Yo, Miss!

small schools and the union

2005-06-17T10:30:00.000-05:00

some gung-ho UFT folk today suggested that one of the reasons the city likes small schools is that the small stagff size (and generally less experienced staff) means the school chapters, and consequently the uion as a whole, are weaker. An interesting theory. Probably can't exaplin the small schools initiative, but may be a perceived perk on the part of management. Not that I'm a big union fan, but the administration ain't so hot neither.

no more teacher's dirty looks

2005-06-17T10:26:00.000-05:00

the students are done with school, and i am officially just another union worker, getting paid a lot to sit around and occasionally pack up some school supplies in boxes. a coworker told me i haven't looked this un-stressed since august...

undue aggravation

2005-06-17T10:21:00.000-05:00

cleaning up i found some old memos (fromthe old principal) that are real gems. here's the one that introduced the "teacher preference sheet," on which teahers rank their prefered "proffesional" (ie, non-teaching, extra) assignments for the coming year. Good luck if you can figure that out from what it says. Seems like she gave us a memo that was supposed to be for herself. The first two paragraphs are the best.

It is the responsibility of the principal to disseminate the attached memo each spring. Every teacher should receive one. Failure to comply with this regulation, may lead to undo (sic) aggravation.

It is the teacher's responsibility to return their sheet promptly. Failure to do so may release you from contractual obligations the same would be true if the sheet is only partially complate.

Besides the contractual issue, preference sheets are a good tool for understanding teacher's perceived strengths and weaknesses, likes and fears.

It should be quite helpful to you and your administration in planning the next school year.

Preference sheets should be saved for three years and should be used to justify assignments for the upcoming semester, in the event of grievances.

end of major combat

2005-06-10T08:10:00.001-05:00

this declaration may be premature - there's still all of today (during which all i have to do is help proctor other people's exams) and next wednesday (could be fun, could be chaos, but will def. be only one day...) and then the lovely children are done with school, and its just us teachers left, packing stuff up and sweltering in tthe ONLY module in the building without airconditioning. (we don't think this is coincidental, given te congenial relations between our old administrator and our host school.) We'll see what happens to this page - may depend on what i do next year. in any case, before i present my own reflections, here are some of my stdunets' reflections.

(no, not all the answers make sense given the question. we call this "literacy issues.")

1 - Do you think you got as much out of this year as you could have?
2 - What do you think you could have done to learn more?
3- What is one thing you are proud of from this class this year?
4- What is one thing you would change?
5 - Is there anything else you want to say?

Responses

from the student who sits silently until you go near her, at which point she mutters a string of insult under her breath before returning to her I-don't--give-a-sh** cocked head pose...

1 - No. Because u can't teach.
2 - get a better teacher
3 -we had fun
4 - The way the teacher acts
5 - no

from the little, loud girl in teh corner who has a good heart but gets dsitracted incredibly easily...

1- No I think I could of got more if the teacher would of not worked on the bad kids and more on the good kids.
2- less talking and more doing work
3-
4- less talking
5- no

from the smart girl who's too cool to do work and not confident enough to believe that she knows how.

1- No, because I wasn't being taught what I was supposed to
2- there should've been more experience teachers and stricter rules on students who are bad and teachers should've also stopped yelling, etc.
3- that we got to use the computers.
4- that there are a lot of inexperienced teachers
5- NO

from the pretty bright student who likes to give oyu attitude to impress her firends, but is really too afraid of her intense carribean mom to give you too much of a hard time by the end...

1- NO
2- I don't know may be the teacher stop yelling for every LiL' thing and start ignoring
3-
4-
5- Na Im good!!

from the sweet girld who's not too bright but not too slow, but misses about 1/2 of the days of school for undetermined reasons...

1-Yes, I think that I got as much as I could out of this year. because I think I tried my best.
2-Well what I think I could do to learn more is probably my attendance.
3- That I did all of my homework and that Im up to task.
4- The one thing I would change would be not being absent a lot.
5- I had good times and some bad times but Im glad that its the end of the school year!

from the recent jamaican immigrant who was all smiles until she realized that kids in America act insane

1- maybe some
2- I did all I could
3- English because Mr. A put me to do my owrk things that I didn't want to do
4-Probably going to another school or not changing the sheet for small school nowww
5- The only rule for wear regular cloth is don't wear hats in the building don't wearing anything pass yout knee

from the sweet girl who's quite sane considering her home situation, and really tries to do her work, but sometimes is just a big bundle of attitude and rudeness.

1- a little yes and a little no. I learned a lot but sometimes its a lilttle difficult. becuase I wasn't listnening as much.
2- Listen, more, and comprehend more just understand the teacher more as possible.
3- My last grade well the one befor last, and the reason that i can, hel[p people because i understand the work.
4-
5-

from the very, very "low functioning" student who makes you wonder how she got out of 4th grade without a special ed label.

1 - yes Because we learn lot of things
2- yes
3- that I'm giong my homework
4- My Garde
5- NO

from the smart boy who feels like he has to act like as much of an idiot as the other boys to be cool

1 - No, because most times I get bothered and don't feel like doing work.
2 - nothing
3 - Don't know
4 - A teacher.
5- I hate math

From the brown-nosing OCD girl who gets great grades because she does nothing but work, but is ultimately hardly the sharpest tool in teh shed, as they say...

1- No, in general (all of my lasse). I do not think that I got as much out of this year as I could have because I just feel that I could have been challenged more academically.
2- Nothing. I've done everything I could've possibly done.
3- One thing that I am proud of from this class was how much knoledge I gained during math class. (even though I could have been challenged a little bit more).

From the immature but quite presonable girl who sits inthe corner and draws all day (scrawled in huge letters)

1- No, this school is mad whack
2- Gone 2 6 flags
3- Nothing
4- Everything
5- How 'Bout' NO! (this is what she says and writes at least 5 times a day in my class...)

From the bright girl who "isn't feeling well" almost every day and likes to sleep in class.

1 - Well to tell you the truth, I haven't been paying much attention but for 10th grade, I will put all my effort in school.
2- Actually, I need to stop letting friends educated one with the words and stop getting off task.
3- Getting to realize that I need to elave the street at the street and take school as school.
4- I would like to go back and start the school year over and do my work
7. I want to pass at least with a 70.

From the very smart girl who likes to yell when she stops being the center of attention

1- No, because these teacehrs are slow.
2- Focus and do right.
3- All the fun we had
4- my school (smiley face)
5- yeah, I hate this school and the people in it.

From the teacher...
1-for the most part, yes, though I could have kept up my effort more at the end. I learned a heck of a lot... as for the kids, they didn't get as much as they could have and I didn't get the concomminant fuzzy feeling, as if I'd been successful...
2- chosen schools more wisely to learn more about being a teacher. this school was perfect for learning about organizational fucntion and disfunction...
3- making it through
4- try not to lose prespective, not yell as much.
5- maybe later...

the end.

three cheers for high stakes tests!

2005-05-23T20:33:00.000-05:00

apparently, more fourth graders are "meeting the standards."
from the first time i eahrd this story i knew there had to be a story behind it. call me cynical, or an unbeliever, or whatver. anyway, the nyt had this to say:

"The questions focused on whether this year's exam was easier and how much an overall decline in the number of students tested, especially among students with limited English skills, had contributed to the gains"

not useful. my math coach told me, however, that 3d and 7th grade have become the big years for questioning promotion - so that students who are far below standards no longer make it out of 3d grade. at least not on the first try. this is the second group of kids tested since that policy went into effect.
that might certainly explain this part of hte result:

Mr. Kadamus and other officials said they were especially heartened by the continuing decline in the number of non-special education students scoring at the very bottom - Level 1 out of 4, meaning that they are far below grade level.

