So I'm on layover in Tampa for another 2 hours, poking around the NCTM website to see what looks good and maybe plan out the next couple of days in DC. There is so much juicy mathematical, differentiated instruction, technological, new teacher-oriented goodness on the conference schedule that I wish it were longer. I've already got some much overlap that I'll be holed up in a conference room all day for the next two days and part of Saturday. It's looking way damn cool and nerdtastic.
All that said, I definitely need these few days to get my head straight. I'm in give-up mode again. Monday and Tuesday were soul-sucking days. Again, is it worth it? It's awfully painful to teach and coach and mother and model and lather-rinse-repeat only to realize that after months and months their behavior is still horrific and they still don't understand how fractions or decimals work. When word problems at a 5th grade level are still viewed as insurmountable obstacles even though they have the skills they just refuse to use them. And they talk. They just never shut up. Which would be fine if they would stop and listen every once in a while.
Even so, I think the disconnect is somewhere higher up. If the kids are totally fucking bonkers then it is probably on account of some adult somewhere either doing something wrong or not doing anything at all. I count myself among such adults and therefore, while I am away on this conference, am also working on my resume and considering my options.
I want to keep teaching, but I very well may stop.
Until that's figured out, however, there are 4 weeks left in the school year and I have to survive them. Hopefully a little better than that.
So horribly frustrated with my kids right now. I just don't know what to do. I feel like I'm reliving last year. I don't know why they act this way, I don't know why I can't get them to stop taunting each other, I don't know why I can't get them to pay attention, I don't know why things seem to be getting worse instead of better and I don't know why the things I do to make it better just never seem to work. I hate that I snap at the stupidest things. I hate that I put up with the things I put up with, that I feel helpless to stop the kids from poking, teasing, throwing, yelling, etc. I hate that other people seem to get a response from my kids but I can't.
What is it about ME? What's wrong with ME?
There was this great segment on This American Life on Sunday about a program in Harlem and Baby College for low-income parents. Everyone should go listen to it. It reminded me of my kids and their parents and now it's kind of making me feel helpless and angry.
I don't know what the sudden burst of pessimism is about. Just tired, I guess. Worn down and trying not to show it, trying not to crack. Tired of being treated like I don't exist by bunch of punkass little adolescents. Tired of the show. Tired of being the one who has to put on a front in the face of all the whining and pushing and shoving and picking and picking and picking. Tired of feeling like I'm repeating some of this crap from last year.
I'm tired of my help and my support not being very helpful or supportive. I'm tired of not having the special ed teacher when I'm supposed to be working with the special ed teacher. I'm tired of having paraprofessionals that don't know my content and correcting the mistakes that they tell my children are correct, tired of paras who won't help my kids because they can't look past the behaviors, of feeling like I'm in this madhouse of a classroom trying to pull a miracle out of my ass.
Really, this is the most frustrating thing that I run into over and over and over: the adults who are supposed to help my kids academically who are hurting my kids because they don't know the content! It makes me want to scream. If you won't help with the behaviors and the accommodations that my students are supposed to receive, at least you could not confuse the shit out of my students who don't need as much help.
1st math test of the year (Data Analysis & Statistics): finished writing. 1st science quiz of the year (What is Physical Science?): needs to be corrected. Lots of miscellaneous papers in my school bag: have been put off yet again. Unit Plan for the next 3 weeks: so not even started yet. The idea of crawling into bed at 4 o'clock tomorrow afternoon and staying there: YAY FRIDAY!
My greatest pleasure in life now: going to bed early.
Today was the teachers' first day officially back on the job at ye olde John McDonogh #32 Literacy Charter School (one of oh-so-many exciting changes that have been going on while I've been in my summer hibernation). There was so much at the morning introduction that I had to take notes. Now that I look at my notes there is so much that it seems best to list the highlights:
- we have three (count 'em - 3) assistant principals - a reading specialist! - a Spanish teacher - a full time middle school art teacher (who lives across the hall from me and I already like her a lot) - 2 extra social workers - parents will be required (to the best of the school's ability) to volunteer 1 hour per week - community service and service learning focus in learning - 90 minute planning periods!! (though only three days per week) - TAP (Teacher Advancement Program) in full swing means performance-based pay - lots of toys and new technology
As for the state of my affairs, this year will be a year of big changes and big challenges. It never seems to end. I suppose that's the way education should be - how exhausting. And awesome. As I mentioned before, I will be teaching 6th grade math once again with the added challenge of teaching 6th grade science (chemistry and physics - my two least favorite sciences). Because I am the science teacher I was given a Promethean board in my classroom, which is quite possibly the most exciting toy-tool that any teacher could ever have.
