Fail Again. Fail Better

The first quarter is over. Midterms are in and grades almost finalized. Gandalf’s shout to the balrog thunders through my head at inopportune moments. I have a whole slew of students whom I’ve managed to invest in their grade, if not world history as a subject (I want to teach English! English!), and after-school tutoring sessions in the trailer are becoming popular (I played them Israeli rap last week as they worked… next up, Norwegian heavy metal).

I caught a kid cheating on his midterm. It was a bummer, because I’d already caught him cheating once. I handled it very coolly—most of the other students were unaware and continued testing in peace. I noticed him as I was reading a test aloud to one of my students (the school does not provide for IEPs) and doing one of my frequent gimlet-eyed room scans that misses probably 50% of what it’s supposed to catch. He had his study guide beneath the test, and was furtively checking it for answers. I picked up his test, marked a 0, and as his jaw dropped, replaced it with a worksheet for him to finish. The shame of it is, that by caring enough to cheat, he shows more motivation (albeit external) than a lot of students.

Later that night, I called home to say it’s the second time I’ve caught him cheating on a test. His big brother, who sounded his age, picked up. When I asked for a parent or guardian, he told me that their mom’s in the hospital and they don’t know when their stepdad will be home. Ouch. Self-righteous teacherhood just got punched where it hurts.

My last block is becoming more mellow as we share more and more jokes and the kids realize I’m for real and so are their grades. Earlier in the week they were making up motions to remember the scientists of the scientific revolution as part of a larger project testing various mnemonic devices, and when two of the best dancers (and most hyperactive kids) in the class stood up to mime hoola hooping as a mnemonic for Kepler discovering elliptical orbits, the entire class was floored and giggling. Man these kids can move. When I tried to copy the moves we all collapsed again—Ms. W really can’t dance!

Today my second block was all set to be a hot mess, but I’m learning the feeling of it and beginning to figure out exactly how to steer. Instead of anarchy, we had a really good debate about Locke vs. Hobbes, the nature of humanity, and, ironically enough, the danger of anarchy. I need more ideas on how to play with social studies and up the rigor, and hence engagement—all the buzzwords here are actually right on the mark. I’m getting bored without new stuff, which means the kids must be as well. French Revolution next week… we’re definitely barricading the classroom with desks. Now to figure out how to create a classroom-safe guillotine…

My third block was as good as they get. They're so good that I turned the discussion over to them, and during our literary period they debated passionately about whether 10 and 11 year old criminals should be left in federal databases or removed, while class had them arguing about whether the school would be better run in a Hobbesian or Lockian system. The school definitely is Hobbesian in nature, and I sometimes wonder whether a little more trust in the innocence of our students and their ability to unite to run things wouldn't invest them more than the police state that public school sometimes seems.

My newest mentra is Beckett’s terse lines urging readers to “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Fail again. Fail better. That sounds like every day at school, and each day that I try something new I fail better and better until perhaps, some day, without quite realizing it, I’ll reach success.

My third block left my 2nd block a message for tomorrow. I wonder how2nd will respond, and if it's as terrible an idea to leave it up as I suspect, or if it will play on their strong sense of class pride and for once I won't feel embarrassed in front of the custodian...

I Don't Teach History, I Teach Finishing School

Or, in my case, 9th grade world history

One day this week started out pretty awful; in my first block my students absolutely refused to do their work and expressed so much antagonism that I was unable even to get three words out. It was at some point  after I got called a bitch that I buckled and snapped, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak teenager” (kind of bitchy, but also pretty funny). When one of the security guards came to haul the student out, he must have seen the giving-up look in my eyes as he held up his arm to keep the girl from launching herself back into class (or at me? I’m not sure), because five minutes later, as I was getting ready to call security for a second student, the class called me back from the phone, “Ms. W., don’t bother, security’s outside.” He was, and after him strode the 9^th grade administrator, who asked me what was going on, and when I just shook my head, sent me out to relax while she spoke to the students.