Only 2 percent of such fourth graders and only 2.8 percent of those eighth graders fell into this category, a slight decrease.

now, if this is really the explanation, the effect should be short-lived, since they don't keep 15 year olds in 3d grade forever, and eventually you move on. however, i suspect that more very low performing students will be sent to special ed. this might mean that they get better services and perform higher (sun and roses - hooray for education!) given my atypically atrocious experience this year, i am tempted to think that it means the doe covers it tush re: "serving" all children and nclb, and doesn't even hve to show as much improvement with these "disabled" students, so who really knows what's happening?

(for the record, lest i be misunderstood: i do believe that there is such a thing as a learning disability, and that it can be remediated with good services.)

for the record

2005-05-20T12:03:00.000-05:00

i did not quit my job. i quit yelling. the original post was somewhat (intentionally) ambiguous at first but y'all have to read carefully - i think the rest makes it clear that i'm still at school, though on days like today when just no one listens at all to me ever i wonder why... anyway, sorry for the confusions.
this evening the kids are performing macbeth (modernized version). i keep thinking this is my last-minute chance to get at least a little nachas out of these little buggers... (i know, you can't really call 15 year olds little buggers, but the things you can call tehm are, in the parlance of our times, madd wrong.)

making (up) the grade

2005-05-17T15:00:00.000-05:00

well, in the 5th of 6 marking periods, i passed a hell of a lot of kids, and gave a hell of a lot more higher grades than ever, mostly just to prove to them that i was willing to do it. (none of this "you're going to fail me anyway" or "no matter how hard i work you still gonna give me a 65!") we'll see if this bites me later.

mr. 3 is trying to press me to pass as many as possible, for the school's sake, moslty (lots of failing kids means a nightmare 9th grade next year, and a lot of inspection from the region, but not necessarily more learning). So, for the record, this is how social promotion happens.
So, when 50 percent really deserve to pass, how do you decide which 20% to add on to that?

mr. three thinks you pick the kids who do work and are not evil, whether or not they can do the math at grade level.

math coach thinks you pick the kids who know it and can function ina higher class, but refuse to behave and/or do work.

i am pretty sure that you don't pass teh kids who do nothing or the kids who make it impossible to teach. i am also pretty sure that you pass the kids who try and have learned somkething this year, even if they're still years below grade level. its mostly the kids who do very little work but know everything, and the kids who do a lot of work but know nothing, that leave me confounded...

more from mr 17

2005-05-17T14:56:00.000-05:00

today mr 17 decided that rather than accept a worksheet with his hands, he was going to grab it with his mouth. not really knowing what to do with that, i said "should we just call you rover?"
"you tryin to play me?!"
"you're holding paper in your mouth. i don't really know what to do besides try and play you."
at this point, realizing he'd lost, he tried to get his friend in on his defense and repeated the whole conversation. after which the friend smile, said "she's calling you a dog," and shared a conspiratorial finally-we-shut-up-the-guy-who-never-shuts-up moment with me. or at least that was my take on it...

yo mama

2005-05-17T14:51:00.000-05:00

some of my students, ring-led by mr. i'm-17-and-have-accumulated-3-credits-since-the-first-time-i-tried-to-pass-ninth-grade-many-years-ago, decided that rather than their usual teenage boy bathroom-humor antics, tey were going to "talk smart." so, instead of telling me to go away, when i came over, or making jokes about me smellin, or whatever they would have done, they tried to scare me away with big words. mr. 17 started, as he often does, to talk about something random, hoping i would get bored/exasperated and walk away:
"that reminds me of an antidote - one time..."
well, two can play at that game.
"mr. 17 (i used his "government" name, which got him upset already...), that was a common malapropism."
"say what?"
"that was a common malapropism. you meant to say anecdote."
(cutting me off) - "what'd you say about my mother?"

i guess talking smart only goes so far.

cold turkey

2005-05-17T14:47:00.000-05:00

i quit. yelling. this has made me much happier. much much happier. it has also made my children happier, though htey get away with a bit more. but they are also easier to bring around when the time is right. anyway, this is very exciting. though its only been a week, and there are four more... (or maybe more than that, if the superintendant ever decides what she wants schools without regents-taking students to do during "Regents week," when all high school kids rightfully expect to be free for the summer...)
i also told my boss that i will not be back at this school next year, and he's been quite nice about it all and given me some good suggestions for other options.

though its been forever and even those wh know me may have given up on this blog as a useful source of inromation about my life, i've decided to waste some of this afternoon updating, hopefully with happier stories than i was getting used to...

she looked fruity

2005-04-29T14:30:00.000-05:00

in her pink buisiness suit. well, to be precise, sort of an electric coral color. anyway, that was the best f-you my boss could muster to the world (or, al;ternatively, the best she could do for putting on a happy face) on her last day of work one week ago. since then, i've been on vacation and not thinking about school.
except that i graded the tests i gave last week - the first normal distribution* of grades in months! this might say more about my ability to design tests than anything else, but i think more kids have actually been doing work...
*not in the technical sense - it's skewed at the bottom b/c i gave about 7 (out of 40-ish) zeros for copying. but just that a decent number passed, and only the really clueless got in the 20s...

neat math teaher trick, btw: when solving equations for one or two variables, give the same problems (same numbers and everything) with different variables. eg, 2s = 12, then 2r = 12. this keeps all answers the same while easily catching copy-ers...

the end.

odds and ends

2005-04-20T18:45:00.000-05:00

its strange how quickly a change in leadership changes my entire life. i mean, mr 3 has been around (still concurrent with sitting duck ms. 1) for four days and already he's been in my room, talked to me after calss, and generally helped me get a handle on things and stop making myself quite so miserable. really amazing. just good karma or something.

my mentor urges us all to "make peace" with ms. 1. because "you can't just let her leave like this....from a human perspective." which is true. also because "you never know where she'll end up - don't burn your bridges." (if i haven't mentioned, my mentor is a fluent but not native english speaker, so when she gets a hold of an idiom she uses it a lot. she must have said "don't burn your bridges" about 15 times over our last two meetings. mostly in slightly off contexts...) not sure how to do that. smile and say hallmark...

the one thing about mr. 3 is that he by no means tshares the "new visions for small schools" that are supposed to guide schools like mine. (and on which some of our funding is contingent, to make it real...) so he runs it like a big school in a small school body. i mean, at least it runs, but it's not always quite right. a propos of this, maybe some time i'll write about the contrast between the way he handled a certain student/family situation and the way some of the more progressive new-visionsy teachers handled the same situation when he wasn't there. i think i prefer their way, actually, though i'm not sure either will be effective...

(basics of the story: what do you tell and uncle who took in his delinquent nephew against the wishes of his wife when he finds out that nephew stole from him and lied about it to his face?)

vacation looms. sleep is the bestest. ("Miss M, that's not a word!" they would say...)

overheard

2005-04-14T19:34:00.000-05:00

some things that happen when your classroom is right across from the principal's office:
1- she sees all the chaos and tries to fire you midyear. (i had forgotten about that util one of my coworkers foudn a stack of copies of letters from the LIS [local instructional supervisor] to her, some of which were about how you can't just up and fire a math you've given only satisfactory ratings to. anyway, in case i felt bad about anything re: her now i remembered how little i owe her...)
2- she says things you can hear but aren;t supposed to.
for example, today, she was talking to a furniture deliverer person on the phone and said "i resigned but you can talk to Mr. 3." i was sort of shocked, then kind of put it out of my head as not-even-the-wierdest-thing-that-has-ahppened-so-far and went about my day, forgetting. someone else confirmed, on condition that i "act surprised" when i hear officially, that she is in factleaving, rather soon.

never boring.

in other news, i almost cried in front of my kids twice in the last two days. i may be looking at another mental health monday ;)

in other other news, well, maybe later...