It makes planning lessons seem so much more exciting, quizzes less of a pain in the ass, and technology in the classroom that is a thousand times more useful to me and my kids than a couple of computers that only get used for MySpace and other illicit non-educational purposes. I am probably speaking technology teaching sacrilege to say so, but I hate having PCs in the classroom and I am happy to have them removed. That being said, our school has laptop carts now (a laptop for every student in the class with a wireless connection - sweet!) which I certainly plan to put to use.
The daily schedule looks slightly more sane on paper, but we shall see. We continue to work on a block schedule (90 minute periods) and I'll have three classes. The upcoming class is supposed to be fairly small so I believe I will have an average of 10 kids per class period which, when you think about it, is absolutely unheard of in a public school like ours! These estimates, however, will probably end up being closer to 15 per class which is still more than educationally reasonable. No word on the numbers of kids with exceptionalities yet, but I hope to get access to files and names by mid-week.
Still debating how to juggle my two subjects. Last year, for the brief and completely overwhelming period that I had both subjects to teach, I had two classes on three hour blocks and tried to split the class time with absolutely no success. I think my best bet is to teach math MWF and science on TTh. This strikes me as the sane way to go about things. Yes? I wish I knew more experienced teachers out there on the vast interwebs who might give a little input on such things. But this is, alas, a blog mostly for my own cathartic benefit with a tiny readership. And I am a terrible networker.
The process of putting up bulletin boards and attempting to arrange my classroom today lead to more chaos than progress. But I'm excited. Things are new and strange and seem to be moving even faster - yet the school appears more prepared in general than last year. Better prepared. Better equipped. I can't find the actual listing at the moment but at the beginning of last year #32 was at the very bottom of the barrel in New Orleans according to the state tests. After just one year, it is now in the top 30% of New Orleans schools. Which is just huge. Granted, that isn't even remotely good enough when you consider the state of New Orleans test scores. Still, there is momentum.
I've fallen off the face of the earth, swimming in the abyss of time and heat and paralyzing fear and pure laziness that has been my summer hermitage. But is the eve of my return to the working world.
I get a brand new batch of children on August 11th. Math and Science (for real this time). I've got the same classroom, more work, less kids, and one week to get ready for the insanity. Here we go again.
This paperwork disaster is my classroom. No more bulletin boards, no more posters, no more students in desks. Just lots and lots of paper. This is me trying to get organized on multiple levels. The first is making sure I have enough evidence to back up the 20 F's I gave out (that is, for a little more perspective on the numbers, equivalent to the entirety of my homeroom class this year). Two kids to a desk--that's eight per group of four desks--with their tests and quizzes and class assignments stacking up as I clean out what's in my desk and my file cabinet. There is more paper at home.
The rest of the papers piled up in my room are worksheets and assignments that will be reused in the future, organized mostly by subject (fractions, decimals, place value, geometry, multiplication practice, integers, etc) so that I can put together the beginnings of a filing system which will hopefully make planning that much easier for next year.
And yes, there will be a next year. I just signed my new contract today. I've been told I'll be teaching science in addition to math. I sincerely hope this is not true, but at least this time I have two-and-a-half months warning to try and become a physical science expert before the kids find me out for the fraud I am.
