

Sign-Turners would be paid based on whether or not people ACTUALLY slowed down in construction zones
The only measure of whether or not people were actually slowing down would be the number on the speedometer, not whether the number of accidents decreased
Sign-Turners will be expected to pay for their own sign. And vest.
Sign-Turners will be rewarded if they use aggressive measures to slow people down. Why rely on only the sign? Even an idiot can hold a sign, the truly GOOD sign-turners will fling themselves in front of oncoming traffic in an effort to really make a difference.
From time to time, a study would be done that proves that people respond better to round signs rather than triangular signs, as triangular signs are challenging for round-preferential people to read. All signs would then be switched to the round shape for a few years, until another study proved that, in fact, triangular signs were superior because the shape catches people's attention.
In an effort to address the needs of all drivers, sign-turners would be required to hold BOTH shapes of signs and only use the shape that a particular driver will respond to - even though it is illegal to ask the drivers what kind of sign they might best respond to.
Other studies would prove that turning the sign clockwise instead of counterclockwise increases the likelihood that right-handed drivers will respond appropriately to the sign, whereas left-handed drivers repsond best to a counterclockwise rotation. Again, sign-turners will be expected to turn the sign in the appropriate direction in response to the needs of all drivers, including blind ones.
Yet another study would determine that printing "STOP" in all capital letters on a red background creates the impulse to in fact go faster for some people (this is known as "oppositional defiance"), so printing "GO LESS FAST" instead will help defuse these tendencies and encourage them not to give in to their suffering.
Telling blind people that they cannot drive is illegal. All people can do everything equally well. Sign-Turners will be expected to modify their sign-turning to compensate for the needs of all drivers.
New Sign-Turners will be hired straight out of ivy-league colleges, because only the young can masterfully reach all drivers. Old Sign-Turners refuse to listen to the studies listed above, stating reasons such as "Been There Done That." How can the DOT expect to meet the needs of all drivers if the Sign-Turners are so resistant to change?
Sign-Turners will be expected to call the mothers of all bad drivers to let the mothers know that their children broke the rules. How the sign-turner is supposed to figure out the correct phone number is up to the sign-turner, but if they do not contact the mothers, bad drivers will be allowed to continue to drive badly, since no one told them not to.

Sometimes, lunch is the only thing that gets me through the day.

Teach Tony Danza - Pt 3

2010-10-19T20:11:00.000-07:00

Yes. I should be grading papers right now, why do you ask?

This episode was all about over-extending yourself. The show opens with Tony singing the national anthem at the Phillies game. He's not too bad, actually. Another teacher then talks to Tony about being the guest speaker at senior pin night.Tony says it's hard to say no, but thinks he might be spreading himself kind of thin. He is falling into the first year trap of saying yes to everything, probably exacerbated by the fact that he is who he is. In addition, apparently he could not get out of a contracted event in Atlantic City for the coming weekend and is a little worried about it. Meanwhile, back in the classroom, Tony is having trouble with Algernon (odd name, but there have been odder ones in my classroom). Tony asks the kids to turn in their homework but Algernon won't turn it in. Al doesn't understand why Tony keeps getting on him. David Cohn says not to push him too hard, he's the type of kid you have to earn his respect. That's true. There are kids that you have to nudge and kids you have to push, and kids you learn to just leave alone on some days. The math teacher Crystal Green comes to talk to Tony, says that Al participates in math class and she doesn't know why he is being so resistant in Tony's class....well duh, she's a pretty young teacher. Sometimes you just hit a kid the wrong way and you just can't get them back. It's frustrating, especially when you trealize that a kid is a brilliant kid, but just not doing things in YOUR class. It makes you feel like MORE of a failure. Tony gets a message that the mayor of Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter (speaking of odd names....that is interesting....). the Mayor wants Tony to do an emcee performance for his wife's foundation at the end of the week, and is able to talk him into it somehow. More work that Tony should have said no to.

Tony meets with the drill team, the band instructor, the break dancers, and the choir director about getting involved in the show for the mayor. He brings Walter Painter, his choreographer (?) to organize the kids, which is chaotic to say the least. The kids don't think Walter knows anything about dance and are a little judgmental, but then they change their minds when they find out he has choreographed grammy shows and so on, although they think he is nagging on them. Rehearsal is completely insane and the kids are screwing around. Tony meets with the scary assistant principal, Ms. DeNaples, to ask for her help and she reluctantly agrees to coordinate things. Back in class, Tony again asks for homework to be passed in, Al doesn't turn in his homework, and Tony gives him "strike 2." Nakiya does not like the fact that Tony treats Al differently and Al says he doens't worry about the strikes because he knows they don't mean anything.

Chuck Carr, geometry teacher, comes to check on Tony, Tony wishes he was a better teacher, Chuck says it takes a while and asks if he is acting the teacher or being the teacher. Good question, Chuck. At the rehearsal stage that night, Tony is struggling with the dancing and says he is tired and gets up at 4:30 every morning, is involved in football, the mayor, and Atlantic City, and the musicians look bored while Tony talks about how busy he is. Back in class, Tony discusses image anad asks Al for an image. Al refuses, and Tony says he is not getting though to him, and decides to call Al's mom. He wonders what the outcome of a call home will be - a beating, a lecture, you never know what is going to happen if you call home, especially if the kid's parents don't speak English and come from a culture where there is no communication between school and home unless it is negative. Al's mom says Al gets bored and should tell the teacher what he wants to do. (Really? That is not the way it works in the real world, but thanks for giving your kid the belief that they don't have to do anything they don't want to do. Talk about the Age of Entitlement!) After school, Assistant principal DeNaples comes in to help Tony cooordinate the 150 kids participating in the mayor's show. Tony is still coaching football and practicing for the mayor's show at nights, as well as teaching and everything else. Kids are starting to think he is looking tired. David Cohn says Tony looks physically exhausted and is back to where he was at the beginning of the year.

Al gets kicked out of the PSAT with the hot teacher, and we find out later it is because he called her a b***h and then claimed he didn't. Tony goes to In School Suspension facility and talks to Al about cleaning up his act. Saturday morning, Tony goes to get a haircut, then to the football game. Meanwhile at Loews Theatre, the kids are practicing for the night show with the mayor, but are really worried that Tony is skipping out on them when he isn't there for the rehearsals during the day. Tony finally arrives at Loews at 4:30, and the kids feel better until the theatre starts filling up and then get really nervous. The show goes great, and the kids are kind of amazed that the audiences likes them so much. At the after party.....Oh Ms DeNaples, we saw you dancing....and you kissed Tony!! Then Tony goes to Atlantic City and does the show there.

The next week at school Tony talks to the coach and decides to step down as the assistant coach - a wise decision, since he admits that he doesn't really know what he's doing and says that he needs to focus on being a teacher first. since that's what he's here to do. Tony talks to Al, asks if he would be willing to present to the class, says he's a pretty good writer. Al says no, but seems to respond to Tony better than before. Al thinks that Tony cares more than other teachers, that other teachers just kick him out of class and Tony never does that.

We didn't see nearly enough of my favorite principal, Principal Carroll, this time, and there was only one shot of Monte, with NO WORDS. But this episode brought up a couple of things I would like to address. First of all, it is easy to get over booked when you are a teacher. Between lesson planning, grading, and actually being in the classroom teaching, your time goes away quickly and then you add in after school tutoring, faculty meetings, paperwork, IEPs, and all the other things that are just a part of life and you find yourself with no time. If you try and add things like being a club advisor or coaching, you will find yourself stretched pretty thin. When I taught in Texas, some coaches actually slept at the school some nights.

The second thing I want to address is the issue with Al. A kid like that is incredibly frustrating to have in classs. They are bright, but refuse to take AP classes because they have to actually work in them, but then they claim to be bored in regular classes and that is why they act out. That is a load of bull honkey. In my opinion, this kid has figured out how to manipulate Tony into trying too hard to please the student instead of just showing him that sometimes there are negative consequences to your decisions and you have to deal with those.

I was not as into this episode, simply because this one was so much about what was happening outside of school, but I will still continue to post reviews.

Direct Quotes from 3rd Period

2010-10-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

The assignment? Working as a group of 4, read a paragraph of information about the Islamic Empire in one of four different areas (Spain, Turkey, West Africa or India) and fill in a chart. The twist? The answers didn't leap off the page and slap them across the face.

This is what I heard:

Kid - "I don't understand this reading"
Me - "It has literally been 30 seconds since you got the assignment, so I know you haven't actually read it."
Kid - "Well, I don't get it."
Me - "What exactly do you not understand?"
Kid - "All of it"
Me - "I don't know how to address that issue. I explained the assignment, the questions, and the instructions, so I don't know how to help you until you tell me what you don't understand."
Kid - "Where do I find the answers?"
Me - "In the reading."
Kid - "Where?"
Me - "In the reading"
Kid - "But where in the reading?"
Me - silence, then after a moment in which I have been counting to ten and praying for patience....."In. The. Reading. Go talk to your group and figure it out."
Kid goes back to her group and says, "She won't help me! I guess I'm just going to fail!"

A few minutes later.....

A different kid:
Kid - "This doesn't make sense because you cut the paragraphs apart. Can we have one that isn't cut apart?"
Me - "no, you can figure it out if you talk to the other people in your group."
Kid - "Can we have one that isn't cut apart?"
Me - looking at him slightly askance, wondering if he has a previously unnoticed hearing problem..."No."
Kid - "Can we have one that isn't cut apart?"
Me - seriously annoyed at this point...."No"
Kid - "Can we have one that isn't cut apart?" (you think I am making this up, sadly, I'm not)
Me - "No. Go back to your seat."

Ten minutes later....
(Different) kid, after the third day in a row of behaving like a 3rd grader (complaining, whining, hitting another student (flirting), tripping the same other student, talking constantly, trying to use her phone during class, etc), said "shut up" to another student on the other side of the classroom, who said "shut up" back to her louder. I lost it, told them both to knock it off, and they were both dangerously close to being referred for bullying. Female kid pouted for a couple of minutes, then asked to use the bathroom.
I asked if she had a pass (they get two per quarter)
she said no, so I said no.
She then asked to blow her nose.
Um, I'm not as dumb as I look, so NO.
She asked to get a drink.
I looked at her, shook my head, and said, "seriously?"
She asked to go to the office.
I said no.
She asked again, so I called the principal and asked if it was ok to send her down.
Principal said yes, so I wrote her a pass and she left, still pouting.