2005-04-13T21:15:00.000-05:00

My education professor basically told me that if i can't get a job at Bronx Science or the like I should quit b/c I suffer from "intellectualis snoberensis." While that might not have been the nicest way to put it he may be right for other reasons. I tried to convince him that I am happy working for people who are not as smart as I am if they are competent (cf principal three). He may or may not have believed me. The elephant in the room, of course, was being too much of a snob for the kids, which I certainly was not at the beginning but might be by now, just b/c they are so awful* to me...

*I am trying to pinpoint when I started taking things personally, which was a big mistake. I think I did so, though, b/c when I didn't take things personally it was hard for me to care enough to impose serious consequences, whence comes chaos**... More on that another time, perhaps.
**of which i have none now, of course ;-)

The Other Math Teacher at my school stays sane by not caring. The questions is whether I would want to do that if I could. I think not.

2005-04-11T20:22:00.000-05:00

someone detached my classroom's door handle and threw it out the window. i think that speaks for itself, and i have to go feed my meter...

ps

2005-04-08T15:09:00.000-05:00

The woman facilitating my advisory* asked
The girl who wrote "Its peaceful there because the people know how to act. They don’t be acting ghetto like vandalizing and graffiting things. They take care of the neighborhood. " refered to her neighborhood as "all white people" or some such.
The woman facilitating my advisory* asked: "do you live there?"
"yes"
"So then it's not just white people, is it?"

*what i get for teaching 5 in a row, well out of contract, is that someone else (importantly, someone extremely awesome whom the kids love) runs my advisory once a week, and she gets them to do some amazing stuff...

growing up ghetto* - READ THIS if you have a soul

2005-04-08T15:02:00.000-05:00

*sorry for the horrible pun. though obviously not sorry enough to remove it.

anyway, these are some excerpts from what my advisory (small group of 15 i meet with 2x per week for "socail and emotional suport") in response to the prompt:

~How do you see the world?
~How do you see your neighborhood?
~What if you had the power to change things?

(with the possible exception of some undetected typos, all errors are from the students' originals.)

I see my neighborhood as a nice place because around where I live it is filled with Jewish people. It is also a kind of quiet place to. I say this because if there was a lot of black people it will not be a quiet. It will be a lot of gang members a lot of gang members a lot of people shooting at other people and people selling drugs. I would wnt these black people to learn that being quiet like Jewish people would make the world better. Black people not selling drugs and shooting at people that does not do bad things.

Its peaceful there because the people know how to act. They don’t be acting ghetto like vandalizing and graffiting things. They take care of the neighborhood.

I see my neighborhood mostly as lost kids without a future. A lot of the teens in my neighborhood worry about drugs, gangs, sex, money, fights, and the latest jordans. They don’t care about school. If I had the power to change that I would make all of them like school and act like civilized kids. I would send all of them to Boot Camp, until they would learn how to behave. There they would learn how to respect others and how to take care of their environment.

I see the world coming to an end. I see my own kind killing each other everyday. Selling drugs. Ialso see the world in a good way some people going to school getting an education trying to make it in life. If I had the chance to change it I would make fun activities for people.

my neighborhood is bad and good. They smoke and drink cause they sell it to teens. The kids there are cool with me and my family. Mama is worrys about me and my sis. That is why the po-po is around my neighborhood. My neighborhood is getting better now.

I see my neighborhood as nothing but gang members, sometimes quiet, sometimes negative, sometimes positive. Boys walking up and down the streets smoking weed and trying to be a G. you see people beating on on each other for NO reason. My neighborhood have party, sometimes basketball tornaments. In my hood people look out for each other. Nothing more nothing less.that’s the good thing bout my hood. We stick together. There’s a lot of crip gangmembers who have gang fights with other gangs. Gunshots at nights, rapists is all. This is my exactly how I see my HOOD!

If I had the power to change thing there wouldn’t be drugs in the street, no gangs, no killing, nothing that would harm us.

the world is not kind, its full with violence. People don’t look out for one another no more. People kill for money without careing, not realizing that we are just killing among iselfs. If I had the power I will take away money and make people exchange things. I believe trading will make a lot easier.

How I see my world

I see my world with souls so dirty,
I see my world with girls being flirty.
Turn the block and I see guns,
I don’t think all I do is run.
In my world I see girls selling their bodies,
Sometimes I think, is it a job or is it a hobby?
In my world I see wars + violence,
I just think why can’t their be peace and a lot of silence.
If I had the power to change the world,
I would stop the violence and the boys hitting girls.

And I thought I could just coast until the end of the year...

2005-04-05T21:17:00.000-05:00

Apparently if you fail 70% of your students you get a special visit from the Regional Instructional Supervisor for Mathematics to help you strategize on how to improve student achievment before the end of the year.
Ms. RIS has been featured here before. She is not my favorite technocrat, but whatever. Her first priority: sit down with the other math teacher next week to help him create an acceptable word wall. Her second priority: sit down with me the week after that (aka the week before april break, 1.5 month before the kids stop coming to school...) to start planning to implement a particular strategy that she thinks will help engage students.

Anyway, speaking of word walls, its true that now that mine is all up to snuff nobody bothers me about the chaos in my room. Just so long as it's a print rich environment. Fantastic.

In other news, today was an awful day, but no need to display the gory details here just yet.

for all the randi weingarten fans out there...

2005-03-28T18:33:00.001-05:00


good thing i look at my bluk email folder or i might have missed this:

Statement from Randi Weingarten on Chancellor Klein's remarks on
religious observance days:

"We're deeply disturbed that the DOE would take such an anti-religious
position like this. They have never done anything like this before on
religious holidays that we can think of, and indeed when we raised this
concern in April of last year they assured us that 'of course
individual staff members who need the day off for religious reasons can and
should apply for a religious observance day under the applicable
Chancellor's Regulation.'

"We are advising our members that anyone who wants to take a day off
Holy Thursday and/or Easter Monday as a religious observance should do
so. If they are disciplined for taking the day, we will take the
appropriate action to support them, beginning with filing a grievance."

>
for the union makes us strong...

lessons learned last week

2005-03-28T18:06:00.000-05:00

four day weeks are better than five day weeks.
four day weeks are even better when you take monday off. (the kids liked the substitute more than me, though...)
teaching on 2.5 hours of sleep is possible and not even necessarily disastrous (i happened to have a very good day doing it...)
karate without sleep is significantly more difficult.
other things too. i forget them now.

2005-03-21T21:53:00.000-05:00

i took my first mental health day. well deserved, and rather uneventful. i slept until noon, bought food, baked, filed important documents, got the oil changed in my car, paid bills, hung posters, etc. unfortunately, i neglected to spend enough time getting ready for tomorrow and am now in my usual it's-10 pm-and-i-don't-have-a-lesson-yet frenzy. but that's ok. no school this friday ;)

2005-03-17T17:35:00.000-05:00

Today I had a few of those moments that make people really love teaching. The best was probably watching the girl who regularly does the one-two-step and/or sings in full voice during math class - she's uber-charismatic, making her both delightful and a "calssroom management" nightmare - read a poem she wrote out loud to our advisory class. These kids have some serious souls.

supervisors: a comparative study

2005-03-09T21:59:00.000-05:00

a propos of Principal One's anticipated return on Monday, I thought I would share the following:

The Problem: My blackboard, owing largely to the cheap erasers my school chose to buy, would get very dusty and hard to read. When I wahsed it, it would be less dusty, but hard to erase, so previoiusly written things would still be visible, causing much confusion. The optimal time for readability was usually a day or two after washing.

