Today, I was informed that my goalkeeper was off the team. He had a 39 in english. My assistant coach had somehow gotten grades early, and informed his mother, and that was that.
Charlie will graduate this May. My assistant coach just dropped him off at home (at 11 PM) after a tutoring session. He or my other assistant coach will take him all day Saturday, and I'll take him on Sunday. If he never plays another game with us, he'll graduate. If he gets his grades up to the point where he can play again, great. But he is a part of something. He has people who care about him, who won't let him slip through the cracks. This makes all the difference in the world, and that fact that I can be one of those people - not the most influential or important, but just that I can be one of those people, is a success for me.
This leads me to believe that schools with 1700 students are a bad idea. There aren't enough things for everyone to be a part of. Two schools of 850 each would have two football teams, two soccer teams (maybe), two cheerleading squads, two track teams, two x-c teams, and nearly twice as many kids feeling like they belong to something. My research paper didn't find any sort of link between athletics and academic performance, but I trust my gut over my research. It's important to belong to something, especially at 16, 17, 18 years old.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Things I will miss about Mississippi
Ryan Conley and his jail-bird suit.
Lisa.
Anna.
Other MTC people who are not in my living room right now.
DB,NB,CB,DukeFG,MW,AL,JT,IB,JR,AM,WB,FM and the rest of my soccer boys. I'll miss them like hell.
Perfect soccer weather October through March.
My garden.
My awesome house - with cheap rent.
Late, late night drives to Oxford.
San Juan Mexican Grill.
Bogglific.
Pick-up soccer with Spot and the rest of the guys.
Gluten-free meals.
Reggae.
Church casseroles.
Blues.
The majority of my students.
Lisa.
Anna.
Other MTC people who are not in my living room right now.
DB,NB,CB,DukeFG,MW,AL,JT,IB,JR,AM,WB,FM and the rest of my soccer boys. I'll miss them like hell.
Perfect soccer weather October through March.
My garden.
My awesome house - with cheap rent.
Late, late night drives to Oxford.
San Juan Mexican Grill.
Bogglific.
Pick-up soccer with Spot and the rest of the guys.
Gluten-free meals.
Reggae.
Church casseroles.
Blues.
The majority of my students.
Skiing
I feel like a terrible teacher at the moment. About to go back to school, after having had nine days off, and I have nothing done, nothing ready, no idea about where we are going.
In high school, I was on the cross-country ski team. I needed to do something in the winter to stay in shape for soccer, and I couldn't play basketball. I remember one race, at Cranwell, an old golf course, which was one of the only places that made snow. It was warm, so the snow was very wet, and it was a classic race, so all the kicking I could manage still didn't get me anywhere, because my wax wasn't sticking. Then, when I finally made it to the finish line, I fell, right on the finish line, in a pile of deep powdery snow, and managed to land, somehow, directly on my nuts. I couldn't get up, and so I had to just drag myself across the finish line, where I was immediately shouted at by angry parents, because I was, of course, in the way.
This is how I feel about teaching right now. All the hard work I could put in doesn't get me anywhere, and now I am just trying to crawl across the finish line. I was never a graceful skier, and I feel anything but graceful in the classroom. And to top it all off, there is just that general feeling of getting kicked in the nuts.
I guess the good thing is that in three years of skiing, I finished every race.
In high school, I was on the cross-country ski team. I needed to do something in the winter to stay in shape for soccer, and I couldn't play basketball. I remember one race, at Cranwell, an old golf course, which was one of the only places that made snow. It was warm, so the snow was very wet, and it was a classic race, so all the kicking I could manage still didn't get me anywhere, because my wax wasn't sticking. Then, when I finally made it to the finish line, I fell, right on the finish line, in a pile of deep powdery snow, and managed to land, somehow, directly on my nuts. I couldn't get up, and so I had to just drag myself across the finish line, where I was immediately shouted at by angry parents, because I was, of course, in the way.
This is how I feel about teaching right now. All the hard work I could put in doesn't get me anywhere, and now I am just trying to crawl across the finish line. I was never a graceful skier, and I feel anything but graceful in the classroom. And to top it all off, there is just that general feeling of getting kicked in the nuts.
