On the Front Line with Wine

Final Post- Redirecting

2010-09-01T07:00:00.021-04:00

Greetings Everyone!

I hope your summer has been a restful and relaxing one.

I've begun a new blog this fall. If you liked the stuff written on On the Front Line with Wine, take a look at TryingTeaching.com. I plan to write about education more holistically, but I'll still be tossing out whatever pointers I can give for the new teachers.

Good luck to those of you going back into the classroom this fall. Thanks to everyone who read and commented on On the Front Line with Wine. It was greatly appreciated.

Take Care Until September

2010-07-09T22:35:00.001-04:00

Dear Readers,

After completing my second year in the classroom with some level of success I've decided to take, at least in part, my own advice from my most recent post- Get Your Head Out of It. At the behest of many of the people close to me and for my own good I will be taking the summer off from blog writing in order to best prepare for the coming school year and in order to fulfill a number of other commitments between now and September. I've also been told by several of the people closest to me that I need to take at least a small break over the summer to prevent burnout next school year. As I've not been through as many years in the classroom as they have and as I tend to heap as much as possible onto my plate (oftentimes too much), I'm going to listen to them.

On the Front Line with Wine was a pleasure to write, but was intended to be written through the lens of a second-year teacher. As I no longer am a second-year teacher I feel it would not be consistent with the spirit of the blog if I were to keep writing it. The time off this summer will help me in transitioning into my third year, which brings with it many added responsibilities in and out of the classroom. Taking some time off will also give me the opportunity to develop a new theme and focus for the writing I'd like to do next year and in the years to come. My new blog will be up an running by the time school begins in the fall- just after Labor Day. I truly hope that if you follow this blog or even tune in occasionally that you'll visit the new site once it's operational.

I'd like to sincerely thank everyone whose supported this effort over the past ten months. In that time this blog has seen thousands of hits and a lot of great feedback. If you could, leave some feedback on this post as to what you liked about this blog and/or what you'd like to see on the one that will be created for September. When the site is up and running I'll post to On the Front Line with Wine to let anyone who happens by know what the new link is.

For the First Years (Now Second Years):
Rest and recuperate this summer. Go into next year with a new battle strategy and playbook, and buckle down from the first minute. It will be better in the second year- and astoundingly so.

Take Care,

Nick James

Today's Wine: Louis Perdrier Brut Excellence. This was under ten dollars, uncomplicated and delicious. How could I have chosen anything but champagne for this post? Cheers!

Get Your Head Out of It

2010-07-07T10:06:00.000-04:00

Around this time of year a lot of people tend to think that teachers have the sweetest job around. Three months off? Who wouldn't want that job?! Sadly for them, it's not that simple. First of all, it's not three months, but two months. Secondly, while some teachers do use most of the time for leisure, most are working at least part time during the summer, either taking on a part-time job, working on their own professional development as a teacher, debriefing the year and planning for the following year or a combination of all these things.

As the past week has been the first week of the summer, most teachers have hardly detached themselves from the classroom yet. This is probably especially true for the first-year teachers. Last year during the first two weeks of summer I simply had to recover. By the last day of school it's as if a freight train knocked you down, a stampede of bison ran right over you and then some jerk burned you on your forehead with a cigarette. You have little clue as to what happened and your head is spinning so hard that you're nauseous. Personally, I was in a horrible state of disrepair having not exercised in months, lacking sleep and having pushed myself to the breaking point time and again throughout the year. It was the first time in my life where I agreed that a long break was the best thing I could do in order to improve myself and support my career.

If you're a first year, you should take the next couple weeks off entirely. Go on vacation with what little money you may have saved or simply sleep in every day. Do what you need to in order to get out of the school mindset. This is important for a variety of reasons, but a short list is: it will help prevent burnout; you probably need to recover some of your previous health; and, in order to improve as much as possible next year you need to approach it with a clear head, willing to change things in your classroom. The latter is especially important if you intend to teach next year and thereafter.

After you've had that time off, we can talk about what needs to be done this summer (from a post-second year's perspective) in order to make next year a good one.

Today's Wine: 2008 Marotti Campi Luzano. This is an Italian white made from Verdicchio grapes. It's floral up front, smooth and citric on the palate. It was another of the case assembled by the New York Wine Club.

End of Days

2010-06-28T07:51:00.000-04:00

Today marks the end of the 2009-2010 school year in New York City. In school this year and last year I felt my last days were pretty anti-climactic, if not surreal. The feeling is due in part to the fact that we've already had our 8th Grade Promotion Ceremony (Graduation), the 8th Grade Formal, etc. The other is that I don't feel like I've finished teaching- as if there is much, much more I could possibly tell my students about U.S. History that I simply did not get to.

Last year this feeling was especially bad. In the waning minutes of the last period of the day, I kicked into high gear, making everyone's head spin in the classroom, nearly panicked that I wouldn't get another few semester's worth of material into the last five minutes of dialogue I'd have with the students. Alas, all of that information was not passed on, though to be honest not a whole lot was during regular class periods over the course of my first year. Luckily that was not the case this year, as my students were far more knowledgeable about social studies when they left me on the final day of instruction.

If this was your first year in the classroom and you're still breathing, congratulations. A ton of people walk out in the first days or weeks of school, never to be seen again. Still others wait a few months, stubborn (though not enough), quitting sometime around mid-year, perhaps making up an excuse about an emergency they need to attend to across the country, such as the invasion of their town by martians. And then there are those like you who have stuck through what most veterans say will be the most difficult year of your entire life.

Well done, indeed.

Today's Wine: Any kind of champagne.

The Irritable End

2010-06-22T17:21:00.000-04:00

If you've read any of this blog, you probably could predict that the end of my first year was anything but pretty. I dragged myself across the finish line after having limped for a considerable amount of time due to what I thought was irreparable damage done by the first year in the classroom. I was way off the deep end waiting for rest and a break from everything that was my first year of teaching. To say the least I was jaded and I was irritable with everyone and everything around me.

The obvious feeling I had was being sick of my students. Had my School of Ed Self read this past sentence, I'm sure he would have reeled in the disbelief of those who ever spoke ill of students, but there it is. For ten months they'd ground into me, pushed me every second of every day, and oftentimes succeeded in pushing me over the edge to where I was a screaming, unbalanced mess. The last thing I wanted to do was extend my time with them and I was certainly looking forward to a break wherein I could forget all about the exhausting effort I'd expended every day for what was approaching 300 days nearly without respite. Even with the few I'd enjoyed teaching and depended on to help keep the class in some semblance of order, I had no desire to interact with them. I was irritable and wanted nothing to do with any of them.

It's certain that my students held similar sentiments. They'd seen me for nearly a year, standing at the front of the class demanding attention, not getting it, then demanding more still. They were tired of their first-year teacher, someone who lacked the ability to command a group of thirty students in the setting they lived and went to school in. While they were unaware of the fact that it was my first year, they knew I was not familiar with what they were used to and that I did not yet belong in that setting. Their sentiments came out in their frustration with my inability to deliver instruction in a way they most needed and they were tired of me trying the only methods I had up my short sleeves. They were as sick of me as I was of them.

Lastly, I was incredibly tired of meeting with, talking to, and generally working with other teachers in my school. Even the ones that had supported me all year began to get to me with their very well-intentioned and sincere advice as to how I should close out the year. At this point I was tired of dealing with anyone and willing to just wait it out until the end of the year- a state I'd never resigned myself to with any other undertaking throughout my life.

And so it was with my first year. It was unlike anything else I'd ever been through and unlike anything I'll probably ever go through again (hopefully). My colleagues and I speak often of how the one thing we wouldn't wish upon anyone is teaching the first year in the city. It's absurd, monstrously difficult and if you simply survive the year without running for the hills it's highly likely that your efforts were laudable. Near the end you may very well be irritable with everyone and everyone may be (or at the very least seem to be) irritable with you.

If you're in you first year and still in your classroom teaching, I applaud you. Much like a soldier on the front line, no one- regardless of their experience with K-12 education- can know what you've been through unless they have done the same. Not a single other person on the planet can commiserate with you unless they've been there, much like many professions I suppose, but is very arguably (and I say this not trying to be self-aggrandizing) more difficult than the vast majority of other professions. Make it through the next several days and then we'll talk about the summer, relaxing and preparing for next year.

Today's Wine: Mark West Chardonnay 2008. My father was nice enough to pick this up for me while we were in town to visit for my brother's wedding. The bottle bills itself as "uncomplicated," which I woudl agree with. It was a pretty fruity, not at all buttery.

Post 100

2010-06-14T21:13:00.000-04:00

This is my 100th post. Over the past ten months I've averaged about ten posts per month, though in recent months it's slowed down a bit due to my desire to heap everything I possibly can onto my plate. Initially in this post I was going to try to post something magnanimous and terrific, but instead I'd like to use the opportunity as a general check-in with how I feel about this year.

As of right now, I'm thoroughly exhausted and ready for some rest and perhaps six hours of sleep for more than two days in a row. The year is winding down and I'm trying to grade large exit projects and the last round of classwork assignments, help administer exams, grade my students' state exams, break down my classroom, get in final paperwork, finish writing an action research piece, set up summer PD opportunities, yadda yadda yadda.

In spite of the fatigue and a To-Do List that seems unnecessarily daunting, I'm looking back at this year feeling like my students and I have accomplished something. I did not feel at all this way last year, but instead was thoroughly smashed into the ground and at this point in the year was waiting for the ref to blow the whistle and end the tragic comedy that was my first year in the classroom. While the second year certainly wasn't perfect, it was a far cry from the first year and was what all of the veterans last year told me it would be.

Today was my last day of classroom instruction for the year. While this thing isn't finished yet, I'm in a much better place than last year and I expect many other second year teachers feel the same way.

Today's Wine: At this point any wine would put me to sleep immediately, so I'm substituting a black eye from Starbucks (a tall cup of coffee with a double-shot of espresso added) for my wine today. Cheers!

The 8th Grade Prom

2010-06-09T21:50:00.000-04:00

This past Friday was the 8th Grade Formal/Prom. We referred to it as the “formal” this year at our school because we are trying to move away from the idea that the eighth grade is any kind of stopping point in our students’ education. Eighth grade graduation is a very big deal in NYC because many students and their families readily assume they will hit no other major milestone in the wide world of education. Sadly, many of them are correct, but that does not excuse a community mentality that eighth grade is any kind of stopping point and should be celebrated as such. The group of students I began my career with last year was plagued by this general disposition, in part because there were more low-functioning, over-aged students. This year the contrast in students made me think I was a middle school teacher again, as I’d felt while student teaching in a middle school outside of NYC.

The formal this year went off far better than last year. Our science teacher led the planning effort again and based on what we did last year knew how to pull the thing down efficiently and cost effectively. Last year we spent endless hours building plastic columns and arches from a kit that cost over a grand, logging over twenty man-hours apiece in the couple of days leading up to the dance with a large group of students just to get the thing ready (during which I got some sweet second degree burns when operating a very tricky hot-glue gun while sleep-deprived). While it looked impressive and the students really appreciated the whole thing, it was clear once it was over that things would have to change for this year.

After the dance started, the difference between the two groups of students was blindingly apparent and continued to be throughout the night. A few things contributed to this rebirth of a traditional junior high dance at our school. When I say “traditional junior high dance,” I guess I’m referring mostly to the way the students were dancing and interacting with one another. Last year our eighth graders were bumping and grinding like they were eighteen or older, practically making babies on the dance floor. I spent the better part of three hours prying students apart, our large intimidating math teacher (the only one who could have really prevented it) just watching and laughing the entire time as she had done most of the year when I’d tried to put my foot down. Personally, I thought the dancing was atrocious and unacceptable, but she was on her way out and couldn’t care less. The dance this year was a far cry from the writhing mess of last year- the students danced in circles most of the time and separated themselves naturally into groups of girls and boys, awkwardly approaching one another during songs that warranted it. We spoke to a couple students near the end who started to get a bit more ambitious, but even the couple of high schoolers who came as dates were very respectful and appropriate the whole time.

Our eighth graders this year are about six months younger on average than the group we had last year. While that might not sound a like a lot, the difference between a fourteen year-old and fifteen year-old in the South Bronx (and really anywhere) is incredible, especially if the student is of the type that has been held back. This year we also did a far better job of holding students more accountable for academics and behavior as we approached the end of the year, which kept most of the knuckle-heads on the “do not admit” list - students who would have caused the most trouble, danced in the most inappropriate manner, etc.

Another factor, something that was not at all present last year, was that two of the biggest male personalities at the dance were not very interested in grinding on all of the girls in spite of the fact that the girls outnumbered the boys two to one. While they haven’t openly declared it (and probably won’t as long as they live or go to school in one of the most homophobic neighborhoods in the United States), our entire team is all but certain that the young men are probably gay. While that certainly doesn’t mean they wouldn’t bump and grind, the more boisterous of the two (and also the most boisterous at the dance in general) led the effort to keep the energy level high, marching around the dance floor like a party planner, demanding the other students join him in jumping and screaming, taking pictures like nobody’s business and inadvertently breaking up most love-connections and couples who might otherwise “lose” themselves in each other’s starry-eyed gaze on the dance floor/grind and make babies. In fact, most of the evening it looked more likely that a mosh pit would evolve than any babies be made.

When we sent them home (an hour earlier than last year- another brilliant move) the whole team agreed that it had gone off without a hitch and that it was the most pleasant dance we’d ever witnessed in the school’s history. The students and the staff had equally great times and it was a fantastic way to wrap up the year. It also sent (and will continue to send as the students talk about it next week) the message to those students who did not do their jobs this year that they can in fact miss out on great things because of their actions, even if being promoted to the next grade is not one of those things.

Today’s Wine: Martha Clara North Fork Cabernet Sauvignon 2007. The description says a lot of things and I only remember t being peppery. At any rate, this one was picked up at the Martha Clara Vineyards out on Long Island- part of a another wine tour we did this past weekend. We'd been to this vineyard before, which started to put some perspective on the size of the wine region on Long Island.

I Want an IEP!

2010-06-05T07:35:00.000-04:00

The past few weeks have been crunch time in the eighth grade at our school. While major projects have been assigned and unseen levels of students engagement have occurred, I can't help but to think that the work being done by our students has nothing to do with the desire to learn or to succeed academically, so much as the promise that if they do very well this marking period they will avoid summer school. There are a lot of tricks and loopholes that are being implemented for a lot of reasons, all of which get our students off the eighth grade rosters and onto the high school rosters. I explained some of this in my post NYC's Grand Grading Plan. Here is a bit more about the promotion process:

About two months ago a member of our administration gathered all of our failing students together and distributed what have been referred to as their "magic numbers" (without informing the teachers). These are the grades they must achieve in each class that will get them to pass for the entire year. For some, it is a 75% simply because they need to pass the semester with a high enough average. For those who failed the first three quarters of the year in a class, they were told that if they get a 95% in a class they'll be passed.

When I heard this I was indignant. You're going to tell my students that if they get an A for ONE quarter of the year then they passed my entire class?! Is that what you think of the work I do with these kids? AND you're not going to tell me about this conversation before having it with students? I suppose it's not that severe. The goal really was to give them a glimmer of hope and motivate them to do something this marking period. A friend of mine also pointed out that if they did not pass my class for the first three marking periods, the chances of them getting a 95% (currently one person in the entire grade is pulling that off) are essentially nil. Regardless, it was pretty special to know this is one of the "easy" ways to avoid summer school, though the strategy wasn't as bothersome and irritating as what some of our students wanted to do last year.

Around this time last year my students caught wind of an entirely different way to be promoted: an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). These are designed to give students with learning disabilities extra support as they navigate their way through the public education system. Their intent is outstanding: give every single student the support they need to succeed. The actual implementation? Most frequently we see some of the intended use of the IEP, but also the slapping of IEP's on behavior problems so those kids have excuses to fail academically. Now, our learning specialist is entirely against the latter. Not only does she understand what these tools are for, but she works to help each child grow so they one day do not need the IEP. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons (including job security and a desire to procure funding), the actual de-certification part doesn't always happen.

Anyway, one of the common provisions on an IEP is "modified promotional criteria." In layman's terms that means students will be passed to the next grade if they meet alternate, specified requirements. Unfortunately this is oftentimes abused to get students to the next grade who are floundering because of behavior issues- those who won't sit in their seat and do the work and are failing because of it. "Modified criteria" becomes synonymous with "is breathing" and the student is passed along no matter what they do. When this happens, most of them anticipate it, which helps their motivation to bottom out completely.

Well, several of our students caught wind of this last year and because of it and the DOE promising like mad that there would be a crack-down on eighth grade promotion (which did not happen), the panicked cry of, "I want an IEP!" could be heard in every year-end meeting we had with the students who were failing. Students were practically crying because they realized it was their last hope of avoiding summer school and perhaps being held back (again, for most of them- more than half of our grade was over-aged last year). Unfortunately for them, an IEP can't just be dreamt up and spit out onto a Word document in an afternoon, it takes a lot of planning and legal documentation (luckily, in this case). That was a relief, though, and while it may not sound professional to say so, it certainly felt like I'd finally seen some vindication for the students who had destroyed the educational process in my classroom every single day last year.

Social promotion is a beast of an issue- one I do not support, but I am also not the one charged with making the final decision on promotion. It's also easy for me to be against it, as I know that my students are going to be passed along and out of my hair regardless of what I believe. The immediacy of whether or not my students are going to graduate high school and/or find a decent job is not what it is in the grades that follow mine. I can still hope that if they're slipping up they can turn things around once they get to the ninth grade. In spite of whether I'm held accountable for their skills or not, it's tough watching them walk on by at the end of the year knowing that I said specifically that they were not prepared to go to the next grade and that the system is essentially set up to send them there regardless.

Today's Wine: Louise d'Estree Brut Sparkling Wine.
Because my school computer crashed and died, our two home computers are on their last legs respectively and because I've wrestled and complained about Windows operating systems for years, we bought an iMac this past weekend. The champagne is to celebrate!

We Failed.

2010-05-31T09:41:00.000-04:00

Today in our Learning Specialist's office one of my students stared a computer trying to make sense of a massive project he is to complete by the end of the school year. Our English teacher and I have combined forces to create the 8th Grade Exit Project, which is supposed to be mandated by the state but isn't actually. Regardless, it's worth 35% of our students' English AND Social Studies grades, which means if they do not do well on it many of them will be sent to summer school.

This young man in particular has been having a rough time with school lately. He's a low-level reader and has scraped by this year because he's worked pretty hard. His home life is less than stellar and his mother is, to be frank, pretty worthless (she came to parent conferences and laughed at the teachers when they said her son's 65's across the board were not good enough- he was passing after all). The student is generally not a behavior problem, but when he slips up there is no support at all whatsoever at home. To say the least, that puts much more pressure on the school to make sure he checks his behavior.

Now, this Exit Project is turning out to be different than much of the rest of this year's work. It appears as though it's a legitimate Exit Project, which means if the students lack the skills to complete it they could fail regardless of how hard they work. This was the wall this young man ran up against today. It became blindingly apparent to him how much he was lacking in academic skills- perhaps never so clear as in that moment.

Our learning specialist spoke to me about it afterward. She was startled as she explained that he simply did not understand what needed to be done with this project. It's always harsh to say that a students simply cannot get something, but this young man has a very real problem with knowledge retention. Throw as much of it at him as you want and it's going to pour out as if through a colander. For this reason our learning specialist pulled him out of the general education classroom and was working with him one on one during this project. It's important to note that this young man is not classified as special ed- mostly because his mother doesn't want him to be classified as such- but probably should be.

In spite of all of her best efforts (which are as a rule very effective with our students), this young man simply did not get what was supposed to happen with the project. When she brought this problem to me my response was such that it was obvious I was aware of this problem, which pushed the discussion further.

If I knew that he performed at such a low level, why hadn't more been done over the course of the year? Our team has a scheduled meeting every Friday devoted to addressing students who need extra support, and this student came up only once in that meeting this year. Granted, we have a whole ton of students who need extra support, but the tendency in those meetings is to talk about the biggest jerks and behavior problems running around the eighth grade instead of those who actually behave, do their jobs and need extra support.

There are several reasons the focus of this meeting can be misguided. First, all of the teachers have an incredible desire to address the behavior problems because if those students are controlled the whole class will run much more smoothly and all of the students will learn more. That desire is not misguided. A common perception, however, is that these students can be easily reformed and when that happens the lower-achieving, moderately well-behaved students being left behind will then receive the support they need. There also seems to be the assumption that the students acting out are doing so because they do not understand the material or do not have the skills to complete it. Because of the latter we talk about the miscreant students during this planned meeting instead of students like the one that is the subject of this post. Therein lies the real problem.

In my short experience, if a student acts out in an extreme way on a very regular basis it is not because he or she lacks the necessary skills. Surely that can add to it, but these students have major issues that are outside of the academics and from what I can tell outside of the ability of regular classroom teachers to address in the two minutes of individual time we have per student on average per day (in the upper grades).

Now, I'm not saying that we should leave the students with behavior problems behind, but the fact that this young man sat in my Learning Specialist's office on the verge of tears because he realized how low-functioning he is and the fact that all of the jerks and knuckle-heads got so much more of our attention this year than him is a damned crime. We failed him. Perhaps the cards and system were stacked up against him, but we're the ones that made the decision to let him go without the large amount of extra support he needed (regardless of whether his mother would allow it to be mandated or not) and instead concentrated on other students who need support we actually cannot give them, but that we are expected to.

But at least his mother's happy, right?

Last year I felt like I failed every student who needed extra help because I spent nearly all of my energy in and outside of the classroom dealing with behavior that should have gotten students removed from my classroom altogether, but did not. By this time last year I was so affected by it I didn't know what to think about my job any more. It seemed like I was the cause of students being left behind and learning next to nothing. I could draw no other conclusions than that my students had just gone through an entire year of their education and because of me (and the fact that they had three bad English teachers in one year), their literacy flat-lined or regressed and they left my class no better than when they entered it.

There's not a lot to say to a new teacher who feels that way. Unfortunately the expectations handed to them and the lack of support given to them leads many to a situation similar to this one. We go into this profession to work hard and to make a difference and the first year is slams you down and at best feels like a wash. All you can do sometimes is move forward with the faith that what people tell you-that the second year is far better- is true. While my team of four and I seems to have failed this student this year, the work we've done this year (two of us are in our second year) is a far cry from the work we did last year. Hopefully next year we'll avoid letting students like this one fall through the cracks by being better organized and focused and by giving those who will benefit from it most of everything we can.

Today's Wine: Charles Shaw Cabernet- I haven't had this in months and its return to the rotation is not without notice. I still think it's solid for what you pay, though of course nothing to write home about necessarily.

Hiring Season

2010-05-25T21:35:00.001-04:00

According to the New York Times, New York City is experiencing quite a run on teaching positions . They cite things like "3,620 applications for eight positions" and other large, frightening numbers. How in the world can someone coming out of a school of ed compete with that many new and veteran teachers? I might not know everything, especially since I'm not a principal, but here's what I've got in terms of advice.

General Tips

Resume
This should be one of the neatest-looking, concise, and descriptive documents you have ever created. It should make you sound as amazing as possible without sounding boastful, and it needs to be honest. While somewhere between a tenth and a third of people lie on their resumes, don't be one of them. Have several people read through your resume before handing it out to potential employers. If possible, find a current principal you won't be interviewing with or a former principal to check it out.

Pound the Pavement
I was told to fax my resume to the principals I wanted to interview with. That was a terrible idea. I spent $40 on faxes and never heard from a single one of them. Faxing might not have been the problem, but if you do call to follow up and perhaps send a copy via email. I'm always surprised to hear how defeated people are when they're not called back once they've submitted a resume or application (whether it's for a teaching job or a job at Target). Make it known that you really want the job and that you want to know your status with the school. Also don't assume that you're such a rock star that they'll be dying to call you back the second someone in the school even glimpses your resume. I may have been guilty of that, at least in part.

Mock Interviews
If you have access to a current or former administrator, for the love of pete use their expertise. Ask them to conduct a mock interview with you so you get used to answering the type of questions you will be asked. This might help to solidify or even get you started thinking about many of the things you will be asked to do as a teacher that they did not teach you in the school of ed. You may become more comfortable with the high-pressure situations as well.

Approaching the Interview
Show up to your interview early, polished, shaven (guys), well/appropriately dressed with plenty of resumes in hand. You should have learned everything possible about the school at which you are interviewing. While not necessarily the custom in the wide world of education, it's extremely important to show the principal or hiring team that you are interested in their school, not just a school. If you showed up to a decent job interview in the private sector and knew nothing about the company you were interviewing for, your chances of getting the position would bottom out. You need to be able to explain why you want to work at that school.

Be a Professional
In order to get the job you want you will need to have left college behind. Unlike professions like medicine and law you do not have the luxury of spending three to four more years after undergrad getting the partying out of your system, expanding your professional wardrobe and simply growing up into your mid-twenties. It is time to be an adult. Period. Without question. If your potential employer catches a whiff of your late Friday and Saturday night keg-stands or the fact that you have a tough time rolling our of bed at 9AM, the guy standing behind you with two years experience under his belt is going to get the position.

