you never can tell with bees

Mr. Gallagher again...

2009-11-12T08:40:00.002-06:00

I'm starting a long-term substitute position back in Western Mass. AP Calc, Honors Trig, and a pair of Math 1 classes at the end of the day. The Math 1 classes are supposed to be a real challenge, so we'll see how it goes. The original teacher went in for shoulder surgery, so I'm hear for two - three months, perfect to get me through the winter until the farm starts up in the spring. We'll see how it compares.

Notes

2009-11-04T08:49:00.004-06:00

In transition, again, I'm going through old boxes, trying to consolidate and organize. I found some notes from my students in Mississippi, that I'll post here, in case I lose them. This blog is my record of my delta days, and so it seems only fitting to include these artifacts here.

"To: Mr. Gallagher

From: your former student T. O'N.

Thanks for your teaching, It was a great learning experience for me and I really didn't like math, but you made me like it."

"Dear Mr. Gallagher

The reason why I'm actin the way I'm acting is because my aunt Died and I guess you don't know how it feels to lose someone real special that you really liked and that was my only aunt that stayed down here. I don't have no family down here at all nobody but my mother, sisters, brothers and grandmother. and my Brother is leaving tomorro to go to Iraq to fight for his country. But like I said theirs nobody that can solve that problem but the man above and thats God

Yours truly

A.B."

(Folded intricately in that way that only high school girls can fold a note...)

"To: Mr. G

From: A.B.

March 11, 2008

Dear Mr. Gallagher

How have you been. fine I hope. Now that I realize that she's gone to a better place it really don't bother me anymore but my brother is safe because he's only over there for two months but I want say ain't nothing gone happen to him cause going to Iraq is dangerous but I think he will make it though butI really thank you for the talk you gave me and I really over comed it cause it don't bother me anymore but I think I can be a honor student now cause all the stress and the pain is all gone away and I'm gone pass the state test cause I believe in myself and I know you believe in me too so wish Good luck upon me Okay

Your friend,

A.B."

"Feb 20, 2007

Mr. G,

Hey I know for the few couple of weeks I have been missing days and sleep. Well its because I found out that I was pregnant. I know thats not your problem but on top of that I have issue at home and at school. I have not been missing school for the fun of it. I just been sick and down I will stay after school and do anything math is my down fall and I do plan to march in May. Also suppose to be moving to Cali and attending college. please understand what I am going through and I promise you I will work twice as hard to get my grade up. Whenever you can and able to can we talk. please.

Thanks,

C.S."

(In red sharpie on holiday stationary...)

"I would like to say thank you for working with me this year . . . . I enjoyed you

. . . . T. M."

(A yellow card with a smiling, shaggy dog on the front..."

"Missing you! (handwritten across the front of the card, above the dog)

(inside) To a man that makes me work hard! That you for ever thing.

Thank you Mr. G

Luv ya!!

M-Tech

Clazz of "09"

D. R.

Stay cool I'll Miss you!"

Going through these, I have some doubts about whether I should post them or not, especially the extremely personal note from C.S. The trust that many of my students eventually placed in me was such a meaningful gift, neither lightly earned nor given, that I want to be very careful not to compromise it. I've left out some of the most personal parts of C.S.'s note - her pregnancy was neither unusual nor hidden, so that has remained.

I am constantly missing Mississippi, albeit with a firm understanding that, while I might visit, I can never truly go back. Finding these notes was a poignant reminder of what I've known since leaving my home among the cotton for the last time: I'll be missing Mississippi for the rest of my life.

And suddenly I'm Mr. Gallagher again...

2009-03-06T14:28:00.004-06:00

For the last three days, from 7:30 until 2, I've been Mr. Gallagher again. On Tuesday, I went down to the business office of the district to apply as a sub, where I was told I would need transcripts and three letters of reference, which seemed a lot to ask for a substitute. I stopped by the principal's office on the way out - he told me to just put his name down as a reference (he was assistant principal when I was there) and give it to him. I was called the next day, and have been called every day since. It's been a trip.

Nearly everyone who taught me is gone. Of all the teachers I had, only four remain, and so the adult faces are just as unfamiliar as the children's. The last names, of course, are all familiar, plenty of good old polish names. And the quality of the education, well, I'd have to say I think it's slid a bit, to be honest.

Today, I was teaching physics and life science. The physics classes were both CP (college prep - the middle rung on the tracking ladder - descriptive, CP, honors, AP) and were both pretty decent. They were seniors, and worked in groups on a packet of questions without incident. The second of the life science classes, though, presented me with some problems that I thought it might be worth sharing.

The first kid walks in, and gives me his name. Tells me this is going to be a bad class. I tell him I've had worse as I check his name off the roster. I see a name I had the day before, and in he comes. Mr. Danzel, I say. It's Danzel, motherfucker. The assistant principal is in the hall, and I pass the kid off. The AP sends the kid to the office and tells me this is one of the worst classes in the school, and offers to talk to them before we get started. I tell him I'd rather he not, and we begin. Kids here actaully swear much more than they do in Mississippi. In other classes I'd subbed, they thought nothing of asking me if they could go get their shit out of their locker or telling me that they fucked up. These kids, though, brought it to a new level. I had two give me fake names, who weren't in the class, before running out the back door (classrooms with two, or, in this case, three doors, present unique scenarios) and being replaced by the actual owners of the names. I take roll, inform them that they will not be talking, and that they will be taking a quiz. This, obviously, does not go over well and is met with a chorus of profanity, but I pass out the quizzes, and tell them to keep quiet. They don't, and as a sub, I have no consequences, but I play it pretty straight. Stick to last names, and no shouting, calm, polite, each time repeating my expectations. We will not throw things in this classroom. You will sit in your desk, not on your desk. We will not stand on desks, nor will we jump over them (a kid did actually do this. twice.) Finally, one of them let loose. He had walked out of another class I had been subbing two days before, after I told him to stop talking, and today the same request was met with pure fury. He stood, tore the quiz in two, raised his backpack over his head and slammed it on the desk. You piss me off. You make me want to punch you in the fucking face. Out he went, with a loud slam of the door, and his quiz went into the folder with the others I had collected. Then the class began to turn around for me. I took up the rest of the quizzes. They asked me a couple of questions, the basics - do you ever smile, were you in the military, where did you used to work before this. I tell them that at my last job, they let me hit the kids. That at least gets their interest. One kid especially starts to come around. He's Kennedy Carpenter, Dominque Olds, a leader who has no interest in class , loves chaos, and is too smart to get caught. He smiles, and announces - I'm starting to get this guy. Good, I say. I collect the quizzes. You all don't get him, he continues. He says sir to you, you say sir to him, and everything'll be cool. It's like, um... he says, fumbling, and, with help from the rest of the students, comes up with it - mutual respect. It's like mutual. It is mutual respect, I reply. Detailing the rest of the class would be a bit boring, but by the end of it, we were having a productive discussion about evolution by natural selection and the three requisite criteria - variability, heritability, and differential fitness, without interuptions and with everyone in his seat. It felt good and I had more fun with that class than with the ones that actually sat silently and took their quizzes. Someday I might even go back to teaching. Right now, though, I think I'd really have to need the money.

Algebra I Test Scores

2008-09-01T11:26:00.002-05:00

Below is a breakdown of the passing rate for the Algebra I Subject Area Test. The first column identifies each teacher by a letter, the second shows the number of students that teacher taught (or, apparently, did not teach) and the third shows the percent of those students who passed the test. I taught less than 50 students, certainly, although I can't be sure of the exact number of testers, since I had so many retesters. That means I must be either B, G, or I. Needless to say, I'm hoping for B.

A 61 26
B 30 63
C 51 23
D 60 61
E 61 29
F 73 2.8
G 34 2.9
H 46 39
I 25 0

Numbers

2008-05-23T08:55:00.002-05:00

Overall:
Total Students: 64
Failing Students: 35
Percent Failing: 55

First Block:
Total Students: 19
Failing Students: 14
Percent Failing: 74%

Second Block:
Total Students:22
Failing Students: 6
Percent Failing: 27%

Fourth Block:
Total Students: 23
Failing Students: 15
Percent Failing: 65%

Notes like these always get me...

2008-05-22T20:20:00.002-05:00

Dear Mr. Gallagher,

This year you have taught me a lot and you have showed me that I am a bright ,smart ,and intelligent young lady and that I can do anything I want if I put my mind to it . I want to thank you for everything you have taught me and thank you for believing in me and showing me that I can make it threw anything. You are a wonderful teacher and I want wish you the best in life and hope you can make someone else feel as great as you have made me feel.

Love Always,

Zakeishein Humphrey

Today

2008-05-19T20:32:00.002-05:00

I hit a bird on the motorcycle. With my helmet. Doing 65. That's all.

On the back of a senior picture....

2008-05-15T13:02:00.001-05:00

To: Mr. G
"The quote is 'Never judge a book by its cover.' It is true that you look mean but you are actually nice but firm. Thanks for the sidewalk chats."

You are appreciated...

2008-05-09T12:14:00.002-05:00

Today, apparently, is teacher appreciation day, or at least the final day of teacher appreciation week. Our principal organized a breakfast for all the teachers, during which she held all the students in the auditorium. It was a nice gesture, although of course what the teachers would have appreciated most would have been a normal day that followed a predictable schedule. The breakfast meant first block lasted only about 20 minutes.

As second block starts, T.C. bursts in, and holding up a dollar bill, thrusts it at me. As I'm trying to remember if I had somehow told them that it was my birthday, he says "Mr. G., we appreciate you!" I'm standing, still somewhat speechless, when Myran, not to be outdone, leaps from his seat and presents me with another crinkled bill. As I look down and notice the denomination on the bill, Myran makes the same realization - "Hey, Mr. G, gimme back that five dollars. Mr. G, Mr. G..."

Things I can't control in fourth block

2008-05-06T23:48:00.003-05:00

The temperature is at least 85 degrees in the classroom.

Fourth block is supposed to start at 1:38, and end at 3:26. Today, like many other days, unannounced, it did not end until 4:00.

Today, about an hour into class (which, as mentioned above, isn't even halfway into the block), three students walk in with passes from the office. Ten minutes later, three more arrive. In the middle of class, once we're quite in the middle of independent practice, I have six angry students arriving, knowing nothing about what we did for the last hour.

ZH has missed more days than she has been present this year. When she is present, she is an inquisitive, bright student. When she is absent, she does not learn. She has made less than a 20 every quarter. She is pregnant.

JH was my best student, until she went on maternity leave. Since she came back, I have seen her perhaps three times, in class. I saw her at the fair, though. She will not pass.

To summarize, I cannot control the temperature, the variable and overly drawn-out length of class, the arrival or departure of students during class, the pregnant state of my students or their attendance rates.

Senioritis

2008-05-06T23:29:00.002-05:00

I've got it, and probably worse than the kids. I'm counting down the days, realizing I'll never be in this moment again, that these people with whom I've become so close are all about to disperse to far corners of the country, perhaps never to meet again.

Today, instead of coming home and working after school, I went to soccer, entirely against doctor's orders. Then, instead of coming home, I went to the Po' Boy shop, which doubles as a bar and pool hall, with Tabitha. We ate at the bar, watching a reality show about king crab fishermen in Alaska, and played a few games of pool. We should have started patronizing that place a long time ago.

We came back to the house and played set for an hour and a half, perhaps two hours, with Cornish and Anwmo. It started out as two games, but we needed a tie breaker, and so we played another, and then kept going. We made a lot of jokes about your mom. And then suddenly it was 11, and there are a whole list of things I should have done, but didn't. I should have graded Dominique's retest. I have to still do that tonight, if nothing else. I haven't done TST stuff, but I've basically given up on that. I didn't do my PT for my knee, but, well, it got a workout at soccer. I didn't grade any of my log packets or log quizzes from Algebra II, and I haven't planned anything for tomorrow. Oh, yes. Algebra II, we're d0ing conics. Tape and construction paper. Algebra I, first block, we are doing what we were supposed to do today, since we didn't have first block today. I just need to know what we're doing in fourth block. Basically, we could do the same thing we did today, since no one understood it, but that would get boring quickly. I think, basically, what I need to do is to come up with two different forms of independent practice, so that the first day they can do one, that is slightly more dependent, and the second day, they can do a more independent version. Or maybe, I just need to do better guided practice. Working problems on the board and asking the students what to do is only guided practice for those that are paying attention, and that is usually just 2 or 3 students in Algebra I (either block). This has been a miserable semester. I hate that I hate these kids, but I really do. Not all of them, probably not even most of them, individually. But as groups, both my fourth and first block I can honestly say I hate, and my second block, as a group, I strongly dislike. Any one of them, if I could remove a few elements, would be alright. But in my fourth block, there are too many elements that need removing.

Anyway, I had a good day of not working. Now I need about 20 minutes of working.

2008-04-29T12:06:00.002-05:00

What a day, what a day. I feel, again, like I did at that ski race back in high school, where I fell on the finish line and had to crawl across. This is miserable. Outside of school, I am having a great time. Really enjoying myself. I had a great weekend spent with good friends, relaxing, eating, having fun. Yesterday, I finally got cleared by the orthropedist to take my knee brace off, which meant I got straight on the motorcycle. I took an hour ride, up to Metcalf and back, and thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful weather. Then, I got back to Leland and had an unexpected yet excellent dinner once again. I am looking forward to another weekend coming up in which I can put in some serious miles on the bike. But most of all, I am looking forward to walking out this door for the last time as a teacher. I'd love to come back and visit, because I love these kids to death, but I am not a good classroom manager, and that kills me. If I could do that, everything else would come easily. Perhaps my administration could have been more supportive, but there are certainly worse administrators out there. At the end of the day, it comes down to me, and I'm just no good at classroom management and therefore, no good at teaching here. I believe I could be a decent, perhaps even a good teacher, in a school that was not so riddled with discipline problems, where a supportive, respectful culture already existed. But this is too much for me. I've worked my ass off these last two years - I'm tired, I'm grumpy and I am sick of being continually disrespected.

There it is, then, that's why I'm leaving. I can't take the daily disrespect and the intense stress of managing a classroom. I'm tried, and I'll keep trying for the next three and a half weeks. But I am ready to go.

The Times says it again...

2008-04-27T10:31:00.002-05:00

An article out in the Times today confirms my long-held belief that teaching math using real world examples is not only unhelpful, but counterproductive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/science/25math.html?ex=1366862400&en=f77a801028348734&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Frustration

2008-04-13T20:42:00.001-05:00

Me: What should I teach my Algebra I kids tomorrow?
Ruth: What have you taught them?
Me: Nothing.

A Gift

2008-04-11T13:20:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, during my second block, I had two parents sit in on my class. Well, actually, I had a parent and a sister. The two students involved had been assigned parent monitoring, because they both cut class and act a fool on a regular basis. TC's mom is great, she's always on him, and has really been helpful to me in dealing with his behaviors. After storming out of my class one day, he came back within minutes, apologized, and gave me his phone like I had asked him to the first time. When I asked him what had brought about the change of heart, he said that his mom had texted him and told him to give me that phone.

Anyway, it was a decent class. Not a great class, certainly. These kids are getting more and more rowdy, and I seem to have less and less control over them. Sometimes, it seems like I have less and less support as well, but I know part of it has to do with the fact that I have less and less energy. Regardless, learning was taking place, but I found myself spending far too much of my time and energy quieting the class. They haven't been doing a good job of listening, and my consequences have more or less evaporated. When T.C.'s mom left at the end of class, I asked her, like I usually ask parents, if she had learned anything. "Sure did," she said, then handed me the book she had been reading during the class. "You need these, Mr. G" she said and I thanked her. As she left, I looked down to find myself holding on to a small book of prayers. There are six weeks left, and I sure do need them.

Credit Recovery

2008-04-10T23:50:00.002-05:00

As I read this article in the Times, I remembered hearing some talk about starting up a credit recovery system at our high school. I like Ben's hypothetical situations, so, if you were a principal in a school in the delta, would you institute a credit recovery program at your school?

