Posts (page 3)

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.

First day of school, revised:

-Don't have much to say.
-Teaching rules and procedures isn't really scintillating
-Surprised that the kids follow orders, even if only for a couple seconds
-Obviously, intimidating at first.

Is there a better topic for my final required blog than that I don't enjoy the emphasis being placed on technology?

I realize that there are numerous advantages that can theoretically be garnered from the blogs and the video cameras and the iLife or whatever the hell it is called, but I simply am not a fan.  I see all these things as shiny bells and whistles; unfortunately it seems that they are being regarded not as an adornment, but as some necessary and critical aspect of the program.  I have no problem with the use of computers or whatever else; I just see it as a little absurd when their use becomes required.  I also don't want to waste my time fiddling with some camera or program I don't understand when I could be writing lesson plans or sleeping or eating or reading a book.

But the iMac chess game is fun.