minime mirabile dictu

Another Assigned Summer School Blog

nobody@vox.com(Reklawnitsua) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:26:27 -0700

Evaluating My Performance During the Year:

1. Select a "learning goal" where the students were successful. Tell why:

Participles. By the end of the year most of them could identify participles and participial phrases. Why? Because I labored with it; I spent hours and days and weeks on participles, incorporating them into a thousand different lessons in a thousand different ways. Eventually the repetition effectuated some learning.

2. Select a "learning goal" where the students were not successful. Tell why:

My students were not any good at higher-order thinking skills. Why not? Because I have not found a good way to teach those sorts of things; in order to effectively teach skills like this, one of two things has to occur. You either have to:

1. have a school that encourages outside-the-box thinking

2. know what the hell you're doing as a teacher.

Neither one is true in my case, so teaching integration and analysis is still not easy. I guess it's all about repetition, the same way it is with participles.

3. Give a general overview of your year in order to make sure you don't get a bad grade. Tell why:

By the end of the year I was teaching things; It took a while to establish my classroom in such a way to allow me to do my paid job. At the end, I was teaching "Romeo and Juliet", and I was (no small accomplishment) teaching it. Everything you need to know about the English language (and about interaction between people) is found in Shakespeare. To (semi-)effectively teach a real masterwork gave me the feeling that I was inching towards being a real teacher and not just another jackass sitting in a classroom to serve some ulterior motives.

Now, with my freshmen, I didn't get anywhere close to teaching Shakespeare. We were still remediating during the 4th 9 weeks: phrases and clauses? plot and setting elements? having students say, "We didn't know there was more than nouns and verbs"?

I don't really know what else to say. I've already had to write another "end-of-year" evaluation blog. I'm sort of tired of talking about my last year. I'd like just to teach another.

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MTC Blog: Coaching

nobody@vox.com(Reklawnitsua) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:30:43 -0700

1. Describe Yourself as an Instructional Coach

As a coach, I like to look for little mistakes that may escape detection but will become important later on. For instance: when teachers do not verbally specify their plans for the day or their expectations of the students. That is something I think is important, and I try to reinforce it in my coaching. The students must always be told exactly what is expected of them, and what they need to do.

2. What aspect of coaching has been most difficult?

The physical exertion. Honestly, I have no idea. I can't say that coaching has flummoxed me. Perhaps what's difficult is that I don't know if i'm giving good or bad advice.

3. Describe how your coaching techniques have developed.

Um, I've only been "coaching" for 2 weeks. That's not a lot of developmental time. If anything, I've learned to be harsher with Parks than with Hayley and Jen. Parks needs to hear how bad he is; Hayley and Jen are awesome teachers.

4. How has coaching impacted my own teaching?

Well, the things I "coach" are the things I've found myself emphasizing in my lessons: clear delineation of plans and expectations, firm discipline, confident command of the classroom. I don't know if it's coming across, but I'm trying at any rate to emphasize them.

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Assessment

nobody@vox.com(Reklawnitsua) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:24:56 -0700

This year I gave only my own self-made tests. I do not like multiple-choice English tests: I do not see English's primary purpose--to teach one to analyze, interpret, and express oneself competently--well served by having students choose among some pre-made responses. I also love teaching grammar, and enjoy having students explain spatially the way sentence parts interact: this sort of testing is impossible with multiple-choice. I can have students identify the correct of four sentences with M-C, but they cannot draw arrows from modifiers to nouns/verbs, cordon off unnecessary phrases, and trace the causation of verbs in a multiple choice format.

I should make tests that look like the SATP since I will be teaching English II next year; I should make a greater effort to ask questions on a higher DOK level; I should probably focus more on commonly-accepted aspects of English than those that I believe are the most interesting or enlightening.

