Who says kids lack manners and grammar skills?

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

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

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.

Alarming Information

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

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

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.

The Story

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.

The Latest

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.

Frac Attack

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.