Oh, snap!

a greeting from the mist!

2006-12-24T18:32:00.000-08:00

Hello good people. I hope that no one is reading this blog any longer...I stopped writing in it when I got a teaching job because my job gobbled by life up like an enormous fish with a gaping, child-filled mouth. So here's the story. I started a job at a KIPP school teaching 5th grade social studies in July. I taught for 3 weeks in July, went to the KIPP conference, worked in August on my room and curriculum, and started for real in September. I have not really slept or, for that matter, sat down, since then. I love the job, the school, and the kids though. It's an amazing experience. Everyone is so smart and hard-working and I can just relate to them because they are like me. It's so different than everything I've encountered in education before this. In 3 weeks at KIPP I learned more about teaching than I did in a whole year of grad school. The other teachers are incredible, and inspiring and everything. And the little kids are so dear...when they're not being tiny devils. But that's what 10 year olds are for I suppose. Anyway, I don't want to sound pollyannish, the school definitely has its problems. It has a REALLY long school day that's hard on the kids and hard on the teachers. I teach 3 90 minute classes, 2 45 minute homerooms, and 1 45 minute test prep/reading class. My schedule is such that I teach straight from 1 pm to 5 pm. It's killer. But it's totally worth it when I imagine the alternative work environment...public schools seem even crazier since I got to KIPP. Anyway, I don't want to write too much now because it'll be a boring overview. I'll try to write more as I go along, although it's difficult because I'm so busy and exhausted all the time. I've found myself saying things to kids like "I don't CARE about your ISSUES!" That's when I know I'm too tired. But it would be good to reflect too, so I'll try to keep this up this time.

Portfolio education

2006-05-25T12:13:00.000-07:00

So I have my big portfolio project due for school tomorrow. I'm mostly done. Phoning something in doesn't take that long. The project is basically a compilation of a number of different assignments we had over the course of the year in different classes: a statement of our "philosophy" of social studies education, a resume, some units on history or economics, the social justice action project and a social justice "inquiry brief," the usual suspects. We also have to organize it around a quirky/peppy theme. For example, one person did a wedding theme, with her assignments grouped under subthemes like "dating," "proposing," "wedding planning," etc. Another one from a past year was about an ordinary boy transforming into a popular superhero. One girl in my class did something akin to "Riding the equity bus to the state capitol." (Equity is a really big word these days. I don't know what happened to "equality," but it's out.) Anyway, the portfolio is supposed to signify the changes you go through in the master's program. But it's just so silly. I think back to my undergraduate days and I simply cannot imagine a professor giving such a childish assignment. Can you imagine turning in an academic paper with the title "Peter Parker transforms into Superman"? It's almost insulting. And we get a master's degree for this? I think the program knows how silly it is too, because some of the language they use to describe the project requirements just sound like fancy language trying to cover up for intellectual bankruptcy. Witness:

"The portfolio should be integrative, synthetic, and evaluative.

Translation: The portfolio should be big word to make me look smart, big word to confirm smartness, big word to blow their minds with the smartness.

"The portfolio is not a scrapbook, although it may resemble one, but a new creation which assimilates the diverse aspects of the candidate's experiences during the master's program."

Translation: The portfolio is a scrapbook. Get over it.

"The portfolio should be organized around a theme which will be set out in an introductory essay explicating and organizing the choice of materials."

Translation: Choose a theme. Write an essay on why you chose your theme. Explain the materials you included.

Introductory essay: "This essay should indicate the organizing schema governing the selection of the 'artifacts' of the student's teaching 'journey' contained within the portfolio.

Translation: Write an essay on why you chose your theme. Explain the materials you included.

Curriculum Units: "Please make sure to include content goals and skill goals. For these goals, state concisely why you have chosen to include them in your unit as well as insuring your instructional objectives derive from your unit goals."

Here's what JLo would say to this: "Girl, please. You would not know concise if it hit you with a wood cutout of the word 'explicate.'"

I called JLo and asked her. She said that's what she would say.

Social justice paper: "What role has any of the following played in social studies over the last several decades and how, if at all, do these topics relate to social justice?

--technology
--patriotism
--cognitive pluralism
--notions of self-actualization
--current events
--Supreme Court cases
--Economic opportunity
--Global education
--religion"

Does the inclusion of "self-actualization" mean we can use the book "I'm Ok, You're Ok" as a source? What if using that book would help me realize my full potential?

Social justice paper: "Your paper will be a reflection of your shared knowledge, acknowledged here as tentative and embryonic, of these signficant questions around social justice and social studies education."

Translation: Your paper will be about what you know and what your classmates know, which is not a lot. Your knowledge is, in fact, similar to a hesitant fetus.

Student teaching reflective papers: "What are the norms, practices, rituals, customs, values, power structures, group affiliations, and status systems that define and shape your classroom setting?

Well, let's see. We usually start off by sacrificing a goat on the altar of Mammon, cuz he's our favorite god. Then Raquita, who is the Queen Bee of the Nest, leads us through a little blood-letting and some chanting while Michael, affiliated with the school's most elite acapella group, tends the burning incense. Everyone gives a tithe to me, the Dragon Mother, and after that we start the Do Now.

That's all for today. I have to go finish my portfolio.

comments

2006-05-12T20:36:00.000-07:00

There were some really interesting comments on the last post. I'd like to say that I agree with the commentor who said that not all schools should be like KIPP schools. Obviously education is not a one size fits all type of joint. There should be choices, for parents and for students. Choice is part of the appeal of the charter school movement, and something that I think makes it so promising. In our society, we are obsessed with choice. New brands and flavors and colors are constantly cropping up, competing for our attention. And yet we are somehow afraid of letting people choose schools, as if the whole world would fall around us. Well, wealthy people have school choice because they have money. Less wealthy people should have choice too.

Having a choice, rather than something pushed on you, really creates a level of buy-in. If all schools were charter schools (it's ok, breathe), parents would have a tremendous level of choice as to where to send their child. The schools with the best records, teachers, and programs would be in high demand (and could be allocated money to expand), whereas the bad schools would have to improve or be pushed to the side. Even though there aren't huge profits in education, I think with some kind of market forces in place you will have schools cropping up if there is a demand for them. For example, if too many kids are getting kicked out of charter schools, more schools for kids with EBD will step in to fill the void. Believe it or not, there are people willing and able to help kids like that, and the state has allocated money for them. The DOE is so incredibly inefficient right now, in so many ways, that introducing any kind of market forces (through school choice, teacher selection, merit pay, etc) will free up money to be funneled into areas that need it, like special ed.

This is rambly assortment of ideas with no order imposed, so bear with me.

As for expulsion, I have a child in my class who was asked to leave a KIPP school in the 8th grade. He has a load of emotional/behavioral problems that prevent him from being able to handle such a structured environment. However, he is also the smartest kid in my class. A lot of the knowledge he has he learned at KIPP. He scores 4's on all his state exams. Now, he is a naturally smart young kid, but he didn't learn what he knows from watching TV. And his home life has been so chaotic for so long that the only possibility, I think, is that he learned at school. So even though he was expelled, I think he really did benefit from being at that school.

Furthermore, for a school to create a certain kind of culture, the power to ultimately expel a student has to be there. So let's say 3 kids out of a school of 75 kids are expelled in one year. If expelling those 3 kids was necessary (and often, it is) to maintain the culture and safety of the school for the other 72, does that mean we need to shut down the school? As for screening, even if there is some selection based on motivated parents and door-knocking, all the data shows that the students who enter these schools are almost identical to students at the neighborhood schools. Same low test scores, same income levels, same ethnic/racial backgrounds, same obstacles. That small sliver of selection cannot, in my view, ever overshadow the difference in gains between KIPP-type charter school kids and neighborhood public school kids. Let's say there were 5 KIPP schools in one area instead of 1. Maybe, because the program is so rigorous and not for everyone, those five schools would only help 3-4 times the number of students that the 1st one did. Does that mean those other 5 are not worth having? Just because not every kid can succeed (and many can) at a particular charter school does not provide a reason to shut down that school. That's just stupid. The purpose of a free public education is not to keep all kids at the same mediocre levels. If one school is doing things better than another, complain about the second school, not the first! Let's stop attacking things that work so we can cover our own asses.

As for the comment about preparing every kid for public office--yello? Isn't that what American democracy is all about? An assumption that everyone has the potential to be what he creates himself to be, and not what he was born as? Listen, if the kid is not interested in that path, fine. But how am I supposed to tell which kids should be afforded privileges? Which kids get the keys to power and which don't? If a sixth grader is unmotivated to do math, that doesn't mean he can't someday be an engineer. I don't think I have the right to select which students get which knowledge. I have to push them all, try to motivate them all. When they're older, then they can make a choice. Which is why I would definitely support a greater variety of high-quality high schools (charter high schools? eh? eh?)--vocational, professional, college prep, whatever. Students at that age are a little more self-aware.

Aaaanyway, I shall end with some typical whining, since that is really the true essence of this blog. My students are going nuts! They're 8th graders and want OUT of the school. This week 6 of them were suspended for having a crayon fight in another class. I believe I heard the phrase "the air was thick with crayons," or something to that effect. One little boy, who is constantly in trouble, saw what was about to start, got up, and ran out of the room, stating "I am not about to get expelled for no crayon fight." I was proud of his self-restraint. It's funny though, about this suspension punishment, since last week in class one of my students made an incredibly obscene remark/insult to another student (this was the worst behavior incident I have seen in my class) and was sent to the office. And yet, the very same day, she was playing in the championship basketball game. Oh, did I mention she's the star player? Right. Great message to send. Oh well, that's life. And at a charter school, no less! :)

apologies to the social justice project for misdirected anger

2006-05-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

Seems I hit a bit of a nerve on some people with the last entry. I understand some of the complaints--what's wrong with a little social justice here and there? etc. It's not that this assignment, standing alone, is so onerous. But it is part of a program that has consistently emphasized ideology, a particular and unbending view of urban education (that has, over the last 30 years, utterly failed, if we take the current situation as an assessment) and vague terms like "social justice" over concrete realities.

Social justice, at its root, is about change. We want to change the way our society works so that everyone can have the opportunity to create the lives they want. But if social justice succeeds only if change occurs, then we have to measure that change. We have to know if we have accomplished what we set out to do. If we don't measure, or even attempt to measure, all we are doing is patting ourselves on the back and convincing ourselves, without evidence, that we have done something good. Something good means change. Change must be measured.

So. What would be measurable social justice in reference to education? The ability for all students, regardless of income or race, to achieve at high levels. What is a "high level"? To me it is the ability to compete economically, socially, and politically with kids from suburban and private schools who have been drilled and tutored their entire lives. "Competing" means a) the ability to obtain a job with middle class, family-supporting wages, b) the ability to enter into and graduate from (there is an enormous difference between the two) 4 year academic institutions, c) the ability to obtain elite professional jobs reserved for only the most highly educated, d) the ability to run for, and win, public office. I am making no judgment as to whether anybody should or should not hold a,b,c, or d as goals. But withholding opportunity for others based on my own personal life preferences is morally reprehensible. I had all these opportunities. I chose not to take some of them. But I had a choice. Many kids don't, and that is unjust.

So now we have some social justice goals to work toward. Now we need to figure out how to achieve them. We could just sit around and think about it, and perhaps come up with one or two good ideas. But a much more efficient method would be to go out and see who is already achieving the goals we set out for ourselves. If we observe many different schools in many different places that are helping their kids obtain skill levels to accomplish a,b,c, and d, then we can analyze what each of these places has in common.

The tricky part is working backward from a,b,c, and d--we need to figure out what these goals look like in grade school, middle school, and high school. Let's focus on middle school for a second. We will use math and literacy test scores. This is a controversial move, but let's think through it. We have suburban kids being able to achieve certain levels on literacy and math tests. They are the ones who, currently, end up having the choices a,b,c, and d because of the special privileges life has afforded them. So if we have urban schools whose students achieve parity with, or outperform, these students on academic measures, then we have at least a rough indicator that a school is doing something right. Tests may not be the be-all and end-all of educational achievement, but let's face it: our kids should not be failing these tests. They are ridiculously, sadly easy. And they aren't some kind of tests from space with symbols no one recognizes. Math tests assess the ability to do math, reading tests assess the ability to read.

So, IF we can agree that tests show SOMETHING about how a school's children are being educated, THEN we can find the urban schools that are succeeding. It's an imperfect measure, but what else do we have? People argue that tests don't assess "creativity," "critical thinking," "passion," etc. But these things are essentially un-measurable. We can hide behind them, and say they are the only things that matter, but then we are back to the problem we started with: if we aren't willing to measure change, then we will never know if we have achieved social justice. And ignorance is the same as failure. Or we can accept these tests as imperfect but revealing.

Maybe I have lost some of you with the testing. If you can explain to me a better way to measure how students are doing on a large scale (social justice is nothing if not large scale), then please do so.

So now, the urban school systems that are succeeding at social justice as we have defined it here: KIPP, Achievement First, Yes Prep, Uncommon Schools. Individual schools: Roxbury Prep, North Star Academy, Amistad Academy, MATCH School, Excellence Charter School of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Academy of the Pacific Rim, Bronx Prep, Boston Collegiate, and on and on. I encourage you to look up any and all information you can on these schools. Look at their scores, look at their student populations, look at their gains, look at how many of their kids are going to college. It's astounding.

What do all these schools have in common? Dreaded things. Traditional curricula, long school days, long school years, excellent teachers on call 24/7, administrators dedicated, obsessed with, student achievement, discipline, uniforms, insistence upon doing homework, insistence on parental involvement, rewards, character development. No bullshit. Hard work. Year after year. KIPP Academy has been the top-scoring middle school in math and reading for 11 years. It just works.

These schools focus on academics, whole-heartedly. They give their students perspectives, but first and foremost they expect students to work their hearts out and learn and learn. It's brutal sometimes, but these schools are communities, the kids love them. They help one another, they participate, they want to do well, they have community meetings where they sing and dance and cheer. Go visit one of these schools sometime. It makes you cry.

The teachers in these schools are experienced. They are the best and the brightest. They come from often disastrous public school environments where they had to figure everything out on their own. My question is: why can't ed schools learn from these schools? Why can't they take what those teachers have learned (and what has been proven to work) and show it to us? Why do we have to do social justice projects when nobody cares about how effective we are at teaching children what they need to know???? I swear, literacy should be the first item on any list devoted to social justice, and yet it is like a ghost in the hallways at ed school.

I complain and whine because I am angry. I am angry because I want to be like the teachers in these schools, but no one at my school will tell me how. They are against charter schools, against long school days, against traditional education. Even when they know these things work. One of my instructors told me that KIPP was bad because it "makes kids go to school too much." But what if that's just what it takes to achieve true social justice? How can you be so hypocritical?

The anger heaped upon the social justice project is disproportionate because it represents the anger I feel all the time, with everything. With wanting to learn how to make a difference and being shot down at every turn. With caring about urban kids and being told that I really actually don't. With seeing students thrive and being told I am seeing wrong. I'm sorry this was so long. It's been exhausting to write and I should have left it for another time. I have to go to sleep; I have another day of mucking through my own mistakes, trying desperately, and failing, to be good.

social freaking justice

2006-04-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

I am writing, as usual, so that you will share my pain with me. I have to do an assignment for my student teaching seminar which will also be included in my "portfolio" (due in a month. Have I started? Of course not. Do I care? Not at all). I have been putting off this project all year because I think it is the epitome of the essence of quintessential bullshit. You know, it doesn't even warrant the gift of calling it bullshit, because I would much rather do something related to, or in conjunction with, the poop of cows, rather than this assignment. This is more like death by a thousand tiny but stupid lasers.

The assignment is a Social Justice Action Project. What is that, you ask? I answer: something that makes me want to weep and also whirl around and around like the Tasmanian Devil or a Dervish until I start to drill into the ground and then, upon entering the core of the earth, are exempted from this assignment. Here are the instructions I was given:

VII – Social Justice Culminating Project – Due April 13, 2006

Drawing upon your coursework and student teaching experiences related to diversity and social justice issues, develop and enact a social justice project. As a student teacher, you must check with your cooperating teacher and school on the viability of whatever project you decide to pursue. Choose one of the following options:

Invite a guest speaker to your class who will speak on issues of political accountability and educational equity. This person might be a local political office holder or a community activist. Following the speakers presentation, develop and instructional activity to be used with students that draws upon the presentation that was heard.
Develop a reading buddies program for your students, where they are paired with elementary students and engaged in an after-school literacy endeavor. You may choose to make this an extra-credit project for your students.
Involve your class in community activism. This might include student participation in a community event such as New York Cares Day.
If your school already has a service learning program in place, involve your class in one of the projects.
Develop a professional development experience for teachers that attempts to address and remediate the most pressing social justice issue at the school. Present your ideas to your colleagues at the school.
Develop and implement your own justice-oriented action project.

Your presentation of the social justice action project should include the following components:

An introductory description of the activist project (2 pages):

Page 1: How do you conceptualize a justice-oriented citizen? How do you make meaning of social justice and connect it to justice-oriented citizenship? How have your experiences as a high school student and as a student teacher exposed you to differences in resource allocation in schools?
Page 2: Which of the above action projects did you choose? What was the purpose of the project? Explain the features of the project you developed.

Lesson Plans: How will you debrief with your students? Will they have written reflective assignments? A class discussion? Please provide a detailed plan for how you will help students make meaning of their experiences, and think about future civic involvement.

