Unbalanced Literacy

Day 2

2009-09-09T22:51:00.005-04:00

I am already exhausted, and achy. I'm not old, not even middle aged, but I feel my age right now. There was a time when I could lug boxes and stretch to hang banners and hop on and off chairs, and while I can still do those things, I feel it the next day. Clearly I am not 25 anymore. If I had time, I'd start going to yoga again.

Choosing not to loop with my former students might be the best decision I've made recently. I passed the classrooms of my old students, and saw one whole class already being reprimanded by the assistant principal, with a few knuckleheads already removed pending parent contact. My new students, on the other hand, were very good and while I know that we're in the honeymoon phase, I get a very different vibe that makes me feel optimistic.

And it's almost Thursday already. Despite my low-level euphoria, I can't wait for the weekend. I am worn.

Day One, Post 100

2009-09-08T21:15:00.003-04:00

This will be nothing significant, but I want to get into the habit again, of at least writing something, even if it's not worth reading. (Sorry.)

Today was pretty productive. For the first time ever I was very organized in how I put my materials and other stuff away, and it paid off. I also knew exactly how I wanted to organize everything (and even made a floorplan) so I was able to get a lot done. There is still work to be done, but the room looks great, maybe even the best I've ever done in (gulp) thirteen years. The little tweaks will come in time.

Somehow we got an A on our progress report. I told Mister that I hate to knock good results, and I hate to knock our school. But I don't think I'm impressed. I think we were helped by the fact that the people who graded our tests were asleep at the wheel. (You know, kids who can barely read getting 2s and even 3s.) We're apparently in the top 20% of the city, or something like that. But I still wouldn't send Beany here. I am looking forward to seeing how my incoming kids compare on my assessments to their state assessments.

I'm looking forward to meeting the kids, but tomorrow's going to come too quickly.

Updates on Various

2009-08-27T21:47:00.004-04:00

In brief, since Project Runway is on in 13 minutes and it's about the only show I watch anymore. (And thanks to Schoolgal for thinking of me again; I wonder if anyone's even reading anymore? I hate that I let this blog get so neglected.)

Summer: I can't believe it's almost over, but it's been wonderful. Mister, Beany and I took several short trips and packed a lot into our time spent locally as well. It's been great to not have any real pressure on us, beyond cleaning/laundry/raising a kid, all which are relatively a breeze.

Beany: She is amazing. I can't believe that she's almost two and a half already. She's not a baby any more, she's a little girl. I am happy and sad about this.

School: I think this past year may have been one of my worst ever. Usually I want to move up with my kids from sixth grade to seventh and eighth. Though I swore after '07-'08 that I would never loop from six to eight again, I thought that staying with the same kids from sixth to seventh might be nice. But not these kids. I was happy to see them go. I never had kids who were so rude, entitled, unwilling to follow rules and policies, mean to each other, unmotivated. And I have always and only worked in the South Bronx so it's not like I left the 'burbs for the city all of a sudden. In almost every other year, most of the kids were nice, put in some effort, were respectful and adhered to expectations. This year (or I guess I should say last year) I found that the diligent, nice, respectful kids were in the minority. In my homeroom, there were maybe ten kids who didn't make me want to rip out my fingernails one by one. I had one really good month and then it went downhill quickly.

Other: I told Mister that I was going to give this one more year. If things don't improve, I don't know what I will do. I think about quitting, though, and fantasizing about working in Borders where I will have a 15 minute commute and the chance to be around books all day. Of course, there's no better time to plan a career change than when the economy's in the shitter.

And that's all for now.

Who says kids lack manners and grammar skills?

2009-01-15T14:47:00.004-05:00

Alternate Title: Ewwwwwwwwww...

Dear Ms. ***** I have to tell you something private.

There was a condom on the back door nob. And you touched it. So I think you should wash you should wash your hands or do something. That is why nobody goes through the back door.

Sorry.

From: Girl #1 and Girl #2.

p.s. you are welcome.

Findings

2008-12-17T20:13:00.003-05:00

My new incentive system has worked well in one class and not so well in the other. I wish that I'd kept some data of the "before" and "after" (because I don't have enough data to deal with already) because this data would actually mean something to me. I do know that at least three kids who got fifty-fives in the first marking period now have averages of 75 to 80 because they have been doing all of their homework and classwork. I have fewer kids coming late; there are only a couple of holdouts. And I haven't had to give out a pen or pencil; that situation was really making me want to tear my hair out from frustration.

I am not a fan of teaching after lunch. Usually, it would take me ten minutes to get the kids quiet, at least. Then they would be so hyped up that it was hard to get anything done. Now, it's like walking into a different room. Most of the kids have books out and are reading and it's actually quiet. I began throwing bonus points at the groups who did this on their own because they took it upon themselves to make sure that they all had books and began to read as soon as the previous teacher left. And the behavior is also significantly better. Usually the noise would be coming from all over the place, making it hard to pin down which kids were actually talking. Now, I have entire groups that are completely silent while other groups are noisy, so those noisy groups don't get their conduct point. It's been interesting to see which kids have thrived and which kids haven't done as well as I'd hoped. Some of the kids are really stepping up, leading, organizing, supporting the others, and that's really gratifying to see, that they are getting something out of this that might actually be useful in the real world.

It's not perfect, but it's made a huge difference. In the other class, where the idea was less-than-successful, the math teacher and I had grouped the kids by ability. There are about six kids who are really strong academically and they are well-behaved, so they were sitting together. There is one group of kids who are seriously behind, and we wanted them together to facilitate differentiation. But when I tried to move to the new system, only the strongest group did well; the others were a mess. I think they'd been better behaved before. The math teacher gave them new seats, which are slightly better. I'm doing the reward (a field trip to see The Tale of Despereaux and lunch) with those kids on an individual basis. This allows me to exclude the girl who made a point to say loudly, "Mr. Science is the only cool teacher." Because she knew that I am now emotionally mortally wounded over not being the cool teacher. Tomorrow during lunch, I am going to hurl myself dramatically off the roof for all to see. If I survive, then next month I am going to make another attempt with that class to implement my system.

Of course, it's not perfect. Interestingly, I noticed that the two groups who so far have the most points are single-gender. One group is all girls and the other group is all boys. There are two mixed-gender groups who have both had multiple meetings with me (at their request) and at the heart of the problem in both was boy-girl conflict. So I'm thinking about doing something I've never done before: grouping by gender. I am going to keep the successful groups intact but make some changes to the others.

Overall, I do feel really good about the results. It's helped me stay more on top of grading, because the kids are very eager to know how many points they got. As soon as I have a prep, I check all the classwork and homework and it's not hanging over my head. And a couple of kids in particular have really amazed me. I think that they really don't want the other members of their groups to be upset with them, and that's motivating them to do for themselves, knowing that they are helping the others.

If only I could stay in my much-improved bubble all the time...

Middle School Logic

2008-12-17T20:12:00.001-05:00

In the last two days, I've confiscated an iPod (because the girl put it away when asked, but then took ten steps away from me and took it out again) and a phone (from a girl who was texting during my class). I learned something very important: when you take something from a student, it automatically belongs to someone else. Thus, it is expected that you will return the item immediately to the guilty party because the person you took it from was not the owner.

Of course, this is the mindset of the middle schooler. Naturally, I laughed the laugh of the evil, not-cool teacher, and walked away.

Is diagnosing teacher burnout like determining recession?

2008-12-05T20:01:00.001-05:00

Two Christmas vacations from now, will I be on a long-awaited, child-free vacation with my husband, drunk on daquiris, and realize that I've been living burnout for most of the last decade?

Supporting Detail One: I've been misspelling simple things. As an English teacher, and an often-maligned city teacher, I'm always very mindful of using language correctly. And I'm a good speller by nature, so when I make these errors I know that I'm in need of serious rest. The test prep books that were chosen (by someone else who doesn't even use them, of course) really suck, so I printed all the old ELA exams for my grade from the state website. I'm using them for practice and assessment, and after I labeled one of the sections I realized that I'd written "ASSMENT" instead of "ASSESSMENT." Though I can't say for sure if I can attribute that error to tiredness or if it reflected my real feelings about testing.

Supporting Detail Two: During seventh period today, the only day and time of the week that I believe in Satan, I found myself wondering, If I fall out the window "accidentally" is that considered an on-the-job injury?

Supporting Detail Three: Now that I've been able to log on to Acuity, I actually find it useful. This is the weakest example of the three, because I still have lots of valid reason to bitch about Acuity.

TGIF.

A Post, Just For The Hell Of It

2008-12-01T20:15:00.005-05:00

My new reward system went into effect today. It worked better with my morning class than my afternoon class, but that's typical. Teaching in the afternoon is nearly impossible.

I had fewer late students this morning, which was also a positive, but it's also occured to me that it's ridiculous that I have to jump through all these hoops to get the kids to do the things that they are supposed to do.

I've been a good little soldier and have been attempting to use more data. Of course, it took me about three weeks to be able to log on to Acuity. No one could figure out why, but then I realized that my old DOE e-mail account is somehow lost in cyberspace, replaced with a newer one I had no idea about with both my maiden and married names. In the meantime, I still haven't been able to log on to ARIS.

I suppose that the millions the Tweedians coughed up for these programs wasn't enough.

More importantly, I wish I knew when I was supposed to have time to look at all this data. While I don't think it's the be-all, end-all that the brainwashed educrats think it is, I do think it can be useful. But we get no time to look at it, or think about what it says, other than the fact that Johnny can't read because he doesn't come to school have the time and does nothing when he's there.

Each week I'm tempted to boycott our weekly common conferences. It's wasted time, really. There hasn't been a concrete agenda in weeks. And the programs were done in such a way that not all the teachers on a grade are at the meetings, because many of them are teaching. Last year, as difficult as it was, I found solace in the other teachers on my team. We all taught the same kids, and while a focus on instruction would have been more beneficial, at least we were able to discuss the kids who were challenging us the most and come up with ideas and solutions. We were truly a team. I don't have that this year, even though I am fortunate to have a great working relationship with the math teacher for the grade. We're a team of two, at least.

Otherwise, I feel like I am totally on my own. The curriculum guidance is non-existent, and we're always being hammered on using the data and using technology without any real conversations about how to implement these things.

Today I started my full-blown, hard-core test prep. It bores the shit out of me, but at least I don't have to think quite so much. So maybe this month I will be able to figure out ARIS. If, of course, I'm able to log on.

Alarming Information

2008-11-23T19:41:00.003-05:00

We had parent-teacher conferences last week. (Did I mention this already? The weekend has not been nearly as restorative as it should be.)

So. One of the things I want to tackle with my new system is lateness. It's a huge problem, and nothing that I did helped. A few of the kids are working on twenty latenesses for the year. Nothing is being done at the administrative level either. Lunch detention didn't make a difference; it just meant that the kids were late AND bitching and moaning about how unfair I am.

Even though I'd spoken to parents over the phone, I made a point to emphasize the issue during conferences, and I was stunned at the number of parents who explained that their kids were late because they, the parents, didn’t always get them up in time. On Friday, one chronically late student was later than usual with a note from his mother, explaining that she overslept, and was unable to get him up. Keep in mind that I teach sixth graders, and many of them are responsible for walking younger siblings to and from school. They have their own apartment and house keys. Hell, I didn't have a house key all through high school, something that still makes me the object of ridicule among some of my friends. But my mother no longer woke me up when I was in sixth grade; I was on my own.

So, these children who have iPods and cell phones that are more sophisticated than mine don’t own that other very high-tech gadget, the alarm clock.

The Year So Far

2008-11-20T19:59:00.002-05:00

I was so excited to teach sixth grade this year. My last group of sixth graders was wonderful; granted, they devolved into snotty, entitled, hormone-charged brats by eighth grade, but when they were sixth graders, I loved them. Generally, I like the age group and I developed several units that they found engaging, units I'd tweak, improve and reuse.

So at this point, with about a quarter of the year finished, I’d say that I’m disappointed. While I do have a tendency to look back with rose-colored glasses, I don’t think I’ve ever been this continually frustrated with my students. Overall, their behavior is not good; calls to parents and lunch detention haven’t helped. They don’t listen at all. I have lost track of the number of times that I’ve asked them to do something simple, like take out materials, hang up jackets, go back to their seat. They look at me and continue doing whatever they were doing and I have to ask at least once more.

Of course some of the kids are wonderful, hard-working and well-behaved. But there are more who don’t fit into that category. As for the parents, they seem to fall into two extremes: helpful or not. I’ve been using an online grading program this year, and it’s been a life-saver. There’s a component for parent access, so I was able to get several e-mail addresses so that I can send them grades and behavior logs. I’m more optimistic about those parents, but then there are parents who know that their kids are struggling, either with behavior or work, and they don’t want to get involved.

I need to do something. A few weeks ago my husband mentioned an article in the New York Times sports section about Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama’s brother, who is a college basketball coach. The article mentioned Robinson’s policy of punishing late players by making the whole team run sprints. He said that they were all punished to remind them that they were accountable to each other.

It got me thinking about accountability, and these kids, and how they’re really not accountable to the system. Their parents aren’t either. Teachers are the only ones who really get the heat when the scores are bad. And that’s a problem for a lot of reasons. Granted, the kids get bad grades, but most of them don’t seem bothered by them. They know they will go to summer school and get passed on to the next grade, especially the kids who are already multiple holdovers.

I thought about making the whole class do lunch detention the next time a few kids were bad. Then a light bulb went off in my head, reminding me of how pissed I get when my school implements things on the fly, and in a half-assed way. So for the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about how I can make these kids accountable to each other.

I think I’ve hammered out a decent plan. It still needs tweaking, and I won’t bore anyone with details, but I have hope. Instead of the whole class, the kids will be in small groups of four or five kids, and they will be accountable to their group for work, behavior and punctuality. They’ll get points for doing what they’re supposed to do. I know that I’ll have to build in some lessons about teamwork and what to do about the kids who absolutely won’t come on board. They will all be working towards a point goal instead of competing against each other. I’m aiming this more at those middle kids, the ones who aren’t doing terribly but aren’t working to their full potential. So far this year I haven’t taken any trips, because the kids just haven’t deserved them, but trips will be the monthly reward.

Once the ELA is over I think I will also enjoy myself more. I’m about to cast everything aside and do nothing but test prep until the test. I don’t feel great about it, and it will bore the shit out of all of us, but I feel backed into a corner. It’s pretty clear that test scores are the only thing that matter. Thank goodness that at least a few of my kids really do have genuine curiosity and a desire to learn. I’m sure as hell not cultivating it. By my standards, I’m not doing the job I want, but if the kids pass the test, at least the Tweedians will be happy with my performance.

Today

2008-11-13T20:27:00.002-05:00

I have a student, Jay, who has been a perpetual thorn in my side all year. He’s pretty bright, but makes it a point to not do his work. This in itself is obviously a concern, but his behavior is also a problem. There have been times when the principal and assistant principal have been in the room to talk to the class about something, and he just goes on as if he’s the only one who matters. Their obvious anger with him doesn’t seem to bother him. His mother was also just in on Monday.

On Thursdays I have an eighth period prep, and with the way our school’s extended day is structured, I sometimes don’t have any kids then either (shh…don’t tell Joel and Mikey!) Thus I have a good chunk of uninterrupted time where I can work in the relative peace and quiet of my room, something I don’t get too often. But today, I was so angry with several of them, including Jay, that I didn’t let them go to their last period tech class, which they love. And since detention, or punishment, or whatever the hell it’s called, sometimes turns into a free-for-all, I gave them a “reflective essay” to write. Very New-Age of me, don’t you think? I should buy a Yanni CD to play during writing time.

This is what Jay wrote
The reason why I do not do my work is because I do not have a lot of self esteem and I know I can do my work but I chose not to. Another reason is because I don’t know why I don’t pay attention it is not because I am mentally slow or anything. It’s just some teachers don’t give me enough credit.

Another kid, DJ, wrote:
The things that make me act up in my life is I’m hardly around my father. I live with my mom only 2 days each weekend and I can’t keep still. It’s hard for me to control myself…I don’t know when it’s time to stop playing, I’ve been like this since I was in 2nd grade and I am still like this I just can’t help myself.

Jay and I talked for a few minutes; all the kids who were there talked about what they’d written. It makes me feel bad that so many of them have such difficult situations in their lives that they don’t want to discuss. I never press things but it really does explain a lot. Those kids, who’d made me see red just a few minutes before, had me feeling a lot of empathy for them. Most of us who work in city schools regularly ruminate about the problems these kids have in their lives, which are often brought in to the classroom, but, for me anyway, it’s easy to let that awareness fall to the side. Especially when the word of the day, every day, is “test.” Or, really, “test test test test test test.”

I don’t, for one second, suggest letting them slide when they do wrong, but I think talking with them more regularly in a “risk free environment” (gag) might help. I’ve been all but banging my head against cinderblocks, trying to think of ways to get them to behave. I call parents, lecture them, request conferences, do lunch detention, take away the few-and-far-between fun things that come up, to no avail. Today felt like the first time I made any headway with a couple of them.

Naturally, I was feeling especially good about the progress I made with Jay, which means that he inevitably left the room with the rest of the class and pushed another kid down the stairs. Now I think I see him more as a master manipulator, because he did have me feeling badly for him and guilty that I hadn't tried the kinder, gentler thing earlier in the year. From all smiles to assault in just a matter of minutes.

We want Joel to go, but not to DC...

2008-11-11T19:26:00.000-05:00

SIGN this petition. Pass it on.

How to piss off a loyal fan...

2008-11-11T14:40:00.003-05:00

I became a fan of Morning Joe on MSNBC back when I was on maternity leave. Since we had today off, and Beany got up before the sun, I was able to see the show. There was a clip with DC Mayor Adrian Fenty talking about school reform, and afterwards all the hosts engaged in a little teacher-union bashing. Inherent in that, of course, is teacher-bashing. Finding myself super-pissed, I devoted some of today to writing this response, neglecting the pile of dirty laundry that probably rivals Sarah Palin's entire RNC-funded haul.

I wish, before you and your co-hosts launched into your diatribe about evil teachers’ unions, that you’d done a little more research, and maybe you could have talked to a real teacher or two. For brevity’s sake, I can only scratch the surface of my experiences and thoughts, but I know that there are many educators who would agree with me.

I am a veteran New York City teacher who has worked in the South Bronx since 1996. While admittedly I only caught a snippet of your interview with DC Mayor Adrian Fenty, I am well versed in the reforms that Chancellor Michelle Rhee is attempting to implement in that city’s schools. The regime of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein has been attempting to make similar reforms, with mixed results (but don’t tell them; they are masters at spinning numbers to make it look like our kids are doing better than they really are.)

The public (and journalists and politicians) love to point fingers at unions, at teachers, to explain the abysmal performance of our schools. Unfortunately, blame and accusations take up time and energy that could be better invested in our kids. The reality is that the blame is on all of us: teachers, administrators, parents, even the students themselves. Unions protect bad teachers; there’s no doubt about that. But in my experience, most of us work very hard every day under challenging conditions. It’s hard, but not impossible, to remove bad teachers. Our teacher’s union has a little-used plan that works with teachers who need to be out of the profession, helping transition them to other careers. Unfortunately, principals rarely follow through on the process, though to be fair, they are overworked too.

Teacher unions are not evil. There have been a few years when I have had 36 and 37 kids in a class; during my first year, I had 40 bilingual students, no materials and no qualifications to teach bilingual kids. The UFT is constantly fighting to lower class size, as smaller classes are proven to be a factor in success. I can’t say I had the kind of success I wanted when my students and I were crammed into the room like sardines, with kids sharing books.