Response One:
Pricipal One might be described as anal retentive and placed a memo in all of our boxes informing us that blackboards should be washed every day after school. She then came into my room and commented on my board. I told her about the problem - how washing made it less readable. It took two or three exaplnations for her to actually believe thsat I was making a point other than "I don't want to wash the board."

Solution: unwilling to give up on the spotless blackboard ideal, she told me that if I couldn't wash the board daily and use it daily, I should use the overhead projector instead. (When we were going to get new bulbs was not discussed...)

Response Two:
Principal Three asked me about my dusty board. I told him the problem.

Solution: He said "That's because you';re not washing it right," and told me what to do to do it right. sicne then, i;ve washed the board once a week or so and everything works nicely.

The contrast is only exacerbated for less trivial concerns...

on my appearance

2005-03-07T20:51:00.000-05:00

well, i straightened my hair. i was thinking i should do it every few months just b/c i enjoy the flurry of compliments, but that's a separate issue. When i walked into school i was instantly surrounded by half a dozen girls, litearlly shrienking, jaws dropped, circling me like you circle a sculpture in a museum to get a full view, but afraid to touch. (two girls* later had no such compunctions and actually grabbed my hair to feel it as the complimented it...) i got a lot of compliments of the form "your hair looks great, now all you need is ____" Some things that filled in the blank:
~your eyebrows waxed
~makeup
~contacts
~a new wardrobe

a subtle lot, they are...

but in a funny way if these girls respect you for your appearance they may be more likely to respect the rest of you too...

The social worker likes to say, in response to such stories, "they're so juveniele!" The funny thing is, he says it in the tone of judgment passed, not simple statement of fact.

*one of whom has told me more than once that I have "a problem with my hands" because i do things like tap people on the shoulder to get their attention.

you do the math

2005-03-07T20:49:00.000-05:00

six teachers, two absent. four classes running simultaneously all day. no subs.
tired.

2005-03-06T16:26:00.000-05:00

if you know any teachers (or are one), here's a neat site:
they show videos of model lessons, etc. i did one of them myself (workshop 3) actually. needless to say, it went a bit differently than the eager-beaver camera-in-the-room version, but it was still pretty good...

2005-03-06T15:45:00.000-05:00

for the record, i smiled a lot more at students this week than i have in the remember-able past. other good things are happening too. other other things are also hapenning, eg: Principal One is coming back a week from Monday. "Whatever else," one of my coworkers likes to say, "working for the Board of Ed is never boring."

A conversation with another teacher:
She: "I told my kids I would give them all zeros if they give me any trouble."
Me: "My kids just don't care anymore."
She: "That's because you don't care."

Mussar well taken. but how does one refill the chessed coffers when they are so depleted?

Time to top talking about teaching and prepare to do some of it. (yay, working on Sunday! my favorite!)

on leaving

2005-03-02T21:33:00.000-05:00

Principal Three is quite personable, in an old-school-NY-Jewish way (kind of like everyone over 50 in the Board of Ed). One of the things he does, (I'm never sure if its out of compassion/unproffessional pity or some motivational good-cop routine...) is mention how our situation is extraordinarilly awful. In one such discussion, he said, "To tell you the truth, I'm surprised you're still here."

I mentioned this to my mentor, who provides me with quite minimal actual suport, but at least can be fun to kibbitz with at times... (This is noteworthy since the first time i saw here i was ruder that i have been to anyone i can think of in the past year or so, and she made me cry.*)
She said it means that I must "really love teaching." I said it means I don't like quitting things in the middle. She said I should teach in Private School next year.

A conversation (modified for readability) with my math coach a while back ( i forget if i mentioned this...):
"Rumor has it a great teacher is thinking of leaving the board of ed." (I had mentioned this thought to the other member of the math dept, and things get around...)
(shrug, sarcastic) "I don't know what you're talking about."
"It would be a pity to see you leave because of office politics."
"Yeah, but I just need to be happy."
(sarcastic) "You mean you don't like yelling every day?
...Anyway, ______ (good school with high-functioning kids) is going to be looking for two more math teachers, and I can tell you when interviews roll around and put in a good word for you."
"thanks."

This was, of course, the first nice thing anyone directly involved in supervising me has said in some time.

Said math coach also likes to talk about "next year XYZ inspiring thing will happen." Today, though, it made me kind of sad.* Like planting the carob tree and dying before it grows up, expect its not a carob tree, but a tomato plant or something that grows much faster, and instead of dying you just move away in the middle of the gardening season. and overdevelop metaphors.

My College professor tonight (again, not verbatim, because I am losing my mind...): "I don't want you to want to decide at the end of this year that you want to quit for a whole list of reasons, and none of them are instructional, and I know there are a lot of them..."
This same man told me the last class that smart people make the worst teachers. Well, actually, he told the whole class in reference to me... It's true, is the thing.

What makes me sad, though, is that at this point my reasons may be instructional. I'm not sure I want to say that I'm weak or unskilled, but I just don't want to be (rahter, to get) good at the things I would have to be good at to succeed anymore. I think I could be OK, but I just don't want to. Part of that is having ompletely lost sight, by having lost the experience, of the fun/inspiring/touching parts of teaching. But also, the things you have to spend a lot of energy on to get them are not matched up with my strengths (this was always true) or my primary interests (this is burnout).

I still toy with the idea of teaching kids who are more like me subjects I care about.

*My mentor's best advice lately was "stop getting so weepy!"

The end.

(PS - i would try and stop writing in manic moments, to improve readability and minimize embarassing myself, but lately all my moments are manic if i'm not asleep. which brings up the unfortunate circumstance, hitherto unmentioned on these pages, of my recent tendency to wake up very early without an alarm, after sleeping and eating very little the day before... There is more to be said on the physical symptoms of mental distress. perhaps later.)

2005-03-02T21:17:00.000-05:00

I think a lot of things have happened that deserve comment, but I forget what they are, so I'll settle for reporting on today.
First, my principal observed me and I was pretty happy with it until I overheard his comments to my math coach (who, for the same lesson, thought it went ok...). He spoke to me briefly about the lesson (and he made the critical mistake of not starting with "you had this great idea but... which, compounded with my general inability to think for at least an hour after a day of teaching, made it extremely difficult for me to listen and respond like a sentient and fluent-in-English human being...) and said he was going to write it up as an informal observation, which makes me worry that had it been formal he would have had to give me an unsatisfactory rating. On the other hand, at least that would make my decisions for me...

Fastforward two periods and I had the pleasure of covering a "health class" for which the teacher had not left a viable lesson plan or class roster, so i had kids floating in and out and had no idea where they were supposed to be, or what i should make them do. SOmewhere between me saying a girls name literally 40 times to get her to look at me and stop yelling (i tried quietly, near her, far away, angry, calm, to the point that everyone around her was sick of hearing "shaniqua" the way you get sick of hearing a car alarm...) and dealing with a girl who hit my arm lest i take her cheese-puffs someone stole the keys to the laptop cart. my immeciate worry was what the hell am i going to do for my second period. the second worry was how to get them back. in the end, i had to sit through a lecture from Mr. Three about my class being out of control and being responsible and whatnot (the kind of lecture in which all you want to say is "it was Mr. S who left he keys in out!" which it was, but there's no point...) and somehow someone returned them, leaving me in a very foul mood, as well as unprepared for class.