Today was the last day of school for the kids. I thought I would feel better, lighter. But no. Today was embattled. I knew I would win but winning felt like crap. Because nearly a quarter of the class failed and it was my F that failed them. I know my boss has my back and I know that the F's were right (and also that there should have been a couple more). But I know the kids don't feel that way and there will be parents who don't feel that way. I had one other person at the school point out the discrepency (F in math next to C's and B's in other subjects) and comment that it does not "look right." I agree. There is something wrong with that. There is something wrong when my kids can't read their damn report card but the only class they failed was my math class. Can't shake the feeling that the comment was directed at me, though. Despite all that, I can't in good conscience say that the kids who failed deserve a better grade. So I stuck to it, in tears in the office agonizing over how to help these kids with no way to go. Frustrated and fighting. Because it's too late now. It's done.
There are few things more heartbreaking than watching my children fail.
Well, my urban learners session was affirming (hey! that's my kids!) but not particularly enlightening. A lot of recognizing my own students' behaviors, descriptions of the urban learning environment, relating to the broken discipline system, and generally feeling like someone out there is going through the same things I do on a regular basis! But they didn't really tell me anything I don't already know.
I did just get out of another session run by a Pearson rep which was actually useful. Short, to-the-point, and gives me ideas to take home that don't require a lot of investment. I'll take it. It is also good to know that some companies out there are publishing for kids who are not on level from a vocab/reading perspective. And by that I mean, not just publishing reading intervention programs or reading material, but publishing subject area texts for secondary education on elementary reading levels. A big part of the reason that my class text is pretty useless to me as a teaching tool is because the vocabulary and reading comprehension skills of my students are not yet up to the level of the book. The text is abstract and the vocabulary is difficult for students who can barely read. Even when the text uses concrete examples and modeling, the instructions are too difficult to interpret for my students. So I am forced to improvise. Wouldn't it be grand to have a text written on a lower reading level with all the same content?
So here I am at the Hynes Convention Center, skipping out on my first session of the day because it's boring as hell and not particularly helpful. I took my copy of the power point and left. I started a 'strand' of panel sessions by the Access Center on differentiation yesterday and it continued with a more specific math and science track this morning but I have been disappointed. Yesterday's module was excellent.
There are a couple words that educators throw around these days, one of which is 'differentiation' (an ambiguous term to say the least). With the laws as they are these days and inclusion (another education buzz word) in the classroom, differentiation is something that everybody says but very few really know what it means or what to do about it. We have to differentiate instruction, they say. Well that's great and all, but have you met my children? HELP! For once, during the session yesterday, I actually got some concrete useful information and not just lip service. I was hoping for something in-depth and math-specific this morning but I've been let down. For a two hour session, I heard everything I needed to know in 20 minutes. So here I am blogging about it.
Overall, the conference has been a bit disappointing for me. I am learning that educators can be notoriously bad about saying what they mean. And by this I mean that lectures and panels that have one title and description often turn out to be completely useless to me. I struck out twice yesterday before hitting something that had any meaning. For instance, a 'demonstration' ostensibly titled "State of Practice: Implementation of Inclusion and Prereferral Practices Across School Systems" that claimed to be about improving collaboration to improve inclusion practices (I realize that this means little to any of you out there - but it's important) turned out to be an awful slide show about the demographics of special education students in one small area of Texas. Useless to anyone not from Texas. "Strategies to Sustain Improved Outcomes for Youth with EBD and Their Families" turned out to be another data presentation with no real helpful information about what strategies were used in order to get such encouraging results. Most of my special ed students (and even those with 504 acommodations) have some sort of EBD (emotional/behavioral disability) classification and I need help, ideas, a starting point. It's why I came to this conference in the first place. So far, I got nothing. Most of the presenters I've seen have been preoccupied with presenting the specifics of the data from their studies without ever telling me how I can use the results of their study to benefit me or my school district. That's higher education for you.
I'm a math teacher. I need my presentations to be practical, to-the-point, and devoid of unnecessary information.
Yesterday was a beautiful day in the city so I took a walk around the neighborhood and admired the brownstones and enjoyed the cold but sunny weather. Today is nasty and rainy, but if it lets up any time soon I may skip out of the conference for a little while and go find the comic shop and waste some time. Either that or I'll hit the mall or Barnes & Noble and hide until 5 o'clock. Oh, but look! There is a session titled "Differentiated Instruction, Social Skills and Behavior: Teaching Urban Learners" that claims to want to give me concrete and applicable information. Off I go.