Since Joel Klein became Chancellor, we are constantly judged on test scores, which is unfair. I am an English Language Arts teacher. The test my students will take in January will be given over two days. These two days will inform the media, the parents, the kids, the administrators, if I am doing a good job or not. Ironic, isn’t it, that I’m not the one taking the test? Yet in the past I have had to answer for less-than-stellar scores while kids and parents have not. On any given day, I have about 10% of my students late or absent. I have several children who come to school without pens and pencils. This year I have eight sixth graders who are reading two to three years below grade level. Though I will do the best I can, the reality is that I can’t get them to make years of progress in a few months.

At some point, the parents and the students themselves have to step up. My school of almost 500 students has an average of ten parents at every PTA meeting and half of those attending are the organization’s officers. At our twice-yearly parent conferences, I see fewer than half of my students’ parents. The parents who I really need to see the most are often the least likely to show up.

Teachers in NYC and DC are under attack from politicians who are bent on reform at any cost. Unfortunately, in NYC, Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg chose to implement their reforms against teachers, instead of for children. Children should come first, but teachers are the key to making that happen, and our input was completely cast aside. And when I say input, I don’t mean more time for coffee breaks; I’m referring to input on curriculum and instruction, on assessment, on behavior management. Expectations are high for us to raise scores, but support is nearly non-existent. Many administrators are so intent on keeping their jobs that they resort to threatening and bullying staff and students. Obviously, respect for us is at an all-time low; I don’t even have the right to park my car in front of my school anymore, so some of the time I used to use for planning is now spent driving around, looking for a space.

Since Joel Klein became Chancellor, we have been working a longer day and longer year, something we agreed to in our contract. And while we got more money, most of us don’t consider more money for more time to be a raise.

Every group has its bad apples. There are teachers in classrooms that don’t belong there. However, the constant attacks upon those of us who try to do our best do not serve to motivate us. This is something that Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have not figured out either. And the unions, with their power, seem to have lost sight of their true purpose: to fight for teachers so we can make things better for kids.

A week ago today I voted for Barack Obama with pride and excitement that I have never experienced. I hope that he includes real teachers in these crucial conversations that we need to have. I hope, in the future, that you do the same.

Too Much of Nothing

2008-11-03T20:33:00.000-05:00

I’ve started to write several times over the past few weeks, but have been obviously unsuccessful. October was a rough month, as a teacher and as a mom. I can summarize the mom aspect in two words: “toddler” and “bedtime”.

The teacher aspect is more complex. I’ve been feeling a little lost and a lot overwhelmed, and while I was able to make some headway with some of these challenges, it’s not all peachy. I found myself with a bunch of new students in late September, which caused a lot of upheaval for all of us. Since then, several of those students have been moved to special needs classes. In one class, I had sixth graders whose reading levels ranged from second grade (barely) to seventh grade. I had the equivalent of an entire special needs class in a regular ed class, without the benefit of a para. Fortunately, another teacher who works with the class is wonderful and began the referral process. It turned out that a lot of the new kids had IEPs and never should have been placed in regular ed classes. At the moment I have four kids who are really, really behind, but there were about ten at one point, and I think two of them will be moved to special ed soon. I went to Borders and bought third grade reading workbooks, and tracked down every high interest/low level book I could find. I’m not making much headway. As part of the end-of-marking-period assessment, I had them take the multiple choice part of an old sixth grade ELA. Two of them got two questions right out of 26, one got six and one got 7.

Thinking about these four kids is making my head spin. I think I’m done with this post. Luckily, America seems to be a great place for opportunity: from unlicensed plumber to Congressional candidate AND country music star! I need to find a similar path, but I have to be able to remain a Democrat.

Go Obama!

Note to Self: C.Y.A.

2008-10-07T20:44:00.001-04:00

I want to do a good job, I really do. But it seems like the universe wants to chip away at my motivation until there is nothing left. The year began with promise, smaller classes with kids who were behaved enough so that I could build on that and move on to the real business of teaching. After three weeks, I got several more students, who are, for lack of a better term, unclassified special needs students. I can work with the kids who are academically behind, but the kids who don’t know how to behave are a different story. I have already talked to and met the parents of the most difficult students, and while a couple of them are showing some improvement, the ones I had the most trouble with have not improved at all.

I have two choices: I can continue to invest time, effort, more discipline, whatever I have, into these kids, into trying to get to know them and understand them in the hopes that I will somehow reach them and motivate them. Or I can put the time into carefully documenting all the bad behavior and the lack of work, making sure to give copies of everything to the principal, the assistant principal, the counselors, the parents.

Now that I am going to be rated on my students’ performance on their standardized tests, I am obviously going to chose the second option. There’s no time for actual interest in the problem kids, no time for actual interest in any of the kids. It has been reduced to a numbers game, one I have to play.

The idea of saying to hell with real teaching and plunging full-time into test prep is very, very tempting. It doesn’t matter if the kids learn; it matters that they are able to take tests.

Joke's on me...

2008-10-02T19:04:00.003-04:00

I recently wrote about my relucatance to put in writing any goals related to test scores.

Silly me. I should have known that 'lil Joely and his minions (this means you, Randi) would find a way to get me anyway, along with everyone else who teaches math and ELA to fourth through eighth graders.

The Story

2008-09-28T19:25:00.000-04:00

I don’t know what I prefer: the rudeness that characterized last year’s eighth graders or the immaturity that so far describes the sixth graders. I wish there was a “none of the above” option. So much time is devoted to navigating ridiculousness:

“He took my pen!”
“No I didn’t! She took MY pen!”
“She touched my desk!”
“He touched my desk first!”
“He’s looking at me!”
“No I’m not! She’s mad ugly!”

And so on.

This is the sort of thing I have been dealing with since Day 2, and it came to a head on Friday, which was the most difficult day I’ve had all year. That’s an ominous thought after only nineteen or so days of school (I only know this fact because I had to talk to a student about her attendance, and point out that she’d already been absent for half the school year. She didn’t understand why I thought that was a problem.)

My morning was not terrible, though I was surprised at the number of kids who were absent. We were working on the second draft of a writing activity. I’d collected the first drafts from the kids who’d finished, and told the kids who did not finish in class to finish at home. After I returned the drafts, six kids complained that I hadn’t returned their drafts. I panicked, and went through all my other folders, went through my binder, everything. I didn’t find any additional drafts, and I got pretty upset. Organization is still something I struggle with, but I very seldom lose anything, which is a big reason why I have little motivation to change. I function well within my dysfunction.

The combination of my record of not losing things paired with what I already know about the specific kids who claimed that I had their work made me suspicious. So I sat down with those kids, one at a time (because, you know, I had nothing better to do) and made them go through all their stuff. All the kids but one found the drafts that “I” had. And the one whose work I didn’t find claimed that it was collected by another student, who is not one of my collection monitors. I assume he lost his. Do I need to say that I was furious? I’d felt so guilty about the possibility that I’d lost their work and I spent a lot of time going through all the work I had, and I had to spend a lot of time with each of those kids to find the work that they claimed I had. And of course none of them had made a dent in the assignment.

As frustrating as the morning was, the afternoon was much, much worse. I really don’t know why anyone has to teach on Friday afternoons. It’s so hard to accomplish anything. The time could be spent better on team-building activities or technology projects or…anything else. If I didn’t have a husband and child, I would be willing to allow the students to perform practice lobotomies on me. But that would really only get me through one Friday afternoon; the upside is that afterwards I really wouldn’t give a shit anymore, would I?

The class I have on Friday afternoon is my most talkative, and it also got most of the students from the dissolved class. I got tired of trying to talk over them to explain the activity, so I moved all the quiet kids into one corner, got them started, and went around and gave zeroes to the rest of the students. Once I’d issued the zeroes, they started working. Not the best approach, but I didn’t know what else to do. I refuse to raise my voice; I think less is more.

Naturally, a spat broke out between a boy and a girl, and it got physical. There were no punches thrown, but they were tussling back and forth. My AP walked in as it was happening and was obviously not amused. After the class I called both parents, plus the parents of two other students who are doing no work and causing disruptions. There are many more parents that I need to call, but I think I need to deal with just a couple at a time. It’s hard enough to confer with parents since they often show up when they can, as opposed to when we have preps. So I end up with one foot in the hallway and one foot in the classroom, and it’s not effective. Though I do think I need to bring up to administration that something has to be done about the way we meet with parents. The kids get really antsy when no adult is in the room, even when multiple adults are in earshot. As a result I often wonder what goes through the parents’ heads when they see these other kids and I wonder what they think about my ability and effectiveness.

I am not looking forward to tomorrow, not that this tidbit is surprising. I’ve been looking at websites on character education, and I think tomorrow I am going to backtrack and not do my usual lesson. Instead, I am going to see if I can put together an activity that focuses on respect for fellow students, because I think this is a huge part of my problem. The kids have no respect for each other; they have no respect for themselves, so they are not going to respect me or the learning that needs to happen.

Oy.

2008-09-26T22:04:00.002-04:00

If there was ever a day that would drive me to drink, it was today.

The Latest

2008-09-24T21:08:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I wrote my “goals” for the year. We were expected to explain in detail what we wanted to accomplish with our students this year, including specifics about scores, and how much we were going to raise them.

I really, really thought about writing something snarky because I don’t think anyone’s going to read it. In June we had to write year-end reflections, and I wrote some pretty scathing things. Well, maybe scathing is an exaggeration, but I’m a reforming wimp, so it took a lot to make some of those comments. Nothing was ever said to me. So I was thinking about writing, “My goal is to make better use of time. This means that I will discard anything that remotely reeks of bullshit, like ‘my goals for the year.’”

So, I decided to be professional. But committing to raising scores in any measureable way is not something I feel comfortable with even though it was strongly suggested that we do just that. There’s no way I was going to write something like “My goal is to raise each student’s ELA scale score by ten percent” or “I will move all the Level 2 students to Level 3 and maintain all Level 3s or move them to Level 4.” In my mind, I DO aspire to these things for my students. But in the current climate I’d have to be an absolute moron to put in writing anything that could be held against me later on. I decided to aim for having all the kids read 25 books by the end of the school year because there is a more tangible result, one that the kids can see month to month. And it’s something feasible for me too.

Actually, I did resort to a teeny, subtle bit of snark. I explained that my goal was feasible because it was one that I could accomplish with the students, but without additional support. My other justification for not committing to anything score-related has to do with the help, or lack of, that I've had in the past. Last year I asked for support on several occasions, and got nothing except criticism about the lack of increase in the scores at the end of the year. Relevant, useful, professional support is really lacking, so I have to plan on really being alone in this. Most of the meetings we have seem to center on materials and what we're doing to assess the kids. Assess up the ass, that's our motto.

Improving the scores is going to get harder tomorrow anyway. It seems that my lovely small classes will no longer be. I should have known that it was too good to be true, even after I cornered my principal to grill him about the possibility of getting more kids. He promised that it wouldn’t happen, and I know if it was up to him this would remain the case. It turns out that he has to add another special needs class, even though we have almost twice as many kids as the other school in the building, a school with more physical space and roughly the same number of teachers. This school is led by a Principal’s Academy person. It defies logic why we have to do this. Each of my classes will get about 5 more kids.

I’m so upset. I’m going to do my best to make these kids feel welcome, but even the smaller classes were a challenge because the kids are so chatty. Lunch detention does not seem to be helping; calling parents doesn’t seem to be helping. At least one of the kids I’m getting back cursed out all the teachers pretty regularly last year. If and when that happens, I decided that I am going to throw the fit of all fits because I just let these things get heaped on top of me. I understand that many of these kids have problems; I’m guilty of making excuses for them too. But I’m a teacher, not a counselor, and it seems like more obstacles keep getting thrown in my way.

Me too.

2008-09-24T21:04:00.003-04:00

From the paper I refuse to buy. (I get a free copy at school.)

This is education?

Whitestone: I really don't know how to express my disgust for the N.Y.C. public school system anymore. There are 1,395 teachers sitting in "reserve." Yet last week, my son, in his new middle school, spent three periods (40 minutes each) in the auditorium watching "The Incredibles" because his teacher was absent. I'm truly at a loss for words.

Denise Meyn

My handbag collection is another parking casualty...

2008-09-24T21:02:00.001-04:00

I came to another realization this morning when I was getting out of my car and collecting my daily luggage. I carry a lot of stuff back and forth every day. My tote bag, my purse, my lunch bag. I feel like I should be stronger than I am, lugging around a toddler as much as I do, but I’m puny. And it occurred to me that I am going to have to somehow pare down once I lose my parking pass. The neighborhood I work in is not great. There have been muggings and purse snatchings near the school, and I feel vulnerable walking, weighted down by all my stuff. There are very few non-DOE spots near my school; I’ve been scoping things out every morning. At the moment my ton of daily crap doesn’t worry me because I usually get a decent spot, but if I have to walk a few blocks I need to travel lighter. Most likely I will ditch the purse, which makes me sad because I love to rock a cool handbag, and try to take less work home, which won’t be an issue. I’ll have to arrive at school at 5 am to get parking, so I’ll have plenty of time to do it then.

Teacher as Dictator

2008-09-23T20:30:00.002-04:00

Yesterday there was an announcement made about class elections, and how all homeroom teachers needed to hold them for president and vice president by today.

I am embracing fascism in my classroom this year. Democracy of any sort is not for children in middle school. Ironically, when I was in graduate school, we had to talk about classroom management in small groups and come up with a plan. I think in the mid-90s we were still calling it by its proper name, “discipline.” My group decided that we would make a class constitution. With the students. By the students. For the students.

We must have been high off the fumes that were swirling about from the construction on the new library wing. We were obviously all pre-service teachers, because if we’d had even a modicum of experience, we would have known that dictatorship is the only option.

Thus, I chose the President and Vice President myself. These elections always devolve into popularity contests and finish with some kid crying in the hall because he somehow figured out that he only got one vote, his own. Then I feel helpless and end up with snot on my shirt. And the last kid who deserved the spot gets it and proceeds to make demands of me, such as deciding that I should supply them with cookies twice a week.

I chose a boy as President who is mostly well behaved, does all his classwork and homework, and is always quick to help out when needed. I would have selected a girl, but the most qualified one is not well-behaved enough. But I did make her the Vice-President, told her that I thought she had a lot of potential, which is true. She lost both of her parents in a short span of time, but is super-bright and seems to be in a loving home. I already saw a difference in her conduct; hopefully it’s not temporary.

My decision also came from my frustration with the way things are done in my school- lots of good ideas, executed in half-assed fashion because someone wants it done right away, instead of done right. I have no issue with the idea of class presidents, but I was aggravated at the way it was announced with the expectation that it would be done pronto. So the administration is tacitly supporting a fascist dictator, me. I just can’t get my subjects to stop talking long enough to know that they are under my thumb.

I wonder...

2008-09-21T21:19:00.002-04:00

I refuse to spend money on newspapers that bash teachers, so I seldom buy the Daily News. I do read it from time to time, as I did today while at my parents’ house. (They are excellent grandparents, so I forgive their purchase. Anyway, Mom likes coupons.)

As I was flipping, I spotted an article on the Absent Teacher Reserves . According to the piece, the Department of Ed hired 5,400 new teachers this year, despite the fact that about 1,400 veteran teachers are without permanent assignments, and over two hundred new hires have no placements.

It’s very unusual for me to agree with anything Randi Weingarten says; it’s a pleasant surprise to see her speaking out at all, even though she wasn’t nearly as forceful or angry as she should be. But she is right that in a year when money is tight and budgets were cut, it’s ridiculous that so many new people would be hired. There are qualified, experienced people waiting for positions.

The article made reference to a study by The New Teacher Project that found that more than 100 teachers in the pool did not look for jobs. I assume, then, that 1,300 people DID look for jobs. No one can convince me that those 1,300 people are not qualified. Interestingly, the New Teacher Project was founded by Michelle Rhee before she went to DC to turn that system on its ear like BloomKlein on steroids with a suspicious beef against experienced teachers. The fact that The New Teacher Project did this study makes me wonder if they want to further the idea that those of us who have years of experience, and came in through traditional means, are part of the problem. Are they sharing any of their expertise in "the recruitment, selection, cultivation, preparation and placement of alternate route and traditionally certified teachers" with teachers in the ATR?

Frankly, if I saw 1,300 people looking fruitlessly for jobs, I might not bother to look myself. Getting jobs for these teachers should have been a priority before anyone else was hired.

It’s often implied in the media that teachers in the ATR deserve to be there. And this is where I get frustrated with people who like to complain about tenure. I don’t think that they realize that principals have it in their power to get rid of bad teachers. The process is pretty cumbersome, granted, but if someone is that ineffective and unfit to be in the classroom, there would be no shortage of documentation.

So where is the documentation supporting the placement of these 1,400 teachers in the ATR pool?

I've lost my voice already...

2008-09-16T20:27:00.003-04:00

...and instead of having tea with lemon, I had a huge glass of traminette from our most recent Finger Lakes trip.

So in lieu of a real post, I leave you with this:

A Gift for Sarah Palin.

I sent mine off a few minutes ago.

Request

2008-09-04T19:22:00.004-04:00

After three days, I can safely say that I have no real complaints.

I hope that doesn’t change.

Of course, every morning when I get to work I wonder what it’s going to be like to park in a few weeks, and other than my initial quick post, I never really elaborated on my feelings (angry feelings, in case no one picked up on that). To me, the decision just seems so mean-spirited. I really see it as another slap at the veteran teachers, though maybe that's a stretch. I realize that my own experience is limited to the two schools I’ve worked in, but it seems that most of the newer teachers live in the city and use public transit; I am in a school with mostly older teachers who have been in the system a while, and nearly the entire staff drives. When I lived in Queens I usually drove, but I did have to take the bus and subway from time to time. Moving to the suburbs made that nearly impossible.

I just really don’t get why giving us parking passes posed such a problem. The mayor talked about wanting to reduce the carbon footprint, but I think people are going to be spending a lot more time driving around, looking for a space.

What adds to my anger is my trip past Yankee Stadium on the way home, when people are parked all over the medians and sidewalks during home games. I’ve never seen a ticket on a car, and I’ve never seen a traffic agent writing a ticket. In fact, the last time I drove by I saw two agents talking amidst a sea of illegally parked car, not appearing to be in a rush to ticket anyone.

I can’t believe I spent all this time and energy writing about parking.

My bigger, really important concern is about my classes. They are very small. My homeroom has 25 on the roster, though only 21 have shown up. I can’t speak for the number of kids on register in the other two classes I teach, but about 20 have shown up in each class thus far. Because the classes are so small, I've already been able to collect a lot of information on them. I've done a reading assessment on several of them, and I have been able to just watch them while they worked on their baseline pieces, which has provided me with a lot of information. I have a couple kids who scored Level 3 on the ELA in fifth grade, but one of them actually can't write a sentence and the other one can't seem to get more than a couple sentences on his paper, even though he's had lots of time. I have a little girl who rides the school bus (which is unusual for a child who's not in a special education class) and gets resource room services, but she's probably the most attentive and focused child in the class. I have three boys who just tested out of ESL but who write better than most of the kids who are native English speakers. I also have three boys who are three grade levels behind in reading. I am hoping to be able to do reciprocal teaching with them very soon; I have some kids who'd be great teachers and that would free me up to work with those kids who need the help the most. Of course, if I get more kids, that will be more of a challenge.

So I get really optimistic and excited about all the different ideas I have for teaching them, but then I worry that one of those classes will be dissolved and the other two classes will become huge. Then I worry about how I would be able to work with all the kids, especially those kids who really need help. I almost don’t want to spend too much time organizing them into reading groups or planning too far ahead. I’m starting novels in both classes tomorrow; I hope I don’t have to backtrack and start over because I have a bunch of new kids. I’m trying to tell myself that if it happens, I’ll be ok, but I will be pissed. My principal may also have to excess someone if that class has to be dissolved.