After school I got strongarmed into agreeing to teach five in a row two days a week, and four in a row two more (three in a row is the contractual max, and five ina row is really murder), which is the kind of thing that makes union representatives cry, and with good reason...

on the way to college i was in a bad state. during class i formulated my current woes as follows: i have never had to spend so much time doing things my heart is completely not in. in fact, my feelings toward teaching at this point, and certainly toward grad school, are very much like my feelings toward HS chemistry. it always happens when i am tired and i don't care about it at all.

that's all for now. if i had written this yesterday it would have been much happier, so i suppose indeference to those feelings i should note that mathematical learning has actually been taking place, and some students even seem to like me again...

2005-02-14T20:42:00.000-05:00

one of the things that has happened with Principal Three is that there has been a constant parade of parents in and out as their children do ridiculous things. One kid's foster mom was called after he disrupted my clss by mimicking Mr. Three himself. When parents come up, everyone likes to comment, and usually they think people's mom's are pretty and say things like "so waht happened to you?" In this case, "that was you're mom, right? why don't you look like her?" was particularly ill-advised...

My mom used to sing me a lullaby, which contained the lyrics (translated from Hebrew):
"three horsemen are coming for you. one died by the sword, one died along the way, and one forgot your name." A lot of our "bad" kids are leaving,and the rest are maybe starting to get scared. But it sort of feels like that song. One got stabbed and had to go. One hit me and had to go. One's left, but don't worry, his foster mom is threatening to kick him out so he'll be good...

also, for the record, the number of teenage boys who have cried in front of teachers in jsut the past few weeks is truly astounding. their emotionallives are such messes. alas!

In other news, I got valentines day cookie from a student who announced that he has a crush on me. fantastic...

clipboards, ps

2005-02-09T22:27:00.000-05:00

For the record, the frustrating thing about being treated dismissively by super-supervisors is not just that it's rude, but that it's Bad Management. I mean, why give feedback second hand when you could give it first hand and something might actually be learned? And why treat people in a way that predisposes them to dislike your advice?

I recently came up with the following trite summation of things, which I think is silly but somewhaty true:

The public sectore, expecially its floundering foire into education, seems to have an obsession with "acting like the business world." The idea is to act like there are consequences to poor performance- a good idea, I dare say.
I think, though, that in successful private sector companies, everyoine just knows that something seriosu (money, their job, etc) is at stake, and then management uses positive incentives and other effective forms of motivation to compliment the underlying anxiety.
In the shcool system, every teacher (expect maybe for social studies ; ) ), especially in a school like mine, knows that their position woudln't be easy to fill with anyone better. They also know exactly what raises they will get exactly when, having nothing to do with their performance (God Bless the UFT...). Yet, management continually tries to make them feel anxiety by yelling and making demands without praising or giving compliments. A semblance of "accountability" with highly-downgraded teeth. Except, of course, for whomever happens to be the one fall-guy...

On second thought, fear of being the fall-guy does get things done. It just makes people miserable. Oh yeah, and it makes them leave the system. Which is really, really, unspeakably bad for the children who end up with first and second year teachers for much of their careers...

So yeah, it's not jsut the personal unhappiness, its the observation of the completely unecessary and counterproductive systematic unhappiness...

Leaving no child behind...

2005-02-09T21:58:00.000-05:00

A coworker forwarded me an article about No Child LEft BEhind. I'm not sure about all of it, but some points I have something to say about are:

1. The No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) uses the phrase'scientifically based research' 111 times and demandssuch research from educational researchers, but no scientifically based research-or any research--supportsthe law's mandates. There is no research that supportsNCLB's contention that the way to improve schools is totest every child every year and to fail schools anddistricts that do no make the required Adequate YearlyProgress (AYP). In fact, research argues against theuse of high-stakes testing as an instrument of schoolreform.

On a related note, a teacher of mine from H.S. told me (I have yet to verify it on my own) that there is no reasearch supporting "differentiated instruction."
The article seems to claim that scientific reaserach is good, and NCLB is bad because it's policies aren't research-backed. Unless the point is *solely* to point out an inconsistency, which is just petty...
I wonder, though, whether educational policy should be discarded if not research based.
Reserach only evlauates what we try, and we try things based on philosophy, not at random. Well, I sometimes try things at random, but persistent inconsistency is a bad idea and leaves the kids frustrated. Of course, solid research on effectiveness whould trump philosophy, but that usually takes a while to accumulate...
Equally of course, no universal mandate will be effective.

2. NCLB lacks research support because NCLB dependssolely on punishment. As schools fail to make arbitraryAYP the law imposes punitive, increasingly harsh sanctions. The law is in the tradition of 'the beatingswill continue until morale improves.'

Cheesy Educator Q.O.D.:
"Positive reinforcement changes behavior. Negative reinforcement only stops behavior."

6. Any school that fails to make AYP for twoconsecutive years must offer all students the option totransfer to a 'successful' school. Thus, if a school'sspecial education students fail to make AYP one yearand its English language learners fail the next year,the school must offer all students the 'choice option'in spite of the fact that the school worked for theother 36 student categories. In cities, the choiceoption is a farce. This year, Chicago had 200,000students eligible, but only 500 spaces for them. In2003-2004, 8,000 New York City students chose totransfer. After taking flak from principals whose schools received these students, the city deliberately flouted the law, permitting only 1,000 transfers. Thusfar, the Department of Education has not responded. It has also happened that children leaving a 'failing'school were actually enrolling in a lower scoring'successful' school. If a school's
special education students or English Language Learner students fail tomake AYP, the school fails even if it is doing awonderful job with all remaining categories.

In defense of the Board of Ed, for once, this criticism does not take into account the effect on established schools of a sudden influx, often an influx of students from a different population than the school traditionally served. (eg, students with under-developed social and academic skills - not the students who usually get into the good schools...) What happens to a school of 3000 with a relatively high level of trust between students and staff when you get 500 kids in who don't know what to do with adult responsibilities and need a different, more restricitve, structure* to fucntion well? Not to mention that you have that 17% increase in the number of students passing each other in the hall, sharing the gym, etc...
Optimists think the good schools will cope well with their "growing pains."
Others think the city will just destroy the few chances at a good education left...

*A simple example: In most high schools with higher-functioning students, they just walk from class to class, or to lunch, or whatever. Some students, however, use any unsupervised time in the hallway to do things like, as happened in the Middle School I work next to on monday, set bulletin boards on fire...

...one study found that the three-year-olds of professional mothers used more words when interacting with their mothers than mothers on welfareused in interacting with their three-year-olds.

For anyone who rides the bus in low-income neighborhoods, not at all shocking, unfortunately.

Not to mention that I honestly feel that some of my students are being "left back" by being forced to learn algebra (for some: sit in algebra class) when they really *want,* and are old enough (in some cases, 17) to have decided that they want, to go to trade school and do something they actually like...

Full text: "The Seven Deadly Absurdities of NCLB"

The Clipboard Army

2005-02-09T21:42:00.000-05:00

They visited me today. A woman with, ironically enough, the same name as our 14 year old attempted murderer. Taking copious notes and lookng official and disapproving. Of course, she makes a B-line for the table of 3 students, one of whom has been in school for two days since October, and one of whom is arguably the least motivated student in the room. She calls me over and starts talking to me like one would talk to a child. Asking me to label the a and y axes in the same tone of voice a bitter and frustrated teacher might use for a student who actually doesn't know what they are. Not asking me to teach them (eg, by eliciting what I know they know, but are too turned-off to produce without serious prompting), but to show her that I know them, it seemed.