Connections
As much as we tell our students that hard work, ambition, and intelligence will get you places, we all know that is only true in part. In education it can be more about who you know than in the professions to which we generally attribute the phrase. If you did not make any "connections" while in the school of ed and you are now looking for a job, it's a bit late in the game but it is of course never too late to start. While my principal gave the go ahead on my hiring, it took my connections with my academic adviser as well as someone at the central office for the NYC Department of Education to even get my foot in the door for the interview I had at my school specifically.

Aces in Your Sleeve
You're young, you're ambitious, you're probably in your early twenties and perhaps determined to save the entire planet in one fell swoop. That eagerness and drive will work to your advantage. If you're a traditional ed student right now, you probably grew up immersed in technology and while you may not know how to implement it in the classroom, you should feel more comfortable with the very idea of it. While you don't want to exaggerate your abilities to work with them, let them know you are very interested in exploring the use of new technologies in the classroom. It's still a major advantage over many veteran teachers. I talked all about podcasting and blogging in the classroom at my interviews, though I'd just begun to figure out how to use those things in any way academic.

What You Do Not Have on Your Side
Experience. I tried to play up my subbing and year-long student teaching, but the reality is that I had no experience with the kind of work I'd be doing once I was hired. Don't act like you have no idea what's going on, but make it known that you are aware you are new to the field and that you are very eager to learn the ropes, follow the school leadership and grow into your position.

Your Administration
Based on my own experience and the experiences of my colleagues who have taught at numerous schools, if there is one factor you need to consider most when you are looking for a job it is your principal. During your first year especially, this is your commander-in-chief. As your life is consumed and thrashed about in that first year your principals' policies and ability to run the school and lead the staff will in many ways determine if you make it through year one ready for another helping, or not. If you do not agree with the philosophy of principals with whom you are interviewing, if you get a really bad feeling from them, or if you can tell that you simply won't work well on their staff, don't. I went through an interview last year where I liked the rest of the staff, but in my one brief encounter with the principal he was very cold, never introduced himself or asked who I was and told me I should consider working out of my certification area teaching something I knew nothing about. I'll never know, of course, but I hardly think that would have been a better working environment than the one I have now.

The Bottom Line
You need a job. That's clear. It's going to be really tough in the next couple of years as education funding is cut and as the people who would normally quit the field stay only because the economy is not producing jobs in other sectors. Chin up. Do everything you can every day this hiring season to get a job, ask for help, listen to people you know who are in the field already and don't give up.

Today's Wine: El Supremo Cabernet Sauvignon 2008. This was under $10, a bit spicy, not fruity and very drinkable.

Lapse to Year One

2010-05-19T17:10:00.000-04:00

Last week I had kind of an episode. Being sick certainly contributed to the mistakes I made, but it has to be admitted that I lapsed, made a couple big mistakes and was only able to save face in my classroom because at this point in the year most of us (students and staff included) have solidified our personas in the classroom.

On Tuesday I was off grading exams, which was lucky, as I felt ill enough that I was considering canceling my last-period elective and going home early. Wednesday wasn't much better and I planned something that took longer than the minutes I had in class, so I sent the classwork home to be completed. That's usually a bad idea for two reasons: half the students won't turn it in and it starts to set a precedent that the work cannot be completed in class, which in turn leads students to simply not work in class (their excuse being that they'll finish it at home, even though, as just stated, most probably won't). That was not a good way to precede my plans for the following day, to say the least.

Thursday I walked in with a lesson that could have been pulled off if the management had been clamped down, students worked quickly and if the teacher had pushed them. I've had a good number of days like this over the course of the year (compared with maybe one last year), so I strolled into school Thursday thinking I'd pump out another one without a lot of effort and while ill. Then I completely disregarded a truth I'd learned both in the School of Ed and in the classroom last year: do NOT let students pick their groups if you want them to work efficiently or diligently. As much as teachers should be able to give students directions and expect them to be followed, giving them to the option to have a social hour with friends or completing class work has only led to one end in my classroom: a lot of loud conversations and little work, if any.

That's how brilliantly I set myself up for Thursday. While my other periods either ran themselves or were barely held together by some newly-forged alliances with students that used to give me trouble, I should have known going into sixth period (the one with the largest number of crazy maniacs) that there would be trouble. It ended in a whole lot of yelling on my part and eventually my students doing something they did all the time last year, but only once or twice this year: they stopped working entirely and stared at me. This is one of the most humiliating, humbling, and excruciating things a first year teacher goes through. It's a loss of control and students determining the pace of the class- their deciding they are going to stop working and following directions until you doing something besides yelling and cajoling them to comply with your call for order. My class even topped it off one of the things that made my stomach bottom-out last year: they laughed, nearly every one of them, at my frustration with them.

The problem achieved crystal clarity when one girl said out loud, "You let us pick the groups. What did you expect?", which was a demonstration of how the students have a way of being brutally honest in the midst of their defiance. When I heard that I agreed with it in my head, reprimanded the girl for speaking out of turn, stated that there was absolutely no excuse for the class to act the way it was and then I cranked up the pace of instruction, hoping to get the class back to moving at my pace. By the end of the period I'd convinced them to stay five minutes after the bell and assigned them a good deal more work than my other classes. I was so angry at the end of the period (and sick to boot) that when my last-period elective walked in I gave them their assignment and set them to it immediately while I fumed a bit about the previous period.

It all spoke again to the fact that there are still moments like this in the second year. While not nearly as affected by them now, they come out when I'm off my game for whatever reason. All you can do is not let it affect you, follow through with your disciplinary measures (I called about half the class to inform their parents of the students' unruly nature) and walk in better-prepared the following day. Next year I hope there will be even fewer days like this. The nice thing about this May is that I can imagine it happening, whereas last year I still couldn't believe that the second year could improve enough to make me like my job.

Today's Wine: '07 Rosso Di Sicilia- Colosi, Sicily: or so the menu said. This was another at our favorite wine bar, Cavatappo. Medium bodied, a bit smokey and phenomenal. Nero d'Avola does it to me every time.

The Rusty System & Moving Boxes

2010-05-15T23:40:00.000-04:00

In light of the recent move toward using student test scores to evaluate teachers, I'd like to comment on an experience I had on Tuesday at a grading site where very hard-working teachers had been pulled out of their classrooms to evaluate the tests our students completed two weeks ago (the eighth grade ELA exam). To be honest, I agree with the idea that students test scores should be part of how teachers are evaluated, but in order for that to be helpful the way we grade these exams needs to be updated, reevaluated and improved.

On Tuesday I was sent out of my school to grade the state ELA exams. When I showed up the woman running the grading site was incredibly confused that I could possibly be there instead of the teacher that had come from our school the day before. To her credit, schools are supposed to send only one teacher for the three days of grading, as the first day is spent training those teachers how to to score the exams on the second two.

After the initial shock wore off, the woman decided to find a job for me that was not grading, as it would have been entirely impossible for me to just read the instruction manual and then grade some exams (although that is what the training consists of). After pointing out that I was the youngest person there by about ten years and therefore must be far more tech-literate than anyone else, she proceeded to hand me a stack of poster papers that had been used the day before to find out what the teachers who were now grading thought the students' "strengths" were on the exam and what their "weaknesses" were. I spent three hours inputting these into a Word document that will now be emailed out to all the schools in any way associated with that grading center, after which the message will promptly be ignored by all of them.

While completing this very important task (infinitely more important than teaching my students about the integration of public school in the 1960's- what I'd actually planned to do Tuesday), I was able to sit back and observe the scoring process. The teachers grading the exams seemed really to be a motley crew. Such a variety of hair styles (spanning at least five style decades) I've not seen in the DOE, to say nothing about the skill and diligence with which they worked. To be serious, from what I can tell they seemed pretty competent and willing to get the job done as quickly, accurately, and efficiently as possible.

What most concerned me was the way these graders were spoken to by those in charge of the site. The woman in charge of the whole shebang kept making announcements like, "We want to be fair. We want to make sure our students get the best chance possible." These were of course given after muffled conversations about how poorly the students seemed to be doing. I couldn't help but give her sideways glances over the top of the laptop. Was she serious? The "chance" she was referring to was supposed to be the instruction the students had already received, not how liberally those grading tests could bend the scoring rubric. Several announcements like this were made, and the administrators of the site had numerous hushed conversations about specific scorers that "needed to be talked to."

Dozens of boxes of scoring guides showed up around midday, apparently intended for a different site. When she called the person in charge of this delivery, she first sounded confused and then was told by the woman on the other end of the line to just give the materials to whatever school she could. Why they showed up to that testing site instead of the right one? No one knows. What happened at the site that was lacking these materials? No one seems to know. Why am I telling you? Mostly because I was the schmuck who had to arrange and rearrange boxes all afternoon in order to fit them all into a very small space in a gymnasium that was hardly full. I'm just glad I could help.

What's the moral of this story? In spite of how hard people work to defend the education system, it does need to flush out some of its workers, revamp the way it does things and start fresh some areas. One thing about this system that I've thought a lot about lately is that it does not have a market to drive change. This is because the central commodities are our children, their brains, and their growth as human beings. I do believe that this is one of the reasons teachers and other in the field are resistant to change. We are the ones who work with these children and we do not want to see policies implemented that forget about their well-being for the sake of efficiency. That said, we do need to make sure middle school teachers aren't sent to random schools in the middle of the Bronx to move boxes all day when they could be helping students to learn material deemed valuable by the greater society (during a time period leading up to a state exam that may eventually be used to judge his competency as a teacher).

Today's Wine: A glass Casa De Campo Cab pumped from the other night.

Crazy State Exams

2010-05-10T20:51:00.000-04:00

In New York there are two tests that matter in the eighth grade: ELA and Math. Our students took both of these tests over the course of the past two weeks and I was especially happy with what I saw them do with the ELA exam. Their writing skills far exceed those of last year's eighth graders and I can't help but think that our concerted effort as an eighth grade team to promote those skills was a large part of that. During the exam I was given several reminders of how valuable their successes are, as they are achieved through far more difficult circumstances than their average peer around the state and country.

During one day of testing we had a milieu of interesting distractions. I was proctoring the exams in our multi-purpose room, which is located on the ground floor of the building facing the busy street outside. Directly above that street is a train trestle (only several yards from our third floor windows) on which trains are constantly arriving and departing as part of the NYC subway system. Needless to say they are rather loud- so much in fact that I had to pause no less than seven times while reading a passage that was part of the listening comprehension section of the ELA exam. In addition to the noise of the trains, numerous buses went roaring by, as well as a few vehicles blaring sirens. At one point a "sick" woman passerby was outside of the window screaming at herself about a quarter. I couldn't tell if she was claiming someone had stolen it from her or if some kind of evil demon was a playing a trick on her that day, but it was pretty distracting. My students thought it was pretty funny, at the very least.

Inside of the building we were placed next to a classroom full of "energetic" sixth graders, divided by a movable partition. Because their test was on a slightly different schedule they had breaks while we were testing and vice-versa. This is a the class of sixth graders we have that has a large number of students who came with "mandated self-contained" on their IEPs- a classification that is generally abused to put the kids who have huge behavior problems into small, separate classrooms. Needless to say, sometimes they can be a bit noisy.

Even without all of these distractions I was surprised by how well the students did on these tests. If you'd plopped a group of soft, suburban students down in this environment I doubt they'd test half as well as they would in their regular setting. I know that at that age whenever I saw anything that even looked remotely like the block outside of our school it was incredibly unsettling. Perhaps our students would also be uneasy being plopped down in the middle of the suburbs, but I doubt it would have the same effect.

Another thing that was astounding this year, as it was last year, was the real sense of urgency the students seem to pull out of no where when the state tests come around. They know these two tests are important and that they will not be promoted to the next grade if they cannot pass them. It would be incredible to create this urgency in the majority of our students on a more regular basis, I can't help to think that it will also be incredibly difficult to do this as long as a large number of stakeholders (not just administrators or teachers) demand that students be socially promoted en masse.

What do other folks do to create this sense of urgency on a regular basis? My only half-smoking, cap guns are: reminders of the state test, vague references to high school and explanations of how I personally have used the skills I teach since high school. Hardly what I keep keep kids trucking along on the front line.

Today's Wine: Casa de Campo Cabernet Sauvignon 2007. I feel like my reviews of wine are generally very positive, which perhaps means my pallet is not yet refined enough, but it may also mean that the stores from which I buy wine know their stuff. This one was less than $7 at the Best Cellars at 86th and Lex and it was nice, a bit spicy and not too fruity. It was a solid cab.

Explicit Lyrics and Style Points

2010-05-07T00:35:00.000-04:00

Today in class I was conducting a partially-bunk lesson on Vietnam that involved the analysis of a song from that period. Going into it I had a feeling it was too much for a single period, which meant the discussion at the end of class (probably the most educational part of the lesson) would potentially devolve into me telling students what the lyrics meant rather than allowing them to think about it for themselves, all the while being irritated at myself for being dense about time management and about the students talking too much and wasting a lot of time.

All of that happened, by the way, which left them with a shallow understanding of the war in Vietnam leading into tomorrow's guest presentation by a veteran of the war, but something else also occurred during my fifth period class that was at the very least amusing, if not helpful for me as we head toward the end of the year. After listening to Country Joe and Fish's "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" and summarizing the stanzas, the students were to talk about how the music changed the meaning of the lyrics. That was fine for most of them, but one of my students located near my iPod had a much better idea about how he should spend his time.

Now, this year I've been much less paranoid about having my things stolen. I've left books out, my iPod sitting on my projector cart while I walk around the room, etc. Last year my students either destroyed or stole everything I brought in that was fragile or worth more than five bucks, so it's the huge improvement is reflected in my being able to move around my classroom without worrying about it long after the iPod has fallen silent. While I trust my students not to take all of my stuff, that doesn't mean they don't pick it up, look at it, carry it around and show it to other students. In this case the student located closest to my iPod reached over and started scrolling through the list of artists until he came to Eminem. From there he scrolled through the song titles until he found, "As* Like That," and it was all over. While kind enough not to blare it over the speakers the iPod was still attached to, a small contingent of my students started to whisper about the song, which caught my attention. What tripped them up was the fact that they never whisper in groups of more than two unless it's important or a big deal.

At first I thought they were just generally making fun of what was on the contraption, but they were hardly too shy to show me otherwise. They thought the song being on there was hilarious and said that, "I (had) a lot of explaining to do," trying to put me on the spot and waiting to see if I could think fast enough on my feet to get out of the situation. I learned too much about this last year (the hard way), which in part kept me from earning the respect of my students until near the end of the year- when I was too exhausted to be at all surprised or jarred by what my students did. This time, instead of coming off as if I'd been caught in some scandal, I just pocketed the iPod and walked off, tossing back over my should the direction to get back to work. While disappointed they didn't get a rise out of me, I could tell I'd earned points for that and more especially for having Eminem on my playlist.

Last year when I faced situations like this one I was always caught off guard. I was so paranoid about screwing up, being fired or reprimanded for doing or saying something wrong in my classroom. That was a lasting effect of hearing loads of stories of teachers being dismissed for seemingly trivial offenses (mostly in suburban schools, it seemed) while I was in the school of ed. When you get put on the spot for something like this, the students give you half a second to respond during which they'll be able to tell if you were even slightly jarred by whatever it was they discovered or heard or saw you do. Good luck getting a class back if they really want to rip into after an incident like that. That button is gigantic. In the mean time, you've got to learn to keep your mind from wandering through all of the worst-case scenarios. In short, you need to learn to react to situations like these quickly and in the appropriate way.

After school today I had the chance to sit around and chat with an esteemed colleague of mine. We talked about stakeholder accountability-something that's been on my mind lately. Within that vein what we spoke more specifically about what could be done to hold students responsible for their actions. In the setting we work in the only thing you can really hold over students is their respect for you. For the ones that give you the most trouble, if they do not respect you there is nothing you can do outside of a bribe to keep them in line. I think that idea would shock and appall my school-of-ed self, but it seems to be a reality on the front line. That version of me might also have found it shocking that I got style points for having a pretty bad Eminem song on an iPod in my classroom. I'll certainly take those point, however, as they'll help as we head toward the end of the year.

Today's Wine: Le Sciare Rocca Normanna 2008. This one was great and under ten bucks; medium-bodied, a bit fruity but also with a slight smokiness. I'd pick it up again.

Diet Pills and Overworked Teachers

2010-05-03T19:04:00.001-04:00

A recent article in the New York Times covered the “invisible” burden of family doctors. People seem to oftentimes complain that doctors are paid quite a lot and in spite of that only really see them for a handful of minutes whenever they go in for a check-up. I think a common misconception is that doctors don’t work that much more than the time we see them, which is also a very common misconception of teachers.

The impression most adults have of the classroom is based on what they saw when they were going through school. Indeed teachers themselves are often guilty of falling back on their many years as a student and complaining about how teachers must have had it easier back then. Though I cannot speak to how much work was actually done by my own teachers, it was clearly more than what we saw of them in class. As with doctors, it seems as though what most people believe teachers do is simply stand in front of a class and deliver instruction and aside from that they might grade a few papers here and there, but life is easy once the students are gone.

Wrong and wrong. The article in the NY Times describes just how much family doctors are responsible for in addition to seeing 18 patients per day:

24 telephone calls
Write 12 prescriptions
Read 20 lab/14 consultative reports
Review 11 x-rays
Send 17 emails

That does seem like quite a lot- certainly more than what the average patient might expect. While I cannot say how many hours it takes to complete all of those tasks, I’m sure it’s more than the semi-mythical forty-hour American work week.

How much do teachers do behind the scenes? It might vary widely, but here are things I am responsible for outside of classroom instruction (seeing 80 “patients”, in my case) on an average day:

Send ten emails per day
4 telephone calls to parents
Writing out between four and ten detention slips
Making necessary copies for the day (in spite of using computers nearly every day, back-up copies are necessary for various reasons)
Grading 80 pieces of student work
Lesson Planning = research on the topic to be covered the following day, creating//finalizing/uploading a PowerPoint presentation and creating a new webpage for each day’s lesson (which will hopefully turn into simply updating those pages next year)/figuring out a way to differentiate instruction for students who cannot read and write and those who can better than most of the students in our high school.
One 45-minute meeting, generally centering on teacher collaboration
Sweeping of my classroom in the middle of the day after its use by another teacher
One hour of punitive duty (paperwork for detention documentation, holding detention, etc.)
Completion of at least one form necessary to support students with IEPs, to continue receiving breakfast for the students I have early in the morning, paperwork necessary for payroll, etc.
Meeting with one to five students during my lunch or after school hours to help them catch up or give them extra support

The program being set up for doctors is meant to pay them extra for improving preventative medicine within their practice. It’s meant to recognize that these doctors work an incredible amount to keep their patients healthy, but also that they will produce healthier citizens if they can ensure there are no ailments to treat. Personally, I think its a great idea and hopefully it will shift people's attention to healthy living rather than medical cures for ailments they probably brought upon themselves in one way or another.

I’m of the opinion that many of the issues in medicine mirror issues in education. Perhaps preventative medicine can be likened to solid teaching practices, as preventative medicine keeps you healthy and keeps you on track to stay that way, while sound educational practice keeps students on track to learn the skills they need be successful later in life (reading, writing, critical thinking, etc.). To take the analogy further, test-prep curricula might be likened to a diet pill. Both might get the results you want initially, but they generally cannot sustain a healthy way of doing things in the long term.

Like most of America, I have a lot of respect for the field of medicine. It’s one of the world’s oldest professions and is one in which the professionals have devoted their lives to helping others. In that way, and in many others, the field is like education. The best doctors and the best teachers work endless hours tirelessly to provide support to their fellow community members, hoping to provide them with what they need to be healthy and successful. Perhaps one day we'll figure out a way to pay teachers for their extra efforts in developing and maintaining solid teaching practices for students rather than simply looking at which teachers hand their students diet pills to tease results out of standardized tests.

Today's Wine: JP Azeitao Tinto. This one is under ten dollars and was a great deal. It was a bit fruity, but not a fruit bomb and was smooth all the way through. I give four stars out of five.

Hold on Tight!

2010-04-29T20:50:00.000-04:00

Man, I'm really just not finished yet. In less than two months my students will begin a barrage of exams that will last two weeks, taking them through to the end of the school year. Between now and then I need to figure out a way to fit in a couple gigantic projects as well as all of the 1950's, Civil Rights and Reagan's America through Obama's. In addition to all that, I still need to prepare for the behavior that will creep out of the woodwork beginning in the middle of May.

Last year at this time I'd resigned myself to the hapless fate that was my classroom. Things weren't going terribly well, but I'd squeezed out a small amount of respect from my students just for sticking around through all the chaos. That seemed to smooth out some of the rougher edges, but I was still struggling to get through every day, hardly trying to fix things anymore and really just riding things out until the end of the year. After months and months of trying new things to get the students on my side every single day, I suppose I'd given up spending so much of my energy trying to fix behaviors of kids that had been the same longer than I'd ever known them.

I'm not proud of that, but it's what I did. At the beginning of the spring semester I'd struggled so much that I grabbed another teacher's curriculum and taught it with little variation. The lessons I did plan myself never seemed to go as well because I tried to stray from the concrete, text-heavy plans to the more abstract. While the students may have been capable of such things in the right context, the wrestling match we'd had for more than half a year had established that my classroom was a place where learning rarely happened outside of worksheet-style or educational video-type work. Unfortunately the vast majority of those students didn't walk away from my class with much more knowledge of the social studies than what they'd brought in September. The only benefit that seems to have come of it was the education I brought away from it.

This spring has the potential to be far more productive than last. My students will wrap up some cross-continental collaboration instead of wrapping their hands around each others' throats. They'll write a major research paper instead of writing me off entirely. Instead of leaving my class without the vaguest idea of what has happened throughout United States history, I believe that they will walk away with a firmer grasp of history than they've ever had before.

Regardless of what happens, we're now on the downhill slope toward the end of the year and there's no stopping us. We'll pick up speed and rumble through the finish line hopefully each in control of our young charges. Hold on tight and grab the last bit of content and skill practice you can. It'll be wild.

To the First Years:
You've most likely heard it a thousand times by now- it'll get better. It probably won't get a lot of better this year, which is undoubtedly bad news, but it will be better next year, as unbelievable as that is. Hopefully you've dug yourself far enough in at this point that you can ride out the storm while delivering the best instruction you possibly can (which you've been doing the entire year) until the end of June. Best of luck.

Today's Wine: Four Graces Pinot Gris 2008. This was part of a shipment from the New York Times Wine Club, which was a birthday present of mine. I've not received wine in the mail before, but it's delightful. As for this bottle, it's fruity and I thought I tasted vanilla, but the reviews all say peach. Whatever was in there, I thought it was pretty good.

No More Fingers, Action

2010-04-26T19:04:00.000-04:00

Great job everyone.....not.

To wrap up this series of posts on stakeholders, I thought I'd do something terribly difficult to pull off- point the finger at EVERYone for allowing American education to take a nose-dive. This is something I've thought about lately when listening to various people state how fixing one or two things in the system will solve ALL of the problems. I don't hold any super-advanced degrees in ed theory or policy, nor do I have a great deal of experience, but I'm starting to suspect, based on that little experience as well as my knowledge of American history and American education, that a system as massive as our education system (which is technically more than fifty separate systems) cannot be "fixed" through a couple simple changes in policy, but will require a movement from the masses.

What I can say is that it is not just one group of stakeholders that is to blame for the woes of our education system. Sure their are terrible teachers out there. There are also abhorrent administrators, really bad parents, and young people in schools that can certainly cannot be called students. The long and the short of it is that a large number of us are falling down on the job and then pointing fingers elsewhere instead of demanding that our own ranks improve and that we ourselves do our jobs.

Sounds cynical, right? Perhaps it is. And bit wishy-washy? Sure. Regardless, I would like for people to stop blaming the parents, the unions, the students,the teachers and/or the administrators individually as the downfalls of the students' education and get more people to start looking for solutions to fix all of these vital roles. The idea rolling around in my head recently has been to find ways to hold each group of stakeholders accountable in a way that will promote the achievement of our students. As of right now the most popular attack seems directed at teachers and teachers' unions, but their accountability is being sought in such ways that, to me, seem detrimental to students.

The entire country has a vested interest in creating the best education system (or systems, depending on your views on state control of education) on the planet for all of our children. If we're going to get serious about educating ALL Americans in a top-notch way we need to stop bitching, stop the finger-pointing, hold up our end of the bargain, and then (and only then) demand that each major group of stakeholders be held accountable as well.

More on accountability later. I feel like I've strayed away from directing these posts toward advice for the first years and those in school of education. There's not a lot to be said about this topic save for the fact that perhaps in the first year you shouldn't worry as much about this as how you hold things together in the classroom. Last year I certainly wasn't thinking as much about how to keep students, parents, other teachers, and administrators accountable because I couldn't even keep things in line in the tiny part of the system for which I was directly responsible. Telling others how they should be held accountable didn't cross my mind as much as dreams of reaming out other stakeholders for not doing a damn thing to help (aggression that was somewhat, but not wholly, misplaced).