So if you believe in the Class Size Fairies, please put in a good word for me.

Easy (Interview) on Sunday Morning

2008-09-01T19:54:00.002-04:00

Sleeping late is a rare gift these days. Beany is our tiny human alarm clock; without fail she wakes up at 6 am. She has no concept of weekends yet, in terms of the need her parents have to sleep in. This means that yesterday I was able to see Joel Klein interviewed by Chris Wragge on Eye On New York at the ungodly (for Sunday, anyway) hour of 6:30 am.

It was a total softball interview. I have a feeling that there was a list of things agreed upon beforehand that would not be addressed by Klein. I wish someone more hard-hitting would interview him, gloves off. But that’s not going to happen, ever.

Because it was so clearly a fluff interview (and because I was not fully awake) there wasn’t much to say about it. But Wragge did refer to the survey about Klein that we took in June, which found, on average, that 80% of teachers think that Klein needs to improve himself in every aspect of his dealings with us. You know, the teachers. The people who actually work with the children instead of sitting in Tweed and criticizing from afar everything we do. I was briefly heartened, then quickly disappointed, when Wragge started to bring up the survey but only focus on the question about the amount of testing that we do. Klein’s take? “Teachers don’t like testing because it’s a powerful accountability tool.”

This response makes me believe that Joel Klein has never had an honest conversation with most of the teachers who work in NYC. I can only really speak for myself now, but if I ever had the chance, I would tell him that I have no problem with accountability. I do have a problem with the fact that we seem to spend a few days a month giving the kids test upon test, administered by the city, which takes away time from teaching. There’s also not enough time to really look at the results of these assessments and figure out how to use the data, which is time consuming. Last night I spent two hours reviewing the reading data that I collected from my incoming students in June. Granted, it’s only one assessment, but my conclusion? About three-quarters of kids I have not taught yet cannot read very well despite the fact that nearly all of their school career has been during the BloomKlein Regime, despite the fact that they were tested up the yin-yang all year.

Klein actually compared our testing to the tests he took during his own childhood. He referred to his math and vocabulary tests (they taught vocabulary back then!) as “useful.” When a teacher gives a child a test based on something the teacher and child have done in class, it IS useful. The child gets feedback on something he or she was working on, within a reasonable amount of time. There’s relevance. The teacher goes over the results and knows what the students have mastered and what has to be re-taught.

And when a teacher gives a test based on the work that they are doing in class, no one has to shell out millions of dollars. No corporate hacks get rich when we give our own tests. I can see how Klein would hate the idea of teacher-created assessments. It makes it harder for him to make his case about how we all suck, and fewer companies rake in the dough.

And that’s the problem with these assessments from the city. Even when we let the kids know in advance that one is in the near future, it means nothing to them. They see no relevance to what they are doing in class; it’s just another thing to bubble in. They never get the actual tests back to see what they got wrong.

As Klein said, this is about accountability. He looks at what these tests say about the teachers, not the students.

Staph Development: It's Catching!

2008-08-29T21:38:00.002-04:00

I successfully completed one Evil Level Sudoku puzzle today during today’s professional development. Go me. I started a second one, but ran out of time. Those Evil Level puzzles make me feel smarter than I am. There’s something about toiling over a puzzle for a long time that makes it feel like an achievement. Of course, then I throw my masterful achievement of the moment in the garbage, or write a shopping list on the back so I feel less wasteful.

Ironically, I want to make a real effort to be more professional this year. You could argue, fairly, that I am not off to a very auspicious beginning. However, I refuse to partake in anything that I don’t think will be useful. Whenever we have to do written evaluations, I try to be honest and fair in my critique, but we always get more recycled, shallow stuff thrown at us. The evaluations go unread, I bet. I get very, very antsy during these things, especially if they aren’t relevant to me. Although thinking about how I feel in PD is important for thinking about teaching my own students. I don’t want them to feel disconnected and frustrated like I do when I'm in PD.

For example, I would have loved a sit-down with the other teachers on the sixth grade team this year. Last year, working with a great supportive team made teaching a difficult grade bearable. I am not even sure who else is teaching my incoming homeroom class. Ideally, we would have met to discuss expectations, incentives, and how we’d support each other. I also think we would have benefitted from an in-depth conversation among of all the ELA teachers, especially since our test results were so abysmal last year.

Neither of those events transpired. Instead, we were treated to an hour-long presentation on the new math program/curriculum, which included something that seemed like a sales pitch for a textbook the school’s already purchased. If I didn’t teach English, I would not even be able to spell math- that’s how bad I am at math. I do not wish to be near anything math related as it makes me itch. But that’s not really something you can write on an evaluation form. The whole PD-component felt thrown together for convenience, not purpose. As teachers, we don’t want to be imparting knowledge while the kids sit there like little sponges; the same goes for adults.

We also had to sit through a presentation on last year’s ELA data. We looked at statistics. English + math means tuning out with only one ear, but I was still able to work on my Sudoku. The entire thing got very aggravating to me, because it ended up with people who don’t teach English making suggestions to us for how we should teach and prepare the students for the test. This would be fine, but nothing they suggested was new to me or my English department colleagues. So, again, sort of pointless.

I shouldn’t complain too much. We did get what I think was a generous amount of time to set up our rooms. My room still needs some little details and more organizing, but it’s clean and cheerful and kid-ready. I, on the other hand, am not clean, or cheerful, and I’m not even ready for my own kid at this point. Thankfully she’s asleep, as I soon will be too.

Advice for New Teachers

2008-08-27T19:03:00.003-04:00

My first year as a teacher was the worst year of my life. I took a job in a terrible school because I was desperate to begin working so that I could move out of my parents' house. An argument could have been made for many alternatives, but the fact that I made it through that year is something I am very proud of. Most teachers find the first year to be full of many emotions and experiences, good and bad. On the eve of another school year, I thought I'd share some of my suggestions.

Find friends on the faculty. It’s a good idea to find someone else who is also new, because while some of us still find our first year memories vivid and sharp, it’s not the same as someone who’s going through it with you. But it’s also absolutely critical to include in your circle someone who’s experienced, preferably someone who has been in that school and knows its culture. It may not be a great idea to latch onto the first person who offers you advice. I have found that the less skilled, more insecure teachers tend to swoop down on the new teachers, and it has more to do with what they want than what you need. Ask to observe other teachers’ classes. Initially it may help to focus on the management aspect rather than the instructional side. You cannot teach without management, but it’s something that many of us are not good at when we start. We all have our own unique ways of working with our kids, but I can say that my approaches are a mix of my own ideas and things I’ve seen other teachers do, which I’ve personalized to fit my needs and those of my students.
Don’t take ridiculous amounts of work home. It seems to be a badge of honor among new teachers, to come in and remark that they stayed up until the wee hours writing lessons and grading papers. I recall my own student teaching days, when I would spend hours writing lessons on Julius Caesar and The Old Man and the Sea. It was, and still sometimes is, a necessity. The advent of the internet , however, has made lesson planning much easier. In fact, as early as 1996 I found a wonderful document online called “Seven Steps to The Old Man and the Sea” that resulted in me spending only two hours writing a lesson rather than four. The ‘net is a wonderful resource; while I have never used a lesson verbatim, I have taken great ideas and reworked them so that they were more effective for my students and suited the materials that I had available. It’s a wonderful timesaver. I also bought Jim Burke’s Teacher’s Daybook (Link) and he suggests that you should not take more home to grade than you can do in one night. More specifically, he says you should not take more home than you should do in one night. You should not take 80 papers home to grade in one night. You should break that pile down and do a few at home, a few on a prep, until they are done. Grading marathons are exhausting, and you owe it to the children to give each of them your full attention when you are at your best. Bleary-eyed grading is a disservice to everyone.
Cover your ass whenever possible. It’s sad that I have to write this, because as teachers we are only one part of the equation, but we are the only part held accountable. Parents and children are not. If you call a parent, use your cell phone. This way you have a record of the call even if you never speak to Mom or Dad and you don’t have to make an additional log, which is also more easily disputed. Expect parents to get defensive and say you never let him or her know that Junior likes to throw books out the window and does not work. Also, keep excellent attendance records of your own. This past year I was called to the carpet about my students’ performance on the state test, and my principal commented on one student in particular who missed, on average, six days of school a month. I pointed this out to him, but it would have been a stronger argument if I had my own record of attendance. A behavior log is also important, at least for the more challenging kids; it’s not necessary to keep one for every kid (I hope!) I’m still grappling myself with the best way to maintain conduct records. Paperwork isn’t my strong suit.
Use the students to help you. Kids love to help their teachers. It can be a good motivator for those kids who are good at heart but immature and just need a little something to put them in a positive light for others to see. If you are keeping additional unofficial attendance for yourself, which I strongly recommend, use a student monitor. (Though I don’t know if I’d suggest this in high school). Only a teacher can take official attendance, but if it’s for your own records it’s ok if a student does it. Simple tasks like handing out papers, collecting homework, setting up overheads and maintaining the class library are great tasks for kids. We have enough to do and if you travel between rooms, it’s easier to get started if you can hand off things to the kids so you can get right into teaching.
Ask for help. Don’t let anyone- be it a principal, AP, coach or lead teacher, come into your room and tell you that you are doing ____ wrong without making them accountable as well. It is their job to help you. If you are told that something in your teaching is lacking, ask the person making this judgment to come in and model a lesson for you. One of two things will happen: said higher-up , if he or she is truly invested in making you a better teacher, will follow up and model a lesson, or at the very least, observe you and give you true feedback. Or that person will high-tail it from your room and will not darken your door again. The principle of covering your behind comes into play here as well; if you ask for help from a coach or lead teacher, put it in writing for your own records and cc your principal. My own opinion of coaches and LTs is a bit sour, but since I was a coach for two years I think I am entitled. If criticism about your performance is raised at any time, you will have these documents as proof that you asked for support. I was constantly asking for support with curriculum planning for much of last year, and got no help, so any requests I make this year will be in writing.
Have a life outside school. I made the mistake my first year of really isolating myself from my friends. Most of them thought I was nuts for taking a job at a SURR school in the South Bronx and I hated to admit that they may have been right. It’s hard to go out during the week; even as a college student with a passion for jello shots I really only went out on weekends. But I really think that regardless of where we are in our careers that we could all use some kind of weeknight diversion. I belong to a book club, and though it only meets once a month, I always come home energized because I got to be around adults and there was no mention of standardized testing.
Don’t yell. It’s undignified, which I know sounds ironic coming from a blogger who uses the f-bomb as often as I do. Find your own gimmick and stick to it, whether it’s counting backward from five or flipping the lights. I have a sheet with all the kids names, and I make notations on that. Sometimes, to mess with them, I might look intently at a chatty kid, and pretend to make a mark. Sometimes I really do make a mark. I might yell when in a noisy room to get the kids’ attention, but I never single students out. It’s a bad idea. A few years ago, I had a student who told her mother that I screamed at her all the time. She interpreted my reprimands as screaming; I never raised my voice. When her mother came in to meet with me, ready to rip into me, my AP was able to back me up, as were other kids in the class (yes, it did come to getting kids out of class as witnesses because the mother did not believe the AP either.) It’s also very useful, when trying to settle kids, to emphasize the ones who are on board rather than the ones who are not. I usually say “I see Joseph is ready to work, I see Michelle and Lance are ready to work.” Overall, that tactic is effective, especially when I give out “good” checks.
Be organized. This is still a struggle for me; I must be honest. This year, I put together a binder with my Teacher’s Daybook (as suggested by The Man Himself, Jim Burke) and a section for each class where I will keep grades, anecdotal records, parent contact info, lessons and handouts. There are also some pocket folders, which I will use for things that I need to have copied and the other myriad handouts that I seem to receive. My students’ folders are organized into hanging file crates, one per class. I spent a lot of time during this past school year organizing everything worthwhile into sheet protectors and binders. Halfway through last year I also began using an online grading program, a huge time-saver. No more number-crunching at report card time- it was all done for me. TeacherEase and Engrade are a few popular ones. My entire teaching career has been condensed into five three-inch binders organized by topic- some specific (my units on Bull Run and other novels) and some more general (Essay Writing) and one entire binder is entirely devoted to poetry. Though I’ve not done as much as I wanted, it has been easy so far to find things I needed. My determination to document more this year will also make this a bigger challenge than usual. I’m sharing my ideas just as an additional resource; there are many ways to get organized. I know from my past struggles that coming up with a system is not the hard part, sticking to it is.

Hey, Randi, did this thought ever cross your mind?

2008-08-27T15:12:00.001-04:00

"No, asshole, I am not letting you take away 82% of our parking permits."

I didn't think so.

This union is a joke.

Funny (to me, anyway)

2008-08-24T19:58:00.004-04:00

In honor of our return to school in fucking AUGUST, I thought I'd share a few funnies from my private journal from a few years ago. I realize that this entry will do little to blunt the pain; only a really big shot of Bailey's in your morning coffee (after you arrive safely at school, of course) will make staph development slightly less painful.

September 17
There was an assembly program for our grade today. Actually, it consisted of the principal and a few other administrators lecturing the kids on how they need to behave better. And while I think the kids certainly needed to hear it, I have a hunch that the whole thing went in one ear and out the other.

When the assembly ended the kids were dismissed for lunch. But I kept my class in the auditorium because I was unhappy with the way they behaved when I was trying to line them up. And I need to follow through this year with my discipline policies, or it will be a very long year. The kids are smart and nice but also high-spirited.

Anyway, The Dean walked by as I was standing near the class and did not realize I was detaining the kids, so he started to dismiss them to lunch. When I told him that they needed to stay he made them sit down. Then one of the kids mumbled something about him being the one in charge, and that since he started to dismiss, they should be allowed to go to lunch. And The Dean overheard this and blew up at the kids. His face got red, and he yelled, “Ms. Malarkey is the final authority here and I am here to back her up. If she wants you suspended I will do it.” Then, he was really on a roll. He raised his voice even louder and said, “I AM HERE... TO GIVE MS. MALARKEY... WHATEVER... SHE... WANTS!”

Of course these kids don’t miss a thing. They started to snicker but none of them laughed out loud, luckily for them. It was terribly hard for me not to laugh. I was unsuccessful in not smiling. At least The Dean was in front of me so he couldn’t tell that I was biting the inside of my mouth to keep from cracking up myself.

Tuesday, December 3
The Dean has a brilliant idea for a book. He is going to edit all of the anecdotals that we send in on the kids, write responses, and put out a book. It is going to be called Dear Mr. Dean...HELP! Here’s an excerpt:

Dear Mr. Dean:
Kirsten and Justin got into a verbal altercation, which resulted in Kirsten calling Justin “a stupid motherfucker”, picking up her chair and hurling it at him. She narrowly missed him.
Ms. Malarkey

Dear Ms. Malarkey:
Obviously, you aren’t doing enough to address Kirsten’s learning style. Maybe you need to try a more bodily/kinesthetic approach. Good luck, and let the custodian know if he needs to mop up any blood.
Mr. Dean

Wednesday, April 02
My kids are doing an entrepreneurship project where they have to come up with a business idea and develop it. We started yesterday.

I was thinking that I might take one of the ideas and see if I could get it to take off. It could make me rich, I think. Then someone might actually want to take me on a second date. Hm.

Anyway. One of the groups called me over to share their idea. It was for a gym called "Urban Erotic Fitness". It would primarily be a naked gym, with dominatrixes for fitness instructors. There was more to it, but I had to stop the kids in mid-share because it was bordering on R-rated, and I told them that it needed to be PG. But hell, I'll run with the idea, being over 21. I figure I'll let the mastermind of the plan in on the profits. Maybe set it up as a college fund for him. After all, this teaching thing is getting a little dull. Naked exercising sounds a lot more lucrative!

The Malarkives

2008-08-04T19:44:00.002-04:00

Now that I have a little more than a year as a mom under my belt (where did that time go?) I decided that it’s time to begin spending a little more time on me again, and things that are important to me. I joined a gym, and even go sometimes. I’ve been reading more. I may manage to get a manicure one of these days. And I really, really want to make writing here a habit, and a priority, something I didn’t really do even before Beany was on the scene. But I have a month (well, a little less. Thanks, Randi. I’m not bitter or anything) and a newly rediscovered stash of writing.

For the past several years, I’ve kept a semi-private online diary, and for nostalgic purposes I began reading though it recently. It’s mostly from my pre-husband days, so there’s a lot of angst about dating and shoes. But I didn’t realize till now how much I wrote about teaching, and my kids, and the day-to-day experiences of being a teacher. I've stayed away from here becayse I keep asking myself what does a teacher write about during the summer, anyway? I try to keep up with the education stories in the Times, and other timely things, but that doesn’t always happen and when it does I don't have the energy to actually think about any of it.

Looking back, it’s sort of sad how many things haven’t changed much. But I think (I hope) it may be worthwhile to share some of my previous experiences. Otherwise, this is a purely selfish endeavor, meant to get me back in the saddle, even if there’s more editing than writing at the moment. So check back with me soon...

OK

2008-05-27T20:03:00.006-04:00

I hate those posts people write after long absenses that start with "I can't believe I haven't written in so long..." so I won't start mine that way. Or did I do that anyway? It is really hard to start after long absences, even though I hate to admit that long absences are sort of a trademark of mine, much to my chagrin.

This morning I figured out that there are about ten "regular" days left, regular 8-period school days. The rest are taken up with trips, graduation, a full PD day, clerical half days (when most of the kids don't come), etc.

I'm surprised that nothing about the 8th grade English Language Arts exam has been in the papers, since apparently the students did not do well. My colleague and I have already been taken to task for our students' lack of growth. My colleague and I sat down once as part of the 8th grade "team" to discuss the results and then I had an individual meeting with Principal for my views on "what went wrong."

Funny, I've been thinking about coming back here to write about this, for my "quasi-annual entry" and I managed, through mostly seething anger, to think about how I could explain how I felt, what I thought, what I thought could be done to improve things for next year. And now that I'm sitting here, I feel defeated, and I don't know if I care that much or even where to begin.

Principal attributed some of my "failure" (my choice of word, but I felt it was implied) to being a new mom, and that was a factor. But I really don't believe that I am alone in the blame. For the first time I'm really getting a feel for one of our challenges: that WE are the ones held fully accountable even though our success relies on other people holding up their responsibilities. I've realized, sadly, that next year I am going to spend a good portion of time devoted to CMA (Covering My Ass.) I am going to document EVERYTHING. And when I say "everything" I mean EVE.RY.TH.I.NG. (Anchorman was crass, but I loved it.) SO:

1) Parent contact: Every time I call a parent, I am going to make a note of it, especially when I call them, leave my cell number so they can call back, and they don't. Why does no one ask the parents what they are doing to support their kids? Why can't they buy their kids notebooks when they have iPods? Why can't they make sure their kids get to school on time?

2) Kids' attendance: Principal asked about one particular student whose score declined, and it took all my restraint not to scream "He fucking misses school at least once a week! What do YOU think is the problem?" Someone also dicks around with our attendance, I've noticed. Kids I have marked absent mysteriously get marked present on the ATS form when I get the next days'. I know who is doing it because I have seen it being done, and I am going to throw a fit if anyone does it next year. So my book does not come close to matching what the school has on record, even though my book is correct. I am angry at myself for not speaking up.

3) Administrative help: When I need or want something from the admins, or the coach, or the lead teacher, I am going to put it ALL in writing and cc Principal. This way my requests can't be downplayed again. And interestingly, my colleague (who is a great teacher) and I have been "demoted" to lower grades for next year. But the lead teacher and coach will still be in the same positions next year.

