two favorite quotes from the previous week of teaching:
"This milk tastes like beer."
-CM
"See you on Monday, Mr. Walker!"
-QD, my biggest discipline problem. At some point in time, he decided to man up and stop acting like a baby in my class. I can't pinpoint his exact change in mood, but I can tell you MY change of behavior which in turn led to his. When basketball season began, I made the decision to attend all of the games. I, for any number of reasons, am easily recognizable in any Simmons High-affiliated crowd. He's on the team and has noticed my attendance. He said what I quoted on a Friday night after a game; as I was walking to my car (after working a duty shift), he leaned out of his mother's van and spoke to me. Not too shabby.
let's add a third quote:
"two weeks until vacation."
I'll let this story stand for my experiences in general:
On Friday I broke up my first fight at Simmons. Two kids in my fourth period--my lunch period--were involved. I should have seen the fight coming; while walking back from lunch on Thursday, the two got into each other's faces. I pulled them apart, but I thought nothing of it: these two were not the usual suspects to do something stupid.
Friday was destined to be a powderkeg. It was the day of our playoff game against Rosedale, THE 2A football team in the state of MS (though when i saw their 70 person band and 50+ person football team, I wondered why exactly they were in 2A at all (as opposed to Conference USA, for instance), but those are sour grapes and anyways it's not my story to tell...). It goes without saying, the school was electric with anticipation.
To add to the general mayhem, a subplot of intrigue: In October, the school was witness to a...well, a brawl. 15 kids suspended. A big to-do. Humbugging and knit-brows (but little else) from those in position to do more. The genesis was straight from Shakespeare: two rival cliques (Arcola vs. Hollandale; A-town goons vs. Get-Money-Boys) feuding because it's what they've always done.
When the dust settled and the suspensions expired, our principal added an addendum: the cliques are to stay apart, disband, not meet one another in the streets. Right...ask the Prince of Verona how that worked out. The edict lasted two days at most. The groundswell of these kids' natural inclinations could have been checked by diligence or perseverance or at least giving-a-damn, but we were as inert as the rocks that a stream burbles over. By gameday Friday, our idiots were grouping together again at lunch, harassing girls and jabbering like fools.
Though the record may not bear me out, I have no doubt that the first of these cliques reignited my freshmen's dispute (seeing as one of them wants to be accepted by that crowd, for reasons that I cannot divine). In respect to my classical instruction, a jump to the historical present:
While eating whatever was served for lunch (baked chicken, perhaps), I notice a rush of bodies towards the cafeteria exit. High school etiquette being what it is, I realize that so much movement, so quickly, can only presage a fight. I leave my lunch (let 'em tamper with it, I won't be back to finish it) and bulldoze through the gathered pack. My two freshmen are outside the cafeteria, against the wall, face-to-face, and bumping chests. It's all bluster at this point, so I take one and shove him into the cafeteria while restraining the other, holding him outside.
What's happened, though, is enough to taint the water and all our sharks have scented blood. The scene outside is giddy and unrestrained: the gathered students are hopped up on hope of a fight, shouting and screaming, jostling and pantomiming what they hope to see. I make a mistake; in my own way I'm as hyped as they are, except I'm high on my own feeling of disciplinary control. For 20 seconds, I think I can reign them all back into line. Not content to defuse a fight, I try to defuse the whole situation. I hand out writing assignments and bark reprisals, to limited effect.
Those 20 wasted seconds are time enough. The freshman I had pushed inside the cafeteria has come back out. Preternaturally, I turn from my peace-keeping duties in time to see the two back together, tensed up. One throws a fist; all order breaks down. As if through an imagined muscle-memory, or some instinct previously lain dormant, I'm immediately between the two, bracketing one behind my body, arms back, thrusting him into the wall while I shield him from the blows of the other. I keep my face and body towards the one who's free, while I pin the other to the wall, preventing his reprisal.
Amidst the chaos, something amazing happens.
Another of my freshmen--one of the clique leaders--pulls the unbracketed fighter away from the brawl. I say to this new entrant (D, we'll call him): "D, take C back into the hallway. Get him out of here." While all the world shouts and screams and lusts for blood, D steers C into the school proper (the cafeteria is in an adjacent building) and away from the fight. I wrestle the bracketed K circuitously towards the office. When I arrive, K in tow, who should I see but D standing legs apart and arms crossed, staring holes through C, who's sitting petulantly in a corner.