Coming Home

2008-04-08T21:06:00.001-05:00

Four o'clock. Out to duty. Four-fifteen. Back to the classroom for tutoring. Nelson failed my class last semester, but comes to tutoring two or three times a week, to make sure he doesn't fail again. Jameese came because she was tardy to class and I would not let her in. Chloe has been "missing some days" and came to try to get some sort of idea of what we are doing in class. Greg came to try to learn how to solve quadratic equations, so he can retake the test he made a 44 on. I taught Carliza Algebra I last year, and she came by because she was bored, so I gave her some quadratic equations to solve. She brought a friend, who spent half her time helping Carliza with the equations and the other half dancing.

Four fifty-seven. Hurry up and clear out so you don't miss the late bus. Nelson, erase the boards and grab that bag for me. Put on your seatbelt. Are you going to Greenville High?

Five fifteen. I drop Nelson off in front of Greenville High, and as I pull in, I see Nate. Just the guy I was looking for. What are you doing for next year? Your mom says you're still thinking about the military. If you go in there and get yourself shot, when you get back here, I'm going to shoot you again. Nate and I walk over to the baseball game. I've got a calculator and a few scraps of paper in my pocket, and we work out a few ACT-type algebra problems before the game starts. It's the ACT that has Nate thinking about the military – he made a 14 the first time he took it and is convinced he won't get into college anywhere. So we work out some problems and watch the baseball game for a little while.

Six eighteen. Nate, you said you had to be at church at six-thirty, so you better get going. I say goodbye to the rest of the students at the game and head over to the middle school track meet, where I can see a group of my boys helping out with the meet. Boone, with a 10 foot pole-vault pole in one hand, comes over and starts giving me a hard time my crutches. JT chimes in – I told you you better get your weight up coach. And Alvin informs me that I am too old to be playing. Ant tells me that he never got his letter jacket. Chopper comes striding across the field. I hear you've been staying out of trouble lately, Chop. Yeah know, he says. Who told you that? Ms. Morrison. I thought so. I don't know what was wrong with me in the fall. I wanted to throw discus too, but I was too late. I see lil' Ced, one of the middle school kids who came out for soccer. I chide him for quitting after two games. Three games, three games coach. And you said I wasn't gonna play much anyway. Alright Ced. You and your friend here should come out to Solomon. We play out there Tuesdays and Thursdays at five-thirty, and Sundays at four. Bring your friends. Chopper puts his hand on my shoulder. Coach, I need a favor. What's that? Take me to the house. Alright Chop, let's go.

Six forty-one. Heading back to the truck, I run into one of the twins. Hey Twin. Ka'Shield, right? What are you running? The 1600, 3200, 800, and 4X100. Winning them all? Yeah. Putting up scholarship times? In the 2-mile.

Six forty-nine. I see Javon, another of my middle school recruits who didn't last the season. His brother Darryl, one of our best players, is graduating this year. Javon, you staying out of trouble? Yeah coach, well, I got a referral the other day. He shuffles through his papers but is unable to produce it. You going to come out and play with us at Solomon? Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:30, Sundays at 4:00? I'll try to get out there coach. Hey, can you give me a ride to the house? Yeah Javon. We moved, we stay up by Uncle Ben's now, up there on Broadway. Alright, well, you get in the back. Chopper in the front. We can't leave until you put the seatbelts on.

Seven sixteen. Alright Javon. Tell your mom I said hello. As I pull out of the apartment complex, I realize I'm hungry. Heading back down to the highway, I head back towards Leland. Popeyes. No, I can't eat that. Subway's not so bad for you. As I look up across the counter there is a glimmer of recognition. Hey Mr. Hogues. Mr who? I mean, Mr, uh, Mr. Galla… Gallagher. How are you? Good. How's the baby? He's alright. He must be about 10 months now, right? Yeah, how'd you know? Because you were due right after graduation last year. Oh yeah. What you getting? Italian, I guess, on wheat. I leave feeling incredibly guilty, because I can't for the life of me remember her name.

Seven twenty-three. I walk out of Subway, feeling guilty that I can't, for the life of me, remember that student's name. Coach, you eatin' healthy, ain't you? I turn and spy Ant peering out at me from the back seat of an Oldsmobile. You weren't serious about your letter jacket, were you Ant? No, I been had mine coach. Alright.

Seven twenty-seven. Three blocks from the Subway, I see someone running out to the edge of the highway. I shrill female voice cries – Hey Matt, where you going? I slow down as he races towards the road – Hey Coach. Matt, I haven't seen you out at Solomon. Come out on Sunday. The light turns green and I slowly roll away. Four o'clock, I shout, holding up four fingers. Aight coach. I watch in the rearview mirror as he scampers back to the shrill female voice, and can imagine the explanation "that was my coach."

Seven-forty: Pull in to the house in Leland. Change out of the teaching clothes, get a brownie and the jug of orange juice to go with the Italian sub. I look through the computer, searching for the student's name. I can only find her last name, Lawrence, on an old grade sheet. The bells ring eight. I start to blog. The roommates come home, and I break out the subway. Finish the jug of orange juice. The bells ring nine. I'm tired.

Correspondence

2008-03-11T21:26:00.003-05:00

Correspondence:

Dear Mr. G,
The reason why I'm acting the way I'm acting is because my aunt died and I guess you don't know how it feel to loose someone real special that you really liked and that was your only aunt that stayed down here. I don't have no family down here at all nobody but my mother, sisters, brothers and grandmother. and my Brother is leaving tomorrow to go to Iraq to fight for his country. But like I said theirs nobody that can solve that problem but the man above and thats GOD
Yours Truely,
AB

Dear Mr. G,
How have you been. fine I hope. now that I realize that she's gone to a better place it really don't bother me anymore but my brother is safe because he's only over there for two months but I won't say nothing gone happen to him cause going to Iraq is dangerous but I think he will make it through but I really thank you for the talk you gave me and I really over comed it cause it Don't bother me anymore but I think I can be an honor student now cause all the stress and pain is all gone away and I'm gone pass the state test cause I believe in myself and I know you believe in me too so wish good luck upon me Okay
your friend,
AB

the devil

2008-03-10T22:22:00.002-05:00

So, I was a witness at my second hearing of the year today. I won't get into what brought me and this particular student to the hearing, but my principal was recommending one year out of school. These hearings always start late, which puts parents in a spectacular mood, since they usually rushed to leave work early and then sit in the waiting room for 20 minutes. Another well-designed feature of the such hearings is that the witness, that is, the teacher who wrote the referral that led to this point, must sit in the waiting room with the student and parent during this time. I have been in some awkward situations, but this ranks among the most awkward.

Today, though, I came prepared, with a book of Billy Collins tucked into my jacket pocket. I knew I'd have to wait, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to really get into much of a conversation in the waiting room. I walked in, put my helmet down, said a muted hello to the student and her mother, and proceeded to immerse myself in my poems. Despite Mr. Collins' undoubted skill with everyday words, I could not help but eavesdrop on their conversation. It isn't really eavesdropping, anyway, if it is said at a volume and proximity such that it would
be impossible to not hear. The entire conversation was immensely interesting from many perspectives from the individual - the is where she gets it - to the sociological - Ruby Payne-esque insights. Yet perhaps the most interesting observation occurred when the principal walked in. She was on the phone (she's always busy and works extremely hard) and walked through the waiting area still on the phone.
"That that principal?"
"Yea Ma, that's Ms. Blank"
"That woman didn't even speak."
"You go in there and..."
"Shut up. I ain't gonna say nothing. I'm just gonn' go in there an' look crazy. Ain't sayin' nothing. That woman the devil. Come in here don't even speak. These people, get up in these high positions..."
"Can lose it just as quick"
"Sure can. Ooh that woman the devil."

Lessons:
Start things on time.
Always smile and say hello.

1984

2008-03-05T13:00:00.002-06:00

During homeroom, one girl passes another a picture. Somehow, the picture has a birthday on it.
"Guh, you man be born in 1984. He be old."
"He ain't ugly."
"And you ain't nothing but sixteen."
"Oh no guh, I am seventeen. I'm grown."

So wrong.

Spaghetti

2008-03-04T23:28:00.003-06:00

The times had an interesting article today about monetary incentives for student achievement.

"Abigail said she would use it to pay for 'a car, a house and college,' apparently unaware that the roughly $100 she’s earned this school year might not stretch that far. Another little girl said she would use the money simply for food. When asked to elaborate, she answered quietly, 'Spaghetti.'"

Spring Break

2008-03-03T12:28:00.000-06:00

For Spring Break, I will be regrouping. I have gotten behind on everything, predictably, and so I am taking that time to regroup and reform for the final push. As much as I really would like to use that time to get out of the Delta, I'll be gone soon enough, and so I should really take that time to get something together to get myself and the kids through until the end of the year. Once we get back, I'll have two months left. With all the highs and the lows I've had teaching, I'm hitting a pretty low low right now. My kids are totally disrespectful, don't listen, never stop talking and, what's worse, don't learn anything.

For our research project, I remember that LS asked most of her district leadership (principal, assistant principal, superintendent, etc) how they defined strength, and each said "the ability to endure." This is not a definition I agree with. When one is faced with a challange, strength is the ability to confront that challange and create positive change, not simply to endure it and whether the storm, but to conquer it. Yet I find myself struggling immensely now just to endure these last months. At least I should sacrifice my spring break to try to bring some semblance of order to things for these final couple of months.

I can't believe that in just over two months, I'll be watching the seniors walk across the stage and on to whatever comes next for them, then walking back to Leland and leaving this place. There are some things I've come to love about the place itself. The sunsets are nearly always spectacular, and the night sky is great for watching stars. You can play soccer through January and February. There can ever be a bit of quaint mixed with the sad and bizarre in these small towns, and beauty, where it exists, will shine brightly from the chaos.

I'll miss the kids, and their eternal hopefullness. Their energy and curiousity. They are so resiliant, they bounce back from nearly anything, smile under a weight that would have crushed me long ago.

I won't miss watching them suffer. The kids who show me the gaping abscesses in their teeth, who break down in tears, who tell me about their fathers in prison or their own cancer. The kids who get shot. The kids, just babies themselves, having multiple babies while still in high school. It is too much for me to take in, too much for me to handle. I can hardly exist in the face of all of this, and I admit, it's getting to me. It's getting to me more than it should. I can't fix it. I can't even keep one classroom under control. I can't fix it, any of it, not even one tiny corner of it. And I'm starting to give up hope for this place. Hope that there will be jobs, hope that there could be a strong education system. Hope for integrated public schools. Hope for strong families and values. I'm running out of hope, in fact, I've lost it already. I reserve a little hope - for Nate. For Marquitta. For Floyd. For Charles. For Keyera. For Greg. For KT. But it costs so much to hope, and every time your hope slips and falls, you wonder if it will get up again, or if this will be the final blow that kills it off.

So I'll spend my spring break here in Mississippi, soaking up the last of this world that I'm abandoning, trying to leave something positive for the kids. I might take a couple days and do a little camping - that would be nice. But for the most part, I'll be here, grading papers, planning, calling parents. Maybe I'll take off for a couple of early morning drives through the delta. The fog over the fields can be beautiful.

We've gotta get out of this place

2008-02-26T22:50:00.002-06:00

Been having a really crappy time lately. I could whine and complain, but I won't. All day, I've been thinking, gee, maybe I just feel this crappy because I'm leaving. I remembered, before I went to Russia, seeing a graph about culture shock, and how, no matter how long you are away somewhere, your general happiness follows a certain pattern. Sure enough, before you leave, you hit a patch of what the graph calls up and downs. As if teaching wasn't enough of a roller-coaster already, now, when we're getting ready to unload, we have this extra little predisposition to chaos that is entirely unnecessary. My solution - buy a new motorcycle and read about pastured poultry.

The plan

2008-02-14T15:41:00.002-06:00

This is a plan to make my teaching life better.
1) Start using tickets as rewards. Start just using them for the first 5 minutes of class. In seat and working quietly when bell rings. Move to in seat, working quietly for the first 5 minutes after the bell rings.

2) Grade only during my planning period. Never, ever, take work home to grade. And grade everything, everyday.

3) Post grade sheets every day or every other day.

4) Do all planning on weekends.

Number four will definitely be the hardest. I still have an extremely difficult time planning. But if I can do these things, I will be happier, and my kids will learn better.

This blog entry is a complaint. Don't feel obliged to read it.

2008-02-12T13:23:00.000-06:00

May 24, I hope to have the truck packed and be on the road. I'll miss some of the kids, but I can't do this.

Anna told me that during class, Ben said (again) that classroom management was the biggest problem and the main cause of teachers leaving. I'll agree, but add that it isn't just classroom management, it's personal management too. I can never seem to get ahead, I'm always falling behind on everything (grading is a big one here). I have trouble getting students make up work because I don't even know what we did that day or where we put the extra copies, if there were any. I have no system for keeping things straight.

Oh Mississippi...

2008-02-09T13:32:00.000-06:00

Oh Mississippi...

Keep on keeping on...

2008-02-08T13:37:00.000-06:00

So, today I collected my first project. In over a year and a half, we hadn't done a project, so I thought what the heck, why not do a project. I'll let you know how they turned out once I grade 'em.

But does anyone have a good strategy for having students review tests that they've taken (and failed, often miserably). Especially when there were always students who were out and need to make up the test later. I feel like they could learn a ton from going back through the test and fixing their mistakes, or at least going through and trying to understand them, but I don't know how to work that process into class at all. If anyone has anything that has been successful for them in this regard, let me know. Right now, I don't even usually hand back tests - I just tell the kids what they got, which seems like such a waste of a learning opportunity.

Squirrel in the road

2008-01-29T13:34:00.000-06:00

Should I stay or should I go now?

That is the question that's been bothering me ever since before Christmas. Here's a text I got the other night:

Wen will i no wat position i mite play & who my captains r

I get stuff like this all the time, not necessarily in text message form, but often verbally. From my players, it usually takes the form of "What up my boy co', you know next year I'm gun be grindin', we're going to beat warren central." Or "Co', I think my cousin (friend, sister's boyfriend, sister's boyfriend's cousin's friend) said he might play next year, we're only gonna have seven guys coming back, so we've got to recruit." "Next year I'm gonna..." "Next year we gonna..." "Next year..."

I get it from my seniors too. "Next year I'll be back to watch y'all play." "Next year I'm gonna try to play at Bellhaven." "Next year my little brother'll be up in here." And from my students, past and present. Mike R. was so upset not to have me for Geometry this semester, but he said "I'll have you for Algebra II next year, right?" Stuff like this happens all the time. And I just keep answering, to my students at least, that I have no idea where I'll be next year. Now, they think that I mean whether I'll be at Weston on or the Greenville Campus, but I don't know what region of the country I'll be in. I'll probably be in country. But to my players, I'm going to try to do everything like I would want it done before me if I were the new coach coming in. But I can't say whether I'm prepping them for another year with me or for a new sort of adventure. I've even contemplated leaving in June, getting a stress-free job somewhere, something in line with what I might want to do more long term, something more sustainable than teaching is for me, and then coming back in October just to coach. I couldn't "officially" coach, and couldn't get paid. But I could run practice and take the bus to games and do all that sort of stuff, and not be totally stressed about it all the time. I could even get a job at Kroger during the day while I'm here, or maybe even sub - probably not. But I guess you never know. Right now, I think that is my tentative plan - get a good farm apprenticeship from June through the end of September, then bust ass back down here to spend one more season as coach before doing something more permanent. Of course, I'll never do this. If I decide it's important enough for me to be here another year, I'll be here 100%, teaching and all the rest of it. Maybe I need to have an ultimatum - let me teach Calc - or Russian - or even just 3 blocks of Algebra II - and I'll stay. If anyone has tried such an ultimatum with their school, let me know how that went. Or maybe I could be more subtle, and just say "well, I have been going back and forth. But I really just hate teaching Algebra I. I've had some offers from some schools back up north where I'd get to teach Calc, and that would be a really big draw for me." Also, if anyone has any such experience with subtlety, let me know how it turned out for you.