Today's Wine: Bodega Sur de los Andes Malbe c. This guy was really very good. We had it at Pasita in the West Village. The place was great and the wine well-balanced, not very fruity and not too dry. Great by itself.

The Students on Board

2010-04-24T13:56:00.001-04:00

Speaking honestly and critically about students doesn’t seem PC in a lot of ways, but I think it’s important. As they are of course stakeholders in the process of their own education, I’d like to address them as I have in the past few posts about teachers, parents and administrators.
I generally group students into two categories: those that do their jobs and those that do not. While these seem to emphasize behavior more than other factors, that is what the majority of my effort has been directed toward in the past two years and from what I can tell, it’s what drains the most energy out of most of the teachers I’ve met around here.

Those Doing their Jobs
These students show up to school nearly every day and complete tasks assigned to them. They might slip up once in a while, but they listen to directions and try to complete everything you hand them. They can be goofballs, they can be rascals, they can still make you want to pull your hair out, but they show up, they're respectful and they give you the sense that when they're given clear directions on what to do they will do what they can to get the job done.

They Struggle, but They work
Now, "doing their jobs" not imply that these are the best students academically. In fact, many of these students may struggle in school. Many of these students might not know how to read very well when they show up at your door, they may be void of critical thinking skills and they might not know a noun from a verb, but they're willing to try. Oftentimes these are my favorite students to teach. We are both in for a challenge and it's apparent, but the relationship we forge will help produce real results by the end of the year.

The Gifted High-Fliers
These are the professional students. They listen to all directions, are eager to learn and are great thinkers. Academics come easy to them and they could easily get by without pushing themselves, but they do anyway. While a small minority, these are the kids that can help pull along a class and really help a teacher support those that struggle, but work. In the de-tracked, full-inclusion model these are the ones that model great academics in ways a teacher doesn't think to as they relate to the other students.

The Bright, Albeit Lazy
These are probably the ones that are most in-between those that do their jobs and those that do not. While very bright, they simply do what needs to be done to hit C-range or perhaps a bit higher. Their potential is enormous and their delivery lukewarm. They always make teachers pull their hair out, especially if management is less of a problem.

Those Not Doing Their jobs
Students fall into this category for a lot reasons. Whatever the reasons might be, they show partial, if not total, disregard for the education system, their peers, their parents, teachers and themselves. The subdivisions I think of are the aggressive, the passive and the absent.

Aggressively Not Performing
These students tear things down for themselves and others. They refuse to follow directions, act out, demand attention and must be given it because if they do not either someone will be hurt or no learning will happen for anyone. They seem to follow as few rules to prove simply that they can, and in process screw themselves over as well as many of the other students. The most frustrating thing about this group is that they really do hold back those that struggle but work. While the bright and gifted can still get by and learn a considerable amount, those that struggle with academics and need extra differentiation in the classroom fall by the wayside because the teacher must spend time containing these fools. Of all the injustices one can find in the field of education, this might be the one that irritates me most.

Passively Not Performing
These kids sit in class (when they are there) and do absolutely nothing. Before I got to the Bronx these were the biggest "problem children" I had to deal with. No matter what you do, how you differentiate, modify assignments, give them something that any other student would find at least mildly interesting, they continue to sit and stare. When major assessments come around they oftentimes simply fail to show up and rarely complete them. To be honest, I think that social promotion has produced many of these students over the past number of years (how many I cannot say, as I'm still pretty new to this)- students know they'll be passed and therefore know that if they just sit tight and ride it out they'll be given a pretty easy option to "pass" at some point and them join their classmates in the fall in the next grade.

The Absent
These are students that simply are not there. For one reason or another their attendance is abysmal- sometimes far less than half of the school days in a year. Need I say more about why they don't do their jobs? I have a student on my roster this year who has been present less than five times. See my post on Grades in NYC for how he's still been awarded forty-seven percent of the possible percentage points in my class.

Perhaps it’s not that simple, but I hardly cringe at the students’ individual inability to perform academically- I wince at their inability to stop talking, listen to directions and then carry those directions out. A benefit to this simplification is that it does put it in terms that 99% of students can understand. By the time students come to me in the eighth grade, the vast majority of them know how to act appropriately in school, around adults, etc. We see this happen all the time when their parents come in or when we go on a trip. When they want to, nearly every student can behave and be considerate and be respectful of their peers and teachers for an extended period of time.

During my first year in the classroom I had fewer students who did their jobs than those that did not. There were some days in fact that things were so out of hand that I could count on one hand the students who were doing what they were supposed to. That's changed with nearly two years under my belt and a different set of students, but I still walk into class every day looking to support each kind of students as they need to be. For example, the High-Fliers need to always be pushed higher, the Absent need to be encouraged to attend and have their parents called about it, the Aggressives need to be controlled and contained, and the Strugglers need scaffolding, the most clear and concise everything and each and every student needs as much positive adult attention as I can muster.

Today's Wine: The Cabernet by the glass at Gina La Fornarina.

O Captain! My Captain!

2010-04-17T14:58:00.000-04:00

Without a strong administration, a school will capsize and teachers and students alike will be left to swim for it. In that case the students are encouraged to swim to shore where they would have disembarked, but the teachers are left to tread water and save as many as possible for as long as they can. The frustrating thing is that the captain(s) don’t necessarily go down with the ship in these cases.

What I’ve heard…

I spoke with several superintendents while in the School of Ed, and each said that the most difficult job they’ve ever run up against is that of a high school principal. Between all of the public appearances expected, the equivalent to running a business as well as being the leader of teachers and ensuring the emotional and developmental well-being of hundreds of students, the job demands every ounce of one’s energy as well as the vast majority of one’s time. Personal time is a term referring to the small amount of sleep they get. The principals I’ve spoken with in NYC have said that the most difficult job they’ve bashed into has been that of first-year teacher in the city. Perhaps they’re just being modest.

That said about the difficulty of the position, the leaders of the school- Principal, Assistant Principals and Dean of Discipline- are vital to the success at the school. Without competent and talented people in these positions it’s nearly impossible for a school to be very successful even with master teachers. These people need to be able to maintain morale, recruit like mad and rake in sponsors to support the ranks holding the line. They must keep the confidence of the community and they must understand the trials, tribulations and successes of the community so they know what the students will face during their tenure at the school and thereafter. They must also boost the morale of their troops while maintaining the support of parents- two groups notorious for infighting. Good administrators are also expected to know the names of most of their students, and increasingly the needs of each student- especially as NYC moves to a small school model.

And that’s just some of it. In spite of the fact that the job is gargantuan, the sort of people being commissioned as administrators varies widely. Some are great, some are driving education into the ground, and some seem simply to be holding on and waiting for something- at times either a paycheck or someone else to fix the problems they face in the system.

All of that said, I’ve tried to categorize as best I can the administrators I’ve seen during my short tenure in the field.

Killers of the Classroom

The Corrupt
These range from those who are administrators for the paycheck to those who embezzle from the school system. After a year and a half in the field it’s frightening how often I’ve heard instances of the latter happening. Colleagues have described storage closets full of school supplies that were off-limits to the staff. They’d be filled with expensive supplies and then emptied into non-descript white vans at the front of the school.

The Incompetent
To be a strong leader you must be able to demonstrate what it is you want those following you to do. For a lot of reasons, the default attitude of teachers is skeptical when talking to anyone who is trying to tell them what should be done in the classroom. A principal who does not radiate the idea that she herself is a master teacher will simply not inspire confidence in her staff. Unfortunately many incompetent teachers who do not want to quit the field, but who are not making it in the classroom, decide to move up the ladder to an admin position. Also unfortunately, many of these are promoted by their superiors simply to get them out of the classroom. While I respect the urgency of removing the incompetent from the classroom, promoting people because it’s impossible to get rid of them is not promoting the health of the system. To be sure, this is not the only way the incompetent get into these leadership roles.

The Tyrannical

Sometimes the responsibility of being an administrator goes to the head of those at the helm. While they may fall in the category of incompetent as well, these folks try to make up for the lack of leadership skills by flexing all of their muscle both with students and with staff practically all of the time. If you are unaware, schools can really do very little in terms of punishing students. Flexing and flexing is good and fine if you’re looking in the mirror, but not necessarily when trying to impress your staff and students simply by demonstrating your legal ability to tell them what to do.

The Insane
My girlfriend was oftentimes at odds with one of these at a school she used to work in. That AP was arrested for stabbing her boyfriend with scissors. The incident actually made the newspaper, but because the boyfriend dropped the charges the AP was re-instated without recourse almost immediately.

Follow them to the Front Line
When it comes to administrators and teachers, it’s oftentimes easier to spot the bad ones, rather than the good ones. Perhaps that’s why we concentrate so much on them. If you take any time to look, however, it’s easy to spot the great leaders. They inspire real confidence, show you what they expect and demand excellence. If they're good at their jobs their staffs will follow them in their entirety (or nearly in their entirety) and will be able to hold the line far more successfully.

Great administrators certainly have different styles and generally land somewhere on a spectrum between a very top-down, directive management style and the more bottom-up, allow the staff freedom to succeed sort of style. It seems that the most successful of them strike a balance somewhere in the middle, perhaps on an issue-specific basis. By that I mean that there are specific issues on which administrators must hand down their decisions with an iron fist, and others that must be resolved organically by lower-level staff members. Regardless, its tough to categorize them other than saying they’ve struck an effective balance somewhere on this spectrum.

This might warrant another post altogether as well, but in a nutshell, I believe that as with teachers, there is not a large enough pool of highly-trained, experienced and brilliant people vying for these jobs. These are our captains. They should be the ones directing us and determining how to best utilize our resources as a cohesive unit in order to give the best education possible to our students. Without strong leadership teachers are left to shut and lock their classroom doors and slug it out themselves. When they march off to war in isolation teachers might put up a great fight, but the students suffer tremendously in the long term. It’s also far more likely that a teacher will one day drown when this is the case.

The leadership of a school cannot be taken lightly. Unfortunately, great leaders are difficult to find. Principals vary from those young, bright individuals starting up their own schools to those who have PhD’s, a century of experience and are simply taking over for established schools. These people must be leaders, politicians and great educators. Their jobs demand that they work essentially without pause the entire time they hold their position.

As with teachers, we need to be able to get rid of the bad ones, attract more applicants to the field and applaud those that are successful in their positions. Unfortunately I’m not sure we’re doing any of these things effectively, nor will we in the near future given the way people are determining the success of these leaders.

Today's Wine: Maipe Malbec, 2009. The description at that link was pretty spot-on. It's fruity, not too dry and well-balanced. Very acceptable for a bottle around ten bucks and it went well with some cheap but amazing Mexican carry out.

Teachers Are Sinking the Boat!

2010-04-14T19:51:00.000-04:00

...and plugging the holes, and rowing, and building new boats, and...

Teachers really tick me off sometimes. We've dug ourselves in, isolated ourselves from other stakeholders, allowed substandard educators to join our ranks and have not done a very good job of keeping up the professional edge we once had. That said, we're also sending more students to college than ever before while doing everything in our power to hold on while the arc of education is tossed to and fro by the political and social tide. We are, for better and worse, the men and women that are escorting young Americans to their futures and we range from excellent to terrible. Aside from the students themselves, teachers are the lifeblood of the education system. If there is a major problem with that system, as more of America is beginning to assume, it is natural to examine our ranks to see what is going on. It would be ludicrous not to take these steps. Upon exploring the ranks of pedagogues, one might find there is a pretty interesting mix out there.

I've now worked in three very different settings: rural Kansas as a sub and student teacher; on a U.S. military base in Germany as a long-term student teacher; and in the South Bronx as a first and second year, full-time teacher. As with the parents, it's tough to label teachers, but there is definitely a spectrum of good and bad teachers. This again is entirely subjective and also the opinion of a second-year teacher, but this is my report:

New Teachers- They're very tough to label and are very generally a hot mess. Their quality is difficult to judge accurately, as their success has more to do with the support network they land themselves in than some natural ability to teach the children.

The Good
Green and Eager- I would say I'm probably one of these. The learning curve is steep and they're dedicated. If on the good side they are, of course, headed in the right direction and perhaps one day will be a master teacher.

Solid, Not Entirely Seasoned- These are the good eggs that have stuck around a year or two or three and are developing great skills as teachers. Their management is solidifying, as is their curriculum and they make solid contributions to their staffs. They are not as masterful as those with more experience, but the veterans started somewhere, too.

Entirely Insane, In a Good Way- I've run into a few of these. From throwing lab stools across a room to accidentally blowing petri dishes up and across the lab, these guys can inspire, terrify and potentially teach like no other type of teacher. While not the best role models, it doesn't matter because the vast majority of students want to be nothing like them- they simply learn a lot of great stuff from them.

Well-Seasoned- These folks can be the heart and soul of a school. Masterful, experienced, flexible and at times very quality leaders, they are fantastic examples for other teachers to follow. The ones I've seen are not necessarily in leadership positions, but are looked to as leaders anyway.

Master Teachers- These ones make your jaw drop and drool a bit. With management that wraps entire classes around their little finger, they strike a strong path from day one, hit the ground steaming full throttle and do such a fantastic job that only one of the so, so ugly (see below) teachers would dare criticize them- generally one of those people that criticize others for doing too good a job. If every teaching position was filled by one of these, the Americans would not only be leaders of the free world, but leaders of the universe.

Ancient, Masterful & Growing- In one of the places I taught, the most technologically adventurous teacher was past old enough to retire. He was an expert teacher and still trucking. The year I was there was actually his last, as he took up a teaching position at a major university educating future teachers. Had I been in that state, I would have been lucky to have been one of his charges. He was a master teacher whose days left in the classroom were probably not many fewer than days left in his life.

The Bad
Lost At Sea- Often green, sometimes not, these folks lack directions, whether from their administration or they simply don't have it. Many of them join the ranks of former teachers.

The Bored- These folks, for one reason or another have stopped trying. The students can tell; other teachers can tell; the administration can tell, but for some reason they stick around.

So Angry- Potentially good at their jobs, but so angry at the world and the hand they've been dealt that they cannot deal with other staff, they seem to hate practically everything. I found last year that it's pretty easy to get angry in this field for a billion reasons, but to let it consume you can be to let it tear apart you practice.

Very Bitter and Old- They tell new teachers to beware or simply not to join the field. I met one once that had a PhD in ed, but when she found out that I speak German she told me to switch to business because I could make more money- not very encouraging, nor helpful.

Ancient, Crumbling- These folks are waiting either for retirement or an excuse to leave or maybe even death . They may have stopped growing as a teachers several decades prior and had difficulty switching from the abacus to the computer (their arch-nemeses are the Smart Board and the LCD projector).

So, So Ugly

Absolutely Crazy (In a Bad Way)- These are various. From teachers who can't prevent books being microwaved in a classroom to a middle-aged man prancing around a room of would-be thugs like a fairy-godmother cawing, "No one can steal YOUR education!", these folks need the boot and fast.

Really, Really Bad- This includes the above-listed absolutely crazy and is really just an umbrella term for those teachers that are so bad that any sane stakeholder needs only thirty seconds in their classroom to realize their role in the field should be that of copy clerk (maybe), not classroom teacher.

We all know there are bad teachers out there. It is not a secret. What seems to be a secret sometimes is that there are unbelievably good teachers our there as well. Most teachers in our classrooms are on the Good side of the spectrum, rather than on the Bad or So, So Ugly, but this majority needs reinforcements. The ranks of well-seasoned and master teachers are thinning as more and more of the not entirely seasoned and newbies throw in the towel. The field simply does not recruit a large ratio of applicants to teaching positions. The bottom line, however, is that there are students to be taught and teaching positions to be filled. Principals are often faced with choices reminiscent of too many elections in recent history: the choice between the bad and the worse. Hopefully in the near future we figure out a way to fix this problem, but in the meantime we need to make sure the efforts of those on the "good" end of the spectrum are not swept under the rug.

Until that day happens I'll keep paddling around in my dinghy trying to figure out how to become a master of the trade.

Today's Wine: Tilia Malbec 2008. Yet another from Cavatappo, our friendly neighborhood amazing Italian restaurant. A bit spicy and plenty of fruit.

Parents Can Make or Break You

2010-04-11T10:50:00.000-04:00

After a spring break blogging sabbatical, I’d like to come back and post a few ideas that may piss people off, but things I’ve wanted to get off my chest for a while. Basically I’m developing the opinion that while every stakeholder in child’s education is incredibly important, the onus of educating children in this country is shifting further and further onto teacher’s shoulders. While I’m terribly biased, I’d still like to vent my frustration and address the various stakeholders in separate posts: Parents, Teachers, Administrators and Students. First up are parents.

There were two pieces of inspiration for this post that I witnessed over break:
1.) an American child in Italy (approximately 10 years old) ignoring every waiter asking him questions because he’s playing video games at the table in a nice restaurant
2.) an American child (approximately 10 years old) playing video games in the SISTINE CHAPEL, being completely ignored by his parents and ignoring everything around him the entire time.

Those two things got me thinking again about what (in my opinion) a large part of good parenting is: providing children with healthy, educational life experiences AND helping children to better those experiences. While it’s impossible to categorize parents in a way that makes everyone happy, one of the ways I generally make sense of many things is by setting up spectrum and placing things along it or beside it. In this way, I generally think of parents very simply as good, bad, or something in between. Parents who get involved and help teach their children are at the good end. Those that do not are on the bad end.

Great Parents
Let’s start with the good news. Great parents are the saving grace of education. They are unmatchable supports, the driving force behind the healthy growth and development of our students. They want to know what’s going on at school so they can help their child grow even more. They’re actively involved in every aspect of their child’s life and even if they work two or three jobs they do their damndest to make sure their child is healthy and prepared for life. As I talk to more young adults my age, we tend to agree that our parents’ successes are reflected in our own; that their incredible ability to teach us right from wrong, instill work ethic in us and promote healthy learning from trial and error, making mistakes and scraping a knee now and again were the reasons we had successes in school, college, and in life in general. When I run into a great parent at school, I try to tell them how wonderful they are without sounding like a complete idiot. I thank them as much as possible and usually say something lame like “keep up the good work,” which feels inappropriate in some ways because I’m not a parent myself.

My highest-achieving student last year was the son of immigrant parents who spoke no English and gave up everything they had in their country to move their family to the U.S., hoping that their very bright son would be more successful here. His father worked pretty much around the clock, seven days a week, but made absolutely sure that he was at parent conferences and that his son was doing his job in school and out of school. When I told him his son was receiving the award for academic excellence in my class, he cried and thereby gained whatever respect I had that wasn’t already his. After crazy, oftentimes disheartening experiences with parents last year, he and his wife are two big reasons I tried to get parents more involved this year.

Not Great Parents
On the other side of this equation, parents can be the most frustrating, irritating, pugnacious, destructive stakeholders in this field. There are times that I have no desire to talk to parents. There are times I want to wring their necks because I seem to love their child more than they do. After a rough day in the classroom when I dole out a dozen detentions and perhaps a suspension because students can't control themselves (due to nice weather, bad weather, weather, an assembly, a field trip, a fight or the very fact that they're fourteen), I don't want to spend an hour and a half reliving it by explaining to parents that their students screwed up. For the chronic detainees, I've probably spoken to the parent a dozen times already, given them my feedback, suggested changes to be made and sometimes suggested things that can be done at home (why I'm qualified to do that, I have no idea, but as many parents ask I feel like I need to give some response). Especially at this point in the year, if a student has not begun to turn things around the last thing I really want to do is talk to his parent another time and see the same result: no change.

Hostile Parents
These are the ones that attack you (generally verbally). The buck generally passes completely out of their household and the teachers/school/everyone else are blamed whenever their child screws up. There are a thousand reasons why they are angry- a thousand results that show up in the student, but the fact is that they are working against the other stakeholders and not with them. They’ve let themselves and the student off the hook, which is very destructive.

Indifferent Parents
The extreme in this case is a parent who literally tells the school to stop calling because between 8 and 3 the student is the school’s problem. The funny thing about this is that even when these students leave, the parents do very little to make them “their problem”. Though it is a very small minority of parents, it’s still alarming how often this happens. The students of these parents generally plug into video games once home (or stay outside and do much worse) and the amount of student-parent interaction is dismal.

When I was a substitute teacher in rural Kansas I spent a lot of time in a specific elementary special education classroom. One of the students I worked with was nine years old, but was on a three year-old level developmentally and could not speak. This was a presumed case of neglect. One bitter-cold (near zero degrees), winter day this student was dropped off at school with just a sweatshirt on and was shivering uncontrollably, but couldn’t even tell us how cold she really was. While the family might not have been able to afford a coat, the history of neglect supported a different story. I’ve never had a stronger desire to punch a human in the teeth as I did when her parent did that.

This might seem like an over-simplification of the parent situation, because it is. As I spend more time in the field, however, the cliche "parents are the most important teachers" seems to become an incredible reality. Their importance in their children's early childhood development, reinforcement of academic skills outside of school and socialization of non-academic skills such as work ethic, respect for adults, etc. dwarfs many of the things other stakeholders can possibly do to ensure the success of children. I believe this country is starting to realize that education needs to be fixed, but parents are probably the last variable in the equation that will be targeted, as doing so would mean the government getting their hands into parenting. Even those furthest to the left would be leery of that.

Next up: Teachers.

Today's Wine: While a bit of a cop-out, I'd like to use one post to pay tribute to the carafes of wine we drank in Italy. When we arrived we drank a few bottles, but found the half-liter carafes of house wine were rather nice at virtually every place we ate.

Do Teachers Need Breaks?

2010-03-31T13:31:00.001-04:00

I'll come back to the issue of what I think summer break should be used for, but breaks throughout the school year still strike me as incredibly necessary. Many professions in this country are incredibly exhausting and while I have not worked in many other industries the jobs I have done that are exhausting do not compare to the position I currently hold.

In the spirit of taking a break, this post is short and sweet. Spring break should be used for two things: the first and less important is to prepare for the week or two after spring break and perhaps create a plan for the last few units of the year; the second is to rest up for what will be the final sprint to the end of the year.

It's going to be fast and messy and it's going to make your head spin. After spring break you'll realize how little time you have left to prepare students for exams and cram in the rest of your curriculum and you'll ratchet it up a notch. Students start going crazy and/or checking out entirely and your exhaustion level will peak around the end of May after which you may achieve some level of numbness that will pull you through the end of June where you'll land in a thick cloud of confusion as to what kind of freight train just smashed you to the ground.

I'll address how to pick up the pieces then. As for right now, I'm in Italy doing my damnedest to catch up on sleep and relax. Hopefully I've already planned the lesson for the day I get back so that I won't have to do it while in jet-legged fog the night we get back stateside (which happens to be the night before school begins again).

First Years: If you've made it this far, you'll make it to the end of the year. Do yourself and your students a favor and use spring break for what it's intended to be- a break.

Today's Wine: Whatever bottle I'm drinking on my quest to "sample" at least one nice local vintage each day during break.

Lectures and Liveliness

2010-03-24T20:33:00.000-04:00

While in the school of education, the social studies majors took enough history courses to be just two shy of an independent B.A. in history. Some courses were riveting, captivating, and some were monstrously dull. All of them were lecture-based. As these were the last history courses most of us took before becoming teachers ourselves, they greatly influenced how we approached teaching the subject in the classroom. As the saying goes, "Teachers teach as they were taught." While we came out being rather knowledgeable about history, we also came out wanting to lecture to classes having not even done much of that ourselves and not knowing a great deal about teaching otherwise. In short, I wasn't really sure what giving a lecture was or what it could be.

Last year my debates about kinesthetic and teacher-centered learning were in the trash can after two days along with everything else I'd thought about and planned for leading up to my first year- the compelling lectures, the "lab of democracy"...everything. As I was clawing my way to stable ground I had to abandon the few tools I'd brought with me for something that would deliver any instruction to my students. All of those ideas went briefly to a back burner and then into the back of a storage closet that I wouldn't even look at until weeks after the entire school year was over. I was less concerned with determining how much I was lecturing and more concerned with getting students to do a lick of work.

After student teaching I had plans when approaching my first classroom about turning it into something like a history laboratory. A place where all the space- walls, ceiling, floors- would be utilized to create as much "living history" as possible. I envisioned building walls that slid around the classroom to act as extra bulletin board space or the Berlin Wall, to divide the class into two groups when necessary to promote competition, etc. I wanted several time lines strung across the ceilings holding artifacts from each unit of study and a real graffiti wall where students could use the space to express whatever (appropriate) sociological ideas they had when we delved into the roots of American history. I'd seen pictures of the classrooms of other teachers that came out of my school of education who turned their workspace into a workshop for social studies and I wanted to create something to blow them all out of the water. History was to be anything but a series of lectures where a guy stands at the front of the room and reads from his notes.

