i got 99 problems but algebra ain't one

in fact, algebra is a problem for me. not so much algebra itself. i breezed through it in 6th grade. but explaining algebra to kids lacking the basic skills, who don't want to learn it. it's part of the challenge inherent in a program like mtc. we were the best of the best, we never struggled with the things we are now teaching and in many ways i find that i struggle now to find what it is my kids don't understand. what, possibly, could be so confusing about adding and subtracting negative numbers? everything, it turns out, even in algebra II.

the title of the blog is what one student said when i asked him for a slogan for my class. i need a motto. a math motto. my algebra I kids told me that ms america, their algebra I teacher last year, had a motto that they chanted at the begining of every class. i think this is a great idea, but my creative powers are at an all-time low at the moment. and it couldn't have worked that well, because otherwise they would have passed algebra I and wouldn't be in my class. I have a lot of repeaters.

so, i need some rewards. i need some excitement. my class is boring. I think I'll start with tickets monday. i was all set to do a marble jar, but i realized, i'll never be near enough to the jar. so, if i can give out tickets, say, like a SW does, if you are in your seat and working when the bell rings, or if you finish your independent work, or, my personal, unstolen favorite, when you explain why or how. no tickets for correct answers in class, but you can get a ticket if you give a helpful explanation. i don't think i'll start with that one monday, but i'll try to work it in. i thought about PAT - preferred activity time - too, but i don't think that's really my style. i've got to figure something out though. hopefully tickets, with rewards of a free 100 on a homework, pencils, maybe a soda or cookies... we'll see. i'm still open for suggestions.

it's 6:37...

and i've been home for almost an hour and a half. in that time, i've read one article from the new york times online. something about the new kinds of batteries they are trying to make. to be honest, i'm just braindead. i had so many things i wanted to get done. get home from school. grade three sets of benchmarks. grade homework, just for completion. make tomorrow's benchmarls. call the tfa, whose third block i told him i'd cover (during my planning period) since he is going to be getting kids ready for the algebra I retest for the next two days. call parents. print progress reports. print out the benchmarks for kids to retake. make a list of all the benchmarks that people have missed when they were absent/not in school. figure out a better way to deal with attendence. make charts, with a goal of 90% on the benchmarks, and little movable things to show where each class is on their way to that goal. before today's benchmark, my algebra I classes had a 52 and 63, respectively. oh damn. i somehow screwed up my grading program. and the benchmarks that i gave back today never got entered. so, i could just forget about them, but that would be extraordinarily difficult, because of printing progress reports and such. or i could give a fake notebook check, in which i tell them i'm giving a notebook check for a grade, and then just actually write down the grade they got on that benchmark. motherbugger. half of them will have lost it already. crap crap crap. whatever. i'm going to try to get the other ones in now. classmate, i feel, is probably not the best grading software around, but it's what they gave me at school. if anyone has anything better (and free) let me know.

ruckus in the hall

today I broke up my first fight. i heard some noise in the hall as i was going to make photocopies, and as i turned my head i saw one kid jump at another. four quick steps later and i was wading into a storm of windmilling fists (these kids, surprisingly, don't actually seem to know how to throw a punch). it was a relatively simple task to grab one kid from behind and pull him away, just keeping myself between him and the other one. coach was there ten seconds behind me, and security was right behind him. i discharged the kids into their care and went off to make my copies. at least i seem to have made a friend of the security guard out of it.