Then, in the same tone "what is the rise?" I explained in words, drew a bracket around the section in question, etc. All the things math teachers do. "Could you draw an arrow?" I'm not really sure what that means. "Draw an arrow to show us where the rise is." Confused. She did it for me. Of course, it's misleading to draw an arrow that looks like it's pointing at a specific place, but whatever. "Now draw an arrow to the run." I pointed and said "this whole thing is the run," moving my finger along it. No good, there has to be an arrow, not a bracket. So she drew that one too.

Of course, she's too high up in the Region to talk to me about what she saw, so she pulled aside one of my mentor-types to tell him what to tell me. "Rise" and "run" are too abstract, apparently. Which I know. Which is why I spent three days calling them "change going up" and "cahnge going over" and such things. But she, like the student she was talking to, wasn't there that day...

One good feeling was that the whole conversation, aside from raising my blood pressure, made me realize that the rest of the kids *have* learned- they do understand more abstract expressions than they did 2 weeks ago.

In other news, sometimes I wonder whether I just have a problem taking criticism. Likely. (Though I have been genuinely affected by criticism when it's phrased constructively and in the context of a pre-existing relationship...) But it doesn't help to have my math classroom condescendingly micromanaged by an inflated former-English teacher.

I think that's enough venting about that.

___

Principal Three said something about "when they get out of here after this week," referring to all the regional hordes, he could get something done. I thought to myself: even he, by far the most effective person so far, may not realize that something equally time-consuming always seems to come up...

2005-02-09T21:41:00.000-05:00

On conversion to Judaism:

"I wanna be Jewish - then you don't have to pay taxes!"

on one leg

2005-02-02T21:59:00.000-05:00

lots of things have happened. the most important/absurd is that our interim acting administrator got her own school and will be leaving us. by monday. the region pulled some suit from behind a desk to administer us until our original principal comes back. there's not much i can say about that.

for the record

2005-01-25T20:09:00.000-05:00

there is a staff member at my school named Miss Fortune. ;)

weapons, ps

2005-01-24T19:06:00.000-05:00

i neglected to mention that

1- the student who brought the knife to school was none other than our favorite Illiterate Kid (henceforth, IK), and that

2- he brought it for a Specific Person (henceforth, SP). Now, SP has huge impulse control problems - I don't even have him in class and he's sworn at me, walked away while I was talking to him, completely ignored or mocked my instructions, etc, on numerous occasions, including threatening to throw s/t at me today. I've had just enough negative interactions with him to dislike him, but not enough overall interactions (since he's not in my class) to love him nontheless... (This to preface my reaction to the following occurence:)

Today, IK stabbed SP in the chest.

IK fled the scene. SP seems to be OK - well, as ok as anyone is when they get stabbed in the chest. I almost melted for him when I saw him sitting in the nurse's office before the paramedics came, looking skinny w/o a shirt on, trying really hard not to cry.

As I walked away I realized that I had been hardly phased by a stabbing, which itself shcoked me. I'm still processing things, but the longer I think the closer I get to being horrified. Still, that initial sensory overload was absent - there's just nothing too insane/awful anymore.

I think it really got put into better perspective for me by a coworker who pointed out that IK had committed nothing short of attempted murder.

>>>

Funny, i still feel some pity for IK - after all, he's basically retarded and his whole situation is a travesty. I wonder what it's like to be his mom right now...

"gu-nit"

2005-01-17T18:00:00.000-05:00

What one of our students wrote to decorate the nameplate he was asked to create at the beginning of the year.
Perhaps a better role-model than 50 cent is this uber-vanilla G-Unit alternative?

2005-01-15T20:28:00.000-05:00

I gave a quiz, then went over the hardest problem on it [which was:
if n - 5 = 15, n could be: (a) -20 (b) -10 (c) 10] one girl exclaimed, honestly expecting to get partial credit, "Ms. M, I got the right answer but them my sister (she has a twin in the class) told me it was wrong so I switched it!"

That's up there with the student who asked, "how I got a 30 and she got a 80 and I copied off her?"

2005-01-15T20:25:00.000-05:00

Number of students who refused to take their math tests on Friday: 3
Number of those who have previously expressed interest in passing my class: 3

good tidings?

2005-01-15T20:10:00.000-05:00

on thursday, i didn't yell at all.

weapons, etc

2005-01-09T23:13:00.000-05:00

One of the beauties of being "temporarily housed" in a middle-school building is the absence of "scanners" (metal detectors). So, on Friday, a student brought a knife (machete sized) to school. Some other boys hid it in a classroom, where it was found, and they were all searched. In one of their bags was found some sort of hair dryer/glue gun hybrid looking contraption that apparently has some use in Auto repair, and also happens to look like a gun from far away. The student on whose person it was found was reminded that if he pulled such a thing out in the presence of police, he would likely get shot, and then suspensions were had by all.

The best part of the story was that the way the deans were keeping records of all the objects in question was by photocopying them. Talk about ghetto.

2005-01-09T19:01:00.000-05:00

One of the things I actually like about the educational philosophy being fed to me is the focus on student performance as the indicator of effective teaching. (I do remember teachers who would say "I taught this" when no one had learned it. That's a no-no...)
Anyway, part of this is "performance standards" for students. Here's what my students are supposed to be able to do by the end of next year (except maybe for M8). I'm not sure why would be interesting to anyone else, but I thought it was cool that they could get so specific and concise.

"There are kids at Brooklyn Tech who know more math than we do"

2005-01-09T17:18:00.000-05:00

A conversation with an ordinarily very calm, optimistic, and proffessional coworker. (In fact, he is usually each of these things to an extraordinary degree...)

Him: "Jessica is so small but she has so many problems!"
Me: "Yeah, and she's really smart."
"Could she make it in Stuyvesant?"
"Of course not"
"So she's not 'really smart,' is she?"

On the topic of cynicism, they were inteviewing for a recently vacatd position and the candidate they brought in looked so young, optimistic, energetic, and a bit foolish. I thought, "he looks like me three months ago."

kids these days...

2005-01-06T22:38:00.000-05:00

for the record: picture phones are a very unfrotunate addition to the arsenal of things-kids-use-to-"explore"-their-sexuality.

the things we get used to...

2005-01-06T22:30:00.000-05:00

Today two of our students got into a fight at the bus stop. One of them does very little in school besides get into fights and help with menial office chores, since he can't read or write (or identify letters with their sounds, associate 'A' with 'a,' follow verbal instructions, etc...). Just off the plane from the carribean, he has no official board of ed documentation of his LD/developmentally disabled status (apparently he was in a special school back home), and the process of refering him to special ed and getting all the right papers to send him somewhere where they actually have resources for him (like special ed teachers, would be a start) take about a year.

We were all appalled by this for the first few months and have now gotten used to it. Ms. I.A. (interim administrator) had her first interaction with this student after the incident today, and she asked him what seemed absurd to me but was really the most normal thing in the world - to fill out a report form about what happened. The school aide let her in on the secret. I wonder when (if?) she's going to start feeling like she's in over her head.

One of my coworkers (with a taste for drama) said that by warehousing a student like him in a shcool like ours we might as well "put him on a bus and send it over a cliff."

2005-01-06T22:27:00.000-05:00

Today might have been the first time that I completely sabotaged myself by being in a bad mood. I'll just blame it on my mentor, who forced me to sit through a "working lunch" while she literally read us her strategies for "co-planning standards for behavior" from some Santa Cruz publication or other. I continue to maintain that it's the adults whoi make this job so stressful...
On a lighter note, my new "interim administrator" seems to have a really great rapo with the kids and to be on top of things, good at follow through, etc. Being totally ignorant I didn't know what was missing, but at least I can see it when it's there...

2005-01-06T22:25:00.000-05:00

"Miss M, you're too young to be a teacher! - this is going to make you old!"
no gray hairs yet, at least...