4) Any interventions I use with specific kids, and how I use the data. We have to keep this ridiculous binder of "data" and I spent the better part of the year putting graded samples in their. Then a week before the Quality (Bullshit) Review, one of the higher-ups said, "Oh, you don't need to put student work in there, you just need to put in your findings." Well, thanks. I'm finding that this place has gone totally into the shitter, and no one really wants to do anything about it. And I've found that this binder nonsense has been shoved down my throat all year, but no one really knows its purpose. Thanks.

Lest I end on a cranky note, some more pics of my reason for putting up (temporarily, I hope) with this nonsense, my reason for everything really: Beany, happy, healthy, totally goofy and my most precious girl.

A Very Beany Christmas

2007-12-26T23:03:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile since I've shared some Beany pics. These are actually from the day I attempted to take her picture for our Christmas card.

Why can't you leave me alone?

Seriously, no more pictures.
I shall thwart your plans by refusing to be cute.
Well, OK, I'll smile for Daddy, but only because I own Daddy.

Jingle Bell Schlock

2007-12-21T09:16:00.000-05:00

Dear Santa,
I’ve been a very good girl this year. I have held my tongue on many occasions, especially at meetings, because I know it's not nice to say "This is bullshit" in front of one's colleagues. I don’t roll my eyes any more when people talk about accountable talk and “thinking outside the box” and all those other obnoxious edu-speak words that I've grown to abhor. I’ve even made some honest efforts to use the workshop model. (Well, I did in January, for about three days. That counts, right?)

Most importantly, I’m not even asking for anything for myself; it’s the ultimate unselfish act! However, I want the following special people to have some things.

For my colleagues: a working copy machine with lots and lots of toner. Class sets of books. A curriculum. Respect.

For Papa Joel: a copy of Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, which might give you a little more understanding of what some of our kids are really up against, and why our current approaches aren’t working as well as you’d like the public to believe.

For The Mayor: What do you get the man who has everything? Oh, I know. A clue.

For Randi: I don’t know what I want you to have, but I know what I don’t want you to have: more chances to sell us out.

For Jim Liebman: Running shoes. Watch out for shin splints.

For my students: Smaller classes. Admission to the high schools of your choice. Fair assessments that serve an educational purpose. More than one gym period a week. More chances to study things like art, music and technology (of course, this would mean that you would no longer be able to have three periods of ELA and two periods of math a day; I hope you don’t mind.)

For my fellow teacher-bloggers and teachers everywhere: A restful, happy and safe holiday season.

Love, Me

p.s I changed my mind. I want a week at an all-inclusive resort with Mister and Beany.

What I Know for Sure

2007-12-19T10:09:00.000-05:00

Once in a while, someone will ask me if I ever plan to move into administration. After more than ten years of teaching, it does seem like a logical question and the logical next step.

So while I am a big believer in “never say never”, I know for sure that I will never be a school administrator. Simply put, I would be terrible at it and being terrible at my job would make me unhappy. I do not possess the qualities that a good administrator needs.

I’m not looking for anyone, in either the real world or virtual world, to tell me not to be so hasty, not to underestimate myself. Actually, I think I should be applauded for my honest self-assessment and level of self-awareness. Wouldn’t the school system be a better place if everyone was as reflective as I, and chose to really question themselves before plunging headlong into something with such huge potential for disaster, both personal and professional?

It bothers me that anyone can become an assistant principal or principal. All one needs to do is take the appropriate classes. You don’t even have to have a teaching background anymore. In the corporate world, aren’t people promoted into leadership positions based on performance? While I often bemoan the application of business principles to the education of children, this is one practice that the city really should embrace. There are plenty of people out there with AP licenses who should just not attempt the position because they have serious flaws as teachers. There are plenty of people who pursued the credential because they wanted to get away from children. There are people who’ve worked their way into quasi-administrative positions, often as a “stepping stone” and don’t even try to fulfill the requirements of that position.

Why is it so easy for people to earn these credentials and move into these positions? Being an assistant principal or principal should be a prestigious thing, and maybe outsiders view it as such, but those of us on the inside know that we could do it too, if we wanted. Obviously, a shortage exists. But programs that churn out insta-principals (instapals?) are not a solution. I don’t have a solution myself, but

My advice to anyone who’s thinking about administration is simple: don’t just ask yourself if you’d enjoy the position. Ask yourself if you’d be good at it. Ask yourself about your real motivation and how you will use that to inspire your staff. Ask yourself if you have honest, well-developed people skills. Ask yourself if you know how to walk in the shoes of the teachers. I have encountered some poor administrators during my career, and in my opinion, the worst ones are those who forget what it’s like to be around kids so much, to scramble and scrape for materials and resources, to deal with the fact that a class and the work it does is always a work in progress and never really a finished product. They forget that we have a lot to do, and if we’re asked to do even more, we want to know how it will help and what kind of support we’re going to get.

I appreciate that I have a career that allows me to earn a living while giving me time to pursue my personal interests and have time with my family. I think I’ve learned that I am only as good as the leadership above me, and maybe I need to become better at working well without strong guidance. I don’t know if such a thing is possible.

Since I am becoming increasingly anti-testing...

2007-12-12T20:54:00.000-05:00

...I couldn't really be annoyed at the kids from my school who decided to extend their middle fingers in the direction of the McGraw-Hill building yesterday as we walked by on our way to Rockefeller Center. If you work there and happened to see a group of middle schoolers flipping you off, it was nothing personal.

Insert Cliched Title Here

2007-12-05T14:57:00.000-05:00

I hate clichés and try to avoid them whenever possible, but I suppose sayings become clichés because they have universal appeal. For example, every tired saying about parenthood doesn’t feel overused when it applies to you; instead, it feels simultaneously new and familiar.

I’ve taught many of the same kids for over two years now; teaching them should feel familiar, but lately it doesn’t. In reality, the expression about “familiarity breeding contempt” is applicable here, on both sides. I’m really getting tired of many of them, and they are tired of me. After all the years I’ve taught, I’m fairly immune to garden-variety snottiness, but it stings a little when it comes from the same kids who were my babies just two years ago, the same kids who used to come to me crying on a regular basis. They aren’t my babies anymore; some of them are beginning to tower over me.

One girl, Prissy, has been especially difficult all of a sudden. She gave me a recommendation form the other day for a private boarding school, and seemed annoyed that I hadn’t been chasing after her to give me the form. A couple days later she was assigned lunch detention by Mr. Science Teacher. We teachers have our scheduled days to cover detention, so even though I wasn’t the one who assigned the detention, I had to cover it that day. During the detention, she drilled me about why she’d been given detention and continued to talk even though I reminded her repeatedly that detention was not a social event.

I rearranged the desks the other day while the kids were in gym, and while doing so I found a note Prissy had written to one of her friends. In it, she complained about me giving her detention (in spite of my repeated reminders that I was not the one who assigned it), and how she was going to “fight” me after I returned the recommendation. She then stated that she was kidding, and I knew she was. And though I was more amused than annoyed, I also decided that I wasn’t going to let it go. So I took some masking tape and taped the note to her desk, and wrote “What recommendation?” on top. I had my other class the next period, and I wasn’t surprised to see her at the door the next period, very contrite.

I thought that would be the end of Prissy’s attitude issues, but they’ve continued. She’s not the only one, but I find it surprising that she’s behaving the way she is since she wants more recommendations from me. And I told all the kids at the start that I would be happy to write recommendations for them (several kids are applying for scholarships to private schools and for admission to some special public high school programs) but I also said that I was going to be honest in what I said.

After all this time, I've realized that I've gotten tired of saying the same things over and over. I can say that I've actually been after certain kids for years to come to school on time, to come prepared, to wear their uniform. And some of the kids I could always rely on to do what they were supposed to are beginning to slack off. My best student has becoming ridiculously boy crazy and the ones who have always been boy crazy are behaving in ways that are increasingly questionable.

The sudden spurts of snark from them could be attributed to fears about high school, about leaving their friends, about new pressures. So I’m trying to understand, but at the same time, it wasn’t how I envisioned their last year. This is the second time I have stayed with a group of kids from sixth to eighth grade, and with the last group the eighth grade year was pretty difficult too. But I’d attributed that to changes that were made to the class that weren’t for the better. I wasn’t really upset over seeing those kids go. So if the current trend continues, I don’t think I’ll be sorry to see most of these kids go either. I think that may be sadder, though, than my original visions of graduation.

Frac Attack

2007-12-02T18:24:00.000-05:00

Ironically, after I wrote my recent post about Fric and Frac, I had another incident with Frac. I shouldn’t use the word “ironically,” actually, because that makes it seem like the incident was unexpected, and it wasn’t.

Lately, Frac has slept through the class when he’s been there at all. However, he was awake this time. Since we travel to the kids’ homerooms instead of them to us, I went in as their math class was ending. They know I expect them to be seated and to ask if they need to get up. Once they were all settled, Frac got up and began walking around the room. I asked him to sit down, and he threw a fit. It turns out that he needed a pen, but to me it appeared that he was walking around to talk to the other students. He began yelling and swearing about needing a pen, finishing with “I ain’t askin’ for shit,” and stormed out of the room. Later I learned that minutes later he cursed out the assistant principal and principal, complaining that they never do anything when the teachers curse at him as he proceeded to launch every foul word in his repertoire at them.

You may be scratching you head about the “teachers cursing at him,” part. I didn’t mention that I cursed him out, because I didn’t curse him out.

His mother came in later and met with me, the AP and principal, the dean, a school safety agent, and the other teachers. Frac again launched his accusations about the teachers cursing at him, but when pressed, he narrowed it down to me and the only other white teacher. Now, I have cursed this child out mightily, in my mind, many times. But it’s always remained in the confines of my head. In fact, I have never even raised my voice at him. Luckily, there was another teacher in the room during the time he accused me at cursing at him who supported the correct version of events.

I have no illusions about what’s going to happen with this kid. I know there will be another show of temper and swearing; I just don’t know when it’ll happen. I don’t know what triggers Frac’s anger, because it changes every time. If I knew what his triggers were, I’d try my best to avoid them. But I have to admit that I’m nervous, because he’s so unpredictable. We really don’t know where to put him. His parents are also apparently afraid of him as well, which I can understand. Walking on eggshells two or three periods a day is hard; living with a kid like him must be really difficult.
I hate that I’m waiting for the next blow up, but in some ways it makes things easier because I know it’s inevitable. There was a time when I really believed that I could make a difference for a kid like Frac, but time and disappointment has showed me that I really can’t. Like so many other kids, something in this kid’s soul is broken, maybe beyond repair. It’s beyond me. But the fact that I can accept this is better for me in the long run. This situation is the kind that causes teachers to burn out way before their time. I’ve come to believe that sometimes I really can’t make a difference, and that has to be ok, because I have to last another twenty years. I can wallow over the kids like Frac, or I can feel good about the kids who I really have helped, as few as they are.

Confessions

2007-11-29T15:03:00.000-05:00

This working mom thing is hard. Other teachers with small kids have told me that it will get easier, but I don’t see it getting easier any time soon. Mister and I are trying to get our house in better shape so we can sell it, and unfortunately, there is always laundry and dishes to be done. And a baby generates a lot more of both. I can’t really complain- since Mister is on sabbatical this semester he does a lot more housework than I. Fortunately, clean clothes almost magically appear in my drawers and closet on a pretty regular basis, thanks to him.

I just really, really hate giving up time with Beany to do work. From the second I walk in the door I just want to be with her. There’s really nothing quite like the way her face lights up when she sees me. It’s amazing. I usually attempt to get some work-related things done after she goes to bed, but we have a really hard time getting her to sleep before 9. By the time I get dinner ready, feed and bathe her and get her to bed, I’m wiped out. And since I get up at 5 am, I should really be going to bed around 9 myself. Last night, sitting in front of the computer, I could hardly keep my eyes open. Even though I keep all my old lessons, I can’t bring myself to recycle them, and we no longer have most of the necessary books anyway. We’re expected to collect and organize student data up the wazoo, but I think we are spending so much time collecting that it leaves little time to really process the information and use it in a meaningful way. And of course we are still scrambling for other things we need for our day-to-day work with the kids.

I was observed this morning, and I actually wrote the lesson this morning before school started, something I have never done. Usually the lesson’s done at least a full 24 hours in advance. But last night, I couldn’t get my brain to work the right way. And since I have to make things up as I go along, I was really at a loss. Luckily I do work well under pressure, even though it’s something I try not to do. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve modified lessons a period or two before, because the perfect idea appears suddenly. Though being unable to get copies has sort of hindered that. And I must confess that it’s really, really hard to care when it seems like the people around you can’t be bothered. I am still surprised and disappointed that my concerns went unaddressed, especially since I am not a chronic complainer (outside the blog, of course) and while I may ask for help with difficult kids, I never ask for help with the teaching aspect of my job.

Thus the flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants theme continues.

Re-Thinking Merit Pay

2007-11-25T17:59:00.000-05:00

Whenever a student tells you to go fuck yourself, or some variation of that, you should get a bonus. The bonus should be doubled if you manage not to lose your cool with said student. The bonus should also be increased when the same student persists in using such language, especially when the administration claims that its “hands are tied.”

Whenever you have to spend money on things, such as copies, which you school should supply for you, you should be re-compensated at double the amount you had to spend.

When you find yourself with a class that is over the size limit, you should be paid an additional percentage of your salary per child. When the class is full of mostly Level 2 students, the class size limit should be lowered to 20 (because let’s face it, “approaching standards” is bullshit. Most of my Level 2 kids are reading at a fourth grade level. That’s approaching fifth grade, not eighth.)

Additional hours spent collecting and analyzing “data” should be compensated at the per session rate.

Slightly off topic: Some parents are now being compensated for doing the things they are supposed to be doing anyway. Does this mean that parents will eventually be fined for not doing the things they are supposed to do?

California, Here We Come

2007-11-21T13:28:00.000-05:00

We had a faculty conference/professional development the other day. The main feature was the California Standards for the Teaching Profession, which we are now expected to incorporate into our teaching practices. Apparently, this is going to be the “next big thing” in New York City. After all, we have a great union, small class sizes, an abundance of materials to engage the students, and supportive administrators and parents. So it makes sense that we seek to further improve our practice by following the lead of a state that elected as governor a quasi-articulate ex-bodybuilder.

I engaged myself with a Sudoku puzzle and tuned out, but when the time came to evaluate the session in writing, I had total recall. I questioned why we were investing time in this when there were so many other needs. For example, and since I am in the mood to beat a dead blog horse, how is it that we have a coach AND a lead teacher, but we have no real curriculum or month-to-month plan?

As of now, nothing was said about what I wrote, and I even put my name on the sheet. I have, for now anyway, quelled my urge to wage verbal destruction in favor of expressing my anger in a professional manner. I resisted the temptation to write a very bad word somewhere on my evaluation because I wonder if anyone’s even going to read it. What bothered me the most was someone's comment that "these are things that you are already doing." So why put the time into it?

Several years ago, as a beginning teacher, I attended a workshop at the UFT office on reading activities and strategies. I left with several hands-on ideas, I’m pretty sure that I started using some of them immediately, and I even use some of them now. And I’m a little sad to say that I think that’s one of a small number of meetings I’ve attended where I’ve left with something I could immediately adapt to the needs of my kids.

During the two “lost years”, when I had the misfortune of being the literacy coach, my main criterion in planning PD was the “hands-on” factor. It was important that the teachers leave with something they could use as soon as possible. My motto was “Theory? What’s that?” (Of course, one person did complain that I was not featuring enough theory in my sessions.)

Of course, I was “encouraged” by the ReBots to present certain things for PD, and being the dutiful little soldier, I complied. So I understand that the coaches and LTs have their marching orders. But I also think that effective coaches and lead teachers have an obligation to the teachers to be aware of what we need. Neither person ever approaches me to ask how things are going in my classroom, or what I’m doing with my students. Neither one ever comes into my room to see how I do it without textbooks, without my beloved overhead, without photocopies. Instead, I am handed vague documents to put in my “assessment binder”, another sore subject worth its own post.

Now that we are an Empowerment School, we don’t have people up our behinds on a regular basis. We used to call them “seagull managers” (a term coined by someone much more clever than I.) because they’d fly in, make a lot of noise, crap on everything, and leave. So there’s no accountability on them- they don’t have to worry about someone walking in and asking them what the teachers are doing.

I would happily trade my clandestine Sudoku sessions for a few meetings where I had the chance to collaborate with my colleagues, to share ideas, to do work that means something.

Loaded Question of the Day

2007-11-20T09:41:00.000-05:00

What is our obligation to the kids who, for whatever reason, can’t or won’t do what is expected of them? I’m not talking about the kids who aggravate us with their little quirks, or even about the kids who refuse to do their homework. I am talking about those kids whose name alone is enough to make even the experienced teachers cringe.

This year, I have two such students in one of my classes. For anonymity purposes, I’ll call them Fric and Frac. Their primary skill involves using the playground bathroom at lunch and before school to smoke pot. They were caught on the second day of school, and were briefly suspended. However, they haven’t been deterred. In fact, we often don’t see them after lunch, and they are late most mornings.

I should feel guiltier than I do that they cut class and show up late. But the truth is, the classroom is a much happier place when they aren’t there. It’s more enjoyable for me to teach, and if I secretly polled the 28 remaining students, I am fairly sure that they would admit to being glad that the Pot Princes are keeping the kid equivalent of banker’s hours.

The pot smoking is by itself problematic, of course, but accompanying that is the fact that neither boy will ever be accused of being too gentlemanly. In fact, their behavior when high is preferable to when they aren’t. Both are rude, disrespectful and contribute nothing to the class. I actually recently wrote about Frac and how he threatened one of the girls and cursed at me. Fric isn’t much better. Recently I met with Fric’s mother, after repeated attempts to call her. When I dialed the number and asked for her, the person on the other end told me that I had the wrong number. Fric insisted that the number he gave me was correct, and for once, I believed him. At our meeting, Fric’s mom said that she was frustrated and at her wit’s end, and was planning to go to court during the next week to get a PINS petition for him. The next day, I saw that he was making a true effort to do what was expected. I called his mother and told her that he’d had a good day. She ended up choosing not to pursue the PINS option. I have to wonder if my call to her commending him was a factor. He got progressively worse again, and thinks that completing his class work means that he can disrupt the other students if he wants. (On a side note, that has to be a prime example of faulty logic, one that I’ve heard many times. Why do kids think, because they do their class work, that they can do whatever the hell they want while they do it? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that, and I still don’t understand the logic behind it.)

It’s not lost on me that both of these students have issues. During one especially hellish lunch detention, after Fric stormed out while launching a string of vulgarities at me, one of the other students looked up at me and said, “He acts like that because his mother doesn’t love him.” And while I don’t think that’s a fair assessment, there are clearly things happening at home (or not happening) with both boys that is a factor in why they are making these choices.

So I have to make a choice of my own: do I invest time and energy into these two students, try to win them over, try to help them see that the path they are on leads to a place worse than nowhere? Or do I direct that energy into the many kids who are struggling but want to learn? I look at some of these other kids and see potential that’s never really been tapped. I think about what Fric and Frac’s behavior costs them. Really, it costs me nothing. No matter how aggravated I get, at the end of the day I still have a job, at least until the TPU comes after me. But their behavior also costs the other students a great deal. These other kids, who have likely gone through every school year with a Fric/Frac equivalent in their class, have suffered.

I wonder how much more most of these kids know and be able to do if this small group of overly-disruptive kids was elsewhere, if there were true consequences for bad behavior, if their parents were truly held accountable for them.