2 minutes later, the OTHER kid involved in the above incident comes up to my desk. Talking on top of the other kid standing there asking me a legitimate question about the assignment, he said
"Why did you talk to my coach yesterday? You know I am not the only one that talks in class and you told him that I was the only one talking!"
(side bar here....I talked to the basketball coach about two of the kids in that class yesterday. One of them cleaned up his act today and did great, this one of course denied that anything was his fault and thought I was picking on him...)
I looked at him with the you-are-approaching-the-precipice look and said
"that is not what I told your coach."
He continued to rant, I continued to restate the same phrase, until he finally went away.

5 minutes later, he gets called down to the office by the same principal, and I am left frazzled, annoyed, and on the verge of tears from sheer frustration. Of course, none of those parents have emails, so I have to actually call them, which in my case is not a good thing. I am much better on email than in person, as I have time to think about what I am saying and reword things repeatedly to get them right.

This third period class is obnoxious, rude, disrespectful, and annoying and on top of all that, they act like bullies sometimes. Sigh. Thank God, my afternoon classes are wonderful, so I end the day on a positive note every day. Otherwise, this year would be close to unbearable.

Oh and PS...we got new phones two days ago that are run through the computers (Why? I have no idea...I guess if the system crashes they want us all to be completely marooned). When I got to school yesterday, the right button on my mouse no longer worked. The only thing that had changed was the phone. Isn't it great when technology makes your life easier?

Teach Tony Danza - part 2 review

2010-10-10T14:48:00.000-07:00

Part 2 - Tested

The show starts with Tony reading aloud to his students from Mice and Men and the kids look a little confused, although Monte says they should have read that book in 7th grade, not as sophomores. I have never read the book, so I don't know much about it, but Tony assigns homework - to read two chapters and there will be a quiz the next day. Most of the kids think they should have a couple of weeks before they have a quiz. Frankie talks to Tony about how he can't picture what's happening in the book, Tony tells him how to annotate, and that it will take practice. Frankie says he can't do it, he doesn't like to read, and Tony says it will happen with practice, and actually makes a pretty good analogy, I thought, between sports (which Frankie loves) and reading. David Cohn, the Instructional Coach, later tells Tony that Frankie is at the top of a list of "gifted" students, and Tony starts to suspect that Frankie is playing him. Monte is concerned with his grades again, and wants to be in the AP class so his GPA will be higher. Tony talks to Monte about his concerns, promises to increase difficulty as time goes on. Tony is very excited about his first quiz, but the kids are worried. Ileana, one of the special education students, asked to go to the resource room (along with two other girls), but Tony says no (BIG HUGE MISTAKE). Tony tells the kids he will count for neatness, spelling, and everything else, AND times the test...all things that mess up a special education kid fast. Tony is excited because the quiz will test how his students are doing but also how he is doing. The kids are frustrated, even Chloe, but Monte says it wasn't a test at all, and it only took him 10 minutes to complete. David Cohn is in Tony's classroom immediately after the bell rings, and tells Tony that he HAS to give special education kids with IEPs extra time if they ask. Tony really argues with David...thinks kids should try harder. Does he even understand what special education is? Again, when was the last time Tony took an education class? Tony just thinks that the problem is that the kids don't THINK they can do it. The SPED kids think that Tony thinks they are lazy and they are frustrated and they are worred about their grades in his class. Tony grades the tests that weekend and almost half the class fails.

Tony says he couldn't really sleep since he is so worried about the test. Monte thinks that the test was easy and Emmanuel questions if Tony really knows how to make a test, since he is a new teacher. Monte thinks everyone could have gotten an A without even reading the book (I am sort of disliking this kid....). Tony tells David Cohn that half the class failed, asks what to do. David wonders how many of them are reading the book, but are getting tripped up on the question, but also points out that some of them just are not reading the book. Tony wonders how much of the failure rate is his fault and David reassures him that this is something that every teacher struggles with (TRUE STORY). Tony tells the class he was disappointed, and asks the class to be honest about who is reading. Nakiya thinks the test wasn't fair and tears start welling up, and she puts her head inside her shirt collar. Frankie says he doesn't understand the book at all, he tried annotating and still doesn't understand, and other students say the same thing. Tony says the test doesn't show they are reading, and says he did the same thing in high school by listening during class and bluffing his way through. Nakiya starts crying, Tony asks what is wrong, but she won't tell him. Tony goes to talk to Paige about her low grade, she won't talk to him either. Laura is upset about a question that was half opinion and half fact, and doesn't think that she should have gotten it all wrong because she used the wrong fact. Tony talks to Nakiya, he says she needs to put more effort into it. Daniel says he could have done better if he read the book better. Chloe says she sort of deserved the grade, but also says if more than half the class failed it is the teacher's fault. Monte says it should have been harder, and goes to Tony and asks for more work to make the class more challenging.

Tony debates what to do with the two special education students that need (and asked for) extra time. He brings them to lunch and talks to them one on one. I think that he truly doesn't understand what a special education classification means and thinks that they simply need to put more effort in. David Cohn is concerned about the SPED issue and talks to Tony immediately after class again. David sends Tony to talk to the special education teacher, Sue, who tries to explain that sped students are not lazy, they simply have different needs. Tony talks over her. He simply does not get it and thinks that effort will overcome the learning disability. Sue gets frustrated, and Tony gets summoned to a meeting on accomodations and IEPs and the legal implications of not following them. Tbe presenter gives the situation, "if a student asks to go to the resource room during a test, waht should your answer be?" and Tony shakes his head no. The presenter then gives Tony a worksheet wtih upside down, backwards, and mixed up letters and says that this is how a kid with dyslexia sees words, and for the first time I think he starts to understand that it is not laziness or lack of effort. Tony then meets with the Principal regarding failures and special education kids, and this is when she says that great quote I referenced in my last review; "You are miultitalented and I would never think that I could stand beside you and do what you do. I expect that same respect for the art of education, you have to listen to what we say because we are experts." Tony backs off and I think he is finally starting to get it. The principal makes it very clear that you do not mess with the special education law, you need to trust the kids, and tells Tony my favorite quote of the show; "You don't get the tag of "teacher" until your students are learning." Seriously, she is my hero.

Tony talks to another (teacher?) named Rob about Paige, who has no interest in class, has been suspended, texts during class, and won't participate. Rob asks if Tony has called home to talk to Paige's mom, and Tony says no. Rob says you can't just be their friend. sometimes you have to do what is best for them. Paige's mom actually comes in to talk to Tony (HOLY COW) and says she needs a tough teacher. Paige feels that Tony went behind her back but also thinks her mom went behind her back too and has major attitude when Tony asks if she was reading. Tony tells her he needs to talk to her at the end of class, and tells her that he knows she can do better, and asks what he can do to help. She says "nothing," and he says "then what can you do?" so Paige asks to get a tissue and leaves when he goes to get the box. When Tony talks to David, David suggests stopping, taking a deep breath, and hanging in there. David then jokingly asks if Tony has cried yet today, Tony says he hasn't cried yet today, but then breaks into tears and leaves the room.

The other assistant principal, Sharon, comes to talk to Tony, who is having a serious meltdown in his classroom and wondering if he can do this job. He can't believe how emotional he is and she basically says dude, we've ALL been there. Meanwhile, Tianna tells Paige that Mr. Danza cares about her and that is why he asks her questions, Paige says that brushing her hair in class should be just fine and that Mr. Danza is just picking on her. (Sidebar here.....I HATE it when the kids do personal grooming during class, like putting on makeup, brushing their hair, flossing their teeth, putting on deodorant, they've done it all) Paige has become a project to Tony...we've all had those kids BELIEVE me...and tries to get her involved. He keeps asking her what's going on in the story, asks specific questions, kneels down by her desk, asks her more specific questions, and she finally gives him some answers. In a later interview outside of class, she finally comes around and agrees that he cares about her and that's why he "nags" her. On the next quiz, Tony tells the three SPED kids they can have extra time if they need it and he will go down and help them in the resource room.

My thoughts.....This special education thing is HUGE. It is a legal requirement to follow the IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) and not having the resources in your school is unfortunately not a legal excuse for not doing something on that plan. I have been struggling with this recently as well, and with the continued cuts in education, programs like special education get cut first. Some schools are better than others at special education support and information, but in the end it is the teacher's responsibility to do what the law requires. Tony's attitude is unfortunately all too common among many people, even in education, and it is the reason for some kids falling through the cracks. Regarding the specific show, it is still the Tony Show, but some interesting issues were addressed here, although I think that the way a special education student's brain works was not explained and the implication that "failure was simply for a lack of effort" was not truly addressed. On the other hand, a student like Paige (not special ed) is incredibly frustrating for so many reasons. There is nothing more frustrating to a teacher than a student who is brilliant and completely wasting their brains, and add to that the frustrations of the quiz that he saw as a reflection of his own failures and it is no wonder that he broke down. I applaud his willingness to tackle Paige head-on and get through to her.

This week I am leaning more to the positive on this show, there are a lot of things that you would only relate to if you are a teacher, however, like the issues with Monte, Frankie and Paige, which makes me wonder what someone who is NOT a teacher would think about this show.

Teach Tony Danza - Review

2010-10-03T13:37:00.000-07:00

I started seeing some random commercials for a show by Tony Danza titled "Teach" earlier this summer and decided to watch it to see what kind of show it was. Recent shows like NBC's "Education Nation" and "Waiting for Superman" have made me a little nervous about any media attention focused on education, but I wanted to actually see it before I made judgments. This is a little stream-of-consciousness, as I was taking notes while watching.

Tony starts out showing Northeast High School in Philadelphia where he is going to be teaching sophomore English. It is a large school, with 3700 students, and I know from personal experience that it is very difficult to teach in a large school, but that those are typical numbers for an urban school in a major city, especially on the east coast, so I guess it is a good start. Tony attends teacher orientation, where the presenter starts by saying there are three groups of people in the US who are forced to be somewhere they don't want to be - prisoners, people in mental health facilities, and high school students. The orientation leader seems very typical, a little burned out, talking to teachers who are only halfway paying attention (someone is knitting). Tony talks about how his dad was a garbageman (repeatedly), how he became a boxer, and an actor, but his actual college degree is in teaching, although he has never actually taught anywhere. Tony is pretty emotional that night, questions whether he would want his own daughter in his English class and has serious doubts about whether or not he can do this. First day of school he's up at 4:20, and at school on time, but forgets to sign in and is yelled at (pretty disrespectfully, I thought) by an assistant principal on a serious power trip. She is clearly not impressed by him, probably voted against allowing this project, and in no way wants to be seen as being supportive of him. The students wonder who he was, they don't remember him from anything and one student named Monte wonders if he will learn anything at all.