Alright, well, assigned blog for Feb 20th is now complete. If anyone has a good idea for assigned wiki post for Feb 20th, let me know.

Progress

2008-01-23T21:58:00.000-06:00

The good news - I am no longer as concerned about mere survival as I once was. The thought that there are only two more days until the weekend is not as comforting as it once was. I've started to worry about more important things, which is great, but the worries are often more profound than those that they replace. For example, "how do I make it to Friday while keeping kids on task enough that they don't riot?" was a real worry of mine for a long time. But now that I've mostly conquered that question, the others coming in are nearly as immediate and much more difficult to solve. "How do I teach all of algebra I, with new frameworks and a new test to pass, in 3 and a half months?" "What can I skip from the frameworks and still give the kids a good chance of passing?" "Why don't kids ever understand when I explain something?" "How do you get anything close to an hour and a half's worth of learning out of a 98 minute block?" "How do I differentiate instruction so the smart kids don't sleep or start a mini-riot?" "How do I differentiate instruction to deal with IEPs?" It's amazing, after a year and a half of this, how much I still have to figure out.

Algebra I – January through May

2008-01-21T11:37:00.001-06:00

I am really starting to have doubts about my ability to teach all of Algebra I in four months. Sounds crazy, but that's what I'm supposed to do. Still not sure how. In two weeks, I set out to teach how to solve single-variable linear equations. Mastery is not happening, at all. I need to move forward and start talking about slope and lines and graphing – my master plan that I made has me spending just four more weeks on everything linear – graphing, slope, literal equations, writing equations of lines, all of that, before I have to move on to systems, polynomials, quadratics… it's insane. Not sure how it will happen. At least, if I suck it up big time, they might have me teach something else instead next year – if there is a next year.

out with a bang

2008-01-18T00:18:00.000-06:00

one for the volley, two for the goal, clap your hands if you beat st joe.

rules

2008-01-14T22:41:00.000-06:00

really, i should blog about soccer, as it is currently the best and most exciting part of my life right now. but i have a thought about rules, consequences, classroom management, and perhaps MTC's role in molding us all as classroom managers.

Throughout my year and a half of teaching, I've changed rules and consequences many times, trying to find rules and consequences that fit my style and would make my classroom what i want it to be. I can't have a silent classroom, but I can't stand having to wait to speak until everyone else is finished. I don't really care if students eat. Or do I? Starting off a new semester with dreams, as always, of being strict, I know that I won't be able to hold up to that struggle of bam-consequence, bam-consequence, bam-consequence. And I don't want to have a classroom of persecution, of enmity, of concealment and slyness and general strife.

So I wonder. Maybe we all had great teachers in school, who were really strict who made a great impact on our lives. We probably did. Thinking back, I remember Madame Corbiere, strict, maybe, but not nearly the teacher that Madame Kahus was. Mrs. Becker was strict, perhaps exacting is a better word, and she was very good. But I think we are equally likely to have had a great teacher who wasn't especially strict. Several of mine jump to mind, headed by Mahar and S.B. So what's the deal?

There are a couple things that could have been going on here. The first is that they were strict, but were so fair and firm in their decisions and were generally such good teachers that we didn't realize their strictness as such, but rather simply as the appropriate structure for the class. That may be true for S.B., but definitely was not the case for Mahar, and I imagine is the case much less often than one would hope.

The second is that it may be that a relaxed teaching style - relaxed in terms of rules and consequences - is appropriate for other student populations and not for ours. This, I imagine, is far more likely. I heard that one of the first years taught a year at a prep school and gave out a detention. A single detention. I wonder what that must be like.

But I wonder if it is possible to take a different view to CM than that which we have all tried to take. I know that the MTC folks are all hard-line rule-consequence-consistency-people, and believe me, I think that's fine. In fact, I'd wager that almost every time it is the method that affords the first year teacher the best chance of survival. And even if you aren't strict, you need to be consistent. But I wonder how many people there are that just can't fit that model, who could otherwise be great teachers. I wonder how many people can't come up with rules that work for them, ever. I can be a good teacher. With certain classes, I am a good teacher. With other classes, I'm not. I was a terrible teacher for my first block last semester, absolutely awful. I have a feeling I'll be a poor teacher for my first block this semester, although I'm not going down without a fight, detentions and referrals blazing. But I am a great teacher in my second block. My kids learn, understand, work with each other to help, and I am able to totally bend their behaviors to fit whatever it is we need to do in the classroom. I am undoubtedly in control, which is great, but I run that class by being strict about just a very few things and by being extremely, overbearingly positive all the time. I took Wong's idea of shaking kids hands at the door, every day. I love it. It make such an enormous difference. I treat those kids like human beings, and they respond fantastically. Whenever I try to treat my first block like human beings, however, they respond rather less humanely. It's so frustrating to see something work so well with one group of kids and so disastrously for another.

I just wonder how training for MTC could help teachers to pare down their rules and consequences and find those that are really and truly suitable for their teaching style. Maybe stress that not all classes will respond the same way, and that it could be helpful, or even necessary, to have one set of rules for one class and one set for another, especially when teaching different grades. Another reason why it's important for summer school teachers to observe other classrooms and, if it's at all possible, to make summer-school classes bigger.

Oh, and my fourth block. They like to sing when they work.

“his tongue no longer feels gross”

2008-01-10T22:53:00.001-06:00

Or "Above the waist you can do whatever you want"

What's better then you're bored and don't want to plan your lessons on a Thursday night in Leland?

I was struggling to sit down at the computer and crank out a worksheet or two, when I heard a sonorous voice in the office. Anna was sitting at her computer (not working, gmail chatting) as Ryan leaned against the doorframe, reading from a small book - "We were in the passenger seat, and his hands were on my lower back..." Ryan had found a journal of a high school girl in Indianola, from about 10 years ago, and was reading to us. It chronicled Kathy's relationship with Jason, from their early days when she was too afraid to hug him, to the point where his tongue no longer felt gross and beyond. At one point, we stopped, thinking they had finally done it, but realized, to our relief, that she had been writing about one of her friends. By the time the journal ends, she and Jason have been dating for over a year. On the last page, she tells us that she is still too scared to do it but really wants to, leaving us in unbearable suspense. Will she and Jason do it? We'll never know. Unless we decide to call one of the phone numbers in the back.

And then I blogged.

What should we do differently with MTC Summer School? [Assigned]

2008-01-07T13:35:00.001-06:00

The absolute biggest problem with summer school, as far as student learning is concerned, is that it is too short. Three weeks is an impossibly short time in which to teach an entire year's worth of material. I understand, from posts on other blogs, that this summer there will be one long session rather than two short ones, and this seems to be the best way to address the issue of time.

The second problem with summer school, as far as student learning is concerned, is a lack of rigor. It is impossible for first years to know what is expected of these students in their year-long classes and equally impossible to teach all of that in such a short time. Evaluations should be created by second year teachers, and should be modeled on the evaluations given in the regular classroom setting. The pre and post-test for the course should be a comprehensive final exam of everything that should be covered in a year-long course. Significant time and planning needs to go into the creation of these tests, and they should be reviewed by others who teach the same subject well before summer school starts. I am certainly guilty of not doing this during the past session, and it showed in our classroom. Moreover, more students need to fail summer school. They need that specter of fear as both a motivating factor and a sign that the summer school is as serious, or more so, than the regular classroom.

As far as teacher preparation, the second goal of summer school, is concerned, there are several things that could be done better. The first is that every first-year should be required to keep an observation log. They should be required to observe one lesson outside of their own classroom every day, and some of these observations should be in classrooms outside their own subject area. They should also be required to draft year-long master plans for what they plan to accomplish in their classroom placements. These plans should include topics to be covered, broken down at least by week, and should include all major assessments. Having teachers make these plans during the summer, reviewing them with second years, and then revising them with mentors during the second summer session would be an enormously helpful process.

Bigger classes, of course, are better for prepping teachers for the real world. While I have been luck with class sizes, having had a class of 12 last semester and one on just ten students during my first year, nothing has been as small as the 3-student pre-algebra class I co-taught this summer. Obviously, there is not a lot that MTC can do about the numbers enrolling, and as word gets out that summer school is getting more rigorous, enrollment may even drop. First years need to get a chance teaching in front of a bigger group, though, and if it can't be during summer school, it would have to be during TEAM or some other situation designed to get them doing the job in front of a group.

Another skill that many teachers lack coming in, and by many teachers, I mean me, is organization. The amount of organization required to be a teacher can often be overwhelming, and one way that summer school could help this is to have mock irate parents come in, demanding to see grades, work, lesson plans. Maybe tell the first years, or maybe just send someone in to each classroom after school, pretending to be an angry parent, and have them confront the teacher, wanting to see grades and work and demanding to know what has been done to help the child. Also, it would be good to videotape these mock confrontations and play some clips at the banquet.

More qualified Teachers?

2007-12-12T12:57:00.000-06:00

The New York Times seems to think so.

I wonder what the breakdown is for Mississippi?

Success

2007-11-26T22:52:00.000-06:00

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.

Things I will miss about Mississippi

2007-11-25T22:18:00.000-06:00

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.

Skiing

2007-11-25T17:40:00.000-06:00

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.

0-0-2

2007-11-15T23:12:00.001-06:00

2-2, 1-1. Out on PK's both nights.

Pasta Party

2007-11-12T21:48:00.001-06:00

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.

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.

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.

Understand?

2007-11-09T19:08:00.000-06:00

Are black teachers more effective than white teachers in reaching black students?

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/understand/

My favorite teacher

2007-11-08T20:30:00.000-06:00

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.

Recruit where? MTC

2007-11-08T19:34:00.000-06:00

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.

It's better to burn out, than to fade away...

2007-11-08T18:45:00.000-06:00

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.

Progress

2007-10-17T10:30:00.000-05:00

I just filed a referral. It was the third one that I've gotten back, although I think I wrote two others that I haven't seen back yet. It's mid-October. Just for fun, I looked at my bulging referral folder from last year. By this time last year, I had written about 30 referrals.

Why are you here?

2007-10-16T20:44:00.000-05:00

Today was our second day of soccer practice. We had a fairly hard day - not as bad as the two practices yesterday, but nothing too easy either. After practice, they took a knee, and I asked them a simple question - why are you here? I went first. I told them I had three reasons for being out there. I love them, I am passionate about the game, and I want to win. Some of their answers were really fantastic.

Well, you introduced me to soccer. Before, I never would have played it, but now I have a passion for it, I love playing, I love running people over, well, I just love running.

I'm out here because last year, we were 17 and 0, and I want to show some people that we can play. They're gonna see us coming and remember last year and say we're gonna beat them black boys again. But look, this is my motto this year - if you're not gonna hustle, don't waste your energy. We got to go to states and it's hard work that is going to get us there...

Coach, you introduced me to this game too. I used to watch it on TV and I thought those people were stupid, but then I came out here. At first, I wanted to run on the field, but then I started playing in goal, and I really like, well, playing in goal.

I'm out here, not just to win some games, but to go to state.

I love sports, and soccer is a good sport that I really like playing. I like playing soccer and being around people who, you know, like being around other people.

I'm out here 'cause my brother's out here.

I'm out here because I'm joining the marines next summer, and I want to be in the best shape I can. I want to be so that I can just run the entire game and never get tired. Also, I look over here and I see JH, my cousin, and over here is WB, my best friend, and here's NB, my brother. Just a lot of good, hardworking people that it's good to be around.

Now we just have to work on turning words into deeds. I've got to plan something really hard for tomorrrow.

An Unexpected Guest

2007-10-14T12:26:00.001-05:00

Sunday morning. Actually, Sunday noon. "Mike, um, Mr. G, there's a student here."

Anyone who read my failure story remembers KM. He been staying around here a few days now, with his old lady's folks, still looking for a job so he can get him a crib. He was on a walk with said old lady, in his red pajama pants and a red tank top. We chatted for a few minutes, I asked him to come by for dinner tomorrow, if he has the time. Told him that if he had a mower, I'd call him when the grass got long. We talked about jobs, the plaes he's been to look, and the responses he's gotten, all the same. We'll call you. And no calls.

I hope he comes back tomorrow for dinner. I'll try to cook something good.

Tale of Two Classes

2007-10-07T14:58:00.000-05:00

I just finished grading my algebra II quarter exams. I have two blocks of algebra II, first and second. Second block did very well, while first block failed rather miserably. This has been the pattern of the year so far, and I am looking for ways to correct it.

The problem is easy to explain. First block is bigger - 19 students compared to 12. First block is earlier in the morning. There are more students in first block who are unprepared for this class - at least 10 in first block who just had abysmal math skill coming in, compared to only 2 in second block who I would put in that category. But the biggest difference is classroom management. My CM plan has worked fantastically well in my second block. We spend 92 of 98 minutes on task and engaged, they work quietly, they help each other, and we generally get along swimmingly, except when I make catastrophic errors in judgment and try to do something fun, like Jeopardy, which backfired tremendously on Thursday.
In my first block, things just don't work. Half the class comes in late, everyday, about half of them with late bus passes and half without. Some students sleep, and almost all the rest are openly hostile towards me. This has gotten a little bit better, but is still a huge problem. They refuse to listen to me when I teach, and then want help on the quizzes and classwork. That is, of course, unless they refuse to do the classwork.
I'm going to try dividing the class into two parts tomorrow - those that want to work and those that do not want to work. Teach all of them, then let the ones who are good - I'll call them group A or something - practice, while doing something much more structured, and silent, with group B. I'm honestly not sure how it is going to work, but I don't want to let this class ruin my year. When I start to think things to myself like "they are all just a bunch of jerks" I know that they are getting to me and I am starting to lose it. So I've got to get them under control. Hopefully this will do the trick.

Also:
I got back from the football game Friday night around 12:30 AM. While waiting for players' parents to pick them up, I saw one of my soccer boys, who had showed up at the school to meet one of my soccer/football boys, since they were going back to his house. I pulled the ball out of the back of the truck and we played for about half an hour, the three of us. I suggested turning on the lights and going out to the field, but NB noted that the sprinklers were on and so we were forced to abandon that idea. We are going to have a great season this year. Maybe we'll manage to sneak a few wins as well.

Grading proofs is annoying. But actually, it isn't bad, because my geometry kids can actually write proofs now. Seriously, they give statements and reasons and do things logically. It's amazing. I'm super-proud of them. They work really hard (usually) and so they deserve to do well. But it takes me way too long to grade these. I even had to make up a rubric to help.

Proof that my kids can write proofs!

Get Ready

2007-10-02T21:57:00.000-05:00

Soccer season is coming. October 15th.

18 hours

2007-09-22T02:01:00.000-05:00

By now, I am pretty used to being Mr. G. There were times last year when it felt pretty strange, but I feel much more accustomed to my adult role this year. Every once in a while though, it still seems so strange. Like when I wake up at 1:30 AM on a dark bus and the first thing I hear is Ed's voice.
"Aw Mr. G, you slept good, didn't ya?"
Yeah. Why, was I snoring Ed?
Yeah, you was snoring.
Loud.
Naw, not loud, but you was snoring.

2007-09-20T17:55:00.000-05:00

what a gift. Imagine how much more of a difference that money would have made were it spent on a single school here. But I guess we nneed an elite class to rule the country and make the right decisions for the rest of us.

Yale? Where that be?

2007-09-17T22:38:00.000-05:00

So, I emailed admissions departments at a bunch of top tier schools. I'm basically trying to work my way down the list to get a bunch of information for my students. Today, I got my first packets, from Yale and Stanford. Yale even included a poster, which I promptly displayed in my classroom. Although I wouldn't always call my students the most observant bunch, they picked up on the poster right away.