After I stood back up at the end of last year and dusted off my rump, I got to thinking about teaching again, but with a far larger dose of reality to go on. Something I didn't see back in the school of education was that well-placed lectures are educational. Perhaps students won't retain enough of it to score high on a quiz of every detail, but to lecture effectively, to tell a story and get students to listen to an adult for more than five minutes at length, is something majestic and difficult- and it can certainly be educational. To be quite honest I can't recall much of the information presented to me in the most inspiring lectures I've attended. The point was less the specific pieces of information given and more the motivation I felt leaving the hall where I listened to someone speak. It was less about learning line-item facts and more about wanting to do something- having the very real desire to act- once I left the lecture hall. That is what a large part of education is supposed to be about- not just learning facts to spout when it's convenient and appropriate but gaining the desire to do something meaningful with your life.

At this point in my second year I'm not sure what I want to do with the idea of the lecture, but I still feel it definitely has its place in the classroom. Granted, I don't think it should be the most common mode of instructional delivery, nor even used on a very frequent basis. When students are listening at length to what you have to say where I teach (and perhaps most places), you get the feeling that the time cannot be wasted and that you damn well better utilize it to drive home a larger point about social studies and life in general.

Today's Wine: A generic red from an Asian fusion place up the street. I've been a bit dry this past week- perhaps in anticipation of a trip to Italy that begins the minute school is out this Friday.

Democracy = Conference Proposals?

2010-03-20T21:52:00.000-04:00

Looking for a good time? Looking to improve your research and writing skills and perhaps do some traveling in the meantime? Are you interested in determining what will be taught in history classes around the country? Hi. I'm Nick James and I'm here today to tell you about my work with the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). I've been a card-carrying member for the past handful of years. In that time I've traveled to foreign lands (Kansas), made new friends, and had barrels of laughs.

I got my membership renewal bill in the mail today. The reason I joined this organization was not because I thought it would bring me any more knowledge than my time in the school of education, it was because my revered adviser wanted to bring me along to a conference a number of years ago and I had to be a member to go. Since that time I've attended the annual conference every year, seeing Washington D.C., San Diego, Houston, and Atlanta along the way. My approach each year has varied from "must learn and attend as many lectures as possible" to "let's present and then walk around on a real aircraft carrier and then drink a bottle of wine on the beach." At any rate, it's been a good time getting around some major cities in this country that I might not have seen otherwise. I've also been on the ticket of a proposal every year that was accepted to be presented at the conference, which of course was a major draw to go.

Last year I signed up to review the conference proposals that people submit to the organization. What this means is that I rate about thirteen proposals and send the feedback to the conference committee for final approval. I can write "definitely reject" or "definitely accept" and have considerable sway in terms of what gets in or what doesn't. It, of course, makes me feel very powerful and excited to be determining what the leading social studies organization showcases at its national conference, though I'm not incredibly sure of the exact impact I have on the field or system.

At any rate, reviewing proposals strikes me as being very active in my field. In an education system where support for social studies is waning in the shadow of falling literacy levels, the job of figuring out what should be taught in history classes may be more important than ever. As NCSS (as well as other subject-specific national organizations) does have some sway in helping states determine their content standards, taking up the torch as a member, while at times uninterested, seemingly pointless, and mundane, is something that more people should do.

Much like the democracy we live in, if you do not show up to vote you have very little say in what happens to you. Many people complain that voting has no effect anyway, but that's in large part due to the fact that so many people think it doesn't matter. I'm of the opinion that you should vote first and then work to change the system if you're displeased with it. If you do not make your voice heard in the forum that's been designed to do so and then simply complain all the time about social/educational ills, your voice oftentimes loses all its power.

My Advice: Join your content area's national organization. Stay current on what's going on in the field. Don't just complain about what's happening around you in the wide world of education, actively work to make a difference in it. Doing what you think is best in your own classroom is fine and well, but it stops at the door if you don't take your ideas into a larger context. And I don't mean the staff lounge.

Today's Wine: 2005 Cardeal Dao Colheita Seleccionada. This was a discount wine bin grab. At first I was incredibly skeptical. I thought it lacked any body and was just a dry, tart, bland red. It ended up being pretty decent. I'm not sure how it happened. Perhaps I should look into that characteristic in wines.

Ed Knowledge Off the Front Line

2010-03-17T19:58:00.000-04:00

It sometimes escapes me that people who are off the front lines know so much about education. Thinking that others don't know anything about what we do is entirely ridiculous. My problem is that I bury myself so far in the idea of fighting the good fight I forget that everyone back home has some knowledge of education and many know a lot about what good education is and what it looks like, even if they've got a different perspective. Running around thinking everyone outside the field can "hardly understand" is pretty arrogant and negative. Having conversations with people completely outside of the field can bring you back down to earth and off the lone-ranger high horse and help to remind you that plenty of people know about education.

This weekend my younger brother took time out of his busy schedule to visit me, flying over from the parallel American universe we lovingly refer to as Kansas. We hit the town, got soaked in the monsoon that blew through and had a pretty great time overall. Shortly before he left we went to a German restaurant near my apartment for a beer. Once there we got to talking about our family, business, his approaching wedding, politics, the wide world of education and a number of other things would-be adults generally discuss.

Now, my brother is an educated guy, but he's not in the field of education. He's finishing his degree in business this spring (while playing on a nationally-renowned collegiate table-tennis team) and will probably land a solid job in the next few months to start his career out in Oz. While I didn't expect him to be void of opinions on the major issues facing the field of education, I was blown away by his views that were not only well-based, but not sweeping generalizations like many of the things I even say about the field. It was very apparent that he'd learned a good amount about the issues, had strong (but not extreme) opinions backed up by facts and was willing to stop elaborating on them when he could no longer do so. On top of that, he listened very carefully when I expanded on his opinions, giving him more facts and my own opinions about the field.

In the school of education I was sometimes indignant when people offered their opinions on what was happening in my field. How could they possibly know? They'd never been there! Never mind that I hadn't either. I'd been through years of boot camp. Clearly I had something to say and others should have been listening. Never mind that they'd gone through the system themselves; never mind that they might know people in the field; never mind that they simply could have done a lot of reading about education, which is headline news more and more these days. I was a very nearly a teacher and therefore an expert on everything related to the classroom!

Riiiight. While people outside the field may not know what it's like to control a classroom, they understand many of the issues surrounding the system- much like those who've chosen to educate themselves about U.S. foreign policy know to a certain extent why our armed forces do what they do in the Middle East. To take it a step further, the public should be informed about issues going on in the wide world of education (and the Middle East) and should have a strong desire to get to the roots of the problems with the system. To discourage discussion of those issues and act like a know-it-all is hardly going to drum up support for sweeping changes in the system and may even turn people off to the future teachers going through the traditional route to the classroom, which is how most teachers are still prepared before marching off to the front line.

Today's Wine: The beer in a glass boot I shared with the table tennis champ.

Reading is Ridiculous

2010-03-11T21:47:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I get so irritated about the fact that my students do not read well. My job is supposedly to teach them about citizenship, government regulation, economic systems, personal rights, etc. My job should NOT be to teach fourteen year-olds to read. It is though. It will be for the foreseeable future. My job is to teach students to read because they don't do it very well and without that ability they will not be successful. Accepting that is incredibly important; learning to deal with it is the next step and planning curriculum and instruction can be accomplished after that.

To be clear, many of my students read at or above grade level. In fact, a full third of them do. The rest of the students, however, do not. Because the average level is much lower than an eighth grade level, I give them material that is written on the average reading level of the grade so that No Child Is Left Behind. At one time I thought that if a student tried hard enough they'd magically advance numerous reading levels under my tutelage. Alas, for that to happen is astronomically unlikely. For it to happen in a first-year teacher's classroom is damn-near impossible.

I sat down with my lil' Wayne wannabe earlier this year to discuss why it is important to learn to read. He is still convinced that his best option is to drop out and start working on his first album. What I told him was lil' Wayne knew how to read and write fairly well before he dropped out and that he (the wanna be) needed to raise his reading level to at least an eighth grade level from a fourth grade level before he has a shot in the record business. When I told him the average reading level for the grade is three years behind, he became incensed. He started blaming everyone in the world for such a catastrophe of reading levels (except of course, himself). The tantrum was expected and my only response was that it wasn't one person's fault, nor a single group's (teachers', parents', students', administrators', etc.). The last thing I was going to do was start naming names.

At a professional development I attended this week (which deserves its own post), the presenter clarified the basis of my frustration with the reading situation: teachers expect that in elementary school students learn to read; in middle and high school students read to learn. The fact of the matter is, however, that students come to me and cannot read. I cannot send them back and sending them on is really out of my hands (in spite of the failing grades I hand out). What I can do is try, with the help of my team (the English teacher in particular) to boost scores at least one grade level at a point when low reading levels seem to creep to a halt altogether.

We do a lot of things to combat the low reading levels. Some of them are:

collaborating to use the same reading/writing strategies in both classes
handing out two different homework assignments (reading assignments) for my classes on a given day and on some giving out three to differentiate for the varied levels
silent reading of social studies trade books this year with sets of leveled books
explicitly teaching reading strategies with whatever piece we're covering in class

Last year differentiating, planning across the curricula and collaborating with other teachers was at a minimum because I was so consumed by my own classroom and to be perfectly honest I'm still figuring out what's the best way to approach this thing.

Reading is a tough thing to tackle. I do believe strongly that because my students are so far behind it is my job to work with my team to bring their levels up. While it means less time to devote to social studies in the ways I know how to teach social studies, my students need to learn to read and to read well. While according to our state they are, for the most part, not being left behind in K-12 education, they certainly are after they get to college or the world of work. I should not have to teach students to read, but for me to walk away from my job at the end of the year without having tried to give students one of the fundamental skills included in a formal education would be for me to not have tried to educate them.

Today's Wine: A house Sangiovese at an Italian place on the West Side- Campo. To be honest I didn't pay a lot of attention to it, but it went well with the pancetta in my pasta.

Kids in Power?

2010-03-08T18:43:00.000-05:00

Last year I was intensely paranoid about giving students power. I wanted to micro-manage and I was terrible at it. On the one hand I wanted the students to do the things I knew they could and should be able to do (behave in class, work in groups, pass a stack of papers from the front of the room to the back, etc.). On the other hand, by this time last year the idea of giving an ounce of leeway- to say nothing of the amount liberally taken from my students on a daily basis- made my stomach turn. I felt that giving any responsibility to a student in class would end in a larger headache than before. Even with the good ones I'd flash back to an instance when they'd made a bad decision and my trust in their ability to come through with anything would vanish.

These fears are pretty normal from what I can tell. Most of my peers coming out of the school of ed had control over most aspects of their lives and were pretty secure with who they were. Six months into the year many of them and I had been jarred off of our foundation, well out of our comfort zone. The prospect of giving up control to the classes that had done this, even of passing out highlighters, was certainly something that got to me. What is important to point out is that at this point in the year it should be very obvious that much of teaching is not at all intuitive to the rookie teacher. Many good teaching practices when presented to me last year at this time were counter-intuitive. When a veteran teachers told me to give power over to the very students that had been making my life hell for months I'm sure I gave them more than just a stink eye.

The fact of the matter is that a bunch of your students, however crazy the lot of them are acting, want you to give them a job that they can perform to help you and make you proud. Doesn't mean giving them A's on mindless work at the end of a period, but letting them participate in the process of teaching them. Giving them roles in the classroom, handing over some of the management and power, is really reinforcing your own authority. Think of it this way: you've probably fought them tooth and nail all year to do what you wish- academic tasks. Getting the class to go along with me for anything was a chore last year. Instances where they're ready to help out is like greasing the wheels for future cooperation with directions.

At this point in the second year I'm trying to delegate as much as possible. My students and I have enough of a rapport that when I ask for volunteers to hand back papers, pass out materials or come up in front of the class to help prove some fantastically relevant historical point, a good handful of students are ready and willing. What is more is that I don't throw up a little in my mouth when I hand over a bucket of scissors or highlighters to my scissor/highlighter monitor of the day.

It's tough to micro-manage if you can't manage a damned thing. The biggest on-the-job-training piece for new teachers is classroom management. It is by far the most difficult thing to learn from a textbook and most schools of education I've heard of. If you want to do larger projects with students that involve a lot of intricate planning, supplies, movement in the classroom, etc., it's nearly impossible to do so without the help of the students.

Today's Wine: BV Coastal Cabernet. A lot of restaurants carry this one. I've had it before and it's a pretty solid bottle for the table. It was at or a bit above room temperature where we ordered it tonight, which was not preferable, but it went pretty well with the italian cold cuts and prosciutto and fig pizza we ordered.

Hat Friday

2010-03-04T20:30:00.001-05:00

A crazy impression I was left with coming out of the school of education was that I was too dignified and professional to do "silly teacher stuff"- costumes, outlandish classroom decorations, etc. Really what I had was a vague idea that teachers needed to be professionals- in my mind that meant they should wear ties every day and not treat the job like some kind of production. Anything "unconventional" was gimmicky to me and perhaps even disrespectful to my students as surely it would be insulting their intelligence to do any of that. The problem was I lumped pretty much everything outside of lecture-based instruction into this crazy-stuff category including loads of hands-on, tactile learning strategies. By the end of the year last year I started to really see the value in making things more tactile for my students, but I didn't really know how to do that in a history classroom.

This year I started small. Instead of transforming and entire classroom into some kind of alternate social studies dimension, I bought a few props, more real decorations for the room and some more tangible, positive incentives that would support the curriculum rather than promote tooth decay. I mentioned the button-maker before, which is a way of keeping academic achievement in front of my students' faces all year. I also used the flags of all countries my students represent to cover my entire classroom ceiling. The idea behind that one was to give students something to connect to immediately in the room and originally it was going to be used for something to do with our immigration unit last fall, but I lost track of that one.

My other major "gimmick" this year was conceived based on the notion that my students destroyed everything they could get their hands on last year. It was actually kind of impressive how much stuff they broke, vandalized and whisked away. Come September I wanted to bring things into the classroom to make history more concrete, but I still didn't trust students not to destroy or steal whatever I brought. It was also impossible for me to carry something around the entire period or stand over it and watch it, as some students last year took any opportunity where I was tied down to something (oftentimes helping an individual student) to start up the mayhem. My response: hats. I figured that if they could connect to it and I could wear it around the entire class period I would achieve all the goals I just laid out.

For every unit I've had at least one hat to wear representing the time period. These are worn on Fridays and I tell students they too can wear a hat in school against the Chancellor's regulations if, and only if, they explain how it relates to what we're studying. So far I've had a Union Soldier hat, hard hat, welding helmet, WWI soldier helmet, paperboy hat, fedora, bowler, a trucker hat with a women's suffrage cartoon on it, a headlamp to affix to the hard hat, a paperboy hat with pieces of burlap stitched to it, a Yankee hat, and today arrived in the mail my genuine American WWII soldier M-1 helmet.

While buying hats, flags and a button-maker might not strike many as ideal kinesthetic pedagogy, it's a big step up from the lame projects I had my students complete last year that generally included drawing stick figures with colored pencils and writing two sentences on the back of the thing. As I move forward with the idea of "living history" I hope to acquire more artifacts of what makes up America and what has made up America. Creating some kind of concrete connection to the material, especially for our students, is incredibly important in helping them to understand it.

Disclaimer: As an important side note, this stuff does cost money. This could be especially burdensome for first-year teachers. Last year (mostly last fall) I spent enough money on my classroom that TurboTax sent up a flag telling me "great job!" I thought that was somewhat telling. If you're strapped for cash you should realize that these sorts of things certainly aren't quick fixes and that you can't buy your way out of a crappy situation. That said, I think it's also unreasonable to expect teachers to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of their own dollars on their classroom in order to make it a place to which students want to come.

Today's Wine: Luigi Bosca Reserve Malbec 2006. We went to a fairly new restaurant called Setlights. The bartender let us try two Malbecs and we picked this one. It was heavier than the other and described by my girlfriend as "warm and cozy."

Lost It Again- Dangerous Conversation

2010-02-28T17:12:00.000-05:00

This past week I lost it again. It wasn't off the handle and uncontrolled to the point that I was shaking or to the point that it ruined my day and evening like it used to, but it was losing it nonetheless. While losing it I dropped myself into an especially precarious position that could have taken the rest of the year to crawl out of. I openly challenged a group of students on whether they respected me or not. Such a challenge last year would have been something I lost every time had I tried it, and it wasn't terribly smart this year either.

It was detention and the seven or so kids who were in there simply would not get quite. During detention I do everything I can to run a tight shift, generally standing at the front of the room with a list of detainees on an index card on which I take notes about further infractions they perform while serving their time. Throughout the forty-five minute period I stand and watch them, sending the message that anything they do other than sitting there other than nothing is not acceptable. Needless to say, a handful of students acting nuts on my detention shift does not make me happy.

It was apparently apparent that it was coming on. Another teacher in the room who was their getting some information from me quickly got the hint and left as I threw a few futile efforts out there to get the students quiet. On the list on this particular day was an all-star line-up: a student who has been pushed to the brink of insanity by his home life and has the strong desire to physically confront adults and students alike; a whiny little lil' Wayne wanna-be who feels all teachers are complete morons and should be listened to at no cost; the loudest student in the eighth grade, who may well be the least mature as well; a student who rivals that student for least mature, but who craves positive male attention because from what I can gather his father is less than soft and cuddly when calls are made to the home every night; and, probably our most sporadic and unpredictable female student, who is pretty smart though faces a tough home life herself and dates brink-of-insanity boy to boot.

After numerous firm attempts to get everyone seated and quiet I stopped for a couple seconds, which gave them the impression that I might stop asking them altogether. I relaxed all the muscles in my face, which is a trick I picked up in a professional development once to made myself look both indifferent and a bit stern in additional to helping calm me down a bit. Then BOOM- I erupted into a choppy, less than eloquent monologue about how they should be acting in my detention, that at this point in the year I thought we knew one another better than what their present behavior was telling me and that it was blindingly apparent that they had zero respect for me as a teacher or as an adult, let alone for themselves.

Silence. Even brink-of-insanity boy was left blinking, wondering where that came from. One muttered that what I said wasn't the case at all. I fumed a good amount and then just got quiet and kept standing at attention at the front of the room, unable to do much more than that and not wanting to break the rule of silence in my detention room any further. Little lil' Wayne thought that was comical and giggled quietly to himself (which for him showed more self-control than usual) and all but one of the others settled down for the most part until the end of the period. That one student was suspended.

In retrospect I was playing with fire. Respect is the most important capital teachers on the front line have. To gamble what little I might have with my most difficult students could have ended in a disastrous management problem for weeks to come, if not until the end of the year. Perhaps I'll change my mind once I get more experience, but for now I'm going to cool it with calling out students on how much they respect me.

Today's Wine: Sebastiani Zinfandel 2006. On the vineyard's website this goes for $15, but the store near us has it for around $10. It's from Sonoma County, California, which I preferred for many of the reasons presented in the article linked here. It's less hyped-up, more laid back and seems to produce pretty similar quality wines for my buck. Perhaps I'm not buying in the correct price-range though...

Black History Month

2010-02-26T19:32:00.000-05:00

Last year in February a student in my classroom raised his hand and asked, "Why aren't we talking more about black people during Black History Month?" My response was fantastically eloquent, well-supported, understandable and acceptable: because the state doesn't require it and we're way behind with the things they want you to know.

Really? The second after that plopped out of my mouth the aftertaste blew my mind and woke me up to what I'd believed six months prior- that the last thing I thought I'd be doing was teaching to the test when I finally got my own classroom, but here I was justifying why I couldn't teach something really rather relevant to my students (African American history) by telling them the state required me to teach other things.

This issue with a disconnect from the curricula is a common problem the folks on the front line see. We're given our curricula and we do our best to deliver it to our students. Where we and the state falls down is in the fact that our students' ancestors are not readily included in the history we're teaching them. The version of American history I teach seems at times to come off to them like Portuguese history would come off to a Nebraskan. Many of my students simply don't care about what white people did to build this country up to what it is now; others are recent immigrants not by choice so much as a parental decision to make the move and really just want to go back to the country from which they were brought; still others are part of a population that hasn't been able to crawl out of the inner city and a long history of discrimination for various reasons. On top of all of that, my kids don't read very well, which makes studying any history in depth pretty difficult.

Figuring out exactly what to teach to students has been one of the most difficult parts of the job. The state wants me to teach a laundry-list of line-item historical facts, which is difficult to do without teaching to a test that is based more on recall of information than the testing of real skills. It's a test promoted by the state board of education, which is appointed by elected representatives in the state legislature which is popularly elected, though I would guess few even know who is in Albany speaking for them on these issues. To be honest I had to look up my own state senator and assemblyman after writing this.

I'm sure I'll write a long, ranting post about how pointless the eighth grade social studies exam is and how that is sad, but it suffices to say that after last year I'm not entirely concerned about the test-prep part of my curriculum. That said, it is still very possible to incorporate Black History Month into your curriculum if you feel it's worth it. As a teacher in the South Bronx it is definitely worth it- my students are asking to learn about it (something that happens very rarely in my class, and then only by an individual student). If I didn't take that request and run with it I'd be out of my mind.

Today's Wine: Bodegas Franco Espanolas Rioja Diamante 2008. That's a long name. Diamante is a semi-sweet wine that was recommended to us after we said we were looking for a Riesling for my parents. It was a very nice bottle that they enjoyed and that I did as well. Generally the wines they prefer are a bit too sweet for me, but this one hit the spot.

Yo Mista, That's Racist

2010-02-21T20:30:00.000-05:00

At one point I liked to cite the fact that my high school was the most ethnically diverse in the district of five suburban high schools, that meant that the minority rate when I graduated was about sixteen percent. While I'd tried to prepare myself mentally and otherwise for working with an urban, minority population, I knew that it would be different actually doing it. I didn't know if I should address issues regarding race or how to address them in a classroom. Aside from a fear of being labeled as a racist white guy, I had the sneaking suspicion that my complete disconnect with urban African American and Latino culture would be a problem. What I found was that some of my students are not at all racist, some are, and some seem oblivious to what racism really is. Many will call things racist as well even if they are in no way so.

This year I've been dealing with a student who is a white-supremacist (he was giving a Nazi salute in the hallways at school earlier in the year). This is clearly inappropriate and really, really stupid in the South Bronx. Why in the world would you preach white supremacy in an area where .00001% of the residents are white? This kid isn't even white! Our union rep and I were talking it over and he said I should document it to be safe. During that conversation he mentioned that every class of students has a Nazi in it, even in the South Bronx. Last year I knew there was a kid upstairs (in 10-12 grade) who was drawing swastikas all over everything. That young man was an African American who was openly a white supremacist.

My students last year had a terrible problem with calling everything racist. Some did it just to mess with me and some truly believed that everything that addressed race was inherently racist. It drove me crazy. My fear of being accused of racism changed to irritation and then to boredom as I realized the students were either giving me grief just to get a rise out of me or because perhaps they didn't really understand what racism is.

By the end of the year when a student accused me of being racist I just agreed with them sarcastically and moved on. I'd already given the following sarcastic speech to all of my classes:

Yes, I am racist. I'm the most racist person you will ever meet. I moved all the way from Kansas to New York City, where it's all white people, to New York JUST so I could pick on black and Hispanic kids.

That generally got them quiet and then we moved on with whatever we were doing that day. This year there has been much less of the racism talk in class. It came out once and I tried to drop that little speech on the class and it was lost on them. One kid just said, "That's wrong," which showed me that my sarcasm probably wasn't terribly appropriate last year- it just got the people screaming to be quiet. A major transition from novice teacher to veteran teacher seems to be preventing those fires and reacting less to the crazy/screaming students. While putting out fires you tend to say some things that you certainly wouldn't otherwise that can be misinterpreted by your good students. I can't help but to think that social studies should be used to alleviate problems like this instead of test prep that leaves our students with next to no real knowledge of human history when they graduate. I can't help but to think that social studies should be used to alleviate problems like this instead of test prep that leaves our students with next to no real knowledge of human history when they graduate.

Racism still negatively impacts minorities in the United States. While things have greatly improved for minorities in the U.S. in the past hundred years, there are still things that can be done by everyone to address the problems we experience here. At times I'm not entirely sure what my role as an educator should be when addressing this issue. Cutting the sarcasm and promoting discussions on it as we work our way through the curriculum is what I plan to do this spring, but it was impossible during my first year to really address these issues. To me such serious topics need to be addressed through conversation and having any kind of class discussion was impossible in my room last year. I think by the end of this spring we may be in a place where those discussions can take place.

Today's Wine: Bruni Poggio d'Elsa Super Tuscan 2008. We had this out at Cavatappo, the spot in our neighborhood I've mentioned before. It was a cherry up front and a spicier finish. It was also very good and went well with the seafood risotto.

The Male (Dis)Advantage

2010-02-19T17:15:00.000-05:00

Like it or not, we all crave male attention- I’ve watched enough Law and Order and read enough of the psychology text I was given in the school of ed to know that- just as we all crave female attention, albeit for different reasons. Being a male in the urban setting will both help and hurt you. I'm sure being a female is the same, but for different reasons and ones with which I'm not as familiar given the circumstances. The bottom line, however, is that being a male teacher can either be one of your greatest downfalls or it can help you considerably with some students.