I stepped out of that dark smelly trailer into the briskly sunlit day with a sense of freedom. Then I closed my eyes, pictured the hidden fjord crag where I used to end my jogs at Gamlehaugen in Norway, and repeated to myself the words of Anne of Green Gables: I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.  And I’m so glad that I don’t have to be in that trailer with those kids right now. Poor kids. I’m sure they’re being read the riot act. Well, they wanted nothing more than to be free of mercantilism, and now they’ve got it.

As I waited for the administrator to finish whatever lecture she was giving to my students, I saw three TFA staff round the bend to observe their corps members in class. They were hilariously heartening, and amid the oft-repeated “we’ve all been there,” one of them threatened to go into my classroom and pound some respect into those kids with such seriousness it made me feel like she was their grandma coming to visit and yell at them.

Afterwards, in the office, the admin and another dean sat down with me to make certain I didn’t feel bad about the students’ chaos. They were hilariously supportive and concrete in their suggestions, and even as I wondered where on earth to begin with that class, all the little tips coalesced nicely. To tell the truth, I feel like I need a total rehaul there, and am just floating until the weekend when I can take the time to really figure it out.

My students exactly

My third block perked me up entirely and by the time fourth block rolled around, I was ready for anything again. When a student slowly crumpled up and dropped tiny balls of paper on the floor, I made her stand and pick it up, cracking, “I don’t teach history, I teach finishing school,” at her. When a student freaked out that there wasn’t enough time to finish the exit ticket, I put on her tone of panic exactly and said, “oh no! You’d better hurry, then!” She laughed so hard she fell out of her chair, and from the floor told me, “I didn’t know you rolled that way, Ms. W.” 

When I came home, I shucked the pencil skirt and flats and jumped straight into the pool for an hour of October brisk sunny swimming and Henry James tanning. It was cathartic, and I’m not sure what I’ll do when the pool closes at the end of October. Perhaps move back to Norway where they swim in all seasons.

By the way, my vocabulary is becoming increasingly enhanced by teenagerisms. Yes, I roll that way, Imma hundred percent and not trifling so let’s turn it up I ain't kidding… For sure got one of those wrong, but anyhow that’s the language they speak, and when I said, “I don’t speak teenager,” it was more true than you’d believe—I have a really hard time understanding a lot of what my students mean! I’m sure they have the same complaint about me; today I told my students we are not addressing sartorial concerns in the middle of class as they passed around and compared shoes (except of course the umpteen times I remind gentlemen that I’d rather not see their underwear hanging out of their pants and ladies that their tummies better get tucked back into their shirts. –A debate for another day: are dress codes sexist? Not when I consider an exposed bottom a much more egregious violation than a little midriff), and they kvetched that I use words that are too big. I chuckled inside at that—all is relative—today I taught my third block the word “hegemony” and they lapped it up.

You see, we were talking about the Middle Passage. I’d cringed at the idea of starting with slavery as the curriculum said, and introduced them to the idea that stuff happened in Africa before Europeans arrived there—Ghana, Mali, and Songhai were exhibited in all their glory, never mind that they won’t be on the test. When we moved along to the Middle Passage, they perked up and, hands waving furiously, competed to get their questions out:

“Is this when racism started?”

“Why are people different colors?”

“Is it true all people come from Africa?”

I have an ESL co-teacher in that class, and as an African-American Muslim woman she had bases covered that I had never thought of. It’s a pleasure to teach with someone who knows all the things you don’t. And a pleasure to engage with such inquisitive minds as my students possess. 

When one girl suggested that maybe it was good some slaves copied Jesus’ submissiveness and believed it was G-d’s will they be slaves, I decided it was about time to introduce them to the concept of hegemony, and so I did, with the caveat that this was a college-level word and they did not need to remember it and they were having none of it, right away they demanded I write it on the board so they could copy it down and use it. It got left there during my fourth block when students were popping in and out, repeating some phrase that I still don’t understand even after extensive googling, in a kind of ironic sneer of what students are capable.

