Be Cool, Stay in School

Sometimes, I think it is important to examine things that we have previously taken on faith, and ask ourselves what reasons, what arguments, have convinced us to believe these things in the first place. Often, what seems ironclad logic when in our formative years can turn out to be circular or simply unreasonable.

Today, near the end of my first block, I heard a knock on the door. I had already had several "guests" this morning, and I was in no mood for another. When K- thrust his slip and textbook towards me, my heart sank. I left my class to shout themselves into oblivion and litter my room with balled up papers, and stepped out into the hall with him. He handed me his withdrawl slip, with GED scrawled along the bottom and his textbook, in immaculate condition. It had probably never been opened. I asked him if he'd thought it through. I took his hand, wished him luck, and gave him my number, telling me, if he ever needed any help with that GED, or if he ever needed anything at all, to please call me. You know you can call me anytime K-. I know Mr. G.

So that brings me to a paradox. K- was a huge discipline problem nearly every single day he was in my class, although such days had become increasingly rare. If he wasn't sleeping, he was entertaining. He is quite intelligent, but like so many of my students, he lacks that self-starting drive, he cannot begin an exercise unless he is sure of all the steps that he needs to follow to get to the end. He doesn't try something he doesn't know how to do, and because he missed so many days, he never really knew how to do anything. Except graph lines in slope intercept form. He did that better than everyone else - in fact, I let him teach the class one day.

But what is school going to do for K-? Or R-? There are some children who just don't seem to be cut out for school. I know that to the established bourgeois it's a heretical thought. Even before we could understand the meaning of the world school, we were told it was the only way to success. Without school, we're nothing. Anyone who drops out, who decides that there dreams might be best served elsewhere, is misguided. Dropouts are illiterate crackheads, we are taught, or they soon will be.

I don't think I could ever devalue education. But what my kids recieve here is not an education. My good kids just go through the motions. My best kids recieve some training. But no one learns to think, and it kills me. I'm not helping - I have my own set of motions that I put them through, and none of those are designed to get kids to think on their own. No one develops a vocabulary other than the 50 or so words that they hear on the street. But they need a sprawling vocabulary, not to impress anyone, but to be able to vocalize to themselves what they think, feel, and experience. In many ways, our language provides the framework for our thoughts, and it is nearly impossible for our thoughts to rise out of that framework. As a math teacher, I am convinced that math is also a language, and that knowing more math allows a person to have deeper thoughts.

And yet, my kids aren't learning this language. They are learning how to jump through hoops. I have no idea, even, how to teach it. All I can do is expose. I need to start exposing my kids to more things, to more beauty, as Mr. Kozol said. There is so much beauty in the world - tucked in among the pages of an old book, spread out across the horizen in waves of purple and orange and sunset, there is beauty in both natural and cultural objects. While my kids can appreciate natural beauty (although, with the limited framework of language they may never be able to describe it well) they are a long way from ever picking up Dostoevsky and seeing the beauty of that great author's insight into the human mind or from leafing through a volume of Ginsburg and being moved to the point of being ready to abandon everything and become a noble bum.

So why stay in school, if it cannot or will not teach one to think deeply, to analyze, to ask the right questions and to find the beauty in all things? To get a degree to get to college to get another degree to get a job to be happy. This is what we middle class often say, when we can't find a real reason to go to school. What we leave out is the money. If we aren't going to school to become enlightened, to stretch our minds and fill the new spaces with as many facts and ideas as possible, then we just going through the motions to get a job, and the only reason anyone every gets a job is to get paid. So, when the noblest of motives no longer fits, we choose the shallowest. This somehow fits well with our bourgeois duplicity - it is shallow to act solely for money or power, yet that is the very foundation of the success for which we are all indoctrinated to strive.

Was K- wrong to dropout? It hurts me, because I tried to be his reason to stay, when he wasn't being enlightened, and he wasn't getting any closer to any material rewards in the form of his diploma. I failed, but hey, the odds were high against me. That seems to be the way things are in this job. But should I be upset about his choice, ignoring the fact that I'll miss him like hell? Did he do the rigth thing? I know he doesn't have any big plans right now. I doubt he has any plans beyond this weekend. But he has so much responsibility - he just became a Dad - and so little preparation. I'm just really worried about the kid.