If the students in this setting sense you are weak they want nothing to do with you. This is where being a scrawny white guy can really hurt you. If you do not assert your dominance in a positive, unwavering and respectful way, if you cave to student demands and let them get the best of you; they may see you as weak and will not give you the time of day.

Last year it took until the very end of the year to gain the respect of most my students and even then I didn’t get it from a good number of them. For many of the young men I worked with they either saw me as a push-over or as someone who wasn’t strong enough to look up to. I don’t think any of them looked up to me as their major male role model, as they saw day in and day out that I could be stomped and kicked around by a pretty small group of eighth-graders. If I were them I probably wouldn’t have thought, “Jeepers, I’d like to be like that guy!” Oh my, no. I probably would have said, “Sucks for that dude,” or if I could muster some level of empathy, “That guy gets stomped by these d-bags just like me, only worse. That’s too bad.”

In short, if the students run the show, your maleness will work against you multiplicatively. There will also always be students who have a problem with all males. In many cases this goes back to the fact that the fathers of many of our students are not present in their lives or the ones who are abuse them. The authority figure at home may be a mother or grandmother, so when a male tries to assert his authority they resist and resist. These are factors outside of the school building that cannot be controlled from within it.

On the flip side of the coin, being a male can also be a very powerful thing. It seems that with boys especially, many are looking for positive male attention instead of the negative or abusive attention they receive at home. Many others are simply trying to fill a void. In many respects male teachers can take on a father-figure role in a setting like this, which brings along with it additional responsibilities. It seems worth it though and the feeling it brings is one that motivates many to come into this field. The role of surrogate parent, while limited, is a considerable one.

If you are a strong male who shows students he knows what’s up you can set yourself up to be the strong male presence many of our students cannot find anywhere else. I cannot speak to the fact as to whether I should be considered a strong male presence, but I can say that my skin is thicker than last year. My first year was a rough one- full of anger, discouragement, and even self-pity. That came out while in the trenches and the students readily picked up on it. I was not a strong male to be looked up to, but instead a fledgling teacher trying to get his footing. From what I can tell, things are improving on that front. Hopefully they continue to and I'll be able to positively impact my boys.

Today's Wine: Villa Pillo Cingalino Rosso di Toscana 2007. This was labeled as a "super Tuscan" at the wine shop. It hales from Tuscany and also bears the label "IGT" for Indicazione Geografica Tipica- some measure of quality assurance slightly below the D.O.C. that people look for in Italian wines. I didn't pick it for anything that logical. There is a wild boar wearing a suit and holding grapes on the front. That paired with the idea of a "super Tuscan" got me thinking of some kind of wine-making pig super hero and I therefore had to purchase this specific bottle. It went well with the prosciutto and pea quiche we ate.

Mid-Winter Break

2010-02-17T08:06:00.000-05:00

In NYC teachers and students are given a winter break, mid-winter break and a spring break. The instructional days surrounding these breaks are especially important for a number of reasons. They may well be the most productive instructional days of the year and for that reason they should be well-prepared for. This week has been February break, which can allow for two important things to occur: resting for the coming period in which there are no long weekends and preparing curriculum, procedures and your classroom for a productive spring.

The first thing you should do over break is use it for what it is intended to be: a break. Instead of stressing out the entire break and only getting a few of the big things on my plate accomplished, the past five days I've been cooking, taking advantage of Restaurant Week (which was extended for a few weeks to help boost sales throughout the city), spending time with friends in the city and procrastinating on anything work-related. This has allowed me to catch up on sleep, get in some exercise and improve my health before I continue to douse myself with coffee to make it through my work days operating once more on around five and a half hour sleep regimen.

The reason it's important to prepare for the coming weeks is that they are nearly uninterrupted weeks of instructional days. We have five weeks between now and spring break. From spring break to the end of the year there are eight weeks that are interrupted only for state exams and Memorial Day, which were less disruptive last year than all of the random days off in the fall. Also, at this point in the year you and your students probably know one another fairly well. It's more than half-way through the year now. They most likely know what to generally expect of you and you know what you can generally do with them. Drastic changes on either side are, while perhaps desirable, not as likely. Take what you have built, however large, and work with it. Move forward as best you can, still working to improve, but having a more realistic goal as to what you and your students can accomplish by the end of June. The solid weeks of instruction will work to your advantage, as they will in themselves give more of a routine than November, December, January, and February to this point have offered. If you're still struggling with routines, this is an opportunity to take another look at them.

Tonight I'm jumping back on the horse to get a few things done before my parents get into town tomorrow night. After they've headed back to the Midwest I'll have about a day left of break to get my act together for Monday- the beginning of this productive spring period. Luckily I already have the next couple weeks mapped out. If you've been working like mad this week to get things planned for your classes after break, take the next couple of days to really separate yourself from that work and relax. Come back to it on the weekend and make sure you're prepared for five long weeks that are full of potential.

Today's Wine: Cudgee Creek Cabernet Sauvignon 2008. Something I've found a bit challenging is getting reviews on newer vintages. The link above is the 2006 vintage of this wine. To me it was another Australian wine that was incredibly fruity and not what I think of as a Cabernet. It was fine though with the white wine/duck cream sauce I served it with, which might have been over-powered by a drier or fuller-bodied red.

NYC Snow Days

2010-02-10T21:27:00.000-05:00

The glorious thing about snow days are they are unexpected breaks from work- especially in NYC. There is nothing you can do to prevent them and they almost always do decrease your workload, rather than increase it. In addition to that, you have an excuse to stay at home, not go out and do what you like. Personally, I took it as a chance to catch up on things and get prepared for parent conferences tomorrow, although we might get another day because of the weather.

Today I tried to keep a balance between school work, other work and no work. As of right now I still need to get a few odds and ends done, but I got laundry out of the way, planned my lesson for tomorrow, found out a doctor's office is closed, left a message at the amusement park our eighth graders will go to at the end of the year, dropped of some dry-cleaning and split a bottle of wine over lunch with my girlfriend. I've also spent a couple hours grading and doing other vaguely productive tasks and I went to get 25-cent hot wings across a very snow/slush-filled avenue.

We've been astounded all day by the way Bloomberg has handled this snow day business. Coming from Kansas and Michigan (two places with a history of being pummeled by winter weather and school closures), we were pretty confused by the way the mayor handled a snow storm in this city. Where we're from, school is never called off a full day before a storm begins. As it turns out, weather has a tendency to be somewhat unpredictable, so to pull an entire school system to a screeching halt based on a weather report the day before seems a bit silly.

Today Bloomberg decided he would be able to predict at 5:30 PM the conditions of the roads tomorrow morning at 5:30 AM. This is another thing that is different from what we're used to. School is never called until the morning of that school day. All things considered, I think that tomorrow is going to be a much worse travel day for students- especially who, for the most part, walk to school or walk to a bus or train- than today was, as the walk to school wouldn't have been that bad.

Ah, well. At least we got a day off and I was able to catch up on a laundry list of things, including laundry, instead of adding to the pile of grading and other things that need to be done.

Today's Wine: Tabor Cabernet Sauvignon Galil 2007. This one was under $15, very solid and from Israel. While the political situation over there is incredibly complex, whoever made this wine knew what was going on.

NYC's Grand Grading Plan

2010-02-06T10:06:00.000-05:00

During my first marking period last year I flunked just under half of my students and was told that was "normal" for the first marking period in an eighth grade history class. Coming from a setting where a handful of failing students is a real problem, I was flabbergasted by the thought that half of my students were failing and it was alright. How in the world does a school system function if it's expected that half of the students will be failing at any given time?

Well, New York has some handy tricks to keep its students headed toward an increasingly watered-down U.S. high school diploma. While I cannot say if each of these are official DOE policy, they certainly happen in the South Bronx.

First of all, it is impossible to receive less than a 45% in a class. Impossible. You receive a 45% if you are dead and still on the school roster. That's nearly half the points available in the class simply for existing.
Second, if you show up a single time you are awarded a 55% in a class. That means if you walk into the room, sit down for twenty minutes, scream like a maniac and then walk back out- never to be seen again- you are awarded a 55%. Now, maybe I'm crazy, but to say a students did OVER HALF OF THE WORK because they showed up once to class sounds like the most absurd thing to hit education since I don't know what- not to mention the students who do show up and do ABSOLUTELY nothing for an entire marking period and also get this grade.
Third, when calculating grades, anything below ninety percent must be rounded to the 5's (for example, a 74 would be rounded to a 75). This gives many students extra points just for fun.
Fourth- this is key- students cannot be given a 60% on their report card. This allows those with 60's to receive five additional points on their report cards, as the teacher must round up to 65% or down to 55%.
Now, in the eighth grade a student's first and second marking period grades are average together for a semester grade. That means if a student received a 55% and a 65% it would average to 60%, leaving the teacher to decide whether or not to round up to the passing grade of 65% or down to the failing grade of 55%. Pressure to post a decent pass-rate, the fact that you know each kid's story (home lives oftentimes do not readily support academic excellence) can definitely push you toward the 65%.

When I was first told last year about these rules and regulations for grading students I took them at face value simply because I was freaking out about pass rates and needed to know how to score kids. After a while though it dawned on me how little information a student needed to receive to actually and officially pass a grade: 30% of all possible percentage points.

So, if a student decides to play his Play Station 3 every single day except one during each of the first and third marking periods and then shows up for the second and fourth and receives 60% in each respective marking period, they can "legitimately" pass with teacher discretion. That thought makes me dizzy.

If only I could show up four times a year and still get 55% of my salary, I'd get twenty more teaching jobs! It would be flippin fantastic!

And if you're worried about the students who don't quite get enough points to hit 60% any of the marking periods, don't be. They'll probably get passed on anyway. It's a good thing we base so much teacher/administrative accountability on promotion/graduation rates. It's having a friggin awesome effect on our education system. Pretty soon it will be teachers' jobs to walk around with picnic baskets of high school diplomas and hand them to anyone who can smile.

Today's Wine: San Camillus Pinot Grigio. The way we picked this one was incredibly scientific. First, we only wanted a white wine because I was cooking up a wine reduction sauce. Second, this was the only one in the store that had a cork, which we're compiling for some kind of art project. The wine was just fine, and went with the cream sauce, prosciutto and peas we were eating.

A Brand New Semester

2010-02-01T20:14:00.000-05:00

For the First Years

There are five months left in the school year. By now you should see how important the first two weeks of the school year were. While the next two are not as crucial, they are incredibly important. If you take action you can improve your classroom substantially. If you take no action you are making the decision to allow things to keep going as is. If you're alright with that, OK. Perhaps your classroom has turned around and become a place of incredible learning and growth, but last year at this time I was still struggling to get anything done with my students and even to stay afloat. I wrote a bit about starting over in my post, "The Day After Break," but this is bigger than that. This is not the day after a week-long break. This is the beginning of the second half of your first year in the classroom- what might be the most difficult year of your life. Here are a few things to think about:

Take Action
Treat this week like a new beginning, but do not expect that the students will react immediately. Re-establish the rules, re-establish classroom procedures and make certain that you stick to them. Teach, for goodness sake, but stick to every last thing you say. If you must reduce your lesson plans to teaching completely out of the textbook, do it. If you've not established some kind of normalcy in your classroom, this is the time to get it done.

That said, be careful. I got myself in trouble last year by assuming things would get better if I just followed the easy steps of laying out the rules once more. I expected way too much and then was frustrated when the small gain we'd made in my classroom dissolved into me shouting again. What could have been a better classroom turned into a bitter disappointment. Remember that it is going to take renewed effort and more work, but that it will be worth it.

Review Rules and Regulations
If you have too many of them, ditch a few. If you have some that you've realized are inconsequential, ditch them too. Simplify your management plan and make it, well, manageable. If you've found you cannot stick to part of it, scrap it. You should know by now that if you do not follow through with what you say, you lose credibility- and quickly.

Don't Expect Miracles
Sticking to your management plan will not magically transform your classroom. It will still be very hard work to get students to where you want them to be. That might not be what you want to hear, but that's reality. Following through will definitely help, however. You have five months and while things probably won't turn into some gloriously progressive, discussion-based classroom situation, there is a lot of potential that things will get better.

Five Months Left
Keep going this marking period. My father always told me that when training for a marathon, if you can run half the distance you can make it through the entire race on race day. As exhausted as you may be and as much as your students might irritate you, they- especially the ones who've listened to everything you've said this year- still deserve everything you can give them. Dig in these next couple of weeks and make the second semester better for you and for your students. Remember that there are students who are on your side and who need your help to be lifted above the madness. It's your duty to help them no matter how few they are.

Today's Wine: Manta Sauvignon Blanc 2009. A dry white I used to cook with. It was just fine otherwise. I'm not as familiar with whites, as I stray away from them generally. Here are a couple different takes on this same bottle: Take One; Take Two.

Regents Week Wake Up Call

2010-01-30T22:45:00.001-05:00

In January we devote an entire instructional week to Regents Exams- New York's exit exams. There are no classes, instead there are tests to proctor. Students do not come to school unless they are scheduled for a test (and sometimes not even then, of course). It's pretty nice until we start grading the things. After that the gloves came off, a lot of people got ornery, and a lot of students were put to the test. After all is said and done, the testing, grading, passing and failing get to you and the week becomes as rough as any other.

The Schedule
Each teacher is given a schedule of proctoring and grading periods. This is the first thing that raises the level of irritation amongst the staff. Our building only has so many rooms and so many teachers, the combination of which is very difficult to piece together so there are enough staff and enough rooms to go around. In spite of that difficulty and the effort made to maintain equity, many teachers have had numerous free periods, while others have to proctor and grade the entire week straight.

Students are not in classes and therefore are providing fewer opportunities for the teachers to complain, the amount of grading required and the number of tests that one must proctor immediately fill that void. Any slight variance in equity becomes a complaint given to other teachers and administrators. Administrators then might go to more experienced staff to try to shift the work load around a bit, the result of which is more irritation.

For some the proctoring schedule is completely absurd, as it is with our special education department. The teachers we have in that department are scheduled to administer tests for between seven and nine hours straight every day of the week and are only relieved when they text someone a reminder that they are stuck in a room with students and have to go to the bathroom.

The Grading
Each teacher has to grade tests in his or her subject area. That means all of the social studies teachers team up to grade the social studies exit exams, all the math teacher do the same, etc. This is necessary so that teachers do not grade their own students' exams, and also provides the teams an opportunity to come together to talk, bond, ignore one another, etc.

The complaints in this department center on how much grading each person actually does when compared to the number of students they actually have taking the test. I was pretty guilty of this one. I had four of my eighth graders take the eleventh grade exit exam, but I assisted in the grading of well over a hundred exams. That's fine. I wouldn't have nearly as large a problem with that if I wasn't made to give a large test to the rest of my eighth graders and then grade it entirely by myself outside of school hours by the end of the week. My complaints were quieted by the logic that I'm lucky to have the time off from teaching and should be quiet, though that didn't really make me feel a whole lot better.

The fact that we grade the exams in-house baffles me. If these tests are important at all, why in the world would the state expect people who are supposed to be very emotionally engaged in the success of the students grade the very exams that are supposed to be objective measures of their competency?! Teacher's and administrator's jobs depend on those test scores and we're the ones grading them? Because I do not teach high school and my students aren't actually expected to pass these exams, I find myself being most objective and holding the highest standards for students to actually pass the tests, while my colleagues tend to be a bit more lenient when it comes to marking down . Even still, many of the students taking the exam are my students from last year, which means however much I want to be objective about them, I cannot be.

Moving Forward
The first whiff of how difficult my job would be in the Bronx came when I graded the August Regents Exams in the summer of 2008. I came in fresh from college and used to reading high-level student work. I was shocked by the fact that students couldn't do well on the exams, let alone even pass them.

When your job is to get students to learn an important base of knowledge and develop the skills they will need to be successful in life, it's an incredible shot to the gut to find out that all of your hard work results in many students failing a minimum competency test. Your pride is cut down; your self-esteem dissolved. As you calculate the scores a sort of numb feeling grips you as you search for meaning in the fact that few of the students are able to pass what has become one of the largest measures of your performance.

While I'm not yet a seasoned veteran, I can imagine how difficult it is to see students do so poorly year after year. In spite of all our efforts, it may come down to the fact that our current system simply cannot do what we want it to do. With class sizes so large, teachers demoralized (and demonized), and public favor of the public schools waning, all we can do is keep marching and improving what we're doing with students. Maybe it is a losing battle in this system, but that doesn't mean we'll give up the fight. Hopefully someone figures out how to dig us out of this mess while we're still standing.

Today's Wine: Casillero del Diablo Carmenere. My impeccable and flourishing Spanish (I learned the word for "question" the other day) tells me that Diablo means "devil," so of course I had to buy it. This guy was fruity, full-bodied, not too dry and not at all expensive. Great job.

You're So Not Ghetto

2010-01-25T17:00:00.009-05:00

Being from suburban Kansas generally doesn't get you interested in African American, urban culture, or in the plights of recent immigrants. In fact it generally makes you prejudiced against them on some or many levels and certainly doesn't help you familiarize yourself with them. I grew up playing Bach on a violin and listening to very Caucasian, would-be punk rock acts. My parents both attended at least some college and my father had a very good job as a businessman in Kansas City. To say the least, in spite of my lackluster liberal longings, I had no idea what was outside of the bubble in which I grew up, not to mention the fact that I knew nothing about "the hood" (as my students lovingly refer to it). All I had to fall back on was my own experience, which was one placed somewhere between the middle-class and the upper middle-class of America. In spite of the "front" I put up, I knew all along that I was going to face some trouble once I got to the front line- I just underestimated how much.

In college I studied German as a second major, but really as an extra-curricular activity that was credit-bearing. I seemed to have a knack for the language, as well as picking up on aspects of the culture that my classmates could not. While that might be neat for someone learning German, picking up random accents after spending only a bit of time in a foreign area of the United States can definitely be seen as offensive by the native population.

Whatever skill I had with languages I took with me to the South Bronx. I picked up on idioms, expressions, and the accent of the folks with whom I worked. After a while I decided to show students that I knew something about them, having heard in the school of ed numerous times that the only way to get through to students was by getting to know them. I was also running out of ideas of what I could possibly do to connect to them and settle them down in class.

The problem with throwing what I perceived to be their culture back at them was that they could immediately tell what it was that I was doing. While they thought it was kind of funny (in a let's-make-fun-of-Mr.-James kind of way), it didn't really earn me any points, not to mention the fact that it could have been seen as culturally insensitive by a few extreme personalities. While learning about the community in which you work is a vital part of the job, even hinting at the idea that you've experienced it first hand on the ground when you've only been in a school a couple months- keeping in mind the fact the inside of the school you work in might itself be a far cry away from the community wherein that school is located- is quickly picked up by students as a lot of hot air.

Remember this: Don't "front," just show them you understand.

You should definitely know about the things in which the students are interested. I know way more about Lil Wayne than I'd ever prefer to, but it has helped greatly with a relationship I have this year with one of our most difficult students. It may seem pretty stereotypical, but if you don't know anything about the top ten major urban artists, you might look them up and listen to some of their music. Personally I still don't know much about Latino culture in the U.S., but I'm learning.

The more you know about the culture, the more it will come out naturally when you're teaching and talking to students. That is where it becomes a valuable asset.

Today's Wine: Samantha Starr Pinot Noir 2005. We took the train to Hoboken to have fondue last night and this is what we drank with it. It was nice, crisp, fruity and went well with the various things we stuck into hot cheese and oil.

Fight!

2010-01-23T12:17:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the day. Two students went at it big time right in front of me in my classroom. The relationships I had with them and a stern voice weren't enough to ward off the fight. While I know I wasn't the cause of the conflict, the fact that it happened on my watch is rather disheartening. In spite of the improvement I've seen in my students and in my own ability to teach them, crap like this still has to go ahead and happen.

It all started when one of my students lost interest in the homework he was supposed to start to keep him occupied for the last bit of class. As dead time in general is a death sentence for management, I made it clear that every student was to be in his or her seat completing the day's lesson or beginning the homework. He wasn't into that. Instead he thought he'd walk around and lightly slap everyone's paper with a long eraser, I suppose to say "hello" or simply make sure everyone knew he was alive. Whatever it was, it was not well-received by one particular young lady, who I'm sure decided that by calling him a "faggot," everything would be set straight, put in order and we'd all get back to work. Too bad Eraser Boy felt being called a "faggot" was the gravest insult one could possibly receive.

So, in spite of the fact that I was already standing beside them, it escalated. Eraser Boy put his fist on her chin and pushed it a couple feet in one direction. "Faggot" Girl then slapped Eraser Boy in the face, causing his glasses to go flying across the room. Eraser Boy, already incredibly imbalanced in so many ways, was now backed into a corner via impaired vision and announced to the heavens that he "don't care if she's a girl," and lunged for her, the result of which was both of them hitting, slapping, punching and tossing one another around while I tried to pry them apart. I pulled Miss Slaps-A-Lot off of Eraser boy, and dragged her across the room while instructing another student to go and fetch a useful adult, and then shoved Eraser Boy out of the classroom.

Now, last year this would have been cause for celebration on the part of the other students in the classroom. Class would have been officially over and the gossip mill would have been in full swing. Half of all eighth graders would have been informed of the fight via text message within five minutes and there may very well have been another fight scheduled later that day just for kicks. The aftermath of this fight was much different, however. The students knew it was a terrible thing and there was something like embarrassment, empathy for their comrades or something that left a much more somber feeling in the room. According to one student who was a bit dazed, fights are only supposed to happen in bad teachers' classrooms. I took that as a compliment and thought perhaps the somber feeling was the result of complete surprise that the fight happened.

Advice for the First Years

If things feel like they're about to well up and explode, it's tough to say what is the best action to take. Last year a blow-out fight happened in my class after one kid was throwing highlighters across the room (not an irregular occurrence). After walking across the room to apologize, that student received a fist in the face after being misinterpreted, which led to desks flying and me pulling apart a couple of the larger students in my grade (both over-aged).

Unfortunately, fights happen in a lot of schools. Most of the time the students who actually fight are those who have a lot of other problems they're dealing with.

Today, after everything was cleared up, I was told by another teacher that when other teachers hear about this fight, it won't reflect on my management, rather than on the fact that these two students are nuts. I can't help but to think that I should have seen it coming, though, or should have more forcefully restrained Eraser Boy before things got out of hand. Perhaps both perspectives should be considered, but regardless- it sucks when things go down right in your classroom.

Chin up though. You can't stop all of the fights in the world. If a fight does occur in your class, make sure to think about the things that led up to it so you can diffuse the next one more easily. That and constantly working to improve are your best bets at keeping the fighting out of your classroom. After the fight yesterday, I'll be cracking down on anyone out of their seat without a hand raised, which is one of my classroom rules anyway.

Today's Wine: Il Poggio dei Vigneti Chianti 2004. This guy was pretty good- not too dry and not terribly fruity. It has the D.O.C.G. stamp of approval, which I've just now learned is a quality insurance label given to food and wine in Italy. It also has my stamp of approval.

Waiting for the Break

2010-01-18T11:15:00.000-05:00

Students and teachers alike oftentimes adopt a mentality of waiting before a break. The job is so exhausting that even directly after a break the staff at times will take up waiting for the next break, especially if it's just a couple weeks away. This can lead both staff and students to simply "get by" until that break comes. What that looks like is students moving through their schedule almost comatose and teachers teaching such a way that requires much less energy and a lot more down time. Unfortunately even the most veteran teachers in this setting are guilty of this sometimes, and I can hardly claim I haven't simply survived until my next bit of respite, rather than throwing everything I've got into it.

It's important for the teacher to not get caught up in this attitude of waiting. Last year I was guilty very often of coming off as unenthusiastic about whatever it was I was teaching on a given day because I was so frustrated with management issues. It's hard to get excited about your content when you're constantly putting out fires. Before breaks, however, it's easy to re-adopt a practice I had when I was working part-time as a sales clerk in high school- watching the clock until my shift was over and I would be just fine. That means that the management issues become less important, you pass the entire buck to the students for misbehaving and not learning the material, and you go home at the end of the day having accomplished only getting one day closer to break.

The students pick up very easily on how enthused you are about a given topic. Their ability to perceive your mood is stunning, especially (it seems) those who want to get under your skin. If they know you're unenthusiastic about the topic, for whatever reason, they are far less likely to be engaged. By giving up your enthusiasm before the last minute of break you are handing the ball to those who want it and you're greatly decreasing the amount most of your students will learn.

Another thing that happens when you adopt this mentality is that you are lowering your expectations for what your students are capable of. This is unfair for those- generally the majority- who show up to learn and do what you ask. Lowering your expectations is what the minority of students want- they really do want to do as little as possible. It's our duty to make sure that doesn't happen. One of the most powerful tools teachers have is to keep expectations high and know that most people rise to meet expectations. If before breaks you lower them to get by, you're relinquishing that tool.