It was the proudest I've ever been as a teacher. This is why:
As I said, D was one of the clique leaders. During the big fight, he was an instigator and major contributor. When he came back from the alternative school I told him that I didn't care if the other kids who weren't supposed to hang out at lunch did actually did so, HE--since he was in my class--was not to sit with them. If they came and sat next to him, he was to get up and sit by me.
I told him that and he ignored me. I asked him how many times must I repeat my order. He said 27, but he didn't mean it. He asked me to stop after 18. And damn it all, he followed through. He stopped sitting with the idiots and sat with his class (like he was supposed to). On Friday, when his idiot clique buddies tried again, he left and sat next to me, taking in stride their taunts about "leaving us for a teach."
And then he took the most responsibility I've ever seen any freshman take, helping me to break up this fight and actually get his kid to the office before I got mine there.
What this says to me is that, regardless of anything related to the subject of English that I may or may not have taught, it looks like--on one day when it mattered most--a kid who had every right to act worse showed me that he'd learned how to act better. And that's a hopeful sign. Ironically (if that's the word for it), by having to break up my first fight, I realize it's been a good first semester.
One of my students made me laugh because he missed school for about a month and then showed up one day, not expecting to get back on track, not expecting to learn anything, but really just looking to bide time until he can miss school for another month. I don't understand why he doesn't just drop out.
Obviously, that was overly cynical. My homeroom has me in stitches right now: they are jealous that my regular classes can earn tickets, but they cannot. Because of them, I've made my ticket policy non-discriminatory, and you would laugh to see my formerly...let's call them "Dionysian" (have to keep the classics alive)... homeroom jump over itself to sit down first, erase the board, fill out the attendance sheet, and stack up books in nice piles. And they stopped talking graphically about sex, too!
I will roll the past two weeks into one big success story:
There exists a program "Future Educators of America," or FEA for short. The FEA is a sort of fraternal, tuition-aiding program that veers high school seniors towards educational careers. Seniors at Simmons High have been applying for the past two weeks and many have approached me to complete one of three required teacher recommendation forms. This, in itself, I count as a success because I choose to read their actions as saying that they either respect me or, at least, no longer think of me as some weird person they'd rather not associate with at all.
After the application process, somewhere along the lines of 20 seniors were accepted into the program. They were told upon their acceptance that they needed to find a "mentor" teacher to help show them the ropes. Now, I will grant that four of these seniors interrupted my sixth period freshmen class--so i've not trained them as well as i'd like--but the four did interrupt to ask me to be their mentor. I was their first choice. I could take no more than two, and I feel a little guilty about being a first year teacher pretending to be able to instill some sort of wisdom into these kids, but this above everything else seems to show that they respect what I'm doing and--if they've decided to pick me to mentor them--I must be somewhat effective at getting my message across in class.
I want to talk about discipline and rewards separately, so I'll split this blog into two sections:
Discipline:
Taking Ben's advice, I reviewed classroom management and discipline with my freshmen last week. I don't know if it was the review, or that I've tried to stay consistent with discipline, but in these past two days I have seen positive dividends paid. I still have to give out writing assignments willy-nilly, but the kids are now starting to link the cause and effect of behavior and punishment. To wit, on Wednesday I had to give out seven (seven!!!) writing assignments in my 4th period, but for all of Thursday they were angels. This is the dramatic improvement from the daily kangaroo zoo 4th period used to be.
My real improvement has come in managing behavior. I can now look at a kid, catch his eye, and stare hard enough so as to make him stop misbehaving. This has been 10 weeks in the making, and it's probably the best classroom management tool i have, because freshmen can't help but laugh when I say, "XYZ, that is your warning" or "XYZ, that is a writing assignment." By quietly controlling them with my eyes, I don't draw attention to their bad behavior. And if they don't get verbal recognition from me, they don't get attention from their friends.
I win. They lose. They learn.
Rewards:
Big success. Originally, I thought a Ticket Policy for-things-well-done was too kitschy. I stand corrected. It has been a resounding success. Kids will shoot each other for tickets. Kids will jump around naked for tickets. Mirabile dictu, kids will even participate in class for tickets.