Today in my first block I changed my attention-getting signal, which used to be a trigger for misbehavior, and the students are into the chorus of “Athens—Sparta!” that one of the administrators advised (he’d done turkey—gravy, but I’m less into Thanksgiving, and I love all those kids yelling “Sparta!” at the top of their lungs to my whispered “Athens!”).  They also racked up more class points at one go than they ever had before, finally investing them in the class behavior competition, but leading my fourth block to question whether they’re my favorites. I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to crack up the way I did at that suggestion, but at least it satisfied my students. 

Tomorrow is the last day of the week, and students will be learning about slavery today as well as making posters against transatlantic slavery. I can’t wait to see their creativity; most of my classes have at least two or three creative geniuses, and some simply darn good artists floating in the bunch.

P.S. I was startled to receive an email from a parent that ended with "Try Jesus", but like a good sport wrote back that I'm sure prayer will help her son improve his grade. Since then I've realized that a whole lot of parents here sign off with religious email signatures, and I'm now really embarrassed that I took it personally. 

Tupac and the Kibbutz Classroom

This Week’s Highlights:

Things I learned:

·      Who Tupac is. Because every time I put the slide up with Machiavelli, the kids shouted “Tupac!” Even the security guard asked about Tupac when he came in to take a student to in-school suspension. I’ve now listened to the song, and no, we are NOT playing it in class.

·      That pretty drawing on the desk in the front row is a marijuana leaf. Mr. B, the janitor, pointed it out to me while he was sweeping.

·      Students are weirdly much more fascinated by Teresa of Avila and the concept of role models than the Inquisition. Go figure.

The most memorable moments:

·      Rejuvenating Sunday brunch with friends who range in conversation from ethnic food to genetics.

·      The student who started out the semester in the back of the room, doing nothing but talking and being sent out, and after being moved to the front and various interventions, this week finished her third draft of an essay that actually made sense! She called me over to read it, and told me it’s the first real essay she’s ever written. Did I tear up? A little. But instead of crying I wrote her a note to take home and translate to her parents about how goshdarn awesome she’s been working.

·      The student who thought an appropriate response to a guy teasing her was to stand up, grab one of my whiteboard markers off the board, and chuck it as hard as she could at another student

·      When my last block was introduced to class points and magically hushed throughout the class period. MAGICAL!

·      The student who called me “racist” under her breath as I sent her out of the room

·      The student who dumped pencil shavings all over another student’s desk

·      The student who ate a piece of his test review in the back of the room

·      Four students who stayed after class three different days this week, one scoring triple his original score on a retest with me there to talk him through the questions. Gotta make that happen more.

·      Calling three parents of students who have had behavior issues to tell them how well their kids did in class that day—one parent said he’d never gotten a positive phone call from a teacher before.

·      The student who stayed during lunch to explain exactly what will help him learn the best.

·       It wasn’t in the classroom, but for my edu. Masters I got to write about the connection between Kohlberg’s levels
      of morality and student behavior—oh baby oh baby oh baby imagine a world where schools were run like kibbutzim, students responsible to a social contract and society they created! I ran wild with the paper and then demurely edited it down to hand in, but what joyous imaginings.  Next up: my attempt at the kibbutznik classroom.

Right now, this year is running a close tie with Norway for the best year of my life. It’s utterly, ridiculously different, but when it doesn't have me furrowing my brow, I'm exhilarated with it! 

Why Are You So Happy?

Teaching feels like this! Including those moments you don't
get off the ground or fall and sprain your ankle. But when
you're soaring, it's the best! 

Fourth week of school. Yet more new students, who come in and ask, “why are you so happy?” By now the old students respond in chorus: "Because she likes to teach!" They know.

While talking to one of the other world history teachers one lunch, he asked if our students think we’re weird. He’d leaped onto his desk to recite the Declaration of Independence intro, and has the sneaking suspicion they all think he’s nuts. Good nuts, I told him—Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society nuts. But it’s totally true—all our students probably think we’re rather crazy.