I guess the good thing is that in three years of skiing, I finished every race.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Pasta Party
Tonight was the second annual pre-season meal at coach's house. Expanded to include the girls' team. I'll elaborate later.
Floyd, food, and spades.
My goalkeeper. I can't explain the face.
Floyd, food, and spades.
My goalkeeper. I can't explain the face.
Two of the nicest guys I've ever met.
Jacedric, one of my little seventh graders. In a few years, he just might do something.
Jacedric, one of my little seventh graders. In a few years, he just might do something.
Also, thanks to all the fantastic people who helped out with this event. The kids really enjoyed it. So, Tabitha, Anna, Sunny, Jessie - you all rock.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Understand?
Are black teachers more effective than white teachers in reaching black students?
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/understand/
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/understand/
Thursday, November 08, 2007
My favorite teacher
Dr. Mullins asked us to write something about our favorite teacher. I don't even know where to start. With Mrs. McBride, who let a group of us write books in a group in the corner during seconds grade? With Mrs. Bernard, who guided us through our biography projects in fifth grade? Or with Mr. Vadnais, history teacher and soccer coach, who's skills were in his ability to relate to middle school students and make them feel like human, and who helped us reenact Gettysburg, with snowballs on the hill behind the school. Mme. Kahus, who in grades 7-9 taught me all the french I ever learned, enough so that even after two years of horrendous high school french I could still get by and so that now, nine years later, I still can conjugate verbs in the passe compose, imparfait, future, and conditional. Probably not a lot of verbs, but hey. More importantly, she instilled in me a love for and fascination with languages that has never left me. She offered Russian for two years, and I took it, and loved it - I credit her with my majoring in Russian in college. Cramer, my only high school math teacher, taught a mean calculus class, interspersed with strange stories about some hippy named Wavy Gravy, who may or may not have contributed to the campaign to get a pigasaurus elected president. And of course SB, who genuinely loved spending time with us, interacting with her students and engaging with their writing. I can't think of another class that is as conducive to forming a strong bond with a teacher as a creative writing class, and she handled it all so well, with gentle criticism and genuine praise for our attempts at literary art.
And then there was Mahar. Mahar may be my favorite teacher, in a way that I did not expect when I began contemplating this question. Mahar, with his fieldwork on coyotes, his real love for his subject, was not even a great teacher, in some ways. He bungled some questions about cellular biology and his explanations were sometimes indicative of the fact that he himself was not entirely comfortable with everything that was going on in the glycolysis reaction. Yet in others, he was superb. He was weak on cellular and molecular bio, but he knew it, and knew enough to get by. But he found a way to let the things he was really passionate about become the important things in his class. I still remember the Lincoln-Peterson labs, daubing mice with whiteout on the backs of their necks, and going back out to catch them again. The riparian ecosystem lab, measuring trees along the stream, and the statistical analysis that went with it. Mahar asked for t-tests and p-values in high school, and that was huge. Not only that, but we read Song of the Dodo. Mahar did a really solid job of picking books for that class. I was about to bash the one we read about Watson and Crick and Rosalind Franklin, but now that I think about it, that was a great book to read too. Understanding where the biological world was at before the modern synthesis made me finally understand, for the first time, the full importance of genes, DNA, and the forces that modify them over time. The Song of the Dodo, by looking a the stripped down system of island biogeography, really brought to light enormous amounts of evolutionary theory and made it accessible on a wonderful scale. As much as Mme Kahus led me to major in Russian, Mahar was instrumental in my majoring in biology. My greatest, most enduring academic interst, the only thing that I have ever considered going back to grad school for, is evolutionary biology, and a good chunk of credit for that interest has to go to Mahar. As goofy as he sometimes was, and as much as he disliked teaching cellular biology, his passion for ecology and evolution and his ability to share that passion made him a great teacher for me.