A reflective journal describing the process of the project: What was your time frame for developing and enacting the project? What bureaucratic barriers did you encounter? How did you go about organizing the project? How did your colleagues and students react to the project? Was the experience meaningful for you and your students? Will you attempt these types of action projects in your future career?

Crazy, right? My personal favorite idea is to develop a social justice professional development for the teachers at my school. I can only imagine how they would react to something like that. I would probably be skinned alive. Another thing that I like is the reflective journal. Don't we all love reflective journals? I know I do. No one asks us to keep reflective journals on our teaching, or whether our kids are actually learning a goddam thing, but we have to keep a reflective journal on the process of a social justice action project that is ill-defined and which no one seems to be able to explain the purpose of? GREAT. THANK YOU, ED SCHOOL. I'm sure this is going to be so helpful to me in the future. Especially if I am on a game show called "Name That Ridiculous Ideological Nightmare" or "Things I Am Ashamed of" or "Something that Will Never, Ever Help a Student; Not Ever." Although I guess I haven't heard of a game show title with a semi-colon in it. But hey, I also had never heard of a social justice action project, and yet here it is.

The next question is: what am I going to do? Well, that was my question two days ago when I called my Mom crying and asked, "What am I going to do?" My biggest problem, other than the fact that I think taking up school time with this ridiculous nonsense is not only a waste of time but actually morally questionable (given the obviously partisan tone of the project and how far behind my students are in real school), was that I have my class of kids only 3 times a week. In the next month, seeing them 3 times a week, I have to get these kids from Industrialization through World War II. I have calculated that I have less than 5 days for all of World War I. So even one class period is precious. I could do it after school, but I actually use that time to plan actual lessons. That kids will actually learn from. So I was upset and convinced I wouldn't graduate. Which, considering, would not be too disappointing. As it is, I plan to never speak of this school or degree ever again, unless I have to. "Do you have any master's degrees, Laura?" they'll ask. "Only from the school of hard knocks," I'll say. Anyway, my mom, being a very sensible lady, pointed out that I am teaching the Gilded Age right now, and had a lesson coming up on the vast gap between rich and poor, and that I could use that! Think of it! Doing a for an assignment in grad school! She is truly brilliant. Seriously, people, you just wish you had a mom like mine. She flies and stuff.

So now it is time to write this up. I'm somewhat afraid that I will be failed on this assignment. However, I will keep my dignity and self-respect anyway. I will keep you updated. Send your prayers, or, if you have the power, please fire the people responsible for this project. Hey, you never know who's reading. (i.e. God).

funny blog

2006-04-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

My friend has a really funny blog dedicated to his love for Taco Bell and his rage that there aren't any in Midtown. Check it out:

tacobellchampion.blogspot.com

some updates

2006-04-23T19:14:00.000-07:00

--My bus ride back from Boston last week featured a crying baby (well, sometimes crying, sometimes just loud high-pitched happy noises), an 80 degree bus, and traffic so bad that it took us 45 minutes to get from 60th St to 42nd street, which then caused class lateness and panic. Feel sorry for me. I sure did.

--Interviews went pretty well. Fingers crossed for my first real paying job in 2 years.

--Have to do a portfolio to graduate from ed school. Has to have some kind of "cohesive theme" that "illustrates our journey" through the year. I'm thinking "Frustration," "Disappointment," or "Seething fury." Suggestions welcome.

oh man

2006-04-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

Things have been crazy busy here on the home front. (I suppose I shouldn't say that, since we are actually in a war. ) We just finished the Civil War unit in my student teaching class (oh, and one of the kids stole the test from my shelf ahead of time...yeah he's in HUGE trouble), I've had a couple papers due for ed school (completed in just over 1 hour, thank you very much--you know, I USED to be a good student!), and I've had 1 interview in Washington and now have 4 in Boston, so I've been traveling all over the place. And all this while trying to pay my bills, eat, maintain proper hygiene, etc. So it's been pretty hectic.

Yesterday my student teaching seminar was really depressing, because people started getting on that whole "these kids...(fill in the blank with excuses about why they can't do school)." I know (I KNOW) that urban teaching is really difficult, but I think what they don't know is that the school structure and attitude can change everything! These are smart, well-meaning people, but they're coming out of ed school with this horrible defeatist attitude about urban kids, and they're all applying to teach in Westchester and Long Island instead. The other ones, who do want to teach urban kids, say things like "why do we have to shove kids through this system when they don't like it? Kids are so curious, but we don't let them explore their own interests. Why don't we go back to a Dewey type model of school?" My instructor said, "That's a very good point." Nobody said anything about how Dewey was actually a FAILED teacher when he wrote his philosophical musings. Then there was this whole discussion about how some kids just "aren't good at school" and we should have more options for them, like technical training programs. Now I agree with that--some people just don't like the school structure or book learning or whatever--there were kids like that at my high school who I am sure went on to be successful pilots or plumbers or whatever. However, you know they are not talking about just any kids going to technical school--they are saying that poor, minority children should go to technical schools. Which perpetuates the class structure they are always bemoaning anyway. Unless you are willing to accept a Booker T. Washington-esque gradualism in solving economic and social inequalities. It's just so frustrating that there are these schools that are so wonderful, and are getting their city kids up to and beyond standard, and yet no one knows about them!!

But let me turn from the bad news to teh good news. There is a movie coming up this summer that is going to be AWESOME. Here is a short piece about the movie in Newsweek (April 10, 2006):

The script is pure Hollywood schlock. A witness under FBI protection is flying from Hawaii to Los Angeles. A mobster wants him dead before he can testify. But how can the bad guy get to him? A selection from the script: "Hundreds of oxygen masks DEPLOY, dangling over the seats—but it's not just oxygen masks. IT'S SNAKES."

Forget Cruise. Forget Hanks. The summer's most buzzed-about movie is a grade-C thriller about passengers besieged by a plane full of snakes, and it's called ... wait for it ... "Snakes on a Plane."

Just when you thought the world had no innocent joy left in it, someone goes and makes a movie whose very title makes you love all of mankind. Snakes on a Plane. Thank you, God. And you too, Samuel L. Jackson.

School

2006-03-22T13:16:00.000-08:00

My school is driving me crazy. Not the school I'm teaching in, but the school I go to. Maybe I should say "school," since is it really a school if you don't learn anything? Really it's just a building into which I am pouring tens of thousands of dollars of money that I have not yet earned. Fabulous.

The reason I'm annoyed is that I'm applying to work at schools out of state, but I still have credits left to take at my school here in the summer. Most schools want me to start in the middle of the summer, but if I do then I won't finish all my credits. And, of course, you can't transfer ANY credits in from another institution. You know, because the education I'm getting in my current courses is so high quality that I wouldn't want to sully my degree with any inferior outside courses. Ugh. I just want to get my degree and get the h out of here.

Seriously, I feel like a second grade student who keeps getting busywork ditto worksheets from the teacher and is bored and appalled. Although my reading level is actually at a third grade level at the moment. But I shouldn't joke, because there are people my age with a third grade reading level. Many of them are high school graduates! Something wrong there I think.

Anyway, I'm looking at schools in Boston, New York, DC...I love the Midwest where I'm from, but it's too early to move back yet. "You can't go home again." Who is that? Tom Wolfe?
Sometimes I feel that way because I think I need to accomplish something before I face anyone I used to know. And that really hasn't happened, especially this year! Good lord. It's been such a waste. I might as well have taken a big loan out of a bank in cash, put it all in a pile, and burned it. At least then I would have gotten some heat out of the deal.

I was talking to someone at a job fair who is starting what looks to be a really great school. He was saying that it's going to be hard for me because I don't have enough experience (usually 2 years is what people want) to get into one of these really good charter schools. But I have too much experience to want to work at a DOE school or a crappy charter school. So really I'm screwed. Who knows, maybe someone will take some pity on me. I make a good sad face.

On the flip side, the other school is going well and I'm enjoying myself. It's challenging because the school doesn't really have a unified behavior system, so I'm sort of making one up as I go along. Today in one of my classes, this one kid who is always loud and ridiculous wasn't there, and it was like a whole different experience. During the Do Now, there was total silence. It was shocking. This one kid is really able to affect the whole class negatively. Nothing I've tried with him works. He just has no impulse control, or else doesn't use it. I don't know what to do with him.

Anyway, I'd better go do some work. I have to write a test on the Civil War and Reconstruction. It should be interesting.

Nothing pithy to say

2006-03-08T20:00:00.000-08:00

Ummmmmm. My contacts are dried out and I am tired. My friends are at a party, and yet it is Wednesday night. I have just finished my lesson for tomorrow and am relieved. I ate too many potato chips before dinner and now I feel kind of sick. The Diet Coke and York peppermint patty after dinner did not help matters I think. I went to a charter school job fair on Saturday and am afraid that no one will hire me because I don't have enough experience. Some days I wish I had done TFA, but that has its own set of problems. But oh, how everyone loves people from TFA. I am the lonely outsider from a bs graduate school. Well, what can you do. Today I went to the girls' basketball game. This is a small charter middle school, and yet the basketball team is awesome. They haven't lost a game in 3 years. It's entirely because of 3 girls on the team who are amazing. They didn't play in the first half, and by halftime the team was losing 20-10. Midway through the 3rd quarter it was like 22-37. Amazing, these girls. Anyway, I have to go to sleep. Let's all hope for a good tomorrow. That would include my grad school classes being cancelled. Pray for me.

I hate children

2006-03-06T11:47:00.000-08:00

Oh, the whining.

My one class of spazzes who never do their homework all just bombed a quiz today. A couple of them--ones who do work and/or listen in class--did fine. The rest BOMBED. One of them said that Abraham Lincoln, before he was a politician, was a MAILMAN. Someone else said a gardener. I feel like shooting myself. Hopefully it will be a rude awakening for them, and not an inspiration to give up completely.

This class, though. They make me feel completely incompetent. They are OUT of control. Mainly there are 3 instigators, and the rest are happy to follow along. Well I have to run. Any advice is appreciated.

the weather outside is frightful

2006-03-02T11:43:00.000-08:00

and I don't have a fireplace.

Today went really well. It was a lesson on Civil War battles. They were curious about things like bonesaws and digging bodies up to rebury them. Everyone loves that stuff.

I only got up the gumption to write something for 2 reasons:

1) Because I want to complain about having to go to class from 3:20-7 because it suuuucks.

2) It's my mom's birthday and I wanted to send a shout-out! Happy birthday Mom! She's mphmphmm years old. That was her holding her hand over my mouth. Now that she took her hand away, I can tell you that she's over 500 years old. She's actually a Biblical patriarch, and has 800 children. Ha ha just kidding. It doesn't matter how old she is, since she is a beautiful and caring person at any age. Awwwwww................ (Mom--send money)

I don't want to go to class! Maybe there will be an avalanche so I don't have to go. Or God will finally decide to mete out final justice and this whole place will be destroyed with a single bolt of lightning. Or maybe a giant pencil or book. That would be more fitting.

tired

2006-02-28T18:41:00.000-08:00

It's amazing that one hour of teaching a day can make you feel like you've run a marathon and then had the crap beaten out of you by a passing thug.

Suffice it to say, today was rough. The learning process itself was ok I think, but these 2 boys in my class are driving me crazy. One cares somewhat about school and learning, but he is so social and easily distractable and giggly. He is generally good-natured, but a pain in the ass. The other kid doesn't seem to care about school (he's getting a 36 in my class) and is really hostile toward me, and apparently toward other female teachers also. This is the kind of kid I have a lot of trouble handling.

Tomorrow I have the less hostile, more spazzy class.

Today was also funny because we got into some bureaucratic ridiculousness. The school is on the 4th and 6th floors of a building used for other purposes. On the sixth floor, the school janitor does the classrooms, but another guy does the hallways. The school janitor "doesn't do" the 4th floor, so you have to appeal to yet another janitor. There have been disputes within my classroom about which janitor empties which trash can. Which is why I think hiring an independent cleaning company to come in once a day after school and just clean the damn room is probably a good idea. Entrenchment: not a good idea.

hi

2006-02-27T12:40:00.000-08:00

Someone encouraged me to start writing again. I appreciated that, so I'm going to do my best here.

I've been exhausted lately because I started my student teaching assignment. I have 2 classes of eighth graders, but each class only has social studies three days a week. So I have one class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the other class Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. It's difficult to teach this way because the scheduling gets all messed up in my head. And I have to try to cram a lot of content into a short amount of time, since they have to take the 8th grade s.s. test in June. And they were supposed to start the year on the civil war and right now be on like the Progressive Era, but my teacher re-taught a lot of 7th grade material, so I am doing the Civil War currently!! I am trying to map out how I am going to get through the rest of the Civil War, industrialization, the Progressive Era, World War I, the Depression, World War II, and the postwar era in the approximately 30 some days they have left in social studies. Easy, right?

It's weird that there's only 3 days of social studies a week. Also we have this weird period after lunch called "Literature group." It's basically group reading, which is good, but they only have 5 periods in the day (plus an hour lunch), so I really think they should tack that on as a 6th period. School only goes from 8:40 to 2:50, which is not enough time I think. It's an ok school, but there are a lot of messed up things like that. For example, every Friday 2 of my girls miss class because they have dance. And that's somehow ok?

I like the kids though. They're pretty sweet, most of them. Some of the boys are giving me trouble and testing me, there's one kid with severe behavioral/emotional problems who is hard to deal with, and a couple of the girls are snotty and obnoxious, but other than that the kids are fine. There was one precious moment last week that I loved. I wasn't there, but one of the other teachers recounted this story to me. The kids had this ridiculous speaker for Black History Month. He was a poet, and read some of his poetry about black leaders, which was great. But then he put down his poems and just started ranting to the kids about his far-left political views, like how the first George Bush caused 9/11 and how everything is a conspiracy, blah blah. The kids really challenged him on these views, especially when he criticized black rappers for being too materialistic and mysogynist and then bragged that he hung out with Snoop Dogg. I was proud of them when I heard that.

Anyway, the funny part came when he asked them who the first "gangster" in American history was. He was looking for the answer "Christopher Columbus." But the kids didn't understand what he was getting at in his question. One kid raised his hand and was like, "Um, Biggie Smalls?" Brilliant.

I'm getting more used to behavioral management, although I'm still not very good at it. The hardest thing is the transitions between activities. Also, some activities lend themselves better to quiet than others. My class is sometimes kind of chaotic, although other times I am proud of how it's going. Also, much of the information we're covering seems to be getting across, so I'm happy about that. So much of how the class behaves depends on the lesson plan and how smoothly it operates. Unfortunately I have to do so much on the fly because it takes me so long to plan a lesson that I can hardly catch up with myself.

But for all my complaining, my situation is 10000 times better than last semester, and I am grateful for that. My cooperating teacher is very supportive and helpful, and has given me a lot of free rein to be creative and do what I want. The kids have chafed under some of the changes I've made, but I think they'll get used to them and stop whining eventually. Although whining is a special talent of theirs. Especially about homework. I don't even give that much homework, they have 2 nights to do it, and yet you should hear them yell and cry! It's a good thing none of them is going to MATCH next year--they would freak out! Actually, it's not a good thing, but you know what I mean.

On Saturday I took 2 of the NYState Teacher Certification Exams. One was a "Liberal Arts and Sciences Test." I think they should redesign this test to have 2 questions:

1. Are you an idiot? ______
2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how sure are you that you are not an idiot? ______

I think that test would be pretty much equivalent to the one I took. The other test was a history content one, and that was more difficult. However, it was poorly designed in that, for many of the multiple choice questions, you could make a good argument for more than one answer. In my mind, I would think, do you want the traditional standard textbook answer or the more PC, revisionist answer? Because they're both there. It was frustrating. Still, I'm sure I did fine. Not that I'm done with testing. There's one more, the ATSW. I think it's on teaching skills or something. No idea. Don't care. I'll show up and take it and I'm sure it will be fine.

So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. And I'm constantly wishing that I had a portable cot. Like right now I am wishing that.

size matters

2006-01-29T15:13:00.000-08:00

I'm starting student teaching at the charter school tomorrow! I'm so excited! I had another meeting with the Principal last week, and she is so great. She actually asked ME how the SCHOOL could help me get something good out of my experience! She said, "I don't want you to go out for a drink on Friday night with your friends and have to tell them how horrible your teaching placement is." I told her that it was 100% impossible that this school could be worse, or even in the same ballpark of horrible, as the one I taught at last semester. She just laughed.

This school is a K-8, and has about 30 kids per grade. In the "upper school," of grades 6-8, each individual class period has only 15 kids! Talk about a perfect place to do student teaching! The social studies teacher I'm working with has one class of 6th grade global history, two classes (7th and 8th) of American history, and a "literature" class. This last class is a group of kids at the same reading level who read books together and talk about them. The teachers are free to choose whatever kinds of books they want, as long as they are at the correct reading level. It sounds pretty fun. My teacher's class is currently reading Angels and Demons, which, while not exactly an intellectual force, is an enjoyable and decent book, and is certainly different from books they read in English class.

I haven't worked with middle school kids in awhile...if anyone has advice they'd like to give on teaching this age group, please post a comment or write me an email. Anything is appreciated :).