Mr. G, you went to Yale?
No.
Then what you got that poster for? Who went to Yale.
One of you is going to Yale.
I ain't goin' to no Yale.
Sure you are. Or Harvard then.
Yale, where that be?
Connecticut.
Oh no, I ain't going to no Conneccticut.

But after school, I stopped one of my favorite students. I told her that I had gotten the poster for her. She said her mom wouldn't let her go that far away, but I tried to convince her. She took home the viewbook. And she is just a sophomore.

To any fellow MTC-ers reading this, or any other delta teachers, have you ever had a student go to a really top-tier school? Or ever heard of a student from the delta going to a top tier school?

One of the things our principal said he wanted was for some of our kids to be going to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. While these schools aren't for everyone, and while they may be elitist, perhaps even extremely so, I feel like the academicaly elite of my school deserve the chance to match minds with the academically elite of the rest of the country. But even my brightest kids, even if they made it into that sort of institution, I wonder if they would be too far behind. I just think of my freshman year classes at Williams and then think about what my kids leave my school knowing. That's a big part of what makes me push them. I can't stand when they complain about having too much work, or when they're lazy - they have so much catching up to do. Maybe I should start some sort of after-school club, the elite college club, and just take the best students I can find, do community service and ACT prep, alternating one every other weekend. Obviously find a non-MTC teacher to help out with it. So many ideas - so little time.

i thought about the army

2007-09-09T01:57:00.001-05:00

"well i thought about the army, dad said son you're f-cking high"

I don't know what I think about the services drawing as heavily as they do from poverty for recruits. Some consider it a form of conscription. Others see it as a great opportunity offered to those who have few others, with a strong dose of discipline being among the most important aspects. Do recruiters lie to these kids? I don't know. Do the kids leave recruiters' offices with a skewed conception of reality that is not corrected by recruiters? Yes.

Mr. G, I'm leaving for the guard in a couple of weeks.

Coach, I was thinking about joining the marines.

Well, at first they had assigned me to artillery, but then they put me in transport.

Coach, I'm gonna be all I can be.

I just know I don't want my kids to join up. I don't want my kids to be on the other end of an AK or an IED. Transport, to me, means roadside bombs. Marines means all the dignity of a military funeral.

Maybe I'd feel differently if I supported the war, or the idea of war, or patriotism, but I don't think I would. Those are questions for men to decide, not boys, and these are my boys. I know that they're almost men, and some of them have already gone through much more than I had before I was of legal age to enlist.

Maybe I'd feel differently if the kids who planned on enlisting were kids who could really benefit from it. When KM told me he was joining the guard, I was not upset. The kid needed the discipline, and he didn't have anything else. Nothing. He had such a strong personality about him, he could have gone through the military, gotten something out of it, and used that to forward himself. WE probably made the right decision too, although I didn't know him as well. But NB and DJ? Fantastic kids, never a behavior problem, probably not a referral between them in 4 years of high school, varsity athletes, (DJ 3 sports), supportive mothers. DJ has a 3.5 GPA. And he wants to go into the army?

I'm not going to stay in Mississippi forever, and once I leave, I don't want to be coming back for any military funerals.

SquashFest

2007-09-01T20:48:00.000-05:00

My senior year at Williams, I lived in what is called a co-op, an on-campus house that is like a stepping stone to real life. You still don't pay rent or utilities, and you have B&G to take care of things like shoveling snow, fixing the heat, and cleaning the bathrooms, but you do have to do things like buy and cook food (no dining halls), keep a kitchen neat, and not kill each other.

I lived in this house with some very special people. It just so happened that they were all female, and all vegetarian, but nevertheless, they were good people who enjoyed food, and, to various degrees, cooking. Cooking, like many other things, is something I really enjoy doing whenever I don't need to do it. I made such delicacies as blini (блины), pierogies, raspberry muffins, and hamburgers. For many of the meals, the six of us all made time to eat together, and often we even invited guests - students living elsewhere, faculty, and other friends.

On of our staple foods turned out to be butternut squash. Cheap, easy, and abundant. We bought 25 pounds for $10, fresh from the farm. Then, we bought 25 more pounds. And 25 more. Over the course of a few months, the six of us ate more than 75 pounds of squash. Usually, we just baked it on a cookie sheet, with a little brown sugar, maple syrup, or some raisins, but we had some more creative cooks who tried some great things. Jess made a delicious squash soup, and one night, Kate made an entire dinner with every course containing squash.

I managed to grow a small garden last spring, to help keep me sane while my classroom tumbled into the, um, pits of hell, and although it was mostly overgrown by the time I got back this summer, there were a surprising number of butternut squashes hidden among the waist-high grass that the landlady was so angry about. I gave most of them away last weekend at Oxford, but I kept a few for myself, and tonight cooked up a squash extravaganza. We made a cookbook with all the recipes we had used in the co-op, and so today I made myself a double-batch of Jess' Squash Soup and Kate's Squash Rolls. Delicious, delicious. I also made the one addition that was always impossible at Parsons - some pork chops on the grill. Then I started to miss everyone just a little, then I remembered that I saw almost all of them this summer, in New Orleans, New York, Leland, and Lake Champlain, and realized I am still a pretty lucky guy.

Scholarships, Fellowships

2007-08-29T21:53:00.001-05:00

I have some amazing students this year. I have one recite a list of the best colleges in the country at least once a week. I've been thinking about how to find opportunities for them, like the earthwatch fellowship one of Dan's students recieved last year. So, I made a new wiki page about it, to try to find things for my kids to apply for. I haven't got enough time right now to go through all of it, but this weekend or next weekend I'll try to put up link as I find them. Any suggestions or ideas anyone has would be appreciated. That's why, afterall, it's a wiki and not my own website - edit please!

Mr. G, you're not asleep?

2007-08-28T22:13:00.000-05:00

So, about an hour ago, my phone rang, but I missed it. A 662 number meant a teacher or student. I called back, and it was DW. "Hey Mr. G." Hi DW "Hey, uh, hey, uh, I wanted to switch my club from, uh, modeling squad to, uh, drama" Ok "Did you turn in that paper yet?" Yes, but we can probably change it tomorrow. "Ok" Click.

What was that all about? Couldn't we have dealt with that just fine tomorrow? Kids rarely call for the reasosn they say they call, that was lisa's sage comment. Sure enough, five minutes ago, it rings again.

"Mr. G? You're not asleep?" No, DW, I'm not. "Oh, ok. How do you find the roots? Do you just make x zero and then find y?" No, you have to set y equal to zero, and then you'll get an equation with only x's in it, which you can solve with the quadratic formula or factoring, once it's in standard form. "So I got to subtract from both sides?" What's the problem? "I'm trying to do number sixteen. y = 4x^2 + 4x + 2" So, put in 0 for y. Then it's in standard form, right? "Yeah, and then I can just use the quadratic equation?" Right, but be careful, that one has complex roots. "Yeah, I see that. Alright Mr. G." Alright DW. I won't be going to bed anytime soon, so call back if you have more questions. "Alright."

In my mind, I'm going to Carolina..

2007-08-27T13:22:00.000-05:00

$10,000 signing bonus for teaching Algebra I?

They need teachers in NC, and elsewhere.

In a sense, NCLB might actually be doing a good thing here. It seems to have shifted the demand curve for teachers upwards and increased what districts are willing to pay to get them. Perhaps, finally, we are on the way towards offering teachers salaries that are commensurate with the vital role that they play in our society. After all, you get what you pay for.

Next time...

2007-08-26T23:28:00.001-05:00

Things I should blog about in the future, when sleep is less precious:

The upcoming soccer season.
The wonder of podcasts.
Feeling old.
Food.

Things I need to do:
Get a lawnmower.
Mow the lawn.
Clean the porch.
DO LAUNDRY.
Deal with that interest at ole miss.
Sign my award letter.
Buy stamps.
And many more.

Check it

2007-08-23T19:30:00.000-05:00

So, I managed to turn it around. It wasn't a bad day. Fourth block, well, they didn't academically rock the world, and the lesson was certainly not fun, but they got better. They are still struggling with proofs, but we made some headway, which was great. And they are just good kids. I am glad I wrote that first blog, because it let me get a lot of that out of my system. It's so important to stay positive. So important. It can be hard though - almost as hard as keeping up with grading and planning. Not quite though. Plus, the kid who walked out of my class - three days at home. Move on to Friday.

Anatomy of a Bad Day

2007-08-23T19:28:00.000-05:00

The first one of the year.
Last night. Came home from football practice. Made daily quizzes for today. Found a worksheet for Algebra II on complex numbers. Outlined (in my mind) lecture and notes. Ate hot dogs and generic cinnimon toast crunch for dinner. Forgot to make a sandwich for lunch.

6:00- 6:40 AM
Attempted to set a new record for snooze button hits in a single morning.

7:10 AM - left for school.
7:32 AM - arrived at school.

8 AM - FIrst block began. 6 students were tardy. All students were talkative. Consequences were applied unevenly. Detentions that should have been handed out were not. Things contnued to get worse. Class ended with a lecture about respect.

9:43 - Second Block begins. Tardy bell rang early, and so 4 or 5 students were tardy. Just after I sent them away to get a pass, they made an announcement to allow all students into class at that point. So they came back, and we finally got started. Most students were excellently behaved during the daily quiz. One student was working on work for another class. I took the work and told him he could get it back at the end of class. Then, I told him to get out a sheet of paper to take notes after he finished the quiz. He claimed not to have any paper, so I assigned him detention and gave him some paper. He took the paper and detention slip and walked out of class. I sent the referral down a few minutes later. When the office called down and asked for his books, one student, KP, noted that he hadn't even realized that the student had gotten up and walked out of class. So I guess, at least I was able to handle it without it becoming a big enough deal to distract him from his work. However, when the bell rang, he got up and walked out without being dismissed, so he has a detention slip waiting for him when he comes back tomorrow.

11:21 - FAP starts and we head to lunch. Disaster in the hall. Loud, shouting. Refusal to get in line. The lunch looked so bad that I didn't get any. The trip back from lunch was worse. At least BC didn't find the girls that he refers to, daily, as the Big Booty Patrol. But there was shouting, disrespect. When we got into the classroom things were worse. Shouting, jumping around, hitting each other, going through each other's things... Chaos. Next person who leaves their seat will find themselves in detention. Things improved. They just left now, with BC telling the class that he is just going to take a masturbation break. No kidding. So now it's my planning period. I have to re-plan for geometry, because apart from that quiz, I'm not sure where we are going. It's really hard to teach proofs. I'm a bit stuck here. I'm not sure what, exactly, it is that they are supposed to have mastered, since writings proofs is such a huge undertaking, I can't expect them to master it all at once. So I'll get on that. But still, a bad day this year is not nearly as frustrating as a bad day last year. I'm not going to let this year descend into the pits of hell, which is an apt description, borrowed from another second-year, of the first year.

losers

2007-08-21T20:19:00.000-05:00

How do you coach a bunch of losers? This was the question coach asked today, and I'm still wondering.

funny

2007-08-15T16:30:00.000-05:00

Quiz: Solve for x: ax + by = c

Response: x may equal anything because there is no numbers to help sorry for the x

Chess Club

2007-08-15T11:43:00.000-05:00

Today during homeroom, I suffered my first loss in chess to a student. It was great. I'm going to start a chess club.

Ben suggested that we write an entry about how the begining of this year is different from the start of last year. First, let me say how they are the same. I am exhausted, and was equally exhausted this time last year. I am not less exhausted the second time around. I'm just doing more.

Last year at this time, I was teaching 3 classes (2 preps), plus the MTC work. This year, in addition to all of that, I'm coaching football and about to start a chess club. So I'm still as exhausted, if not more exhausted. This year, though, I'm just a little more efficient, and more of the work that I do actually seems to have some sort of result.

I spent more time this year on rules and procedures, although not quite intentionally. I planned to do a day and a half of rules and procedures, but once I had written up all my procedures, I realized it was going to take longer. I let that take the whole first day, half the second day, half the third, and probably 10 minutes of the fourth and fifth. There was a lot of repetition, which was great, because I had new students continually showing up for the class. In fact, today, on the eighth day of school, I had another student show up for my Algebra II class. She had been out of town, in Kansas. But because the new students kept arriving, it gave me a good excuse to review rules and procedures, without the kids feeling like I thought they were stupid.

I've enjoyed my kids so much more. Part of it is knowing them, and knowing how to deal with them and talk to them. I didn't realize that I had even gained anything in this regard until I started talking to a fellow MTC-er, a first year teaching in my school, who said she just doesn't know how to talk to the kids, not in class, but in the cafeteria, the hallway, wal-mart, etc. As we were talking, I realized that I did know how to do that, and did it unconciously all the time. My favorite parts of the day are often interactions I have in the hallway or cafeteria with students or former students or kids who have never taken my class but who know me somehow. It's definitely something I could not do last year.

Plus, Big Delta is run so much better this year. The new head principal, new associate principal on my campus, and assistant principal back from surgery this year have made all the difference. The climate is changing, slowly. Right now, all we have is a better run jail, but I can feel that we are going to start running school soon. No fights, I've written one referral, and I hand out detentions like candy for the smallest infractions. No homework, no problem, here's your detention. No textbook, no problem...

The biggest difference, though, is that I am happy. I love my kids. I like my job. I had a great summer at home and was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time with a lot of people who are very important to me. If I say any more about being happy, though, I might jinx myself. I'm just exhausted.

Today

2007-08-13T22:08:00.000-05:00

Today -
I was at school for 13 hours.
We had a fire drill.
I found out a student from my school was shot over the weekend and is in ICU.
A student gave me his demo cd, then called me to see how I liked it.
I ate a little debbie oatmeal cream pie (370 calories, each).
The temperature was over 100 F for the fourth day in a row.
I taught math.
I had an overwhelming response to a facebook-wide petition for pen-pals for my students. I'm thinking about starting a school-wide pen-pal project. I'll start by just using my homeroom students as a pilot, and see how that goes.
I got tired.
and soon to come... I went to sleep.

ode to a principal

2007-08-07T20:20:00.000-05:00

"we aren't doing anything but running a better-run jail. can we be satisfied with that? no, we need to be running a school. I can't wait to be up there at that graduation, kid walking across the stage, they saying "...with a scholarship from harvard..." And that's for the mind, not because he can knock someone out."
I love my principal.

Granted, we are doing a better job running our jail, so far, than we did last year. It's only been two days though. But the way that man talks, he makes you feel some passion for the job. He has that passion.

I know I'm asking a lot. But I'm at that point in my life, where I'm thinking, when I come to judgement and the lord show me a child, I want to say I did everything I could for that child, and if he didn't come right, wasn't nothing could have been done for that child.

He must have been a heck of a coach. He is just the kind of guy that gets things done. I won't write any more, because I need to be the kind of guy who gets things done too, right now.

First Day

2007-08-06T20:30:00.000-05:00

One down, 179 to go.

The first day went well, but boy, was it exhausting. What with football practice and all, I was on my feet for a full twelve hours. I need to do a little more Ben Guest style teaching, otherwise I'll fall out, as the kids say. But if I write any more I'll be procrastinating; I've got things to do.

Pause. And begin again.

2007-08-01T20:40:00.000-05:00

What Is the Beautiful?

The narrowing line.
Walking on the burning ground.
The ledges of stone.
Owlfish wading near the horizon.
Unrest in the outer districts.

Pause.

And begin again.
Needles through the eye.
Bodies cracked open like nuts.
Must have a place.
Dog has a place.

Pause.

And begin again.
Tents in the sultry weather.
Rifles hate holds.
Who is right?
Was Christ?
Is it wrong to love all men?

Pause.

And begin again.
Contagion of murder.
But the small whip hits back.
This is my life, Caesar.
I think it is good to live.

Pause.

And begin again.
Perhaps the shapes will open.
Will flying fly?
Will singing have a song?
Will the shapes of evil fall?
Will the lives of men grow clean?
Will the power be for good?
Will the power of man find its sun?
Will the power of man flame as a sun?
Will the power of man turn against death?
Who is right?
Is war?