While I appreciate the extra day off as much as the next, it's important to keep our heads in it and work until the last minute of the last period before break. This weekend has been extended by Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and it could be felt in our school on Friday. There was a dance performance in the middle of the day, after which many of our students relieved themselves of the burden of the final two academic periods. Whether I was successful with that is debatable, but I think that it went better than it would have last year.

Today's Lack of Wine: Due to a stomach virus going around, I was not able to have wine this weekend. In it's place has a been a lot of water, green tea and some Gatorade. Cheers!

Leaving it At School

2010-01-16T11:45:00.001-05:00

My first year changed me. It made me so angry. I was angry all the time. It was directed at the students, at myself, at my girlfriend, at strangers and at the world. Last year I'd go home after a tough day (most days) and bring everything negative with me. Thoughts of misbehaving students would plague my mind late into the night and I would get visibly and verbally pissed trying to pull down a lesson plan for the following day. Doing that made life unnecessarily terrible sometimes and certainly affected how effective I was in the classroom.

By the end of the year I felt as though my general disposition had shifted to something that I certainly didn't want it to be. I was pissed at the school of education, at my students, at myself and at pretty much the entire world for allowing such an impossible job to exist for a rookie teacher. The whole thing sort of built up on top of itself until I was edgy, impatient, and irritable.

You'll see a lot of older teachers in the field angry and bitter with years of nonsense, unrealistic expectations, and unruly students (among other things). I'd imagine the outlook also comes from years of a grinding realization that you can never do enough- that as much as we try, students do fall through the cracks and criticism of the profession from all corners of society is increasing. Whether that's the case or not, the feeling I had wasn't so deeply rooted, but was instead a reaction to one really bad year in the field.

The fact that this year has been better than the last has helped me to release some of the negative feelings I was harboring. Even after the worst day this year I can leave it at school, go home and do what needs to be done without freaking out about miscreant children. Whether I've become more used to the biz, better at controlling my temper, both or something else,I'm better able to leave school with a clear head, relax and get things done at home. It also helps to know that at the end of the day- at the end of the year- things are going to be just fine. Last year I didn't know that was going to be the case.

Today's Wine: Duck Walk Vineyards Boysenberry Fruit Wine. We picked this one up on one of the wine tours we did on Long Island last year. It's tart, not too sweet and pretty great after a meal. I don't think it's widely distributed in stores, but I would recommend visiting the winery if you're ever at the other end of Long Island.

Buttons and Badges

2010-01-11T20:46:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it really pains me to give stuff away to children. It depends on the reason why, of course, but if it's for anything other than on an occasion to show them I like them unconditionally I really question why I'm doing it. When I was in school I strove for success simply because I didn't want to fail. I also had a vague but strong sense that my academic success was important. Last year, a lot of that went down the toilet as I attempted to persuade/bribe my class to behave better. It really bothered me because it was as if to say, "What I am telling you to do is not important enough for you to want to do it inherently, so I'm going to give you a chocolate to make it go down easier." This year I've been giving out awards that are academic in nature rather than out and out bribery. The idea has been to reinforce positive behavior without seeming like it's just an attempt to neutralize the poor behavior.

When I was a kid I was active in scouting. I liked it because it got me away from my five siblings and I was able to do things like camp, hike, rock climb, canoe, set off bottle rockets, shoot guns, smell bad, etc. I also liked it because as I worked through requirements I was given awards that reflected ambition and the ability to follow through on what I wanted to accomplish. Most of the awards/ranks/merit badges I also wore around a lot of the time on my uniform, which not only made me strut a bit more, but I would think made other scouts want to receive similar awards.

This past summer I came up with an idea based on my merit badges and on my aversion to giving pizza parties and shiny pencils to children who behave well just enough to get those things out of you. I bought a button maker. With this magical, $400 contraption, I've made a few hundred buttons and handed them out to my students as awards for real academic achievement after each unit and after major projects and assignments. The beautiful thing about these things is that unlike a certificate that will never be seen after an awards ceremony, I actually have students with them on their backpacks walking around every day reminding students of past content and reminding them that there will be an academic award at the end of the unit. The buttons also aren't candy that will rot their teeth, pizza that will teach them poor eating habits or pencils that will litter my floor by the end of the week.

The button maker decision was also based on my observation of how much my students loved the buttons of Obama I gave out as awards for great campaign speeches in the fall of 2008 (don't worry, they wrote for their candidate of choice and had the option to take Obama buttons as well as McCain buttons), which was my first successful project as a full-time teacher. They wore those things around for the rest of the year and I couldn't help but think two things: they simply liked wearing buttons and if I could get students to wear something that reminded them of the major ideas we covered that it might help keep those things in mind as we progressed through our history curriculum.

Now, this could certainly have been gimmicky and fallen flat had it not been presented properly. To avoid this I made sure that I had student buy-in at the beginning of the year. My first unit was a Bronx History unit designed to raise student interest in my class and get some basic social studies skills underway (mapping skills, etc.). The button for that unit was a Yankee button, which was a big hit and got the students craving the things. Since then I've had a Civil War button with rifles crossed on the front, a class librarian button with books, a technology monitor button with computer on it, a Statue of Liberty button for immigration, a railroad crossing button for industrialization, and a recycling button for my progressives unit. Each has been an image catering to student tastes (punk rock images, graffiti art, etc.) and they've gotten many of even the most off-task students asking for them and wondering about them.

One of the things that first-year teachers often do is pull out prize buckets, buy pizzas, and do whatever they think will possibly calm the class down and get them to work. It's possible that most of it or all of it won't work in the long run. Going into this year I realized I didn't need them nearly as much and that the things I did bring with me (buttons) were based on the synthesis of my own personality and the interests of the students. That made them more genuine awards while keeping students' interest high. It also speaks again to the fact that in order to teach well you need to know your students, but it also has supported the idea that students appreciate things that aren't just cheap junk you might use to get them to be quiet for a minute.

Finding things like this is part of finding your niche in the classroom. This particular thing wouldn't work for a hundred other teachers. Figure out a way to make your classroom stand out in the minds of your students. Once you've found it stick with it and then find the next thing to add to your arsenal. Your students might think it's lame and your co-workers might think it's lame, but if you think it's good and act like it's awesome, your students might very well think the same eventually.

Today's Wine: Charles Shaw Cabernet. I wasn't kidding when I said this was going to be a staple. This past weekend we looked through all the corks we've been saving this year and found that exactly half were from Charles Shaw and probably 90% of those was this wine exactly. While I'd like to vary the selection for this blog, I'd also like to make sure I don't break the bank. Thanks for sticking with me on this one.

At Least You Came to School?

2010-01-07T21:03:00.000-05:00

Excuse me? What did you say? At least you came to school?! Is this some sort of gift? Is this some kind of miraculous favor? Did you actually just tell me that your mere presence is supposed to make me satisfied and elated to be a teacher?

So is the attitude of many a student where I work. They come to school because that is what is expected of them. While teachers set real and high expectations as to what should happen in the classroom, those are only followed through with if the students have developed some level of respect for the teacher and then only if a certain level of work ethic has been instilled within them. Students in today's education system, at least the system I work in, show up to school with the understanding that the teachers can do no worse than what's already been dealt them outside of school and that schools will not hold them back no matter what infractions are performed.

This is a battle teachers are losing in the classroom. How's this for trickle-down theory: politicians need school achievement to stay elected, superintendents/chancellors need pass rates and graduation rates to stay appointed, principals need to raise the scores of the disenfranchised to keep their jobs and teachers' very real assessment of students' skills and abilities are ignored as their students are passed on to the next grade. What does that all mean for me? No matter what grades I give my students, they are going to go to high school. Is this a secret? No. Last year we promised, we preached, we shouted until we were blue in the face that the chancellor was finally cracking down, which is what we were told. Our principal- our captain-was going to follow through and hold back half the grade if necessary. Those who did not pass their core subjects AND their state assessments would not be passed on to high school.

Mythical models were proposed as to how we would accommodate it. We discussed class sizes of fifty to be held in the cafeteria and an eighth grade large enough to require herd dogs. What happened? Two out of a hundred were held back. Two students. We held back the young man who attended my class for three partial class periods and who was discharged twice from our school to attend rehab and we held back the young lady who attended my class twice due to the baby she was carrying much of the school term (which was conceived a year and a half after she exited elementary school). I've seen the girl as many times this year, and while the boy did turn in one completed assignment this year- thereby achieving his highest overall grade ever in eighth grade social studies- their "presence" has hardly been enough to send the message to our current students that if they don't get it together they too will barred from attending high school.

Now, I must throw out the disclaimer once again that the majority of students do not show up to school with this attitude. The sad thing is that to be affected by it is unavoidable at times. When good people see others doing the wrong thing and still reap the same rewards as everyone time and again, it is nearly impossible to avoid being disheartened. Holding students back oftentimes ends very poorly for them, but the flip side of the coin is that the battle teachers and motivated students fight to lift them up- the battle to show the nation that they are students and that if they work hard enough they will make it- that battle is made infinitely more difficult to win.

So yes, what I get is a handful of flippant remarks about the privilege given me by a particular student's presence, but what we should consider are the long-term effects. While we do not have what it takes to accommodate those students who drop out early when held back and end up on the street, in jail or worse, we're holding back so many of the students from achieving something more than what their immediate surroundings offer. In the short term the consequences are very obviously brutal for those who drop out. In the long term, they are less obviously so, though arguably just as brutal, for those trying to rise above what was dealt them.

Today's Wine: 3-Buck Chuck trumps Monarch Glen Merlot (2005). The Monarch Glen seemed to lack everything once again. Now, this wine was bought from a bodega in the Bronx and given to us as a gift with a bunch of dust on it and a cork that didn't look as though the bottle had been laying down in a while. Perhaps the wine was oxidized, perhaps not, but when we drank the Charles Shaw afterward, it was really rather delicious.

The Day After Break

2010-01-03T11:55:00.001-05:00

Don't expect things to be better after break. Don't expect them to be worse. Go in expecting a lot of the same and work for something better. Your students, though they may not show it, will be relieved to see you after a week and a half away. You have also had a chance to breath away from one another for over a week. Now is not the time to revamp your entire classroom and management plan, but it may be the time to put your foot back down on the ground (or get it there for the first time) and keep it there a bit better than it was before the holidays.

The day after a break provides a unique opportunity to re-establish rules and procedures. Treat it like a fresh start in the classroom, going back over the rules like it was the first day. Concentrate on any of them that were working and if you think adding one or two will make a significant difference, make sure you keep them simple and that you can handle following through on each rule or regulation you want to cover. In the time that you've been in the classroom, it has probably become very apparent that not following through on a single thing you say is very damaging to your ability to govern your classroom. That's why it's important to keep it simple and concise.

A problem I had when people told me this last year was that I would go in to "lay down the law" and expect some kind of drastic improvement. That was always a let down. I would get frustrated after a couple days when one of my classes would go poorly and any small gain I made would go down the drain as I lost it in front of the class. Keep in mind that this is something that could help in the long term; it's not a fix-all, end-all. Regard the day after break as a starting point, not a day to fix all of the problems.

Go back over the rules you want to keep. Don't bring up any that you're going to let go. If you didn't have a sign with the rules up in the classroom, it might be the time to get one. The advantage you can use after coming back from break is just that: an advantage. Don't expect a fresh coat of paint on your management plan to fix all of the problems. Make sure the plan has your solid, core rules and make sure you stick to them better than you did before break. While all your problems won't go away, if you lay out the rules again and stick to them invariably, the students may give you a little back.

Today's Wine: Evodia Garnacha 2008. It took a little time to figure out what the grape on this was. It's from Spain, not too expensive and easy to drink.

Winter Leave- Coming Back

2010-01-01T15:05:00.000-05:00

While Winter Break is incredibly important for getting some rest and regrouping for January and February, it can also be dangerous. Before I left to head back to Kansas last year my assistant principal came by after one of my rougher days to talk about break. He left on a note of, "Make sure you come back from Kansas." If he had said that to the young man who had been in the School of Ed, that young man would have been incredibly indignant and would have either said or thought, "Quit? Do you know who you're talking to?!"

I didn't react that way though. I just looked at my AP and looked at the floor and responded unenthusiastically that he could count on me being back in January. It was clear that it had happened in the past that first-years make it through the fall, head back home for the holidays and then don't show their face in the spring. Seeing how easy they had it or how nice it really was back home certainly can be disheartening. I was also told that come spring when things aren't fixed for some people they cut and run. Perhaps being home over the holidays is a catalyst for that as well.

You might be having a terrible time this year. Teaching your first year is likely the most difficult thing you've ever done and it may very well be the most difficult thing you ever do. I've heard that time and again from veteran teachers and even former teachers who've left the field. The same AP who told me to come back after break was also the one who told me over and over again that next year would be better. While it's nearly impossible for a first year teacher to believe things can be that much better, they can be and are.

As things stand now, if you're already in the thick of it things will probably not get drastically better this year, but you need to stick it out for you and for your students. Quitting the field based on one year of teaching, let alone one semester, is quitting based on the most difficult part of the job without seeing any of the rewards.

Hang in there. It'll get better.

Today's Wine: Domaine Ste. Michelle Brut. That's a bottle of sparkling wine out of Washington State. Happy New Year!

Certification Check-In

2009-12-29T13:19:00.000-05:00

This one's for the good folks running around in Schools of Ed. If you plan to leave your state, venture out into the great wide open and teach the children far away from the homeland, you should have an idea by now of how you're going to do it. One of the big things you're going to need to know is what kind of certification you'll need to teach in your state of choice.

My road to certification was a long, perilous one that ended with a phone call from the city saying "Nick James will not teach tomorrow if his certification is not complete." Yep. My paperwork had not gone through by the day before school, which meant I had to take a trip down to the headquarters of the NYC Department of Education to see what was going on with the paperwork I had submitted in a timely fashion many weeks prior to the beginning of school. I'd actually begun the process more than six months prior to the beginning of school.

Going from Kansas to New York things can be tricky. States often have what's referred to as certification reciprocity, meaning that some states only accept teachers from certain other states. Now, I believe New York got rid of excluding certain states from reciprocity, but the process a year and a half ago left my head spinning enough that I'm not really sure what New York State wants from it's teacher candidates before they teach. They wanted me to pass four certification exams, take trips to the NYC DOE offices numerous times, call the state office in Albany a few times, dance around with a tutu, sweat for the several weeks leading up to school and finally pull strings most people don't have to push my certification through in time to teach. Pretty sweet, right?

Some good advice I took away from my advisor at the School of Ed was to go ahead and get the certification my home state offered at the end of my teacher program. While I applied directly to New York State, having a Kansas certification helped the process along considerably, even though it was impossible to tell that would be the case by reading the certification requirements. If my certification had not gone through and my principal had kept me in the classroom anyway, things would have gotten way worse if I'd not been certified in any state. Getting certified in two states ended up costing more money of course between processing fees and three additional certification exams, but it was worth it.

If you haven't checked out what you'll need to be able to teach you should still have plenty of time, but get on it. You can find most certification requirements online. I was contacted recently by the journalist working for the website certificationmap.com, which is a pretty decent starting point for anyone leaving their state to teach. You can find some preliminary information and links to state's certification requirements.

Sweet Interview
The site also has a blog on which they're interviewing teachers about their craft, why they went into the field, etc. The man who contacted me asked me to fill out a few questions and then put my answers up as a post on December 28th. Nice!

Today's Wine: Franciscan Cabernet 2006. This one was recommended by Betty in an earlier post. I couldn't find the Cabernet in New York, but I found it on a trip back home. While a bit more expensive than what I usually buy, it was a great bottle of Cabernet. Very well-balanced and complex on the palate. Between the recommendation, the great bottle and the fact that my father picked it up for me, I was living large last night.

Low Attendance Days

2009-12-26T15:47:00.006-05:00

Attendance is a major issue for many of our students. It's the major issue with our school's progress and it oftentimes leaves our administration and staff scratching our heads about how to increase our numbers. Right now we're averaging about eighty-five percent as a school, although the high school averages in the seventies while the middle school averages a bit higher (our seventh graders in particular never miss school, which makes me very excited about teaching them next year). The numbers are averages, so of course there are good attendance days and bad attendance days. The numbers also drive us to plan around them, which is both smart and dangerous.

Last year I did not anticipate one of the the lower-end outliers: Halloween. It was really poor planning on my part, but my lack of experience and inability to accept the fact that students oftentimes don't do what they're supposed to do led to a major project almost falling flat in front of my administration.

On Halloween (a Friday) I planned a work day during which the students were to complete speeches for a rally the following Monday. They were writing speeches about the presidential race, either supporting Obama or McCain (I did actually have one student write one supporting McCain, though it was a bit sarcastic). It had begun to dawn on me that Friday's had lower attendance rates, but last year on Halloween the attendance in the eighth grade bottomed out at around twenty-five percent. When that happens the motivation of the students who do come to school plummets and the amount of work that is completed is abysmal. Come the following Monday, I had to give students the first half of the period to finish speeches before they were given. Smiling nervously at the administrators who had come to watch, wondering if the whole thing was going to fall apart, the students who I hand-picked to give speeches actually did fairly well.

The day before Winter Break this year showed something interesting about which students tend to show up on days before a break. Because our classes are highly tracked we have been able to see the dramatic differences between low and high achievers at our school. The turnout on Wednesday was as we expected, but was not perhaps what people off the front lines expect: the high-end students and the low-end students show up; the students in the middle do not.

The reasons for this are numerous, but if you simplify it completely: high-end students come because they are motivated to succeed, the low-end students come because they oftentimes have no where else to go and they want to be in a warm, familiar place before they head into a break that will be less than spectacular. The middle of the road students, on the other hand, have neither of these incentives working for them. They know that the day before break most teachers aren't going to plan anything major and there is the assumption that other students will be absent, so they can be as well. They may also simply want to extend their break by a day.

Fridays in general mean a sharp decline in attendance. Students look for that three-day weekend, some feeling that they've done enough work by showing up at least three days of the week (perhaps they even followed directions!). While we should try to boost attendance on Fridays and other low-attendance days, we also need to plan for the fact that many students will not be present. On one end of the spectrum, the day before break this year saw our high school teachers taking their students to the movies, which meant half their students stayed home and the other half were doing nothing academic. Our ninth grade science teacher complained that the teachers allowed the students to dictate what was going to happen that day, as the teachers made the assumption that absolutely nothing academic could be done on that (whether that was true or not is debatable). The other end was what I did in my classroom, which was a huge gamble, though less of one because I teach middle school and not high school.

I did plan something academic this year before break. I've done my best to push the students academically and somehow, with an hour left before ten days of break, my high-tracked class (which had been reamed out all day for goofing around), buckled down and for the most part finished five-paragraph essays about working conditions in the early 1900s and what the government and individuals did to improve those conditions. While I got a number of pretty awesome presents for Christmas this year, that one trumped them easily. I'm still trying to figure out what happened, but I'm happy as a lark about it.

As a first year teacher something that happens a lot is that students dictate the tempo of instruction. I struggled so much last year with this, thinking that "students aren't going to do s*** anyway, so why plan for it?" This is dangerous. On low-attendance days allowing students to dictate what is going to happen empowers them to take control on other days. Of course there is a balance to be had- planning huge assessments or assignments for low attendance days is also not the answer (it'll be like pulling teeth to get my students who were absent for that essay to actually complete it), but if you expect that the students will not produce anything that day, they won't- and many of them won't even show up.

Today's Wine: Louis Martini Cabernet and a cheap house wine at a bar. These were had at a local establishment out in semi-small town USA. The cheap something may have been the strangest red wine I've ever had. It was bad, to be sure, but it tasted as if they'd left the grapes out. It wasn't light-bodied, it had no body. The waitress was very gracious, taking it back and asking what "flavor" we'd like to try instead. I've written about Louis Martini before and knew it would be just fine, so I chose that flavor.

Winter Leave

2009-12-22T23:21:00.007-05:00

Tomorrow we start winter break. Last year it was like entering some kind of cloud- an alternate universe that was my life prior to starting work on the front lines. Here are a couple quotes from what I wrote in my journal about the break:

The first four months of school were certainly startling... My students knocked me on my knees, I hit survival mode on the first day of school and was reeling backward, literally trying to stay alive during the first couple weeks of school. Everything I believed about education and about what I wanted to do with my life came crashing to the ground around me and as I sat sorting through the pieces the school year marched on dragging me along by my heels. It took two months for me to stand up and move forward to catch up with my students and the massive beast that was my classroom and my piece of the education system in New York City. During that time I appeared to everyone in the setting as a meek, skinny white guy from the Midwest trying very hard to survive in a setting that was entirely foreign to most human beings.

By the time the break rolled around last year, I felt as if my feet had hit the ground, but barely. It was my major accomplishment. While things certainly weren't fantastic in my classroom, I felt as though I was vertical and moving, and I'd begun to roll with some of the punches. That said, it was still ridiculously unclear what in the world I would need to do to be successful by my own standard.

It's felt that I never left, really. I'd been in the city for five straight months (save a weekend in Houston) and it feels like I was just here (Kansas) yesterday. It'll be interesting to see how long that feeling lasts. July will probably be the next time that I visit the Midwest.

When I was sitting on my parents' couch last December it felt as though everything I'd done in the four months prior was a thousand miles away (according to Google Maps, it's 1,223) or that someone else had done it and I had simply watched them closely. Perhaps that meant I was really back in my element. New York had been so jarring that it certainly could not be considered my element. If your time in the classroom has been less than stellar, getting out of the city is important if for no other reason than it helps remind you that things can be sane and normal (according to your own definition).

This year I really need to get out of the city as well. The amount of agitation, disrespect, city attitude and nutso people in these parts have really gotten to me lately. They are a minority and I have certainly defended New Yorkers as people who are just as nice as any other group of people once you get to know them, but the callousness that permeates crowds here has started to get under my skin. While last year I needed to get away to show myself again that the world hadn't gone completely insane, this year I simply want a short break from the city so I can appreciate it a bit more, relax and get ready for the spring.

Today's Wine: Charles Shaw Shiraz. Again, not as dry as their Cabernet, but a bit peppery like Shiraz oftentimes is. It also supported the fact that for the price, Charles Shaw is incredibly acceptable.

"Happy" Holidays

2009-12-20T12:25:00.001-05:00

Ah, the holidays. Last night it snowed here in the city and it's very white outside. It reminds me of the years my parents would pile all six of us kids into an ugly Buick station wagon (the kind with the fake wood paneling) and make the trek from Kansas to Minneapolis to visit the rest of my relatives. We'd be jammed in so tight that we couldn't move for the eight hours we were in the car (it was probably planned that way by my parents), and to get out to go to the bathroom took agility and skill in order to keep tons of suitcases and presents from crushing you, your baby brother or any innocent bystanders outside of the car.

Once up in the Twin Cities, we'd go to a Christmas dinner at one grandparent's house on Christmas Eve and the other on Christmas Day. Both were pretty fantastic in their own right. My mom's family kept kids in ties and dresses and we sat around a single table with cloth napkins eating Norwegian meatballs. After dinner I'd run around in a pair of wooden clogs brought from the old country. My dad's family was quite the opposite. Their were thirty plus grandchildren, eight sets of aunts and uncles and other family friends (topping twenty five adults sometimes) all crammed into a single-story rambler surrounded by a hundred feet of snow. Everyone always had plenty to eat, plenty of toys by the end of the day and plenty of cousins to goof around with. While the journey up and down the middle of the U.S. wasn't our favorite, my brothers and sisters and I always loved the holidays and getting to see our whole family.

I'm not too sure, but before those breaks our behavior in school probably changed. Knowing full and well that all you have to do is "survive" another couple days doesn't always motivate you to do astounding things academically. We acted the way we did because we were excited that we were going to get a break. We acted that way because school was going to be out and, while we might complain about being bored once or twice before the New Year, winter break was something to be appreciated.

Something I found out last year is that this is not the story for many of our students. While I knew that none of them would be driving to Minneapolis and many wouldn't be getting a lot of presents, what I didn't know is that some of the the students hate the holidays- especially the ones causing all of the trouble in your classes just before the break. How they feel about the holidays is usually reflected in their behavior. The continuum of student behavior ranges from those who do far better than normal to increase their present potential to those who know the holidays are not going to be a celebration at all. Most students are somewhere in between, but the ones at the extreme ends are the ones who are, as usual, the most interesting/back-breaking.

The behavior of the students on the worrisome side of the spectrum starts going downhill a couple weeks before the holidays. The stories range from students who will not have enough to eat for a week and a half to children waiting for an estranged parent to bring them a promised present, which simply won't happen. Unfortunately many of the students who have a parent absent in his or her life don't give up hope they'll come back for holidays until he or she is in high school. Many of the students are also anticipating a lack of structure for a week and a half that is difficult to deal with. There are a hundred reasons why they may not like the holidays, the point is that they rough if you're not used to spending quality, healthy time with your family.