Another interesting thing from this week. I went to this "policy breakfast" at NYU held by the NYU education school, MetLife, and the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (I'm still a little unclear on what the latter organization is...their name is a little scary though). They had a panel discussion on the current state of teacher training. The title of the meeting was Teaching in a Flat World: Giving Teachers a Strong Start. Since we all know that I have some opinions (you know, one or two) on teacher training, I was excited to go.

The panel included some interesting people, including the CEO of human resources and the Deputy Chancellor for Teaching & Learning for the NYC Department of Ed. I thought that these two would be, at best, defensive about NYC's teacher training. And it's true that they did kind of pat themselves on the back for starting some mentorship program for new teachers within the NYC public schools, a program which I am fairly sure is pretty dysfunctional and ineffectual. But on the whole they had it right on about what teacher training needed to be. They talked about assigning the best teachers to be mentors, not just the ones who had been in the system the longest, about the need for honest, detailed, quality feedback for new teachers, and about the need for many different kinds of supportive relationships for new teachers within the school structure. The panel moderator said something that struck a chord with me: "We need to stop this hazing ritual that we put new teachers through year after year, and which drives the most talented people out of the professsion." I think the phrase "hazing ritual" is really apt. For me, someone who always wants to be prepared and competent at any task I undertake, this year has been really terrifying. Whenever I get up in front of a class, I feel under-prepared, nervous, and un-supported. There hasn't been enough feedback or support for me to really grow. Hopefully I'll get more of that this semester, but there's really no training or structure to help mentor teachers help their student teachers. Only a few people really know how to give good feedback. Since this is the primary pipeline (the other being the similarly problematic policy of just throwing smart but inexperienced people into the classroom right away) for new teachers, the whole thing really needs to be rethought. Would you send a medical student into the operating room with a pair of scissors, a pat on the back, and responsibility for not letting someone die? Would you put a college graduate straight into mid-level management in a publishing house? No. They all get entry-level positions and then are eased into positions of responsibility. There should be some adaptation for teaching, as most people consider the product of this profession pretty important.

At one point, the CEO for Human Resources at NYC Dept of Ed referred to the need for more practical training for teachers, that more of the training should be school-based, rather than university-based. One audience member quipped, "Are you suggesting breaking the monopoly of schools of education?" She responded, "You said it, not me." Everyone in the audience laughed. It was the kind of laugh that said "Everyone knows it has to be done, but it's politically terrifying and any attempt is going to take a marshaling of forces that do not currently exist." So in some ways it was comforting, in that the people in the room (most seemed to be former or current educators and people involved with education non-profits) knew that things needed to be changed and that the world of education training needed shaking up. On the other hand it was sad, because people seemed to acknowledge that even the leaders of the public school system were pretty powerless to make the necessary changes.

You can't blame them. When someone is responsible for training teachers for 1,000 schools, all of whom are supposed to run in much the same way, it's going to be incredibly difficult to change the status quo even a little. There are just so many people, so many institutions, and so many rules involved. I've heard it described as akin to trying to change the course of an enormous ocean liner going full speed ahead. That's why charter schools are so great. Their size allows them to make necessary changes lightning fast, with one decision and a manageable amount of observation and enforcement. If a charter school thinks its teachers need to have training in a certain aspect of literacy instruction or behavioral management, they can just hold that training right then and there. The institutional size is just so much more manageable. It's too much to expect any one group of reformers, even over decades, to make all the changes necessary to improve 1,000 schools with hundreds of thousands of employees. What we need to do is break down barriers to entry into teaching (while keeping the standards for teacher knowledge and intelligence high), eliminate unnecessary union regulations, allow alternative means of teacher training, and restructure schools to favor and reward the most competent and hard-working teachers (and administrators). If you have good people within your schools, then there doesn't have to be so much top-down regulation. You can let people experiment and come up with the best ways to train teachers and communicate with each other about it. Anyway, I'm just rambling, so I better stop. The point is that the size of the institution matters, and our urban school districts are just waaaaaaaaaaaaay too gargantuan to allow any significant reform over any reasonable amount of time.

Well this post has been somewhat meandering and not funny, so I apologize. In fact, this entire semester's blog might be a lot less amusing, since I anticipate this school, as well as my class instructors, will give me a lot less bullshit than the people last semester. Good for me, bad for sad, absurd story-reading. Well, at least I can keep you updated on my plans to avoid/circumvent/bastardize for my own purposes the "social justice action project" I have to do this semester. Ugh.

yesssssssssss

2006-01-23T13:41:00.000-08:00

Good news for me! I know everyone out there is really riveted to all the ups and downs of my life, so I wanted to tell you all about the newest development in my quest to escape mediocrity and self-loathing.

Today I met with the principal of a charter school in Harlem. It's K-8. She told me, "when I started 2 and a half years ago, we were a failing school. Now we've come up to mediocre. But that's not good enough, I want to take us to excellence." Yay! Excellence! I have not heard that word uttered once this entire year in regard to education! I have heard "diversity" and "collaboration," but never "excellence"! She says, we're always trying to improve here. That's what I tell my teachers. And I tell them that if they can't give me improvement or excellence, they're going to have to teach somewhere else. She even had the book Good to Great (an organizational management book popular in the charter school movement) on her bookshelf! AND she excitedly took my suggestion to read the Thernstroms' No Excuses! She worked at the DOE here in NY for many years, but somehow still came out like this! The best news: I get to student-teach there instead of at that crappy high school I described a couple weeks ago!

My program is giving me a lot of shit for switching so last minute. They told me that if I thought backing out would "jeopardize the school's relationship with the cooperating teacher" that I should "choose to do the right thing." My program director actually seemed really pissy about it. Not that he was willing to give me help months ago when I asked for it!!!! Seriously, these people don't care about teacher education at all! The way they pick the mentor teacher is seemingly random. The mentor teachers seem to be evaluated on whether they are "nice" or not. I can't tell you how many times I've mentioned the other cooperating teacher's name and someone from my department says, "oh, he's a really nice guy." That's good, I mean, I like nice people, but doesn't it matter more that he's an effective teacher? If he's not, then he shouldn't even be teaching, much less teaching other teachers! But the cooperating teachers are never judged on that kind of criteria.

Well off to economics class. Maybe there won't be so many rants this semester--maybe there will even be satisfaction and happiness! Can I even hope?

Semester 2

2006-01-19T20:26:00.000-08:00

My semester 2 classes began today. I had my student teaching seminar first. This was the one that ended up being so crazy last semester, with the whole "societal structures of oppression" theme every week. Our instructor this semester is a little more practical. He was, frankly, shocked that our seminar had not talked (at all) about 1) state teacher exams, 2) classroom management, 3) resumes, 4) job applications, 5) the certification process, or even 6) graduation requirements. Really the whole point of this seminar is to help us get all that extra crap out of the way. His comment was, "Well, what did you do last semester?" No one really knew how to respond. It was a sad moment for all of us.

I also had "Alternative Methods," which is being taught by a very nice lady who (ironically) seems a little more open to "traditional" teaching methods than my regular "methods" teacher. And one guy in my class had this really interesting idea of social science "labs," in which kids could apply the skills of document analysis/map reading/statistical analysis/visual image interpretation etc to come up with some conclusions about history. Not that there's really enough time for that in a regular classroom...

I would like to share with y'all something that is on the syllabi for all my classes. It is called the "Description of School of Education Conceptual Framework." I would just like to say that the phrase "conceptual framework" makes me want to curl up in the fetal position, with a teddy bear and a binky, for several months. Ok. The conceptual framework includes "three shared philosophical stances," another phrase for the ages (Note: you may want to throw salt over your left shoulder at this point. These phrases have dark power.). The first 2 are the "inquiry stance" and the "curricular stance," which inform the reader that graduates of this school "challenge...complacency" and "strive to meet the needs of diverse learners." Personally, I hate diverse learners. I think everybody does. So this thing about "striving" for them is pretty unique to this school. But I'm confused about something...is it "challenging complacency" when you "perpetuate complacency"? Something to ponder.

Anyway, the third philosophical stance (throwing salt now) is my favorite. Here it is, in its entirety:

"Social justice stance: Our graduates choose to collaborate across differences in and beyond their school communities to demonstrate a commitment to social justice and to serving the world while imagining its perspectives." (saltsaltsaltsalt)

Yes, I have no bananas, if by bananas you mean any idea about what that means in any way. First off, who are we collaborating with? People in our schools, or with other graduates? Second, would someone please please please tell me what "social justice" really means? Because I had to write 2 papers on it last semester, and I have a "social justice action project" that I have to do this semester, and I have no idea what's going on. To me, providing quality education in urban communities is, in itself, social justice. Thus, if you learn to teach well and then do it and are effective, there is no need to get all flowery about social justice because you already have achieved it! The sad fact is that professors in and graduates of this school who teach in/work with/work for crappy urban public schools with no qualms about the lack of quality are actually working against social justice! Even while they write papers and conduct projects extolling its virtues! Aaaaaaaaaaaah!

Let's also talk about "serving the world while imagining its perspectives." So, basically, wait, I should....envision an Indian guy sitting at his desk at a call center in Madras and try to figure out what he's thinking? And then serve him? Or what?

The conceptual framework ends with this statement:

"These stances are the three dimensions of the educational space that we continuously create. [You know you're in trouble when someone uses the word "space" and it is not followed by the phrase "the final frontier."] By using critical inquiry as a tool in approaching the complexity of students and their learning, of ourselves and our teaching, our subject matter, and the contexts in which these operate, we and our students and graduates build effective curricula which benefit students' learning and ultimately serve the larger purpose of moral growth in the individual and society."

I like that the curricula only "benefit students' learning." It's like "our curricula are lukewarmly positive and pretty much fine." So apparently this school is not about education but about "moral growth." I might as well have joined the priesthood. Maybe they could tell me what it takes to be a good teacher! Hmm...maybe not. Priesthood+children=recent controversies. But then again, teachers+children often=no learning. Recent controversies+no learning=kids lose. Every time.

Semester 2, folks. And so it begins.

2006-01-17T19:12:00.000-08:00

Classes loom. My first is on Thursday. Alternative Methods. No one seems to know what that means, really. We already seem to have had Alternative Methods. It was called Methods. So I'm not sure where that leaves us.

Before the new semester starts, a short recap on my fall classes:
1. Methods.
A class on designing social studies lessons. We learned about fishbowl discussion groups, panel discussions, WebQuests (don't even ask--they're horrifying), simulations/acting out of historical events, diversity, and...I'm not sure what else. I gained some good tips on the details of lesson planning, but the rest was not very helpful for actually teaching in an actual school, or at least, an urban school. Lecturing was very frowned upon, so we didn't even discuss the most effective ways to lecture if we had to do it (overhead? discussion w/notes? powerpoint?). I would venture to guess that most high school teachers, particularly social studies teachers, are pushed by standardized tests and lack of time to lecture almost every single day. So a little help in that area would have been nice. In addition, we didn't talk at all about how to use social studies to teach key literacy skills--decoding, reading comprehension, reading for deeper analysis, writing, etc. These are the skills that kids will need their whole lives. Basically, I'm going to have to come up with how to do these things myself. Based on the fact that I have spent most of this evening watching 24 and eating cheese crackers, and the fact that I have 1.5 years of experience in an actual school, that is somewhat of a scary prospect.

In fact, terrifying. I suppose the entire point of writing this blog is to express the fact that I'm absolutely terrified of what I'm getting myself into: a chaotic, mediocre, unpleasant public school system with no sense of accountability, excellence, ethical duty, or responsibility towards children. I'm sure individuals within the system are different, but the system itself is
terribly, terribly broken. And who am I to think I can make any difference, when generations of earnest, smart, enthusiastic educators really haven't? (I'm talking about the stagnation of school performance in the U.S. over the last 30 years, especially among minorities). What can I possibly contribute? Couldn't I have a more productive, happy life in some other field, a field in which good work is rewarded, rather than punished? One with a more tangible sense of accomplishment? These are the questions I have to ask myself every day. I keep re-committing myself only because I know that things can be different. I have seen them be different. And it's great.

2. Student teaching seminar.
Ostensibly about discussing our student teaching experiences. Actually about our instructor preaching to us that schools are useless in the face of poverty, crime, racism, drug abuse, health problems, and broken families. When we did our oral evaluations of the class, most kids thought maybe it would have been better to talk more about student teaching.

In this class, I asked my instructor what he thought about the charter systems like KIPP and Achievement First that are resoundingly not useless in the face of all these problems. He said that those schools make kids spend too much time in school. It really makes you want to weep, doesn't it?

3. World History
Quality content course. Learned lots of new info on global history. Taught by a real history professor, not a professor of "the teaching of social studies." And much better than any classes with the latter types. Coincidence? You decide.

4. Educational Psychology
Interesting course, but basically could be summed up with: in almost every educational issue, there is data to support both opposing sides. And there is not enough research. Ever. We should have co-ed classrooms because the research suggests that it's better, and we should have single-sex classrooms because the research suggests that it's better. Pick one and run with it.

5. Special Education
No real techniques given for how to deal with a child in your particular classroom. No special attention given to the higher incidence disabilities, like language processing disorders (ie dyslexia) and emotional/behavioral disorders. Some nice speakers, but no actual special ed or general ed teachers to talk about their experiences. Have no idea what to do with children with disabilities, except what I have gleaned on my own and from last year at MATCH. Seems to me that, in many/most cases, they just need more help and time to learn things. Usually not given to them.

That's the breakdown. I won't go back into my student teaching experience because it was a train wreck in which most of my dignity and faith in our educational system died horrible deaths. Looking forward to fewer classes this semester. Only have Economics, Alternative Methods (discussed above), and student teaching seminar (new instructor, less crazy, more bald).

Organ donation

2006-01-13T11:38:00.000-08:00

This is an email I sent out to friends. I thought I'd post it here as well, even if it doesn't have to do with education. It's just a good thing, and so easy to do.

Hi friends and family and other people whose email addresses I have,

I happen to be one of those people who believes that once you're dead, you're dead. So you might as well give other people your stuff. And by stuff, I mean money (listen up mom and dad! just kidding), but I also mean your organs. Because what are you going to do with them? Nothing, because you'll be dead. So you might as well save someone else's life. And someone else might as well save yours too.

I thought I'd do a good deed by sending along some information on how to be an organ donor. Most of my friends (ha ha, I mean casual acquaintances and enemies) live in Massachusetts, New York state, and Minnesota, so I have compiled info below on becoming organ donors in those states. It's pretty easy, and it's a really good thing to do. And what other good things have you done lately? That's right, none. So to ease your guilt, become an organ donor. Also because I say so, and I know what's good for you.

Please forward this email to anyone and everyone. No one should have to die to let someone else's life-saving organs rot in the ground.

PS If someone you know doesn't want to donate, but has no good reason for it, the next time you see him/her, read the articles below out loud to them. For dramatic effect, you could start crying too. Also effective would be to start making consistent subtle references about how he/she is a bad person, preferably in front of his/her boss. A less ethical idea would be to disguise yourself as a doctor and tell him/her that he/she desperately needs a new __________ (fill in name of organ here...a funny one would be "butt.")

Massachusetts

1. Go to this website and print out an organ donor card. Fill it out and carry it in your wallet.
http://www.organdonor.gov/signup1.html

2. Make sure to tell your family and friends that you wish to be an organ donor. They may have to approve the decision if you are incapacitated.

3. If you need to apply for or renew your license, go to this website to find out how. Make sure to check the organ donation box when filling out the registration forms.
https://www.mass.gov/secure/rmv/express/renlicform.htm

New York State

1. Go to this website and click on "Online Organ and Tissue Donor Registration." This will take you to a form that will put you on the NY state organ donor database.
http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/donor/index.htm

2. Go to this website and print out an organ donor card. Fill it out and carry it in your wallet.
http://www.organdonor.gov/signup1.html

3. Make sure to tell your family and friends that you wish to be an organ donor. They may have to approve the decision if you are incapacitated.

4. If you are going to apply for or renew your driver's license, go to the website below. Make sure to check the organ donation box.
http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/license.htm#licenserenew

Minnesota

1. Go to this website and print out an organ donor card. Fill it out and carry it in your wallet.
http://www.organdonor.gov/signup1.html

2. Make sure to tell your family and friends that you wish to be an organ donor. They may have to approve the decision if you are incapacitated.

3. If you are going to apply for or renew your license, go to this website to find out how. Make sure to check the organ donation box when filling out the registration forms.
http://www.dps.state.mn.us/dvs/ID%20Requirments/IDframeset.htm

A new day?

2006-01-04T09:22:00.000-08:00

I suppose there aren't as many people reading this, since I have been writing only sporadically. It's probably for the best. Fewer people who are reminded daily what a smartass jerk I am.

Today I visited the school I will be student-teaching at this semester. It's a pretty large school, about 1600 kids, mostly Hispanic. The school is selective for kids living outside the district--you have to read at grade level (sadly, a rare commodity) and have certain grades in math and science to get in. This means that the kids care more and work harder than the average public school kid, which makes a huge difference. It is so easy to teach someone who wants to learn. Well, not so easy, not like eating Easy Cheese straight from the can (Or is it spray bottle? Squirter? You know what I'm talking about?). But I guess that's why they call it Easy Cheese. The point is, it helps to have students who are eager, or at least willing, to learn. The Coalition of the Willing, you might say. You just have to hope that yours is more than like 2 guys from Uzbekistan whose government is trying to get more favorable trade relations or something.