Went to my first football game in my whole life! I’d already sat an hour in the sweltering hot gym watching one of my second block students’ volleyball games—I’d bumped into her on the way to my trailer and she had her uniform on, so I came by to cheer her on. Well, mostly I gave her a wave and nod when she looked at me while surreptitiously grading papers in the back of the bleachers.  Anyhow, after another hour of grading I headed with two other TFA teachers over to the football field. It was INTENSE! The band is really impressive. They played at Obama’s inauguration, and if anything, are even better than the football team. One of my students is the baton twirler out front, and I kept grinning proudly as I watched her perform. The whole gorgeous force of her personality came out as she led the band. Then the football players came on, and I laughed as hulking huge young men turned around anxiously to check the bleachers for parents and teachers.

 

One of my fellow-teachers explained everything to me as the game proceeded. At first I was shocked by the violence. One gets over it quickly, though, and pretty soon I was cheering, “get him!” along with everyone else.

There are some kinds of violence one never gets used to, though. I was walking past the administration building this morning, ahead of me one of the security officers, and noticed a young man grabbing at a young woman. I waited for the security guard to say something, but he walked straight past. By now the man had the young lady in a headlock, her neck against his elbow, and she was trying to smile while he laughed. “Let go of her now,” I told him as I passed, and he loosened his grip. The security guard looked back and said, “chill out,” to him. Then he held the door open for me. As I went into the office, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the man had the girl up against the wall by the throat and was laughing. I glanced up at the security guard waiting for me to enter, opened my mouth, and closed it. So I didn’t say anything. Now I’m chewing over my words. It seemed to me at the time that the security guard knows better—that he knew it wouldn’t help to say anything. But now I wonder if he’s just desensitized—if the sight of a young man playing around by pretending to physically harm his girlfriend doesn’t even faze him anymore. Because it still brings the bile into my throat when I think of it. Next time, I’m sticking around until the brutish horseplay stops.

I survived Yom Kippur— what to others is a religious experience is for me always simply a 25 hour period concentrating on not fainting. But I’ve gotten really good at it over the years, and know exactly which books to read and when to give up on davening and lie prone. After Yom Kippur, the Rabbi’s house developed an impromptu kumzitz. It was a perfectly lovely start to the year to sit there listening to the Israeli chazzan play piano while his son trebled high and all the guys brought in for the weekend sang.

All that I am, I will not deny! Yes, sometimes I
shout that to the skies when I'm walking alone.

Today I spent entirely in lesson planning and grading. I literally did have a stack as high as my knee that I have waded through in one day. I have cool stuff for this week—we’re putting Joan of Arc on trial, using historical documents to figure out what motivated the Crusaders, and comparing the Black Plague to AIDS. As I zoomed through the video on the Black Death I want to show, I began to get nauseous. Realizing that I’m going to have to sit through it three more times has me slightly queasy. Can’t wait until we move on to the Renaissance!  

P.S. You’ll have noticed I succumbed to the Eurocentric viewpoint. I’m too baby to shake things up—just getting my lesson plans out on time and all my stuff graded is keeping me highly occupied! Most of the paradigm-shaking I do happens impromptu. But I do always seek out the minorities perspective within the European oh that sounds too much like a whinging excuse. Anyhow, I’m slowly figuring out this teaching gig, and once I’m on firmer ground and gone through the curriculum once, I’ll be able to maneuver it better into the kind of political learning I want to engage in. This week’s literacy practice: an article on feminism in high schools.

IT DOESN'T GET BETTER; YOU DO

Nearly done with grading my first tests; gave them Monday.
Now-- data tracking! Until I die, possibly.

"It doesn't get better; you do."