Four Weeks

Four weeks left in the semester. In four weeks, I'll be computing final grades for my algebra II kids. In four weeks, I'll have survived the first half of what everyone tells me is the hardest thing I'll ever do. I'm starting to think I might make it.

In four weeks, I'll be home. Eating my mom's food. Curling up on the couch to watch something as brainless as law and order. I'll be waking up, putting on sweaters and crunching through snow, making tracks through the bare trees to all the spots I once roamed over at will. In four weeks I'll be at the neighborhood Christmas Eve party, which has become my favorite day of the year. I'll borrow my little sister's car and meet my parents' dog, both new arrivals. Sleep in my little twin bed. Lay out of the cool kitchen floor and repent of eating much more than my stomach has been accustomed to. It will probably freak me out; even thinking about it freaks me out now just a little bit.

I've started to realize how much I've actually been affected by culture shock down here. When I went to Russia, it was something I prepped for, something everyone warned me about, and something I accepted as natural and neccessary. But coming to Mississippi, despite the warnings, I never took the idea of culture shock seriously. After all, I was only making a 20 hour drive, not a 4500 mile flight. I would be speaking (essentially) the same language, and be surrounded by people whom, I suspected, had grown up with a set of experiences that I, more or less, shared. That was where I was wrong. The things that people experience here everyday, through childhood and on to adulthood, are radically different than those I experienced. These kids see more by the time they turn ten then I have ever seen. It was, more than the language or history, the lack of shared experiences that caused most of my culture shock problems in Russia, and I have found that same sort of blockage in my ability to relate to people down here.
This is all a long, drawn out explanation of why I am starting to prepare myself to be weirded out when I get home. Reverse culture shock. Being suddenly flooded with familiar sensations and faces, being immediately spoiled by having an exceptional support network (shout out to you all at home) and everything I need. I'm reminded of a scene from Hatchet, one of those fourth grade books I read upwards of 10 times. The kid (was his name Brian?) spent weeks (months?) living alone in the Canadian wilderness, surviving with only his (you guessed it) hatchet and his wits, but the scene I remember occurs after Brian is rescud. He's been back for several weeks, but when he enters a supermarket, and sees how everyone takes for granted the food that occupied his every thought when he was alone and starving in the wilderness. When I get home, I'm worried I might feel a bit like Brian in the supermarket, angry at everyone for taking for granted the amazing things they have. Because here, people never ask where you live, but where you stay - residences are ever shifting things, and though you might live in Greenville your entire life, you might stay in a different place every few months. You might stay different places different nights of the week, depending on who got their check, who got drunk, who was on the outs with whom. Read "A framework for understanding poverty" by Ruby Payne. I blogged about that book earlier, mainly because I was assigned to, but also because so much of what the book says actually comes true in real life. A friend just told me how surprising it is, in a way, that the world we've studied, been warned about, and prepared for really does exist. And it's true. In so many ways, it was just what I needed, because I was tired of studying, being warned and being prepared. But going back home, to a place where , at least among the circles I traveled in, everything down here is simply something to be studied or warned about, might be a bit off-putting. We'll see. At least I won't be stopping in for a visit at college, the ultimate place to studying and preparing for a reality that the institution of college is eternally striving to banish from the lush green lawns, ivy-covered walls and leather-couched libraries.

Four weeks. Four weeks and tehn I'll see if I react like Brian in the supermarket. I'm sure though, despite it all, I'll be glad to be home. Even if it only makes it harder to come back...

The Enforcer

So, even before Ben assigned this blog, I had started as the enforcer. Second block, algebra II. Nail them. Every time. Talk when I'm talking - bam, give me a page. Keep talking - bam, bam. Hit 'em hard and fast with those tally marks on the board. I only ever recieved writing assignments from two students. And they, of course, were not the ones who were racking up the most assignments. My two trouble girls in that class, the ones I had re-written the rules to deal with, never turned in anything. One turned up once for detention. The other one never did. I wrote both of them up, and difficult guy I have in that class too. Two ended up in ISS, for the other I never saw the referral back.