Pause.

And begin again.
A narrow line.
Walking on the beautiful ground.
A ledge of fire.
It would take little to be free.
That no man hate another man,
Because he is black;
Because he is yellow;
Or because he is English;
Or German;
Or rich;
Or poor;

Because we are everyman.

Pause.

And begin again.
It would take little to be free.
That no man live at the expense of another.
Because no man can own what belongs to all.
Because no man can kill what all must use.
Because no man can lie when all men are betrayed.
Because no man can hate when all are hated.

And begin again.
I know that the shapes will opne.
Flying will fly, and singing will sing.
Because the only power of man is in good.
And all evil shall fail.
Because evil does not work,
Because the white man and the black man,
The Englishman and the German,
Are not real things.
They are only pictures of things.
Their shapes, like the shapes of the tree
And the flower, have no lives in names or signs;
They are their lives, and the real is in them.
And what is real shall always have life.

Pause.

I believe in the truth.
I believe that every good thought I have,
All men shall have.
I believe that what is best in me,
Shall be found in every man.
I believe that only the beautiful
Shall survive on the earth.

I believe that the perfect shape of everything
Has been prepared;
And, that we do not fit our own
Is of little consequence.
Man beckons to man on this terrible road.
I believe that we are going into the darkness now;
Hundreds of years will pass before the light
Shines over the world of all men . . .
And I am blinded by its splendor.

Pause.

And begin again.

- Kenneth Patchen

That is one of my favorite poems, from Patchen's 1943 book Cloth of the Tempest. I cite it here without permission, but with the certainty that such beauty should be shared, and that the author would probably not mind too much.

Here I am at a new begining, trying to pause and take stock in where I am, where I'm coming from, where I'm heading. I feel strangely optimistic. God, what a job we have. I don't think I can fully explain how just completely in awe I am of my job at the moment. At this moment, I'm sure I couldn't have a more worthwhile job anywhere. It's hard, and perhaps we are going into the darkness now, but I want to completely give myself over to it all. I want to suceed this year, more than I have ever wanted anything before. It's frightening, but if I can do this, if I can get this right, I can do anything. And I will do it. I may not have a life while doing it, but I'll get it done. Math is alright, but let me love these kids through math, let me show them beauty.

State Test Scores

2007-07-30T17:59:00.001-05:00

88% passing.

Success - at last

2007-07-27T18:42:00.000-05:00

Success Story
Algebra two, spring semester. C was one of seven seniors in that class. She was also one of the four pregnant girls. She is the only student I have known in Mississippi to have gotten an abortion. C graduated. She is my success story.
In February, C wrote me a note. "I will stay after school and do anything", she said "math is my downfall and I plan to march in May." C was so far behind in math that I would have been shocked before I got to the delta. No sense of how to deal with negative numbers or fractions and no sense of what it meant to solve even the simplest linear equations. I am still not sure how much she knows about logarithms and quadratic equations, but she knows an awful lot about persistence.
When she wrote me that note, she was failing with a low sixty. She slept through class and did not pay attention, but rarely talked and was never rude. I never could completely blame her for not paying attention, even though it frustrated me enormously. The material, as presented in class, was so far over her head that asking her to pay attention was be like asking me to pay attention to a presentation on the intricacies of Chinese grammar. But she got better. When I'd write something on the board and ask her what it is, her stock answer was always "A hot mess." But when she came after school, I realized that she had started to at least take notes on the hot mess, even if she didn't understand it, and she began to come ready with questions.
C came to see me after school almost every day. We worked and worked, going over imaginary numbers for what seemed like forever. These sessions were usually as frustrating for me as they were for her, because things just never seemed to click. By eighteen, if some basic things haven't clicked already, there is nothing that I can do in a few months to make them click. Just keep on plodding away at them until they become habit. We often lost the why of the math, which hurt to give up, but we eventually got the how, enough so that she had moved herself within touching distance of passing as the end of the year rolled around.
That was when I started Senior Saturdays. We met at McDonald's, every Saturday that I did not have to go up to Oxford, from nine until the last of them left. I never left before noon, and often later. C came every Saturday. It seemed like she stayed after school and made it on Saturdays not because of her parents but rather in spite of them. Her mother was always calling her, telling her she had to come home for this or that or that she had to pick her up at a certain time, and no other. C, however, thought that her mother and I would get along just fine. "You two should go out" she told me one day, "she real cute." I told her, of course, that I wasn't interested, but she continued "Why not? She real young. Aw, you must not like black girls." Eventually, however, I was able to assure C that my lack of interest had nothing to do with race, and that I was sure her momma was very nice, but that the demands of teaching left little time for a relationship.
C passed. She also passed Advanced Algebra and Trig, which she was taking simultaneously and which we worked on sometimes. She even passed Econ, and so in May, she marched. She probably won't remember anything about the quadratic formula or imaginary numbers, but she will remember that she worked really hard, and that she was successful. If I had not helped her, she would have failed. I guess there is a measure of success in that.

Assigned Blog #2

2007-06-26T16:57:00.000-05:00

Instructional Goals

During summer school, two of my objectives were as follows:
1)Students will multiply and divide exponential expressions and
2)Students will simplify square roots.
As per the assignment, one of these was met successfully and one less successfully. It does not take a genius to imagine which.
After a fairly short explanation, the students were quite capable of using exponent rules to perform multiplication and division. This process includes only one step and students have only a few things to consider in their minds before getting started. One reason we were more successful with this goal was simply that it was easier. Another, is that at least some of my students began to actually see why it has to be true. By expanding exponents and showing repeated multiplication, my students could look back at the definition of exponents and see that as long as they accepted this definition, the rules must be true. Maybe I ought to prove everything next year, and tell my kids they will have to reproduce certain proofs on the test. Because when you know that something must be true, you don't guess, you don't have to ask yourself whether you multiply or add, or whether your base multiplies too or just your exponent. You don't have to memorize anything, although you will. Also, using induction to allow students to discover these rules for themselves helped them to get a better grasp of what is going on.
Teaching students to simplify square roots was much more difficult and less successful. Partially, this is due to the increased complication of the task. There are more steps, and the process is less intuitive, but there are some obvious things I could have done differently that would have helped my students be more successful. I tried to rush through this lesson because of time constraints but if I did not have enough time to teach it well, I ought not to have taught it at all. What I should have done was illustrate why the process we were working on has to occur as it does, why root eight must equal two root two. Unfortunately, illuminating such connections requires me to spend more time talking, writing on the board, guiding through handouts, or something equally preachy. I have not yet been able to develop an inductive strategy to meet this objective, nor have I been able to find one on the internet. Working with decimal approximations on the calculator would be one way to tackle such a problem, but it would require the belief that the calculator is magical and always correct. I try very hard to dismantle the calculator myth in my classroom, so such an exercise would be highly counter-productive.

Differentiated learning in a classroom of three students just happens. It becomes obvious very quickly though informal assessment which students are not understanding the material, and the plans change accordingly. It is more difficult with more teachers, because each teacher might not see what the other teachers see, so communication is essential. Differentiation in the classroom took place in the form of assigning different students different problems, and also in questioning, when different students were asked questions relating to different depths of understanding.

In the future, to better address the learning needs of my students, I think it is important to seek out inductive strategies when possible, and to be patient and avoid rushing students. I need to be always committed to the vision of mathematics as a unified, interconnected web of knowledge and never forget that it cannot be understood piecemeal.

One of many

2007-06-20T00:56:00.000-05:00

My Failure Story

One of Many

Preface:

When I began thinking about a “failure story,” I thought of Hank Bounds and his assertion that every child who is a behavior problem in your class is a result of a failure in your classroom management. In fact, he never said exactly those words but that was what I heard, at a time when I felt decidedly low about my classroom, the behaviors that I had allowed myself to tolerate, and the effects that my classroom management had on my students. I think he was right. Even the worst students I had, the absolute classroom terrors, the pregnant gang-banging girls, the bipolar ones, the sleepers, shouters, paper-throwers, and so on and so forth, each of them showed me on more than one occasion that they still carried within them a kernel of childhood, the desire to do well, to please, to succeed. They wanted to be successful, and at the times when they wanted it, I did not have the vision, the energy, or the clarity to show them a path to get where they wanted to be. Very few people would choose the lives that my kids are choosing for themselves every day, if they knew anything else, if they knew how to make that choice of something different, but they don’t know how to make that choice.

So what story do I settle on? Dominique, who I lost from day one? Ebony, who I lost from day two? Kendra, who I thought had gone for good only to return from alternative school just in time to disrupt final preparations for state testing. Tim Kelly, who cost himself his place in the tenth grade by cheating on his algebra final? Or should I choose my best students, whom I failed equally but in different ways. Keyera will still, if there is any justice in the world, go to college. Not community college, but a challenging, academic school. Millsapps? But if that girl does not get in to one of the elite educational institutions in the country in three years, I will have failed her too. I already did, by not challenging her enough, by not cutting through the mess and finding a way to teach her something stimulating. In the end, although I failed all of my students in one way or another, I can probably only write this story about Keith.

Keith

Keith sat in the second row. He survived the exodus to pre-algebra, and remained in my class when nearly half my students were sent elsewhere for a remedial course in adding integers. His hair was always, well, rather unkempt, or else done in an entirely ridiculous manner. There was very little that was serious about Keith, but the pink beads hanging down from the beads, or the ridiculous halfro that he often sported were especially absurd. But they always managed, along with the rainbow headband and extra small female jacket, to get someone’s attention, and that was enough to light up his entire face with that equally absurd grin, so absurd that I struggled to keep my own smile encased within stern, teacher lips. That was all the boy ever needed, was attention.

Keith thought everything was funny, and would disrupt class in most ways he could, if he wasn’t asleep. One incident stands out, in which I take the blame. As the class was commenting about my the ever-present wrinkles in my pants, Keith, upon waking from a nap, uttered something to another student, disguised by his habitual, yet sleep-enhanced mumbling. Apparently, as he told me later, he said something about someone’s Dickies. You can imagine what I heard, and I pulled out the referral. As I began to realize my mistake, it was much too late, and Keith had already huffed and puffed himself up into a storm. I said, Keith, if you did not say what I think you said, tell me what it is you did say and we’ll discuss it after class. No, you think you heard me say something, you go on and write it down there and send me outta here. I want to go down to the office. Give me some days at the house, I don’t need to be back here no more. And so on, so off he went.

Hope

Keith’s expertise was slope. He could graph a line better than any student in my fourth block, finding the intercept, using the rise and the run, and making great lines. He was actually quite good at transforming equations into slope-intercept form as well as calculating the slope from a graph. He showed the entire class how to do it. There were plenty of concepts he struggled with, and some that he didn’t even bother to struggle with. I remember when he stayed after school, for an entire week. One day I called him to the board to explain something the class was struggling with, and heard the following conversation:

Keith, how you be knowin how to do all that stuff.

We did it after school the other day.

You be stayin after school? Who else be stayin up in here.

Just me and Mr. G. It be crunk though.

I took him home, to the little house on the end of central street, squat and square and very yellow. As we drove down the road towards his house, I thought I smelled a whiff of marijuana. You smell that, Keith asked. That’s my antie’s house. She always be smokin up in there. Sure enough, as we eased toward the white house on the left, the aroma became stronger and then faded as we moved on, bumping past the potholes and over the train tracks. His dad, all 300 pound of him, was sitting on the porch, or rather the concrete area under a small awning in front of the little yellow house, that performed all the functions of a porch. He sat, paper-bagged bottle in hand, waiting. As his son clambered out of the truck and past him, into the house, it became obvious that he was waiting not for his son, but for something much more elusive. He had been waiting a long time, and six months later, when I stopped by to check on Keith, long after he had dropped out of school, his father was still on the porch, still waiting.

Gone

Keith dropped out in October. He had already been suspended three times. He was still failing my class, but getting closer. During my first block class (Keith belonged in my fourth block) he knocked on my classroom door. I saw him standing there, his sheepish grin somehow absent as he held out his textbook and his withdrawal slip. He did not say anything. I took the book, and signed the slip. Made sure that he had my number, in case he needed anything, in case he needed help with the GED he has insisted so many times he was going to embark upon. I took a moment to collect myself before I re-entered the chaos of first block, and had to wipe away a stray tear. I never should have signed that slip.

What could I have done for Keith? I failed Keith in the same way I failed too many of my students, by not creating a classroom environment designed for success. I failed Keith with inconsistencies. I could have given him more progress reports, so he could see the huge improvements that I saw him making. I could have called his mother more, coerced him to stay after school more often. I could have done so much for Keith, he was crying out for attention, for love, for anyone to help him do right. He never wanted the eternal waiting of his father.

Epilogue – Touched down in the land of the delta blues

It was fantastic to be home for Christmas. After seven lonely months in Mississippi, I never appreciated more the love and support that I have from so many people at home. Without any understanding of god, I still felt blessed, for if there has ever been anything to be supernaturally thankful for, it is a plentiful group of people who love each other.

When my flight touched down in Memphis, I turned on my cell phone, a ritual that is still new to me. A few moments later I heard the text message chimes, and wondered who could be texting me. Since this story is all about Keith, the answer must be obvious.

Wat up mr. G this keith i was just textin to mess wit you since i aint heard from you in a min...3341234 this my number if you want to call in holla.

That was the first message. In the second, he explained that he would be joining up with the national guard in a few weeks. I called him the next day, and we tried to set up a time to get lunch, but it never worked out.

As the months passed, I did not hear from Keith, and the number he had given me, unsurprisingly, was soon disconnected, so that I had no way of getting in touch with him. I heard that he had not gone into the guard; rumors suggested that he had possibly joined job corps. So one day I went down to central street. Keith's father was still waiting one the porch, and was glad to see me. Remembered the truck. No, Keith had not joined the guard, no, he had not joined job corps. He was just trying to stay out of trouble. Was he succeeding, I asked. No, not really. He's looking for a job, but has not been looking too hard. Here's his cell phone number; I know he'd like to hear from you. On my way back to Leland, I thought I saw someone waving to me in an old Blazer when I stopped at the four-way. I wasn't sure, but the Blazer followed me through the two turns to my house, and as I got out of the truck, I realized it was Keith, with his absurd grin and do-rag covering his ridiculous hair, and my face lit up. I just stopped by your house. I know, my momma called and said you was there. I gotta go drop my sister off now. This where you stay? Yeah, this is where I stay. Aight, well, I'll holla at you some time. Ok Keith, I got your number, I'll give you a call. We still haven't managed to get lunch. But I have the number and if it changes, I always know where he lives. So I hope we'll get to sit down and talk, and maybe he can muster up some sort of initiative, some sort of drive. I just don't want to imagine that absurd smile extinguished behind a paper-bagged bottle, on a porch that isn't a porch, waiting for a future that has already come and gone.

Ready, Set...

2007-06-17T13:14:00.000-05:00

Ben suggested that we should post about something we wished we had done before the school year started. I've got a long list, both of things I wished I had and had not done.

Organization - Clear, detailed procedures for my students and myself.
My most challanging problem last year was organization, which, based on the way I had made it through college, nevermind my own experiences as a student in high school, should not have been surprising. Before I started the year, I needed to have better procedures, that were much more thought out and thought through, both procedures for what the students would do and for what I would do. Where would I put the daily attendance list when it showed up at lunch, during 3rd or 4th block, or the next morning (that is, if it showed up at all)? What would I do with the do not admit list? How would I keep track of attendance in my own classroom? How would I record disciplinary infractions, and how would I inform students of consequences? How would I communicate grades with parents, and when would I have time to grade all the crap that I assigned? Would I grade at home or at school? Even simple things, like what I expected when I asked the class a question, were unclear. So I wish that before school started last year, I had set these ideas out very clearly, in writing, and played them through a few times in my head, then went to a second year and gone through all of them with the second year, just to get an idea of what is reasonable and what is not. A second year from my district would have been ideal, but since I was the first in my district, that was not possible.