Example: I think poetic meter--and the notation of it--is what makes poetry fascinating, but the State of MS. shovels meter under the ambiguous term "Rhythm", and places no emphasis on being able to notate the flux of iambs and anapests and trochees. Perhaps I shouldn't test that skill.

At some point it's about my kids and not about me, so I'll grudgingly change the way I test--sometimes. Their tests may have an SATP multiple-choice section, but they will not be able to totally escape my goading them into expansive and nuanced written responses.

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A Coon-Huntin' Story

nobody@vox.com(Reklawnitsua) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:53:25 -0700

“My friend John Eubanks was a great American. He always said, ‘Give everything a sporting chance. When you go coon huntin’, either take a cross cut saw with you so that you can cut down the tree the coon is in, or climb up the tree and punch him out and make him jump in among the dogs. Give him a sporting chance.’ Many times my brother Sonny and I would make a coon jump in amongst twenty or thirty dogs. But at least that coon had the option of whuppin’ all them dogs and walkin’ off if he wanted to.”
-Jerry Clower

It’s funny; my principal is a big coon hunter. The teachers tell me that every year he shows up to school one day with a new pickup truck because he stuck his old one in an impossible bog the previous night trying to chase a coon down. When the year began, I sympathized like never before with the coon in Jerry Clower’s story. Somehow I’d gotten myself up in a tree and here came my principal to punch me out. The year’s start was rough: many a time I jumped out of the tree and was torn up by those hounds. Eventually, though, I realized that I had the option of whoopin’ the dogs, and even later on in the year I learned how to. Granted, the odds are always against the coon—and I’m not by any means a prodigiously successful teacher—but every now and then the coon steals one.

As the coon jumps, one of two thoughts can cross his mind:

1. it’s really not fair that I got punched out. I should be able to stay in this tree and live my life the way I want to. AND, even if the hunter had to punch me out, he could have given me a stick or a knife or SOMETHING to fight off these dogs with. And why are the dogs so mean anyways? Are they bred for this sort of thing? They’re certainly ill-bred, I know that much. The daddy hound probably left home when they were a little litter of pups.

2. These dogs don’t know what’s about to hit them. They’d better be in their seats and working on the bellringer when I hit the ground or I’m gonna whup ‘em all.

My first year has been a lesson in stoical responsibility. My dad used to say of me that I had a “justice problem” because I’d get myself in trouble whenever I perceived some unfair treatment of me (and of other people too, but to a lesser extent. It can’t be unusual that many of the most selfish people are also the most concerned about “fair” treatment). Throughout high school and college I was—well, to be honest—monumentally irresponsible, and always ready to solipsize away any criticism of it.

The Teacher Corps certainly hasn’t entirely cured me: far too often I leave assignments ungraded; I fall asleep at 5pm after a tough day; I eat at Sonic, unhealthily and expensively; I exercise about never; hardly ever do I return phone messages and emails; and I don’t push my students as hard or as far as they should be pushed.

Nevertheless, while my first year may have been a failure on many fronts (can you only have a Maginot Line if you also have some well-guarded borders? Or can your defenses be a series of Maginot Lines?), I am proud to have finally given up on the idea of faulting the whole world for my problems.

Certainly our students could be better parented, they could be more interested in school, the administration could be more supportive, the bell schedule could be regular, the secretaries could speak proper English, etc. etc. etc.

Ultimately, I am responsible for how my class is conducted. If the class is derailed, I did not take appropriate preventative action. If I’m going to teach my kids anything, I’m going to have to fight them and outsmart them and win them over WHILE holding them to a high standard. I’m going to have to whup ‘em all, one way or another.

What I’ve mentioned isn’t what I’ve accomplished, but thinking any other way—or blaming anyone else—is more destructive. I overheard another teacher defend his disciplinary stance towards his kids (they were overrunning him) by saying, “When they get bad, I say to myself ‘The meek shall inherit the earth,’ and then I just don’t bother with them.’” I didn’t say anything at the time (I also developed a shrewd politicism this year), but I cannot imagine a more malignant, a more cankerous attitude than this. Is this the role of a teacher, to feel uniquely persecuted and to withdraw in a monastic non-resistance? You certainly have to ENDURE, almost endlessly, as a teacher, but your justification comes not in a pious acceptance of an unbridled fate, but comes instead through wrestling oppositely-running horses into harnesses and cracking the whip.