It's reassuring that despite the selectivity, the school is still mostly Hispanic and black. Other selective schools in the city are almost entirely white kids, like a whale's underbelly, except pimplier. But one wrinkle is that 20% of the kids have to be from the surrounding district. To get the designated quota, the school cannot be as picky about these students. And, sadly, as you might guess, these students (regular kids) typically are low performers. I'm not saying the quota system is bad, it's just depressing that you can't find enough kids to go to a school whose entrance requirements are reading at grade level and getting B's in math and science! The district is a fairly poor immigrant community, almost entirely Hispanic, and its public schools are terrible. There are people doing some great work with charter schools in the area, which is really promising. But that's sort of too small and too recent to have had much impact yet.

So anyway, I'll be teaching seniors. The school has three levels, it seems, for social studies--AP, Honors, and regular. As luck would have it, I got the regulars.

Again, as you might guess, the regular kids are more difficult to handle and have far lower achievement levels. I'm sure they are also disproportionately neighborhood kids. Now, I don't think it's necessarily bad to have a tracking system based on skill levels. Sometimes it's necessary. And it's really not bad at all to have the kids with lower skill levels. They still have a lot of potential and are pretty bright. They just happen to be behind, have a learning disability, or have some kind of emotional/behavioral problem (acting out in class, low self-esteem, chaotic family life) that has prevented them from succeeding. These things can be dealt with.

But it's not easy. It can be hell for the teacher sometimes, since the kids who don't like school or don't do well are the ones who make trouble. And sometimes their varying needs (language skills, help with a disability, family problems) can seem overwhelming. For these reasons, I think that the school has to have a firm internal structure set up to help these low performers, and all students for that matter. This structure should include, but not be limited to, their primary teachers. I'm talking about tutoring, after-school help with teachers, a strong discipline code rigorously enforced (detention!), counseling support, contact with parents, and maybe just a little love. I mean, we all need a little love, right? Not me, I'm a heartless robot with a soul of steel. Which is one reason I don't have a problem failing students. If a student is so behind that he/she can't catch up during the year, it is in that student's best interest to repeat and acquire the necessary skills. Likewise, a student who never does his/her work should learn that the consequence to that is failure. In the workplace, not doing work gets you fired. Schools can be more humane. Not doing work means you have to do the work anyway. Failing a grade can turn someone's life around. Even if the student hates it (or you) at the time, it might be the best thing that ever happened to him/her.

With high-performing students, you may not need all these tools. Their desire to do well in school means they are usually better behaved and do their homework on their own. But low performers need more. And if they need more, we should give them more. I've been at the school one day, and I don't think these kids are getting more.

It's better than the last school for sure; the kids have to call the teachers "Mr" or "Ms" and can't
have electronics or hats on. I even saw my teacher kick a kid out of class today for being out of control.

Still, the teacher allows a lot of ridiculous behavior, like yelling and swearing, and there is hardly ever a time during class when all the students are silent. One gets the impression that they are running the show. It's going to be difficult to be strict since I have nothing backing me up. What will I do if a kid breaks a rule, scold him? I could make him come in after school I suppose, but if he doesn't do it, my only recourse is to call the parent. If they aren't cooperative, I'm screwed. The kid then knows I have no leverage. Still, I'll have to try. Really, I can't stand yelling or swearing in class (I do a fair amount outside of class myself; sometimes, in a hilarious bit of irony, I swear about the kids swearing). And I hate any kind of disrespect. These things just make me ill. School and learning are so important to me. And I know how important they will be in the kids' futures. When they trash their education, and their teachers allow them to, I just feel so bad. I can't describe it any other way than that.

It will be an interesting semester. I'll keep you posted.

my schooling

2005-12-27T10:16:00.000-08:00

I hope you all have had a great holidays so far. I have had a good old time here at home in Minnesota (yes, it is cold, people). Surprisingly, we do have computers in Minnesota, and just recently moved into real houses from our igloos.

My dad and I were rehashing some of the issues I've discussed on this blog the other night. (By the way, it's been made empirically certain that I got the ranting gene from him. Not that my Mm is too shabby at it either. I love you guys!). We actually got to discussing my own education, which was an interesting comparison to what I've been doing this year.

I went to my local public high school here in Minnesota. We live in a wealthy suburb of Minneapolis that is known for its good schools, which is why my parents chose to live here. In fact, the high property values here are largely based on the reputation of the school system. This gives incentive to older residents and those without children to vote for high levels of funding for the school system, despite the fact that they themselves do not partake of it. Thus, local referenda on increases to school funding usually pass quite easily. (One exeption is our crotchety right-wing neighbor, who doesn't see why he has to contribute to the education of the pesky kids of the neighborhood. Personally, I think he's just bitter because they discovered that the haunted park monster is really this guy in a mummy suit. Pesky kids.)

Anyway, my school was pretty good. They offered AP Biology, AP American History, AP European History, AP Calculus, AP American Literature, and a variety of AP languages. Kids could choose to take these advanced classes or not. The only tracked subject was math. Teachers were smart and competent (with notable exceptions. One of my teachers would regularly let my friend leave class to drive somewhere and buy bagels. And another time we spent an entire class period searching for textbooks that some kid had hidden in the ceiling). Administrators were proud of the academics (although not as proud as they were of the sports) and tried to protect them. I am grateful for the education I got there.

Still, overall, I don't think it was enough. This was supposed to be the best public high school in our state. But when I got to college (I went to a good one), I realized that I couldn't really cut it in the areas of science and math. Granted, I'm not exactly a whiz at either of these subjects, and they aren't my passion. Still, compared to kids who went to private schools or magnet schools, I was definitely behind. And compared to kids from other countries, I was definitely definitely behind. The entire math department at my school was dominated by foreigners, to the point where they couldn't find PhD students who spoke good English to teach intro math classes. The biggest complaint I heard about calculus classes was not that they were so difficult, but that the students couldn't understand what their teacher was saying. Most were from Asian countries and had very thick accents. I had a German dude who was reasonably understandable. But also freaky in a German grad student/robot kind of way.

As a freshman, I was still ambitious and over-confident in my academic skills. I was still in small-school Minnesota mindset, as opposed to world-class university mindset, which is "if it's math and science, you probably can't do it." I took a multi-variable caculus class and an advanced general chemistry class. It was the worst semester of my life. Multi-variable calculus was extremely difficult, mostly because it was taught in a completely different way than any of my high school math classes. Our textbook did not walk one through the problems. Problem sets had to be solved by combining different theorems and procedures in creative ways. Class met only three days a week, and the lectures were fast-paced. You had to give yourself the quizzes. There were only two tests, and they were impossible. I got decent grades, but only because the curve was so incredibly generous that a trained gerbil would have had to struggle only slightly to pass. For example, on the midterm exam, a 22 out of 100 was a D. A 56 out of 100 was an A-.

My chemistry class was worse, for me. I had taken only an intro type chemistry class in high school. My advisor, who was clearly a sadist, told me to take the advanced one anyway. I struggled. I went in for office hours, I asked my friends how to do things, I cried, and I worked all the time. I did ok...I was really proud of my B-.

I don't know...maybe it's just that I'm not talented in these areas. But still, I think that it was generally just difficult for me to cut it at my college based on the preparation I had been given. I think if my math and science education had been more rigorous, or even if there was a more rigorous option available, I could have survived and even though about majoring in one of those subjects. As it was, an "ordinary" student like me would not think of doing that. It was a small elite, at least among the American students, who could cut it.

Let me know what you think about this issue. I would like to know what the situation was like at other colleges.

2005-12-19T18:18:00.000-08:00

Transit strike looms in New York. If it happens, and all the bus and subway operators walk out, tomorrow will be known as The Day Convenience Died. You won't be able to get into Manhattan without 4 people in your car. There will be areas to pick up extra people if you don't have enough. Taxis can carry multiple people at one time. Otherwise, you have to walk or bike. This all sounds really great, until you remember that 7 million people come into and out of the city every day on public transit. Life is going to suuuuuuck.

The transit worker's union is being ridiculous. They already get paid like $55,000 a year, which is more than most teachers. They get free health care and a pension when they turn 55. Now, I don't know how much training and work it takes to drive a bus or subway, but I can tell you that the only requirement for being a station attendant is surly unhelpfulness.

Now, I'm all for public employees being compensated well and having happy lives, and I wouldn't ask that anyone would reduce their salaries. But the union is now asking for an 8% salary raise over 3 years PLUS a retirement age of 50! 50!!! No one gets to retire then! Anyway, I'm probably just bitter because I don't like to do a lot of walking. Standing is also somewhat inconvenient.

Today my methods class ended. I have to admit that I did learn some useful things in the class. BUT I am still going to insist upon right answers. Somehow that has come to be a controversial position.

I only have one more assignment to complete. Then freedom will ring from the mountaintops and whatnot. All my Christmas presents for others will soon arrive in the mail. Online shopping, by the way, is definitely awesome. Today I spent 45 minutes in line at Express buying a velour sweatshirt for my friend. She wanted it because she had already bought it a couple months ago, then lost it. The point is, waiting in line at Express for 45 minutes is excruciating, especially with LITE104 serenading you. The internet, wave of the future. World wide web. Information superhighway. You know what I'm talking about.

Holiday cheer

2005-12-18T21:03:00.000-08:00

For two weeks now, my thighs have had laptop imprints on them. At least my couch is a comfortable, fuzzy place to whip out sub-par work (that, I promise you, will receive A's) on silly, pointless final papers. I now only have two things left. But one of them is going to be painful. It's a reflection on my fall student teaching placement. I don't even know what to say anymore. Here's one of the "guiding questions" that we're supposed to answer: "What are the norms, practices, rituals, customs, values, power structures, group affiliations, and status systems that define and shape your classroom setting?" I wonder if "none of the above" could be a correct answer to that.

I should say that not all the assignments were pointless. For my history class, we had to write a syllabus for a world history course. Here in NY state, 9th and 10th graders take a 2 year global history curriculum, tied to a regents exam. Here's one thing I learned while writing this syllabus: lots of stuff has happened in the history of the world. Who would've known?

I also learned that, contrary to popular belief, the histories of pre-Columbian America and pre-totally impoverished Africa are quite interesting and complex. For example, when the British first tried to colonize sub-tropical Africa in the 19th century, they kept settling near low-lying swamps with malarial mosquitoes. They were all dying off. In contrast, native Africans would settle in high-lying areas with few mosquitoes, and many had acquired immunity over many generations (sickle-cell anemia, common in African-Americans, is actually an African genetic adaptation that prevents malaria from infecting blood cells). And the British also couldn't get past the fierce, spear- and sword-wielding Zulu warriors, who they found absolutely terrifying. Unfortunately for everyone, Europeans soon discovered that quinine was an effective prophylactic against malaria, and that machine guns were quite effective against spears. And the colonial fun began. But it's ok, because these days everything is Africa is juuuuuuuuust fine.

Bill and Melinda Gates (and Bono!! hilarious!!) were just named People of the Year by Time magazine for their work in Africa. Gates just announced $400 million in new funding to what I like to call "wacky science." They're projects that normal institutions like the NIH or whatever don't want to fund because they're too "wacky" and their chances for success are too low. But at the same time, they are projects that, if successful, could have a huge impact. Like, some guys are trying to genetically modify mosquitos so that they can't smell humans and thus won't be able to infect them with malaria. Another guy is trying to modify cassava roots so that they have protein and vitamins, instead of just starch. It's cool stuff. Bono, meanwhile, wears awesome sunglasses while totally rocking out for the less advantaged. And people have paid attention, because people with one name have a certain je ne se quois (think Cher). That is phonetic French that I just made up. My mom said that taking French would be pointless. The fourth grade me pointed out that Peru is a French-speaking country, but that just didn't seem to convince her. Where fourth-grade me picked up that little gem of knowledge is still a mystery.

As for the Americas, I'm reading a really interesting book called 1491, about American civilizations that rose and fell after colonization of the Americas from Asia. The guy who wrote it definitely has a political agenda and a true "stick it to whitey" type of attitude, but he's a great writer and he presents recent archaeological and genetic findings. The new research is starting to reveal an America teeming with people with interesting, complex cultures and societies. It seems that many, many more Americans were killed by European diseases than was once thought. Like, maybe 90%. Which would make pre-Columbian population numbers in America as high or higher than those in Europe at the time. Anyway, you should read the book and decide for yourself.

Here's another question I have to answer in my reflection paper: "How have collaborative efforts affected your teaching this semester?" Do you think I can say, "They made me want to forego being alive, but, seeing as how that is impractical as well as life-threatening, I chose to pretend that collaborative efforts were not occuring"? I'm thinking I should go a little milder.

I missed my department's holiday party last week. I was sad, because they promised karaoke and I wanted to make inappropriate comments about various staff members. But I went to Boston instead, to see my kids from last year at MATCH. And it was the best part of my year so far. My kids are doing well and were happy to see me, the school is doing great, everything was as it should be. It's so, so good and soul-affirming to go to a place like that, where there are smart people trying to solve problems that arise and who don't take on a fatalistic attitude about everything. And I would like to note that many of the kids who failed ninth grade and are repeating are doing quite well, both in behavior and in academics, the second time around. It's like the poster school for failing a grade. I also got to go to the faculty party and watch a few people get a little too merry (you know who you are, people).

I'm going to try and start writing more regularly again. I don't want to be a complainer, so I will just try to observe and comment. For example, I may say, "there are many, many tiny dogs that live in New York, and I hate them." So that's the kind of pithiness you can look forward to.

Hello again.

2005-11-25T12:00:00.001-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Remember to be thankful for all the wonderful things you have, including friends, family, digital music players, and no wild animals loose in your neighborhood (Although are you sure about that last one? Think about it.).

I haven't written in a long time, it's true; I guess it's been almost a month. This has been pointed out to me by my many loving fans, an overwhelming percentage of whom are directly related to me. The reason I haven't written is that I haven't had anything new to say. I've continued to be frustrated, stymied, and tired in a constant cycle, and I thought that wouldn't be so interesting to other people, as it certainly isn't interesting to me. At first I sort of felt that I was barreling into this business, moving forward with a speed that could only be attributed to passion and caring. Then I realized that the illusion of moving forward was from the fact that I had been hit by a train and was now stuck to the front grating. And by "a train," I of course mean "the education train."

My student teaching semester ended with a whimper when I got a horrible virus. It was bad enough that I wished I was well enough to go to school (!). But that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Before I was sick, I got observed from a supervisor affiliated with, but outside of, my program, who told me, "I'm sorry you've had to be here all semester...it's been a waste of your time." You'd think this would be validating, but actually it made me tear up a little. I suppose it was precisely because I already knew that that I didn't want to hear it. I hadn't been able to do anything about it earlier when I tried, so it was not an instructive comment, but just made me feel bad. Not that this supervisor meant any harm; she was just trying to be honest.

I also saw the first distribution of report cards to kids. If all things were fair, I would say that 80% of the kids in my class should have failed. Instead, I think 4 out of 40 or so failed. And these were the kids who never handed in one single piece of homework ever. The ones who handed in a couple pieces of homework did fine. I heard one of my teachers ask the other, "how many of your kids are going to fail?" He responded, "you know, just a couple...most of the kids show up." So I guess showing up is the requirement for passing. This is social promotion, and is technically not allowed in this city. Perhaps I will write a letter to the mayor.

In better news, I saw a couple of really nice little charter elementary schools that are very new but appear to be working quite well so far. They had really smart, dedicated leaders and good teachers and have the potential to be really great. So all is not lost.

Well anyway, there is the latest news. Earth shattering, I know. I live to rock your world over here. Now I just have my own classes to deal with until January, when I get my new student teaching assignment. I'm working on this semester not being the complete and total void of goodness that was last semester. And I have more time for different things, like eating and cleaning my apartment, which still smells funny from when we moved in. I think it's the pigeons that roost on the air conditioner. Gross.

lamenting

2005-10-31T21:36:00.000-08:00

Today I was trying to think of alternatives to drowning one's sorrows in the bottle. Nothing much came to mind. At first I came up with cigarettes and coffee, but that is less like drowning your sorrows and more like winding them up very tightly and injecting them with speed. TV and chocolate eating are other options, but I already employ those and they don't seem to be working.

Not very many kids came to school today because it was Halloween. Somehow I didn't think they were missing much. And it was sadly peaceful without them, as a disproportionate number of the missing kids were also the disruptive kids. Surprise, right?

I have nothing much of note to express today, except the sinking feeling that my indignation is slowly becoming resignation. Or, not so much resignation as boredom and desolation.

One strange thing was that I got a sample lesson plan I wrote back from one of my instructors. It was a lesson on human evolution and pre-history (ie Australopithecines, Homo habilis/erectus/sapiens, etc). She liked it, but said that in the lesson I needed to address the tension between evolution and creationism. I thought that was really weird. It's not even intelligent design. And creationism takes many different forms, depending on the particular belief system. I don't think I would feel comfortable bringing it up in class. Perhaps if a kid asks about it, we could have a discussion, but I think that kind of thing falls in the realm of the parents, not the teacher. I mean, we don't teach the many religious/social/ethnic/gendered/etc sides of all issues, so why this one? Personally I don't feel there's much of a controversy regarding evolution, if we're talking about science and generally accepted scientific fact, so I don't know why I would have to say there is one. Students can still believe whatever they want to, but it's not going to come from me.