But results as far as classroom climate. Of course, it generated a lot of animosity and refusal. For me, it seemed to turn the students who had been decent students into more problematic students. For the problem students, it just alienated them more. But at the same time, the classroom did quiet down. Things became more orderly, for sure. But I have to admit, I didn't keep it up. I had it for about three weeks, kept it going, but since then I have dropped off it quite a bit. Part of the reason is that my second consequence - detention - has become imposible, since I've started coaching. I also started to burn out right around that time, and that certainly contributed. And I had a few really good days with my other classes, that led me to think all this wasn't neccassary. But in truth, I stopped consistently enforcing my rules because I didn't have good rules (or consequences). It all goes back to what I said in my last post about not having concrete expectations for what I want my class to be like. I say that I'd kill for 50 minute blocks, but I don't think that would solve the problem. What I'd really love to do is observe some of the other MTC teachers - especially M. Bo-Bonley. Watching more math teachers teach would be, I think, supremely useful. I've dropped in on our resident second year TFA's class a couple of times, but I really would like to see Mr. Bo-Bonley
teach. I feel like his style is a lot more orthodox than mine, and I'd like to see how that works out for him. How learning takes place. Because still, after almost four months in this profession, I have no idea what sorts of things lead to comprehension and what sorts of things lead to completely lost students.

First Game

5-0 them.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

So, my old classroom management plan. Writing assignments, detentions. No talking. Right... After talking to some 2nd year TFAs from my school, I abandoned that one before school even started, and came up with a new plan. Consequences: warning, conference, detention, parent phone call, office referral. These are still on the wall, but in fact, I've long since stopped using them. I initiated a new plan with my second block: warning, writing assignment, detention, office. I stuck to it for a few weeks, but I found my rules: absolutely no talking during certain activities, etc, to be uneforcable and my consequences to be unreasonable. I got about 4 writing assignments, all from the same girl, and one other girl who stayed for detention. The rest I wrote up for skipping detention, and nothing happened to them. My classroom management plan right now is in serious need of a revamping, and the main problem I'm facing is that I am still not sure what my own expectations are or should be. I can't expect silence for 98 minutes. And like Ben said, limiting talking with a rule such as be respectful or even speak respectfully at all times is too wishy-washy. What is respectful, what isn't? Who decides? Let's argue about it. Plus, I am not sure what to do for consequences. Detention is not longer an option, since I've started coaching (that's the one thing that's going right in my professional life at the moment). Writing assignments? Would anyone do them? Before school detentions? Would anyone come? Calling parents? For one particular student, I have never been able to get a number for his family. The one the school had given me gave the Chrysler dealership.

My rules now are very simple. Do math, or at least shut up so that everyone else can do math. If you don't do math, you get a zero. If you don't shut up so that everyone else can do math, I'll ask you nicely to be quiet, and then I'll write you up. This is really, really bad. Some days I can get along fine with it, and others, I lose it completely. Like Thursday and Friday. Completely lost. I know I need something better, and I sit in front of the computer and draft and scrap new plans almost daily, and I lay in bed and draft new plans in my sleep. I even find myself contemplating new plans as I try to shower in the morning, half asleep and wondering why the water in the new house, aside from not really washing off the soap, smells so strange. But I always end up throwing them out before I get to implementation. Because I just can't envision anything working out.

In a way, although I hate to admit it, my management plan relies on my students doing things. If they come in uncooperative, I am really sometimes at a loss. This is a little more than I like to admit, even to myself. I have looks, I have words, and I have grades, and the kids who have a shread of respect, or who care at all about their grades aren't a problem, but the kids who don't care about anything or anyone, I have no consequences to try to turn them around. I feel like I would have been much better off sticking to my original consequences, but my original rules were untenable. I need to figure out, first, what I want my 98 minutes to look like, sound like, and feel like, and then I need to create rules that will create that. I would kill for 50 minute blocks. But I guess the grass is always greener.

That's all. The end.