Posts (page 2)

This week I wrote a curriculum map with my fellow teachers for our summer school classroom. I have been asked to create a curriculum map once before - in October or so. At the time, I was swamped. I couldn't think past the next two days, let alone a full week, or god knows, an entire semester. I am not a natural procrastinator, and every moment spent on a curriculum map (that I may or may not have used) was one less moment spent planning for the week ahead.  To top it off, my administrators only gave us about three days -- not enough time for such a huge task.

So, my first curriculum map was basically worthless. I stuck to the truth for the first few weeks, then just typed in random objectives. I never looked at it or thought about it again.

This time around, I had more time, a group, and a much more manageable curriculum to map out. It was easier. That being said, I find it incredibly difficult to map out English objectives. The four competencies are all so dependent on one another, that is difficult to divide them with any success. And because you rely on texts to teach the material, and often texts will take multiple classes or weeks to complete, it can be hard to map out specific objectives without first choosing texts. If you plan to teach irony, symbolism, and foreshadowing in the first few days of week 3, you better go find a short story that clearly and easily displays all three to read for those days. I still haven't found the best way to search for texts based on English concepts -- a Google search doesn't usually cut it, and rarely will I even find the full text of the story even if I discover that it contains the concepts I need. (insert plug here for my "national teacher's wiki", where full-texts will be catagorized and searchable not just by author and subject, but also by objectives and English concepts).

So the fogginess of the English curriculum was probably the most difficult challenge. The only other challenge we ran into was that we wanted to give our first-years the flexibility to choose their own texts, and design their own projects in the final weeks -- so constraining them to certain objectives seemed a bit unfair.

I think curriculum maps are basically a great idea, but I think, to do an English one well, its necessary to start with a lot more time. (As in, way more time than we have in a summer school session).  I am planning to start my fall curriculum planning NEXT WEEK. And I won't even get close to done by the end of the summer....

According to The Law of Schools, Students and Teachers in a Nutshell:

..if academic penalities have an academic connection, then the school regulation will prevail. Where a school board withheld credit from a student for missing twenty-four class periods, explicitly stated the purpose was academic, and the student's grades were reduced for each unapproved absence, then the court upheld the procedure.....

I think I may scour my district handbook for any reason why I wouldn't be allowed to do this. Imposing a grade penalty on absences might actually be a good idea for me. Especially if I end up teaching seniors again next year -- whose parents don't mind signing them out of school mid-day for no good reason, and who seem to disappear for vast stretches of time come April and May.

One of the biggest problems in my district, in my mind, is the unbelievable absenteeism. Students are not punished for missing school in my district. At all. We threaten their parents that something MIGHT happen, but they know as well as we do, that nothing will. This book talks of parents getting arrested and students thrown in jail for truancy -- for half the number of absences that many of my students accrued this year. We have none of these sorts of threats to hold over our student's heads, and teachers are held responsible for catching those students up -- and pressured to pass them.
I think, a clearly stated grade penalty for a certain number of absences might just keep the kids in my room. Maybe. I'll have to keep mulling it over....

My dream for teachers goes something like this:

Someday, there might be an organization that creates a national "teacher's wiki". It would take what we have done with our pbwiki , and expand it to include anyone, or any author (just like wikipedia!).  Perhaps, if people objected to total freedom, or the organizers lacked the funds to guide and police in the same way that wikipedia has, there could be a simple sign-up and verification process that the user is actually a teacher. Of course, our pbwiki is woefully underused (note the lack of resources on the foreign language page) and horrendously organized (with a few exceptions)

 This new teacher wiki would be a massively organized database of handouts, worksheets, slideshows, activities and lesson plans for every subject linked into catagories  by subject matter, age group, and approximate level within that age group. We could share our resources not just down the hall, but across the nation. If I needed some inspiration to teach peer editing, I could type "peer editing" into a search box, and have hundreds of different materials and ideas uploaded by teachers around the country at my fingertips.

If I was brave, I might start a business to get this started. It could just as easily be created by a non-profit organization (educational grants are everywhere!), or even, dare I say, the government. It could only help teachers to have this sort of resource -- especially those straight out of school, who lack many of their own resources, and are under more pressure to lesson plan. In fact, I don't know WHY we don't have something like this. Lesson-planning websites on the Internet, I've found, are lacking in quality, and many require payment. I think an advertising-(or grant-) supported database is completely feasible. Now, I just need the courage and the momentum. Maybe someday...

a fellow new MTC-er just posted a fantastic little piece about "NCLB football" which originally came from one of the diaries on DailyKos.

I laughed out loud reading it, so it had to be re-posted:

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND - FOOTBALL VERSION, author unknown
(suggested by Bruce Patterson, Central Michigan University)

1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does
not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time, even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!

3. Talented players will be asked to work out on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don't like football.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game.

This will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child gets left behind. If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.

This piece points out some of NCLB's biggest flaws in a simple, straightforward manner. National accountability and testing, yes. But the series of consequences, the bad assumptions, and the absurd expectations, NO.

Only a week after I posted this "hypothetical", the following gem comes in on a worksheet:

Reflect: What are three things that you are most proud of from this school year?

       I only got one referral (not anything bad, just for drinkin in class)

I'm not sure how to respond to this. (that is, that getting drunk in school seems to be a fairly normal occurrence) There are more problems in struggling school districts than lack of funding, or poor teaching, or even low test scores. This answer shows me that there is a fundamental clash between attitude and expectations. Between the culture these kids grow up in and generate, and the system that we have in place to educate them.

Can you change a culture? A whole community? Should you, even if you could? Or does the education system as we know it need to change? Should we be teaching values and responsibility rather than college-prep curricula?  Or should that have happened already? Is it the school's place to teach values? Or is our responsibility?  I can imagine thousands of plausible answers...