I have also come around to the fact that, for the first time, I am an academic outsider. Socially, well let's just say I owned a shirt with giraffes on it. But that didn't really matter. It's so strange now to know that people see me as some kind of outcast, or malcontent. The whole thing just makes me so tired. And you know you're in trouble when you start identifying with Churchill's speeches from the late thirties.

Witness

2005-10-28T21:09:00.000-07:00

[The conversation about the ethical issues of posting this stuff has been very interesting. I'm not really sure what I think. I agree with the author who said, "if you feel you need to hide something, it probably isn't right." That gut feeling always bothers me. But at the same time, what is going on in schools is hidden and not right. Which is the greater sin? I don't know.

To clarify the situation, these quotes are from responses that the students posted on a secured website, to be read by their classmates and teacher. They knew that others, including peers, would read it, but probably did not expect that others would.]

Today's post is simple. It is a series of paragraphs written by 11th grade students in my school. I do believe that posting these paragraphs is mildly unethical. However, I think the fact that these kids are allowed to get to 11th grade and write like this is positively immoral, and I think people should know about it. These excerpts are written responses to questions about a novel on the American Revolution. Just for extra safety, I took out the name of the book when it is directly stated and replaced it with brackets like this: [Title]

"I like how they showed how the black people got there freedom and what white men did to the blacks I did not know black men had to go to the army to get freedom"
"1 thing i liked about the book "[Title]" was that she kept on fighting for freedom and never gave up no matter what happen. She stood strong even when she witness her fathers die. I really didn't have any dislike's about the book. I would really recommand this book to other 11th graders."
"I agree with almost everything and specially when you said that this book isn't 100% accurate because it shows at many times that [character] had escaped many times and in real life she wouldn't get away that easily so I agree. Even though this book is a fiction I still think it should have been atleast close to being 100% accurate. And I kinf of disagree with the part when u said there is no sympathy in [character] losing her parents because remember back then they didn't prison women for fun but they would prison women to take away a right of a women which is what happened to [character]'s mother but maybe the author meant as prisoning her mother for fun who knows since this book isn't 100% accurate."
"i think the book [title] is a book that shows the struggle of african americans during the worst time in history for us . i think that [character] was a strong girl that fought for her freedom from every one when i say that i mean that she had to prove herself to every one that she came across being that she was a freeded slave . i don't think that the war was very revoloutionary and the picture that this book painted for me made me upset so in general i didn't like the book but it was a good read for a class"
"in [title]. [character] has to deal with alot of racism bieng that she is a nigga during slavery. she sees her father get killed and then have to go home and find out that her mother is tooken buy the british. then will y goes to her aunt house and [character] try to put her back into slavery. then she goes to new york to have a better life and then after evry thing that happen to will she if free with the help of [character] and also help her uncle."
"I like the book [title]. this book changes what i thought about freedom and not getting the freedom you suppose to have. [character] went through a lot for where she at now. she gain a lot of freedom from the Revolution. In my mind and thought if [character] didnt posed as a guy she probably wouldnt be where she at today. [character] is a strong girl. even though [character] struggle so much to get frredom by hiding her idenity. she overcome her mom and dad deaths. and she got freedom for her uncle to be free by getting a white lawyer and getting a right to be free herself , cause of [character] trying to take a freedom away and being unsuccessful. [title] was a good book and got my attention some of the times. but that what afican americans need to be equal and to have the rights. my thoughts.........."

be consistent in your stupidness

2005-10-24T19:06:00.000-07:00

I would like to address the notion that I am using my terrible experiences as "fodder" for this blog, rather than taking the high road and trying to change teaching placements. Seriously, I wish that were the case, because then I would feel I had some choice in the matter. I have very few options open to me. Staying in grad school means going along, to some extent, with this crap. The student teaching, in particular, is hard to rearrange once you are placed. I know because I have tried to get out of it. Quitting grad school means I have wasted a lot of money and don't get to be a teacher, unless a charter or private school hired me with no experience, which is possible but difficult. Really this blog is for me. Writing about the crazy things I see helps me step back into the world I've always known, where knowledge is good, achievement smiled upon, and intellect encouraged. Please do not believe that I am glad to witness any of the things I do. I wish to God I didn't see any of it. Many days I feel nauseous and near tears with the futility and the tragedy of the thing. It makes me crazy, just crazy. The only thing I can do, besides steeling myself against it all, is to write here. So that's why I do it.

Class today, my methods class for the Teaching of Social Studies. Not the one with the crazy Marxist guy, a different instructor. Anyway, today we were discussing lesson plans that we had written individually and turned in last week. She handed them back, with comments. I got a B+ and a note that I couldn't use any more presentation/teacher-centered techniques for the next four lessons we have to write. She told the class that, if we don't use all the cooperative learning techniques we've been learning about, we will get a bad grade. I might just go for the bad grade. Or I might turn in two lesson plans, one with her crap and one with what I would really do, labeled "What I would really do." Just to stick it to her that I know how to plan these stupid lessons, but I just don't want to use them because they're stupid.

The major incident in class today involved my friend, who I'll call Mark. Mark is literally a godsend in class. If it weren't for him, I would feel totally marooned in this sea of absurdity. He keeps me somewhat sane, as at least we can exchange "oh my god" looks in class, argue and back one another up, and giggle after class about how everyone hates us. Mark and I have gained a reputation in the department as "trouble-makers" and "traditionalists." I think our instructors actually talk shit about us when we're not around. We both think it's hilarious.

So today he was talking about a technique he likes to use to keep kids on their feet. He used the example of Germany during World War II. What he wanted to do was to argue, to the class, that Germany's actions in invading the Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc were not aggressive, but actually defensive and justifiable political necessities. He presumed that his class would protest, then come around to his view, and then he would sort of pull the rug out from underneath them and say, "of course Germany's actions were aggressive. They took over several neighboring countries, without provocation!"

Whatever you think of this teaching technique does not matter. Here is what happened next:

Teacher: But what if one of your students really does believe that Germany's actions weren't aggressive?

Mark: Well, maybe you can try to justify Germany's actions as reactions to the war guilt clause and the economy and everything, but they were undeniably aggressive actions.

Teacher: Is it undeniable? If your student can come up with a reasonable argument as to why Germany was not aggressive, then you have to accept that. You can't point at him and say, 'you're wrong.' You have to let them think for themselves.

Mark: Ok...there must be a textbook definition of 'aggressive' that we can all agree on and that makes these types of actions (invading other countries) aggressive.

Teacher: Textbooks have lots of things in them. That doesn't make them true.

Other student: Yeah, you could definitely make a strong argument that Germany's actions weren't aggressive.

There are many, many important historical controversies out there. They keep historians employed for generations. I have never heard of this particular issue being controversial. Perhaps it was controversial in East Germany. But I think that 99% of creditable historians would accept that Germany, whatever the reason, was being geopolitically aggressive during the 1930's and 1940's. It just seems like maybe there's a solid fact right there. But the conversation didn't end there...

Teacher: ...Of course you don't want to take this too far. I mean, you don't want students walking away thinking that the Holocaust was somehow a positive event in history, since it clearly wasn't.

Mark: But presumably there is some argument one can make that says it was positive. Maybe the argument would be totally awful, but if it was logical you said before that I would have to accept it and couldn't say it was wrong!

I don't remember how she responded. I was smiling at Mark's indignation. This is the kind of ridiculous situation you can find yourself in when you say there aren't any right answers. Without right answers, there is no history and there is no morality. Or, at least, no history or morality that is directly teachable. We all can have our own separate truths, or whatever. I'm sure that would work great. My moral truth says that it's ok to punch someone in the face, and you can't tell me that's wrong. That's what really pisses me off about the fact that she makes up fake primary source documents for her students. What?! How is that letting them think for themselves or find their own internal truth? I mean, if you're going to have a stupid philosophy about things, at least be consistent with it.

That's where I'm planning to be a smart aleck. I'm going to write to her and tell her that I could easily give her a reasonable argument as to why lecture and traditional pedagogical methods are just as good as constructivist ones, so she should let me plan all my lessons that way. If there is no right answer, and if she has to let me think for myself, then she shouldn't be able to control my ideas about pedagogy. This is the logical extension of her claims. I think her response shall be interesting...

PS The White Sox are totally the bomb.

A new level of scary

2005-10-20T19:28:00.000-07:00

Today, ah today. A Thursday that began so inauspiciously with me swearing at my alarm clock, just like every day. I brushed my teeth, ate a cupcake, and went to school, just as usual. And yet, somehow, this normal day eventually became a terrible freakshow.

First block was fine. I observed a different teacher, who was pretty good. He did a stations lesson, so I just sat at one of the stations and watched pieces of video about ancient Egypt. The kids were well-behaved and seemed to be productive. I think the day first started going downhill in advisory, probably when a kid actually answered a cell phone call he was getting. When my teacher tried to talk to him, he laughed and was incredibly disrespectful. He couldn't even look her in the eye. He has been disruptful in every context I have ever seen him in. My teachers want him to move to another advisory. I think it's unfair; after all, they've never, ever told him what's wrong with how he is behaving or how he is supposed to behave.

Another problem in advisory was the kids who refused to silently read, and insisted upon sleeping. My teacher could do nothing about this, as there are no consequences to anything.

But really it was second block when I knew it was not going to be a blessed day. The period started out with a kid, who was late, standing at the door talking to his friend, who was outside the classroom. I went up to the kid and told him to sit down. He turned to me and said, "Excuse me, I'm talking to my friend. We have some business." I was just opening my mouth to express utter indignation and shock when my teacher called him in, and he complied.

Unfortunately, the entire class today was "student-centered." Please read "none of the kids had any idea what was going on." We were reading various documents about colonists continual insistence upon taking Native American land after the American Revolution. The problem is that most of the kids still do not really know what the American Revolution was or who was even fighting in it, because they were never actually told what it was, explicity. That would have been wrong...I guess they were supposed to "construct" the two sides of the conflict from various bits and pieces of information thrown their way.

If you don't believe me that 11th graders don't know anything about the American Revolution, here are some student guesses I received today as to who fought who: 1) The colonists were fighting the Indians. 2) The British were fighting the English. 3) The whites were fighting the British. 4) The whites were fighting the English. And we can't forget 5) The Indians were fighting the Native Americans.

As if this were not depressing enough, the kids' behavior in second period is getting out of control. They throw balls of paper. They swear at each other across the room. They hit one another. They rap. They yell. They do anything but the work. When the teacher talks, there are eight other conversations going on at the same volume level. My teacher refuses to do anything about this. Refuses. In fact, she thinks that "the class is going really well!" Whereas I would put it more like, "the class is an unmitigated disaster!" Today, another teacher who works with us suggested that we do something to stop them from throwing paper at each other, since it is completely ridiculous. When we see them do it, all we can do is tell them not to. They laugh it off. But she has tied our hands because she never set any limits or any consequences for acting like a total idiot. She said that their paper throwing didn't bother her. She doesn't want to be "authoritarian" with them. She doesn't want to say "oh no, you can't do that." Because somehow, that is wrong. The other teacher said, well, it's your call. But another thing is that oftentimes you're talking, and they're all talking over you. You respect them so much, and you should demand it back from them. She responded, "in my five years of experience, this type of thing gets better as time goes on and they come to know and respect me more." On the contrary. At the beginning of the year, their behavior ranged up and down the scale from "ok" down to "the worst behavior ever." Now it starts at "the worst behavior ever" and goes downhill from there.

Here's one example of what happens when there are no boundaries. Today this one kid kept playing with a yoyo. (No, 11th grade). I told him to put it away a couple times. Finally I said, if I see it again, I'm taking it. He put it in his pocket and I didn't see it for awhile. But juuuust as the period was coming to a close, he takes it out. I went over. I said, "ok, you made your choice, you need to give me the yoyo." He replied that it wasn't school time anymore, even though the period had not ended and, in fact, he was still in school. I asked for it again. He continued to play with it. I was not going to lose this one. I had stated a consequence earlier and, if I didn't go through with it, I would lose any credibility I had ever had (which was and is not much). So I caught the yoyo end as he was throwing it about. But the string was still tied around his finger. I asked him to take it off, several times. He refused. Other kids told him just to do it. He wouldn't. We sat there as the bell rang, me holding the yoyo, him with the string tied around his finger. "Are you going to stay for next block?" I asked. It seemed as though he would. He certainly was not moving. So I asked another kid for some scissors and cut the damn yoyo string, leaving him with a small piece tied around his finger. I took the yoyo back to the desk and put it away. I told him he could get it back at the end of the day. I was satisfied.

He was angry. He tried to tell my teacher on me. She had no idea what he was talking about and shuffled him out the door. I told her what happened and she just kind of laughed it off, even though he was obviously really mad. As the next period was starting, he actually came back into the room and tried to talk to her about it again. Later she saw him outside at lunch and, as befits her friendly/nonconfrontational style, tried to joke with him about it. From the limited amount she said, I gathered that he began saying very nasty things about me. I'm sure she didn't even reprimand him.

The kid was not mad because of the yoyo. He was mad because he is not used to not getting his way in school. Everyone just indulges everyone else. The fact that I broke the mold with him was jarring. I mean, really I had no real right to do what I did, because I'm supposed to follow the lead of my cooperating teacher. But seriously, sometimes I just can't take the outright disrespect and childishness that goes on in there. How is this kid ever going to exist in the real world? He wouldn't put away a yoyo when asked. No one is telling him how he is expected to act, so he acts like a big baby.

Ok, so at this point I took some Advil, and went on with the next block, which went much more peacefully. HOWEVER. After lunch I was working on a project in the same room as my other cooperating teacher's fourth block class. He has a slightly different style, but generally kind of lets things slide. Toward the end of the period, these two girls got in a slight tiff, which quickly, very quickly escalated to a screaming match, then to both of them getting up in each other's faces, and one girl trying to strike the other. The special ed teacher, who was in the room, had to physically get between them and kind of muscle the one girl outside. It was insane.

After that, the class was all a-titter. The teacher couldn't get them to stop talking, which had been a problem all period. Finally, he screams at the top of his lungs, "SHUT THE HELL UP!" They quiet down but still aren't really listening. The two girls get a talking-to by the Principal. When I saw the teacher later, he didn't really think it was a big deal. He should have. It was his lack of classroom management and his inattention to small infractions of discipline that directly led to those two girls fighting. He set up a classroom environment that would allow it. Yet he was totally unconcerned.

Finally, school was over. Tomorrow I am teaching a lesson and being observed by someone from my school. I had been working all day on getting everything set for it. We were wrapping things up when one of my cooperating teachers says, "you know what, let's hold off on that until next week. I know something we can do tomorrow: a book jacket!" So out comes this whole other lesson plan, seemingly from nowhere, although I think it might have been from hell. I was stunned. It had happened so quickly. And this kind of thing happens all the time. They wouldn't even allow me to make up my own lesson plan for the new topic. I had to stay while we cobbled together something crappy. I was so depressed at that point that I just had nothing to say. I still don't, really. What do you say after a day like that?

I love Bill

2005-10-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

[I edited some parts of this post because I wrote it really late at night and was dissatisfied with it.]

This will have to be short because I'm tired and also because today made me want to hammer a bullet into my skull.

A small taste of the day: I was back at my regular school. I left at 3 pm (so early!) with most of the kids. One of the women who works at the school was standing on the corner, sort of marshaling kids onward and making sure they didn't block the sidewalk. There was a whole crowd sort of surging down the sidewalk. One kid, probably about 14, was yelling something to his friend which included the animated use of a swear word. The school woman started to yell at him, but he cut her off and snarled, "It's after school! Fuck! Shit! Bitch! ..." and continuing on with some other words particularly offensive to women. The kid was already past her, and I'm not sure if she knew who he was. I was already on edge from witnessing yet another pointless day filled with non-learning, and I really almost cried right then and there. The kid had so little respect for school, the other kids, the woman, himself, or anyone else around him. I felt I should do or say something, but I didn't know what. It's the kind of thing that can (with a ton of work and stress) be prevented, but not stopped, if you see the distinction.

Oh, and in class we're making history mobiles. I really prefer dioramas, as long as we're going with 6th grade type projects, but whatever.

Now then, if you are a New Yorker subscriber (aka snobby jerk) like I am, you can find a great article in this week's issue. It's called "What Money Can Buy," and it's about the Gates Foundation's work on global health issues, particularly malaria. Gates also supports domestic education reforms, particularly the small school movement (breaking up huge urban high schools into smaller schools or programs). I think small schools are definitely a great idea and are particularly helpful in cutting down on school violence and dropout rates. However, I think of them more as a prerequisite for high academic achievement than as a catalyst for it. You can go to a warm, safe, enjoyable place every day for years and not learn anything. For example, graduate school. But anyway, what I think is important about this article is Gates's will to do something about a terrible tragedy. He's not interested in sitting around and talking and bemoaning the problem. He talks to scientists and researchers and says, what can we do about this? What will work? And then he helps them do it. And if it's not working, he cuts off funds and goes for something else. Some selected quotes:

--"It would be hard to overstate the impact that the Gates foundation has had: the research programs of entire countries have been restored, and fields that had languished for years, like tropical medicine, have once again burst to life. In a world where a fast reaction to the threat of disease is imperative, bureaucracies like the W.H.O.--which make decisions by consensus--are often too cumbersome to compete at the speed of a maturing virus. Gates and his wife need consensus only between themselves."