And then there was Mahar. Mahar may be my favorite teacher, in a way that I did not expect when I began contemplating this question. Mahar, with his fieldwork on coyotes, his real love for his subject, was not even a great teacher, in some ways. He bungled some questions about cellular biology and his explanations were sometimes indicative of the fact that he himself was not entirely comfortable with everything that was going on in the glycolysis reaction. Yet in others, he was superb. He was weak on cellular and molecular bio, but he knew it, and knew enough to get by. But he found a way to let the things he was really passionate about become the important things in his class. I still remember the Lincoln-Peterson labs, daubing mice with whiteout on the backs of their necks, and going back out to catch them again. The riparian ecosystem lab, measuring trees along the stream, and the statistical analysis that went with it. Mahar asked for t-tests and p-values in high school, and that was huge. Not only that, but we read Song of the Dodo. Mahar did a really solid job of picking books for that class. I was about to bash the one we read about Watson and Crick and Rosalind Franklin, but now that I think about it, that was a great book to read too. Understanding where the biological world was at before the modern synthesis made me finally understand, for the first time, the full importance of genes, DNA, and the forces that modify them over time. The Song of the Dodo, by looking a the stripped down system of island biogeography, really brought to light enormous amounts of evolutionary theory and made it accessible on a wonderful scale. As much as Mme Kahus led me to major in Russian, Mahar was instrumental in my majoring in biology. My greatest, most enduring academic interst, the only thing that I have ever considered going back to grad school for, is evolutionary biology, and a good chunk of credit for that interest has to go to Mahar. As goofy as he sometimes was, and as much as he disliked teaching cellular biology, his passion for ecology and evolution and his ability to share that passion made him a great teacher for me.
Recruit where? MTC
Q: Should MTC focus more on recruiting in Mississippi, in the South, or nationwide?
A: Nationwide.
Reason one: You will draw better applicants from a bigger pool.
If you want the best possible applicants, you need the biggest pool to choose from. Pretty self explanatory.
Reason two: Teachers coming from the south or Mississippi will bring inherently different perspectives to the classroom than teachers coming from the north, midwest, westcoast, southwest, alaska, anywhere. Of course, it depends on how you interpret the goal of MTC, but I feel that a fresh perspective, from the outside, can only be a benefit. When my students run through all the places that start with M where I might go home for Christmas - Manhattan, Michigan, Minnesota, Connecticut... I realize just how limited their perspectives of the wider world are.
When I was in high school, all of my teachers were from the northeast, except maybe Aase. At least, as far as I know. But I think I would have benefited from having teachers from other areas of the country. I know I did in college. Diversity is touted as being exceptionally important in education, and geography can be a good proxy for establishing a diversity of perspectives and past experiences.
Teachers from increasingly local levels (the south, Mississippi, the Delta) having the correspondingly increasing benefit of familiarity and cultural understanding. But the kids already have lots of teachers with that familiarity and background.
Reason Three: (The one that will get me in trouble)
MTC should recruit heavily outside of the south and Mississippi because it is important for MTC to recruit students from the best colleges and universities in the country, from those institutions that represent the very pinnacle of learning. Going to a good school does not make you a better teacher, but it certainly does not make you a worse one. I have realized that some of my ideas about education are more elitist than I ever thought, and this really disturbs me, in a lot of ways. I want some of my students to go to Harvard (or MIT, Yale, Stanford, Bowdoin, Middlebury, etc.). I've almost deleted this section three or four times now, because I worry that I'll offend someone. I have a very north-east-centric view of things, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I had been taught be a more goegraphically diverse faculty during high school. But I think that MTC should continue to recruit from the very best colleges and universities in the country, where ever they are. Any recruiting policy that limited recruiting to the south would certainly eliminate many students from the institutions that are considered the flagbearers of higher education in this country, despite what the incensed regular viewers of ESPN's College Gameday might argue.
The cons:
1) A national recruiting policy is more expensive.
2) This is entirely speculative, but I imagine that the likelihood of an MTC teacher staying for a few extra years or for the long haul is inversely proportionate to the distance between Mississippi and that person's home. Ben has data on who is still here and who left and where they were from, and could probably actually tell me if this is true or not. But as my second year is moving along, I am already starting to feel incredibly guilty about leaving these kids. There is no way to do enough for these kids, and to walk away from them after just two years seems cruel. At the same time, there are the parts of me that urge me to leave in May - my sanity, my family, my memories of foliage and snow and the daydreams about the good life teaching somewhere where I don't have to deal with so many discipline issues, so many disorganizational issues. It's so important for teachers to stay more than two years. Maybe that's easier for teachers whose homes are a little closer to Misssissippi. If it is, this might outweigh all the reasons for recruiting nationwide.