So says the Goldwater Institute, who just released some amazing data comparing NAEP scores from students in Arizona and Florida. The results are pretty incredible.  In the 10 years since Jeb Bush took office and overhauled education policies, Florida's scores have exploded - their low-income Hispanic students now outscore the statewide average of all students in California, Arizona, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, and New Mexico on 4th grade reading tests. Similar gains have been shown in 4th grade math, and 8th grade reading and math...

There is some great commentary here. There is some of the actual data, and an explanation of the steps that the good Gov. Bush took, here.

It's difficult to accurately put this year into words. I am in a different place now (in many senses) than I was in March, in December, in September, and I have a hard time remembering what the year has really been like, let alone get it into words.

I feel like I can't even describe this experience without dipping into time-honored MTC or TFA cliches, that of course, don't do anything justice. To say that it was "a rollercoaster" doesn't give me (or you) the sense of the mind-numbing, brick-dragging lows or the exuberant, cartwheel highs. To say that it has been "the hardest experience of my life" does not convey the magnitude of something more emotionally challenging than losing my mother, more physically challenging than a summer of full-time ice hockey camps, more socially challenging than middle school, and more mentally challenging than 40 back-to-back weeks of college finals.

To sum up, I went to work every morning (sometimes with optimism and excitement, other times with depression and anger), I taught my students (some motivated, some unmotivated) what I thought they needed to learn (lessons that were well-planned and successful, and others that were chaotic and worthless),  and I (gradually) earned their respect (although not all of them).  I coached a sport (which was more fun than my day job, but the added stress almost drove me to quit), and I attended all sorts of faculty meetings (which were occasionally fun and helpful, but often boring and frustrating). I did it. I made it.

You won't find any grandiose, heart-wrenching, "I'm making a difference" type statements, or even the magical "transformation explanation" (in which indebted teacher elaborates on how students have opened her eyes, moved her heart, and changed her very being for their existence). While I have certainly learned (and even, dare I say, changed), to jump into this overly passionate, intangible drivel seems to devalue the concrete task that we are actually trying to accomplish. That is, how can we successfully teach children what they need to know.  To quote a favorite blog, this is just a job.

What this experience has done for me: Most importantly, I am now extremely interested in educational issues - on both the policy and pedagogical levels. A conversation with a few fellow teachers over dinner last night reminded me again how much I enjoy thinking critically about, and proposing solutions to, all sorts of problems in our nation's schools - at a national level right on down to the classroom. It is this desire to fix, to critique, to debate, to reflect, to analyze, to propose and to implement that kept me here as I was on the brink of wandering away. Of course, I probably would have wandered into another facet of education, but one (most likely) without quite the same challenges.

I have no doubt that I will remain active in education in some form or another for a long time to come -- if it does not end up as my career, it will most certainly be an outlet for my free time and energy. So in that sense, this year has been wonderful success. I have found something I want to devote my time and skills and energy towards and something that will stay with me long after next year. As far as my teaching goes, I'd like to think I am on my way to a successful second year. I have learned from mistakes, I am ten times the teacher I was in September, and perhaps most importantly, I intend to spend the next few months analyzing, proposing, debating, critiquing and reflecting on all sorts of strategies that I may want to implement come fall....

One of my favorite education blogs has a hilarious little post that made me laugh out loud multiple times. It rings true. And also, I imagine I might be thinking right along the same lines at this time next year...

"Let's hope the smart-and-excited-trumps-experience gamble pays off."

I hope this blogger isn't gone for good, or that he is simply changing schools, rather than quitting the profession entirely -- I'll miss his posts, and once again a school will miss a motivated young teacher...

It's the second-to-last day for seniors. Many of the seniors are actually out today -- attending a ceremony of some sort for state scholars. As a result, your morning class has three students, only one of which is a senior.

This senior is very bright, but regularly refuses to do his work and often resists your classroom management techniques. He knows full well that he does not need your class to graduate. His overall attitude towards you and the class could be described as "critical" -- his temper flares up if you press him about anything, and you get tired of dealing with a student who so obviously doesn't want to be there.

So on a day like today, where you aren't doing all that much anyway (finishing up the final project), and its his second-to-last day, you don't feel like giving him a hard time. He is very, very upbeat today. He comes in happily, begins quietly working on his project, contributes to the discussion, and even compliments you and the class.

But he is, to your eyes, obviously drunk.

What do you do?

Racial stereotypes of all kinds have always bothered me. One in particular has been rolling around my mind today - the idea that being black carries with it "coolness" while white skin automatically signals "nerd". I hate that students who are interested in school are branded as acting white, the ultimate "loser" insult. That in order to fit in with your race you must project a sort of 'cool' image, rather than embracing your inner interest in math, in chess, in reading, in computers, in whatever.

My kids constantly make jokes about white people that appear in movies, pictures, or cultural references around school. The first thing a student does when they get frustrated with me will be to imitate my voice -- I cringe when their exaggerated verbal caricature sounds so much like me, yet so obviously nerdy. The patronizing tone they use when they joke about white people doing something awkward makes me want to point out that there are plenty of so-called "nerds" at our school, and plenty of white people that aren't walking awkward dictionaries. Just another chasm between the races; perceptions that neither side can quite get over (or want to?), no matter what anyone might show them otherwise.

This all came rushing to my mind when DT said, out-of-the-blue, near the end of class, "Hey ms. m, you cool, for your color. Other people might not think so, but I think you are."  This should have been a teachable moment, but the bell was about to ring, and I got caught off-guard. My first instinct was to take it as a compliment, but I can't let go of the left-handedness of it...