Because today is my Friday and I don't have to go back to work until next Wednesday, I am not going to talk about my own students at all today. But I did want to share a gem of the internets.
I am still laughing my ass off over this one. This comic is an alternate reality version of my life for the last eight months. I can't even tell you - there are not words sufficient.
So the third quarter of my first year of teaching is drawing to a close. This means frantically updating gradebooks, filling out retention forms, and (drum roll, please) preparing my 6th graders for the iLeap. I will have an update on how many students passing/failing just as soon as I can crunch my numbers. But right now I am more worried about getting the kids prepped to sit and take tests all next week.
I am torn about the status of standardized testing and educational accountability. On the one hand, it totally fucking blows. It is cramming as much information into a kid's head as possible with minimal attention to what they really learned and will retain or to what is really going to be meaningful. I've said this before, that intuitively I may need to know that the commutative property of multiplication or addition exists, but do I really need to know the fancy math term for it just so I can fill out the right bubble on the standardized test? I mean, honestly?
On the other hand, in order to pass these tests, the children really do have to have problem solving skills of some sort and that is something vital to life outside of testing. Multiple choice does not an easy-pass make. In order for them to do well at all, I do have to figure out how to teach them to think and that's what we want, isn't it? These things are stupid to those of us to take it for granted that reading comprehension and basic arithmetic are no-brainers. Ever tried to teach a kid to think? Most people at some point in their lives, especially if they have kids or younger siblings, have spent time trying to teach someone their times tables or how fractions work. But did you ever have to teach them how to think?
This year has been a slow realization that the process of thinking out simple problems is something that a lot of us take for granted. You just do it. But my students, most of them, haven't been trained to think for themselves. It's not that they are any less intelligent than your average privileged white kid in suburbia. When they want something bad enough, they will figure out a way to get it and in some of the most surprising ways you can imagine. The problem, as I see it, is they have gone through their lives thinking that just getting the answer is what's important. 2 + 3 = 5 but who taught them to connect the numbers to the reality? They learn math because we told them to, not because they actually believe that it is useful to them (no matter what the stupid curriculum says or how much their teachers try to convince them with silly scenarios). So they go through the motions as quickly as possible, spit out an answer, and then move on to the more important task of gossiping and trying to figure out a better, sneakier way to eat noodles in class without getting caught.
They have super powers, these kids, they just haven't yet learned to use their powers for good.
Anyway, this all started with iLeap. And I guess what I really wanted to say is that there is something to be said for what the standardized tests are trying to accomplish. Still not convinced, however, that they succeed or that they are the best way to assess our kids' progress. Not that I have any better ideas.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
I guess I've been pretty (relatively) zen about the kids and their craziness this week. And, I've said it before, but despite the lunacy displayed daily, I do love my childrens. They've really mellowed out considerably from the beginning of the year (although, if you saw them you might not believe me). At least, in my classroom they have mellowed out. I cannot and will not speak for other classrooms. I'll get my ass in trouble or say something untrue and that's not what this is about.
True, there are a couple of them that I can live without. But mostly I love them. They make me laugh. They are beginning to surprise me in good ways. Students who fought me in the beginning, now I think I've earned a little respect. It was hard earned, tooth and nail. And there is still a long way to go, but I am proud of them for what progress we have made. What progress they have made. It can't all be quantified, unfortunately, in the iLeap exam that my children will take in a little more than a week. And that is what is breaking my heart right now.
The kids are starting to ask me if I will be back next year (of course!) and a few even asked me if I would be teaching 7th grade math because they thought I should. I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that it means that at least for a couple kids I have accomplished one of the things I set out to do when I pursued teaching math in the first place: to not be the sucky math teacher that I had in middle school.
Holy crap!! I just had the best five minutes of the school year so far! I can't even tell you, dear interwebs, just how fucking amazing it is when suddenly this kid, this kid who is way too old for 6th grade, this kid who fights me every step of the way and is so used to failing at life that his only coping mechanism is to annoy the hell out of everyone so that they pay attention to him - how fucking amazing it is to hear the click in his brain when suddenly he understands!