A: Nationwide.
Reason one: You will draw better applicants from a bigger pool.
If you want the best possible applicants, you need the biggest pool to choose from. Pretty self explanatory.
Reason two: Teachers coming from the south or Mississippi will bring inherently different perspectives to the classroom than teachers coming from the north, midwest, westcoast, southwest, alaska, anywhere. Of course, it depends on how you interpret the goal of MTC, but I feel that a fresh perspective, from the outside, can only be a benefit. When my students run through all the places that start with M where I might go home for Christmas - Manhattan, Michigan, Minnesota, Connecticut... I realize just how limited their perspectives of the wider world are.
When I was in high school, all of my teachers were from the northeast, except maybe Aase. At least, as far as I know. But I think I would have benefited from having teachers from other areas of the country. I know I did in college. Diversity is touted as being exceptionally important in education, and geography can be a good proxy for establishing a diversity of perspectives and past experiences.
Teachers from increasingly local levels (the south, Mississippi, the Delta) having the correspondingly increasing benefit of familiarity and cultural understanding. But the kids already have lots of teachers with that familiarity and background.
Reason Three: (The one that will get me in trouble)
MTC should recruit heavily outside of the south and Mississippi because it is important for MTC to recruit students from the best colleges and universities in the country, from those institutions that represent the very pinnacle of learning. Going to a good school does not make you a better teacher, but it certainly does not make you a worse one. I have realized that some of my ideas about education are more elitist than I ever thought, and this really disturbs me, in a lot of ways. I want some of my students to go to Harvard (or MIT, Yale, Stanford, Bowdoin, Middlebury, etc.). I've almost deleted this section three or four times now, because I worry that I'll offend someone. I have a very north-east-centric view of things, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I had been taught be a more goegraphically diverse faculty during high school. But I think that MTC should continue to recruit from the very best colleges and universities in the country, where ever they are. Any recruiting policy that limited recruiting to the south would certainly eliminate many students from the institutions that are considered the flagbearers of higher education in this country, despite what the incensed regular viewers of ESPN's College Gameday might argue.
The cons:
1) A national recruiting policy is more expensive.
2) This is entirely speculative, but I imagine that the likelihood of an MTC teacher staying for a few extra years or for the long haul is inversely proportionate to the distance between Mississippi and that person's home. Ben has data on who is still here and who left and where they were from, and could probably actually tell me if this is true or not. But as my second year is moving along, I am already starting to feel incredibly guilty about leaving these kids. There is no way to do enough for these kids, and to walk away from them after just two years seems cruel. At the same time, there are the parts of me that urge me to leave in May - my sanity, my family, my memories of foliage and snow and the daydreams about the good life teaching somewhere where I don't have to deal with so many discipline issues, so many disorganizational issues. It's so important for teachers to stay more than two years. Maybe that's easier for teachers whose homes are a little closer to Misssissippi. If it is, this might outweigh all the reasons for recruiting nationwide.
It's better to burn out, than to fade away...
At least that is what they say.
But burning out as a teacher is never a good thing. At one point someone suggested that we offer some advice for the first years on avoiding burnout. Unfortunately, I haven't had nearly the success in this department that Jeremy has had, and so the best advice I can offer is to be what I am not - organized. And don't coach football. But I am really not in the correct frame of mind to offer advice. I am just going to dive into how burnt out I am.
I'm not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to coach football last spring. Maybe I thought I would get more respect from the kids, just by spending more time with them, they'd understand, a little better how much I cared. I thought, perhaps, nostalgic for soccer season, that it would be great to spend a little more time with the boys who play both soccer and football, and that if the soccer guys were so great, maybe I'd be able to love the football players as much as I do the soccer players.
Regardless of what I thought, it was a poor decision. I was not helpful to the football team. I was not helpful to myself. I learned a few things from the football coaches, about football and coaching in general. I met a few great kids who I never would have met otherwise. But it was a mistake, because it left me already running on reserve when soccer season hit.