Frustration, Continued

2007-11-09T12:35:00.000-05:00

Today I am grateful for a happy home life. I spent the better part of this morning completely annoyed and frustrated, but remembering that Mister and I are taking Beany out tonight for dinner and an extended visit to our favorite local bookstore made me feel better. I very much need to go out and relax.

I have a student this year who is the King of the Overreaction. He has been really challenging to deal with, and yesterday one of the girls accidentally banged into his desk when handing out papers. Because his hand was between his desk and another, one of his fingers was injured. When it happened, he yelled at his classmate that he would “fucking snuff” her and launched into a tirade about how she was lucky she was a girl because otherwise he’d hurt her. He also told me to get the fuck out of his face. I felt badly that he was hurt, but it was entirely an accident and a ridiculous overreaction. The girl was shaken, and I was angry.

Erroneously I assumed that the boy would be suspended, but he wasn’t. I asked Mr. Principal, who said that he was sending this child home every other day, and what else could be done?

I know what can be done. Let ALL the kids know that it’s ok to threaten classmates and curse out teachers, since there are clearly no repercussions. Then stand back and watch as this place falls apart again.

The next time I have this class I am going to send this kid to another room, and I am going to do this until his mother comes in.

My frustration with the lack of curriculum and other things I need to do my job well continues. After I wrote my last post, I aired my complaints about the curriculum materials issues at our grade conference, and I felt gratified that my principal listened and attempted to resolve some of my complaints. But as of today, there’s still no curriculum or even a unit for November (interestingly, “units of study” were on today’s grade conference agenda, but nothing was ever said about them, or the lack of them.) I found a great literature anthology that I think the kids will like, and Mr. Principal is willing to order it, but someone else involved is not in favor of anthologies and is thus slowing down the process.

A lot is being asked of us. And I have no problem with that. I love what I do and I want to do it well. But I’m not being provided with all of the things I need to do my job well. What’s the solution? Today, I think I made a decision to look for a position in another school for next September.

I have to believe that there is a school out there that will be a good fit for me.

Floundering

2007-10-25T15:03:00.000-04:00

I’ve been having such a hard time this year. While some of the difficulty can be traced to being a new mom and, to a lesser extent, having a long commute, most of my challenges are a result of how things are being done, or not done, this year.

Ironically, last month I was actually patting myself on the back, because I had things under control. When I came back from maternity leave last May, the kids were already in end-of-the-year mode. I was taking my class back over from a replacement whose style was very different from mine, and not for the better. So instead of dealing with the dual challenge of getting them used to me again and dealing with end of the year chaos, I chose to focus on this year. I was able to write a pretty detailed unit, complete with pacing chart, for September. Thus I at least started off the year with a lot of structure and organization.

Now, I have nothing. To use a tired cliché, I’m flying by the seat of my pants and I hate it. We don’t have a clearly defined curriculum, in fact we don’t really have any curriculum, and while we have the flexibility of being an Empowerment school, we’re not maximizing it. I have so many ideas and there are so many things I’d like to do. But trying to do it alone is daunting. That was one of my personal truths uncovered during the time I was a coach. And now, when I get home, I just want to be with the baby. By the time I get her into bed, I don’t have a lot of mental or physical energy left. If I'm able to get a few things graded, it's noteable.

My struggles are really indicative of so many things that need improving in my school, and in the system overall. The issues with the curriculum are one thing, and short of sitting down by myself for many hours to write out units for the rest of the year, I don’t know what else to do. On the one hand, the current coach is probably overworked an overwhelmed. But on the other hand, the other teachers and I are also overworked and overwhelmed. It seems like a lot of these positions (as well as my own) are not structured in a way that will allow us to be successful.

When BloomKlein took over and Balanced Literacy became the law, our literature anthologies and class sets of novels were taken away. The training we got never really took hold, in part because it wasn’t based in reality and in part because, well, it wasn’t based in reality. This year I decided to try trusting myself again (because my confidence took a beating during the time I was a coach, and prior to that we had a megabitch administrator who specialized in making me doubt myself.) I know that I have a strong knowledge base, but I’m tired of having to devote my energy to figuring out how to teach 32 kids with 24 novels, and readjust things when the copies I requested aren’t ready.

I’ve begun to ask myself how much longer I can do this. I suspect that the more frustrated I get, the less effective I am as a teacher. After more than ten years in the city, I’ve finally started to ask myself if it’s worth shelling out a small fortune in gas money to come here. Mr. Malarkey and I have decided to move back to Long Island, and I don’t think I want to start spending money on tolls either. And even though I have to work, the fact that my job takes me away from my baby all day makes me want to ensure that the job is really, really worth it.

I try so hard to be a better teacher, but I can’t do it alone. I need support and supplies and the expertise of others, and I don’t think those things exist here. Mediocrity is embraced because of a dearth of motivation, organization, and true concern.

In which I am pissed off again...

2007-10-18T15:00:00.000-04:00

It was almost a year ago that I flipped on my tv and learned that we had a new contract. I was thrown because I knew that our contract wasn’t up for a while. This morning, I had a similar experience, but this time the topic was merit pay. I am wondering if this thrown-for-a-loop feeling I had is going to become an annual event.

Merit pay wasn’t something I ever really worried about, or thought about. It just seemed too complex and ridiculous. How can you attach dollar amounts to things related to kids and their achievements? I’ve been a teacher for over ten years now, and I’ve never had two kids who were exactly alike, and I’ve never had two classes that were exactly alike. So I knew that it would be nearly impossible to develop a fair system that pitted teachers against teachers and kids against kids.

The mayor comes from a money-based culture where success is measured by dollars. It’s easy, in that situation, to figure out who the real producers are: the people who are bringing in the most money. Our bottom line is kids. Just because the mayor is happy to reduce these kids to scale scores and attendance statistics does not mean that it’s a reliable measure of how hard a teacher is working.

Randi Weingarten pointed to “checks and balances” in the NY Times article, but doesn’t really elaborate. The “compensation committee” of the principal, A.P. and 2 teachers gets to decide how to dole out the money. I have a big problem with that. Weingarten says it’s not “individual merit pay” but that is incorrect, in my opinion. Allowing a committee to make the decisions about who gets how much is an individual merit pay program. Will these committees have to justify the decisions they make about who gets what? Will it be possible for personal feelings to stay out of this process? I doubt it.

Why don’t we have any say in this?

Placeholder

2007-10-18T07:42:00.000-04:00

I think about writing every day, but when I have the time, I don’t have the motivation, and when I have the motivation I don’t have the time. This morning I decided to make it more of a priority. Beany is seven months old already, and wonderful in every way. However, she is not yet meeting standards for napping and acceptable bedtimes. She is so curious and I bet she thinks that she’s missing out on things when she goes to sleep. By the time she goes to sleep, it’s about time for me to go to sleep.

At the moment I’m neutral on this school year. This is my third year with many of the same kids, and it has its positives and negatives. I’d really hoped that by 8th grade some of the more immature kids would have grown up a little more, but so far that doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s also kind of disheartening to mention things I taught them last year that they’ve forgotten. I have also been noticing other subtle changes that I don’t think I like.

Besides my lack of time, I’ve also been feeling a twinge of paranoia about being “caught” by my colleagues. I feel like I’m not saying a lot of what I want to say because I want to be able to stand behind what I write and not have things get personal.

We’re in our second year as an Empowerment School. I have no real complaints, because not having ReBots on our backs all the time is refreshing. There was nothing worse than having these people swoop in and tell us that everything we were doing was wrong. Since Beany was born, I think I’ve actually been a better teacher, though I have also thrown almost everything I know (which wasn’t much) about reading workshop, writing workshop, running records, balanced literacy, Fountas and Pinell, etc. etc. out the window. I’ve been focusing on what I know, what I feel the kids need, and what materials are available to me.

Recently I came to the realization that I was a better teacher in the days prior to BloomKlein. I think I struggled more after they took over, trying to figure out how I was supposed to teach reading with 30 kids (ok, 35) reading different books, how I was supposed to really learn and apply these new approaches with a literacy coach who wasn’t around and a (now former) administrator who treated us like we were stupid and uncaring because we had questions about her mandates. We really had the rug pulled out from under us and it’s amazing that the kids didn’t suffer more.

While the way I’ve been doing things this year isn’t perfect, at least I feel like I can own my errors and successes more. I don’t have time to agonize over what we’re doing. Finding materials is a struggle, because we don’t have class sets of anything, and getting copies is a challenge, but that’s preferable to having some random person I’ve never seen before tell me that I’m doing everything wrong.

p.s. Merit pay: bad, bad, bad Retirement at 55: I'll believe it when I see it. Hopefully it will come before I am 55 myself.

It's one of "those" things...

2007-07-15T19:47:00.000-04:00

You know, one of those things that you just don’t get unless you’re doing it yourself. Before I was a mom, I had all these thoughts and beliefs and worst of all, judgments, about parenthood, and I really had no clue. Now I know that I just didn’t get it, and I couldn’t really get it until I was waist-deep in dirty diapers.

The same idea holds true for teaching: unless you’re in the thick of it, you really don’t get it. And dare I say that this is especially true for those of us who teach in the city. It’s amazing that I haven’t hurt someone or at the very least, alienated more people, because I’ve heard more than one person say, “teaching’s easy” in such a way that I think they believe we should do it for free.

Thus I was gratified to see this article by David Herszenhorn in a recent New York Times. It’s always gratifying to see someone, especially someone in the media, who “gets it”. It’s gratifying to see a piece that doesn’t begrudge us our “fat” salaries, summers off, and pensions. “Working with children looks easy. It is not,” Herszenhorn writes.

Many of us will happily verify that. The trick, of course, is to make it look easy. For me, executing a great lesson is incredibly satisfying. It can make or break a day. But unless you’re a teacher (or the significant other of one) you really don’t know how much time goes into planning, from a pedagogical perspective and a logistical one. Herszenhorn illustrates this with an example about his field, and how some say that 90% of the job is logistical. While I personally don’t know if I’d put my logistical issues at 90%, they are still substantial.
For example, getting photocopies is the stuff of legends in NYC schools. When I first started, I was told I was entitled to 200 sheets of paper a month. I saw over a hundred kids a week at that point, and my 200 sheets were often gone with the wind anyway. My current school has better accommodations, but I find that I still need to be ready for any glitch- no toner, the mother of all paper jams, etc. And while I love teaching with technology, that too creates headaches at the most inopportune times. Is the Internet up? Did the teacher who had the laptop cart before me remember to charge it? Of course, these are the minor annoyances, but having to always plan around these things eats into time that can be better spent.

Herszenhorn uses another, more poignant example to illustrate the challenges we face, that of a young boy, fast asleep amid the hustle of a busy auditorium. To me, this is at the heart of what we are up against: the personal struggles of our kids, the sometimes-murky details of their home situations. It would be easy for many people to think that the child had been up too late playing video games. As a new teacher, I’d find myself perpetually frustrated by kids who slept in class, until a more experienced colleague gently pointed out that the student had a history of depression, which I wasn’t aware of.

Too many of our students have responsibilities beyond their years; one chronically late former student finally confessed to me that she had to get her younger brother and nephew ready for school in the morning, while getting herself ready, then she had to drop them at their elementary schools and trek several blocks from there to our school. Every year it seems that I have a handful of kids who have family troubles that I could never fathom, and yet they’re expected to put all their outside challenges aside and let themselves be captivated by the workshop model. We are fortunate in my school to have excellent counselors and social workers, but they are swamped, and it’s just not enough.

to be continued...

This is still a teacher blog...

2007-06-30T21:58:00.000-04:00

But I reserve the right to post occasional pictures of my girl. She's kind of cute, don't you think?

To you, and you, and you...

2007-06-25T19:29:00.000-04:00

Dear French-speaking student from Africa:
You improved so much this year, in more ways than one. Last year I used to see you sitting alone in the corner when I covered your class, and that made me feel badly. But this year, though you had some bumps, you interacted so much more and tried to participate. You tried so hard all year, and you really impressed me. Keep it up- you made such amazing progress this year. I think you probably picked up as much English on the playground as you did in the classroom.

Dear Prima Donna:
I've had kids like you before, kids that others flock to even though you're not really that nice to them. You're very charismatic in your own way, but your behavior points to a lot of anger. It still surprises me, the way you get into near knock-down-drag-out fights with some of the girls, and a week later you're the best of buddies. You're Miss Popularity, but I don't think you have any real friends. And your constant challenges to me and the other adults and our authority won't help you either. I wish your mother could see what you needed, instead of throwing pretty clothes and expensive jewelry at you, because I know that's not what you need. But does your mom realize this? Do you?

Dear Future Valedictorian:
I love to tell people about the card you made for your best friend, the one you addressed, "To Mah Bitch Jessica". Maybe I should be appalled at your use of the word "bitch", but deep down I saw it as a sign that you seemed to loosen up a little this year. Earlier this year, Ms. Assistant Principal said that you needed to be a kid, and I agree. You work so hard all the time, and have more focus than people much older, and I know you have responsibilities at home. While I want you to continue to do your best, I also want you to remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and having time to relax is necessary for success too.

p.s. I can deal with the use of the word "bitch" but the "mah" part has to go.

Dear Student Hovering On The Brink of Thugdom:
You're another kid I speak of to my family and friends, for the way you walk to school reading, making sure to stop on the corners so you don't get run over by a speeding livery cab, for the way you're just SO smart. For much of the year, I found myself annoyed with your other teachers, because I felt that they were unfair to you at times. I never found you to be disrespectful; I never had any complaints. But what you did last week nearly broke my heart, and I still can't believe that you vandalized another student's property. I wouldn't believe it if other kids hadn't seen you do it. What happens next? I don't want this to define you, and I feel like you tried so hard this year, but in one fit of anger at a classmate, you threw it all away.

Dear Mr. Malarkey:
Any man who gets up at 5 am to make lunch for his wife, takes care of an infant all day, and keeps the kitty litter box clean deserves a medal. I love you.

Dear Beany:
I love being your mommy. Leaving you every morning is so hard, and at the end of the day I race home to be with you again. In fact, I race away from school so fast that I've taken out half the fifth grade, a couple teachers and half the cafeteria staff. I can't wait to be home full time with you again.

I have 20 minutes

2007-06-15T12:25:00.000-04:00

...and I can't expect anyone to be out there, since I haven't posted since...February? My daughter was born in March, and I've been back at work since the middle of May, just in time to wrap up the school year. Truth be told, I've been more focused on next year, working on the curriculum and units, because the kids' end-of-the-year shenanigans were already in full swing when I came back. My replacement was not nearly as structured as I am, so I returned to a room that looked like a stiff wind had blown through, and my carefully thought-out seating plan went out the window too. The kids were allowed by Replacement Teacher to sit wherever they wanted, and I didn't have it in me to make changes.

I came back just in time for our Quality Review, which went well. I found myself feeling both flattered and frustrated to be chosen as one of the teachers to meet with the reviewer and be observed by him. Being out for as long as I was made me feel very out of sorts and unsure of myself.

I don't think I have anything profound to say. Sleep deprivation does weird things to your brain. Today I was thinking that I don't know how law students and med students manage to accomplish all that work because I am in such a fog. Last night at home I attempted to print out some pages with the learning standards from the NYS website, and this morning I discovered that I printed the wrong grade. I feel a little guilty for not doing very much "real" teaching, but my head is so foggy that I think they're better off. It's oddly fascinating to me, the ways in which I am spacing out. Trying to write strong units, and make them really good and thoughtful and exciting, is always hard for me, because there are just so many ways to do things, so many possible readings, questions, skills that the kids need. Now, I don't have my former luxury of time; I don't have the luxury of thinking and re-thinking and then thinking some more. Now, I have to do it to get it done, and I wonder if that's going to make my work better than it's been. I want that to be so.

My husband shared a cool quote with me when I told him the above, but of course I can't remember it exactly. I think it's "Good is the enemy of great" or something similar.

I missed my students like crazy. Even though I'd rather be home with the baby, they made it easier.

Back, and Unfocused

2007-01-30T13:28:00.000-05:00

I can't believe how badly I've neglected this blog, and it hasn't been entirely for a lack of things to write about. For whatever reason, I just haven't been able to get around to doing much with the things that have been popping in and out of my head.

Recent weeks have found me with a bit of a second wind, as far as teaching is concerned, but I'll be going on maternity leave in a few weeks, and I won't be back until late May. A lot of people seemed surprised that I was coming back at all, but I don't have enough days to stay out longer. And right now, I am worried about not seeing my kids for so long, that they might prefer my replacement to me (silly, I know), that I'll get screwed when it's time to do the assignments for next year. Moving up with my classes to 8th grade is very important to me, since I've worked with most of these kids for almost two full school years now. Mr. Principal told me that there are at least three other people in addition to me who also want the two 8th grade positions. So I know that if I'm back I can do what's necessary to secure my spot, since I am the most senior. Though I also wonder how much I'll care once the baby is here. But ultimately, since I have to work, I want to be happy at work, and seeing this group of kids through middle school will make me happy.

So occasionally I get ambitious and energetic, and last week I carried out an Extreme Classroom Makeover on the other room I teach in. The homeroom teacher for my other group also has to maintain an art room, and is barely in the homeroom. As a result, the room is often a mess and the kids, while nice enough, have serious neatness and organizational issues. Since I spend three periods a day with them, I really wanted the room to be in better shape. The kids were pretty helpful- we replaced the bulletin board paper, which had gotten pretty ratty, and reorganized the library. There were years of junk in there from previous teachers, and a group of boys must have made 5 trips to the dumpster. It looks so much better, and I feel like I've even seen a difference in the kids' behavior.

I am really, really glad that the ELA is over. I was able to quickly look at my kids' answers to the constructed response questions, and most of them used the strategies I showed them for answering those type of questions. Of course, it would be nice to get the results before October, but I have zero faith in the state or whoever it is who puts out the results.

For the record, I still think KleinBerg sucks. I can't believe that we're going back to the district system, but since I am in an Empowerment School I don't know how that will affect us. While I was never impressed with the way my district ran things, I felt that my district was treated like the loser relative by the (only slightly) better district we were paired with, and they were the ones whose offices and bigwigs were used.

Speaking of being in an Empowerment School, it's been a non-experience as far as I'm concerned. I'd really anticipated having people up our butts like we'd had when we were part of the Region, just different people. But I never see anyone, and now that I've put this out there I bet there will be someone in my room first period tomorrow, looking at my bulletin boards, critiquing every little thing.

Now that the ELA is over, we're going to be concentrating on math during Extended Day Suckage. The kids were supposed to be reassigned, and I was glad because most of my extended day kids have 3s in math (and one had a 4). But they're not changing the groups. So I have to give tutorials to kids who are mostly on level in math, which is my worst and least favorite subject. The math coach gave me books last week, and when I asked for a teacher's guide, he told me that there wasn't one. In my own subject, I never cared about teacher guides because I always found it more useful to do the questions myself, and get an angle on what the kids were dealing with. But I know I will get to the point where I really will have trouble. I was also told that a math teacher would be placed with me, but since a third of the teaching staff at my school seems to not work with kids at all during extended day (and I'd love to know how they're able to get away with this) I am not counting on this.

I suppose I could ramble some more, but I think I am going to wait until I have something of substance to say. And I want to say thanks to Schoolgal for your concern- I appreciate it.

Elaborating on the previous

2006-11-09T18:07:00.000-05:00

I usually turn on my televison in the morning for some much-needed 5 a.m. stimulation. Because I'm rushing about in an attempt to get out the door on time, I don't always pay close attention. So on Tuesday, when I heard something about a settlement in the teacher's contract, I thought I was hearing things.