Tony says he will get them working right away on the first day and talks about setting a tone. David Cohn is introduced as Tony's mentor teacher and will apparently be observing very frequently, if not daily. Tony starts day one by having the kids use hand sanitizer as they walk into class. The kids think it is a little over the top, and I agree, but I can see why he did it, I don't think it's a bad idea, I have hand sanitizer in the classroom and when I run out the kids ask for it. I do NOT have it next to the door on wallmounted dispensers, however. The kids are a little weirded out by how 'old' he is and having a celebrity as a teacher. I'm sure the cameras are a little distracting too. Tony seems super nervous...Been there! I was utterly terrified on my first day of teaching. Tony has five rules, be here, be on time, be prepared, be kind, and believe in yourself. He is taken quickly off track with the question, "are you a millionaire?" and you can see the quick debate on how to answer, but does answer honestly, which is good and bad. Jokes with the kids a little bit, but completely soaked with sweat, which a kid tries to use to throw him off as well, and is partially successful. Apparently he will be teaching sophomores...BEEN THERE. Monte again mentions being concerned about getting an education, a theme which continues throughout the show. Kids ask why he is at Northeast? Tony says the show is designed to show what's going on in urban education. Kids ask why are you doing this? Tony says he wanted to be a teacher, wanted a challenge, and had good teachers himself. David Cohn is watching from the back the room. Kids introduce themselves, seems like a similar mix of kids to what I teach, but wearing more expensive clothes than my kids do and there are quite a few more white kids than at my school. The bell rings, and Tony is surprised. He assigns homework after the bell rang....you've lost them at that point and there was nothing written down, which makes me wonder what the return rate on that homework will be. The kids think the class will be easy because he used to be an actor and he doens't know what he's doing. They also think he is going to flip out and don't think he knows what he's doing, which takes them all of two seconds to pick up on and use to their advantage. Monte thinks he is not qualified to be an English teacher and doesn't think he will pass.

After school is football practice, Tony has volounteered to be an assistant coach. Coach tells him to talk to the players, he's still nervous, and kids think he talks a lot. Needs to talk less. Also never tell kids a game will be a "piece of cake," coaches don't like that (and later he is proved very very wrong). Compares football stretches to various dances, repeatedly, including ballet and chorus lines. That will not go over well. Kids say he doesn't know any of the football stuff like plays, reasons for stretches, etc. Coach tells him to talk less, listen to the kids more, Tony thinks the coach was telling him he made a bad speech. Tony hangs out at a bar with his friend and former teacher Bobby, talks about the day, Bobby says "you're a motivator." Tony definitely has ideals and a little bit of a rosy glow about what he wants to accomplish, but in that way he is just like every other first year teacher. Bobby tries to bring him down to earth a little and Tony says he doesn't know if he's up to this. Next day at school Tony teaches about "omniscient." He is talking a lot, not asking questions, and the kids don't seem that involved in what is going on. They are totally silent until he starts asking questions finally, but I am totally lost about what he is asking (although that could be because I am not an English teacher). Monte corrects him (about 3rd person omniscient!!!), Tony looks lost, then admits kid is right. David Cohn confirms after class that Tony was wrong, Tony seems confused about the concept he was supposed to be teaching and I have no idea if the kids got it at all.

I believe this is the only class he is teaching, so he has about 35 students, and only one 48 minute class a day. His desk is disorganized, he can't find the papers he wanted them to use during class. The kids are a little frustrated with this. Asks for volunteers to read their story, no one volunteers. Asks specific kid to do it, he won't but allows Tony to read it instead. Kids say that he likes to hear himself talk. David Cohn talks to him about why he shsould let them read it. During class, Tony looks up a word Chloe misused and takes way too long to do it, and while using a dictionary is admirable, as an English teacher, you should know the definition (which he doesn't seem to), or make the kid look it up themselves to sharpen their dictionary skills. Tony does like to hear himself talk a lot. You HAVE to let the kids talk. Tony asks Brandi if she understands the concept he is explaining, and Brandi admits later that she didn't really understand what he was talking about but nodded and smiled hoping he would go away. Kids don't think they have learned anything...although I don't know how long of a time period the class is covering (later details indicate it was one week total for the first show). Tony agrees that he talks too much.

First football game. Tony watches coach talk but doesn't say anything. Pouring down rain, cameras are soaked, kids and coaches are soaked, Tony meets some parents in the stands, but talks too much and parents complain a little. One parent asks specific questions about what educational tools he is using, other parents asking questions that I get asked all the time; can you stay after school to give him extra help, can you email me if he doesn't turn in an assignment, my kid can't read 30 minutes a day because he has to take two buses to get home, and they give a lot of possibly unwanted advice like "the most important thing is to build relationships." At first Tony tries to defend himself, but by the end, mostly has a deer-in-the-headlights look. Welcome to my world. It seems that most of the parents were at the game, he talked to 7-8 parents from his class on camera, which is another sign that I think this school has more wealth than the one I am currently teaching at. As far as the parent comments go, he only has one class, imagine if you have 140 students instead of 35. Tony talks with the Principal after the game, she says give the kids a chance, stop performing, and don't talk so much. Tony reflects on finishing his first week of teaching with a Friday night football game in a serious rainstorm, seems symbolic. He wonders if he has made a mistake doing this, wonders if he can make it. He really likes his class, but doesn't want to let them down.

My opinions: Tony went into this with equal parts nervousness and bravura. He is finding it hard to stop performing and so far has yet to deal (on camera at least) with any even minor discipline issues. The school is big and there seems to be some resentment and some obvious reluctance to allow cameras into the school....makes sense considering the current political climate and teacher-bashing that has been going on. The district (or at least the school) seems to have a fairly active mentor teacher program as David Cohn has observed numerous classes with Tony. Tony seems to be like most other new teachers as far as what he expects, but perhaps less prepared for modern school issues. I wonder about "teachery" things like how far out he has lesson planned, when the last time he took a teacher education class was, and what it would be like to observe an actual class, since the show was 45 minutes (without commercials) and showed five 48 minute classes, football practice, a football game, teacher training, principal meetings, self-reflections, kid interviews, etc. So far, I am still neutral. The focus so far has been squarely on Tony and not so much on any of the major issues in a school, which makes sense, given the focus of the show, but it makes me think it is less about education and more about Tony Danza. If you go to the website, the tagline is "Find out what it's like to be in a classroom taught by Tony Danza," so that's another indicator right there.

Favorite quote was actually from the ads for the rest of the season. Tony is meeting with the Principal and she is talking about how some people think they can just decide to be an teacher but that not everyone can do it. She says, "You are multitalented and I would never think that I could get up there next to you and tap dance. I want that same respect for my profession." Preach it sister!

Next show...Friday, October 8, 10 pm (9 central) on A&E.

Update

2010-09-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

* third period is going better...I moved some kids around and it's improving a little.

* Daisy ended up in the principal's office the other day and apparently is mad at every single one of her teachers....from this year AND last year. Life will be tough for that kid.

* 2nd period got a stern lecture yesterday when I realized that their class average was 52% when all my other classes are around 72%. Why? Missing homework.

* I am exhausted. I am planning on taking Monday off.

* We are still having major technology issues, the kids still can't check their grades and some teachers still can't use the new gradebook system we got this year.

* The old technology we had worked just fine.

* I'm just sayin'

* I have strong suspicions of this new movie Waiting for Superman but since I am a responsible adult, will watch it before publicly stating my opinions.

Trouble in Paradise

2010-09-20T17:55:00.000-07:00

If you are a teacher, you know how this works. Every year, you have that One Kid. Or that One Class. That kid or that class that drives you crazy. The class that no matter what you do, makes you want to cry in frustration or punch your fist in the wall. And usually, it isn't so much the class itself as a whole as it is 2 or 3 (or 4 or 5) kids in that class that make your life completely miserable.

I thought that I still deserved a pretty good year after the hell of 2 years ago, but apparently not. This year my third period makes me absolutely insane. I exert a huge amount of mental focus attempting to control that class and keep them in line and at the end of class I am completely exhausted. There are about 5 kids in there that make life miserable for the rest of the kids and for me and I don't really know what to do about it. Of the five, there are two that are by far the worst and of those two, I think I could control one of them if I didn't have the other one.

For the most part, the kids in that class are pretty good, and overall I really like my classes, but in third period, the one that gives me the most problems is a girl I'll call Daisy. Daisy is completely self-centered, to the point that she is totally unaware of the existence of any other person except herself. In addition, she feels the need to talk incessantly and loudly about topics that she knows little to nothing about. Here's an example:

We were talking about India, and one of the students said, "I heard that in India people don't take showers, is that true?" Before I could say anything, Daisy says (loudly), "Ew! That is so disgusting! Those people are weird!" (My poor little Indian girl in the back looks completely mortified...) I said, "No, not weird, just different. Remember that half the people in that country have no running water, so it is hard for them to take showers." Daisy looks at me with the little attitude-y head bob and says, "You can say whatever you want, but it is still gross and weird, and I can say it if I want to."

Seriously? What do I do with that? She is disrespectful and obnoxious, and today went so badly that I asked my third period for their exit slip to tell me what I could do to make third period go better, and 26 of the thirty kids put down that class would go better if I made the other 4 shut up. The other four? Put down that I should "let them talk more."

This is me....praying for patience.

one year later

2010-09-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

One year ago, I broke my right arm while ice skating.

One year later, I have had surgery to install a plate in my right elbow that is daily increasing my chance of later getting severe arthritis, a 2 inch scar, and a small area around it that is completely numb.

One year later I am still dealing with insurance, doctor bills, and workmen's compensation.

One year later I still do not have full range of motion.

One year later I still cannot touch my right shoulder with my right hand, cannot touch the back of my neck with my right hand, and cannot reach nearly as far with my right hand as I can with my left hand.

One year later I am officially 5% disabled....most likely for the rest of my life.

And one year later I am glad it wasn't worse, glad I still have the use of my hand, and glad that I can still do the job that I love, despite the fact that my kids have felled me with a nasty flu bug.

Cooking with Gas

2010-09-07T18:01:00.000-07:00

Well, actually, I cook with electricity, but what kind of title is that? I started a new blog for cooking...you are welcome to come on over if you want.

The Diffident Chef

National Board Certification

2010-09-06T15:25:00.000-07:00

This school year I will be attempting to get my National Board Certification, in order to become a National Board Certified Teacher. This is done through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and is a very intensive, yearlong process that involves creating a portfolio and taking a test showing your expertise in your subject area.

The portfolio has four entries, each between 30 and 50 pages of material, and two of the entries have a required video documentation and analysis piece. One entry is about student work, one focuses on teaching civic competence (small group), one on parent and community involvement and one that has to be done as a large group, but I don't remember the topic. The portfolio is due in March, and after that you take a test at an assessment center that has 6 questions. Each question has multiple parts, you are given 30 minutes to complete each question and each part of the question has to be addressed in your answer.