Or it comes from whuppin’ all them dogs and walkin’ off.

Editorial Note: I realize the danger that comes with comparing students to dogs. I love my kids to death and was merely working out a metaphor. And maybe 15 of them will take Latin with me next year, which is something ANY dog is incapable of.

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Classroom Management Blog

nobody@vox.com(Reklawnitsua) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:45:46 -0700

My first classroom management plan was nonsense. It had little association with how my class would (or could) actually be taught. In the powerpoint detailing my first discipline plan can be found a solicitation of student recommendations for authors; a one-day-then-no-tolerance policy for late work; a delusional attitude toward parent contact ("letters will be sent home before every nine weeks' exam"); and generally misguided bathroom, cleanliness, and entrance/exit policies.

The classroom rules themselves are inconsequential: Pete already mentioned that our principal passed down from Sinai a set of rules we all were to use, so the ones mentioned in my plan were still-born. Pete made another good point, that he came to rely heavily on his procedures. As did I, so they were in constant flux as I searched for a way to integrate (DOK 4) a well-ordered classroom with my innate listing toward laziness, irresponsibility, and poor filing-and-recording procedures.

My bathroom policy stands as a metaphor for my classroom management in general. In my small attempt to discredit the welfare-mentality, nothing in my class is free of charge (not tissue paper, not pens, not paper, not the bathroom, not nothin') but must be paid for with tickets. Prices inflate as the year progresses. During my first year, the easy part of my bathroom policy was the price--I could afford to be inflexible on that. The tough part was assigning a once-per-nine-weeks pass. At the beginning I gave everyone one, but did a poor job keeping track. Then I got angry at the idiots who seemingly had neither kidneys nor bladder, so my policy morphed into a "females only, and only for female problems" policy. That was unfair, and totally unable to be adequately regulated and verified. A "no-pass" policy briefly appeared, but exited just as quickly. By second semester's end, I was back to the one-pass for all rule, with all the problems from year's start as concurrent baggage.

My solution for the coming year: take the work out of my hands and put it in the students'. At the beginning of each semester, they will design an artistic bathroom pass, replete with all and sundry references to whatever they want. When they want to use it, I mark nothing down, I only tear up their pass and throw it away. The cut of the paper will have uncopiable irregularities to prevent forgery.

Same with all the rest. Students will take attendance and absences. Students will be responsible for taking a spare copy of the overhead notes and filing them in a missed-work binder. Ditto homework collection. Ditto room cleanliness. Most of my kids can't tie their shoes and would steal mine if given the chance, but a few are worth their weight in shoelaces. I gave this idea a dry-run in my homeroom halfway through the year, and I can say that since January I can count on one hand the number of times I had to take attendance or write my objectives on the board.

Granted, sometimes the attendance was wrong and the objectives indecipherable, but I wouldn't feel right in SHS with a perfect system. I'd be out of place, like heraldry on a mule.

One with a limp and with mange.

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Curriculum Mapping - Blog 6/11/08

nobody@vox.com(Reklawnitsua) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:06:08 -0700

To tell you the truth, I have nothing to say about curriculum maps.

To say that they help is obvious: Karl already hit on the fallacy of strictly fly-by-night teaching (which stands in contrast to my style, which I call fly-by-early-morning).

To say that they aren't perfect creatures has been echoed repeatedly, as has the idea that this sort of thing is easy to do once you've taught the course and difficult if you haven't.