Today my favorite 2012 TFAer finished our conversation in the parking lot, and my day at school, with those words. His reminiscences about his first year tend to align exactly with what I'm experiencing, so when he talks about the changes he's made over time I listen spellbound. We came out of a professional development in which we were meant to accomplish something on an online platform I cannot yet log into. But since it doesn't affect my students, I care how much? That's right, not a whit. If they (you know, the techie gods) want it to happen, they'll make it happen, and in their own good time.

The past two and a half weeks have been madness. Some great, some bad, mostly extraordinarily busy.

Today was a fairly good day. I showed the CNN news story of the day about 9/11 and compared it to Roman citizens' emotions in the fall of Rome. I got my second block back into good working order after a chaotic day yesterday. I found five sheets of paper someone left in the copier and did a little victory dance in the library. I killed a bug in the middle of class and without a hitch went straight into how in medieval times there would have been a lot more bugs around so smoothly the class didn't even realize I'd swiveled us back on track until they were already comparing the lord-knight-serf paradigm to principles-security guards-teachers in a school I taught my third block about how the brain is malleable and intelligence something they can work at during our literary period. They had fantastic questions and comments on it, and as someone was observing me I swelled with pride in my brilliant students.

After my students leave...

Later I found out the woman standing at the edge of the classroom wasn't observing me. She came over in break and told me she's an ESL teacher added to co-teach that block. I nearly jumped with joy, though I'm very confused about why the one block where students already help each other and are so well-behaved I can spend time with a single student while everyone continues working, gets an ESL teacher and other blocks don't. While the students did their gallery walk on medieval lives, she helped my SIOP students with the picture-matching worksheet I'd made for them. Then the kiddos made storybooks about the lives of the medieval characters, exhibiting impressive artistic skills and writing up what millers, traders, serfs, lords and knights do in a day. I love seeing the students who understand not a word of English bent over their work intently-- some of them work harder than anyone else in the class. I can't wait to hear her advice and strategies. As we were talking about growth in the brain, I had students talking about language acquisition and words that American ears aren't used to hearing. My Vietnamese, Spanish-speaking, and French-speaking students all volunteered and became the experts for a few minutes, and between them, myself, and the ESL teacher, I think we had about eight languages in the room. Pretty darn cool.

I lost it in my last block. A student used an utterly offensive word as he was reading a note aloud. After I sent him out with a reflection, I asked-- with my voice edged with the cold deep depths of don't-you-dare-go-there-- whether they knew how many of their teachers identify with the group indicated by the word he had uttered. They looked at me, and began to raise their hands, but I didn't want a list. "How many teachers do you unwittingly offend when you say that? How many people do you insult without thinking about it every single day?" The kids listened with more intentness than they have yet mustered for all the glories of Spartan war or Viking raid. "Ms. W. maaaad," one said to me after I released the class into work, and even in my fury I found that I can't resist the grammar-correct: "Ms. W. was very mad," I responded. "Did you find the answer to why traders are integral parts of the manorial economic system yet?"

Cutest student response yet: C.E. stands for "common error." It's a common error. That and a kid asking, "if we bomb Syria, won't they bomb us?" and everyone in the class staring at me in horror.

It's so true. Why is it so true?

In my first block, as I was answering questions for a group, one of the students asked, "why are you always so happy?" (He totally meant that since he and his friend had been causing disruption the moment before, I ought to be upset). "I like teaching," I answered, and as I walked away, I heard him whisper, "gooood answer. I liked that answer." Me too, student dearest.

The district has moved the week's football game to Thursday out of respect for a religion holiday. At first I saw the email and wondered what holiday falls in September on a Friday. Then it came over me and I jumped with joy because I'll get to go to a game. I may be the only Yom Kippur-observant Jew at my school, but now I get to root for the senior football players from my homeroom (one "tagged" me and I had to wear an oversize football jersey that came to my knees for a whole day) and cheer as my student who's in the band and keeps asking me when I'm coming to watch, shows off her baton-twirling skills. Also, I realized that it's going to be the first football game I've ever seen in my entire life. So psyched!

G'mar chatimah tovah!

Pretty much right on.