All that to say that this coming school year will most likely be an insanely busy one. I am still reading and commenting on blogs, but may not be able to post here as much. I think the payoff will be big and the teachers that have done it previously at my school have all said it is very much worth it, but it will be time consuming.

The Book I've Been Waiting For

2010-08-12T22:27:00.001-07:00

I love my local library. Here in King County, they have the King County Library System, which means that I can borrow a book from ANY library in the entire county....and there are a LOT of libraries. The one in my town is one of the larger ones, and I discovered the history aisle soon after moving here, and I have been reading my way through it. Today, I checked out the education section, and found the Book I Have Been Waiting For But Didn't Know It Existed.

It is called Understanding Your Refugee and Immigrant Students by Jeffra Flaitz.

This book has all the information I ever wanted about the kids I don't understand. The author talks about 18 of the largest immigrant populations in the US and explains the cultural context they are coming from.

She first gives the usual basics about the country - capital, populaton, location, climate, etc - and then explains the historical perspective of the immigration movement to the US, as well as telling the story of a person either from that country or someone who has worked for an extended period of time in that country. In short, the story of someone who has an intimate knowledge of the particular culture. She presents deep culture beliefs, including explaining the major "tribal" divisions within the country, lists some famous proverbs (the equivalent to the American sayings like "a penny saved is a penny earned" or "the early bird gets the worm") and tells a folk tale specific to that culture.

And then...she gets to the good stuff. She explains the official educational policy of the country and explains the problems that plague that particular system. For the first time, I can see the most likely background for about half the kids in my classroom. She also explains what a school in that country would actually look like, how the teachers would dress and be perceived, and what the relationships between students and students, teachers and students, teachers and parents, and teachers and the community is. She explains what classroom discipline is like and what the kids are expected to contribute. She explains how the students are expected to learn, how they are expected to dress, and has multiple pages PER GROUP on nonverbal communication and cues. She talks about how adults are addressed and what are appropriate and inappropriate topics.

AND THERE'S MORE. She has a few pages per group on the adjustment challenges students may run into in an American school system and the solution you might try to help them adjust and a table that shows basic educational information at a glance - ages of schooling, whether attendance is mandatory, the cost of an education at a particular age, what the grading system is, what kind of exams or national tests there are, the language they use at school, and the curriculum they use.

This is the information I have been desperately seeking and not finding for the eight years I have been a teacher. This is like the magical unicorn at the end of a double rainbow with twin leprechauns.

I will be making good use of this book.

Farming 101 - correct version

2010-08-07T18:06:00.000-07:00

A lot of people ask what kind of farming my dad does and then look just as confused when I answer, so I thought I would do a little rundown, since this is what I did this summer and it's my blog so I'll talk about farming if I want to. =)

I grew up in the Willamette Valley, Oregon. The Willamette Valley is known as the grass seed capital of the world because most of the farming done there is grass seed, as in the stuff that you plant to create your lawn and the stuff that is planted along the side of the road to keep it from eroding. (What, you thought that grew naturally? Nope!) It is also what is planted on golf courses and on soccer fields (grass seed from the Willamette Valley was used on the soccer fields at the World Cup!). The climate is perfect for grass seed, but makes it hard to grow more "traditional" crops like wheat or corn, although the economy has been bad enough that many mid-valley farmers are trying to grow things like coriander, beet seed and chicory in an effort to make even a tiny profit using only the equipment they already have.

There are lots of different kinds of grass seed - annual, perennial, fescue....and some other ones that I can't remember - and the process of harvesting is a little longer than with wheat, corn, or oats.

unharvested field of fescue

In a good year, when the weather is right, the seed gets ripe around the middle of June. Grass seed has to dry before it can be harvested, so the first step in harvest is to windrow (cut) the grass into rows to dry.

this is the front of a windrower. there are blades underneath that cut the grass off and the auger (round thing in the middle) puts all the cut grass into rows...see the next picture

It lays on the ground for 10 days to 2 weeks until the grass is totally dry.

grass behind the windrower laying in rows to dry

In order to prevent the seeds from falling off, you might have to get up really early, to cut it while the dew is on it. My dad gets up sometimes at 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning.

I did not get up that early.

picture taken when I DID get up, around 6:30 or so

Then you combine (or thrash) it, meaning you use this monstrous machine (a combine) to pick up the rows.

The machine beats (thrashes) the seed off the stalk, keeps the seed and spits out the stalk.

seed going into the bin on the back of the combine

The dry stalks can be baled as hay (some gets sent to Japan to use as feed for cows) or chopped up and used as mulch over the crop for the next year.

Just as a point of information, the green machines are best. Red machines? Are BAD. Green is good, red is bad. That is why red machines sit on the side of the field with their sides open and frantic farmer legs sticking out, while green machines calmy munch their way around the field perfectly fine. I'm just sayin'. (The apparent exception is windrowers.....every company has a weak point, I guess.)

red combine sitting forlornly by the side of the road with frantic farmer legs sticking out....

...and green combine harvesting merrily along, happy as a clam.

After the seed is harvested, it gets cleaned and bagged, and sent off to a larger company that rebags it in those pretty packages you buy at the garden store to plant your lawn with.

On bad years, like the last couple of years, the seed is worth only a few cents a pound, and sometimes the seed sits in a warehouse for a couple of years before it gets sold, while the farmer has to cross his fingers and hope that it might sell for enough money to help him at least break even.

In the Valley, a lot of high school kids learn to drive by going 2.1 miles per hour on these multi-ton machines that can cost as much as $300,000. Boring? Yes, but it has to be done, and it's a good source of income for hundreds of high school students in the Valley. Of course, the equipment companies make sure you know what will happen if you aren't careful...maybe the car companies should consider doing this type of warning as well.

And this is the story of what I did on my summer vacation every summer from the time I was 10 or so until I turned 16. And what I did this summer. It is hard work and I am glad that someone likes to do it, because I would not be a very good farmer.

Mole Cat

2010-08-05T23:35:00.000-07:00

This is NOT the cat referred to in the last post....this other cat likes to tunnel, so I found her in my bed the other day....weirdo.

Reset Buttons Would Be Nice

2010-08-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

5:15....alarm goes off, I get up and discover that the cat is apparently mad at me and left me all kinds of fun presents in the hall, the bathroom, and the kitchen. So awesome to discover when half asleep.
6:00...racing out the door to take some friends to the airport, forget my water on the counter (this will be important later...)
6:05...forget which side my gas tank is on, pull into the gas station backwards
6:07...attempt to zip up my jacket, only to discover I have put it on inside out
6:30...discover that everyone in Seattle is taking off from the Southwest terminal this morning, and have decided to creatively park in the dropoff lanes, so instead of being able to get out and give my two best friends a proper sendoff, I have to basically push them out of the car while it is still moving.
6:35...get on I-405 instead of I-5 to return a misplaced engagement ring (long story) and come to a total halt at milepost 3. I proceed to spend the next hour and a quarter going so slowly that it doesn't even register on the speedometer. It took me that long to go 4 miles due to a flaming bus crash on the smallest, busiest freeway in Seattle.
8:15...almost get into an accident by missing the exit and nearly heading to Canada instead of Edmonds
8:20...GPS sends me PAST the school my conference is on
8:25...park in the very last row of the parking lot and RUN to try and make the 8:30 class on the second floor on the far side of the building.
8:45...realize I forgot my water and go to vending machine. Put in $1.25 and am given the message that the water is sold out. Push the coin return and get back 60 cents.

Some days, it would just be better to push the reset button and start over. =)

*******************************************
It's been a busy summer. I took off the weekend after my last post and spent three weeks with my dad helping him farm. I had internet access, but no time to blog. I got back on Sunday and the next day my two best friends came in to visit. They left this morning and I am in the midst of a conference regarding a teaching program that will be consuming my life for the next 8 months (more on that later), so I am going to leave this here, and pick it up later. School is starting soon and I am itching to get into my classroom on Monday!

Communist Propaganda

2010-07-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

I was looking through some of the pictures on my camera and realized I never posted these...

We spent a couple of weeks in class talking about Communism and the Cold War, and it was the first year that I think the kids kind of understood what Communism actually advocates. It is a surprisingly difficult concept to explain, especially since the kids tend to confuse economics and government. Ah Communism.....When I was putting these up in the hallway, the thought occurred to me that 40 years ago, I might have been fired for doing a project like this. As part of their assessment, the kids had to create a Communist propaganda poster (and analyze it on the reverse) that would encourage someone to turn to Communism. I liked this assessment because they had to show an understanding of both Communism and propaganda and I am always wildly amused by their posters. It also shows me what the kids DIDN'T understand. As I was trying to get them to see that Communism wouldn't work, I said that Communism would be like everyone in class having one bank account and everyone gets a debit card. You can take what you need, and we all help provide for each other. Unfortunately, what I didn't realize is that some of the kids thought that having one common bank account was LITERALLY what happened. **sigh**
Some of the kids understood the concept better than others. I particularly liked the above poster. I constantly try to get the kids to use the magazines we have in class to make posters, but they are a little reluctant to do so. I think this one really illustrates the main ideas I was looking for. Sometimes there is just a piece of a poster that sticks out to me. In the above poster, the dictator on the building cracks me up. There is so much detail in this poster but the guy is a stick person.

This above poster was drawn by my resident Communist. We had a somewhat....tense....relationship throughout this unit. =) It was good for him, I think.
Some of the kids used much more color and were more to the point. Despite the misspellings, I really like this one.

This one cracks me up. I love the little businessman and the farmer shaking hands while a factory spews pollution out and apparently all the earth's water evaporates. =) The one below is hands down my absolute favorite. It is unintentionally ironic. The kid that did this poster did not intend to make it so funny, but I ended up showing it to my entire department and I am saving it.

I love that the message of the poster is so encouraging...."join the communists and join us"....but that the poster itself is so uninviting. Ironically, it is a picture of the way Communism actually ended up working out, but we never talked about that in class, so he did this under the firm belief that this would be an encouragement to join Communism. I particularly like the Stalin-esque sun in the corner glaring down on all the downtrodden stick people under a smog filled sky.

Pure Awesome.

Year 8

2010-06-22T22:15:00.001-07:00

Today was the last day of year 8 of my teaching career. This has been a good year overall (professionally, anyway). The kids I had this year were fantastic and I had very few discipline problems. They actively participated in class for the most part, and were generally friendly and polite.