Is there a parallel here to the lumbering speed of public schools, and the potential agility of charters (or any independent school), to meet the needs of students?

--"The rock star and anti-poverty evangelist Bono put it: 'This isn't about compassion. It's about results. It's not some sort of well-meaning-hippie stuff. Bill Gates is not into nice sentimental efforts or whimsical support of hopeless causes. When Bill walks into the room, we are not expecting to have a warm fuzzy feeling."

Seriously, who can say it better than Bono? This is the kind of hard-hearted, driven attitude we need for education.

--This quote starts with Gates speaking. "'Human suffering as a result of malaria is incomparable. By many measures, it's easily the worst thing on the planet. I refuse to accept it. I refuse to sit there and say, O.K., next problem, this one doesn't bother me. It does bother me. Very much. And the only way for that to change is to stop malaria. So that is what we are going to have to do.'"

I love it. I seriously love it. This man, who has the worst bowl cut in the history of the world, is standing there saying, 'I do not like this disease. And because I am so incredibly wealthy that sometimes I involuntarily throw up all over, I really don't think I should have to stand for it.' That is some awesome logic, and sooo American. But who says it can't work? The guy has so much money that IRS computers literally cannot handle his tax return. They have to use some kind of special computer that allows more digits in the income column. I'm not kidding. Plus, who knew the guy had a soul?

--"'there has always been this sense of malaria fatalism. There has been the idea that this is just part of Africa and being African.'"

Hmm...like urban education fatalism? That the failure is just part of America and being African-American (/poor/Latino/lots of other things)' ?

So you're going to think that, to fight malaria, we need some kind of breakthrough discovery or vaccine. That's what I thought. And certainly that's being sought. But guess what could save 30-50% of malaria victims, according to the article? Nets sprayed with insecticide. Nets! You put the nets over your beds, and the mosquitoes die and don't bite you and you don't get malaria. And actually, you don't even have to sleep under the net to benefit! The article says, "death rates, the incidence of anemia, and even the level of parasites in the bloodstream were lowered in children who lived within three hundred metres of houses that had nets." The nets have to be replaced or resprayed with insecticide fairly often, but even so they would significantly impact malarial infection rates. Additionally, new types of nets with imbedded insecticide are being developed that would last a lot longer. NETS, for God's sake! And they've known this for 20 years!

A Tanzanian health entomologist told the reporter, "I am sitting here watching my hair go gray and waiting for those nets. Every year a million more kids die. A decade ago, they were saying 'Let people die; there is nothing we can do.' Then Gates came along and he said this is not acceptable. That was more important than his money."

There are so many parallels here with education. Just as they know nets and insecticide work for malaria (they helped to eradicate it among officials in the British Raj in India), we know that discipline, hard work, and attention to academic rigor work for urban education. What's missing is merely the will to do it, someone to come and say "this is not acceptable." Everyone would rather wait for a magic bullet that's easy and cheap. Or perhaps they just don't care. The Tanzanian scientist said, "We already know how much eight hundred thousand African children are worth to the rich world. We have known it for a long time."

I hope that's not true, for African children or American children. But it's sad that a cold fish like Gates is the guy who has to save the rest of us from the collective guilt of a natural holocaust in Africa. We should take his initiative for ourselves here in America, regarding education. We should say something like, "The underclass in this country, who are disproportionately minorities, have hardly a chance to improve their circumstances. And the only way for that to change is to give everyone a good education. So that is what we are going to have to do." In other words, "This shit is not getting done. Therefore, we will have to do it."

Through the Looking Glass

2005-10-17T14:02:00.000-07:00

Today I discovered a whole new world, despite the fact that Aladdin was not there to help me. Apparently he was at "that tiger's head that rises out of the sand." Whatever, it's totally over between us.

My roommate works at one of the KIPP schools here. She brought me along today so I could meet the principal and sit in on some classes. Note that this school does not select kids; it's an open lottery system, and most of the kids qualify for free or reduced lunch. Most are minorities. I'm not going to say everything was perfect, even though I want to, because then people will accuse me of seeing it through rose-colored glasses just because I agree with its methods. It's funny, because I actually was wearing actual rose-colored glasses.

Ok so here are some of my observations.

--The principal sitting at a school desk in the middle of the hallway, in front of a long line of little boys. Apparently the boys were tardy. The principal talked to each as they got their turn, then called their parents right in front of them. After that, they were sent to class.

--An 8th grade history class that was discussing the attempted impeachment of Andrew Johnson. One little boy asked about checks and balances. The teacher replied, "this was a massive check."

--A fifth grade class of 35 kids who were quieter, more polite, and harder-working the class of 10-15 kids I work with on a regular basis.

--A wall of eighth grade history essays that were clear, made sense, were neatly written, contained a crapload of historical content, and had been revised several times. I am not exaggerating when I say these kids' writing is 1000 times better than the kids' in my 11th grade class. These eighth graders are ready for high school. My 11th graders aren't even ready for junior high.

--Quiet in the halls, kids laughing and smiling in and out of class, neat binders, teachers who worked together, lots of mission reinforcement, repetition of chants and rhymes to memorize basic skills, grammar being taught, plaques of alumni colleges, pride.

I also went to the school on Saturday to help out at a practice interview event. The eighth graders often apply to selective high schools, including elite boarding schools, and have to do an interview to get in. We were their interviewers and asked them typical high school entrance questions. I had this one little eighth grade girl who was awesome. She was articulate, self-aware, outgoing, and enthusiastic. She described how much she had improved since she entered KIPP and how important schools is to her now. She talked about her parents' divorce years ago and how it had negatively impacted her school performance, but after a long talk with her mother about priorities, she decided that school should be first. She loved her history class and she used the word "complacent"! She was amazing. I don't have to hope that she'll do well in high school because you can just see that she will. It was a whole new experience for me, seeing all these kids like her in this school. It was hopeful.

thank you

2005-10-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

First off, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has been posting comments and emailing me with support. Some days I am very discouraged and frustrated. Examples of such days are today, yesterday, and the day before that, and probably tomorrow. It really helps to know that other people support what I'm saying. It makes me feel like I'm fighting for all of us, instead of just my own little opinion. Really, thank you.

Now, back to being angry and bitchy.

Today is Thursday, which will now be called Angry Day. This is because on Thursdays I have a seminar taught by Fidel Castro's beardless younger brother. If you look back to last Thursday's post, you can see the history of this class. Actually, I was considerably angrier earlier today right after class, but since then I have eaten some mint chip ice cream and an Oreo cookie. There are few problems that an Oreo cannot solve.

Today I told the class about my student teaching experience and how demoralizing it is. Others expressed similar sentiments about their schools. We discussed why we thought our schools were like this, why they permitted low standards and bad behavior, the reasons and ideas behind it. I said I thought some of it was guilt about kids' situations and some of it was thinking the kids actually couldn't achieve very highly. Some others agreed, but not everyone.

One kid said he thought that the schools were "just trying to do something new." He said that the "old model" of strict discipline in urban schools was administrators trying to "train the kids for the military and jail." He said that more democratic school discipline would take awhile to work. Well, my school has existed for 12 years, and it hasn't worked yet. It might start to work in the next week. Bookies are taking bets right now.

And saying that discipline in schools was to get them ready for jail is like possibly the most asinine thing I have ever heard. And I have heard George Bush speak several times. The point of discipline is to create a quiet and peaceful learning environment so that kids don't end up in jail. This same kid, along with several other people in my class and my instructor, think it's super important to teach kids about these social justice issues, like drug sentencing, military recruitment in urban areas, and the social structures that keep the poor oppressed. They think it's good for teachers to do liberal political organizing with the kids. This is fine, if kids are interested, but the real social justice issue is the fact that they aren't being educated. The point is not to get them on your side politically, but teach the skills they need to be successful and informed and so they can develop political views of their own. They know enough about prison; teach them math instead so they won't have to know it first hand.

Another kid said that the home and the community are more important than the school in a kid's success, so if someone has a bad family situation than the school can't do anything. That is also stupid. Lots of kids have tough family situations, but they are able to make it if someone gives them a chance.

My instructor then interrupted and told us we weren't going "deep enough." He said, "what makes families and communities the way they are?" He was trying to make us talk about societal structures of oppression. Again. We never talk about teaching, we always have to talk about the societal structures of oppression. I raised my hand and said, "well you want us to say that there are societal structures set up that perpetuate poverty, blah blah blah..." I probably shouldn't have said 'blah, blah, blah' because it really pissed him off. I was going to go on to say that the way to overcome these structures was to make sure we did our jobs as teachers and to make sure we were in schools that would work. But I couldn't get to that because he interrupted me, very angry, and said "blah, blah, blah--that is so dismissive." And then he called on someone else who would probably agree with him. That is intellectual bullying. He's the one who tells us not to indoctrinate our kids. But what does he do? Constantly try to indoctrinate us with his politics, which have little to nothing to do with our actual teaching. I know good teachers who are incredibly liberal, and others who are incredibly conservative. Personal politics do not matter, if your goal is to teach kids well and teach them to value truth and knowledge. He wants us to teach them to be little liberals.

He says that social studies has been taught in a "rah rah America" way in the past that has glossed over controversial issues, and he's right. But the solution is not to teach it in a "boo America is bad and so is capitalism" way, because that glosses over just as much. History is what happened, not our judgment about what we think should or should not have happened.

I don't think this guy should be allowed to be a teacher, for us or anyone else. He doesn't care about our development, just about our agreement with his views. Sometimes I really feel like crying, or throwing something at his head, imagining that his head represents all the stupidity in the world of education (which it may). Instead I write here, for you good people. And hope to stay sane.

a book for young readers

2005-10-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

I would like someone to guess the approximate grade level of the book the 11th graders in my school's humanities class are reading.

No, guess lower.

Barnes and Noble dubs it a "book for young readers," appropriate for 3rd-6th graders.

I wonder: are there colleges nowadays that use books for young readers, or in the case of the more academic colleges, books written for grades 7 and 8? We should look into that.

I feel like I'm in some kind of absurdist play, and the joke's on me. Or maybe it's a Truman-show like situation, and we're waiting to see when I finally explode and start "throwing personal invectives around like Rudy Giuliani on a bad day." (That was from a NY Times book review article. The book is '1491,' by Charles Mann. Looks to be awesome, I would check it out.) I imagine the situation would be quite humorous to viewers. Although, I guess a reality show for which a city and a fake ocean had to be created would not be constructed around the life of an education grad student. And if that is the case, somebody should really be fired, because the most exciting thing I've done this week is paint my living room an unfortunate shade of pink. We were going for warm country homestead, but instead it ended up more like warm country Pepto-bismol. (By the way, never, ever go to bed right after eating or drinking Pepto-bismol. The ingredient 'bismuth' reacts with your spit enzymes to produce this black coating on your tongue. Then you wake up in the morning, freak out when black stuff comes off on your toothbrush, wonder if someone stuffed your mouth full of dirt, reject that possibility because your door is locked and your roommate is a tiny Asian girl, consider what having mouth cancer will be like, consult the Mayo Clinic online, and learn about your condition: "hairy tongue." It's better just to circumvent the entire process).

Anyway, back to this book business. Last year at MATCH, the first thing the ninth graders read was Roots! They almost died, but they got through it. When the teacher asked them about it at the end of the year, many of them said they liked having that challenge right at the beginning, that it helped them gear up for the rest of the year. And they were proud of themselves for getting through the whole thing. I don't know that these 11th grade kids will be proud of themselves for reading an elementary school book.

This whole thing is such a moral dilemma. What is going on at this school is just plainly wrong. Should I quit, then? Refuse to student teach? Quit grad school? Switch grad schools? I want to become a teacher as soon as I can, and I don't want to waste the time (one month) and money (I'm not even going to say because it makes me want to eviscerate myself or someone in the student accounts department) I've spent here. But I also hate having to endure this situation and, worse yet, be a party to it. I'm not even allowed to criticize it openly to the people there, not that it would do any good. I feel like I'm an enabler or something. I'm going to try and switch my student teaching placement, but it might not be possible. If any of you out there have advice or words of wisdom, they would be appreciated.

Baseball, anger toward Joe Buck and other things

2005-10-10T18:04:00.000-07:00

I am currently watching the Yankees-Angels playoff game. I am not a fan of either team, but I love baseball. Although Joe Buck definitely thinks he's hot stuff, and it's irritating. I guess he can't help it, what with his name. Also, there's a guy on the Angels named Vladimir Guerrero. I said, Vladimir? Is he from St. Petersburg, Honduras? [I thought he was Cuban, thus explaining the name Vladimir as a leftover vestige of communist nostalgia. However, a more informed reader explained to me that Guerrero is Dominican. So now I have no explanation for the name Vladimir showing up. If someone else does, please contribute. Or else I might have to name my own child Trajan, or Juan Peron.]

[Ok I looked it up myself, and thus have to willingly bow down to the god of ignorance, who, by the way, fully supports constructivist learning. Apparently the Dominican Republic, like much of Latin America, flirted with communist ideology during the 1950s and 1960s. Don't worry, though, the U.S. invaded just in time to screw everything up even more. I guess Vladimir's parents were hoping things would turn back the other way when he was born, in 1976. Turns out they were kind of on the losing side of things. Except Vladimir, since the Angels won today. So I guess what goes around, comes around, right? Yes.]

These are just some thoughts to make your day brighter. As I've said, I'm here to serve.

Update:

Instantaneous Joe Buck quote: "The Angels are killing Mussina softly."
This guy needs to be taken down.

Update II:

The Yankees lost, and I'm sure many people are sad. I, however, am still angry with Joe Buck, and intend to do something about it. This might include going to his house, sitting next to his TV when he's watching something, and making annoying comments.

However, perhaps I should instead redirect my anger away from Joe Buck and toward important issues, such as education. Although anger regarding education is more exhausting than other types of anger, because anger regarding education exists every minute of every day, including today, when I was forced to do a pencil drawing of what I thought Hiroshima looked like after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on it during a "stations lesson" activity in my methods class. If this is not trivializing an important event and turning it into a pointless and aggravating activity, I do not know what is.

In the same stations lesson, we were also asked to write a short story about the burned military uniform of a Japanese soldier. We had to make up the person it belonged to, what happened to the person during the bombing, etc. I found it incredibly disturbing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "History is not history unless it is the truth." The point of studying history is not to create new history. The point is to learn about our own world, reality, the universe we do live in rather than the ones we create in our silly little heads. I found these activities somewhat of a betrayal, both to the people involved in the events and to the study of history as a discipline. You don't make up science, you don't make up math, and you don't make up history!

(By the way, I had to do an assignment where we looked up history quotes. I'm not one of those people who can quote legendary individuals off the top of his or her head. Although someday I hope to be, god willing. I like those people.)

I felt somewhat redeemed later when we took out some questions from the state history tests. We had to go through and answer some of the questions, and they were pretty tough! I was quite impressed. Our instructor asked us smugly, wouldn't we be able to answer these questions after that stations lesson? Everyone in the class said no, we hadn't learned enough. HA. EAT IT, CRAZY PEOPLE.

I hate the whole reasoning behind this smugness about "not lecturing" and "being creative" and "letting the students learn for themselves." It's like these people are saying, 'all of our teachers thought they were so great, but they didn't have all the answers. They tried to imprison us in their mental universe, but we wouldn't let them, cuz we're rebels! And now we're stickin' it to the man by saying that we don't know any more than the kids do because we all have good thoughts!'

I don't ever think I would say to a class, "I know everything, I have all the answers." [Actually, on a bad/cocky day, I might.] But I would say, "I don't have all the answers, but I do have quite a few more than you do, since I went to college for four years, and then graduate school, to learn all of this stuff, whereas you are 13 and don't know Greece from your ass. Fortunately, I feel generous enough to want to share some knowledge with you here today, and every day for the rest of the year." This is what makes traditional teaching generous, and new teaching stingy. In new teaching, we say we don't know the answers, even though we do, thereby keeping the answers for ourselves while trying to make the students "figure out" or "find" or "discover" things that would be more efficiently and effectively transmitted from us to them. That's why we have teachers in the first place. Granted, many teachers don't know the answers to things, including "Why are you such a bad teacher?" But I'm talking about a better world here, folks.

throwing down the gauntlet

2005-10-06T16:25:00.000-07:00

You know, I am a laid-back person. I don't get too ruffled up about things. Like, when I trip and fall in the street, eliciting gasps from onlookers, I don't make a big deal about it. I pick myself up, dust myself off, try to push my shame deep down, and continue on with life. Yes, I try to take life as it comes.

However. Currently, right now, and for the past few hours, I have had the angry inside. Big time. Like, it's time to rumble.

Okay. So I have this discussion class that is supposed to be us sharing things about our student teaching experiences. So far, this has not happened. Last week, as I said, we discussed the prison-industrial complex. THIS week we started off class with a free word association involving the words liberal, progressive, and radical. (We don't even talk about conservatism in this class. It is definitely off the table. Not that I'm particularly conservative, but I would say there's a kind of intellectual bullying going on here). This exercise took about 45 minutes.

The only amusing part was when a girl associated "radical" with "crazy" and our instructor got pissed. He was like, "now you're just disrespecting someone's belief system." It was ridiculous. He is some kind of Marxist/socialist/radical and really does not try to hide it. Meanwhile, he tells us that we have to be careful not to indoctrinate our kids in any particular ideology when we're teaching social studies. I would say this scores low on the self-awareness scale.