Later, in the car, I heard the full story on 1010 WINS. And I think frustration was my first feeling, stemming from the fact that I think the Mayor is an asshole and he's gotten his way again. The early settlement has nothing to do with goodwill and support for the teachers. It has everything to do with taking away our opportunity to attempt to get back what we've lost.

The Mayor continues to count on us to see dollar signs and nothing else. And based on the reactions of some of my colleagues thus far, it'll work. Again.

Contract, Schmontract

2006-11-07T19:13:00.000-05:00

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is...

My current state of mind

2006-10-23T19:59:00.000-04:00

It's sort of pathetic to me that I have been teaching for almost ten years but still seem to have trouble accomplishing what I want with my students. Lately I've been getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of guidance that we get from the administration. Not so much the principal and assistant principal, but the lead teacher and coach. Granted, the principal and A.P. should give the L.T. and coach more direction, but as a former coach I can say that Mr. P and Ms. A.P. generally trusted me to do what I was supposed to do.

I don't even feel like I can approach the L.T. or coach. For one thing, I seldom see either of them. And I hate to be negative (since it seems like I am so much more negative than I want to be) but the L.T. seems to be permanently out to lunch and I don't think the coach knows much more than I do. The few times I've asked questions I've gotten very vague answers.

Last year I used to write the units for the teachers, leaving them open-ended enough for the teachers to select the content and specifics of assignments. This year, we've been writing the units as we go along, but this meant that October's unit wasn't ready till two weeks into the month. I'd already written units of my own, but I elected not to share. Maybe that was childish of me, but my input wasn't really requested and I am not going to carry everyone else.

And it hasn't mattered that I've been doing my own thing, because neither the coach nor the L.T. has visited either of my classes. I really got off to a great start, but now my energy's definitely waning, as is my motivation.

I do need help, but there just doesn't seem to be a good source of it. One class has only twenty kids, but I have a huge range of abilities in there, one level 4, a handful of 3s and 2s, a few 1s; a very bitter holdover who is determined to get to 8th grade by the second marking period but is more interested in writing gang codes than essays; an African kid who speaks very little English, can't read in his native language, who should be getting ESL but isn't; one utterly obnoxious kid whose mission in life is to draw as much attention to himself as possible and one seemingly happy kid who just revealed herself to be suicidal.

That classroom is also a hovel- it is staggeringly full of crap and garbage. The homeroom teacher does not teach the class, and has another room to maintain. So I've taken it upon myself to clean and organize, because I am in there three periods a day and I can't stand it. I've been chipping away a little at a time, and at this rate it'll be ready by February.

I was better at dealing with the overwhelming-ness when I was newer.

Extended day sucks: Reason #237

2006-10-04T20:11:00.000-04:00

I can’t believe that this only occurred to me today. I will attribute it to being blonde and female.

On Wednesdays, I have four classes in a row in the afternoon. A double period with my homeroom during sixth and seventh, a single period with my other class, and then extended day. Since we do fifty minutes three days a week instead of 37.5, I am actually putting in more time than I would if I taught four regular periods.

Of course, despite being blonde and female, I also realized fairly quickly that I have no leg to stand on as far as a grievance. Had I gone to Mr. Principal earlier, I know he really would have tried to remedy it for me because he’s good like that. Since the extended day is not a teaching period, I probably wouldn’t get anywhere. Also, I have only ten kids, as opposed to an entire class.

Lots of whining in Malarkeyland today.

To the other teachers who have my homeroom class:

2006-10-04T20:03:00.000-04:00

Be warned, my students are very loyal to me. If you say something snarky about me in their presence (which you shouldn’t anyway-it’s unprofessional.) my kids will tell me.

And, in turn, I will write a snarky blog entry, which I don’t really want to do because it’s lame and whiny. But it’s been a slow week for quality blog ideas.

I’ve become uptight about my homeroom. Last year I “lived” in two spaces- the coach room and my homeroom, and it was hard to be neat. So this year, since I have only one “home” I’ve tried very hard to make it look nice and be functional. The classroom library is massive, and takes up a lot of space. Two student desks pushed together form our writing center, which is loaded down with dictionaries and reference books and the Yaffa crate with the kids’ portfolios and folders, along with other random things. My desk is shoved into a corner, and when I get to work in the morning I sit at one of the kids’ desks, because if I sat at my desk my back would be to the door and that creeps me out.

The math teacher approached me recently about needing space for a math center and wall space for charts. Between closets, bulletin boards and chalkboards, the best space for hanging charts is on the windows. I agreed to let her have the windows at the front half of the room, and five student desks, also at the front half/front corner of the room. Because of the space crunch, my two writing center desks are there too, because I have no place else for them.

I like to get lots of sun in the room, so I keep the shades almost all the way up. I asked MT not to hang anything on the shades, just the windows.

Of course, MT pulled down two shades and stapled charts to them. I seethed a bit, then pulled up the shades that afternoon when I was teaching. She noticed the next morning, and complained to the kids, and a few claimed that they did it, even though it was me. The next day, I pulled out the staples (who puts staples in shades anyway?) and taped the charts to the windows. Now the charts are at eye level, where they should be anyway, and more sun comes into the room. MT noticed, and said to the kids, “So I suppose Miss Malarkey thinks she’s an administrator now?” My kids, ever loyal, told her that they, not I, taped the charts to the window.

Today I went in after they had math to find my writing center materials on the floor. When I asked her about it, she said she needed the space, and I reminded her that I gave her the five desks, and that I had no other place for my writing center. She didn’t mention the question to my kids about my wanna-be administrator tendencies. If she had, I would have told her that we both know a math center is only going to be for show and that it will likely gather dust, just like it did last year.

Of course, at the heart of this conflict is the fact that most secondary teachers think that their subject is the most important one in the world. I admit to being guilty of this.

Friday's Four

2006-09-24T18:37:00.000-04:00

1. Four Score and many months ago…

I arrived at work on Friday to find a modest spread of bagels and juice in the main office, courtesy of Mr. Principal, who handed me an envelope with our school’s ELA scores. We made modest but respectable gains in sixth, seventh and eighth grade, but didn’t do so well in fifth. Regardless, he was pleased and so was I.

Of course, the fact remains that it’s September and these tests were taken in January. Does the data even mean anything at this point? It’s old news. I think my students have even given up on the idea of ever getting their individual scores. Of course, I am still really, really curious to see how they individually, but we still don’t have that information. I just get really aggravated when I remember how the Region breathed down our necks to get the tests scored in a timely way, which we did, and it still feels like it was for nothing. How do you convince a kid that a state exam means something when it takes eight months to get the results back?

2. An extra $10k for what?

I have a student, S., who came to our school last year as a sixth grader. He’s a new arrival and did not attend school in his native country. Currently he knows a small handful of words in English, including “mother fucker”, which he’s hurled at classmates on the playground who probably deserved to be on the receiving end of the sentiment. Last year he was picked on a lot; this year has been better but he still doesn’t interact with the other kids, which doesn’t help his language skills.

I have a master’s in literacy, with coursework on working with English language learners, but none of it ever addressed helping a child who was at the very beginning of learning English. And obviously, he should get ESL. So on Friday, I went to see the ESL teacher, who is also the lead literacy teacher. I wanted to find out her schedule for working with S. She informed me that she was not working with S. because another teacher was supposed to work with him as part of a class of 20. She explained that this teacher was using ESL strategies even though the students are not English language learners. And I understand that those students could probably benefit from ELL strategies. But S. needs a smaller group than that. He can’t read in English at all, can’t write sentences, has very limited vocabulary, even though Lead Teacher told me that he knows English. I don’t consider 100 or so words “knowing English.”

Since I also have a class of 20, I can give S. a good amount of one-on-one time. But it’s not enough and I am not ESL licensed. I’m just annoyed because I know more about how the ELA classes have been scheduled than she does, and I’m annoyed because a new teacher is also supposed to be doing small group ESL instruction, but isn’t working with S. either. And this new teacher was caught twice last year without lesson plans, so I don’t know how much faith I have in this person anyway. Our math lead teacher is really on the ball, very visible, always meeting with teachers when not teaching, in the halls in the morning and after lunch to help move the kids along, and in a nutshell, earning that $10k, in my opinion. But I never see our lead teacher. She hasn’t been to my room and I think what bothers me the most was that she seemed completely unconcerned about this child who already has so much catching up to do.

3. Don’t try a career as an inspirational speaker

A couple teachers and I were in the AP’s office after lunch when a parent came in (there aren’t many places for us to work and her office is pretty big). The child in question is in trouble often. I had a couple run-ins with him myself last year, even though he wasn’t one of my students. He prefers the hallway to the classroom.

I didn’t know the details of the current offense. And since Ms. AP was taking care of something else, the mother chose to lecture her kid while they waited for her. It was the usual bluster that comes from disgruntled parents, with a side of, “THESE TEACHERS still get paid if you fail. THESE TEACHERS don’t care if you pass. THESE TEACHERS don’t care about you.”

My guess is that this wasn’t the first time the kid heard this speech. And somehow, I don’t think it was or will be a success. And as offended as I was, (one of my colleagues left the room, he was so disgusted) I wasn’t surprised. A kid who’s told that the adults in his school don’t care about him won’t be inspired to work. And a parent who won’t take responsibility for her kid and his bad behavior will always be disappointed.

4. Friday Afternoons

I cringed when I got my program a few weeks ago and saw that I had my homeroom on Fridays for seventh and eight period. Last year, since I was the coach, I didn’t have a full teaching load and on Fridays my class met in the morning. Teaching Friday afternoons has always been the bane of my existence. It seemed that I used to always leave with a pounding headache. So this year, I decided that I wasn’t going to teach, at least not eighth period. I do a lesson during seventh, which ends just as the kids are starting to get really antsy. Then I put on a CD (something mellow, of course) and they do their independent reading for the last period. It’s been a nice, quiet way to end the week and I otherwise have trouble fitting in the silent reading time. Next week I want to try to bring them cookies or some other snack.

And of course, getting to leave headache-free is a big plus.

Grappling

2006-09-18T16:49:00.000-04:00

Alternate title: This balanced literacy thing can kiss my ass

Today was day 10 with the kids, and already I've hit a wall with regards to teaching reading. In spite of two years as a coach, I feel like I don't know what I am doing. I know I can't ever go back to the way I used to teach, because something about it just doesn't feel right anymore. (Maybe I've been brainwashed, maybe I've just evolved in a good way? Don't know.)

My morning lesson today was the pits. It was so bad that I decided to let my afternoon class have a silent reading/conferencing period instead of that lesson. Fortunately, they like silent reading and I was able to do several conferences.

The Region put out a curriculum calendar for the school year, which I have to grudingly admit is decent, and there's a unit of study for September too. I decided not to reinvent the wheel and use that unit, modifying it as needed. And I haven't been able to really put my heart into those lessons. I've spent a lot of time tailoring them to fit the needs of the kids and to work with the materials available. But I know they're ineffective, and I don't really know what to do. The kids have been patient and well-behaved, but I am not going to take their patience for granted.

I have one group of kids who are on level or very close to it, and don't need the hand-holding that I think the Region lessons provide. And the other class is a range of levels, but since that class has only 20, I can do a lot with grouping. The fact that I have such good kids overall makes me want to give them the very best that I have.

Writing this entry has been useful, though. As I wrote it I remembered the way I used to break my kids into small groups with different activities, and I would do a guided reading lesson with one group at a time, rotating all the activities until all of the kids had done each activity once. That would definitely work with my smaller class and maybe the bigger one too. I am also thinking about giving my bigger class a survey or something, to get ideas about what will be helpful to them. Since those kids are on level and pretty self-aware I would expect some good responses.

I just hope that I am able to figure out something clear and specific, and soon. Our school has a literacy coach and a lead teacher. I would say that they are both approachable, even though I hardly see the lead teacher, and the coach is still overwhelmed by boxes upon boxes in her office. Though I am the kind of stubborn person who prefers to do things without help. Besides, I have a feeling I'd just hear more of the same.

Capped Class, My Ass, etc.

2006-09-17T19:16:00.000-04:00

My homeroom has 32 kids this year. I was supposed to have 33, but one kid moved. Meanwhile, Mr. Principal made sure we all knew that nearly all the classes were capped at 28-29. Unfortunately, since I have the “top” seventh grade, and Mr. Principal salivates over every new admit who walks in with a 3 or 4, I have more and I suspect the other top classes do too. Even though it is not like me, I plan to throw a tantrum if he tries to put anymore kids in there. Though I may not have to. We're already so crowded, and as it is it's hard to circulate among the groups. At the moment I'm fourteen weeks pregnant, so it's just going to get harder.

I really complain because I think the chances of kids hanging onto their 3s and 4s when they are in an overcrowded room are not so great. Of course, since I don’t have my class’s 2006 scores, I can’t prove that theory. Will I ever see my kids’ 2006 scores?

Despite the crowding, being in the classroom again makes me so happy. Lucky my 32 kids are as good as kids get. Mischievous at worst, which is not bad at all. I am having a ball with them. I need to find a way to have as much fun with my other class, but they’ve been a challenge. I have such a range of abilities in there, and the kids who are on grade level (or were according to their fifth grade scores from ’05) are in there because they were not performing to “top class” standards. There are also some behavior issues- I have already had two parents in because their kids were throwing crayons as I walked into the room at the beginning of the period on Thursday.

We’re an Empowerment school this year, for better or worse. So far, I haven’t noticed anything different. The teachers who’ve always worked hard have continued to work hard, and the teachers who need a fire lit under their butts haven’t changed. One alleged perk of empowerment was supposed to be more money, but Mr. Principal says that it won’t be much. The new coach seems fairly hands-off, which is good. She seems to trust us to do our jobs, which means a lot. Our former LIS is no longer a LIS, and is with us in a “consulting” role, or something like that. Oh, and even though we are no longer "required" to seat the kids in groups, I think I am too used to them to change now.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Mr. X, who was the subject a of a small but now-legendary student uprising in our school, was excessed. But since he wasn’t able to find a position on the open market, he’s subbing in our building. Ironically, he sometimes covers the part of the program he would have had if he’d been teaching music.

I have mixed feelings about what’s happened to Mr. X. Mainly, it bothers me that it just seemed so random overall. There’s no real criteria for it. In the case of Mr. X, I don’t feel so badly, because he was warned on more than one occasion, about not teaching the kids, about some inappropriate things he said to female students. But I also know that there are teachers in that situation who don’t deserve to be there.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Extended day is for the birds. I have kids from my homeroom, and none of them should really be there. There are other kids who need it more. And I feel badly, because by the end of the day I am so tired. I feel like I should be planning more, making it better. Then I hear the little voice that says This is not a teaching period. So I hand out the math practice books, and give them fifteen minutes for homework. We have 50 minutes three times a week so I don’t feel badly about that, and they always seem confused with their science homework especially.

Ironically, my students have told me that I am a better math teacher than their regular math teacher, who begins a lesson but then rambles on about some other topic that has nothing to do with math. And I feel terrible saying this (well, not really) but this math teacher is a native English speaker but I need a translator to converse with her. Half the time, I have no idea what the hell she’s talking about. So I know my kids are unhappy with her.

I also teach math the way I was taught, back in the 80s. A coach would probably tell me I was doing everything wrong. And ups my self-esteem a bit to know that maybe I couldn't really grasp seventh grade math back in 1985, but I know it now.

Confession

2006-08-29T17:48:00.000-04:00

I went to school today to begin setting up my classroom, even though I swore up and down that I was not going to do it. I was only there for about three hours; Mr. Malarkey had business in the Bronx and I was otherwise going to have to get up ass-early to take him to the train station. So I figured that I may as well be productive, and be a good, liberated wife who drives her husband to work instead of the other way around.

The fact that I did decide to go doesn't mean that I am not pissed, still, about having to go back on Thursday, and I don't like to do anything to make my colleagues look bad. But that didn't matter; the two new teachers were there anyway to make all of us look bad anyway. They were both in the building yesterday and will be back tomorrow. They even asked the AP if they could come in Saturday.

I am glad that I went, though. I got a good jump on things. The last time I had to set up a classroom was 2003; I coached full time in '04 and in '05 I wasn't assigned my class till late September. Another teacher set up that room and used hideous border and backing paper that didn't coordinate at all, and I had to live with it all year because I didn't have time and didn't want to hurt her feelings.

My principal was a little disappointed that more teachers didn't come in because other schools in our network have already had nearly their entire staff in. I do get the danger of giving up too much of our own time willingly because we'll find ourselves giving up more next time around. I try to think about things on a system-wide basis and on a school-wide basis, and on a school-wide basis, I consider myself and my colleagues fortunate. On a system-wide basis, well, I feel cheerful at the moment and want to keep it that way so I won't say how I really feel.

My principal is really the anti-Leadership Academy principal. He's not perfect, but he's always been good to us, to the point where sometimes I wished that he would crack down harder on certain people who weren't performing their basic duties (like lesson planning). Prior to the 37 1/2 minute thing, there was an unspoken agreement that we could leave early if we didn't teach 8th period. And we never had those monthly faculty conferences. Generally, he just expects us to teach, to manage our classrooms, to do our jobs. So going in today was just a part of the give-and take. He appreciated that I was there and said so, and that means something too.

And after ten years, you'd think I'd be able to get that damn bulletin board paper to lay perfectly flat and smooth, but no. It'll never happen. But at least this year I get a room with lovely coordinating borders and matching paper. It's enough.

What a day to return to blogging...

2006-08-02T12:51:00.000-04:00

It's got to be close to 100 degrees out, and the only a/c in the house is in the bedroom (though I am grateful that we have one at all!) yet here I sit, in a very warm room, writing for the first time in about a month. And I am glad to have power- those poor people in Astoria just can't catch a break.

The heat's not so bad if you sit very still.

I almost feel a little depressed that it's August already. July went very fast. I had so many plans for things I was going to get done, and most of them haven't happened yet. I did take a photography class, which ends tomorrow. It's been great. I had to shoot on an SLR film camera, and learn how to develop the film and make enlargements. Very old-fashioned in this digital age. But I have to say, though I miss the instant gratification of being able to see a digital picture immediately, the satisfaction I get from having an enlargement come out just right (or as close to that as my amateur ass can get) is so much better.

I've read a lot and I feel good about that. Here's a list off the top of my head (my book log is upstairs and getting it would require breaking from my mostly-still state. )

Young Adult:
Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
Messenger by Lois Lowry
A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Next: Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko (best title EVER!)

Professional:
Naked Reading: Uncovering What Tweens Need to Become Lifelong Readers by Teri S. Lesene
Next: Classroom Management Simplified by Elizabeth Breaux

Personal:
Map of Bones by James Rollins
1776 by David McCullough
Anybody Out There? by Marian Keyes
A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger
Washington Square by Henry James

And now I am off to finish my Weegee paper that is due tomorrow. And if you're looking for something to do, the Weegee exhibit at the International Center for Photography is excellent- I think it's there for another week or so.

Thank you...

2006-07-06T00:15:00.000-04:00

...to whoever nominated me for the Teablog award. I am very flattered, and I appreciate it.

That's all, for now. What DOES a teacher write about during the summer? I may start with my fixation on young adult literature. I finished Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry in a day and a half, and am now working on Messenger, the "companion" book to Gathering Blue. Very good so far.

The Sunday Night Blues are on hiatus

2006-07-02T19:12:00.000-04:00

I'm not working this summer. It still doesn't feel real to me. Since starting with the DOE in 1996, I have worked every summer, whether it was bookkeeping with a side of waitressing, curriculum writing, or summer school. This year, between the suckiness that was literacy coaching and a house that's still in need of TLC a year after moving in, I decided not to work. Fortunately, the always wonderful Mr. Malarkey agreed. In fact, he suggested it. He's teaching during both summer sessions at his college, but he assuaged my guilt by reminding me that his summer school is fewer hours, with air conditioned classrooms.