However, as I contemplated grades, things started looking less rosy. I have a higher failure rate at this school than I did in Texas - and my belief is that it is at least partly due to the extremely high transient rate at my school here in Washington. I had a new student transfer in at the beginning of June. I have had 2-3 drops and 2-3 additions per period PER QUARTER, and that has been the norm for all three years I have taught at this school. It is extremely hard to pick up your classes when you are constantly moving around and I know that is part of the reason for the increase in the failure rate.

The final number of kids failing my class this year was 6 or 7 per class period, with the exception of my 6th period, with 15 failing. This is frustrating to me, especially as "failing" is 59% or lower. In Texas, it was 69% or lower. And of course, the 15 in my 6th period........sheesh. I have no words for that. Well, actually, I have quite a lot of words. None of them are appropriate, so I shall refrain.

Of course, as a teacher, I worry about why. Why did so many fail in 6th period? Why are so many failing overall? I feel that my class is structured to be really quite easy. Everything is done in class. Homework is only assigned once a week. There is little to no reading done outside of class (due to a shortage of books). So WHY is my failure rate so high?

I do know that part of it is attendance. The district I am in changed their attendance policy this year, due to a fear of possibly being sued (there was no ACTUAL lawsuit, they were just afraid that they might, at some point, possibly be sued...so they changed the policy...just in case). Previously, a student could accumulate up to 11 absences (including tardies, which counted as 1/3 of an absence) before losing credit for a particular class in a semester. If they accumulated more than 11, they had to appear before a committee and appeal to get credit. If they had a really good reason, and had worked to make up the work, and were passing their class despite the high number of absences, they might be able to get credit anyway. This year, there is no attendance policy in place, and it shows.

3-4 of the failures in each of my classes are kids that had more than 12 absences in my class (not including tardies), so I know that is part of the reason they are failing. But it still can't be the ENTIRE reason. After all, that only accounts for half of my failures, except for that pesky 6th period, where it only accounted for 1/5 of the failures.

So I went back over my grades. With the exception of 1 or 2 kids who have other issues, the biggest reason for my failures is that my kids are not doing their homework. I am certainly not going to cut back on assigning homework, since I feel that we really assign so little as it is, and we work really hard to make sure that homework is targeted towards a very specific skill or concept. We are going to be doing more reading at home next year, but how do I get them to DO their homework? Grades don't seem to be a working motivator.

So....I'll be starting my summer with this problem rolling around in my head. And of course, I would welcome any suggestions from teachers that have had this problem and have managed to improve your passing rate.

The Importance of Punctuation

2010-06-13T19:06:00.001-07:00

I'm sure you've probably heard of the book by Lynne Truss called Eats, Shoots and Leaves in which she talks about the importance of punctuation and bemoans its declining importance in the US and the United Kingdom. This week, I noticed a sign that would seem to indicate that things are not really improving.I think this might be far more funny in New York or somwhere else with a large Jewish population, but it was still funny (and deeply disturbing) to me. If you aren't up on your Jewish vocabulary, click here for a definition of "bris."

Single Digits

2010-06-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

We are down to 9 days of school!

The last few weeks of school are both exhilarating and infuriating. They are infuriating because both teachers and students are antsy and done with school, especially if the weather is nice.

But they are exhilarating as well because if you're lucky, your kids have finally gotten to the point where you can have real discussions and all of a sudden you realize just how far they have come in a few months. This past week we have been talking about globalization and consumerism (materialism) and some of the things they have said are totally awesome.

I have been using the book "Hungry Planet - What the World Eats" by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. If you haven't had a chance to check out this book, I would highly recommend it, as well as the book photographed a few years earlier, "Material World" by the same authors.

from Material World, Kuwait

from Hungry Planet, Bhutan

In Material World, which was inspired by Madonna's song, "Material Girl," Menzel and D'Aluisio photographed families with all of their possessions outside of the family's house. Hungry Planet was written a few years later and was inspired by Menzel watching a refugee child in Somalia downing some dry Top Ramen while the refugee's younger brother ate the seasoning packet. He was struck by how a convenience food in the west is also eaten in other continents but in such a different way, and decided to do a book where a family's food consumption for a week was tracked. In both books, families that were "statistically average" were chosen to represent the various countries.

both from Hungry Planet, top- Darfur refugees, bottom- North Carolina

These books are fantastic to visually show globalization, consumerism, consumption, and materialism. The kids get those concepts after seeing these books and I love seeing how they start pulling out and identifying items that have gone global and how they start applying that knowledge to the concepts of consumerism and materialism.

Hungry Planet, Japan

I love weeks like this, when the kids actually GET a concept that I am trying to teach, and not only get it but apply it and debate about it. Not only that, they asked questions that allowed me to guide them into discussions about processed vs real food, chemical additives, and why processed food is cheaper than unprocessed food here in the US. It has been one of those weeks when I have actually felt like they are taking something away that they might actually use.

from Material World, top - Japan, bottom - Russia

Why Cleaning Your House is Important

2010-06-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

Because when walking across the living room with a plate of food in one hand and a glass of milk in the other, it is somewhat disconcerting to catch your toe in the computer cord and stagger like a drunken clown into a chair while the other foot slides out from under you on a magazine, while you meanwhile attempt to balance the aforementioned plate and glass of milk, which you KNOW will stink Forever and Ever if you spill it into the upholstered chair you just fell over and into while trying to prevent two broken arms in less than a year and still preserving the dinner you just spent half an hour cooking. This will inevitably result in the total failure to save anything at all, resulting in the loss of your security deposit and a chair that will have to be recovered for the third time.

Not that this has ever happened to me or anything.

On Grading, Specifically Essays

2010-06-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

I spent all weekend grading essays. They weren't good essays, in any sense of the word, which made it all the more painful to spend my weekend on it. While grading them, I vacillated between hopelessness, despair, frustration, and annoyance. I blamed the kids for their shockingly bad writing skills. I blamed myself for failing to teach them how to write. And then, I started to scribble some things down.

I don't know where to draw the line between holding the kids accountable for their own learning, and allowing them some degree of leniency for things like high mobility rates, language skills, and cultural obstacles. On the one hand, they need to be pushed, they need to be challenged, and they need to learn to take responsibility for themselves and fight as underdogs on a playing field that isn't fair. On the other hand, is it fair to hold these kids to the same level of accountability as upper class kids if the challenges they face are greater than others?

I am struggling with where this line is. I have expectations, but are they high enough? And on the other hand, if I set expectations that are too high, I take away all motivation to reach for those goals. Am I crippling my students or enabling them? Am I actually teaching them any skills at all or am I just reveling in the sound of my own voice and merely assuming they are picking up skills?

I don't know how to make my kids better writers, except to practice even more, and next year start this process even earlier. And of course, that means that much less time to devote to content, which is the whole reason I love teaching history.

I don't know what any of the answers are or who to ask to get them, so until someone comes along with the answer, I'll just keep plowing through, doing the best I can, every single day, and hopefully that will help some of my kids a little bit.

Days and Days and Days and Days

2010-05-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

All right, that's it. I'm tired of school.

It's time for summer vacation. Good thing we have a four day weekend coming up. My big plans?

I'm cleaning my house and grading Really Bad Essays.

No really, they really, really stink.

So much so that I am looking forward to cleaning my house.

25 Days

2010-05-16T21:09:00.001-07:00

For some teachers, November or March are the hardest months of the year, the downtime, the slog, the time when things are no longer new and exciting but the kids aren't really where you want them to be either. For me though, this is the hardest time of the school year.

In high school, the kids are locked fully into "completely addlepated" mode and even here in Seattle, the sun has begun to shine most days, making it almost impossible for them (or me!) to focus on anything taking place inside. The only thing that either the kids or I can focus on is the end of the school year rapidly approaching.

Adding to that, while I teach mostly sophomores, I have the few random seniors mixed in, most of whom have failed this class the first time around and are here to make up that credit in order to graduate on time. For them, there are only 20 days of school left and they aren't so much focused on school as on the fact that pretty soon no more adults will be Bossing Them Around and Telling Them What To Do All The Time and they will be treated like the Adults They Already Are (I, of course, am only wishing they would behave like the Adults They THINK They Are...). In order to prevent my least favorite spring sport - Angry Yelling From Parents Who Already Invited The Entire Family From The Philippines To Attend Graduation - I h ave to make sure that I am always caught up on the kids' grades, which means that I have been grading almost every weekend since mid-April.

I know that SOUNDS like tons of fun, but it's not as much fun as you might think. Added to that, I have been working track meets again this year, which IS fun, but time-consuming, and you may see why I have been almost totally absent from this blog for quite some time.

This is the hardest time of year for me. I feel like I have no time to do anything and I am never sure where the time goes. And for some reason, this is the time of year when the Parent Conferences come out to play; there was a two week stretch there where I had a parent meeting every single day. Not that meetings are all that unusual, I have an average of 4 per week, aside from the regularly scheduled Friday morning staff development.

This year, adding to the stress, is the fact that I truly like this particular crop of kids. I have had maybe 3 discipline incidents ALL YEAR, and I kind of want to keep them. I really truly like these kids a lot. I am not sure what the difference is, maybe I have a better attitude or something, but this year has gone so incredibly smoothly and I am a little reluctant to let go of it.

And at the same time, I can't wait for summer. Go figure. =)

Have a great week!

Permanent Links for 2010 Teacher Appreciation Week

2010-05-16T20:59:00.001-07:00

I am taking Mr. Linky down, but I wanted to create a post with all the teacher appreciation links on it. Thanks for all your contributions!

Mrs. Reeves - the Ignorant Historian
Mrs. Randolph - This, That, and T'Other
Mr. Powell - An Urban Teacher's Education
Mr. Senter - An Urban Teacher's Education
Ms. Hudson - An Urban Teacher's Education
Dr. Glover - An Urban Teacher's Education
The Parents - An Urban Teacher's Education

Mr. Linky and I had a fight towards the beginning of the week, so if you wrote a post that isn't listed here, please leave the link in the comments. Thanks!!

Teacher Appreciation Week - Mrs. Turman & Mrs. Howard

2010-05-07T00:00:00.001-07:00

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week! And in honor of that, let’s give something back to those awesome teachers that we’ve all had. In an era of increasing negativity towards this profession, let’s take the time to honor those teachers who have influenced us – past or present, instructors or colleagues, whoever! Post something on your blog, then link to it above. Then….go visit! Spread the love!

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I still remember the morning of my first day of school. My mom made me a blue dress with red strawberries appliquéd on it. I remember my dad carrying me out to the living room and I stopped to admire the dress. And, while I don’t remember this picture being taken, there is a picture of me on the front porch, wearing my dress, with my pink (yellow?) lunch box, straight bangs and dark hair and dimples that seem to have disappeared as I have gotten older, one of the many cats we have had weaving its way around my legs, all ready for the first day of the next 18 years of my life.