I have a varied rewards list that goes from 1 ticket (tissue to blow your nose - this keeps kids from asking for tissue so as to have something to do besides take notes) to 500 tickets (5 ppl x 100 tickets - Mr. Walker shaves his head). The kids are nuts for this stuff. I have some seniors who are saving blocks of tickets, refusing to use 10 to buy a bathroom pass, doing their homework so they won't have to buy a 5 ticket homework pass, all so that they can see me shave my head.
I even have freshmen who don't like participating in class, but will try to find ingenious ways to win a ticket (Mr. Walker, let me clean your board. Mr. Walker, please let me read the overhead. Mr. Walker, can I write the bellringer on the main board?). I don't tell them that they are actually engaging the subject of English, and they don't realize that they are being duped into being energetic and staying awake in class.
I win. They lose. They learn.
Now a disclaimer: This is only a partial representation of my classroom management status. I also have at least 3 freshmen over whom I have no control. This is mostly due to the weak-kneed nature of the school board, the total lack of support from particular parents, and the dearth of community resources to deal with chronic delinquents.
Any of the three can take a class straight to hell. Trying to control the rest of the class while finessing a touch-and-go policy with them is a harrying experience. If only I had a paddle...
I think, overall, this should be the summation of my feelings on classroom management: If only I had a paddle...
Nearly all of my seniors would qualify, but I'll choose a freshman to write about instead. CM is one of my favorite students not because he's academically gifted or motivated (since neither, really, is true) but because he can't keep a straight face when he tries to bullshit me.
There's something totally refreshing about a kid who'll say, "Mr. Walker, I've got to go to the bathroom, it's an EMERGENCY!!!!" and then, when I give him my teacher look, will bust out laughing and say, "Awww, come on, Mr. Walker! I gotta GO!" But he knows the rules, and he'll shut up and not bother the class after that.
I take CM's class to lunch, so I've been provided the opportunity to get to know him better than many other of my freshmen. He likes to make me laugh, and he likes to pretend that he's a whole lot tougher than he really is. It's become a running joke where everyday in line he'll say something--i.e. "I'm going to smack somebody today," "I'm going to give that girl what's coming to her," "I'm going to have to let loose," "I'll throw this food back in the lunch ladies' faces today,"--and I'll look at him and say, "No you won't, CM," and he'll start laughing because we both know I'm right, and we also both know that he was never close to serious about anything he says.
Because CM and I get along so well, I've given him the valuable post of "door monitor." When my class is through with lunch, they are required to line up against the wall adjoining the exiting door without leaving until everyone is ready to go and I give the signal. I station CM at the door and he grandiloquently refuses members of my class passage until I give him an equally pompous go-command.
It's a good time. One of the few I have with my nutcase freshmen.
I teach Englishes I and IV. English IV, almost universally, is an everyday pleasure. Unless something catastrophic happens on the exam tomorrow, none of my seniors will fail this first nine weeks.
That bears repeating.
NONE of my seniors will fail. I need to take a moment to laud them. Being a part of their school, everyday I see how all the other students act, I see the expectations (or lack thereof) put on them by their peers and their educators, and I see how they push all this crap aside and for the most part act like responsible adults. They run this school, and they run it well. Just today, after lunch, one of my freshmen was late getting back (we are supposed to constantly monitor our kids before, during, and after lunch, but this girl was intent on not following the rules, so I left her in the cafeteria), and I gave her a writing assignment (the rule being: if i beat you to class, you get a writing assignment). As she took the assignment from me, she grabbed it and crumpled it up. At least two of the seniors who were in my class at the time said, "K, you know better than to behave like that" (or words to the same effect).
My freshmen, on the other hand, are zoo animals. Up to 30 or 35 percent should be failing, but due to a reward policy that mitigates their failure to turn in homework, many of them are doing drastically better than they should. With some noted exceptions, the freshmen are:
lazy
childish
irresponsible
crude
obscene
irresponsible
My freshmen have not realized that this is not middle or grade school (or, for that matter, a house party). The basic levels of self-motivation and continence (both emotional and ESPECIALLY physical) required by an academically rigorous course are totally foreign concepts to them.
Besides the usual sophomoric abuses (or am I giving them too much credit?), I have seen students go missing for a week and then show up, not only without asking about the assignments they've missed, but not even caring if they've received zeros or not. Heaven only knows if the parents are even cognizant of their own children's extended absences. And concerning these "problem kids," their parents talk a big game but consistently fail to deliver.