My room
I wish I had taken more time to make my room an inviting place for students. I don't mean a circus, but I do mean clean, neat, bright colors. Encouraging slogans or posters. Lots of math. Things that I find exciting and interesting, so that if my students ask me about them, I can share some of my passion for other subjects, even if they are not math-related. In this regard, I would especially like to have some things posted that reflect the world outside of the town in which I taught. A world map. Posters of Russia, Africa, South America, anywhere but the delta, memphis, or chicago. College posters of both local and elite institutions. I have students who could go to Williams, Harvard, Standford, etc. Or at least Amherst. They need to know these places exist, and about the doors that they could open for a delta kid. This sounds extraordinarily elitist, maybe I am. But Delta State and Valley do not provide the kind of education my kids deserve. The fact that I was told by someone at Valley that I should teach there after I finish MTC illustrates exactly why my students deserve better than that. A continuation of the high school experience is not what they all need - although some of them certainly do. My room also needs to be neat, which means better organization, and also better procedures about leaving the room, eating, etc.

My Sanity
I wish that, before the year had started, I had set some limits for myself. Regarding, for example, grading. Next year, I plan to do all my grading at school. I have a 98 minute planning period. I am only going to allow myself to take home grading on days when, for one reason or another (covering another teacher's class, school pictures, the extravaganza, meetings, general chaos) I do not have a planning period. The sheer amount of grading I accumulated and did not deal with immediately terrified me as it piled up in my classroom, backpack, dining room, living room, and bedroom. It will all stay at school next year, organized in folders.

Discipline
I wish I had known something about my school's discipline policy before I started. I also wish that the school offered school-wide, supervised detention. But that won't happen.

Planning
I wish that I had planned ahead more. Actually, as I recall, I did plan ahead, but was completely shocked by incompetent my students were at basic mathematical operations. Few of them were actually unintelligent, but fluidity in mathematical operations was somethinng that alluded them, so I had to throw out all my planning on the first day, since it assumed that my students could add and subtract fractions, and integers. Assume nothing.

Like anything you do the first time, there are still a million other things I think I could have done better, but that's why I'm glad it's a two year program. Just a year here and I would feel completely unsatisfied.

Summer School Goals

2007-06-14T15:34:00.000-05:00

What can I possibly teach this group of students tomorrow / next week / next month? This question has been one that troubled me throughout the year, and all too often I found myself asking about tomorrow rather than thinking as far ahead as I would like, but with summer school, things have been a little easier.

I have four students this summer. Some failed pre-algebra, some failed transitions to algebra. Luckily for me, and unluckily for the students, the pre-algebra and transitions are in fact the same course. So is eighth grade math. And seventh grade math. Most of sixth grade is devoted to the same concepts as well, which are then re-taught throughout the high school math sequence.

This is not just a rant about the absurdity of the system (though such absurdity is significant). If affects the goals that I choose for my students. These are not always the objectives I write on my lesson plan and on the board. I do that because I get observed. The goals that I have been trying to chose for my students involve deeper levels of learning, connectivity and understanding than most of the objectives in the frameworks target.

These goals are much more appropriate for my students (in terms of development, past mathematical experiences, and student needs). Recognize patterns. See mathematics as something that stems from fundamental truths about the way that numbers interact, and begin to see that the rules governing these interactions are not arbitrary, that in fact numbers could come together no other way. Build confidence. Create a framework of language that will allow each student to process thoughts about math in logical ways. My students have been "taught" the tricks of math so many times. They've been told that when they multiply exponents they add the exponents, and other equally nonsensical things, but they do not see the connections, they do not see the why, and so the rules all get jumbled when there are no reasons supporting them.

My instructional strategies so far have been very different than they were last summer, and throughout last year. Last year, my goal was to survive. This year, I have loftier ambitions. I have a vision of math as I want them to see it. To that end, I have changed the way that I speak and give instructions. I pay very close attention to the language that I use, defining and re-defining math terminology, and making my instructions much clearer and more specific. I try to provide more definite structure to my lessons, and place enormous stress on the continuity of ideas, the connectivity of concepts, and the multiple paths to solutions. I stopped saying the word "answer" so that I can always be sure that both I and the students know what it is we are talking about. We are never trying to find the answer to a math problem, we are always trying to find something, and if we cannot name that thing for which we are searching, we may never recognize it when we find it.

One inductive strategy that I created this summer was used to introduce exponent rules. I gave students several products and quotients of exponential expressions to simplify, without mentioning the exponents rules, and offered them "clues" from a clue jar to help them solve the problems. The clues showed similar products and quotients that had been simplified correctly, and the students were left to deduce the rules for themselves. The activity was appropriate in that it forced all my students to think and will help them remember the exponent rules much better in the future. However, it did not do enough to make these rules more than simply rules, even though they may be more memorable since they discovered them themselves. I followed the activity up with a formal definition of the rules and an explanation of the symbolic language used in the definition, then a lecture and discussion about why the rules, especially the multiplication rule, must be true as long as we understand the definition of exponents. At that point, it was obvious that the definition of exponents had not completely sunk in yet, but I think that may be something I'll have to keep plugging away at.

Although not exactly relevant to the assignment, I feel I ought to mention confidence. Confidence in a summer school class is bound to be low. Everyone failed regular class. Yet confidence is essential to learning, and I feel that it is my responsibility as a teacher to build the confidence of my students back up, and so I've made that one of my goals. We're on the right track on that one, but it comes slowly, and I hope that our first round of quizzes will not crush that.

I haven't yet spoken much about how to assess these goals, mostly because that is a question that I am still struggling with. But I'm working on it.

Last Day

2007-05-24T22:11:00.000-05:00

I took a lot of pictures of my kids today. Leave a comment with an email address and I'll be more than willing to share them with you, but I probably ought not to post them in such a public place.

So close

2007-05-15T18:29:00.000-05:00

Terrified that next year might not be any better. I'm going to have to work my ass off this summer to make sure that it will be. Now I just have to get my seniors through this exam and out the door. I hope they make it. One or two might not, which is really hard for me. And hard for them too, I'm sure. I've spent so much time working with them, trying to get them caught up, making sure they make up work. I've stayed after school, met them at McDonald's on Saturday mornings, at Tabbs on weeknights with a platter of sweet potato fries, during my planning period, during homeroom. I just hope it's enough. I don't like having so much power.

My favorite announcement of the year

2007-05-09T21:27:00.000-05:00

Please pardon the interruption. Some of you have been very disrespectful to your teachers lately. If you are disrespectful to your teachers, I'll send you home. If you are disrespectful to your fellow students, I'll send you home. If you are disrespectful to any of the staff, I'll send you home. I just gave out 20 days at the house. I've got a stack of referrals and a new box of pens, and I will send you home.

(Students: Man, Ms. Principal come back crazier than ever. She'll do it too, she be sending people home for nothing)

Pardon the interruption again. Seniors: you have not graduated yet. If you think you don't have to follow the rules any more, I'll give you some days at the house too, and you won't graduate. You are not certified yet, and if you decide you don't have to follow school procedures any more, I'll send you home.

I paraphrase, of course, but these were the two best announcements I've heard all year. Maybe that says a little about how my attitude as a teacher has changed. At the beginning of the year I don't think I understood how important it is that the students have someone to be terrified of. I even made a student terrified of me when I told him I'd break his middle finger if he insisted on continuing to raise it in the direction of other students. He tried me on it, too, and I gave it a pretty good twist. Someone suggested I'd get fired for that up north... they were probably right.

annie are you ok

2007-05-03T01:59:00.000-05:00

My freshman year in college, I had a 10 am physics class. Not early, but early enough for college. For williams, it was a big class, 35 or 40 students, and when the clock hit 10 and it was time for class to start, the prof would always push a little button and we would all hear the opening riff of "smooth criminal." He had it set up to fade out after about 5 or 6 seconds, well before "she came in through the window, to the sound of a creshendo" It was the perfect start to class, and by the time it had faded, everyone knew what was going on, namely, physics. When class ended, he pushed his hidden button somewhere, and the song started up again. Every once in a while he would vary the song, if there was another song that was perhaps more relevant to what we were doing, but from september through january, just about every class, I heard those same opening few notes.

This is something I'd like to try for next year. With less technology, and less time between classes, I wouldn't be able to work it exactly the same, but I think I could at least start, if not end class with it. Or end my bellringer with it, because when the music stops, that's when I need the focus on me, to try to teach something, anything,before I lose them.

Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth

2007-04-28T11:40:00.001-05:00

What a b....

The cluster method was what I taught FM after school - it made so much more sense to him than any other way he had learned this stuff before, as I said in my mental math post. Obviously, as the woman says, the textbooks seem a little absurd, but really they are no more absurd than the insistence that all students use the standard algorithm (which she continues to call the most efficient, least error-prone, based on what evidence I wonder?) to the exclusion of all others. Certainly, it is often the best algorithm for multiplying five or six numbers by hand, but when will such a skill be neccessary or even useful? As far as division goes, until I started teaching I had used long division maybe once or twice in eight years. Clustering in division problems makes so much more sense.

Furthermore, the fact that this is being debated as the part of standard 4th and 5th grade math curriculum is almost as ridiculous as the fact that I am teaching in to high school freshmen. Whole number multiplication and division should be mastered by the end of third grade. Students should be able to compute fluently in decimals and fractions by the end of fifth grade, and in sixth grade should begin a two year course in algebra I. In 8th grade they should take geometry, algebra II in ninth grade, Precalc and Trig as sophomores, calc as juniors (basic single variable derivitive and integral calculus) and some elective their senior year, whether it be a serious statistics course, linear algebra, or multivariable calculus. Maybe I'm wrong - I don't know that much about how the brain develops at a young age and I am basing this mostly on my own experiences, which apparently are not the norm. Besides, to have anything like this actually work, we'd have to have middle school teachers who understand algebra and geometry and high school teachers who can explain eigenvalues and integrals in spherical coordinates. Not to mention students who want to learn.

Mental Math

2007-04-26T20:37:00.000-05:00

Very often, I'm amazed at what my kids can't do. The fact that they can't do any sort of mental math has astonished me over and over again, as I wait on things like 30 divided by two or 46 divided by 10. Only today did I realize that even skills like these need to be taught.

I started thinking about a week ago about what I do when I divide something in my head. For example, if I wanted to divide 68 by 2, I first divide the sixty by 2, to get thirty, then divide the 8 by two, to get 4, and add to get 34. Pretty standard, I thought. But today after school, as I watched FM labor through the same problem using long division, I realized it might not be the standard thought process for my kids. So I stopped him and told him how I did it. Oh yeah, he said. That's so much easier. That does make sense. Hopefully, it is a little more intutive for him. FM has become my mental math experiment. A few days ago I caught him laboring over a multiplication problem where he had to multiply something by five. Just take half of it, I told him, and put a zero on the end. Works anytime you have to multiply by 5. That astounded him. And when I explained why, it was like a little light went off. It made sense.

Today, FM stayed after school along with DB. (DB was in my class for a few months in the fall before he got moved to pre-algebra. He is the sweetest kid in the world, and would kill to be back in my class. That's why he stays after school.) Anyway, DB was showing off his solving equations skills, while FM was solving some quadratics. FM was simplifying a square root, trying to make a factor tree for some number, and asked me what went into it. So I decided to tell them about how you can tell if three goes into a number. I told them any number they gave me, I could tell them if three went into it 5 seconds or less. They gave me some horrendous numbers, 5 and digits, and were amazed when I told them yes, three is a factor or no, three isn't a factor as soon as they had finished writing. Finally, after about five minutes of them giving me bigger and nastier numbers, I told them the trick, which had them holding their heads and laughing and generally being amazed at math. As they walked out the door, DB told me he was going to go right home and show that to his mom. FM said he was going to show it to his friends tomorrow. I need to think of some other "tricks" to have ready for them next time. I also need to decide what to do with the last month of the school year. Three weeks for seniors. Oh man.

Oreos

2007-04-24T23:55:00.000-05:00

When I have a bad day, I have a few different coping mechanisms. One is to work in my garden. Another is to lay on the couch and read. Neither of these are very helpful. A third, more helpful mechanism, is to think about my favorite students and how wonderful they are.

HC is one of my favorite. Maybe my favorite, these days, I'm not sure. She's brilliant, but can get an attitude, and has told me more than once to shut up talking to her. Today, after a hectic day of testing, she came up to me in the hall.

"Mr. G., don't forget about those oreos."
"Right, the oreos. I'm heading back to my room now, come and I'll get them for you"

During a makeshift "game" that we were playing today, I awarded points for getting questions right as we were prepping for the test. HC, sure that she would come out tops, pressed me about what the winner would get, and finally, I cracked and said some oreos, after school.

As we walked back to my room, harried by a pair of her friends who seemed certain that their bus would leave without them, HC told me all about he new diet. She's keeping a list of all the things she eats and drinks, which she showed me, along with a list of exercises that she is going right home to do. She had tried this earlier in the year and given up after about a week, so I was excited and I hope she lasts a little longer this time. By the time we got to my room, I had forgetten why we had come. But of course, HC hadn't.
"Where them cookies at Mr. G?"
"Cookies? But isn't that counter to everything you were just telling me about?"
"Aw, it'll be alright. I ain't hardly but eat nothing all day."
"Would you rather have some gatorade instead?"
"Naw, just gimme the cookies. Well, no, gimme the gatorade."
"Alright.."
"No, I wan them cookies."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. No, I'll take that gatorade. I gotta go. Thanks Mr. G."
"I'm gonna have to start bringing fruit."
"Ok"

Infant Deaths Climb in South

2007-04-22T15:29:00.000-05:00

NYT on symtoms of poverty in the Delta.

The Good Things

2007-04-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

So, I can't teach 131 students in the cafeteria. Big deal. Some things are going right though. A former student, who was shunted out to pre-algebra, came to my class after school today. He never does anything in that pre-algebra class, and so he came to me for help. He smiles "I'm gonn be up in your class next year."

This leads to the theme of all the things that kids say in and about my class. "We don't do nothin up in here." "Girl, we don't never do nothin up in this classroom, he just be talkin'" "We ain't learned nothin up in here." "That man don't even teach." Today, I heard it from other kids, about every other algebra teacher. Kids are kids, and kids can complain like few other creatures on earth. I can't bother to take them very seriously.

One student's mother told me that he writes poetry, and that these people sent him a letter saying that they wanted to publish his poems. My first thought, of course, was poetry.com, who want to publish everyone's poem in a special, hardbound, coffee-table edition. Today, he brought be the poems, and the letters from, you guessed it, poetry.com. I guess I do have something in common with my students - I too submitted my early works filled with forced rhymes and the fleeting charm of feelings that seem, momentarily, eternal. The first poem that I submitted, was in fact entitled "Always." Today, as we were all preparing for the state test in what we called Academy One (unofficially: chaos in the cafeteria), he asked me if he would take me for algebra II next year. Not likely, I told him, since he was signed up for geometry, but I assured him that he could and should take both, especially if he hopes to satisfy his interest in architecture. Well then, if he does take it, could I especially request that he be in my class? Sure, I could do that.

Furthermore, in the cafeteria, my students made me proud. "I already know how to do this junk." "We been knowing how to do that." "When we learn this, back in August?" Even one of my most difficult students, and I have a few of those, called to me, across the caf, in that voice that can so often be a torment - MR. G, COME HERE. Oh no, god no. AIN'T YOU SO PROUD OF ME I DID THIS ONE ALL BY MYSELF. Yes, in fact, I am proud of you, very proud. Now do the rest.

Another happiness - the same student to whom I referred in an earlier blog, who claimed to have spent the night in the baseball dugout, showed up at the middle school to play soccer today. I throw out a casual invitation probably once every other week to any and all of my kids; I figure it would be good for all of them, and certainly better than whatever else they are doing. We threw him in goal for a while, then he came out and got his toe stomped on, but he soldiered on until the end, showing me later how purple it was.