So anyway, throughout this exercise I'm thinking, this is not so relevant to teaching. Usually when something is being taught, I pretend I'm about to get up in front of a class of 30 children, and I ask myself, "is this piece of information or idea going to help me in front of these kids?" If the answer is no, I feel frustrated. I would say I feel frustrated about 95% of the time at school.

I figure that I should probably say something about the angry inside me, so I raise my hand and ask, "why are we doing this exercise? I don't really understand. What does this have to do with teaching?" The instructor responds that he didn't just want to tell us the definitions of these words, because then he would be making the mistake of placing himself as the expert, thus invalidating any ideas that we had. Right.

I explained that what I had meant was, "why are these definitions important right now? How will this make me a better teacher?" Some kids raise their hands to respond. They pretty much say that these conversations are helping them to think about and formulate their political beliefs. First of all, where were they in college? Second, do you care about their political beliefs? Will the kids? I don't, that's for sure.

People seem to think that politics is important in this business. But it's not. Charter schools are supported by all kinds of people: from liberals as pink as the day they were born to conservatives who would wrestle a five dollar bill away from their mothers. If you are committed to a system that works, then you don't need politics because we know what works.

Anyway, my whole "let's get back on track" thing was totally aborted, and we continued to discuss these semantic issues. It seemed like we were wrapping up, and I hoped we could move on to something better. But then, all of a sudden, BOOM. With no warning whatsoever, we have started talking about mercantilism. Oh yes, that's right. Personally, I think a mercantilist system would totally help our ailing schools. I think the colonies that we leech from could be located on the moon.

Ok. So then we read a very inflammatory article about the "pedagogy of poverty." I won't go into it, because it was another one of those "our public schools are trying to control the students' minds. We should let them be free!" Really this is not the issue. Also, the guy says that if you want a highly disciplined school, you may or may not be a bigot. He actually used the word bigot.

We got onto the topic of cultural advantages that middle class kids have, such as listening to their parents discuss different issues, going to museums, having more books, etc. Everyone was decrying the fact that poor kids don't have the same things, and that they come into pre-K already behind. When they continue falling behind, middle school and high school teachers complain that "there just isn't enough time" to teach them, particularly with the mandated curriculum dictated by state exams.

I pointed out that, if what people were saying was correct, then that would mean that urban kids should have more time in the classroom, longer school days, and longer school years. This would allow them to catch up and give their teachers the chance to cover everything they wanted. I provided the KIPP schools as an example of a school system that does this, and gets amazing results. It works. More time in school and good instruction works.

My instructor was not pleased with this, though. He thought the idea was too "militaristic." He said, "I mean, what's the end goal?" I was flabbergasted, once again. Doesn't anyone get it? The goal is to give kids the skills and knowledge they need to choose the kind of lives they want to live. Period, end of story, I no longer want to talk to you, stupid idiot. But he has this whole notion of making people "good citizens" or getting them to "think critically" about the world. Ask yourself, what would you want for your child? Would you want her to get a great academic education and be able to do whatever she wanted, or would you want someone to teach her "how to be a good citizen" or "how to think critically"? I know, me too. And if the chips were down, my instructor would admit the same thing. The fact is that schools like KIPP are vaulting kids OUT OF POVERTY. They're giving them a fighting chance. And the concept of the schools is not that complex. Their motto is: Work hard. Be nice. And everything boils down to that in the end. There's no magic curriculum bullet. It's just hard work. This guy, this instructor, he so decries poverty and "keeping poor kids poor" and "the pedagogy of poverty" but it is HIS reluctance to accept WHAT WORKS FOR KIDS that keeps them where they are.

I really don't understand. And I'm so angry about it.

2005-10-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a great interview with the Mike Feinberg, one of the two guys who started KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program: http://www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/sbs/kipp/feinberg.html

These schools are quite amazing. Middle school kids who go to KIPP get into high schools like Deerfield, Andover, Stuyvesant, etc. And these are not privilieged kids, they're regular kids from the South Bronx or Houston.

If you read this piece, you realize that teachers at KIPP schools are expected to operate on a totally different level than most teachers. They are there from 7am to 5pm. They are held accountable for their teaching. They have to carry cellphones so their kids can call them at night. They have to be damn good teachers.

That's the kind of teacher I want to be. But I'm so terrified that I won't be. I mean, I don't think either my classes or my student teaching is at all preparing me for that kind of rigor. KIPP hires a lot of teachers from Teach for America. They have experience and the academic background that KIPP wants, but the thing is that they basically had to go through 2 years of disappointing hell in a regular public school to get there. The reason I didn't do Teach for America was precisely because I didn't want to start out somewhere that was doing a mediocre to terrible job of educating kids. That is exactly the kind of environment where my soul withers and dies and I have to brush the wilted pieces into a little pile and then vaccuum them up with the new power vaccuum my roommate just bought at Home Depot.

The fact is that Teach for America and regular public schools often drive people out of teaching because the experience is so terrible and so disappointing. I can stand almost any level of hard work, but what I cannot stand is incompetence, laziness, and seeing people letting kids down. I don't know. Maybe a good school would hire me right away. But based on what education school is doing for me, they would have every reason not to.

uh oh...

2005-10-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

wait, I just realized that I just pronounced yesterday that I wouldn't pontificate too much. Do you think that last one on testing counts?! Comments welcome...

Testing

2005-10-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

I would like to say a little bit about the controversy swirling, swirling, swirling around mandated state testing.

My student teaching school began its life exempt from the state tests because it is known as a "portfolio school." Instead of passing the tests to graduate, seniors compile collections of their work in each of six subject areas: math, science, English, history, art, and foreign language. They present their work to three or more teachers, who ask the student questions. The students also have to participate in "roundtables," in which they discuss and debate with other students on various topics.

Some of these pieces of work seem fine to me. I like the idea of structured debates (and by structured I mean debates where swearing, yelling, and standing up is discouraged), because one will encounter that type of situation in college. Also, I think something like a portfolio could help a child see how far he/she has come since ninth grade (hopefully it farther than the number of yards the Vikings have been getting in recent games) and provide a sense of closure or accomplishment.

However, there are a couple dangerous loopholes to this system. Many of the kids really do not have the skills they should have to graduate from high school and, hopefully, go on to college. These gaps show up when you test them, but they are able to hide them or downplay their significance in a portfolio of work. Ignoring these weaknesses only hurts the child in the long run.

Not only does this system allow a child to slip through lacking what he/she needs in the future, it lets the school get away with the fact that they haven't given him/her those skills. At my student teaching school, and at many schools, everyone hates the state standards. The tests are evil demons that are infecting the world with their correct answers and muliple choice bubble charts. The other major objection is that teaching what the state demands takes away from other types of lessons, and can pretty much dictate the entire curriculum.

Here's the thing. In the education business, we are thinking only about the period in a child's life from kindergarten through twelfth grade. We want to do the best job we can, but after that, we're off the hook. But the state has to worry about people their whole dang lives. Politicians are held responsible for people's unemployment, poverty, housing, health care, etc etc. So the state wants high schools turning out kids who have real skills so that they can fill the demands of the current labor market, keep up with the changing economy, be able to afford housing, be able to take care of their families, afford preventative health care, etc. These are major, major interests for the state. Schools are uniquely placed to be able to vault kids out of an impoverished background into the kind of self-sufficiency that makes things easier for government and better for society.

In education, we get too caught up with the here and now. We see these kids every day, and we care about them. They aren't cogs in the education machine to us, they are living, breathing, fun, moody, obnoxious children. So it's hard to be objective with them. It's hard to think like the state does. We not only want to educate them, we want to enrich their lives. We want them to really understand what it means for an object to have torque, not just to know how to calculate for it. We care about their character development, and their happiness, and how much they like us as teachers. Worst of all, we want to make a difference.

Idealism, and love for the kids, and really actually caring can, paradoxically, doom a child. We, who know the kid, don't want to see him struggle and fail. We don't want to see him angry at us, we don't want to see his mean streak or his anti-authoritarianism. So we don't push him in the ways that will elicit strong emotions. We don't make him take tests, we play to his strengths, we shy away from his weaknesses, we let him be. When the state, who doesn't know him, tries to come in and force us (and him) to see what he can really do, we are angry. "But they don't know him," we think. He can't do any math, and his literacy skills are weak, but he is so good at X. And plus, they don't know his background.

But in this case, and it's a rare one, the government seems to be right. It's not the here and now that we should be worried about. Kids are the short-sighted ones, but we cannot be. We have to think longer-term. We should not be concerned with his three or four years with us, but his life. We have to evaluate what he needs to do to pass those tests, to have those skills, and then ask, plead, force, or cajole him into doing it. Maybe he'll hate us. And he might even be driven to another school. But he might not. He might stay, hate us, struggle under our all-knowing thumb, be in the principal's office every week, fail before he succeeds, etc. But in the end he might just pass those tests and come out a goddam educated person. And maybe he'll realize what happened and maybe not. But we will have done our job in society, which is to produce people who have skills for college and jobs and life.

One common objection to all this is that handing the kid academic skills without, like, character education or cooperative skills means he'll be some kind of asocial smart freak who can't interact with others. However, I don't really think schools are the most effective transmitters of social or citizenship skills. Those things come from families, clubs, and sports teams. Schools can't be responsible for everything. That they sort of are held responsible for everything is how they duck out of doing their real job: educating. Secondly, I think a guy who has enough skills to get through college and find a good job is going to be a better citizen anyway than someone who was taught through cooperative learning but wasn't able to graduate from high school, and now works as a cashier. Most likely that guy does not like his society very much, and doesn't really want to be a good citizen. I, for one, don't blame him. We failed.

The fact is that 98% of kids at good magnet schools pass the state tests, while like 30% do at a lot of regular high schools. That is shameful and ridiculous. Maybe not everyone will pass the first time, and magnet schools will always have an advantage. But they shouldn't have a 60+% advantage. The kids there aren't that smart. The fact is, they are expected to pass those tests, they are taught so they have the skills to, and they do.

Now, at my school, the kids have to take part of the state tests, but not all. However, I think they are in political hot water because of the renewal of the standards movement both at the state and national levels. I hate to say that George Bush is in the right ballpark on anything, so I will give this one to the bill's cosponsor (I think) Ted Kennedy. Accountability for schools means skills for kids. That's good, people.

Teaching a lesson in a progressive school

2005-10-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

Last week I taught my first student-teaching lesson. The teacher I work with collaborates with two others on her lesson plans, a special ed teacher and another 11th grade humanities teacher. They meet to plan lessons in the afternoons, and usually I'm at class then, so I don't get to input a lot. They are open to my suggestions, up to a point.

For example, the kids' writing is terrible. I mean scary terrible. One essay I just read was almost unintelligible, in that the students' words seemed to have been scattered randomly throughout the "sentence," which went on for like four lines and counted as a paragraph. The girl is bright and articulate, and to my knowledge does not have any type of learning disability.

I suggested I could do some mini grammar lessons in class, and my teacher thought it was a nice idea. She does support the idea of grammar, and recognizes that the kids are pretty weak writers. Although I don't think she has the same fear in her heart that I do for them. But the thing is, she won't let me give any grammar quizzes. The school as a whole is sort of "against" quizzes, although some teachers use them I guess. It's difficult to assess whether the kids have learned the specific principle you taught when you can't quiz them on it specifically. Also, there is every reason for the kids to tune out when I try to teach it to them, since they are not really accountable. But this is a small frustration only.

On Friday, I taught the whole lesson. It was about the Declaration of Independence and what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote, "all men are created equal." We read some of his ambivalent and conflicting views on slavery, and talked about what why he was so conflicted.

This is a really difficult topic because you have to closely examine the American situation at the time. Jefferson was so steeped in the politics of his time--the revolution, trying to maintain colonial unity, condemning slavery while assuring southerners of its preservation, a slaveowner himself, a man of thought in an age of events. He saw slavery, and saw its injustice. He saw how it contradicted with his ideals of equality for all men. So he changed the game by claiming that African-Americans were...not quite men. Sort of pseudo-men, perhaps evolutionarily stunted. It was his awful compromise between reality and idealism.

However, in class we hadn't talked about the revolution yet. We hadn't talked about the different ways that the northern and southern colonies developed and why. We hadn't talked about the fragility of the revolutionary will. We hadn't talked about northern attitudes toward slavery and toward Africans.

Why, then, did we do this lesson when we did?

Because although it is a history class, the class is based around themes, not history.

The themes for this unit (colonial founding through the early American period) are roughly as follows:
the racialization of savagery
race as a social construct
what freedom means to different peoples

It's difficult to find room in there for things like a) the development of the colonies, b) events leading to the revolution, c) ideas leading to the revolution, d) dissent regarding the revolution, e) the war itself.

I would imagine that the kids have had many classes based around themes like this. One girl said in class today, "how come we always have to learn about race?" Not that it isn't an important topic, especially in American history, but I think the sentiment stemmed from theme overload.

Another hint that they haven't really learned a great deal of content, in the past or so far this year, is that they don't know a lot of content. I'm pretty sure a lot of them don't know what "Europe" is, or at least the difference between "Europe" and "England." When I talk to them, they try to reconstruct the facts of history logically, from the themes we learned about.

My teachers and others want kids to understand the "big ideas" in history, rather than memorizing facts and details. But I just don't think you can teach these big ideas directly. They are empty and meaningless by themselves. You teach the small stories, the facts, the dates, the chronology, the events, and then out of these, patterns begin to emerge. That's the beautiful part, when the students start to see them. It's like giving them tree after tree after tree, and suddenly they realize it's a forest. Or it's like that painting, by...Seurat? The one with all the little dots. There is no picture without all the dots!

It's funny, because I feel that the teaching strategy I am suggesting is actually more constructivist than my constructivist teachers. It doesn't involve lots of group work, and it doesn't shun facts, and there would have to be a lot of teacher support and prodding, but I think students could come up with a lot of "big ideas" on their own, without us directly telling them. Giving them the facts, rather than a somewhat revisionist thematic interpretation of the facts, actually gives them more power, and a forest full of trees.

In my lesson during the first block, we read a lot of the primary source documents out loud together, and then I led a discussion about them and we took notes together. This was roundly condemned as the wrong approach, and so the next period I had to let them read and interpret in groups. As usual, they wasted a lot of time and I don't really think they understood it. Not that I'm sure they had totally understood it in the first block, since they didn't have the proper historical background and I can't give them quizzes, but at least I got some reasonable answers out of the class discussion. In the second block, everyone got something different, depending on their group. It was so frustrating. I don't want to learn to teach like this because I don't think it's right. But I can't contradict the teacher. But I need the practice. It's an education grad school moral dilemma. The best kind.

Changing previous posts

2005-10-02T17:54:00.000-07:00

I took down my earlier post about guilt. I felt uncomfortable when I wrote it, and when I read people's comments, and when I thought about it. It was too general, too spacey. It was driven by inference rather than experience, and thus wasn't authentic. So I took it down. I want to stay focused on reality, on observation.

It's like how I love behaviorism, in psychology. It's so simple and real. You react to someone based on how they behave. You reward them for good behavior, and punish or ignore them for bad. You don't have to make a judgment as to their ultimate "character," goodness, or badness. It's very difficult to do, especially as a teacher. You have kids who you tag as your "good" kids: hard workers, raise their hands a lot in class, no trouble. And then you have your "trouble" kids who keep annoying you. But if, as a teacher, you can rely on objectivity and act on behavior alone, you are more just. And you are a better teacher.

One of the main reasons everyone hates graduate school is because it's such an ivory tower. I want no part of that. So I will not sermonize again. I have learned my lesson. I will rely on observation, and then add commentary to what I think is going on. We all have our theories. I think I am most useful and wise without them. Not to mention less of a downer. Jeez.

Some incidents in the life of a progressive school

2005-10-02T16:55:00.000-07:00

Some incidents in the life of a progressive school:

--In homeroom, the kids are telling each other about themselves. One girl, a ninth-grader, says, "I am boy-crazy. And I love to eat! I'm hungry all the time." A twelfth grade boy says under his breath, "If you like boys, and you're hungry all the time, I'll give you something to eat!" He and his friends laugh. The teacher, who probably heard what he said, says, "I'm glad you're comfortable enough to have jokes." This teacher, in the previous period, had taught a lesson on institutional racism, as defined by Cornel West.

--During a similar "homeroom circle," one boy talks out, loudly, again and again. He interrupts people with renditions of his favorite rap songs. No one tells him to stop. Not once. It continues for an hour. No one talks to him after class.

--Someone's cell phone rings in class. There is a rule against cell phones, but there are no consequences attached to breaking it. Another person's cell phone rings. Two kids listen to music on a cell phone. They are told to stop. Two minutes later, it is out again.

--A student who has never done one piece of homework interrupts the teacher at the end of class, chanting "what's the homework? what's the homework?" Annoyed, but joking, she replies, "What do you care? You don't do the homework." The class laughs. The boy is not used to this kind of straight talk. He leaves the room a minute early. The teacher apologizes profusely. She decides she shouldn't be so hard on students. The boy doesn't turn his homework in on Monday.

--During group work, one girl is trying to do the assigned task. Three of her classmates are goofing around, annoying one another and her. There is no accountability for any of them. The girl, distracted by the others, does not finish the task.