school has been non-stop crazy, and i just haven't had the time to do most of the things i need to do, never mind some of the things i would really like to do. took ben's advice and took saturday off, completely, and went up to the blues festival with WS. was too tired to really enjoy it, but i guess it was good for my sanity. i wonder now, though, if taking that time off might have been a mistake. i really need to come up with a rewards system, and to make some kind of action plan for my fourth block, which was, surprisingly, a little better today, although certainly not quiet, by any means. I told them all that I was glad they were a little more focused on work today, and they said - just wait until Kenny comes back. Kenny is already one of my favorites, but he tries to play me, and always speaks out in class. i think it also helped that i moved the Joker away from the kid who called me a fag. But I'm not sure. I still have to figure out someway to get through to MH, who has to be one of the loudest students i have ever met, in all of my 17 years in one type of school or another. louder than the girl who used to dance on her desk in my third grade class, louder than the guys who used to sneak out of class to jump off the roof in 7th grade, or anyone i can think of that i might have been to college with. she's trouble, alright, but she's not a bad kid. i just need to reign her in.

also, kids in my FAP were discussing the years that different people were born. "I bet Mr. Gallagher born in about 76." I just nod, and let them think whatever they want, but i got a kick out of that, just like i get a kick out of the fact that everyone thinks I look like a certain third year tfa. yes, we're white, relatively tall and thin, and we both have some form of facial hair. i guess that's all it takes for a striking similarity. or the girl in the hall the other day, who asked me what my name was. when i asked her, in return, who she was, she promptly responded "mrs. gallagher" i must have given her a nastly look, because she immediately followed it with "i'm just playin" and her real name.

alright, that's that. i've got some phone calls to make. i'm nowhere near my target of calling every parent in the first two weeks, but i've got this whole weekend before it's been, technically, two weeks. so, six tonight. only one discipline-related. one positive. and four introductary.

good luck to the rest of the mtc crew - i know you all will be the last to read this, but i know you all will be doing great work right now, or at least struggling towards survival, which is about where i'm at.

the last thing i should be doing right now is writing a blog

so tired. so much to do. so much of a problem with photocopies. so ready to drop the $200 on the laser copier printer scanner faxer extraordinare, just for the certainty, for the ability to not have to rely on other people (my principal to approve it and my secretary - who is great, but) to get what i need to have my lessons run smoothly for me and my kids.

i don't know how the other teachers do it. sw and i were amazed to see all the teachers, on both our campuses, gone before 4:30. I would still be there, if they hadn't kicked me out at 5. i just don't know how you can do this job not working at least 11 hours a day.

The benevolent ghost of (blank)

The benevolent ghost of (blank) August 3, 2006

I’m beginning to feel haunted. When I was first given a tour of Big Delta high school, I was shown into the room of a departed math teacher. On the white board was a message for his students, and below that was a polite message to everyone else: please do not erase until after the first day of school. It is a measure of the respect that the departed must have commanded that the message was still in evidence today, as I visited the room for the second time.

(blank) was a prodigious teacher. The test scores of his classes – 100% pass rate for Algebra I last year – prove that, but the reverence with which he is spoken of among the remaining teachers is an even better indicator. He was TFA, and stayed two extra years. During that time, he built up an incredible collection of resources, which have fallen rather fortuitously into my hands.

Reading through his plans, schedules, benchmarks, worksheets, and tests, I feel rather like I am being haunted by the departed innovator. His methods have forced me to rethink my entire course structure and thus my classroom management plan; not because I want to take advantage of the work he has done to lesson my own load, but because it would simply be a crime for my students if I did not follow his lead.

Every class starts with a benchmark. A cross between a set of DoNow problems and a test. Each is designed to take 25 minutes, and they are timed. Any student who scores less than a 90% on the benchmarks receives a zero on that benchmark, until he or she makes it up. Any student receiving above a 90% will receive a 100% on that benchmark. Failure is simply unacceptable. It would never work in a regular schedule. But with 98 minutes a day for the entire year, it not only works, but it’s necessary and ideal. It’s strange that I can see myself moving closer to the Guestian model of instruction, even before I’ve stepped into the classroom. I don’t think I’ll spend my time in my desk chair – not only is it not comfortable enough, but I want to be walking among my students all the time. Proximity is the best CM, right? And looking over a kid’ shoulder is, in my opinion, one of the best methods of informal evaluation. But it’s not exhausting, like being on display all the time, and I’ll be tired enough without that.