The parents that will pick up a phone, on the other hand, and especially those parents who have their own phone and aren't bumming off a neighbor's line, have the best children, far and away. Which sounds obvious, and is so.
As I understand it, I'm supposed to blog about "Delta Autumn," right now, right?
If so, let's get to it:
I am going to be as blunt and as honest as I can with this blog, and while I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings (though I don't think I will), that possibility always exists when someone (me) is criticizing anything (the summer school).
First, a background: We are told again and again--we being the MTC--that we are the top 7 %, the cream of the crop, the liberators of a downtrodden and backwards culture, etc. etc. etc.
All of this is nice, and we hear it often enough that before long we're inclined to believe it. But then summer school starts, and we are treated like the greenest of all the college freshmen. Ann's class, while it is informative, is clearly not pitched towards the understanding and comprehension levels not only of "the top 7%, etc." but also of men and women who are told they are responsible enough to teach in critical areas.
Let me rephrase: if we are all that you say we are, the classes we are taught should expect of us more than normal classes expect of normal education-major freshmen and sophomores.
This is where Delta Autumn comes in. It's a good book; a great book, probably. And it has just about everything useful that a first year teacher in the Delta would need to know. But I read this book for the first time over the summer and I couldn't help but be struck by the fact that all that was in the book we were learning from Ann, but learning at a slower and (sorry to say) more boring pace.
If we are all that you say we are, tell us to read the book over the summer, and let us discuss it in Ann's class. Give us online reading quizzes or something (hello, wufu, or whatever it's called) if you don't believe we'll read the book on our own. But don't patronize us. Because just like our students--whom you tell us to keep interested--we will tune out of a lecture as well if it is boring/uninformative/repetitive/etc. Is it even a secret that everyone who had a charged battery was on his computer during the lectures in the summer?
Let us read Delta Autumn and cull the basics from it. Let us review and build on the material in Ann's class (hopefully in a less-than-daily format, since we'd be assigned large reading passages as well). It should give us more time to learn more things during the summer (like unit planning, perhaps?).
Alright. Any questions?
I don't necessarily have a lot to say about Ms. Payne's book other than that I think it is first and foremost a moneymaking scheme for her and her company. It takes a rare book to be completely devoid of salient points (the broken clock rule), so if you search hard enough you can find helpful bits of advice and whatnot (the "this is how poor people respond do adversity" chart), but on the whole this book is maddeningly trivial and unsystematic.
What needs to be realized first is that this is NOT an academic book. Payne may list herself as a PhD, but nowhere in the book does she tell us the university from which it came. Furthermore, you have to dig deeply on her website before she reveals the university to you (South Texas something-or-another). Her research is shoddy and seems to rely almost solely on anecdotes she either witnessed or heard about (for more on this, check out academia's virulent online response to Payne's books). An example: She has as a "case study" Jose or someone who: 1. is dirt poor 2. has a drug addict mom 3. has a gang-leader uncle 4. no one speaks english 5. the gang-leader uncle wants to take Jose out of school and hide out in Mexico because the uncle wants to spend time with Jose before he dies since in the gang business no one lives past 30. ETC. ETC. ETC.
This sort of story may titillate a speaking-tour audience, but I doubt that it's relevant to the great majority of people in poverty that Ms. Payne professes to want to help.
That, and her "hidden middle-class rules" make me want to set her book on fire. As I see it, these are anachronistic and bigoted: the "upper-class rules" have more to do with an imagined Victorian society than anything else, and the "lower-class rules" stem from the worst sort of prejudices about the black poor.
In summary, Ms. Payne's book is full of nonsense that could have been avoided if she'd approached her topic from an academically rigorous angle instead of some misguided philanthropic one or (what is much more likely) a cynical attempt to cash in on the sympathies of well-meaning people.
Revised (the older Wong blog was no good):
Book is good, sometimes starry-eyed, occassionally cloyingly sentimental, and full of lots of nice advice.
That being said, our principal showed us a video of Wong in action, and I far prefer his book. With the book, there is an illusion of academic rigor. When Wong is on stage, he is set to full-bore speaking circuit shtick. As with Ruby Payne, I find it hard to take seriously anything these idiots say, so I now find myself viewing askance the what-seemed-to-be good advice in Wong's book.