I'm on top of the fucking universe right now. I'm so damn proud of him! And it just was so awesome to see the big grin on his face over something that so many of us take for granted. This kid, J, is a kid who can barely do arithmetic. He can sort of multiply and he can add after a few tries, but he never really got it. Subtraction and division? Forget it. Please, someone tell me how you can be 15 years old and not know these basics?
Today we were learning how to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators. Yesterday we covered adding and subtracting with like denominators. He did okay with that because it was a one step process, but today I could see the glazed over eyes. He had checked out. But I sat down with him to walk him through all the steps (finding the least common denominator, making the equivalent fractions, adding it all up, and simplifying your answer). He knew how to find the LCD (which was a pleasant surprise, but not earth-shattering) but when it came to making equivalent fractions (say turning 1/2 into 2/4) he was totally stuck. So I walked him through one. (This is where things get technical and don't translate well to text.)
I set up the proportion 1/2 = blank/4 and asked him what would fill in the blank. When we learned how to solve proportions a few weeks back, I taught the kids the cross multiplication method to solve for the blank by multiplying (in this case) 4 times 1 and then dividing the answer by 2. The division stumped him. But I held up four fingers and told him to break them into twos - how many groups of fingers was I holding up? His eyes got bigger and he says, tentatively, "Oh, that's how you divide..."
That was my cue to give him some other division examples. 10 divided by 2 can be done by drawing 10 tick marks and circling every 2 ticks - how many circles do you have? Subtraction could be done with tick marks too (for 11 - 5 draw 11 tick marks and then cross five of them out and count how many are left). The realization in this kid's eyes was fantastic. There is nothing better than hearing him say that he gets it. Nothing.
I feel like such a proud division mama! That something so simple can be so satisfying. And incredible.
This week and next week are going to be total losses at school. Compass testing this week - what a waste. Mardi Gras next week means we only have school on Thursday and Friday and there will be a dance on Friday. Not getting anything accomplished those days. So that makes things suck.
All that said, I had a comment question about TAP and my experience with it. My school is in their practice year of the Teacher Advancement Program - TAP for short. I have to admit that I was pretty skeptical about it at first and I admit that there are still things about it that I think are totally lame and inconvenient. The sixth grade teachers, the three of us, have a cluster meeting with the school's Master Teacher twice a week. In the beginning we were learning the rubric (if there is one thing I loathe about education it is all this rubric stuff) that covers all sorts of things that research shows make for good teaching. Now we're on to tracking student progress, teacher evaluations, and in our case we are implementing the G.I.S.T. strategy (I couldn't explain to you what GIST stands for if I tried, but you can imagine what it is about) and tracking student data as it relates to that.
Things that drive me crazy: standards and GLEs. Not exclusive to TAP, but I guess I should make my stance on the state Grade Level Expectations known. THEY SUCK. I hate the Comprehensive Curriculum, I hate the GLEs, and I hate the stupid standardized testing that is required by the state. Which is not to say that it is stupid to test kids, I just think the tests they take are stupid. The kids are not being assessed using real life situations, they are not being taught problem solving skills, and they are being force fed all sorts of math that (let's face it folks) no one ever fucking uses outside of a classroom. I happen to like algebra, but do you use variables and algebraic equations in your daily life? Do you ever need to know the associative or commutative property of multiplication? Do you ever need to know the difference between a supplementary or complimentary angle? Honestly? There is all sorts of cool math that kids could be learning and it isn't as tangible or testable as a bunch of multiple choice questions. Basic operations are important, number sense is important, spatial reasoning is handy, and just generally being able to solve a problem using common sense is a must. And the middle school math years are important in our system for establishing all that. But it's silly the way we compartmentalize math. Algebra, geometry, number theory, fractions, decimals, percents, everything in math is related.
I'm not entirely sure where this rant is going, except to say that breaking math instruction down into tiny little bits and they expecting kids to assimilate it all seems ridiculous to me. Why should I be force-feeding them abstract ideas out of the shiny-white-middle-class-perfect-world text book in a certain order when what they really need is the time to explore and make a lot of mistakes. Pressure on account of LEAP means that I have to figure out ways to make the kids think the way that the government thinks they should in order to pass a certain test. I'd be happy if they had the confidence to divide 36 by 12 without the crutch of a calculator. I'd be happy if actually knew what multiplication and division are used for. In sixth grade I have a large number of students (a majority I would even venture to say) who don't actually have a concept of what addition or subtraction or multiplication or division mean beyond scratching numbers down on paper or entering them into a calculator. I plug numbers into a calculator and an answer comes out - that's math.