I don’t remember much about the first day, or really much about that year at all, just bits and pieces…more like 5-6 snapshots more than any one sustained memory. I learned my first phone number in kindergarten (well, the first one that wasn’t my own number anyway), the phone number of a girl I am STILL friends with 26 years later. I remember Open House, when my dad told me that he had gone to school in that same building…and I remember wondering how in the world my 6’ dad fit into those tiny chairs (oh logic, you are such a cruel mistress…). I remember lining up for recess, and the day we colored pictures showing us in our chosen careers (mine was a nurse – this would be BEFORE I discovered my hatred of all bodily fluids that emanate from other people’s bodies).

But most of all, I remember reading. I learned to read in kindergarten, and while what I remember most is my mom bribing me with a new Dr. Seuss book (Hop on Pop) which I very desperately wanted and was NOT allowed to have until I could read it out loud by myself, I also remember reading in kindergarten. We had these small books that the reading teacher Mrs. Howard made for us, and my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Turman would sit down and I would read those books to her. There were short little books that had yellow covers, and hand-made books that had cardboard covers covered with wallpaper remnants, and I’m sure there were regular books too, although I don’t remember those. I can’t remember the exact topics of those books, although I am sure they were of the “Dick and Jane” variety, but I do remember reading…constantly, endlessly, reading.

I still love to read today, and while a good part of that was due to my parents’ decision not to have a television, the fact that I had a kindergarten teacher and a reading teacher that both actively encouraged me to read obviously impacted not only my enjoyment of reading, but my long-term school achievements as well. There are countless studies that directly tie reading ability to ALL other school abilities, so I don’t need to go in to that here, but suffice it to say that those two women had a direct and MAJOR impact on my life.

So thanks! Both of you were experienced teachers (funny how that works), and being in a strong kindergarten class really laid the foundation for the following 18 years of school. I couldn’t have done it without you!
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Thanks for joining me for Teacher Appreication Week! I hope you got the chance to tell one of your teachers how much you appreciate(d) them!

Teacher Appreciation Week - Miss Judy

2010-05-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week! And in honor of that, let’s give something back to those awesome teachers that we’ve all had. In an era of increasing negativity towards this profession, let’s take the time to honor those teachers who have influenced us – past or present, instructors or colleagues, whoever! Post something on your blog, then link to it above. Then….go visit! Spread the love!

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Miss Judy was my piano teacher for 9 years, from as early on as I can remember. And while I must confess that I can barely remember where Middle C is and can only play about 2 songs 17 years after my last lesson, she really was a good teacher. I know that teaching music must require limitless amounts of patience. I know this not only because I am a teacher who does NOT have limitless amounts of patience, but also because I have a low tolerance for annoying noises….and there is almost nothing more annoying than a piano being inexpertly played over and over and over and over (Disclaimer – the most annoying sound in the universe is the collective sound on the day that they hand out recorders to the elementary school kids – I heard one being played in an apartment as I walked by the other day and instantly had a flood of memories regarding those allegedly “musical” instruments…but I digress).

Miss Judy taught piano in the basement of her house, which had a distinctly musty, basementy smell that I still associate with good things. Once a week, we drove up the hill to the very end of a dead end road, to a house built in the midst of a forest, walked down the slope covered with ferns and trilliums, past the zipline strung between two trees, to the sliding glass door and into the basement. The carpet was mustard yellow and the walls were paneled wood and in the center of the room was a piano. Every week Miss Judy was there waiting, on a chair next to the bench in front of that piano.

First things first, start with those scales! Every week, practice, practice, practice. Start with the easy ones – thumb, finger, finger, then cross that thumb under (hard when you are only 5!) and play the next five – thumb, finger, finger, finger, finger. Then, back down the same way. Miss Judy sat next to you and with a pencil poised under your palms, reminding you to keep those hands up! No hand slouching on the keys! After some good warm-ups, it was time to “face the music.” Did you practice last week? This is where it would show. There was no hiding from Miss Judy!

She must have gotten so frustrated, saying the same things over and over – at least to me. Thinking back, she never raised her voice, never got upset, never lost her poise. She was a popular teacher, with a full schedule all day long of students of all ages. Once a year or so, there was a recital – usually on a Sunday afternoon – where all her students played music. Again, this isn’t something that registered at the time, but looking back, she had a LOT of little kids as students. Someone who can make a 5 year old kid sit at a piano for half an hour, or more than that, make FIVE 5-year-olds play the same thing at the same time (group lessons came before individual lessons) has to be an amazing teacher.

Teaching a core class like math or social studies is easier than teaching a creative class, especially one like music. Dealing with kids of varying skill levels, knowing that the chances of producing even ONE who makes a career of music are slim to none, this all tells me that Miss Judy had, quite simply, a profound love for music and teaching. Which makes her a success in my book.

So thanks, Miss Judy, for the countless lessons, the endless patience, and the level of commitment you had to doing something that you loved. And you would be happy to know that even though I no longer play the piano, I still type without hand slouching.

Teacher Appreciation Week - Professor Williamson

2010-05-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week! And in honor of that, let’s give something back to those awesome teachers that we’ve all had. In an era of increasing negativity towards this profession, let’s take the time to honor those teachers who have influenced us – past or present, instructors or colleagues, whoever! Post something on your blog, then link to it above. Then….go visit! Spread the love!

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During my first two years of college, I changed my major twice – from interior design to undeclared and then to education – and after I decided on secondary education, I had to decide what area to focus on. I have always loved to read, so I thought about English for a long time, but then during my sophomore year, as part of my core classes, I took a basic American History class. Some of my friends had taken this class the year before, and absolutely hated it, so I was somewhat less than enthusiastic about this class.

The first day of the class, I walked in, found a seat, and waited for the old geezer to arrive. And that’s when one of the best-looking guys I have ever met in real life walked in. He wasn’t old, he wasn’t dead inside, and he was utterly, completely relaxed. Of course, he was also married. But that didn’t change the fact that he was a fantastic professor. I was lucky enough to go to a relatively small school, so even in my core classes, all but one of my classes was small – usually no more than 25 students or so. Having those small classes meant that Professor Williamson could and did encourage discussions all the time. Generally, a basic level history class means lecture – a LOT of lecture – and while we did that too, we also had some fantastic discussions.

We also did some things that weren’t part of a traditional college level class. For example, it was for and assignment in this class that I interviewed my grandfather, a Korean War vet, and my family gained some unforgettable and hilarious stories written in my grandpa’s blocky printing. That class became one of my favorite college classes, and Mr. Williamson became my favorite college professor – but not because he was cute. Professor W loved history. Despite some pretty disheartening personal problems (his wife gave birth to a son with Down’s syndrome during that semester), he never missed class and never gave less than 100%, but at the same time, was one of the most laid-back, relaxed professors I had in 5 years of teaching.

After that semester, Professor W moved to Wisconsin or some random place where his in-laws lived so his wife could have help with the special needs baby, but that feeling of classroom “safety” is one of the strongest memories I have of Professor W. He was utterly and completely relaxed in front of his classes. Having a teacher that laid-back encourages freedom of speech in their classroom, and while I am nowhere near that relaxed (bit of a control freak, actually), I do try to remember that feeling of safety. The feeling we had in that classroom, that no matter what opinion you had (and of course, as college students, we had plenty), you could say it without fear of put-downs or mockery. And every day in my classroom, I want my kids to have that same feeling.

After that semester, I knew that history was what I wanted to teach. I wanted to teach something I loved and after that semester, I knew that I loved history. I have never looked back and never regretted my area of study (well, except on job interviews where I get asked what I coach) and one of the biggest reasons I focused on history was because of this one basic class.

So thanks, Professor W, for that one semester. It totally changed my life. You were a fantastic professor and I have never forgotten that class.

Teacher Appreciation Week - Sarah Stacy

2010-05-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week! And in honor of that, let’s give something back to those awesome teachers that we’ve all had. In an era of increasing negativity towards this profession, let’s take the time to honor those teachers who have influenced us – past or present, instructors or colleagues, whoever! Post something on your blog, then link to it below this post. Just for kicks and giggles, use your teacher’s name as your link! Then….go visit! Spread the love!

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I was lucky in so many ways with my college education and the job hunt that came at the end of that education. I ended up getting a job at a large (5A) public school in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. This particular district had a week-long new teacher program that was held partially at the district, but mostly on the grounds of your home school. And one of the first things that happened as a new teacher was that you were matched up with a mentor teacher. My mentor teacher was Ms. Stacy. Sarah was a tall blond with a quick smile a down-to-earth personality, and a slightly twisted sense of humor that I was instantly drawn to. She was only a few years older than I, and we had a lot in common.

Sarah was my rock during that first year of teaching. On the days when I questioned whether or not I had wasted the previous five years of school and on the days when I cried, Sarah was there to figuratively hold my hand and get me through….and that crying thing? Yeah, that happened a lot. I'm kind of high-maintenance.

She gave me ideas, taught me about the school culture, taught me how to use (and unjam) the copier, gave me a place to eat lunch, someone to bounce ideas off of, and a shoulder to lean on. She told me how to find (and keep) a good desk chair, steered me away from the negative nellies in our department, and gave me her cell phone number. Sarah is one of the most open and friendly people I have ever met, and for the two years she was at the school with me, she was one of the most consistently hard-working teachers I have ever worked with.

Sarah taught world history and an AP world history class for the first time that year, got engaged, married, and pregnant during those first two years, took care of me and 150 high-maintenance sophomores, and still maintained her poise and grace every single day. The district I am in now does not have a particularly good mentor program and I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for those teachers without someone like Sarah there to keep them from gouging their own eyes out and running screaming from the building.

Sarah and I have stayed friends, despite the fact that she was only at my school for two years, and while I have told her before how awesome I think she is, it never hurts to hear it more than once. She has just recently returned to teaching after a break to start a family, and is doing something totally different (elementary school computers), but I am sure she is knocking it out of the park once again.

So here’s to Sarah….the model mentor!

Teacher Appreciation Week - Beth Hamaty

2010-05-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week! And in honor of that, let’s give something back to those awesome teachers that we’ve all had. In an era of increasing negativity towards this profession, let’s take the time to honor those teachers who have influenced us – past or present, instructors or colleagues, whoever! Post something on your blog, then link to it below this post. Just for kicks and giggles, use your teacher’s name as your link! Then....go visit! Spread the love!