I must admit it’s intimidating to be walking in the footsteps of such a ghost. Yet it is inspiring. He has set the benchmark, so to speak, for me and all the other math teachers at Big Delta. Now I just need to remember not to get too down on myself when these first few weeks don’t go according to plan. But I’ll take my cue from the ghost, and work my arse off to see that the year does go according to a plan; not just any plan, but a darn good one. Thank you, Mr. (blank). You’re a heck of a teacher, even in absentia. Too bad you didn’t leave lesson plans, or a pacing guide…

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Written July 29, 2006

Belated Blog – written in the pre-internet age at the new house. Posted in the pirated wireless age.

This have been pretty quiet this past week. The parents came down, and helped me move into the new place. It was nice to have them down here for the week and we got a lot done. The house is starting to feel like a home. I’ve got a bed, a desk, a dresser, even a filing cabinet. There’s a woman who lives down on old 61 who buys people’s things out of old storage units and then trucks them back to her place and sells all the junk. There are some pretty good deals down there, for all who might be interested. We cleaned up the kitchen pretty well, and the one bathroom at least, and now all I have to do is actually start teaching.

I went down to my school Thursday and Friday. The counselor was nice enough to print out my rolls for me, and imagine my surprise when I looked at them and saw that I am scheduled to teach algebra one (two sections) and algebra two (one section). Until Thursday, I had been under the impression that I was teaching two sections of geometry and one section of advanced algebra / trig. No big deal. Wednesday night I had just reached a breakthrough about how I was going to start the year with geometry, skipping what my students would recognize as math entirely for the first two weeks and working solely with logic. We’d start out with simple if-then conditional statements, work our way up to a implies b, get some biconditional statements, converses, inverses, contrapositives, and then make proofs, all without even thinking about numbers. No review required, to start that, because we’d be doing brand new stuff, without any foundation, in fact, we would be laying the foundation. Then, we could move on and build mathematical proofs, once we had the framework from working with purely logical proofs. I was excited. Plus, I taught advanced algebra this summer during TEAM, so I had a slew of lessons planned out for that. I’ll just toss out all those hours of deep contemplation, and start again.

But there is some good news as well. When I was talking to some of the teachers, I asked them what the class size limit is? I had remembered hearing 27 from someone in the administration, and they just laughed at that, and said yes, that was the official limit. The new guy fell for that one. But then, I looked at my class lists. Algebra one, section one: 17 students; section 2: 16 students; algebra 2: 13 students; homeroom, or FAP as they like to call it: 7 students. Grand total of 53 students. Changes my whole perspective on what the year is going to be like, and what sort of things I’ll be able to do with my classes. I had thought, at one point, about having an oral component to a test, at least once during the semester, but I had tossed that idea out because it would be impossible with 25 students. But with 13? I might be able to work that in at some point. And my piles upon piles of homework to grade? Now it’ll be just one large stack, less than 50, even if everyone hands things in. I think I’ll start off without rolling the die, I’ll start off with a homework bin, everyone’s homework goes in the bin in the beginning of class. Then, if I think it’s appropriate in a couple of weeks I’ll go to the die system. When I presented my CM plan, Ben said the die is fun, and you want to make sure you’re established first before you have fun. Even though I want to establish that my classroom is a place that we will have fun, the first priority is that we will do math. Then, as I get my footing, I can get to the point where the classroom is a place where we can have fun while doing math, and while acing the state tests.

The state tests. Maybe this is a little weird, but I am excited to be teaching a state test. First, I think I like algebra more than I liked geometry, and second, I really like the fact that I’ll be getting some measurable results. I’m an extraordinarily competitive person, and my goal is a 100% pass rate. I know at the end of the year, I’ll have more important things to celebrate than test scores – survival, the relationships I’ve built with my kids, seeing how much they have learned, independent of the tests, and maybe even a successful soccer season – but it will be nice to have something with a number on it as well.