This is me beating my head against a wall.
Anyway, all this is related to TAP because we are attempting to track students progress according to state standards. In my case, the math standards. And as a general rule, everyone in every grade should be teaching the same sort of thing in their math class at the same time and at the same rate and as you can imagine this is a preposterous idea. One, by the time I discovered this, I had already covered a lot of stuff that they wanted me to cover again. No way. My kids were sick of fractions and frustrated and it was time to do something else. Two, my kids are dumb on average. I am trying to sneak problem-solving into a curriculum that already assumes that the kids have problem solving capabilities. They don't. They've never had to think critically in math because as far as I can tell no one ever expected it of them. This is baffling to me on many levels, the most pressing being that problem solving is the entire reason for studying math as far as I'm concerned.
I can't teach kids to think if I'm expected to teach them to pass a standardized test.
Now that I've gone completely off track, let me come back to TAP by saying that I enjoy my Master Teacher very much and she has been a huge help to me as a mentor. She is also understanding that what happens on paper and what happens in an actual classroom are two completely different animals. It doesn't make me less annoyed by so much of the educational jargon and bullshit that I have to be able to digest and regurgitate, but it does make it easier to accept as part of the daily grind.
As for this rubric which the teachers are being evaluated on, I do believe that the time we spent going over it and the things I learned from that time was worth it for me as a first year teacher. It certainly prompted me to change and improve some of my practices and I do believe that it has made a difference for my teaching and for my students. I really don't know that I would have seen the improvements that I've seen from my first quarter teaching to today if I hadn't had the TAP meetings and the Master Teacher's guidance. I think I'd be a worse teacher - or at the very least, it would have taken me longer to figure out some of this stuff on my own. It helped me provide much needed structure and focus to my classes that I was missing because I was so wrapped up in the overwhelming newness of it all.
So while there are aspects of TAP that I find annoying, I can't say that the program is a total loss. Overall for me it has been a great help. But as I said before, I think I can attribute a lot of it also to our Master Teacher. She's an excellent mentor: encouraging, full of ideas, and very good at relating the rubric's mumbo-jumbo to the way things really work in the classroom. She may not be a math person, but she's definitely helped me to feel more at ease in my situation. Because knowing your content is easy but knowing how to deal with your students is the real challenge.
I don't know that this post really answered the question that was asked, but I gave it a shot. Suppose that a more detailed and thoughtful diatribe on the sorry state of math education in our system should be forthcoming. But we'll see about that.
The Week (in short): fights, craziness, miracles, exhaustion, breakthroughs, and algebra.
Teachers don't have a reputation for being cool. But seriously, folks, my job is the coolest. I still love/hate it, but this has limited impact on the cool factor. The main contributor to my job's cool factor this week has been teaching my kids some basic algebra skills. Algebra, I should tell you, is my favorite branch of mathematics. So what makes this all so cool (besides the fact that I love me a good linear equation)?
So much to blog about, so little brain power. So let's bullet point the overall picture and we'll see where I end up.
* I had an official administrative observation on Tuesday * I had my wrap-up/evaluation today * I am going to at least one, if not two, conventions in April * How does one choose between cool things at work and roller derby? * Classes at UNO have begun again * Oh crap. * Barack Obama sound bite on education * Wow, my job is cool.
Now for the long version: I had one of my official observation/evaluations on Tuesday. There were about a million people in and out of my room and I felt totally off my game. The principal and the master teacher and all sorts of folks are always coming into my class, but usually just as a walk-through. I felt unprepared and disorganized and was slightly worried when Mr. G and the master teacher and whoever else was watching left about half-way through class.