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Ms. Hamaty taught sophomore world history, and I learned pretty much everything I know from her. I was in a decent teaching program at my university, but like most teaching programs at any university in the world, education classes were taught by professors who hadn’t ever been in a public elementary or secondary school, or at best, hadn’t been in a non-college classroom for at least twenty years. One thing my university did well however, was to make sure you got plenty of classroom observations in. Starting two years before I graduated, I spent at least part of every semester in a classroom, multiple times a week. At first, I just did observations. Then some practice lessons, then long-term observations (in the same classroom for several hours a week), and finally, full-time student teaching for a semester in two different placements.

I was lucky enough to be matched with Ms. Hamaty on one of those early rounds, and after that point I asked to be matched with her whenever we had observations to do. I wasn’t an expert, but I recognized one when I saw one. Abilene High was a fairly large school with a pretty mixed population, although it definitely leaned towards the lower end of the income ladder. Looking back, it was a pretty average mid public school for a city of that size, but for me, it was a total immersing shock to my system. I went to a small town public school for the first three years, and a small private Christian school until I graduated, then a mid-sized Christian university after that, so I had never really gone to school with kids who were ethnically different than I, or who came from homes that weren’t stable, or whose parents didn’t always have money to put food on the table. All of a sudden, there I was, surrounded by all of these new people who weren’t like me, and it was surprisingly invigorating. From pretty much the first day I walked into that school, I knew that I had made the right decision about becoming a teacher and that this was the Thing I Wanted To Do.

Ms. Hamaty made that happen. She told me all the things they don’t tell you in teacher education classes. It was from her that I learned when to confront a student head on, and how to avert a problem with humor or teasing. She taught me how to tell stories and how to captivate a class of teenagers with a lecture and notes. She taught me that knowing a kid’s background is important, because sometimes when a kid is sleeping in class, it is because he has to work the swing shift to support his family. She taught me how to control a classroom with a look – the look of death, I like to call it – and taught me how to seize the teachable moments.

I worked with Ms. Hamaty off and on for over a year and her expertise made my first year of teaching possible. What is more, as I have been teaching, I now understand just how difficult it is to have a student teacher in your classroom and yet she was patient with me, answering all of my questions, and allowing me to teach her kids, in her classroom, my way. I wouldn’t be here without her. So thanks, Ms. Hamaty, you are still the teacher I look up to more than any other and I can never thank you enough for what you gave me.

An Open Letter to My Beautiful Students

2010-04-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

Today I saw your souls - raw and aching - as you found out about the shooting last night of the 12 year old brother of one of your own. I saw you surround him and grieve with him, pray with him and cry with him, and I was once again thankful that you have allowed me to be a part of your amazing community.

This week was Multicultural Week, a celebration of our uniqueness and the strengths we have together. You put together an incredible show, 22 acts that amaze and astound those of us who watch you. I watched you patiently teach the freshmen how to do the intricate dances, enthusiastically applaud even the performers you didn't know, and defuse potential tension with kind words instead of harsh ones. I saw you blossom as you realized that you can do things that others are in awe of and that your differences are indeed special.

And then, when you found out what had happened, it was your suggestion to change the focus of tonight's show to a benefit performance, you wrote and rehearsed a new song to start the show, you organized a candle-light vigil, and you made it all happen in one day.

I don't know why this happened, and I don't know how to make you feel better, but I wanted to let you know how much I hurt for you, and how much I wish you didn't have to deal with these things. I would tell you that it will get less painful eventually, but I know you aren't ready to hear that, and unfortunately, while the pain will lessen, it will never entirely go away. You will never be as innocent as you were yesterday and my heart breaks for you. I am amazed by your resiliency and I would help you carry this burden if I could.

Love,
Miss Dark Side

Someone Has a Button!

2010-04-28T21:38:00.000-07:00

After my last post, Bethany over at This, That, and T'Other kindly offered to make me a button celebrating the upcoming Teacher Appreciation Week. Check this out!

I am putting it in the sidebar, feel free to pick it up and spread the word! I hope you are planning your posts, I will be posting starting on Monday, May 3 and post every day that week through Friday, May 7.

Prepare to be Amazed

2010-04-22T21:18:00.000-07:00

Things have been going along pretty normally. Nothing super amazing and nothing really bad either, just....normal end of the school year craziness. Not that I am excused from going dark for almost a month, but still.

I did want to check in with anyone still reading, who might be interested in celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week with me. My plan is to post once a day during the week of May 3-7, each day celebrating a teacher I have looked up to in some way. I would love to have you join me! Write your own post and put the link up for us all! It is two weeks away, so you have time to think about it.

The teachers you honor can be ANY teacher, one you had back in elementary school, one you work with now, one you are related to....anyone. Just tell us why you think that teacher was (is) kind of awesome. Then come here and link back to your post so we can all admire that teacher too!

It would be totally fantastic if I had a super-cool button for you to snag, but I have no idea how to make one, so just pretend you have one. =)

Virtual Roses

2010-03-26T21:18:00.001-07:00

Besides the obvious fabulosity of it being Friday, I got a few virtual roses today that made me feel kind of neat.

my principal (and some other district people) met with the Somali organization I tutor with (for a different reason - long story), and in his words, they think I'm "pretty awesome."
I got my post-observation report from my observing principal today and it is detailed, quite complimentary, and she told me that she thinks I do a great job
one of my students that freezes while taking tests, but is really quite smart, came in after school for the specific purpose of telling me that she likes history for the first time in her life

These three small compliments will seriously make my entire week and carry me through to spring break. Tiny little virtual roses that mean so incredibly much to any teacher (or really, any person) - the thought that you are being appreciated.

Which brings me to the future. Teacher Appreciation Week is coming up the first week in May, and I would love to host a blog party...maybe doing something along the lines of what I did last year? If you don't read this blog regularly, or if you are new here, last year I had a week's worth of posts in which I talked about my favorite teachers from elementary to high school and thanked them. What do you think? Would anyone else be interested in doing this and all linking to each other? It gives us some time to think about it and plan for it

I'd love it if you joined!

Paging Captain Obvious

2010-03-22T20:44:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, my kids kindly gave me their latest disease and I have been recovering all week. So nice of them.....

Anyway, as I was browsing though CNN.com today during my prep, I saw this article from Time that caught my attention. The title of the article?

"Does Puberty Make You Stupid?"

Well, Captain Obvious, I'm gonna have to go with a big fat yes on this one.....

Although apparently it has now been proven by science. And mice.

Wednesday Somalia

2010-03-10T19:19:00.000-08:00

I have been wanting to get involved with some kind of volunteer work, and while I was initially looking for a women's shelter to volunteer with, I ended up volunteering with a Somali organization in the Seattle area. This organization has several tutoring programs that are set up with the local school district (not mine) and one of the programs is run thorugh an apartment complex that has a very large Somali population. As it turns out, this apartment is actually in MY school district, so several of the kids know me and I even have a few of them in my classes this year.

I was a little nervous going into this, since the thought of teaching AFTER a long day of teaching was a little daunting. But as it turns out, I absolutely love doing this. The kids that in my classroom are timid and demure are chatterboxes and stinkin' hilarious when you get them on their own turf. When I walked in last week, I was asked for help within 30 seconds. Unfortunately, it was with math, which is....an area of weakness for me, to put it mildly. But we figured it out together and I had so much fun that I ended up staying an extra half hour because I wasn't watching the time.

As part of my volunteer training, I learned some interesting things about Somalia. For example, did you know that the Somali language did not have a written version until 1972? And they haven't had a functional government since 1991. Education was mandatory to age 13 before 1991, but now only about 8% of kids go to elementary school and only 5% of kids go to school beyond that age. Can you imagine how hard it would be to go to school here in the US when you've never been to school at all in your own country? No wonder some of the kids we get struggle so much. In addition, 40% of the population of Somalia is dependent on external aid and Somalia is considered the worst humanitarian disaster in the world.

We aren't sure exactly how many Somalis are in this area, but Western Washington has the third largest Somali population in the United States, with an estimated population of between 40,000-70,000 in this area. Somalis are Muslim and fairly conservative, and the kids (especially the girls) are not allowed to stay after school for tutoring or whatnot, so they have a tutoring program in this apartment complex. There are 2 Somali men who run this program and they do the best they can, but there are between 40-50 kids that come and they all are there for help with their homework.

This is a population in our school that we have a tremendous amount of difficulty reaching. These are the parents we can't get hold of and the parents we literally cannot talk to because they don't speak English. Can you imagine how much of a difference it would make if those parents knew us BEFORE their kids reached high school? So right now, I am working on some fellow teachers to come with me and I am so excited to be doing this. So now you know where I'll be on Wednesday nights.....

By the way, I had to reinstall comment monitoring because I have been pretty seriously spammed over the past few weeks. I'll take it off again after a while, sorry!

Page Numbers

2010-03-06T17:33:00.000-08:00

The teacher down the hall from me is pretty creative with his language arts classes. One of the things that he does is have the kids make a picture that has the page numbers that they read and it has to illustrate the book they read. He puts the best ones in the hallway, and these were the ones I liked the best:

Dreams from my Father, by Barack Obama The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury One of the Percy Jackson and the Olympian series by Rick Riordan...but I don't remember which one. And then, of course, you have the kids who admit with brutal honesty and artistic flair....that they haven't read a dang thing.
This was supposed to be for The Shack, by William P. Young. It makes me laugh. =)

The Business of Schools

2010-03-02T19:05:00.000-08:00

I am privileged to eat lunch daily with an amazing group of people consisting of the majority of the language arts and social studies departments at my school. There are about 10 of us that consistently eat lunch together and while lunchtime topics vary (the Bachelor is a weekly discussion - although not from me - and we've been known to have heated discussions regarding proper grammer or what was on NPR on the way to school that morning) the discussion today naturally focused on the Rhode Island Central Falls High School, where most of the teachers and administration (88 total staff) were fired quite publicly by the school board.

This topic has been discussed enough in other places online, so I will not go into it here, except to say that there is probably quite a lot that is not being reported and that this move was part of a federal program that I think has extremely negative possibilities, called the Race to the Top.

However, as part of that lunchtime discussion, one of the other lunch people mentioned an article written by a Seattle teacher named Kathy Saxon. I don't know Ms. Saxon, but after reading the article, which I've linked to below, I'd certainly like to. She seems to know what she's talking about and says it articulately and exactly the way I'd like to say it. Let me state first that I am not opposed to changing the way I teach. I want to grow as a teacher and I want to be better at my job. I am very much aware of the fact that there are bad teachers, just as there are bad employees in ANY field and I fully support getting rid of those teachers, especially in high-need districts.

However, one of the things that seems to have been a target of the federal government lately is the idea that if a student is not successful, it is totally the fault of the teachers. Let's do some math, shall we? I only see my kids for 50 minutes a day, for 181 days TOTAL, if they are at school every day. That means I directly influence them for 9,050 minutes at the most. By the time they reach me (around age 16), they have been alive for approximately 8.5 million minutes - and shockingly, most of those minutes do not take place in a school environment. It's almost as if things like hunger, poverty, abuse and dysfunction have negatively impacted them.