--One boy thinks it is appropriate to call me "sweetheart." When he is told not to do it, he doesn't understand why. "I call everyone sweetheart," he says. That I am a teacher does not distinguish me from anyone else, in his mind. I tell him it is incredibly disrespectful, and that he cannot do it anymore. He doesn't.

--One twelfth grade humanities class will spend the entire quarter on the idea of "race as a social construct." Perhaps the teachers believe the students will be more interested in a topic that affects their "daily lives." Instead, the kids seem bored. The material is too theoretical, there is nothing for them to grab onto.

Let's talk about me

2005-10-01T13:36:00.000-07:00

(Note: this entry is about my computer problems, not education. I think the two issues are of equal importance, and you should too.)

So my computer is from freshman year in college. That makes it about six years old. When I got into graduate school, I thought about buying a new one. But I thought, no, I'm going to stick with my old friend. Then my roommate and I decided to get cable internet. When the cable guy came (it was Jim Carrey), he couldn't get the cable box to work on my computer. He asked me what version of Windows I had. I said Windows 98. He looked at me as if I had told him that my computer was operated by a crank. Apparently Windows 98 is too old to hook up to cable internet. Apparently it is also too old to interface with a flash drive. So I'm going to have to use some bootleg maneuver to get my old files off it. These files include several very bad short stories and an English paper I wrote about the significance of sky and cloud imagery in Martin Amis's book Money. I got an A on that one.

So long story short, I had to buy a new computer. So I went on the Dell website and did my business. I got the order all done and through, and the thing was shipped out a couple days later. That's when the problems started. You would think that when you spend over $1000 of your hard-earned money,* they would....I'm trying to think of that phrase that means "make things easier for you" and involves butter or grease. I want to say "butter your path," but I'm pretty sure that's not it. Anyway, you'd think they would make sure you get the thing.

*So it was your parents' hard-earned money, which you hope they will continue to be generous with until you get a real job. Which will be never.

Instead, UPS lost the computer. Like, in New Jersey. They were very vague whenever I called about it, insisting that it would be delivered that day. I had to get Dell on their asses. I'm guessing Dell sent them an email with the subject line: "Re: you owe us one thousand dollas, batches." Then UPS started jumpin'. I got this call from a UPS woman that was possibly the most fawning conversation I had ever been a party to. She was SO apologetic and complimentary of my patience. I wanted to say, "whoa, lady, you lost my computer, not my child." I don't know what the real point of the call even was. I mean, if she was trying to get me not to badmouth UPS to my friends, she missed that train like five years ago.

So Dell put another computer in production for me and will send it out again. Although I think this solution might be slightly flawed, as they will be sending it out via UPS.

Personally, I don't know why more people don't use the post office. Those people deliver through everything, like snow and stuff. Although I don't know about New Jersey. That's not part of the slogan.

Back to the issues at hand

2005-09-29T18:12:00.000-07:00

Something interesting happened the other day in my Educational Psychology class. This guy asked, "do they study schools in China, since they do so well?" Our instructor thought he meant, 'do American researchers study schools in China?' She responded, "of course. But it's a totally different situation, because the kids there just spend way more time in school." There was an awkward pause, in which some people thought, "huh. Perhaps that has something to do with their complete mathematical and scientific dominance in test scores?"

The funny part is that the guy was actually asking, "Do Chinese psychologists study Chinese schools?" His point was that they probably don't, because they don't need to. Their schools work. We talked about that for a bit. You know what young kids in China do to learn numbers and counting? The abacus. If anything in this world is old school, it is the abacus. Of course, they also just practice and practice basic math until it becomes automatic, or as we here in the always-clear education world say, until it "reaches automaticity."

I realized after class the irony of the whole situation. Usually, the instructor lectures for about 10 mintues, and then for the rest of the hour we just talk back and forth about the articles we read. The thing is, none of us really know what we're talking about. We read the articles, but that doesn't mean we really understand them. That's why we're in school for this crap. The lecturer, on the other hand, is familiar with many of the major studies on the issues we're studying and could actually set us straight about some stuff. So we end up arguing but not learning anything. And so, I am actually in a constructivist learning environment in which I am arguing about how ineffective constructivism is, and it actually is quite ineffective for me. Weird, huh?

Today I had a seminar in which we discuss our student teaching experience. It was interesting--a LOT of the people in my seminar have the same kind of complaints about their schools that I do: lack of discipline, lack of consequences, not enough attention to basic skills and knowledge, etc. Somehow the entire seminar agreed that these schools were examples of "liberalism run amok." So that was amusing.

That whole seminar is hilarious. The guy who runs it is probably the most intense person ever. He has wild black hair and I could tell from the first time I saw him that he holds views that are "radical." He's a great guy, and definitely has sound educational views--a result of teaching for three years in the worst high schools in Philadelphia. But somehow he always steers the seminar away from discussing teaching and schools and toward other social ills that we are really not going to be able to deal with. For example, today somehow we got to the prison-industrial complex.

I found myself discussing my visit to the Cook County Jail in Chicago. It's the largest jail (as opposed to prison) in the country, except for LA County. There's supposed to be like 9,000 inmates in there, but there's actually 11,000. Some of the inmates are there for short-term sentences. Others are still awaiting trial. Some wait for a trial for years, often imprisoned on bonds of $100 or less that no one will pay for them. Some just choose to plead out right away, so they can get sent downstate to a real prison, a significantly more humane place. The County Jail was built in 1929, and you can tell. Everything is metal and incredibly mechanistic, with levers and bolts. The cell blocks are shaped in a square, with 10 or so closet-sized two-person cells surrounding a center room. The inmates in Cook County usually spend 23 out of 24 hours in their cells or this center room, which is bare except for metal benches and a tv. The warden who was showing us around told us about how the inmates would throw feces at the guards as they walked by, and then showed us a rack of confiscated shanks. I think it was the most horrible place I've ever been. I felt sick and trapped, like an animal. If you weren't a criminal or an addict when you went in, I can see why you would be when you got out.

See how easy it is to get side-tracked? These issues are all so pressing and so depressing and dire, but really you can only concentrate on one thing. And you have to put all your energy toward it. That's my theory, anyway.

Anyway, I'm so exhausted and haven't eaten very much today, so this didn't turn out very funny. Sorry about that. Really, I'm here to entertain.

Just one last thing before I go: I have this feeling that when the United States empire is drowning in its own cesspool of overextension and debt, the very last thing it will see is an abacus.

I plugged it back in after it died

2005-09-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

Hello,

So some of you may be wondering why I skittishly removed my blog from the annals of cyberspace, and am now putting it back on. Ok, here we go:

Reasons I didn't want to have my bizness on the web:

1. I don't want to hurt the people I work and go to school with. They are good people, all, and they have been very nice to me. All this stuff is not supposed to be personal. It's not about what I said about you or what you think about me--it's about how to make schools work so everyone has a chance. It sounds so sappy but I think it's where you have to start from in this business.

2. A few months ago, I got seriously *burned* by a critical evaluation I wrote of an organization I had worked for. It was supposed to be read only by an independent third party, but for reasons that are still unfathomable to me, it got sent to my boss. Not only did she refuse to give me a recommendation for another job (I did a VERY good job for them), but in fact she will not speak to me. Needless to say, that wasn't a very pleasant experience.

Reasons to Plug Back in:

I think this topic is really important, and it's one that people "talk" about all the time but that no one really talks about. So I think we should talk about it. And if it's critical of existing institutions and structures, so be it. I guess you have to draw the line somewhere, or nothing ever changes. Other reasons for re-posting are that people wrote such nice responses, and that I want to be famous.

Just kidding about that last one. But I am really, really happy and surprised that people really read my stuff and liked it. It's definitely a good feeling.

So what I'm going to do is try to make the entries impersonal in terms of describing people and specific places. If it makes the writing vague, I apologize. I have to sleep at night.

I heart knowledge

2005-09-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

Today in my educational psychology class we were discussing constructivism versus direct instruction. This one guy in our class had actually gone to a sort of constructivist middle school, and was telling us about this "history" project they had done. In small groups, they created their own civilizations, produced "artifacts" that would have emanated from such a civilization, then BURIED the artifacts in some kind of artificial "archaeological site" in their classroom. I'm thinking sandbox? Then the other groups took turns digging up the artifacts and trying to determine the nature of the civilization.

Now, I don't know about you, but I really don't think I would have cared to learn about some made-up civilization plucked out of the air by the girl across the room who always wore those annoyingly large scrunchies. I think I would rather have liked to learn about civilizations that actually existed, even though, realistically, I could not have gone traipsing into the desert to find the shards of pottery and the discarded waste products of that society. At least we'd be keeping it real, as it were. Also, I'm wondering what skills were derived from this exercise? Digging?

Anyway, this guy was really supportive of his old school, and is now sending his own child to one like it. When others, including me, tried to argue against various aspects of constructivism, he always shot back with the fact that it worked for him. He and this other guy started talking about how we, as graduate students, had been "good at school" so, naturally we would support "traditional schooling." They said that everyone tended to "teach how he/she was taught." I have heard this argument several times before. Each time, the speaker exhorts us to "learn to step out of the mindset of our own experience."

The question I pose to them is this: what the hell are you talking about? I went to a public school. My teachers lectured. We didn't do group projects. We didn't really do any projects, except a big research project in 10th grade. And yes, mine did involve making paleolithic tools out of obsidian volcanic rock. That's hard, by the way. But mostly we listened, and we read, and we wrote. We sometimes talked about these things, but not all the time. We had quizzes on the reading. We had to do endless DBQ's and our history tests left our hands literally aching, if we had done well. We had many tests, and some of those were (oh no, don't say it) scan-tron. School could be boring, and difficult, and long. And what came of all this? Well, let's see. I went to college, I did well, I graduated, I got a job, I did well, I got another job, I did well, I went back to school. In reality I am not an incredible genius, even though I tell people that I am (actually, I might be). The fact is that I am well-educated. And many of my classmates are also well-educated. And I don't see why we have to abandon all those methods of instruction that obviously worked for us just because now we're talking about black and Hispanic kids from the city instead of white kids from the suburbs. Especially since these things are working at schools like MATCH, and KIPP, and North Star. Speaking of MATCH, the MCAS results from last year came back. MATCH ranked 18th in the state in English scores and 4th in the state for math.

Wait, did you just say that MATCH came in fifth in math? Oh, oh wait, I'm sorry, you said fourth. And was that for the city? Oh, really? For the state? I see. Funny it worked out that way, since the kids didn't get to do any projects. I mean, I think they actually learned math instead of building rowboats out of popsicle sticks to illustrate what numbers really are. No one thought they had a chance.

I'm sorry. Sometimes I just can't keep all the sassiness inside. Anyway, I was going to talk about the class that is my savior, the perfect contrast. It's what our department calls a "content course," which is amusing, since it implies that the other courses have no content. It's a world history survey class up to 1500, designed for the New York state mandate for two years of world history education in 9th and 10th grade. Apparently most new social studies teachers get hired for world history teaching posts because the older social studies teachers don't know anything about world history. It's quite a lot of content knowledge, but the idea it all sort of molds is that human societies throughout thousands of years have been so incredibly similar that it's weird. You find all kinds of cool parallels between civilizations and societies that were completely isolated from one another.

My professor is a real history professor from the real university I attend. He specializes in modern Islam and European colonialism in the Middle East. He wears bow-ties, tells us we're wrong, criticizes us when we stay stupid things, and generally emits an air of effortless superiority. It's absolutely awesome. Finally, someone who values knowledge, who doesn't believe it's just a useless jumble of unrelated baubles. He's brilliant, and it's obvious that he's brilliant because he knows so much. It's not that he's used "transfer skills" from critical thinking projects he did as a kid. No. He studied for god knows how long in libraries across America, the Middle East, and Europe. He learned other languages and lived in other cultures, and he just knows his shit. Today he gave a narrative of the last few years in American life that was brief but so incisive I felt I would tear up. I hate that my school doesn't think this type of intellectualism is worth anything. The guy in my class who was so pro-constructivism, he said "our schools produce kids who are good at school." First off, most of them don't. Second, what is wrong with that? This professor could be doing a million billion different things if he weren't teaching. In fact, he consults with law enforcement about the increasingly radicalized cultures of the Islamic diaspora! Contrast the utility of that with whatever it is you learn when you make a model space station out of plastic pipes and rubber tubing and you'll see what I mean.

Well, it's bedtime for me. Last night I dreamt my apartment was filled with pink, newborn mice that looked like maggots. They were everywhere. My roommate and I kept stepping on them. It was all because we left so many dirty dishes in the sink. I think they're still there, unless she washed them.

Welcome to school

2005-09-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

posted by newoldschoolteacher @ 7:14 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

So I am at a graduate school of education, home of teaching people how to give urban kids a crappy education. I am currently using all my powers to ward off the incessant doctrinal attacks on being oldschool. An argument I had with my instructor yesterday should serve as an excellent starting point.

The class is a "methods class" on teaching social studies. We were practicing writing a lesson plan, as a class. The lesson was about Hurricane Katrina and its effects on New Orleans. So we dutifully planned the lesson, and then came to the part about what homework we were going to assign. After deliberation, the class decided that, as homework, our high school students would have to design a Hurricane Survival Kit.

I meekly raised my hand and said, "well, this is a very creative lesson, but I think maybe it's a little too lite, especially the homework." My instructor replied, "well, actually, I think it's quite difficult. They have to use all this information from class and synthesize it and even maybe look up an evacuation plan for their city." Right. Here would be the Hurricane Survival Kit from most of the kids: , where the blank space represents how they didn't do the assignment because it was stupid.

I responded that, at my old school, god bless its hard heart, my ninth graders had 20 pages of reading a night for one class. And sometimes they didn't do it, but when they didn't, they failed quizzes. And eventually they would have to read it, or they would fail essays, tests, and the class. And failing a class meant summer school, or repeating the year. So a lot of them just did the damn reading. The rest of our conversation went like this:

Instructor (who is, sadly, very smart): Well, does reading 20 pages a night give you all the skills you need?

Me: Well, it sure does improve your reading.

Instructor: But what about life skills that are so important today?

Me: Those are great too, but there's not really a lot of time for that, what with needing to read.

Instructor: See, that's the thing: I don't consider these other skills "extra."

Me: But basically, reading and writing [we don't talk about math] skills are really what you are going to need in college. They are the limiting factor here. Even if you have the other skills, if you don't have reading and writing, you're just not going to college.

Instructor: Well not everyone wants to go to college.

At that point, I sat back in my chair, crossed my arms, and looked resigned. Let me paraphrase the underlying thinking here. Basically, we must produce project-based edu-tainment to occupy the kids who couldn't care less about school, meanwhile dooming the other kids (and there are more than you would think) to failure in ever attaining any kind of dreams of accomplishment. She argued that traditional education is a turn-off to urban kids and that trying to force them to do it will cause them to drop out of school. Hello. They already are, in huge droves. The schools that do what I'm talking about--the oldschools--are actually successful. I don't think it's easy to work with urban kids--they have a lot of really difficult things to deal with at a young age. But some of them can make it, IF we let them.

After class, in an email, she suggested we start a message board discussion of these ideas so they won't take up so much class time. Excellent.

And now for my student teaching placement. Here is a passage from an email I sent my friend about the school and its environment:

Policies

1. Kids call teachers by their first names.
2. Kids call the principal by his first name.
3. There is no dress code.
4. Kids can wear hats in class.
5. Kids can chew gum in class.
6. There is one hour of something called "Advisory," which I playfully call "A Big Waste"
7. There are no tests.
8. There are no quizzes.
9. In fact, tests and quizzes are pretty much forbidden, as I found out.
10. Instead, kids are evaluated based on projects.
11. I have seen these projects. They are riddled with basic skill errors.

Things that may or may not be policy

1. There is very little homework.
2. Kids don't do the little homework.
3. F-bombs go flyin' around.
4. Kids make inappropriate comments, often using the f-bomb.
5. Kids put their heads down on the desks.
6. School starts at 8. There are about 5 kids there at 8. The rest come in a steady trickle through 8:45.
7. Kids bring their cell phones to class.
8. Kids listen to music on their cell phones in class.
9. Often the music on the cell phone drops the f-bomb.
10. Kids talk on their cell phones surreptitiously, in class, while telling one another to go f-bomb themselves, mother f-bomber.

And I could go on. I really like the teacher I'm with, though. She's young, super smart and a good teacher. She just needs two things: 1. A good discipline system to back her up. 2. A reduction in guilt when she lectures instead of giving kids projects. I think the kids could learn a lot from her, but the setup is all wrong. Most of the teachers at my school are, I would say, a lot like her.

I feel like I’m in the wrong place. But what is it they say? Know thine enemy? I guess that's why I'm here.

my first blog

2005-09-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

posted by newoldschoolteacher @ 2:18 PM 3 comments
Monday, September 26, 2005

My first blog
Hi everyone. I'm a little nervous, being out here in cyberspace. But since this is primarily for my own benefit, I guess I won't worry too much.

Just for background on me:

I'm a girl.
I graduated from college in 2003.
I attend graduate school in education.
I'm going to be a social studies teacher.
I am excited to be a social studies teacher.
I think most schools suck a lot.
I don't want my school to suck a lot.

So there you pretty much have it. This blog will pontificate wisely (or not) on my experiences in my graduate education program and the state of American education in general. Sit back and relax, enjoy the show. As someone who knows little to nothing of what I'm talking about, I'm sure it will be very interesting.