I knew there would be many perks to taking off this summer. Time to read, and garden and finish a plethora of abandoned house projects. Time to take a class to learn something I've wanted to do for a long time. Time to just be. Tonight I realized that there's one more benefit: several weeks without the Sunday Night Blues.

The Sunday Night Blues often kick in around 6 p.m., when it becomes apparent that I don't have the ability to stop time, and the arrival of Monday is imminent, and in twelve hours I will be climbing into my little Honda Civic to make the hourlong drive down to SoBro. The Sunday Night Blues involve stress about lessons not quite finished, papers still to be read, lunch to be made, and at least a dozen other things running through my head. Is there gas in the car? Because in the boondocks of my town there's only service station open when I leave, and it's really out of the way. Are my clothes ironed? Is the alarm set? Will I get a coverage because one of my co-workers needed just one more day? Will a dreaded Rebot be there to stalk my every move?

These are little things, but for some reason after a weekend of not thinking too much about work they all converge on me. And the ironic thing is, I did like my job, at least the teaching aspect of it. Those children never failed to make me smile. I can't imagine what it would have been like if I hated it.

So tonight I feel unusually mellow, not having to worry about any of the aforementioned things, not having to rely on Tylenol PM or Nyquil to lull me to sleep. I've had to remind myself a few times today not to stress about the things I have to do, because I can do them tomorrow.

Self-Defense, Cafeteria Style

2006-06-29T20:12:00.001-04:00

This happened a week or so before school ended, and every time I sat down to write about it, something came up.

Not surprisingly, my students usually didn't want to go to Mr. X's class. And though he is otherwise harmless, there is something a little weird about him and more than one kid, especially the girls, has said so. But they never really could substantiate their complaints with anything specific.

If my kids were able to track me down before he came to pick them up and take them to the music room, they'd beg and plead to spend the period with me. "Miss M, pleeeeaaaaase!! Let us stay with you! We don't want to gooooooo!!!" If I was in the coach room for whatever reason, I usually heard them whispering outside my door before I actually saw them. I must admit, the fact that they liked me enough to do that was flattering. And I always found the stealth factor pretty amusing. They must have thought that if they could avoid detection for at least fifteen minutes, that the odds of them not going to music would increase in their favor.

Almost every time, I made them go to Mr. X's class. I hate when teachers pull kids from my class without asking me (and there was really only one person who did this until I told the kids that they were never to miss my class)so I try not to do it to others. But at the end, I was struggling to simulataneously pack up my classroom, clean up the coach room, and unpack an enormous shipment of Perma-bound books that came in mid-June. So when Girl #1 came to me and asked if she could stay with me during Mr. X's period, I was very torn.

"I don't like taking you out of his class," I reminded her.
"But Miss M, Girl #2 and I went to see him today at lunch," she said.
"You always complain that he's creepy and that you don't like him, so why would you girls go see him at lunch?" I asked, very surprised.
"Oh, it's okay, Miss M," Girl #1 said confidently, "I brought a fork."

Sidenote: Girl #2 told me later that Mr. X asked them to help him with something during the lunch period when they went to see him. Girl #1 said no, but Girl #2 is a big people pleaser and felt bad saying no. Girl #1 didn't want her to go alone, hence the arming with the fork. But since it was from the cafeteria, it was probably a spork. I don't know if that would be more or less effective.

And Now, The Editorial

2006-06-22T09:14:00.000-04:00

I used to write for the newspaper, back in college. Chances are, I sucked royally, but it was fun, I learned a lot, and I met some awesome people. And sometimes there's something so simple and neat about a news story, so I thought it would be fun to try my hand at it again. Of course, since objectivity is key to a news story, even a spoofed one, I didn't write about my real feelings about what my kids did.

For me, this event has me thinking about the issue of teacher quality and the way bad teachers are protected. The teacher who is the subject of my students' anger has been the subject of my anger as well, for a range of reasons not worth detailing. I don't think my principal can do much, beyond encouraging this teacher to go on the open market. If this teacher worked in "corporate America" he'd be fired, probably, or at least demoted, for not carrying out the responsibilities of his position.

I am proud of what my students did. They organized themselves and expressed their frustrations in a constructive way. They could have used the teacher's inattentiveness, the clear lack of planning and interest in them, to really raise some hell. But they didn't.

Oddly, I feel a bit badly for Mr. X., because I am sure his feelings were hurt. But I really believe that he should have seen this, or something similar, coming. My class is a good group; I feel very lucky to have taught them. And I know from my years in the classroom that even kids who are not so well-behaved will respond when you come in prepared, with rules and structures and activities. Mr. X. is not a new teacher, and he should have known this too. And he had the advantage of teaching a subject that many of our kids want to learn.

I don't excuse the times that my kids have been truly disruptive, but I also understand that their bad behavior came from the fact that they spent an absurd amount of time learning to clean their instruments, even though they all had instrumental music as fifth graders. And things didn’t improve much from there.

When I see kids who are well-behaved with some teachers, and not with others, it obviously brings up the question: is it the kids or is it the teacher? I have always told my classes that if they can behave for me, then they can behave for all their teachers. But deep down I wonder if that's an unfair expectation on my part. If a teacher is ill-prepared, is it fair to expect the students to hold up their end? We all have bad teaching days, but for some teachers ill-preparation is their way of life. What is the solution?

Sixth Graders Attempt Coup d'Etat

2006-06-22T09:10:00.000-04:00

BRONX- A determined group of sixth grade students attemped a peaceful overthrow of their music teacher's class last Wednesday, with the goal of expressing their displeasure with teacher, Mr. X and his teaching tactics.

Chants of "Down with music!! No more Mr. X!!" could be heard through the halls of Middle School XYZ, prompting a visit from a school counselor who was passing by the scene.

The school counselor reported two boys tussling in the corner, with the majority of the remaining students carrying signs that had messages like, "Teach Us Already!" and "We Want to Learn Music!!" while circling the room. "They were very organized," Ms. Counselor said. She contacted Mr. Principal, involved with another crisis, who requested that Ms. Counselor take the signs and help restore order, which she did.

"We hardly ever get to play our instruments," one student complained. "It does not seem like he knows what he's doing. And there are three other people using my mouthpiece. That's just gross," said the rebellion organizer, who shall remain nameless due to her age and the fact that she is still worried about being grounded.

Ms. Assistant Principal admitted to inadvertantly contributing to the rebellion effort. "They came to me for construction paper. I asked them if they wanted small or large sheets. They wanted the biggest pieces I had. I didn't ask them what they were doing; I assumed that they were working on Miss Malarkey's poetry project. I gave them markers too."

Miss Malarkey, homeroom teacher of the rebelling students, said, "I don't know if they chose the right time or place, but I was pleased with the fact that they attempted to do something constructive with their frustration. They have complained to me on more than one occasion and I advised them to involve their parents. Some parents have raised concerns but I think Mr. Principal's hands are tied." She added, "I wonder if the UFT could learn anything from the efforts of these students."

Mr. Principal and Mr. X. declined comment. However, Mr. Principal replied "no" when asked if the rebelling students would face disciplinary action, including the loss of the much-anticipated year-end pizza party.

incubate small moments

2006-06-19T20:36:00.000-04:00

The person who invented the Magnetic Poetry Kit deserves every penny he or she has earned. They are the coolest things ever and I can't believe I waited so long to try them. I had my kids work on different poetry activities, and one of them involved using the kits to write poems. The kids who chose to work in the magnetic poetry center wrote really amazing things. I also had to tear myself away from them so I could circulate and see what the other little buggers were doing.

Of course, one of my boys comes to me, saying, "Look, this is my favorite word." His hand was cupped around a magnet with the word breast on it. I wanted to say, "Kid, don't even THINK about looking at one (or two) of those until you have your diploma." But I managed to give him my stern look and he slunk back to his table.

Two Hats, Ten More Days

2006-06-14T20:29:00.000-04:00

I feel such relief about the end of the school year. Next year will be so much better for me, since I will be teaching a full 25 period load. Yes, the irony. I am walking away from a position that kept me out of the classroom for all of last year and the better part of this year (I had one class, two periods a day).

Being a literacy coach has been the biggest mistake of my career. In part, it's because I'm just not cut out for it. I definitely have the knowledge, but I'm not enough of a hard-ass. And I decided that I would be happier not trying to change who I am. In another circumstance, with other teachers, I may have done really well. But I realized that some people will succeed under any conditions, and some people will succeed when they have conditions that are favorable to them. I belong to the second group, and I've accepted that.

I've learned that I prefer working with kids to working with adults. Kids are much easier to motivate. Many of my co-workers are whiny and just want to complain, and many of them are thisclose to retiring. And some of them have seen a long sucession of chancellors and mayors and programs and philosophies, with little to no REAL change. I understand their frustration. And I know that I did myself a disservice by being too accommodating, and trying to do things that really weren't my responsibility, because I tried to be sensitive to the demands that are places on the classroom teacher.

I also feel good about the fact that I didn't get sucked into the cult that is Teacher's College/Balanced Literacy/THE REGION, etc. Ironically, I finished a master's in literacy a few months before becoming the coach. I had been really impressed with the quality of the program I finished; it was pretty rigorous and I learned a lot. I confess that I chose the program because the degree was free and I wanted another certification; I didn't care if it was a good program.

But anyway. From the beginning I've been frustrated by the expectation that I must get teachers to teach the way THE REGION wanted them to, and I just had such a problem with that. Yes, I know about research and I do believe in balanced literacy, but I just can't buy into the idea that there's only one way to do things, that if your whole class is reading the same book you're evil and should be shot, that if your mini lesson is two minutes over that you're depriving your students of their much needed student-centeredness.

And if there's one other thing I know, it's that if you shove something down a person's throat, he or she may simultaneously smile and gag, and spit it out immediately thereafter.

We got a big shipment of Perma-bound books today. I know have 30 copies of Fever 1793, Greek Myths, I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories and Hoot safely locked in a classroom closet, to be used next year, along with a class set of Elements of Literature. I can't wait for a ReBot to walk in and promptly keel over at the sight of 30 kids reading the same book. I'm such a rebel.

Reflection/Unintention

2006-06-02T12:26:00.000-04:00

We're doing poetry at the moment. I know Poetry Month is loooong gone, but my artist unit ran longer than anticipated, and the kids loved it. It's not like poetry will dissolve if it's not taught during the month of April.

Actually, some of my kids wrote some amazing stuff- we did multi-genre writing, with a "fictionalized biography" as the main piece. Then they were assigned two more pieces of their choosing- some did dialogues, they did poetry, they wrote top ten lists. I realized as I was going along that the kids weren't getting the whole idea of "fictionalizing" the biographies, and I ended up with a lot of the standards "Claude Monet was born in ___ on ___. He became a painter after ___." But I wasn't sure how to go about helping them to shift their creativity.

I still consider it mostly successful, because the kids were really into the books. I practically had to pull them out of their hands.

This was going to be about my kids and our current work, and some other stuff. But a Rebot just walked in. That's what I get for being sneaky and blogging at work.

Tues Blues

2006-05-09T19:55:00.000-04:00

I really do like my kids, and I know they like me but for whatever reason, on Tuesday afternoons they seem to make it their mission to kick the shit out of me. Not literally, of course, But they wear me out. And it's only during periods 7 and 8 on Tuesday. Every other day is fine.

There are lots of small snippets of things dashing around in my head. I don't know if I'll be able to string them together in a coherent way and I think I'm not going to try. I've slept terribly for the last two nights; I don't know why. Though I know that I am always dealing with the dread that comes alone with Pollyanna ReBot's visits.

I've realized that taking the literacy coach position was a huge mistake. My confidence in myself and my ability as a teacher took such a beating from the ReBots last year. All I got was criticism, you suck, you don't do this, etc. Then one of the Rebots wanted to know why I wasn't applying for a lead teacher position. And I suppose I am on the road to emotional recovery because that made me want to laugh. Of course I was thinking "Are you fucking kidding me?" but I explained that I just wanted to teach full time. I want nothing to do with Region people and their ideas. I can't say an extra $10k would not make a difference to my husband and I, but if I know my Region they'd bleed it out of me.

Today I actually began cleaning out my room. I'll be there again in the fall, and I have two closets that lock. One locked closet contains a class set of Elements of Literature: Intro and a class set of Elements of Literature: First Course. I have used both for mini lessons and shared readings, and if Polly knew I had them, she'd take them from me. She'd prefer that we make photocopies of stories.

If she even tries to come near those books I will kick her ass. In the meantime, I am stashing whatever I think I will need for seventh grade ~~English Communication Arts~~ Reading and Writing Workshop. I have given the teachers carte blanche to take any materials they've needed, but I somehow think that my replacement will be an outsider, and I think she will be under Polly's thumb.

Polly makes me feel like a moron. She does it by talking circles around me and making everything seem much more complicated than it is. Now, I don't think teaching is easy, but it's not nuclear physics. Unless, of course, you teach nuclear physics. Otherwise, welcome to the new wave in school ~~dictator~~ leadership. I should have known that my luck would run out.

Ironically, I don't even mind the Workshop Model. I just can't deal with the there's-only-one-way-to-do-this-and-it's-MY-way crap. My principal wants us to become a part of that "Empowerment Zone" though he has some concerns about the teachers embracing the idea. But I told him that if it does truly empower us to teach our kids according to what we think they need, it'll be a no-brainer. I see so many creative people who are just being stifled to death.

A Series of Unfortunate Ramblings

2006-05-04T14:32:00.000-04:00

I just gave Gracie a copy of The Grim Grotto (Book 11 in the Series of Unfortunate Events) and she actually did a little dance, she was so happy to have that book.
Why aren't they all like that? How do I get them all to dance over a book? Is it even possible? How do I get Gracie to stay an avid reader and conscientious student? How, how, how????
I have one kid in my 37.5 minute session. He never wants to stay with me (I can understand being freaked by one on one time with a teacher) and I refuse to chase the others. I just mark the rest of them absent, and spend the time getting ready for tomorrow.
I had spent a lot of time planning today's activities. I arranged for laptops so some of them could research their artists, collected and organized tons of books, and hauled in all the art supplies I could get my hands on. I was really excited, so of course I found out at 8:10 that ten of my students were chosen to take a field trip. Today. I was about to get really annoyed at them for not telling me, but when I saw who was running it, I knew the kids were not to blame for the late notice. They only found out yesterday afternoon.
My biggest pain-in-the-ass kid is actually quite the techie. I thought about bringing in my own laptop for him to use on the days when the mobile lab is unavailable, to get him more interested in doing his work (because he does NONE). But I don't know how to justify that to the rest of the kids who would see it as a reward for bad behavior. I'll figure something out.
Pollyanna Rebot will most likely be our AP next year, making my newest favorite word tenure. Because nothing I do will be good enough. I can already tell.
It's the time of year when I begin counting the days.

My Response to Mr. Kristof

2006-05-03T12:54:00.000-04:00

There was an interesting op-ed piece in the Sunday New York Times titled “Opening Classroom Doors” by Nicholas D. Kristof. He expresses his belief that highly intelligent and talented people who want to become teachers are being discouraged by the barriers to the classroom, namely, having to go through the certification process, which includes student teaching and related coursework. He proposes relaxing the requirements “so people can enter teaching more easily.”

Frankly, I believe that this is the last thing we should be doing. The sad truth, as I’ve witnessed in my ten years as a New York City public school teacher, is that there are enough lazy morons in front of the classroom. Granted, they’ve been the minority, but even one is too many. Making the process of becoming a teacher easier is not the answer.

There is a shortage of teachers; Mr. Kristof is right about that, and the need for teachers will continue to grow. The numbers tell that story. But eliminating or relaxing certification standards isn’t the answer. Mr. Kristof calls the teacher shortage problem “one of the easiest to solve.” I’ve learned that none of the problems that plague education are easy to solve, this one included.

I’m resisting the urge to call former I.B.M. chief Louis Gerstner a corporate hack, since I don’t know the man and I sure his intentions are good. But his so-called “blue-ribbon panel,” the Teaching Commission, cited “confusing and cumbersome procedures to discourage many talented would-be teachers from entering the classroom.” Having jumped through this set of hoops twice, first to get New York State teacher certification, then to get a New York City license, I have to say that while annoying, it wasn’t all that complicated. If a person truly wants to pursue a career as an educator, “confusing and cumbersome procedures,” shouldn’t interfere. And if they can’t figure out the requirements, should they be in the classroom?

I also can’t help but feel a little insulted by this piece. Mr. Kristof gives the impression that he thinks teaching is easy, that any smart person with personality can just do it. For some people, unaware of the depth and breadth of knowledge needed, teaching probably is easy. But I know there are also many others like me, teachers who want to be reflective, who research best practices, who question what they’re doing and why, who have a reason for everything, big and small, that they do in their classrooms. For me, it’s all ongoing, but the process began as a pre-service teacher, before I even set foot in a classroom. Mr. Kristof says there’s no evidence that teacher training courses are of any help, but uses no supporting evidence for that claim.

Admittedly, I am a bit defensive about the choice I made to enter teaching through a conventional route that included a bachelor’s in English, a Master’s in English Education, and a semester of student teaching. But in my first year of teaching, those credentials helped me get through the year. During my toughest times, I took comfort in the fact that the depth and quality of my preparation would help me figure it out. On the worst days, that little scrap of confidence was all I had. Will someone who walks in with a B.A., a piece of chalk and a strong feeling of altruism have that?

Teach for America is lauded here, and in other publications, as an example of an organization that has placed successful teachers in the classroom with minimal training. I worked in a school with a significant number of TFA teachers, and while some of them flourished, almost as many failed, at least initially. Kristof names one study, which cited stronger gains in math when taught by TFA teachers. But that’s one study; I found one study myself which found that students of TFA teachers made 20% less academic growth than students with non-TFA teachers. The last few groups of TFA teachers I worked with were woefully inadequate, with serious classroom management problems. Most of them, however, were better in their second year after having graduate courses under their belts. Their teaching experience taught them a lot as well, but what about their students, who had to spend a year with a teacher who started with little more than a summer-long crash course in teaching? Besides, the majority of them choose not to become career teachers anyway.

I wish I had a workable solution, but I think improving conditions for teachers is critical if we are going to entice more people to become teachers. Today, it only takes a brief spin around the blogosphere to learn the truth about teaching: that classes are overcrowded, parental support is often sorely lacking, many administrators prefer to lead by intimidation, for starters. Why would someone want to become a teacher? How many people have been turned off by those factors? I have never heard someone say that they didn’t want to teach because of the salary; they always cite some combination of the factors I mentioned.

I think the teaching profession needs a major image overhaul. Changes need to be made within the profession to make it more appealing to the right people. And at this time I almost feel like I’m wrong in calling it a “profession.” In NYC we aren’t treated as professionals, and this will not help us attract teachers. Teacher morale in New York City is as low as it’s been since I began in 1996. We have absurd mandates and are expected to adapt the one-size-fits-all approach, or else. We have a Chancellor who looks to every “expert” he can find, experts who largely haven’t taught, to find solutions. But he never thinks to ask those of us in the classrooms, who really know. So why become a teacher, when you can keep your cushy corporate job and still have a chance to make important decisions about education?

Untitled

2006-05-02T07:37:00.000-04:00

I have started the countdown to summer. I am living for the weekends. I am over my five a.m. wake up call. I am bored of my daily trip to Dunkin' Donuts, where the young woman with the Russian accent must know me by now. Large vanilla coffee, milk and two Sweet-n-lows, a bottle of water, plain wheat bagel.