As for the students who acquired the abilities to smile, listen to you and complete an assignment for the first time in anticipation of their respective gift-receiving holiday, enjoy it while it lasts, call their parents to let them know they're working hard and hope for some residual effect come January.

Keep in mind that as you're struggling to keep your classroom in order before the break, your students may be struggling with the thought of a rough couple weeks ahead of them. Many of the ones you've been battling all year are the ones who are actually going to miss your classroom the most. For the past four months you've been showing up every day (or very nearly every day) to do what you can for them. Whether or not they're responding, listening, working or otherwise, you've done that for them- and you'll be back for them after the holidays.

Today's Wine: Mulled Wine/Gluehwein/Gloegg. This is, of course, spiced, fortified wine. There are a lot of recipes out there for it, but I use the toss-it-together method, which works out just fine. For each bottle of not expensive red wine, put in a splash of vanilla, an orange cut in half with some cloves stuck in it, a cinnamon stick, a healthy splash of Grand Marnier if you have it and some sugar (start with a quarter cup and add more if you want). Heat and drink.

Holiday Parties

2009-12-17T20:54:00.001-05:00

When I started writing this post it was my intention to tell you to take no part in holiday parties for students. This was because the thought of mine last year makes my stomach churn a bit. I was very, very frustrated after a day we tried to give the students who came to school a bit of a break but during which we were handed loads of discipline problems and headaches. What changed was my giving a draft of the post to a fellow teacher in my school who told me how her holiday party went last year.

These are some of the things she said:

In order to have a successful party, or even easy day, you have to have the time be particularly structured. If the students have a positive community and respect for their teacher, celebrations can worthwhile and fun.

We fell down right there last year. We didn't have a structure to the activities we did, only the day itself. Just like the classroom has to be structured, celebration time needs to be as well. My classroom (and two of my teammates') were also not as a rule positive communities where respect for the teacher was to be found.

Students have to see the value in what they're doing. Watching a movie for the sake of watching a movie is transparent, while watching a movie after you've read a book is desirable. The kids know what to expect and have been likely looking forward to watching the movie ever since the reading of the book began.

We showed a movie last year, but we showed it just to show it. That meant "do whatever we please time" to most of the students, which ended in half the students present being kicked out of a movie room for the rest of the day into a detention room that was monitored in shifts, which was less than entertaining for the teachers doing the monitoring.

Holidays are a little different, but I even had a nice holiday party last year. I sugar-coated it as a "Publishing Party" and it seemed scholastically oriented and viable. Since there was a structure to the day, there was a structure to the party and things went off without a hitch.

We tried to teach some small lessons in the morning and show a movie in the afternoon, but even the class schedule was completely different than what the students were used to. By the time the movie rolled around in the afternoon they would have been a little nuts on a regular day, to say nothing of the day before winter break.

You have to have student buy-in. You have to put them in charge sometimes so that they feel what they are doing is meaningful. Have a plate passer-outer and juice-pourer and a napkin-giver. All of a sudden you have an entire classroom working for the party! And THAT is what having a successful party is all about.

Last year I ran around like the waiter I used to be brewing hot chocolate for students, popping popcorn and handing both to the students in the movie room. At this point in the year my trust in the students had been so shattered by their lack of participation and terrible behavior in class that I flat rejected offers to help with handing these things out- probably not smart.

This year I am planning no holiday party. The teachers on my team (two of four of which are new to the school/team) and I are all having some kind of culminating project in each of our classes (mine was today- a rally for modern progressive issues topped off with a few bags of chips), but we aren't going to try to have a grade-wide celebration.

If you're still struggling with management and getting a handle on your class, plan something that's educational, but not incredibly difficult. Stick to all daily routines you have in place. Last year two days before the botched holiday bash I brought in for each of my students two of my favorite cookie and one of those small candy canes wrapped in a gift bag with ribbon. Unlike most of the other things I'd handed out last fall, these were not based on merit or performance or behavior, which meant everyone got one. I can't tell for sure, but the gesture may have been something of a turning point in the relationship I had with those kids. Whatever did it, things started to get better after break.

Today's Wine: Misterio Malbec 2006. This made for smooth drinking and, as is usual with Malbecs (for me), a nice bottle for the table.

Start an After School Program

2009-12-13T15:30:00.001-05:00

Sometime in early December last year I was having a particularly bad day and was down in the dumps about the fact that many of my high-end students in my classes were standing on the deck watching as I was drowning and many of their classmates were swimming circles around me. They were probably wondering when and if I was going to get it together and start teaching. To say the least, the work load was getting to me and I felt like all of my options for controlling my classes were exhausted.

That's when my assistant principal walked in and told me I should start an after-school program. I' m not sure what the look on face was when he said that. It was probably either blank, as if he'd just spoken to me in Ukrainian, or I gave him a look that sent him the message that he'd fallen off his rocker and smashed his head against something hard on the floor. By the time he was done talking, however, I was on board.

By this time last year I was becoming very cynical and angry about my job. I started an after-school program to help lift up my high-end students as much as to preserve my sanity. I drafted a letter and handed it to the few students doing well in my class inviting them to meet me after school to talk about starting a program. I called their parents to let them know I was creating an honors after-school program and that their child was invited to attend. When all was said and done I had about seven students who wanted to stay/were told to stay by their parents- about half of the students I invited. They stayed with me for the rest of the year, agreeing to do pretty much whatever for the small price of a granola bar or popcorn during the meetings.

By June the group had served many purposes. They reminded me that I love teaching. They taught me about themselves and their peers through conversations I couldn't have during the school day. They also helped me complete my master's thesis by serving as a sample population. In June I wondered how much they really got out of the program, though I was satisfied that it was an academic venture outside of school hours and was more educational than the video games they would have been playing otherwise.

I didn't give the program a second thought after school let out, figuring it was over and done with and that those students moved on to high school (most of them still at our school). It wasn't until several of them approached me in September this year and asked if I was going to have another program that I realized that they even really enjoyed it. One of the students whose parents had made him attend for fear that he'd be jumped walking home after school was one of those really pressing for it.

These students certainly caught me off guard. They wanted me to start another after-school program? What was more, these students were already scheduled to be in school from 8:15 to 4:00PM. Now they wanted to stay until 5PM? I thought they were nuts, but told them I'd think about it and perhaps start one after school got underway and we all were settled in.

After several more requests I ended up organizing and starting one two weeks ago. Instead of seven or eight eighth graders coming to learn how to analyze documents for U.S. history, I now have seven ninth and eighth graders coming to learn German (which is my second, random certification) twice a week until 5PM. I'm not sure if there's a nerdier, stranger bunch of students in the South Bronx, but I'm happy as heck to have them. I wrote a bit about this in my post titled Home Field Advantage. Having students coming back into my classroom on a regular basis to say hello has been an amazing feeling. My relationships with two of the biggest pains in my ass last year have done one-eighties, to boot. While my after-school kids are way too talkative and can also be pains sometimes, they think I have something to give them, which makes me think that I might.

It's incredibly difficult to differentiate if there are any behavioral problems in a classroom. Generally the extra attention and time that would be used to push high-level students is used to deal with the ones who are going nuts, throwing things and attacking your sanity. Starting an after school program provided an outlet for me last year to get some real teaching done for students who were committed to learning. It may be something to consider if you're struggling to justify your existence in your classroom, as I oftentimes did last year. If you're pulling out the rest of your hair right now and wondering what the hell has been going on for the past three and a half months, try taking a step back and finding a way to really teach a small group of students. It may really remind you why you're here.

Today's Wine: Charles Shaw Chardonnay. I used this while making a fancy schmancy wine reduction sauce for some pasta. I generally like to sip whatever it is I'm cooking while cooking. It's pretty standard quality for the 3-Buck Chucks- great value for the price, but nothing to scream from the rooftops about otherwise.

Coverages

2009-12-11T22:45:00.001-05:00

Last year I was asked to step in and cover a class for a teacher who was inexplicably absent. The students had been "my students" for months and while I wanted to believe that they would listen to me better than they would listen to a substitute, they didn't seem to want to go along with that fantasy.

When I walked into that room and could not get the attention of the class, I asked why they wouldn't get quiet and they responded with, "You're not our teacher for this class. You're a substitute." From there on all bets were off. I walked into that class hoping only for some semblance of order and as little headache as possible. I was given no lesson plan, had no computer and no resources other than what I could scrape together in the room. My grand plan was to look to the classroom library, hand out books and ask the students to read (which really pissed off the absent teacher when she got back, as she'd spent some time working on that library). Their grand plan turned out to be something totally different, although it did involve books from the classroom library. My version involved books in their hands, while their version involved books on the floor.

Today I had my first coverage of the year. Like last year, I taught the class the period before and then followed them to the next class. Like last year I started with a joke along the lines of "You guys are SO lucky that you get ME for two periods in a row!" This class is the class that had been tearing apart our math teacher. This class has been the root of rumors and the butt of numerous jokes. Walking into the room I was less than thrilled to be holding a one-paragraph lesson plan with seventy minutes between us and lunch (during which I'd be running lunch detention).

What happened next was miraculous and surreal. I read the email to the students, gave them some paper out of a closet in the classroom and told them to get to work. It took them about ten or fifteen minutes, but the students got to work quietly. This was probably due to a lot of factors that I'll spare myself the task of writing about, but the point is that with a very similar population it was night and day from last year. Last year the students hardly considered me their teacher outside of my own classroom and the period they had me. This year, even though this particular group doesn't care too much for me, they recognized the fact that I was in charge in the room. That's very encouraging for when I have them in my own classroom from this point forward.

It's also pretty nice to identify another thing that's gotten much better since last year.

Today's Wine: SIPranillo Tempranillo 2006 (Spanish). While I generally like drier wines, this one was really well-balanced and went incredibly well on the table with some cheese and prosciutto. It's full-bodied, but was pretty soft on the palate.

Get Off the Soap Box

2009-12-07T23:02:00.000-05:00

Sometimes in the classroom I have verbal diarrhea. The sheer volume of the stuff coming out of my mouth is impressive, if excessive. It's as though I'm narrating what the class is doing, explaining directions, giving my opinion on any number of things in a never-ending string of gestures and phrases that is tuned out by most students after about twenty seconds and is not tuned back into until I change the volume of my voice from loud to incredibly loud, say something they really want to hear that has nothing to do with what we're doing in class, or threaten them with extending the period into lunch or past the end of the day.

In addition to this verbal phenomena, I also take the time out of my busy day on many days of the year to tell students about life's mysteries, what they can expect from high school, college, future employers (sometimes current employers), parents, siblings, etc. I talk about the psychology that explains why people act and tell them that their actions are going to affect whether they graduate or not. Sometimes my brain tunes out and my mouth just goes, spouting something that, while intelligible to my friends who have a decent graduate level education, is certainly not something my eighth graders understand.

Now, this desire to tell students the facts of school and sometimes life is derived from a very real concern about their well-beings, how well they're doing in school compared to the average American student and unsettling statistics about what will happen to them if they don't turn around their behavior and finish high school. The added stress of a semi-controlled classrooms with a few very unruly students draws out the lecture and increases the desire to cut the lesson about citizenship and simply "tell students how it is." This preaching to students, even if it does sink in with a couple of them in the long run, generally leads to a lot of eye-rolling and a dramatic increase in talking and unruly behavior by those who are most often guilty of . The irony, of course, is those talking and ignoring and/or mocking the advice/ideas I've talked about are exactly those who need to be listening. As you'll be able to tell in time, the idea of a State of the Class Address is difficult to pull off especially on semi-weekly basis.

When talking to a rather difficult class, less is generally more. Standing up on a soap box and telling a class what they're doing wrong, why it's wrong and how they're going to fix it; trying to make a speech about what things should be when they simply are not that way; and trying to tell students anything important when they are more interested in showing their friends how well they defy authority by showing you the finger is generally not incredibly effective.

Step away from the podium. Common sense says trying to talk down a class that is refusing to listen is not going to be effective. The impulse you developed in undergrad says that if you present a reasonable argument that the students are going to stop in their tracks, say,"Gee willikers, he's right," and amend their ways. If you've been on the front since September you already know that's ridiculous. For those classes that are giving you particular trouble, try to reduce the number of words you say to the bare minimum. If the students have a very short attention span for you when you're talking (whether they should or not), it's your job to place your instruction into that window and to try to expand it.

Today's Wine: Project Happiness Syrah. This bottle only has a yellow happy face on the front of it. Most of the reviews seem a bit down on it, but what I had of it followed the Charles Shaw Shiraz, so the Project Happiness tasted pretty alright.

Plan Your Time Wisely

2009-12-03T16:45:00.001-05:00

My girlfriend asked me today what I did on my planning period. She'd noticed that no matter what I did during it, I always planned my lesson at home anyway. She was trying to tease out of me the fact that I might not use it as wisely as I could.

My planning period is right after my first period class. Last year it was often spent wondering how I could salvage for my other classes a meticulously-planned lesson that had just crumbled away before thirty eighth graders. That sometimes meant rewriting a PowerPoint or scrapping the whole thing and getting something new for the rest of the classes in order to preserve order.

This year when first period is over I first head into the hall and make sure it is cleared. That always takes a few minutes, as I help clear the hall of eighth graders and then of the ninth graders who pass through the same hall after the eighth graders are done passing (we don't have any official passing periods- an effort to reduce incidents in the hallways; students move directly from one class to the next). When that's all over I generally use the restroom and then head to a small science prep room that fits a couple desks and refrigerator. I pull up the detention log for our grade and write down the names of our detainees for the day on post-it notes to hand to the other teachers on my team so they can lasso the rapscallions who owe us time at lunch. From there I make any alteration to the day's lesson plan that need to be made for the rest of my classes, answer any emails that need answering and attend to any paperwork or errands I need to run around the school (talking to the secretary or an AP, making extra copies for my classes after my prep, etc.). Other than those things, I feel like I've been doing a lot of putzing around during my planning this year. I sometimes start planning the next day's lesson, but know full and well that it won't get done during that period, so I'm generally not as focused as I could be. This problem is exacerbated by the knowledge that I haven't taught that day's lesson to most of my students and therefore cannot know exactly what I'll need to cover the next day- I may change my mind about what to teach based on how my students perform on a given day in class.

From now on I'm going to try to get my grading done and entered during my prep period. Up until this point I've been dedicating about four hours of my Saturday to pouring over my students' work and getting an idea of what they have or have not learned in the past week. Grading every day will allow me to more easily catch those who are having issues with an aspect of the unit. It will also hopefully make me more productive during my planning period.

Advice for the First Years- Pick one part of your job that fits into the time you are allowed for your prep period. Make sure that thing gets done every day. Last year after school I retreated to my bunker apartment in Queens and the time I spent there was very unstructured, which oftentimes meant it took forever to get anything done. That's fine if everything gets done, but I should have used the structured part of my day- the time I spent at school- to organize my job and make it easier for me to complete.

Today's Wine: Domaine Vigouroux Gouleyant Malbec Cahors 2007. Lately the reds I've been drinking have not struck me as fruity. This is no exception. It was pretty good- smokey and herby. It hails from the region called the South West of France.

Lesson Writer's Block

2009-11-30T17:30:00.001-05:00

Today I was trying to get a lesson together for tomorrow and had a major throw-back to last year. The urge to toss my papers to the floor and storm out of my apartment came way to close to fruition. I'm not even sure what brought it on. The lesson I was trying to come up with was just not coming to me, which probably aggravated the problem, but the issue of lesson writer's block has happened before this year. Luckily I had a scheduled break to go hang out with a friend of mine for a couple hours and to get my mind off of work.

There would be nights last year when I would bang my head against things. There would be nights when I'd get so frustrated that I'd throw my fifth grade New York State history text across my apartment and fume, thinking, "Why the hell am I putting this much effort into a lesson that my students are going to ignore, trample over and complete a fraction of anyway? What incentive do I have to do my job if they aren't even going to attempt their job?!! This is a crock of sh**." The mental block that got in the way of my lessons last year was that I imagined every part of it being torn apart by unruly students, as was the case most days in my classroom. It was as if my mind anticipated those problems and said, "Nope, that won't work. They aren't going to listen if you do or say that. Scrap that one." It pissed me off further that I knew I'd be able to write a lesson if they'd just listen for once. Today my mind remembered that feeling all too well, perhaps because a few of my students this year have gotten on my nerves lately.

Take a breath. Take a break. Walk away from the lesson and come back to it.

This was the time of year when things continued to get harder for me last year. While I'd grown numb to certain parts of the job, my self-assumed failure as an educator was still glaring at me every second I was in the classroom. It was getting pretty old by December. My mentors kept saying that things would get better, that the second year would be infinitely better and that I needed to stick in there. At this point last year I was about ready to tell them to shove it.

If this is your first year and things aren't stellar, get a grip and hold on tighter until after winter break. December is not the most glorious month for teaching. The sun isn't out, it's getting colder and things aren't great for many of your students at home in the winter. My mentors were right when they said it would get better. It has, and it got better after Christmas last year, but not until after.

If you are having trouble getting through the day-to-day stuff remember that the better job you do writing lessons this year the easier your second year will be. Remember (what you believe to be) the small minority of students who are actually doing their jobs in your classes and the fact that they deserve and need everything you can give them. You didn't jump into this job completely naive of the fact that it would be rough- just of what "rough" would actually mean. Take a deep breath, a longer break is around the corner and you'll be able to rest up and dig in again and prep yourself for the students after winter break.

Today's Wine: A very fine bottle of Charles Shaw Cabernet.

Pinch Lesson Plan

2009-11-28T11:07:00.000-05:00

This past week I changed two lessons on the fly in class. The lessons I planned were not well-designed for the class in which I implemented them, which left me with the choices of drowning for forty minutes or taking a drastically different route than what I'd mapped out. It went as well as could be expected- no mutiny in the classroom, although a couple students tried.

Monday I planned a lesson to engage students in the vocabulary that they need to know for the unit that will unfold over the next month. We did an activity that helped them to review the definitions, and then were going to play charades to help them visualize the definitions and hit hard on kinesthetic learning. My first period class has been my most troublesome this year and at the point in the lesson when I was trying to explain how to play charades they wouldn't even get quiet. At that point it became deafeningly apparent that getting the students up in front of the group to act out words like "suffrage" or "labor unions" was going to be tough. Trying to talk in front of a group who isn't listening at all whatsoever is incredibly difficult. That task becomes infinitely worse when it's in front of a group of peers, of course, and I knew from a similar incident last year that if I asked students to come do anything academic in front of a crowd of their jeering friends, I'd have a classroom of eighth graders refusing to follow directions and shutting down my lesson, thereby shutting down my authority in the classroom. That incident last year resulting in an entire class refusing to come up to present because the rest of the class was talking to much and being rowdy.

It was at that point on Monday when even I couldn't get the group to listen that I switched gears and picked up the speed of the lesson. Instead of charades I told the students to turn the vocabulary handout over, make four boxes and then pick four words we covered. The students then created a graphic representation of the word (they drew stick figures), wrote the definition in their own words, and used the word in a sentence. The incredible thing was for one of the first times this year the class got quiet and nearly every student completed the assignment as directed. What is more is that I don't think they noticed that the lesson had changed at all.

T I was going to show a film (Iron-Jawed Angels) to help illustrate what the women's rights movement was all about in the 1800s and early 1900s. My first period class already lost movie privileges because they couldn't handle watching a film with some mild violence without laughing hysterically at very serious content. This time during my last period class the students would not get quiet to discuss the things we needed to in order to prepare for the movie. The general feeling in the room was far more talkative and rebellious than usual, so I told them if they were not quiet in fifteen seconds that we would scrap the movie and do another assignment, as I couldn't have students talking through the movie. They didn't and I couldn't balk.

I didn't say anything at the end of the fifteen seconds. I just started counting how many students were present with my fingers- something that actually got the students curious and quiet. I walked to the bookcase, stacked enough books for partners to share at the front of each row, told them to pass them back and as they did I flipped through the book hoping to god there was something I could do with women's suffrage. Luckily there was (if there hadn't been, I would have used a different activity from the unit), and I gave the direction to open the books to that page and complete an assignment distinguishing fact from opinion using a suffragette article. Done. They all completed it and one student even asked near the end of the period if that was the assignment I'd planned for them, which got some snide remarks out of other students. At least they were aware that they'd misbehaved and a privilege had been taken away.

Last year I was so terrified to switch things up mid-lesson and so bad at it that I very rarely tried it. Those times that I did it was so apparent that I was very irate that the students took the switch personally and didn't do anything, which meant a long period of floundering and a classroom full of students defying adult authority. That of course leads to a lot of issues down the road, which in turn made the situation even more stressful. Of course the goal is to not have to switch things up mid-lesson, but sometimes you realize that the students are simply not going to get anything out of the lesson for whatever reason. Try to be cool-headed about the switch, pick an activity that is ridiculously straight-forward (the text can be a decent option), and don't back down. If it isn't necessary don't immediately point out that they are being terrible and you are switching things up, just switch and try to get them working. If possible, to the end of the period you can have the conversation about what you wanted to do, why you couldn't do it and how to move forward from the incident.

If this happens remember that the breakdown is most likely due to their behavior, not an unsound lesson. Whether your management is an issue or not, the point is that if it's blindingly apparent that the students aren't really going to do the lesson and if they aren't going to follow directions, you need to give them something that they will do, regardless of how it compares to your original lesson in terms of educational value.

Today's Wine: Il Borgo Montepulciano D'Abruzzo 2008- pretty good red. It had some kind of a strange earthy feel when I drank it. It might have been what I was eating or something, but it was different from what I normally drink.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

2009-11-24T19:33:00.000-05:00

Parent conferences have the potential to be terrible or awesome. There may be crying, screaming, yelling, praise of students or even a worthwhile conversation. It might be the first opportunity you have to tell a student and his/her advocate (parent, guardian, aunt, uncle, older sibling, you get the idea) what's what and that you care about them and are trying to help them. They can also be a waste of time; it depends on you and it depends on the parent involved.

Last year the several hours before conferences began were kind of surreal. It struck me as strange that I was so young and inexperienced, having quite a lot of trouble in the classroom, and yet a bunch of parents were about to show up, ask how their child was doing and perhaps even request advice from me on what they can do as a parent to help their student. At this point in the fall I didn't feel like I had much more to give. I was run down, exhausted and very irritated with the majority of my students- probably not the best combination if you want to have productive meetings with their parents.

This year I looked forward to conferences. I felt as though I could really offer some feedback on what the child needs to be doing in order to pass my class. I have a much better understanding of what I'm expecting of students this year, which makes it much easier to relate to parents. As a result of the retreat I went on a little while ago, I was still a bit leery of trying to suggest what parents can do at home to better support their child, but did my best and had some good conversations.

From what I can tell, parent conferences in the city are much, much different from those in the suburbs. The only card our parents really have to play is their parent card- they are the parent, are doing their best with their child and know what's best for their child. That's fine; they should play that card. It means they are advocating for their child.

UNlike in the suburbs, the teachers (even brand new ones) are better-paid and have more formal education than many parents walking through the door. That can be pretty intimidating to the parent. Many of our parents also did not have the best go of things when they were in school, which means that when they come to a conference they often see it as another confrontation with another teacher. Some are in the country illegally and are very nervous to interact with any government institution, including schools. I've not been on the teaching end of suburban parent conferences, but the reports I get from my friends and colleagues back home are that many parents try to play the "I'm much older, wiser, and more powerful than you so you will listen to what I have to say and do for my child everything I demand" card. The degree to which this card is played by parents in that setting is probably variant on a lot of factors, but it's not been present, let alone come out, in the three sets of parent conferences I've had in the city.

My parents this year varied from crying in disappointment to nearly crying when their beaming student translated my over-the-top praise of their child. One aunt very angry at her niece came in, scolded her niece, asked, "Why you got a problem with this teacher? Just do the work and then you can ignore the teachers you don't like" and was out the door in less than a minute. The conversations I had with a couple I think will help and with others I can already tell were loads of hot air. The point is, however, that I have at least two students genuinely trying harder, and I think this year I know how to help them run with that just a bit better than I did last year.

Tips for Conferences:

sit around a table so that you're on the same playing field as everyone in attendance
have copies of the students' grades ready to hand to parents
type out a letter with your contact information and any updates for your class
when using a translator, look at the parent when you're speaking. A lot of people look at the translator, which alienates the parent. They might be able to understand some of what you're saying, and they'll definitely pick up better on your inflection

Today's Wine: Monte Degli Angeli Monferrato Pinot Noir 2008. The 2006 got a raving review on Snooth.com. I preferred this one to a lot of Pinot Noirs out there because many are really light reds and I prefer medium to full-bodied reds. This bottle wasn't too light and was really easy to drink. The label talks about a lot of fruit flavor, but I didn't find it that way.

Edwize X 2

2009-11-21T18:15:00.001-05:00

I was notified that a second blog post from this thing is going up on Edwize and into the New York Teacher. It's the stuff I wrote on Flunking Students. After rereading the post I realized it's actually pretty tame, and I could have gone on a much larger rant regarding how I oftentimes feel about the students I have who flunk my class and why they flunk my class. I said at the end of the article "the students who tried really hard did well in my class while those who did not failed," but there were also a lot of students in the middle with grades swimming around arbitrarily and a lot on the cusp who I've passed that I wouldn't have in a thousand years before I came to the city.