2004-12-31T01:42:00.000-05:00

One of the beauties of working in a mal-funcitoning beaurocracy is getting information on a need-to-know basis. Usually, actually, on a needed-to-know-last-week basis.

Last Thursday AM - everyone was smiling. Counting down the hours to freedom.
I went into a nother teacher's classroom to borrow some supplies and she asked if Mr. A (regional mucky-muck) had come yet.
Huh?
"He's coming to make sure we're doing work on the last day before vacation."
("asshole," i thought. then, "well, i better makes sure there are equations on the board...")
I mentioned to another person, "Did you know Mr. A is coming today?"
"Yeah, and he might be bringing a visitor."
(visitor? like Ms. G, the super-mucky-muck?! ahh!)
Then, during my "advisory" calss, we were chilling with chicken wings and kosher muffins, listening to abominable latin reggae (well, its really only abominable the third or fourth consecutive time...). "Yo, turn off the radio - that bald-headed man is here!" Hubert said. The kids know who's important... "It's ok," i said, "it's advisory"(but i did start trying harder to engage them in some sort of conversation that could appropriately be described as contributing to "youth development").
Then Mr. T came by. "so, we're going to meet in the teacher's room for a few minutes with Mr. A during lunch so he can introduce her."
"Her?" (blank stare?)
Yeah, the woman who's going to be stepping in for Ms. L. (principal.)"
"ok." (confused. did she get fired? did she quit?)

turns out that after taking a number of sick days recently the principal is going on extended medical leave, reason unspecified. Apparently i was the only one people forgot to tell. We are going to have an "interim administrator" who 1-has superviosry experience and 2- has a math background. could be very good. but who knows. oh, and 3 - she's black. that could really help.
so we shall see...

2004-12-31T01:39:00.000-05:00

vacation is the bestestest. but today i had to do work for grad school, and over the weekend i have to do work for the kiddies. which reminds me that its almost over, and i have to go *back.* I can't actually imagine that. but maybe under the New Regime (details to follow) things will change. In any case I am trying to formulate some plans for myself so that I can smile even when I'm not on vacation.

2004-12-22T17:41:00.000-05:00

I was complaining, as I too-often do, about my job.
"Well, how about the rest of your life?" A friend asked.
"The what?"

I couldn't have said it better myself

2004-12-20T21:57:00.000-05:00

"DISILLUSIONMENT PHASE

After six to eight weeks of non-stop work, new teachers enter the disillusionment phase. The intensity and length of the phase varies among new teachers. The extensive time commitment, the realization that things are probably not going as smoothly as they want, and low morale contribute to this period of disenchantment. New teachers begin questioning both their commitment and their competence. Many new teachers become physically ill during this phase from the added stress and insufficient sleep.

Compounding an already difficult situation is the fact that new teachers are confronted with several new events during this time frame. They are faced with back-to-school night, parent conferences, completing report cards for the first time, and their first formal evaluation by the site administrator. Each of these important milestones places an already vulnerable individual in a very stressful situation.

At this point, the accumulated stress of the first-year teacher coupled with months of excessive time allotted to teaching often strains relationships with family members and friends. This is a very difficult and challenging phase for new entrees into the profession. They express self-doubt, have lower self-esteem, and question their professional commitment. In fact, getting through this phase may be the toughest challenge they face as a new teacher.

'I thought I’d be focusing more on curriculum and less on classroom management and discipline. I’m stressed because I have some very problematic students who are low academically, and I think about them every second my eyes are open.'"

professionally developed

2004-12-20T21:44:00.000-05:00

The one thing about these "new teacher" training/"professional development" sessions that no one is in the modd for is realizing that everyone is as sour on this as i am right now. They gave us the new teacher cycle yet again. I sort of feel like I am going to be the exception to the allegedly normal upturn in mood after vacation. Of course, maybe everyone feels that way. I also wonder whether these things are not in part self-fulfilling prophecy. (If they keep telling you it will get better you end up sticking around until it does?)

Them, of course, there's the advice I got from a friend's mom, 30+ year teacher in my Region, counting the days til she can retire with full benefits:
"However much they are going to charge you to leave your program, just pay it. Don't do this for another year. It's not the kids. The kids can be dealt with. It's the supervisors. What you do will never be good enough for them."
(loose quotation - my memory fails of late...)

the weakest link

2004-12-20T21:41:00.000-05:00

Well, one (or should I say, the first?) of our 7 teachers is resigning in January. "On paper," it's for reasons of personal life, family-type issues. So is it good news for the Jews? On one hand, that means firing me increases turmoil. On the other, that means the administration may start to feel even more pressure and behave rashly. At this point, what happens happens. On the third hand, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I got fired...

solidarity forever

2004-12-14T23:05:00.000-05:00

An exercise in absurdity, for anyone with too much free time:

There is a management-labor dispute at my place of work as to whether teachers can be asked to escort students to lunch, pick them up from lunch, and escort them out of the building at the end of the day. (Doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize that it all adds up to about three hours a month of completely uneccessary stress, an that it interferes with other things teachers might like to do, like eat, help students afterschool, etc...)
The Union says it is clearly not allowed. Today we got a memo that there is no "contractual" issue.
Who's right? And prove it from the text. (Hey, look, a "document based question" - Regents Exam preparation for everyone...)

ve-nahafoch hu

2004-12-14T21:42:00.000-05:00

So, instead of doomsday, my principal got suddenly sick and the whole visit was postponed for a month. so not quite like purim, because it was postponed. but then again, maybe a lot like purim, because even there they still had to fight...

Today I got a taste of what actually supportive, useful, specific advice is like. Amazing. While it was helpful, it was also sad, because there's no one to give it regularly... (The advisor in this case was a "consultant" who visits about once a month...

doomsday

2004-12-12T23:28:00.000-05:00

i am being visited by a very-high-up person tomorrow. but not to worry, my bullettin boards are all ready...
(in some other regions in the city, a school can get writen up if the background color of its bullttin boards does not match the designated regio-wide color for each subject area. so is suppose i should feel autonomous because all they're telling me how to do with uneccessary detail is the important parts of the job - what to write on the board and where, eg...)

in other news, i am in the proces fo taking the fall for the failings of my school, principal, etc, to excel in our first three months.
it's funny when educators (principals) start using fear as their primary motivator (of teachers, because they get mad when you do that to students...). kind of like when education professors chalk and talk for 1.5 hours straight about using the "workshop model" and not lecturing for too long.

My students on Judaism

2004-12-04T23:16:00.000-05:00

Do y'all believe in God?
___

"Y'all goin to hell."
___

"What's a bris?"
___

"Are you going to shave your head when you get married? "
___

"Have you ever worn a short skirt?"
___

(One of my female students asked, after one of her male classmates did something particularly ridiculous:)

"Do Jewish boys act like him?"

(Another female student responded, in typical 14 year old fashion, "Him? He's not human!")

___

"I saw a Jewish woman sitting with her legs out the window on the fifth floor. Why do you do that?"

___

From the class clown: "Jewish people and black people, we have the same struggle - we were both slaves."
Me: "That's true."
(as I turned to walk away, thinking maybe we had shared a proverbial moment)
"Yeah, so why'd ya'll kill Jesus?"

My students on race

2004-12-04T23:07:00.000-05:00

A student who has, among other things, taken off his pants in class, threatened to relieve himself in the corner of my room, and sat in the back of the room saying "f*ck-edy-f*ck-f*ck" for extended periods of time, likes to complain:
"You're just picking on me because I'm black."