But...after observations we are supposed to do a wrap-up and self-evaluation with the master teacher. And I'm not too proud to say that for the most part I got glowing reviews. (On our scoring rubric, we are aiming for 3s and the MT kept saying 4!) This mostly makes me happy because I know that it means I have a job next year at the school I want to be at working for the people I want to work for. It also helps to know that starting next year we will be working on a performance-based pay scale and glowing reviews means a sweet paycheck. I like sweet paychecks. But beside that, I like feeling appreciated. It is comforting to know that even if I can't see when I'm doing things right, someone sees it. I want to be the best. I want to take pride in what I do. This helps.
I also have to admit that it was pretty cool to hear about Mr. G's enthusiasm for my lesson. He's just the type of guy that you can't bear to disappoint. He inspires people to want to be better and that's an awesome quality to have in a principal, especially for a low-performing school such as ours.
Now I know I've made it into the "professional" world: I'm going to conferences! The charter association is paying for professional development in the form of sending teachers to conventions for various teacher-type subjects come spring time. For me that means paid room and board for two separate conferences in April, back-to-back. I'll spend four days in Boston for the 2008 CEC convention dealing with special education topics. This is the one I am most looking forward to development-wise. Dealing with my special needs kids is my biggest challenge and currently my biggest failing. The week after that I am going to Salt Lake City for an NCTM conference, Becoming Certain about Uncertainty, whatever the hell that means. It should be a good time, however, a lot of my favorite teachers are going.
Plus, two weeks away from the kids! In other cities! I like traveling for free.
On the downside, going to both conferences means that I will not make practice requirements in April in order to skate in the championship bout. This makes me very sad. But I have got to take care of work before derby. At least until the day derby starts paying.
Classes at UNO have started again. Yeah. I don't want to talk about that. It makes me want to hyperventilate and die. Which brings us to...
Oh crap.
I had something to say about Barack Obama. But I have to go grade 50 papers and update my gradebook and for that I need the last of today's allotment of brain cells. So it will have to wait.
Well, if my life wasn't surreal enough and stressful enough before, I decided to take on just one more thing. As of this next Monday I will be teaching a small group of about half a dozen 3rd graders in the mornings before school. For an hour a day I will be an elementary teacher and I'm really not sure how that will end up working out.
The good news: most of my materials are provided, we are working on pretty specific skills, the 'class' will be small, and I will get paid $25 an hour. That's $125 per week! That's my drinking money, baby. And boy, will I need me some drinking money...
The bad news: the mornings from 7-8 have traditionally been my prep time for the day ahead, so this means staying longer after school for the next day as well as coming early (I already pull 9 hours at school each day, nevermind time spent at home working). Also, I'm not trained to teach 3rd graders - what do I do with these strange creatures? Also, I have the dubious honor of teaching both math and reading (the other teachers are just teaching reading). Because I have never had to teach reading, I will happily point back to the good news, which is that most of my materials have been provided and are pretty straightforward.
This morning program is pretty much for the 'dumb' kids. I am a bad teacher in that I privately (and affectionately) refer to my students as 'my dumb ones.' They are putting the whole human race into perspective for me. Most of us are dumb, which is why education is such doomed but necessary enterprise. More accurately, parents signed their kids up for this extra time at school because they need the extra help, they are falling behind their peers, or possibly the parents just want them out of the house for an extra hour a day. I really am not sure. There are things that I like about having the 'dumb ones' but lately I've been fantasizing about a class of smart kids. I don't think I would love them or worry about them as much (my smartest kids right now are not particularly my favorites, though they are mostly good kids) but it would be a weight off my mind to have students who are less stressful. At least some of the time.
In other news, my students are cheating again. It makes me want break things, break kids even. There is one major peeve that I inherited from my father and that's a lack of integrity. It really bothers me when people lie to me like I'm stupid, like I won't know the difference, like it's no big deal. When it comes to my kids, it hurts the most even though I can't let them know that. I can't fucking stand cheaters.
Today was this weird mix of good and ambivalent and stressful that has put me in a strange mood. Tired, emotionally drained, frustrated - the usual mess - but also calm, weirdly content, and resolved.