At most, I can only compare my experience last year with mine now: when Deb and Ward trotted out their curriculum map, I saw it as a super-human feat, to be able to pierce the veils of time and student-competence in order to establish a workable teaching schedule. Having seen the guesswork and fingers-crossed best-wishes that actually go into making one, I realize now it's still a sort of fly-by-night proposition.

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Songs of Experience...err....Hypothetical Situation 1

nobody@vox.com(Reklawnitsua) — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:27:54 -0700

You are a white male first-year teacher in the Mississippi Delta. You also have long hair that people, who are NOT students, have been wont to touch and tug on. Ahh, but how times change...

Halfway through your first year, whilst trying to find ways to burn a 3-hour 4th period scheduling clusterf**k, you sit down to teach chess to some of your freshmen. As you sit and instruct, a student comes from behind you and starts playing with your hair, commenting about "how pretty it is"...

What do you do?

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Advice for the first years

nobody@vox.com(Reklawnitsua) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:59:58 -0700

As I am completing this blog at the very dregs of punctuality, it must be brief. I'll post a sequel later:

Many things that I would like to say have been admirably covered by others (beware the messiah complex, etc.). I want to individually stress these two points:

1. prepare to be miserable. Eventually your misery will buy you back some happiness, but be prepared to wait six or eight months before you can start purhcasing any. You will have a lot of work to do, and you will not know how to do it all. The Summer School will prepare you as best we can, but this profession in this area is a sink-or-swim proposition. In the end it's up to you: keep you head above water in the fall, and learn how to swim in the spring. By the second year, you'll be diving for pearls.

2. Find a hobby that involves what Mississippi does well. If you have joined MTC because you wanted to find traditional high culture, you will quit. If you joined MTC because you wanted to find traditionally liberally-minded people, you will quit. If you joined MTC because you wanted to find an enlightned public school system, you will quit. Many things Mississippi does poorly. If the things we do poorly are the things that get your rocks off, you won't make it. What you need to do is find a reason to love the state: do you like to hunt? do you like the outdoors? do you like Civil War history? do you like to fish? do you like to gamble in riverboat casinos?

If you can find a reason to love the state--and if your reason to love the state will also help relieve stress--then your time here will be much more enjoyable. Mississippi is rural; don't come here with a city-slicker carpet-bagger mentality. If you want to stay sane and have fun, you'll have to accept the state (and its people) on their own terms.

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How Do You Improve the Website?

nobody@vox.com(Reklawnitsua) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:24:24 -0700

I tell you what, my standards for and knowledge of the internet are really low. I'm the same way with computers in general. I still have a soft spot for Windows 3.1 because you could click on "File Manager" and have your computer's innards look directly at you without flashy graphics or hotkeys or extraneous clicking. So in this respect I have no advice to offer to MTC's webmasters.

I got to thinking, though, that our main competition is TFA, so I might as well mosey to their website to see how they are set up. And they beat the pants off of us. Badly. They look professional and we look like our website was made in the Delta. My advice is to beg, borrow, or steal every aspect of TFA's website. If I have to choose one thing in particular, they have an awesome interactive map that allows you to zoom into a particular TFA region to learn more about it.

I think MTC would be well-served to have an interactive map of Mississippi on either the first or second page. Have some flashy graphics, some statistics, maybe pictures and blog links as well. Like if I were to click on the "Greenville region", up would flash information about all the districts we serve in, perhaps some pictures of the schools and the towns in the area, and even links to the blogs of teachers who are placed in that particular region. It would certainly allow for incoming MTC'ers to better vet their option of where to be placed.

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The Most Exciting Blog You'll Ever Read

nobody@vox.com(Reklawnitsua) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:02:50 -0700

Or, the Required Ole Miss EDSE 557 Education Manifesto Response

Part I: Describe how educational technology should be used to support teaching and learning [50-100 words]

It appears that educational technology should exist to unburden teachers and students of the most rote and mundane aspects of a school day. Having freed the students to expand their educational horizons, ed. technology supports open-ended and simulated real-world experiences. For this to be effective, teachers must break from the "student-as-bucket" approach and reorient themselves not as strict pedagogues, but as "facilitators" instead.