I know that there are many people that have managed to bring themselves out of horrendous homelives, and become successful, but there's a reason that those people make the news when they do so. It is rare. Just like out of the millions of aspiring athletes and artists, it's rare to be an professional athlete or musician. There is a reason that low-performing schools are located in low-income areas. It's not the schools creating the low income, it's the low income areas creating the schools.

I know from personal experience that working in a low-income area is hard. It's much more difficult than working in a higher income area. The easy way out is to quit. To go to a school where the kids don't cuss you out for bumping into them in the hallway, where there aren't metal detectors at the door, and where most of the kids speak English. Teachers that stay in those low-income areas are generally speaking extremely dedicated, and incredibly invested in the success of their students. The stories I hear break my heart on a regular basis. I have multiple students that have spent time in jail, and I only teach sophomores. When there is a news story about a drive-by shooting or a gang murder, I know that the chances are better than good that one of my kids knows the people involved or was personally involved themselves. These are my kids. I teach here because I want to, and not because I'm lazy.

In her article, Kathy Saxon is talking specifically about merit pay, but I feel that it applies to so many topics in education. I can't directly quote her since I don't have her permission, but I would strongly encourage you to read the article. It is short but extremely well written and perfectly sums up why so many teachers are resistant to the programs being proposed at the federal level.

Go here to read the article

Diffendoofer Payoffs

2010-02-24T20:28:00.000-08:00

While I was at home over the break, I read a book that my mom had sitting on one of many piles of books and magazines. It was called Hooray for Diffendoofer Day and was an unfinished Dr. Seuss manuscript published posthumously by his publisher, using a children's book author and illustrator she knew. I told my mom that I would love to have a copy of that book if she ever saw another copy, because it is a great book for teachers. Essentially the book is a celebration of people who teach creativity. In fact, one particular line of the book that I remember says, "you can pass this test, because we've taught you how to THINK!"

This is something that all teachers want desperately above all else. And it is the most difficult thing to do. How do you teach something so ephemeral? And is it even possible to teach this when there is no supporting cultural or home structure to build on?

Every year that I have been at this Urban Public High School, I think that I have moved a fraction closer to this goal. Every year Clark and I work hard to do things that require thinking. We have spent a lot of time this year focusing on opinion questions. Questions that ask "why" and "how," and we've put a lot of emphasis on the grade coming from explaining the thought process BEHIND the answer.

I think it might be starting to pay off.

This week we have been talking about why the Islamic Empire and China lost power in the 1800s while Japan (a country we have not previously talked about in this course) suddenly becomes very powerful. Without any previous explanations, we gave them a reading on Japan and some fairly difficult questions to answer, and not only did the kids do them, they did them without complaining and most of them got finished. This tells me that they understood these questions and were capable of synthesizing information from multiple sources to come up with a coherent answer and then explain that answer.

I know that this is the whole point of teaching. But sometimes, it's the little things, the things that don't jump out at you, the things you realize at the end of the day, that suddenly make you think that you might actually be making a little bit of a difference.

And THAT is why I teach.

Lost in Space

2010-02-21T17:40:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure where the last two weeks went....sorry.

This is the last night of my one-week mid-winter break (don't be jealous...we don't get out of school until the end of June) and while it is always lovely to have a break from school, it is also kind of nice to get back into the routine. I tend to do better with routines, and I know the kids do too.

It is also nice to go back with everything graded, and the next month all planned out. I guess that means all my paperwork will get done on time for a change this month.

I'll try not to go so long between posts....

Quote of the Week

2010-02-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

From a female student - "Miss, are you wearing a belt?"
Me - "yesssss.....?"
Student - "Can I wear it?"

Um..... no. I need it to keep my pants up.

The Smell of Special College

2010-02-03T17:32:00.000-08:00

One of the classes I have twice a week is my advisory class. It is a class of twenty kids that I have had since they were freshmen. They are now juniors and we are trying to prepare them to launch themselves on the unsuspecting universe in about 17 months. One of their projects was to research two universities to find out things like tuition, entrance requirements, etc.

Each of my students was allowed to choose whatever 2 colleges they wanted, as long as at least one college was out of state. One of the kids in my class (I'll call him Randy), asked to do his research on technical or motorcycle repair colleges. He is a student that has very low grades, but always knows better than everyone else about everything, and he has a girlfriend I call Vampira because of her habit of leaving suck marks on his neck - 3 or 4 at a time on any given day.

Randy actually worked on his college research pretty well and did his presentation today during class. His second slide was a list of classes offered at this college, called Oaksterdam University.

And that's the moment I realized that he was doing a college presentation on a college devoted to MARIJUANA.

Thaaaaat's right, folks, this is a college dedicated to the "cannabis industry," according to their byline on the website. Classes include the following (my commentary in parentheses):

Horticulture (how to grow marijuana)
THREE different "methods of ingestion" classes (so.....a class on how to smoke a doobie?)
Advanced Grow (how to grow....bigger pot plants??)
Cannabusiness - YES that is the real name of the class!!!!! - (apparently, how to legally sell marijuana?)

There are about 15 different classes offered, but no worries, the standards are pretty low. There are no regular degrees offered, but you CAN get a get a Certificate of Attendance just for attending all your classes. If you want a higher degree? Well....you can get a Certificate of Completion WITH HONORS for attending all your classes AND doing your homework.

I can only imagine the homework assignments.

Meanwhile, Randy is giving his presentation and I interrupted him to ask, "are you seriously doinig a presentation on a pot college???" and his response was "yes! It's a growing industry!" at which point I just lost it.

The saddest part of all......I don't think his grades are good enough to get in.

The Unwelcome and Unloved

2010-02-01T19:17:00.001-08:00

I have been struggling to write lately...the Thing that has been happening in our family consumes my thoughts a lot and is providing a fairly solid writer's block that is proving difficult to get past. In addition, compared to last year's class, this year's sophomores are fantastic. I don't really have the caliber of stories that I did last year. And I am NOT complaining about that, just saying that I don't have as much blog fodder or angst to get rid of as I did last year.

Speaking of last year's sophomores, I have some returners...(insert very tiny and completely fake cheer here), including one of my 5 Annoyances from last year's Infamous 6th period. When I saw his name on my roll, I have to admit I got a knot in my stomach. He is enrolled in my 6th period again, and while I do like this 6th period about 87% better than last year's 6th period, it is still my most challenging class of the day. I had high hopes, since the word from his US history teacher was that he had grown up a little bit. But within 30 minutes of being in my class, he was already one warning away from being kicked out.

When I have a kid like this, I doubt my abilities as a teacher. I have a tenuous hold on that class as it is and while he deserves as good an education as the next kid, at what point does his disrupton become unfair to the rest of the class? At what point am I "justified" in having him removed? Does that point ever arrive? And why is it that some kids have the ability to make me doubt my abilities?

I will freely admit that I am carrying some baggage from last year with this particular kid, but I am trying to give him a fair chance, while still cutting him off at the pass. I want him to know that I am not going to put up with what he did in my class last year. So....we'll see.

We're halfway through the school year!

Seating Charts

2010-01-27T19:20:00.001-08:00

Today I asked my students to let me know if they had any requests when I make the seating chart for next week. I was thinking they should tell me if they need to sit up front or if there is someone that they shouldn't sit next to. One of my kids in third period handed me this:

Zumba Education

2010-01-25T21:34:00.001-08:00

I have been taking a zumba class with a friend once a week. Zumba, if you aren't familiar with it, is a workout latin dance class where the point is to move constantly for a solid hour, as opposed to becoming a better dancer. I blogged about it here. It has been fun, although I am pretty uncoordinated. I can't move BOTH my feet AND my hands at the same time...I'm just sayin'.

The usual instructor is this tiny waif of a woman who appears to be dancing even when she is just walking around. She teaches something like 8 zumba classes a week, including three in a row on Saturdays. But on Monday, she had a guest instructor that stepped in for a dance or two, and as a teacher, I instantly saw a huge difference. The guest instructor was very good. She moved like a panther and her hips did things I am pretty sure mine will never do. Ever.

But she watched herself in the mirror the entire time, not the class. She didn't once tell us what to do, just did things (fast) and expected the entire class to follow along. So of course, I started thinking about teaching in my classroom.

I wonder how often I am like the guest instructor, more enamored of hearing my own voice than I am interested in making sure my students actually get the concepts and understand what is going on. It is easy to just assume that everyone gets a concept, because especially in high school, the ones who don't get it, don't speak up. They sit there quietly and hope they get it, like I stood and swayed in the back of the studio because I didn't get it.

The regular instructor is a great instructor. She models every step slowly, then the class practices them slowly for several repetitions before putting them together and going faster. She circulates throughout the classroom, correcting steps, helping students individually, and is vocal with encouragement and warnings about what is coming up.

This is the kind of teacher I want to be. I want to be more encouraging, I want to be more aware of when my students "get it" or don't get it, I want to figure out ways to help students be more successful in my class.

So thanks, mysterious zumba teacher, for making this particular lesson stick in my mind.

Irritations

2010-01-21T18:31:00.001-08:00

This has been a great year, school-wise. I love these kids and things are really going well. However, there have been a few things that are just....irritating. Call them "teacher peeves:"

...when a student misses a day of school, does not make up their work, then on the test day, comes up to my desk and says "I wasn't here for this"
...when a student uses a cell phone during my class, and when asked to give it up (until the end of class!!), obviously passes me a completely different phone - and how do I know this? Because I've been picking up his phone most days for the last 2 weeks.
...when a student tells me that I cannot call home because he won't be allowed back in the house if he gets in trouble - and then I find out that what that means is that he will have to confess to sneaking his phone out of the house when he was restricted from using it at all (caring parents?? SHOCKING.)
...when my students don't just deal with their failures and move on - whether it is a cell phone being picked up, or lying to me and being caught, or being in complete denial about an uncompleted test.

This has all happened, with one student, over the last two days. He is normally a pretty great kid, a sweetheart, a generally hard worker, but over the last few months (since football ended) his grades have slipped and he is having trouble staying focused during class.

We had an IEP/ parent meeting yesterday and the entire way through the meeting he kept trying to make excuses and corrections. I said, "he didn't finish his test, he only did 2 of the questions" and his response was "no, I did almost the entire thing!" I said, "you need to start being responsible for yourself when you scew up" and he said "but that wasn't my fault!"

I don't know how to make this kid understand that he is not acting like an adult...and at this point, he's not even acting like he's 16.

Really, it's closer to 6.