Football meant getting home between 7 and 7:30 every night, between 10 and 1 AM on Fridays, and a few hours on Sunday for film. Soccer means getting home between 7 and 7:30 every night plus responsibilities. We ordered new uniforms, we're still trying to track down some of last years, the field needs to be lined, the goals need to be moved and the new nets put up. We need buses for away games, checks for away game meals and pregame food, we need to order new balls and shin guards and cones. And then there is eligibility. Birth certificates, physicals, permission forms, eligibility sheets, counselors, principals, and athletic directors at four different schools - the two campuses of the high school and the two middle schools. And that is just the BS part of coaching. The real work of finding a system and putting the right people in the right places, and finding and fixing deficiencies, of discipline, spirit and pride, loses out to the paperwork. I got an assistant coach, finally, and she is fantastic. It's my delegating skills that are weak, and we got a bit of a late start, because of football.
In addition, for the last three or four weeks I've been teaching trig during my planning period. I volunteered - the trig teacher was in a car wreck and had to get stitches in his head, so our principal, rightly, did not want the kids to fall behind. I applaud her for that. But that has really been taking a toll too. Leave the house at 7:30, get back to the house at 7:30, no stopping. No getting anything done. It's not the fact that I can't get anything done during ym planning period that is the worst, although the enormous stack of grading that has piled up on my desk, shelves, in my backpack, and on top of my overhead projector has become an almost unbearble stressor. But rather, the fact that I am "on" for nearly 12 hours a day, in front of kids, putting on the teacher act, pretending to be an adult, nonstop. That just wears me down.
In closing, don't teach four block classes, coach two sports, and go to grad school at the same time.
But burning out as a teacher is never a good thing. At one point someone suggested that we offer some advice for the first years on avoiding burnout. Unfortunately, I haven't had nearly the success in this department that Jeremy has had, and so the best advice I can offer is to be what I am not - organized. And don't coach football. But I am really not in the correct frame of mind to offer advice. I am just going to dive into how burnt out I am.
I'm not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to coach football last spring. Maybe I thought I would get more respect from the kids, just by spending more time with them, they'd understand, a little better how much I cared. I thought, perhaps, nostalgic for soccer season, that it would be great to spend a little more time with the boys who play both soccer and football, and that if the soccer guys were so great, maybe I'd be able to love the football players as much as I do the soccer players.
Regardless of what I thought, it was a poor decision. I was not helpful to the football team. I was not helpful to myself. I learned a few things from the football coaches, about football and coaching in general. I met a few great kids who I never would have met otherwise. But it was a mistake, because it left me already running on reserve when soccer season hit.
Football meant getting home between 7 and 7:30 every night, between 10 and 1 AM on Fridays, and a few hours on Sunday for film. Soccer means getting home between 7 and 7:30 every night plus responsibilities. We ordered new uniforms, we're still trying to track down some of last years, the field needs to be lined, the goals need to be moved and the new nets put up. We need buses for away games, checks for away game meals and pregame food, we need to order new balls and shin guards and cones. And then there is eligibility. Birth certificates, physicals, permission forms, eligibility sheets, counselors, principals, and athletic directors at four different schools - the two campuses of the high school and the two middle schools. And that is just the BS part of coaching. The real work of finding a system and putting the right people in the right places, and finding and fixing deficiencies, of discipline, spirit and pride, loses out to the paperwork. I got an assistant coach, finally, and she is fantastic. It's my delegating skills that are weak, and we got a bit of a late start, because of football.
In addition, for the last three or four weeks I've been teaching trig during my planning period. I volunteered - the trig teacher was in a car wreck and had to get stitches in his head, so our principal, rightly, did not want the kids to fall behind. I applaud her for that. But that has really been taking a toll too. Leave the house at 7:30, get back to the house at 7:30, no stopping. No getting anything done. It's not the fact that I can't get anything done during ym planning period that is the worst, although the enormous stack of grading that has piled up on my desk, shelves, in my backpack, and on top of my overhead projector has become an almost unbearble stressor. But rather, the fact that I am "on" for nearly 12 hours a day, in front of kids, putting on the teacher act, pretending to be an adult, nonstop. That just wears me down.
In closing, don't teach four block classes, coach two sports, and go to grad school at the same time.
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