Part II: Cognitive tools and their association with educational technology [50-100 words]

This has already been mentioned above. Cog. tools expose students to "authentic" learning in the hopes that more of the education sticks in their heads that way. Many "authentic" environments will end up being computer simulations or other technology-dependent constructs. Voila! as the French would say. Here is ed. tech's entry point into the cog. tools discussion. They are, or can be, synonymous with each other.

Part III: My crack at a learning activity that uses elements of ed. tech, cog. tools, and "authentic" learning environments [150-200 words]

I fly the kids in an airplane (technology!) to the British Lake District (authentic!) where we read Wordsworth's Lake District poems in the same setting in which they were written. The students are unburdened of having to mentally-construct Wordsworth's images, insofar as the images will be visibly in front of the students.

Or...

Using an LCD projector and associated ed. tech tools (perhaps a TV, an open-ended documentary series? hmm?) I can virtually-reconstruct the Lake District and Wordsworth's life there. The students could even go on self-guided virtual tours (by using computers!!!!) of the area in order to locate particular geographical landmarks that Wordsworth mentions in his poems.

Hooper-and-Reiber, were they to walk in on this classroom, would wet themselves with joy. Students creating their own learning environments, guiding themselves through a virtual Lake District tour, free to choose any of the Lake Distict poems that tickle their fancy and then research those at their leisure. A teacher who is free of pedantry, acting as a facilitator to instill love of poetry--not just rote facts of birth and death!!!--in the students' heads. etc. etc. etc.

Part IV: Assessing Technology in K-12

1. How and why is the integration of technology succeeding in K-12? [50-100 words]

Why is it succeeding? I cannot answer this question until "success" is defined. If "success" means "technology is omnipresent in the classrooms", then the answer why is because technology is an easily quantifiable metric: in the absence of more enlightened methods of ascertaining school quality, the presence and numbers of 21st century technology is an easy tally mark to make.

2. How and why is the integration of technology failing in K-12? [50-100 words]

On the other hand, if "success" means what Hooper and Reiber want it to mean, if "success" is to mean students and teachers who depend on technology to transform the learning experience into something orgasmic, then K-12's integration of technology is still, well, less than tumescent. The reasons why are easy, Hooper and Reiber mentioned them all: teachers who are scared of technology; teachers who are untrained in the uses of technology; and administrators whose focus is solely on putting technology in the school but lack the stamina to see that the technology, once placed, is efficiently used. At the same time, Hooper and Reiber were disingenuous to compare the technological integration of doctors and dentists to the integration of teachers. We all know that the business world is NOT the academic world, so demanding a similar hard-driving charge towards efficiency in education is wide of the mark. Plenty of students can learn all they need to know without the use of simulated "authentic" worlds. I mean, the entire historical human population prior to 1980 did alright, and nary was a computer to be found amongst them.

3. Based on my teaching position, what must be done to make ed. tech central to the educational experience? [100-200 words]

Here's the laundry list of obvious suspects: train teachers better, train administrators better, completely fund the technological etc. etc. etc, change the school culture concerning the possibilities of technology.

But if you are asking for my personal opinion about my unique situation, then my answer is this: No one climbs Everest without a base camp; no one kills a deer without first scouting the area and putting up a stand; no one builds a house without a blueprint and a foundation. Until we have a reliable internet connection, computers that can consistently log on to the school network, and sufficient space for to do whatever needs to be done, very little ed. tech. integration will occur. Pedestals and columns can be built high even with a narrow base, but they too easily fall: until the fundamentals are taken care of, it will not matter how many educational simulation websites the district has purchased. Until ease of use is assured, ed. tech. cannot be integrated.

And once our base is solid, you can go back and deal with that laundry list of obvious suspects.

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