I often forget that these kids are, well, kids. The guys, at least, often have the bodies of adults. Well, at least the seniors. The freshmen still appear as if they would fit in quite well in a middle school, but the two guys who came out today, if I saw them for the first time outside of school, I would judge to be between 20 and 22, rather than 17. One of them has two inches and at least 60 pounds on me. But they are kids, they need attention, they need to feel respected and listened to, and they need so much love. I can't do enough.

Unconscionable

2007-04-02T21:56:00.000-05:00

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat, who voted against New York’s new budget, called it “an unconscionable, discriminatory addition to the school aid formula.” (nyt)

Brodsky is from Westchester county, where the median home value is in the range of $350,000 and high school graduation rates are near 99%. What is unconscionable is that in the Bronx, graduation rates hover around 50%, and more money is spent, per student, in Westchester County than in the Bronx. When children begin their academic lives three steps behind, of course the logical thing to do is to make sure that those children, slighted by the system and by a capricious fate, have all the advantages that the state can confer. As long as the graduation rate in the Westchester is 50 percentage points higher than that in the Bronx, all state aid should go do the Bronx and none should go to Westchester. The rich kids can hack it.

(Graduation rates, per pupil expenditure, and other stats taken from publicschoolreview.com)

Happy Birthday to me

2007-03-26T22:06:00.000-05:00

My kids would say I'm blessed. In the past, I would have said I'm lucky. Now, I'm no longer sure what sort of word to use, but whether I attribute it to blind chance and luck or to a higher power, I was born and grew up with a wonderful group of friends.
Just today, I got a birthday card. Granted, my birthday was a month and a week ago, but the best cards have no need to be on time. Their lateness just confirms that someone has been thinking about me all that time, waiting for the right inspiration to write a note. In fact, the card came from one of my neighbors, Jenny, and her daughter, Ashley. When my house was a duplex, they inhabited the other half. Ashley was a freshman when I was a senior, which means I was in third grade when she first got on the bus to kindergarten, a moment I remember well. We played all sorts of games, one that I'm sure Jenny recalls with dread was the "game" when my sister (it may have been me, but I might as well have blame her) decided to unzip the pink beanbag that was a current feature in Ashley's room. That room was the mirror image of mine at the time, and later became the room I called home during high school and on to today, after my dad took on the ambitious project of converting the old mill house into a single-family dwelling. And yet, as terbulent as my room was over the ensuing years, the floor covered with soccer or ski clothes or whatever sort of clothing happened to be in season, papers, books - I never was and still and not what you would call a neat man - yet no matter how much I abused my mother's sense of order, the room was never as joyfully chaotic as it was on that day when Rachael, who could only have been four or five at the time, unleashed an avalanche of miniature styrofoam snowballs from the bright pink bean bag.
They poured out, swamping our version of the peter rabbit board game, and began to run to all corners of the room. As the senior child in the group, older than the rest by four years, I ought to have done sometime. Although I may have organized some sort of half-hearted cleaning attempt, what I remember was how tiny the bits of styrofoam were, so light that they fell in slow motion when you tossed handfuls of them up in the air, and so small that they fit not only between the edge of the hardwood floor and the wall (the molding was not something my dad had gotten to by that point) but into some of the larger cracks between the floorboards as well. Later, with the trusty shop-vac, I realized that they were some of the more difficult cases to dislodge.

To be continued.

everywhere is war

2007-03-24T11:19:00.000-05:00

So last night, DD and I went to the fair in town. Just like the fairs set up in parking lots of all the other small cities in the country, it was a sea of asphalt filled with a few rides operated by the drug addicts and the mentally ill and hoardes of rigged games where you trade two dollars for a very slim chance to win a stuffed animal you could probably buy for three bucks. DD spent nearly 20 bucks trying to shoot basketballs into no-regulation rings, but I managed to resist the urge until right before we left, when I dropped two bucks on the game that involves throwing softball-sized balls into a what resembles a laundry basket, tilted at an angle.

When I was a kid, I won that at a carnival somewhere, but the carnie told me I had cheated, because I leaned in, and he didn't give me my four foot stuffed creature. So I figured I'd try it again. Three shots for two dollars. DD suggested the first one be a practice shot, and the carnie said "sure, first one's a practice shot, unless you make it, then I'll count it. just because you're white" I wasn't sure I had heard him right, and I really didn't want to believe that I had. I made the first shot, and even figured out the trick. Anyone can make the first shot because they leave the balls in the basket to dampen it, but they clear them out afterwards, to make the second two shots almost impossible. This way they get your confidence up, so you come back to try again and again. Anyway, as I took my second two shots, the guy sort of strck up a conversation with us, asking us where we were from, and so on, and as we left, he offered us a couple of small stuffed snakes, saying very clearing this time "just because you're white." I mumbled something, no, that's alright, no thanks, but he thrust them into our hands and i just turned a walked away, too stunned to really know what to say. We were leaving anyway, and gave the snakes to a seven or eight year old kid with big eyes, who smiled at the prospect of claiming them as his own prizes for winning a game.

The fair was really the first place where I saw blacks and whites socializing together in large numbers. My school has 4 white kids. DD and I stopped in at the bar on the way home, and it was all-white. When I've been to the bourbon mall, another restaurant / bar (try the fried pickles), it's also been all-white. Wal-mart and kroger were really the only places I had seen large numbers of white and black people together, and those, by nature, are not places that foster social interactions. Unfortunately, what I heard from that carnie last night was not the only sign of the latent racism that is still so strong here - DD heard a young white couple make the comment "these niggers are so fucked up." This world is so fucked up, when there are people thinking things like that.

The group of guys I play pickup soccer with is surprisingly mixed. There are whites, from the private school, blacks from the public school, whites and a few blacks from the catholic school (both alums and current students from all three). There are mexicans from the mexican restaurant, and there are a few guys from baghdad, doing who knows what here. Yet still, race is the defining characteristic, and generalizations based on race are still a little shocking to me "the damn mexicans just kick you too much" or even things like "where are all the mexicans today?. Usually, we play mexico vs usa, which is a convenient way to break up the teams. Sometimes the arabic guys go with the mexicans, sometimes with us, to even out the numbers. Most of the guys out there are really nice guys, and I wouldn't say they are racist. Yet race just looms larger on the radar here.

"until the color of a man's skin, is no more significant, than the color of his eyes

there's a war"

...

2007-03-20T21:32:00.000-05:00

Reasons my kids struggle to focus on school:

JF's house got robbed over spring break and he only has two pair of uniform pants.

ME, MD, SC, LK, OT, and CA are pregnant. (MT might be too).

HM, LK, and RM have babies.

EW got kicked out of his house - again.

WB has been in court trying to get his own custody sorted out after his mom passed this summer.

HM just found out she has cervical cancer.

DD's pregnant cousin just died of sickle cell.

Someone threw a brick at CM's car - then he fought them.

Two girls went after each other with scissors.

WD had surgery on her esophagus.

RM's mom is in the hospital.

Someone that all my kids seem to have known got shot last night.

The list goes on, and I continue to be amazed that they show up at all.

It's hard to look too far ahead.

It's never too late...

2007-03-19T19:52:00.000-05:00

for new rules and consequences.

Yes, it's mid-march. Yes, we just got back from spring break. But that doesn't mean that it is too late to introduce a little more order into the classroom, which was getting quite ragged there before break. I have to admit that I was hanging on for dear life at the end there and the way I limped towards spring break was reminiscent of a stock car as it pulls into the pit stop after a wreck, sheet metal flapping loose, tailpipe sparking as it drags along the ground and something unkown just starting to catch fire under the hood.

But I made it to spring break, which was in fact terribly depressing, for two reasons. The first was that I realized how much I hate my job, and spent at least 5 of my nine days off in deadly terror of returning. The second was that I realized that without my job, I have absolutely no life or prospects of a life down here. That first Saturday, when return was sufficiently distant, was the best day of the break. I woke up early, got a hair cut, planted a garden (one thing you can't quite do up north yet), cooked a good dinner and watched a movie with my roomie. Even despite the fact that Babel was a big dissapointment, it was a wonderful day, and I felt very accomplished. But aside from that - nada. So I have a job I hate and fear, but if I don't fill my time with the job, I have even less purpose and feel worse.

That said, today was surprisingly un-bad. They listened, they accepted, grudgingly, the new rules and consequences, and tomorrow I'm set to start handing out writing assignments. Yet here I am, it's Monday night, still with a huge stack of grading and some planning left to do, and I have hardly done anything since I got home. It's just such an intimidating amount of work to get started on. I wanted to have a rule of no work after 9 PM, but that is looking less and less likely. Less blogging, more grading. That's what I need.

Math is amazing, I promise.

2007-03-02T21:57:00.000-06:00

It depresses the hell out of me to think about how cool math is. Because I wish my students could see that. Because I can't do enough to make them see that. Because I make math boring. Because these kids will never see the beauty in that.

After school today I saw a senior, the brother of one of my algebra I students. I asked him why I was not seeing his name on the superintendent's list, and he proceded to tell me about his different classes, the trouble that he had been having in his calculus class before his new teacher arrived. I asked him what they were doing now, and he gave me a reasonable explanation of finding maximum area of boxes that had polynomials as their sides. Damn the boxes though, the mathematics itself is beautiful.

But in a five minute walk down the hall, I explained anti-derivatives to the kid. Just taking a derivative backwards. He told me the antiderivative of 2x was x^2. Good, but what is the derivative of x^2 + 1? 2x. So what is the anti-derivative of 2x? It could be two x squared plus any number.

Just that small leap of inference was beautiful. I would kill to teach that calculus class. But it also kills me to think of these kids trying to find the maxima and minima of functions. Even if you had just a cubic function, taking the derivative is easy. But setting the resulting quadratic to zero and solving it? In eight grade, I ate solving quadratics problems. Bam, boom, negativebplusorminusthesquarerootofbsquaredminusfouracallovertwoa. Give me another. I just feel terrible, like I am not preparoing my kids for this at all. KW could do it in three years, maybe even two. But the rest of them? If QR ever cared about anything. Maybe CH. And maybe MR. But almost all of them are smart enough to be able to do it. With the exception of, perhaps, 3 students, all of my students are at a level of intelligence equal to or above my high school calc class. If they were born in the berkshires, about half of my kids would take calculus.

Math has always seemed easy to me. This hsa been, certainly, an impediment to teaching it. When I get out of here, it might be really nice to have the opportunity to teach kids for whom math is easy. I know, at that point, that I wouldn't really be making a difference, but it would be fun. I'd love to take the top fifth and sixth graders, take them through a program that would get them from algebra I through calc in ninth grade. That is so possible for so many kids. Right now, I could take KW from algebra I through calc by the end of her junior year. But I hope she leaves. She needs to be at the math and science academy. Just like most of my kids, she needs to be anywhere but here.

Play on playa

2007-02-26T22:54:00.000-06:00

Today, I had three students stay after school for help. Well, actually two students stayed after school for extra help and I made another stay for detention. BA told me that tomorrow he is going to bring drinks for after school, and FJ, after running up and down the hallway in search of a poster, came by even though he is not in need of any real math help. "Lemme do some o' that matrix stuff." he said, meaning the matrix multiplication he had witnessed me helping algebra II students with the week before. FH, in response to the traditional detention question of whether you will chose to sit quietly or to do math, said "Give me some of them fractions. I used to hate them, before you explained them to me." She got her fractions, plus a small dose of series. FJ multiplied some matrices. And BA graphed some functions. Then, though, as we were leaving the building, I gave FJ my phone to call his ride. Then, he asks to borrow my pen. I hand it to him and look back and he is copying something out of my phone. FJ, what are you doing? And then I see that he is, of course, copying down the numbers of one of my female students (if I've called your mom, dad, anty or grandma, your number is in my phone). At first I was so amazed I didn't even say anything, but then, once I did, FJ stopped copying. "Oh, I can get it on my own, I don't need your phone to get numbers. I bet you I can get it on my own, come on, I'll bet you." I just shook my head, held out my hand to get teh phone back, and kept on walking.

What keeps me going

2007-02-14T22:29:00.000-06:00

Getting started on a long night of grading. No, trying to get started on a long night of grading. Failing. I'm failing, at getting my grades in. At staying organized. My kids are failing to learn any math, or to perform on assessments. They will soon be failing the state test.

But tonight, as I was sitting down to try to get something done for the hundredth time, my phone rang. "You know who this is?" "BC" "Yeah, how you doin' Mr. G." "Great. I've got your number in my phone." yeah, I know, I know. You know what time the valentines dance starts tonight?..."

Something about the fact that BC would call me to ask about the valentine's day dance, which I knew nothing about, really made me feel like I was making a difference, making a connections somehow. After he asked about the dance, and I made fun of him for not having any game, he reminded me that he would be coming after school tomorrow for help. It's crazy, but it will take so much effort on my part for Barry to pass, but I want so badly for him to do well. I just can't do it for everyone in there.

I also need to become more productive and stop fearing both grading and lesson planning. I mentally block them out, even if I don't allow myself to do anything else, I often won't begin planning/grading until close to 9 PM, which is terrible and impossible, and a complete waste of my time. If I am only going to spend a few hours doing it, I might as well put in those hours when I get home so I can sleep reasonably well, rather than waste a bunch of time before starting and then not sleep. Oh wait, I'm blogging right now. Good start, that.

Acting

2007-02-07T17:28:00.000-06:00

Meet FJ. He was in this same room last year, same class, he often tells me, same block. He sits in the front row, talks too much, and has a tendency to curse and think I won't hear him. Lately, he has been one of my after school crew. He wants to be a chef, and his favorite food is spagetti with Velveta melted on top of it in the microwave.

This morning, I saw FJ in the hall with a bloody lip. "What happened F?" "Some boys jumped on me at the bus stop." "You alright?" "Yea, I'll get them later." "No, F, you won't."

FJ has a history with the bus. He's already been suspended from the bus once, I assume for disagreements with the same guys. FJ does not want to fight anyone, but he wants to save face and he wants the harrassment to cease. So he tells me he's going to get those guys. "F, you can't get suspended now, just when you're getting on a roll in my class." "Oh, I ain't fittn to get suspended, we gon' do it in the hood." "No, F, you're not going to do it at all. You're smarter than that." "But Mr. ---------...." "F, come see me after school and we'll talk about why you won't do this."

After school, F shuffles into my room as I am finishing up with a few students. I had momentarily forgotten why he was here, and he sensed my confusion. "You wanted to talk to me." "Yeah F, sit down. You're bus isn't the first one or anything?" "No." I finish dealing with the other students and sit down across from F, searching for something to say to keep him from fighting, when I know, had I been in his shoes, I would have wanted to fight as well. But he saves me the trouble and starts the conversation.

I been thinkin about what you said. And the reason we came down here from Memphis was so I wouldn't be gettin in no more of this trouble. I don't want to have to go and tell my mom I been fighting. It just about might braek her heart.

Pause.

So, I got something that'll work for me and work for you. The only way I can do this is if when my bus comes they see you pulling me away from the bus. I can't just not get on the bus, but if you're pulling me away, just by the arm, then there's nothin I can do.

Pause.

I ride bus 127.

Ok F, so when you go over to get on the bus, I'll come after you and grab you and keep you from getting on the bus?

Right.

So, I went along with F's plan. I waited among a crowd of students for what seemed like ages, watching the bus numbers, and watching F watch me from across the lawn. I didn't need to worry about missing the bus though, because as soon as I saw it, G, who draws cartoons of me and is a very likeable, if dorky, guy, came up to me and said "F says the bus is here." I got a little closer, waited for the bus to pull up, and as the first kids started boarding I called out "F. F!" He looked up at me and headed toward the bus. G was jogging along beside me, telling me something I couldn't understand. I grabbed F by the arm. "Come on F. Let's go." He tries to pull away, and his eyes shine with anger. Had he sent G to tell me that he'd changed his minded and wanted to get on the bus after all? "Let me go man!" "No, F, come on. Let's go." Scattered shouts of "That man gotta get on the bus" and "How you gonna keep that man from gettin on his bus" echo around me.