Another student (whom the other students call alternatively "that white kid,"* or "the puerto-rican one") who likes to talk when he should be listening caught on. When I asked him to be quiet once he said:

"You're just saying that because I'm black."
"No, I'm just saying that because I'm black."

This, like most such "clever" retorts, shut him up but made the whole rest of the class go nuts. Oh well.

*Funny thing, race politics. He is as light skinned as I am, but it doesn't seem informative to describe him as "white" because he says "aks" and "mines."

2004-12-04T22:52:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, I saw my first school-mouse. It was kind of cute - bigger ears than mice I have seen before. Certainly better than the two school-cockroaches (one lving, one dead, both about 3 iches long) over the summer.

2004-11-30T20:24:00.000-05:00

I am in the market for "inspirational" teacher quotes. I actually went so far as to search online for "inspirational quotes teacher."
So far the best I came up with was "The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind." (William James, they say)
Suggestions are welcome.

2004-11-29T23:05:00.000-05:00

Today Nina got up (without permission), walked across the room, and plugged in her cel phone (not allowed in school) to charge.
I waited til she went back to her seat and then unplugged the phone and took posession of it myself.
She came over and, while yelling about how she hadn't been using it, tried to physically pry my hands off the phone. Her grip was so determined all I had to do was walk toward the door and turn around so my arms (and attached Nina) were out in the hall. The principal heard me yelling and collected Nina, and I went back to my class.
This sort of thing makes me look bad.

a story

2004-11-26T03:30:00.000-05:00

Monday: My gradebook went missing

Tuesday after lunch: one of my students threw his own hat out the window.

Tuesday after school: School safety came up to tell us that jordan got mugged. We have two jordan's. My first thought was that I hoped it was the bad one, not the good one.

Later that hour: My gradebook was returned, wet, having been retrieved along wiht J's stuff that he dropped during the incident. One corner, w/ some info about one of J's frineds, was ripped off.

Wednesday: Apparently, the story is that two students went looking in the bushes for the defenestrated hat and found the gradebook, and, brilliantly, took off with it. they met up with some other boys, got into some altercation or other, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Part of me hopes someone gets suspended for this. not because i took it so seriously (perhaps i should be more personally hurt that they took my property...) but because i could really stand not to have some of these young people in class for a day or two.

thanksgiving

2004-11-26T03:24:00.000-05:00

I remember being told that the "new teacher cycle" has the following stages:

1- anticipation/optimism (august/sept)
2- survival
3- depths of hell (they called this one something else - i forget)
4- rejuvenation (aka winter breaks...)
5- optimism (june)

i think i just officially moved from 2 to 3 last week.
If i recall, that's a bit off schedule - you're supposed to stop "surviving" sooner. I hope this doesn't mean my "rejuvenation" is postponed ;)

Shadows

2004-11-22T04:05:00.000-05:00

I have never, ever, been this excited to go home for thanksgiving. Actually, I have never gone home for thanksgiving. Over the course of the past week I have come way too close to
1- losing my job
2- losing my temper a lot
3- hating children

Different people took different tacks to impress upon me the seriousness of the situation.

B.O.E. mentor: "your job is at stake."

Principal: "you are exhibiting what looks to me like stress. You seem to have the day from hell every day." she neglected to mention either the serious stakes for the students or for her (as the person whose neck is on the final line wrt outcomes for our "new small school.") Which just made me feel like we weren't being honest. But maybe better that than threatening-ness.

Coach: "If you continue down this path, one of a number of things will ahppen. You may become bitter, and start to make assumptions about kids, and it will take a physical toll on you. You may decide to leave, or you may have to leave for otehr reasons."
He also pointed out that the reason I can't follow through is that I am not impressed enough with the seriousness of the situation - how high the risks are for every child, etc...

I knew I was losing it when two separate people, both usually very good for hours of complaining, pled studying or assignments to get off the phone with my incessant anxiety.

___

This job is amazingly hard. Especially for me. And if I fix what's hard now I'll only have more hard things to do, like make sure everyone learns and is challenged...

My friends who got Cs in college laugh at me, faced with the prospect of failure for the first time in my life.

2004-11-14T20:30:00.000-05:00

"Miss M, you married?
"No."
"You got a boyfriend?"
"That's private."
"You wanna get with my uncle?"

from the mouths of babes

2004-11-12T01:57:00.000-05:00

I gave out an anonymous "report card" asking what I as a teacher should stop, start, and continue doing. Some exemplary responses:

STOP

"I think you should stop scream when we not paying attention"
"Stop trying to be nice all the time"
"stop talking so quietly because I can't hear you over all the other student"
"yelling and stop giving wack lessons"
"you should stop letting students rule the class"
"stop laughing when your yelling"
"you should stop calling my house"
"screaming"
"laughing at everything the kids be saying and doing because its not cute what they do"
"stop taking mess from students"
"you should stop being so friendly. you should stop letting kids talk to you however they want to."
"you should stop letting the students talk to you any way they want. making the lessons boring"
"laughing and screaming"

START

"wend ever someone spiking tell them to stop one time and if they still spiking put them outsid"
"you should start being mean"
"you should start doing more math games so class would be more interesting"
"give out candy or something nice to the students who are good"
"you should start some teaching methods that we would like"
"you should start being more aggressive"
"you should have the class in order and teach"
"make it more fun and be more strict. make work harder."
"you should start being more strict and making the lessons more interesting"
"being more strict on the students. Try to help all the students that don't understand"

CONTINUE

"you should keep on helping people at lunch and after school that reely help me to pass my class"
"you should continue teaching the people that are interested in passing math class"
"nothing you do"
"you should continue being the great teacher you are"
"just continue doing what your doing"
"just keep teaching"
"being nice"
"there is nothing you should continue doing, none whatsoever, not at all"

i think that summarizes my teaching rather nicely.

speaking of central planning

2004-11-09T22:41:00.000-05:00

My regional superintendent (or some similar title) came to talk to our math dept. before school in September. We learned:

1- If we just use the mandatory workshop model* to differentiate instruction* during our heterogeniously grouped,* block scheduled* classes, nothing can go wrong.

2- We should just stick to the mandated "pacing guide" and stop worrying about teaching similar things in the same unit.

3- This is her second career - before hand she was an economist studying Soviet Russia.
"So, you like central planning..." we all thought...

* subtext: use buzzwords to transform chaos into order when talking to regional supervisors.

Last week I saw here again at a region-wide conference. This time she was fielding questions from a bunch of frustrated teachers who are sick of being given a new Answer full of mandated whatnot and no follow-through every year or two. Just keep differentiating instruction and it will be OK. But she cleary knows it aint so and is just not at liberty to say so.

"Who made the decision about which textbook to use city-wide?" (implication: it had more to do with politics than with education)
"The chancellor." (she wanted it to sound important)
"But he's not even an educator!" (plan backfires)
"Well, it was the deputy vice-chancelor for instruction along with..." (hide behind big words)

I imagine it won't take more than one or two more such meetings for me to stop being amused and start bringing a novel.

I'm ten years older than them, but...

2004-11-09T22:16:00.000-05:00

On Friday one of my students called me: "yo, mom!"

Just the facts

2004-11-09T22:09:00.000-05:00

This blog is the belated record of my first year teaching in an urban public school. Well, my first year teaching at all, which happens to be in an urban public school. I intend to cover two basic areas:

1- anecdotes. you know, "teacher stories." Amusing, appalling, or absurd. These speak for themselves.

2- ruminations on the broader themes affecting education in America - a view from below on the policies from up high. Complete with the misguided self-importance of any tiny cog in such a vast, centrally planned machine.

Either or both of these things may or may not happen, but that's the plan. At least I'll know what I was thinkng two years down the line...