I was out yesterday on a sick day which was good for me even though it messed with the momentum of my week. This morning there was an outpouring of relief and appreciation from my students that I hadn't anticipated. I remember when I was in middle school, it was always good when my teacher was gone and we had a substitute. We hated our math teacher. He wasn't mean or overly harsh or unfair or any of that. We just loathed him for the sake of loathing. (Sorry, Mr. Gutfeld, but you were a tool.) Also, I was bored out of my mind and nearly failed 7th grade math because I thought the whole thing was just stupid. I knew it all but couldn't test into the advanced class. Stupid. Maybe there was a case of 90s grunge apathetic angst about the whole deal but I digress. The point was, my students couldn't stop talking about how they were glad to have me back instead of the sub (they all walk all over him and, well, he's not very good with kids yet - very authoritarian but has no authority). And of course, that meant that they couldn't stop talking, but it wasn't malicious just kid stuff, exacerbated by the fact that I got pulled from class after 45 minutes for a tech training and my homeroom all protested loudly about it.
It was a strange show of affection, but no less appreciated. My other classes were messed up for the day but ran smoothly nonetheless and it made me feel better about my whole situation.
Had a conversation with the middle school special ed coordinator regarding the kids in special ed and specifically about D. D, the root of many headaches, but also the one who needs saved the most. We are not sure if he will be coming back to school. He is abused, neglected, and unwanted. He can hardly read but a few sight words and his math is marginally better as long as he has someone to read the problems. All his academic deficiencies have been overshadowed by his behavior problems. He is out right now because his mother won't take him to get his shots so we can't let him back to school - though we fudged that rule for most of the school year because of his situation. The problem is that his mother won't take him to get his shots so that he can stay in school but she won't let him stay home during the day so he roams the neighborhood on his bike and fends for himself. What the fucking hell is wrong with this woman? The school is running out of options. He's already been in foster care and his mother is uncooperative. It's no wonder he has a serious problem with female authority figures when his mother beats him. What can we do? I'm just afraid that this kid is way too close to being permanently broken and all I can do is watch it happen.
Another of my students got suspended today and I'm really kind of depressed about it because I don't want him to lose out so close to the end of the quarter and I think that he can pass this quarter. I don't want to see him singled out excessively so that it hurts him, which is what it seems is happening and I can't do anything about that either. Going to try to get him his work through his sister for the week that he will be out so that he can prepare for the exam and get the credit he needs. I really hate that progress the kids may be showing in my class behavior-wise seems to get no credit outside my class and I don't know how to fix that. I know that part of the problem is that this kid has a personality clash with one of the other teachers and he fights back fast. I have noticed, for the most part, that over time my students have calmed as I've calmed down. They may not talk any less but things are less dramatic most of the time. Trying to save the yelling for the most harmful behaviors has worked even though it has taken a while to see small results. I had expectations set too high too fast, especially considering my inexperience. But my inexperience is what makes it difficult for me to make suggestions to a more experienced teacher about how they deal with their own classroom discipline. I don't like people butting into my classroom, so I can hardly go butting into theirs.
I am trying to at least point the kids in the direction of empathy, though I may never see the benefits of anything I try to teach in that capacity.
All this said and rambled, brings me to my evening at UNO and my talk with my cohort leader about the state of my own academics. I nearly had an anxiety attack just thinking about the whole mess but it will probably be fine in the end. I've got some extra time to make up the disaster which is not as much of a disaster as I had suspected. But she told me that she thought I had a good rapport with my kids, which I have rarely felt. Reminded me that kids don't show it well, but after all that happened today I can see some of the little things. It may not get them to learn how to factor, but that is probably not the most important life skill they will ever need. Maybe I am just the stepping stone and I might not see the payoff. And you know kids, they'll take everything you've got and more and never realize until much, much later (if ever) the ways we try to point them in the right direction. The ways we try to shape them into something good without smothering what's there already. I try not to let my first-year mistakes get in their way or stick.
It's too much to say, I've realized, that I want them to have everything. I don't care whether they grow up and go to Harvard and blame all their success in life on my 6th grade math class. I just want to know that they are going to be okay, have a decent life, and pass on the favor to their kids. For some of them, this is a lot to hope for but I hope for it anyway.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that today, yes, I have been crying. But it is only because I really do love the little fuckers.