We turn the corner back towards the school and, out of sight, I let go of F's arm. Another kid comes up behind us. "Hey, go back out there with the buses." He ignores me and starts talking to F. "That's aight, we'll get 'em tomorrow." "No" I say, "you won't get them tomorrow. It's over." The kid looks at me, then at F. "Cuz," says F, in that peculiar rythem that he has "i'll explain it all to you when we get home." and as a side note, to me, "This my cousin."

"Call your mom, F" I say as I pass him my phone. He puts in his number, and his mom's name shows up. He stopped being surprised about that a long time ago. "You ever consider acting?" "No, I never did think about that."

After F gets off the phone, as we continue to walk down the breezeway, F says "you know, I think I really could use a father figure in my life." I just shake my head "I'm way to young for that F." "oh, yeah, I didn't mean you, I just mean I think it would be good for me to have, you know, a guy at home to look up to and all that."

F, at 15, has diagnosed half of his own problem, and the probably the single biggest problem in the Delta. But at least today, he didn't fight.

Something

2007-02-06T23:35:00.000-06:00

I haven't lately been given to eloquent blog postings, and this one will be no different. I promise, though, one of these days, I'll sit down and write something that might approach a thoughtful, or at least coherent, piece of prose. Until then, settle for snippets.

I think that my kids might have actually learned something. I've had them for 98 minutes a day, every day, since August seventh. I don't feel like doing the calculations, but even with the 5 or six days that I have been 'sick', the number of minutes I've spent "teaching" these kids is extreme. But finally, I am starting to see small glimpses of accomplishment. I just wanted to blog about it now before it disappears tomorrow.

Other things of note:
1. Kids have been staying after school, which is good. More need to stay after school, or some seniors will not graduate. How they get to this point and know nothing is beyond me.

2. I'm planning on implementing a long-term competive group sort of scenario in my algebra II class. Sit them in groups, give them points for everything, including attendence, quiz and test grades, homework, participation, and discipline. Anyone have any suggestions on this? Tried it before? Failed miserably? Had some success?

3. There was a third... Nope, completely forgot. State test is coming up quick. To be honest, I would be really happy if I got 80% to pass.

4. Oh, I remembered what was supposed to be #3. I have a student in Algebra II who can't solve 3x - 2 = 4. Even after we spent an hour going over this sort of thing after school. He never passed the algebra I state test. And he doesn't have a chance of passing my class. How can I grade him on the same scale that I grade everyone else, when his skill set is obviously so much less well suited to algebra than that of everyone else in the class? When I give a test on systems of equations and compositon of functions, and he just writes things that don't make any sense? This kid needs an IEP, but because expectations are so low for everyone else, he has managed to somehow pass everything up to algebra II, without knowing anything. What do I do with this kid?

Responsibility

2007-01-31T23:56:00.000-06:00

I was all set to skip school tomorrow - call in sick and try to get caught up, but then I realized that my kids actually need me to be there tomorrow. They made plans to stay after school, because I told them they needed to, and if I don't show up, I'll never get them to come back again. So I have to go to school. So what if I didn't grade the binders, and if I didn't get the chance to, or rather couldn't bring myself to make some solid lesson plans for tomorrow. It's better that I go in there and wing it then if I just skip out altogether. It was a strange epiphany, though, that the kids actually rely on me.

One goal for next year - I need to keep on on grading and make my grading system more transparent.

Eat Fresh

2007-01-28T20:19:00.000-06:00

On Friday, I held detention. After skipping twice and getting written up, BC finally showed up. Since he had cut class that day, he had to make up his quiz, which he did fairly well on. The great thing was that he couldn't even cheat. It was a good afternoon overall - I had two other students stay for a little extra help, with one of them telling me he had never been this crunk over math before.

Of course, I had to take BC home. Since it was my last soccer game of the season, I convinced him, with a little help from his sister, to come to watch the game. Now, BC and I have known each other all year long - he's in my homeroom class, which is relatively small, and we get on pretty well, despite the fact that he plays a lot and likes to cut class. He's certainly a likeable guy; every girl in the hallway he says "Hey friend." He's six foot two, skinny, hangs out with the kids who think they're thugs, but is a bit more respectful, and a little goofier.

Anyway, we head from his house back to the game, and I'm starved, so we stop at Subway. He says, can't I just wait in the truck, and I tell him, no, not if you want to eat. So we go in, and I ask him what he wants. There's a bit of a line in the place, a pregnant young woman and another with a list that makes me think she's ordering for a construction crew, so he has plenty of time to think about it. Just get me something you think I'll like.

What do you want BC?
You know me, just get me something you think I'd like.

And then the lightbulb goes off. He's never been to Subway before. He's never been to anywhere like Subway before. This kid has lived his whole life in the hood.

What vegetables do you want on it?
Aww, you know.

I ended up just getting him the same thing I got. I made him pick out his own bag of chips though. I like this kid a lot. I'd love it if he came out for the soccer team next year. I'd love it even more if he passed something this year. Especially if he passes my class, which would mean he had actually learned something. I would really love to take him somewhere, anywhere, really, but the Delta. He'd be a fun kid to take on a road trip, back up to Massachusetts or something. I can't even begin to imagine the things I'd learn if I spent a few days on the highway with BC. I wonder what he would think if I took him home with me, what he'd think of my hometown, my house, the woods, the mountains. What he'd think about my family. Most likely, I'll never figure out these things, but maybe next year, when I'm ready to leave, and he's (hopefully) about to graduate, I'll call up his mom and say, listen, I want to take Barry on a little trip. I'll bring him back safe.

It just kills me how little these kids know about anything outside the Delta. If there is only one place you're ever going to go in your life, that's bad enough, but if that one place is the Delta, probably the single most backwards plot of earth in the country, then that's really something else. My experience with BC isn't a singular one - another teacher took a student out to eat who didn't know what mozzarella sticks were, and kept asking how much a glass of water cost. These kids have such limited experience, rich, I'm sure, but extremely narrow. Every once in a while I ask myself, who am I to judge that a broader base of experience would be better? Still, I'd take BC cross-country with me in an instant.

Wanted:

2007-01-23T23:55:00.000-06:00

You can't teach (well) without sleeping. And yet, you can't teach well in a small enough number of hours to allow for sleep. I wish I had a person who would do all my lesson planning for me. I mean, really, DD, RC and I, as a house, could hire a fourth person (welcome back Stu?) to do all our lesson planning for us. He could also cook us meals when we got home from our exhausting days at work, and maybe try to keep the kitchen clean and ant-free. Really, if there are any volunteers out there, we'd probably give you free rent and a small stipend. Sorry, no health insurance.

Duties:
Plan interesting, alligned, and engaging lessons for algebra I, algebra II, english II and english III.
Cook 3-4 healthy, gluten-free meals a week.
Keep the kitchen reasonably clean.

We're accepting applications starting immediately.

Diet: Part Deux

2007-01-21T22:46:00.000-06:00

Instead of the outrageously impractical diet that Dan and I proposed, I am just going to slowly exclude unhealthy things as I feel capable.

I'll start with Snickers. These have become a staple for me down here. Odd, considering I never really liked them at home. They just feel like they pack the most punch in terms of calories, and I when I hit hour 9 of that 16-18 hour work day (not including the work I do at home), I need something to keep going. But they are bad, very bad, and so from now on, no more snickers, or other candy bars.

I'm also cutting out school lunch. Aside from certainly being unhealthy, it's gross, and expensive ($2.50 a pop for teachers). Goodbye, John Wayne Caserole, goodbye jello-embedded pinapples, and goodbye, footlong hotdogs. Hello PB&J and more fruit.

The real thing I need to do, so that I'll be able to keep up with my boys on the field and beat up my roommates is get myself in shape. Teaching really is a profession that doesn't tend to encourage an active lifestyle. The lifestyle it encourages, I believe, is fairly accurately represented below:

So, in summary, more of this:

and this:

and a little less of this:

New Mexico City

2007-01-11T22:45:00.000-06:00

Capitals According to my kids

New York - Harlem
New Mexico - New Mexico City
Arkansas - Helena, Lake Village, or, my personal favorite, Greenwood
Pennsylvania - Lansing
California - Compton

The last one was said in jest, but the rest were completely serious. I get a kick out of these guys. They're better. After some late-night practice, Chopper know will never forget Augusta and Montpilier.

Just texin to mess wit you

2007-01-05T20:47:00.000-06:00

This is the text message I recieved upon touchdown at the Memphis Airport after a fantastic week and a half at home. It made me (almost) glad to be back.

Wat up mr. G this [km] i was just texti to mess wit you since i aint heard from you in a min...[0000000] this my number if you want to call in holla

It was immediately followed by this one:

I'm bout to leave in a couple days i'm goin to the national guard

KM, if you recall, dropped out about a month ago. So to get this message from him really made my day. I ran into him today, as I was coming back from practice, and hopefully, we'll be able to have lunch or something before he heads out. He says he's getting 60 grand a year, which includes a check for his little girl. As we said goodbye today, he said, "see, i'm trying to do something with my life, trying to stay out of trouble" I wish him all the best of luck.

It comes down to reality, it's fine with me 'cause I've let it slide

2006-12-09T12:01:00.000-06:00

Blog – Semester Reflections

As anyone who has been reading my blog could probably guess, it’s a little hard right now for me to pull back from my season with the (eagles), but I’ll try.

My semester has nosedived as of late. I’ve lost energy motivation and creativity. My mom suspects that I’m depressed, but I can’t believe that. I am not a very good teacher. My management is terrible, my lesson planning unoriginal, boring, and not especially helpful for my students. It certainly isn’t research based, or anything else that it should be,

I hate the block schedule. With a passion. Ben told me that in two years as a teacher, he never did any group work. While in a lot of ways I wouldn’t want to run my classroom as Ben says he ran his, but I would have liked to go away with groupwork, at least for the first year. 98 minutes means that I have to do that crap, everyday. I have to do something, because it’s impossible to lecture, do guided practice, and then some individual work for ninety-eight minutes, straight. It’s impossible to do anything for 98 minutes. I’m starting to think it’s impossible to remain sane for 98 minutes.

I was three times the teacher I am now before I started coaching. That said, though, I was probably having less total impact on students then. I would love to just coach and work at Dollar General or something. Or coach and tutor – that would be perfect. Not that I am a very good coach either; I’ve been lucky enough to inherit a group of boys who have been ready to explode on the scene for a year or two, but have just lacked a little direction and intensity, which I have tried to give them. They are amazing, and they make me believe that things can be ok.

But back to being a teacher. My kids hate me, and hate my class, even my good kids, because I don’t keep the bad kids under control. They wouldn’t even be bad, if I had some clearer expectations for them. Well, some of them would be bad. But most of the kids that consistently give me trouble are FINE in other people’s classes. FINE. They only act up in my class because I let them get away with it. The worst part is, even worse than the fact that they drive me crazy, is that they irritate the kids who actually want to learn, who, I think, might actually make up half of my students. One student even drew a cartoon of me throwing a desk at and cursing out the disruptive girls my first block. “Anybody else wanna F- wit da real MR. G? Anybody? Well shut the F – up!”

Dan says I ought to blog about our recent stop at the doublequick. We’re headed up to Oxford, it’s 11:21 PM on a Friday, and this have become somewhat of a ritual with us, a pilgrimage, We’ve left later, but of all the Oxford weekends, I think we’ve only once arrived in the hotel before midnight, We always stop at the same doublequick, somehow, and stock up on Rockstars. Dan likes the purple fruity one, while I prefer the mango one in the orange can. I had never experienced the wonder of such beverages until these Friday night drives made them indispensable, along with the snickers, hostess cupcakes, and other delectables that contribute to Mississippi being the fattest state in the union.
There really has been a magic to these rides. How could there not be, when we spend our time alternating between states of half-conciousness and chemically induced super-consciousness. After an extraordinarily exhausting week of teaching – isn’t every week of teaching extraordinarily exhausting - the last thing I tend to need is this drive, but it is somehow refreshing in it’s insanity. By the time we drive through the kudzu-covered holly springs state forest, bizarrely nowhere near holly springs, I’m usually starting to see things on the side of the road that aren’t there. The night that we got caught in the thunderstorm was a night to remember as well – driving 45 mph and still barely able to see ten feet in front of me. Or the trip up with Ward, when we somehow missed a turn and found ourselves altogether too close to Memphis.

I’ve got to decide whether to go to class tomorrow or to skip and go be a coach. I’ve almost certainly decided to skip class. I’ve decided the difference between an A and a B is pretty minimal – I’m already out of the running for the award for teachercorps GPA, or will be after tomorrow’s lack of presentation in my methods class, so WTF, right? Besides that, tonight’s loss was really hard to stomach, and I’d hate to abandon my kids after that. They are knocking on the door, so close to achieving something. Achieving something means winning, or even drawing a single game. They’ve lost every game for the past 3 years. Every single game. We’ve no taken the lead in two matches, and lost both 3-2. I must be doing something wrong as a coach, because we can’t seem to hold a lead. We get too excited by the prospect of winning – I am as guilty of this as every one of my players. I love the kids so much, and I really need to lead them to a victory – just one.

But I was supposed to be writing a semester review? A semester evaluation? What was it called? A semester reflection. Goodbye yellow brick road? No. This is harder than I ever thought, and I need some help. I am not doing a good job. I need some inspiration. My kids are ready to revolt, and in a lot of ways, I don’t blame them – I’d probably be ready to revolt too, if I were my own student. At the same time, though, I don’t know that I could try any harder, if that is some kind of consolation. All we need is just a little patience. I need to start off the next semester as a hard-ass, especially in my algebra II class, which will be a brand new group of kids. Hard ass. If I say it enough, maybe I’ll believe it. Firm expectations. A good plan. Better procedures. Better lesson planning. Everything needs to be better, but I don’t think things could get much worse, so that’s something. The only thing that shouldn’t change is the soccer team. And even that could use a little boost in the victories column.

Go to church on three

2006-12-07T16:53:00.002-06:00

After practice on Monday, my captain, D.S., led the team in a prayer after three mumbled repetitions of "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" by the whole team. I can't recall the words he used, but he gave thanks for all of us being out there, asked that we stay safe and avoid injuries, and closed with "let us pray, lord, that we come away with a victory tomorrow." A commnal "amen" followed. Then, he said, jokingly, that the reason we haven't won yet is because no one but he and big B.W. ever lead the prayer. Duke volunteered to give the game prayer the next day, and we closed with a cheer. Team on three. No, Go to church on three.

The next night, Duke, true to his word, gave the prayer. It was good, a little more elequent than the usual prayer, but I could tell he was nervous. Afterwards, the boys chided him "you wrote that one down" but they all appreciated his effort.

I'm not a religious guy, in any way, and before the season started, I was nervous about how I might react to prayer on the field. But since the guys haven't asked me to lead one yet, I have had no problem with it whatsoever. In fact, I have begun to enjoy the prayers. They bring out a humble side of my players that I love to see.

The rest of their pregame rituals are a riot as well. Their stretchs, for example.
Captains: "Thousand"
Team: "One!"
Captains: "Thousand"
Team: "Two!"
....
Captains "Thousand!"
Team: "Nine!"
Captains "Big thow" (Beat thou) I really have no idea what they say here.
Team: "Ten!"

Then, there are the jumping jacks.
Captains (Running around the inside of the circle): Give me twoooo!!!!
Team: Twoooooo!
Captains:Give me twoooo!!!!
Team: Twoooooo!
Captains: Sets!!
Team: Sets!!!
Captains: Sets!!
Team: Sets!!!
Captains: GeeDoublyouAichEss. Everybody ready!
Team: Ready!
Captains: Position. Exercise.
Team: Gee. Dubleya. Aich. Gee dubleya aich hornets.
Team: Gee.
Captains: Whooo.
Team: Dublya.
Captains: Whoooo.
Team: Gee dubleya aich hornets.