I fantasize only about sleeping late, getting up when the sun is out, feeling slothful for getting out of bed at 8 o'clock in the morning, the time when I am usually at my classroom door, greeting the class. Please take your seat, take out your independent reading books, remember, you get a plus if you do what you're supposed to.

Kids love pluses.

I'm going back to a full teaching load in the fall. No more of this half teacher/half coach nonsense. All it took was a reminder to my principal that I am a really good teacher. I will blow my own horn when I absolutely have to. I can get hired in another school. That, and the reminder that I really do suck at this coach thing. He does not agree with that part. In my head, I was desperate and pleading, please, I can't do it anymore, I just can't. I don't know what I'll do if I have to do this next year.

I'm not teaching summer school this year. I have taught every summer since 1999. I don't know what I am going to do with myself. Well, that's not true. I am going to take advantage of being a professor's wife and take a class at his college. Something fun, not teaching related. I am going to morph into a scary Martha Stewart type person and garden and do the many little projects around the money pit. I am going to sleep, sleep, sleep and take photographs and maybe paint again, even though I once took a painting class and the instructor all but said that I sucked. I don't care. I have chosen, finally, to be honest about myself and what I am good at and the fact that I'm not really all that smart. I need to learn to do what I want to do, without any expectation of competence. At least when I'm not getting paid

I love anonymity.

Epiphany II

2006-05-02T07:33:00.000-04:00

I had a friend in college who had a notepad thing attached to his windshield so that he could scribble stuff when driving. At the time I was amused by it, finding it charactertisically anal. Today, as I headed towards the interstate for the long drive south, I wished that I had one of those too. Because I only seem to get good ideas for writing when I am driving. When I drive, I am brilliant, at least in my own mind.

Of course, that does not preclude getting into a stupid fender bender at some point.

And the ensuing epiphany...

2006-04-07T14:32:00.000-04:00

I realized, a few minutes ago, that mentioning the earlier exchange with my kids to Pollyanna ReBot (more on her later) would be fruitless. She would just tell me that it's me, that I am doing the think-alouds wrong and not engaging the children. The reality would not occur to her, that my students have very real opinions about the way they are taught and those opinions should be considered.

All Hail The Workshop Model (unless you're a sixth grader)

2006-04-07T12:53:00.000-04:00

Last year, my lead Literacy ReBot was HUGE on "think-alouds", which is the part of the lesson where you read or write and "think out loud" so that the kids can "see" your thought process. I found myself working it into my lessons this year, and while it felt odd at first, I caught on. I also read more on my own about the rationale for doing it. The idea is that when you do it regularly, it helps the kids to catch on, and ideally do it themselves and become better readers.

So now it's sort of second nature. Of course, the fact that I've incorporated it fairly easily into my teaching should mean that my students have worked it into their reading.

But maybe not. Today, when I opened a copy of Leonardo's Horse by Jean Fritz and got ready to do my thing, one of my students raised her hand and asked, "Are you going to do that thing where you stop and talk about what you've read? Because that's really annoying!"

"Really?" I asked. "You don't find that it helps you?" About half of them shook their heads. "Does anyone else find it annoying?" More than half of them were happy to say yes.

I wonder what the ReBots would say about that. And if the kids find it "annoying" is it benefiting them at all?

The Naming of Names

2006-03-26T19:03:00.000-05:00

We have a new person in our school, a Rebot. Her name, at least for my purposes here, is Pollyanna. She means well, but is making me insane. On the one hand, I'd love to dish details, but on the other hand, I'd hate for anyone to put two and two together and figure out who I am. Maybe Pollyanna Rebot reads education blogs when she needs a break from chewing up and spitting out teachers who don't hail the Almighty Workshop Model. Then again, I wonder if anyone is really reading this drivel in the first place. Sometimes I feel like all I do here is spew venom. But that can be entertaining, for me anyway.

I've been afraid to use the first names of my kids. Many of them have really unique names, and I work at a small school. I can imagine someone out there howling, "Bitch is writing about my schoooool!!!"

I feel like using pseudonyms for everyone can get a bit hairy. But it's fun to think of names for the adults, especially the ones I don't like.

When I can't say what I want...

2006-03-23T14:18:00.000-05:00

I write it in a letter instead...

Dear Mrs. *****
I am sorry if I overreacted to your son’s behavior today. But frankly, there’s nothing funny about a child writing “Die, Die, Die!!” on his forearm in big, bright blue letters. There’s also nothing funny about a child taking the cord from the window shade and wrapping it around his neck. Maybe I just have a lame sense of humor. I would think, instead of being angry, that you’d be grateful that we were diligent and informed you of what your son did.

I know you are mad because the two kids who informed me about the cord incident “pick on him constantly” but to be honest, two of his friends also brought the incident to my attention, and I overheard one of these friends saying something about Sonny sporting a plastic bag over his head.

And when it comes to being "picked on" he is the instigator more often than not.

Maybe Sonny will grow up to be sensitive and thoughtful, but right now, he’s a little asshole.

Sincerely,
Happy to be childless

Dear Students:
It kills me that you all are so fast to snitch on each other when someone does something stupid, but when someone does something potentially dangerous, you clam up. Worse, some of you choose to reduce others to tears for doing the right thing. Normally I do love you all to pieces, but today you really pissed me off, in part because I think you still don’t get it.

Sincerely,
No Munchkins for you this week...

For ELA teachers in New York City

2006-03-17T14:42:00.001-05:00

This is important information about our involvement (or lack of) with the NYS Education Department.
TimFrederick

On Spelling

2006-03-14T07:51:00.000-05:00

TO: Ms. D****
From: Group 3
Dear Ms. Malarkey,
Our table has decided that the best thing for us is to sign R** D***** out of our group. For the simple fact that in the middle of class he disturbs us, he takes our belongings and shows them to us, laughing. He never does the work and he argues with everyone. And he hits group members.
Sincerely,
Alisha
Virgil
Michael
Joann
Nicole

p.s. At this point we don't have patience to negotiate.

I love that they spelled "patience" and "negotiate" right.

My friend Di taught Virgil last year. He's adorable, the smallest in the class though last week he was the only one to stomp on a waterbug that was the size of a Buick. He can read well but his spelling needs more work than I know what to do with. Di told me about this exchange she had with his mom last year:

Michael's Mom: Did you call my son a "non-speller"?
Di: No, I did not call him a non-speller....I called him Mister Non-Speller.

I was only joking when I said...

2006-03-08T17:00:00.000-05:00

I offended Mr. Principal today, or annoyed him anyway. We are having weekly lab sites in our building, conducted by ReBots. One of my colleagues said, “Lab sites? Sounds scientific.” I agreed. “We’re lab rats,” I said, “being taught to run the habitrail.” He was not amused.

I know it was unprofessional and negative, but I am a) a sarcastic ass at heart and b) it’s how I really feel, sort of. Later I apologized, but I told Mr. Principal that I’m ok as long as I can hold on to my sense of humor. When that’s been depleted (and the process has begun) I will begin downing screwdrivers before homeroom.

I won’t do it, of course. I don’t even like screwdrivers. But the thought of it makes me chuckle a little, and I need that.

You've gotta have art...

2006-03-05T09:29:00.000-05:00

I've been sporadically working on my art history unit this week. Hopefully my Children of War unit will wrap up by the end of this week. I hope. That unit has been one of my favorites, but for whatever reason it didn't really have the same punch as last time. I am thinking that maybe sixth grade is a little too young to really grasp some of the ideas.

The first time I did this unit was a couple months after September 11. Ironically, I was supposed to begin with that project, as soon as the kids were familiar with rules and procedures, etc. Afterwards I decided to put it on the back burner because we were all too raw. But a couple months later, I went ahead with it, and the kids wrote some amazing things. We read Zlata's Diary, and one of the requirements was for them to keep a diary for two weeks. Nearly all the kids backdated theirs to September 11 and it was heartbreaking to read about the things that were going through their heads. I like to think it was somewhat cathartic for them, to have that outlet. Heaven knows, we didn't deal with it well in my school on that day or after. But then again, what precedent did we have?

I want to make this art unit really challenging, and interesting, and relevant. It's hard. Yesterday I tried to work on a rationale that the ReBots would not be able to question. The Rebots love to shoot down my ideas, but don't really offer me specific ways to make my units better. They like to talk circles around me.

It makes me think that maybe I am not very smart after all.

I decided to start backwards (since I've had some training with Understanding by Design and think it's pretty solid way to plan) and think about what I want the kids to have as a final product at the end, how I want them to show me what they've learned. And I am not sure. I am hoping that the process of writing this entry will clarify things for me a bit.

Other than the big old book that I am going to cut to pieces (probably while watching the Academy Awards tonight), I bought three other small books (one each about da Vinci, Monet, Picasso, and Matisse.) There are some other random books in my building that I can use. I am going to have to get really creative. I want to be sure to address African-Americans and Hispanic artists too. There's so much; it's really overwhelming.

Definitely want to address: da Vinci and the Mona Lisa (I think kids will get a kick out of the theory that the Mona Lisa is Leonardo in drag), Frieda Kahlo, van Gogh, Matisse, the Impressionists, modern art, ancient Egyptian art. There's so much, and before I go too much further I should think about how I can make solid connections to literacy. Egads.

This wasn't supposed to be a diatribe.

2006-02-27T11:07:00.000-05:00

Despite the fact that I slept maybe two hours last night (and what is more maddening than insomnia, especially at a time when you really need and want to sleep?) I am glad to be back, even though my office is absurdly full of boxes. I don’t even want to see what my classroom looks like, because I think the semi-annual floor polishing rites happened last week. The desks are stacked and shoved every which way, but not put back.

In addition to teaching a sixth grade class, I am also the literacy coach. I hate being the literacy coach, even though it’s only part time. When I first accepted the position in the fall of 2004, I really thought that I’d get to share what I learned about literacy in my last master’s program. I learned so much and it was a great experience. When balanced literacy became the new way of life here in NYC, I already had a few graduate courses under my belt, and that awareness of the research made me much more open than many of my fellow teachers. It also made me more critical of the way the city was going about the process. And unfortunately, “literacy coach” means “another Region mouthpiece”, as far as I am concerned. My agenda is based entirely on their agenda, not my observations of what OUR students and teachers need. That’s frustrating. I have worked with two different “lead” coaches, better known as ReBots (Region Robots) who have had very different styles but came in with the same tired, ineffective ideas.

Last year, I began grinding my teeth in my sleep and it got worse whenever the ReBot was going to visit. The teeth grinding was a first for me. Even working full time and taking ten grad school credits while trying to sustain a still-budding relationship with my now-husband was less stressful. Last year’s ReBot thought that it would be effective coaching for me to go up to the teacher while she was teaching, and whisper to the teacher all the things she was doing wrong. At one point, ReBot’s hand was literally on my back, nudging me to the front of the room. I hadn't even felt so stupid on my first day of student teaching, and I was utterly furious as well. Later on I apologized to the teacher and told the ReBot that I would not coach the teachers in that manner. She insisted that it was the best way to coach the teachers, but since she believed in figurative pushing and shoving, she wouldn’t consider other ways of affecting change.

And that moment, I think, was truly indicative of my Region’s strategy towards doing things. Push, shove, and when that fails, push and shove more and throw in a few ounces of meanness for good measure and "this is for the CHILDREN, don't you care about the CHILDREN?". (Never mind that if THEY cared about the children there would not be 35 of them in one room.)

It truly makes me wonder how some of these people behaved as teachers, how they treated their students, if they had that same hard attitude of “do it and shut up.” It makes me wonder what a little power can really do to a person. This year’s ReBot is at the other end of the spectrum; she is content to come here and sit and when I pointedly ask if she wants to visit classrooms she grudgingly agrees. Then she offers up all sorts of criticism, and suggests that I model lessons. The last feedback log she sent me via e-mail was almost laughable; the issues she had were carefully detailed, but then the only suggestion for improvement was “model lessons for teachers.” Yeah, that helps.

This wasn’t supposed to be whiny, grating, bitchy. I hate those qualities in others but I feel like I’ve just put up and shut up for so long. As soon as I have an opportunity I am going to tell my principal that I want to be in the classroom full time next year.

Funny, I have never really quit anything. I didn't quit waitressing after dumping half dozen huge sodas onto a group of people. I didn't quit my college newspaper job after making a hugely embarrassing blunder that I don't want to go into. I didn't quit my first teaching job at Intermediate School 666 after children threw things at me whenever I turned around and the bitch of an AP berated me regularly, but never offered to help. (She got hers later, thank you Daily News.) But now, I am quitting.

I was going to write about the unit I’m writing, on art history. I am so excited for it. Over the weekend I bought a huge book in Borders. It was $9.99 and it’s huge, and I bought it for the express purpose of cutting it up, to have samples of art to show the kids. The best thing about teaching language arts is that I feel like I can do anything with them, as long as they are reading and writing. Maybe another time.

I am a conundrum (or should it be "I HAVE a conundrum"?)

2006-02-17T13:36:00.000-05:00

Meetings with parents can be such a struggle. We’ve had our parent/teacher conferences over the last couple days, and I am so glad they are over.

Ironically, I usually complain about parents who aren’t involved enough, or don’t seem concerned enough. But for the first time I had such a hard time with parents of a kid who got a good grade, because they were angry (at me) because her grade was not higher.

My meeting with Nona’s parents was a frustrating one. What do you say to a mother who is almost in tears because her child only got an 85? Talk about irony. I usually get upset with parents who aren't upset over low grades.

I didn’t know what to do. I pointed out that Nona had missed some assignments and her notebook didn’t show the kind of growth I was hoping for. I found that she wasn’t trying as hard in the last marking period.

It’s made me realize that Region be damned, I have to come up with a more concrete way of assessing my students. Back in the allegedly good old days, the kids would read a story and take a test. At the end I had a bunch of numbers that constituted a big chunk of their grade. I don’t want to go back to that, but I’m struggling to find a happy medium. This 1-2-3-4 crap is not hacking it for me, especially when I wonder how to best translate those numbers into a traditional grading system.

Nona’s parents wanted to know if I’d made a mistake, and I said no. Nona then informed me that her partner on a project didn’t do any work, and that Nona did all the work. I didn’t bother to remind Nona that the project was from the first marking period and I gave her a decent mark in spite of the fact that neither child followed the directions for the task, despite two conferences I had with them.

What frustrates me too is the feeling that I got that they were pressuring me to change the grade for the sake of the number, without any concern for what I felt was a decrease in effort on Nona’s part, without any concern for the actual learning. During the November conferences, the same parents wanted to know if Nona had the highest average in the class (to which I honestly replied that she didn’t) and the father pushed me to tell him the names of the students who had higher averages. I told him that ethically I could not and would not share information about other children with him. There is one girl in the class who is a superstar, and Superstar and her family knew Nona and her family back in their native country. Nona’s parents are really perpetuating a rivalry between the two girls, which I find really unfair.

I also wanted to point out to them that maybe they were leaning on Nona too hard, because I sensed that her issues from the last marking period, however small, stemmed from a bit of rebelling against the pressure from her parents. But I didn’t. I recognize the cultural beliefs that are at work here, and I recognize that ultimately Nona’s parents just want her to be smart and successful. I know there are probably ways I could have dealt with them better.

It’s led me to ask myself what should the role of the parent be? Why should I be the one to decide what we talk about, what areas are off-limits?

The science teacher gave Nona a 100 for a grade. In all the years I have taught, I have never give a 100 for a grade. I don’t think I believe in giving a 100 for English, because no matter what there is always room for growth and improvement.

What I Wanted to Tell My Husband

2006-02-16T09:59:00.000-05:00

I got home late last night, after 8:30. My new commute is now about an hour. It’s a compromise I have to live with. I love where I live now and I still love where I work, so I am dealing with it. When I got home after last night’s conferences, it felt so very good to take off my heels.
Mr. Malarkey had started dinner, so it was ready quickly. And while there was so much I wanted to tell him, I found that I just couldn’t. Not because I feel that I can’t talk to him, because I can. I am a lucky woman to have the husband I have.

I just felt utterly unable to put words to my thoughts.

I couldn’t tell him about James, who fidgets and flutters like crazy, who can’t sit still, who does no work, but is still on grade level in reading and math (or he was last year, when he was in the fifth grade.)

I couldn’t tell him that I just don’t know what to do about James any more. Mr. Principal wanted to move him to another class but I have fought to keep him in my room. I hated telling James’ father that I just don’t know what to do. I should know what to do, shouldn’t I? “I don’t know what to say anymore,” his dad said to me.

I couldn’t tell my husband that this was the shortest and one of the saddest conferences ever.
I couldn’t tell him that I hope to see a fellow teacher shitcanned for falling asleep during a class. While he was asleep some of his students were doing something that they most CERTAINLY should not have been doing. Ms. Assistant Principal has been so very upset.

I couldn’t tell him that I am never more aware of what we’re up against than when I have to meet with parents. I don’t know why, but it’s so overwhelming. I hesitate to calculate how many of these conferences I have sat through over the years.

Why I Am Here

2006-02-15T19:04:00.000-05:00

My seven-year teaching itch has come a bit late. I find myself in an odd position; I've been seeing people who started with me (and after me) move steadily up the ranks, becoming Principals, Assistant Principals, ISs, RISs, DIZZES, FIZZES, and yet here I am, a classroom teacher and literacy coach (a position that I really think I hate). At the moment I have no desire to move up the ladder. In part, it's because I ONLY have 9 full years in the system, and I just have such issues with Baby Principals. Some of that may stem from my own issues with confidence and ambition and belief in myself, but some of it comes from my belief that a good supervisor works his or her way up through the ranks. The Leadership Academy, which takes people from anywhere and everywhere (as long as they are "smart") is cranking out principals like it's an assembly line process. The premise that someone can be a good school leader with minimal classroom experience troubles me. And I know of a few instances where this has been a complete and utter disaster.

Then again, I have worked with people who did work their way up through the system who are at best clueless and at worst nasty and coldhearted. Maybe I need to make judgments on a case-by-case basis.

I am finding that I need some personal academic rigor. I want to be more abreast of the issues that educators face. I want to be on top of research in my discipline and broaden my content knowledge. I want to use my writing skills to think more about things that are important to me. And of course, I want to be as good at teaching as possible. This blog will hopefully give me some new direction.

I guess, in a nutshell, I am bored. I need something that will help me feel more in tune with what I am doing. Writing has always been incredibly important to me and as much as I love teaching, I have wondered if I shortchanged myself by not trying to do something with my writing first. I think I felt that I didn’t know enough about anything (except cosmetics) to be able to write about it.

I am surrounded by complainers and they are dragging me down. The amount of negativity is truly staggering. And while it’s nothing new, I’ve gotten to a point where I have to learn work around it while staying unaffected by it. I really, really never want to buy into some of the beliefs I see. If I were a stronger person, maybe I would try to share more of my own input, but I think I would be wasting my breath. At the moment I am concentrating on trying to be as positive as I can, and when people say things that I disagree with, I’ve been trying to disagree respectfully, even though it would be so much more satisfying to say, “You know what? You’re an asshole.”

Is there anybody out there?

2006-02-14T07:53:00.000-05:00

I don't know what to do with this space, or myself, yet. I have been blogging for almost four years, but in a smaller, protected community where I have come to know some people very well. I've even exchanged Christmas cards with some of theml, which means that they know my real name and where I live. The idea that I am completely anonymous here is disconcerting, but in a good way. Though I can say what I want, I want it to be honest and not petty.

And I'll admit, a bit of 'net notoriety would be nice. Let's see if I get any.