See math, hear math, touch math, feel math.

Ah yes, the learning styles blog.

When I collected my learning styles survey from my students, it was a very low day among all the highs and the lows of teaching. My students weren’t understanding anything I was teaching, apparently. I wasn’t sure if I was going to fast, if I talked funny, talked too much and didn’t put enough on the board or put too much on the board and talked too little. One thing I was sure of was that I didn’t do enough hands on activities. My kids tell me this at least every other day. Mr. G., it be so boring up in here. Why can’t we do no fun activities. Because you would do even less work at that point than you do now, you would hit each other, throw paper and whatever manipulatives the activities required, and I would be finding little algebra tiles under desks and behind books for the next three months. That’s why. But I was sure that I wasn’t doing enough of those things to be a good teacher. This is where my learning styles survey actually told me something new. Where I had expected to see that my students were all kinesthetic learners who understood no oral instruction and very little visual, I found the opposite. My students are mostly visual learners, followed closely by auditory learners.

They see math, they hear math. They don’t need to touch it or feel it. Thank goodness. So I think I need to resort to better visuals. Typing up notes for the overhead doesn’t cut it. Especially since a certain clumsy fourth block student knocked my overhead off the desk and onto the floor, where it’s nice little glass face broke into far too many little pieces. I need to get that LCD going, have some numbers rolling in on powerpoints, add some sound effects.

Riiiight. That is what I should do. But my land of should is currently very far from my land of reality. In fact, I believe it would be correct to say they are two disjoint spaces. So, I’ll try to be a little more visual every day, and I’ll stress less about doing those fun, hands on activities that my kids claim to love.

Homework! Oh, Homework!

Homework! Oh, Homework!I hate you! You stink!I wish I could wash you away in the sink,if only a bombwould explode you to bits.Homework! Oh, homework!You're giving me fits.
I'd rather take bathswith a man-eating shark,or wrestle a lionalone in the dark,eat spinach and liver,pet ten porcupines,than tackle the homework,my teacher assigns.
Homework! Oh, homework!you're last on my list,I simple can't seewhy you even exist,if you just disappearedit would tickle me pink.Homework! Oh, homework!I hate you! You stink!
Jack Prelutsky


When I started to read Cooper's article on the effeciacy of homework, somehow the only thing that came to my mind was that Prelutsky poem. Again, thank you mom for making me read. You and Dad made me literate enough to understand the difference between correlation and causation that lines like "The more homework high school students do, the higher their achievement levels" conveniently ignore. Students who do homework are, in my experience, the highest achievers. The three young ladies who consistently turn in their assignments first block every morning certainly are.
Furthermore, although some of the studies quoted by Cooper compare students who were given homework with those who were not, this does not solve the correlation vs. causation demo. Schools or teachers that assign more homework are those that would expect students to do it. Teachers who meet with an almost empty homework bin every morning and a gradebook filled with zeros every night may sooner or later become fed up and stop assigning homework, as even many of the most dedicated MTCs have done.
Not that I disagree with their findings, but I just enjoy playing the devil’s advocate a bit. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly that homework, especially during high school, will only increase achievement of those students motivated to actually do it. However, I am still curious about the negative effects of homework that the study fails to mention, specifically, I wonder how much homework serves to alienate those without strong work habits or support systems at home from school. What is the effect of homework on those who are assigned it, but never do it. Because that, right now, is the majority of my students.

Шинник

Every day when I come home from school, I think of all the other things I could be doing, and start to fantasize about the things I will do when I'm done teaching in the Delta. Usually, I daydream about going as far away from here as I could possibly go, to another, even more backwards place, Russia.

I spent a semester in Russia my junior year, and now, whenever things start to get unbearable, I check the price of that one way ticket from Memphis to Moscow. It's still too expensive. Or I'll check the news from the city I lived in, Ярославль (Yaroslavl'). Our soccer team, Шинник (Shinnik) which roughly translates into the little tire men, is now bottom of the table, with one win from twenty-two matches. I only hope to be doing that well when my tenure as a coach begins (seriously, we haven't won a game in three years). I really do want to go back to Russia.

My newest idea is that when I'm done with MTC, I'll hitch a ride over to Springer Mountain, GA, and just walk home. The AT runs through my back yard, so I could do it, no problem. I could start tomorrow. But as much as I say I would love to do these things, right now, instead of teaching, on some level at least I don't really mean it. Because if I left now (or after just a year) I wouldn't be a traveler, I'd be a fugitive, on the run from my failure. But if I am going to fail at this (and I will fail, a thousand times, before I get it right once) I'd rather go down fighting then running.

So my conclusion is that there is nothing wrong with daydreaming a bit about where else I'd like to be in two years. Nothing at all. By then, I'll deserve some kind of reward. But by then, maybe I'd be in the frame of mind to make it a class trip to Russia (amazingly enough, they did it before at my school, about 10 years ago).

Sick Day

Sometimes, it's really hard to live with the fact that I am, in fact, a bad teacher. I am unorganized. My classroom management alternates between fair and poor. My explanations can be incomprehensible and my lessons are often disasters. Now, I myself do not like failing, or being bad at anything, but I can take it. I never was very good at chess (or mountain biking, swimming, anything musical or artistic) or a whole host of other things that I usually decided were not important. But teaching is important. It's important to all my students and to the parents who entrusted these students to me. If I can't teach them what they need to know, they won't graduate. Everyone says the first year is the hardest, everyone says I'll get better, but I need to be a good teacher right now for these kids, and I'm not. I don't know that I could work any harder at it. As it is, I usually spend my entire day working, from when I get out of bed until when I get back in bed again. I stop to eat, and drive places (usually to office depot or wal-mart for something for school) but teaching is consuming me. I wouldn't mind so much, if only all that work paid off, if only somehow by working 12 or 14 hour days I would become a better teacher, but that's not happening right now, and I'm having trouble forgiving myself for not being better at this. For not being more organized. For not even knowing how to do this job better. For all my kids who will be retesting next fall.

pocketful of shells

"Did you tell Mr. G- ?"

"Did you here about your student?"

No, what?

"R- got shot this weekend."

"Mmmhhmmmm, sure did."

"They shot him in both legs, so hardheaded. I told him not to be messing around, but he's so hard-headed, you know."

"I wonder what he did get into. He's such a playful guy."

Is he alright?

"Said he'll be back in about six weeks, so you gotta send some work for him. I told him just Friday that he's going to get himself into some trouble being so hard-headed (that was just last week you told him), and look where he's got himself now."

I admit, I was glad, positively glad when I saw his name on the absent list second block. It meant that the good day that had begun in first block might last until the end of the day. Without both R- and K- I could probably get something taught. But know, I don't know what to think. Poor kid. He is certainly one of my worst behaved kids, always talking out, joking, completely innappropriate, singing and rapping in class. He never does any work, except for making tables of values from equations, he loves that.

Most days, he gets into arguments, usually joking, with someone across the room from him. Did you here what she called me Mr. G? he'll ask. One day I took him out into the hall and told him, whatever someone says to you, just let it run off you like water off a turtle's back. I'm not sure how successful this was. The next day, every five minutes, it was - Mr. G., you hear/see that? I'd give him a teacher look, and R-, all six feet four inches of him, would sit down, oh yeah, that's ok, like water off a turtle's back. He must have said the phrase 30 times that day. He still reacted to everything anyone might have said, but his reaction now included uttering his newfound mantra.

I guess I won't now make him serve the detentions that I had assigned him. I'm not sure how to keep him current on his work, if that is even possible. On the way home from school today, I was thinking of how different the world my kids are growing up in is from the world that I grew up in. I have never seen a gun fired in anger, never heard a shot and known it was aimed at a human body, certainly I have never felt bullets whizz past me, knowing that with a little less luck I might have been dead.

Every one of my kids knows someone who is shot. I would venture to guess that 90% have heard shots fired in anger, and probably about 70% have seen that sort of thing go down. I wouldn't guess how many have actually been shot at - or been on the other side, pulling the trigger - but I'm sure it is not an inconsequential proportion. These are things I just never thought about, never even considered possibilities growing up but my kids live with these fears every day. When I told my fourth block class that R - had been shot, some had known, some hadn't, but none seemed really surprised or worried. My cousin got shot this weekend too - one exclaimed.