I might have to amend the last bit of that statement as well, as it seems imply that if a student did not try very hard in my class they did not pass. That's not true. There were plenty that put forth very little and somehow still passed my class. I believe it's that way in a lot of places, however.

Anyway, while it's not the New York Times, I'm certainly going to take the publication. On Edwize.org they renamed the piece "Making the Grade". I guess "Flunk Them All?" didn't sound as much like a positive teacher trying to help students. There are certainly days when I want to hand out F's like Halloween candy, though.

Today's Wine: A house Cabernet we got with some really good Chinese food at a place called Ging on the Upper East Side.

Coming Down from a Conference High

2009-11-19T17:36:00.000-05:00

Last year I was very bright-eyed when I hit the ground in the Bronx. With what I felt was moderate knowledge of what education should be and my experience teaching two different populations- rural/suburban Kansans and military brats- I thought I could probably handle another population of students, even if they were a bit more difficult (that was incorrect). That said, when I attended the NCSS conference last year I came back re-energized with my head back in the clouds thinking yet again about what education should be in my classroom, rather than what it was. That Monday was one of the most difficult days of the year for me.

Conferences have the power to fill your head with ideas. If you go to the worthwhile sessions you might very well see incredible educators sharing what they do to help their students learn in extraordinary ways. I once attended a session about a guy who created a cross-curricular unit on the Civil War that involved all major subject areas, a classroom management plan, students marching through hallways with regiment flags, real collaboration by teachers and students across an entire grade, and a unit finale that was a camping trip at Gettysburg. It was incredible, but not something I would dream of doing in my own school.

The day I got back from NCSS 2008, I walked into school with a smile on my face and with ideas of Socratic seminars and student-led discussions dancing in my head. Given the fact that I still hadn't taken control of my classrooms very well, whatever activity I did that day as a result of those pie in the sky thoughts was a total wash that ended in me yelling a lot and feeling more exhausted than usual. My mentor came into my room to check on me and could tell what had happened without even asking. She helped me realize again that education in the setting we find ourselves is not what it should be. Teachers like the Civil War guy above, as well as our former selves as students in schools of ed would be appalled at some of the teaching practices we use, citing the fact that they're archaic and do not promote critical thinking skills enough. Doing so is certainly easier said than done.

It's important to know what is possible in other classrooms, even if it's not yet possible in yours. That said, you've got to realize that it takes time to get to the point when you'll be able to implement many of the ideas you learned about in the school of ed or elsewhere. It may be impossible to use many of them in the setting we teach in. Don't get discouraged, but realize that even in a setting that's further back from the front it's difficult for new teachers to pull off a lot of the more hands-on, progressive, technologically sound ideas being developed in the field right now. Be patient, keep your head up and remain in the loop about what is happening in classrooms around the country. I'm certain that your time will come, but not overnight. I'm still waiting for mine, but at least this year it seems like it's on the way.

Today's Wine: Arden Woods Cabernet Sauvignon 2005. This one was just fine. It was less than ten dollars and was a nice bottle for the table. One of the people drinking it with me said it had the essence of camping. Now, having camped quite a lot I can tell you there are a lot of things that describe the smell of camping. I believe she was referring to the oak and perhaps a bit of a smokey flavor you could get from this one, not the any of the other crazy things that require long showers once you get home.

Conferences for Teachers

2009-11-16T16:54:00.001-05:00

Conferences can be helpful and they can be excruciating. Sometimes it hinges on the food and drink provided, sometimes it hinges on how big and therefore how diverse the offerings at the conference are, and other times it’s purely the location that is a draw. I’ve had the opportunity to attend and present at the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) conference for the past four years and got to a Kansas World Language Association a couple years ago as well. I found the key to be squeezing what I want out of them rather than assuming amazing things will be handed to me just for attending.

The German educators conference was a trip. I only attended one day of the conference at Washburn University in our state’s “great” capitol- the banquet and the presentation about German art in either the eighteenth or nineteenth century (I can’t quite recall). The prospect of missing work to spend a lot of time in the city was not too enticing, but I decided to go at the request of my cooperating teacher in the fall of my student teaching year. She thought it would be good for me to network in anticipation of the job search that spring and I took it as an opportunity to practice speaking German. It ended up being a pretty good time. At the end of it I’d had my fill eat and drink and had even had a little nap during the presentation- my graduate work, student teaching and work as a waiter had taken a toll on my sleep schedule. After the conference I was practically handed my own German program at a high school outside Topeka and would receive several other inquiries from principals around the state (I was the only graduate in the entire state with a major in German ed, as far as I know). Overall it was good and fine, but the goals of the conference didn’t quite reach me.

The NCSS conference can either be a waste of time or a great place to learn about the latest pedagogical tricks of the trade. You can walk away with a lot of great free stuff and materials and ideas about what education can be, should be, and is or you can walk away thinking you wasted an entire weekend listened to the sound of hot air being blown from teachers using the conference as a therapy session. Like retreats, they can also provide some time away from the front line to think about what it is we’re doing in this profession.

Learning to pick out the worthwhile sessions to attend is incredibly important. Here's my advice when you're trying to figure out what to do with your time:

Workshops are very often a waste of time…and long
You don’t need to attend every session- take a little time to read through the descriptions and find some sessions that are going to support what you’re doing in the classroom
Be weary of poster presentations. Those guys usually weren’t accepted for a full-fledged session- sometimes for a reason that'll be obvious once you hear what they want to tell you
Take some time to go through the exhibition hall to collect free classroom resources (ex. the History Channel has given me a free DVD a couple times); Check out opportunities to do things like travel for free and get grants for doing things you might already want to do.

If you’re in a school of ed, shoot for sessions that sound interesting to you and are related to state standards. My first conference I had zero teaching experience, so it was hard to put the ideas into a frame of reference that was practical, so I simply tried to take in everything I could. Don’t sweat it if you can’t do everything that looks half-ways interesting. You might have a shot at using some of the ideas. That way in your first year, when you’re clutching the textbook at night wondering how you can possibly implement more entertaining lessons, you might be able to fall back on an idea or two that are simply enough to implement. Starting small with those sorts of things is important. My first year I went to the NCSS conference I went to some crazy and crazy bad sessions that, while perhaps interesting, were completely forgettable and which I've not used at all.

Connections
The conference can also be a time to make connections with other people. Start up some conversations with people at the sessions you attend and at any meeting you attend. This year the president of a non-profit organization attended my session and we struck up a conversation about how to incentivize families throughout the U.S. to spend more time on their children’s education. That led to him asking me to check out a beta version of his companies new online resource that’s not been released yet. If I give him some good feedback there’s no telling what might happen afterward.

Find a balance between the city and the conference and spending money to attend (if you have to) will seem far better spent. Aside from actually attending the conference, you should go out and see the city it’s in. So far all four cities (D.C., San Diego, Houston, and Atlanta) were new to me when I attended the NCSS conference. This time I’ve not been able to see as much of the city as I would have liked because of the schedule of the things I wanted to attend at the conference itself, but I got some great soul food Friday night, and went to the Georgia Aquarium Sunday, which apparently is the largest in the world. There are some pretty unreal fish there, to say the least. Going to the Jimmy Carter Library and to Ebenezar Baptist Church will have to wait for another visit.

Today's Wine: The Chuck- Cabernet

Whole Class Punishment

2009-11-14T19:30:00.001-05:00

Something I was guilty of quite a lot last year was punishing an entire classroom of students for the behavior of a few crazy students. When nearly an entire class is in an uproar and you're battling a group of thirty-plus students day in and day out it's hard not to get frustrated, accuse an entire class of being out of line and dish out a group punishment. If you think about it though, it is pretty unfair to punish the students, however few they may be, who are sitting through class always trying to do the right thing, but who are stuck in a room with way too many other students, many of whom are not in the right setting to be academically productive and who tend to act out each and every day in class.

Last year I found myself saying a lot of things like "you all need to understand that there are people out there that will ruin things and you need to learn to hold them accountable." This seems a bit misdirected. In a setting where keeping others accountable is not dreamed of, let alone embraced, punishing the students doing the right thing may only lead to them to acting out with the rest of the class in the future. The students doing their jobs depend on you to manage the class. Whether you do or not is not the issue. You are punishing those students because you are having difficulty managing the class. That's how they see it.

During the day I had an explosion last week I also had difficulty in another class, which was also on the verge of rebelling against silent reading. After trying to have another discussion on why it's important to learn to read non-fiction, a couple students starting goofing off and calling out to the class, ridiculing reading and the teaching methods in my classroom. As I was already irritable, I acted rashly. Instead of doing some role-playing to show what good interview skills are, I made them get quiet and write down PowerPoint slides instead- hardly sound teaching. The kicker was that a student pointed out that it was because of two students that twenty-eight were now having to write a ton of notes instead of doing what I'd planned for them.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't do what you can to help your classes realize their actions affect other students. Keeping a whole class a couple minutes into lunch until they are quiet so that they don't storm out into the hallway and the rest of the school being obnoxious is not a bad idea. I do that on a regular basis and the students then keep one another in check. There might also be instances when in order to preserve order and even safety in the classroom you'll have to shut everyone down as best you can and have them do something that is not very academic. In the case of the SSR near-rebellion, I didn't have much else planned to pull out of my hat to teach interview skills, so I made them write down what those skills are in hopes that some of it would be used. Had I been more calm and collected I would probably would have been able to gain control of the class and move forward with the lesson, but I made the decision to punish the class and then had to stick with it.

Be very careful about punishing a whole group of people. If you're pissed off and not thinking clearly, you may want to hold off on delving out large swaths of detention times and extra work. There are still times that I feel the whole class deserves some kind of punishment, but I'm doing my best not to act on it when I'm angry in the classroom.

Today's Wine: Kaiken Malbec. This one is out of Argentina. I need to pay more attention to the qualities of the wines I'm drinking. I got lazy with this one and simply thought "pretty good!" Perhaps that kind of review is enough though.

Retreat

2009-11-11T15:26:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I think I know a lot about education. Other times conversations with colleagues and other in the field leave me humbled and wondering if I really know a damn thing about this job. Generally I'm somewhere in between, but this weekend I experienced a lot of the latter.

I went to retreat this weekend with my principal, an ancient learning specialist (special education teacher), our parent coordinator, and two other teachers from our school- a magnificent English teacher and a third year math teacher who is brilliant, but is sometimes not well-received by our staff because he speaks so candidly. The invitation to attend the retreat was extended to the whole staff, but the three of us were asked specifically to attend. That fact went to my head a bit, so I used the opportunity to bring up issues that I've been thinking about lately. In reality I was probably only invited because they knew I'd be interested in attending, while the vast majority of the staff wouldn't be down for it, which means it probably wasn't the most appropriate place to blwo a lot of hot air about the major ed issues that have been bothering me.

Friday we sat around a table brain-storming ideas of what to do with the many hours we would spend together over the course of the weekend. Because our parent coordinator was there, I figured I would bring up my frustration with parents in the community and ask what could be done to help them help us to help their children in the school. Apparently I came off as wanting to save the Bronx and personally make all the parents in the Bronx better. Because of the way I came off, the principal, learning specialist, and the parent coordinator shut me down, saying that there is no way to affect the parents who might benefit from some extra support and ideas on how to engage their students.

From that point forward I was pretty hesitant to offer my opinion on the work at hand. I regressed a bit to sitting and listening, feeling like I don't have enough experience to really offer a valid opinion on how to run any part of the school. Perhaps it was just me being stubborn as well.

After speaking frankly with my girlfriend about the matter (she works in my school and hears some of the gossip I don't), it's gotten around that I have kind of an attitude when I discuss ed issues and matters about the school with my colleagues. I kind of addressed this an earlier post and thought that I'd fixed the problem. Apparently that is not the case. What I thought was my cutting-out-the-crap to speak candidly has left me coming off as condescending and insensitive.

Perhaps my second year is not only going to be about learning a great deal about actually teaching students in the South Bronx (rather than holding on for dear life), it's also going to be about learning to be a positive part of my particular staff. It may be time for a while to take a step or two back and listen more carefully instead of barging in with my opinion.

Today's Wines: On Saturday I went to a wine bar and then to a regular bar. I had wine at both places that were remarkably different. At Cavatappo I had something referred to as a Super Tuscan which was really good (Bruni Poggio d'Elsa 2008) and off the medium-bodied section of the list. After that we just split a glass of something more "robust" (Rosso di Montepulciano - Il Seniero 2006). It was more expensive, but definitely seemed to have more bang for the buck. From there we went to a bar next door and had some generic wine from behind the bar, which, because we'd spent money on some good wine with some well-paired appetizers, had that thick grape-juice taste that comes from the big jugs of wine.

Flunk Them All?

2009-11-07T16:11:00.004-05:00

There were a lot of things I was anxious about when I came out of the School of Ed. One was the switch from being the graded to the being the grader. It was really an odd sensation to grade someone else's work in black and white. All that time at a liberal undergraduate school attending vegan potluck dinners, talking about how terrible judging people can be and now I was being paid to judge people every day.

It get's easier with time. At first you might pour over your grades for a very long time, thinking about how many points a student really deserves based on their effort and the demonstration of their comprehension of an idea. You might come up with rubrics for the littlest assignments to ensure fairness and award points to papers only after covering up their authors. A lot of that will disappear under the shear workload that is grading. Really looking at students work takes forever! A very good friend of mine back in Kansas has over 150 students on her rosters. Think about it: you assign a two page paper in all of your classes and all of a sudden you have a 300 page novel to tear apart, comment on, revise and turn back to its many authors. Who has time for that?

In addition to time, it's really difficult to do any kind of grading if things are going poorly the first year. It's unfair to fail all of the students for not learning if you've not grabbed hold of the reigns and taken control of the class. While the vast majority of the students who failed my class last year were making very poor decisions that led to that failure, fewer would have done so poorly if I'd been able to give them the structure and support they needed. How many? Who knows.

A post on Joanne Jacobs' blog addressed this issue recently. It's really tough to figure out how to assign grades fairly in the first year as you're wrestling with the fact that the students aren't learning as much as they could because you're holding on for dear life and they're oftentimes in the driver's seat. Other teachers are going to throw in their two cents about how annoying and difficult it can be to flunk students in terms of paperwork. You'll probably hear arguments for and against social promotion stating how terrible it is for a child to hold him/her back and how horrible it is for American education in general to not hold them back. Your administration might also put pressure on you about grades and pass rates.

Things also become much less clear-cut once you realize that students don't do their work, that concessions are oftentimes made for students, that some students are going to shut down completely if you flunk them for a marking period and that there are a thousand external pressures "helping" you to amend and develop your own grading policy. My advice is to stick to your gut, assign grades fairly and very consistently (using things like rubrics for larger assignments) and don't stress about them too much. Last year in spite of all the pressures and b.s. the students who tried really hard did well in my class while those who did not failed. In the end, that is about as straightforward as it gets.

Today's Wine: Inigma Cabernet/Merlot 2006. There was a guy giving out free samples of this at the wines store, so I thought I'd humor him and the store so they kept bringing in people to give me free wine. It's from Australia. A lot of people knock Australian wines, but I think that a lot of decent bottles are produced there for easy table drinking. This one qualifies.

EXPLOSIVE Unprofessionalism

2009-11-05T21:54:00.003-05:00

There was an explosion in my class on Monday. Had I been a cartoon, my head would have been cherry-red and the top would have blown off, whistling like a steam engine. I yelled at my first-period class so loud that the para-educators’ and every students’ eyes went white and wide. As these were the students who were even more used to uncontrolled, raging adults than my other classes- this was the lowest-tracked class, the one arguably with the most difficult home situations and certainly the one with the worst behavior problems- the surprise soon turned to giggling.

It wasn’t a single action that set me off. I’ve been sick for the past week and a half and the amount of chatter has been steadily increasing lately. Those things, together with the SSR (silent, sustained reading) I’ve been trying to cram down their throats has left my students very unsettled on the days I’ve asked them to get quiet for twenty minutes to read non-fiction trade books (short, flimsy, concise readings on a large variety of things pertaining to my current unit).

So I was standing at the head of the class after one of these “reading” sessions that went particularly awry, stewing over the fact that this class was about to mutiny over reading (little did I know that the other two classes would do something similar the same day) and the students were simply not getting quiet when I asked. It was the first time this year that they just wouldn’t do it.

BOOM. I lost it. The discomfort the students felt turned into laughter, which of course was even more irritating. From there I did an about-face and sent them to work immediately copying something off a slide whole I collected myself. Most of them did that and I was able to talk to a few individuals one on one. Luckily the main instigator of the near-insurrection and walked out of the class to tell the dean she was having major problems in my class- not because of me, mind you, but because she wanted to beat the hell out of a ninth grader that I taught last year. She failed to mention that when I pulled her aside in class to ask what was going on.

This explosion was unacceptable. It did absolutely nothing positive. I even wrote a post just a couple weeks ago talking about getting very angry in class in which I talked about how destructive to the educational process it is.

Sometimes we need to step outside of the classroom- really take our mind out of the game and think about what it is we do. For many of my students I'm the closest thing they've got to a full-time male role model. The last thing I should be doing is getting angry at unruly fourteen year-olds and having a blow out in class over something like students not listening.

This situation is not irreversible. Things can be mended with this class. It'll take some time and it'll take even-tempered instruction and careful fielding of discipline problems for a while. I'll need to reach out to a few more students in this class, something I should have been doing already, as they are the lowest achieving of all my classes.

I'm not sure what else I can say about this topic. Clearly things like this don't just happen in the first year, but it's important to point out that last year by this time I'd completely lost it with a class at least a dozen times at school. This is improvement by any standard. While still not the way teachers should act in the classroom (of course, my students shouldn't be acting as they do either), it's good to know that things are getting better in the long run in spite of this weeks set-backs. According to reports from veteran teachers, the fact that the year started off well will generally allow me to re-establish a more orderly classroom in spite of a bad week.

Today's Wine: Barocco Primitivo Puglia. I couldn't tell from the label that this is was a zinfandel, nor could I tell from drinking it. I had a glass of this after a glass from another bottle and I've been under the weather lately, so I can't really comment on how good this one actually is. It is the first wine I've had from this region of Italy (Apulia: The Heel of the Boot).

SQR- School Quality paRade

2009-11-02T20:48:00.000-05:00

With the dawning of NCLB and the standards movement really taking off, it's important to be aware of all the red tape, fake red tape, legal requirements of testing, reviews of your school, etc. Part of the whole accountability thing in New York is the School Quality Review (SQR) which takes place in every school every two years. From what I've heard (this year was my first and only experience with it), in most schools it's a ridiculous dog and pony show that really doesn't show anybody how a school is actually doing.

Principals Under Pressure
According to the people I work with, it seems that the only person to whom this thing matters is the superintendent and the principal. Reliable sources told me about their old schools and how much of a farce it was there. Apparently one principal created fake classes to show the superintendent, pulling all the high-end kids into a single classroom and creating a lesson for them to complete that would make them and the school look brilliant. At our school there was a push to complete the vacant bulletin boards up around the building, but everyone said things were eerily quiet in the admin offices. Your administrator may or may not let you know who the classrooms to which they'll try to direct the SQR folks, but that may not mean anything. My assistant principal assured me twice that I would be visited and it never happened.

Quality Review Day
On the day(s) of the quality review you'll prep your students by telling them there may be a visitor in the room. You'll make sure any graffiti is scrubbed away, any sketches of genitals are washed off visible surfaces and you may even tack up some recent work from students. The bulletins boards in the school will be redone and if funding provides for it new paint will be applied and the floors will be buffed. You administration should have prepped the students with some kind of inspirational speech and most of the teachers will wonder if their room will be the one into which the superintendent walks.

Does it Matter to the New Guy?
To be honest, if a superintendent wants to see how well things are going in a first year teacher's classroom and wants to use that as a measure of how well the school is doing, that superintendent is a moron. This is not to say he/she should expect chaos in all first-years' classrooms, but the focus should really be on the supports you're getting in the first year rather than if your students are adhering to and excelling with your curriculum. Your principal might try to feed you lines about what to tell this guy- what the school's mission is, what services you provide or "provide," etc.- and it will be your call when it comes to how much of the truth you want to tell. All I know is that if I'm working for someone who wants me to lie for them, they deserve to deal with the truth, but that's coming from the second year who didn't even get the chance to chat with the super.

Today's Wine: Chateau de Pennautier, Cabardes 2007. I haven't done many French wines on this thing. This one is from the Languedoc region, which is on the southern coast of France. In France people seem very concerned with precise locations of vineyards, and this seems to be no exception- the Cabardes region of the Languedoc region looks pretty small on the map at least. As for the wine, was pretty fruity and went well with the pizza I ate it with.

Halloween for Our Children

2009-10-31T09:45:00.000-04:00

When I was growing up Halloween was a holiday to which I definitely looked forward. It wasn't my favorite, but I liked getting dressed up in the costumes we managed to pull together and then going out to try to rake in all the candy we possibly could in our neighborhood. I remember the year that it suddenly became unsafe for us to take unwrapped/non-manufactured treats from our neighbors. There were legends of razorblades and poison in those candied apples, so they were to be thrown out straight away. In spite of scares like that, however, it was a safe holiday during which we wore our costumes to school, probably had a party and then had fun at night going door to door looking for free loot.

In most of this city it is not that way. It really varies greatly, though. Last year I was in Park Slope, Brooklyn for Halloween and I sat on a stoop handing out candy to the little kids coming by with their parents. Kids didn't ring doorbells, but they still dressed up and got their fill of candy from people sitting on stoops. This year I'll be on the Upper East Side where there is no Trick or Treating for some reason, but the holiday is not an unsafe one. I assume most of the kids go to swanky Halloween parties where their parents booze it up and "network." In the Bronx it seems to to be a different story altogether.

There is a pretty powerful urban "legend" that the Bloods have their initiation over the weekend of Halloween. Depending on who you talk to it's no legend at all. Supposedly the Blood's new recruits have to slice (or kill depending on who you talk to) thirty-one females throughout the city. Whether it's true or not may not even be the point. The rumor itself is so strong that it affects the community in a very substantial way. Perhaps that's what the Bloods really want- just to flex some muscle.

On Halloween many of our students are kept home by parents or choose to stay home. Safety is a very real concern on any given day, but on the day/weekend of Halloween there is added emphasis by parents and the community. Some students are afraid of eggs being thrown and of the threat from the Blood's while some just use it as an excuse to stay home. At any rate, we had an attendance rate of about seventeen percent last year, if I remember correctly. Even if the initiation is just a myth, it is a powerful one.

Today we had about half our students in class, which was an improvement from last year. I did hear that a couple of my students were going door-to-door, but they were going upstate to do so.

Today's Wine: Feudi del Duca Montepulciano. I couldn't find much online about this one, but it's pretty good. It didn't seem as acidic as many other Montepulcianios.

First-Year Illness

2009-10-27T21:25:00.000-04:00

Everyone gets sick their first year. This is something that you'll be told and it will probably be true. I only called out one day last year, but I felt near death as the result of some bug one of my students probably gave me. Teaching the children definitely puts you at risk for illness. The key is to deal with it and keep on trucking.

Last year I called out one time for a sick day, which I referenced in my post about Following Through. At the beginning of the year last year I made the assumption that I wouldn't be out sick, as I hadn't missed a single day of student teaching. Now, it did take an awful lot to knock me down, but the fact was that I had to leave school one day mid-morning and I called out the next day. If that day hadn't been a Friday I would have had to call out a second day.

I started feeling pretty terrible in the morning. The people I took the train with told me that I needed to just head back to my apartment and call in. I of course thought that was silly, especially since it was going to be a morning of testing followed by shortened classes. Getting to school I put my head down in my room until it was time to distribute testing materials. Before the test was half-way over I had to excuse myself twice to go get sick in the bathroom. I decided it wasn't worth it to tough it out until the end of the day, so I made my way to the train with labored breathing, heading home in the late morning. The labored breathing got worse and I nearly passed out on the train a couple times, especially when transferring to another train, and the walk home from the station that normally took three minutes ended up being about fifteen. By the time my girlfriend showed up at my place I was delirious with a fever and I still couldn't hold water down- sure signs that I shouldn't be headed to school in the morning.

People get sick- especially new teachers who move to a new city full of slimy kids who have different immunities to different germs than you do back in your home state. It's time to ditch the adolescent belief of invincibility and realize that you may get really ill during the first year. If you do get a bit sick, but can still handle heading to school, I recommend taking some over-the-counter drugs, perhaps an Emergen-C, and digging in until it goes away. If you get very sick, think of your own well-being as well as your students' (they don't need to get whatever it is you have) and take a day off. I know I also get pretty crabby when I get sick. Today I was screaming and yelling as a result of some congestion, a headache and a bunch of students who were not in the mood to listen. That's not great for management in the long term, either.

Today's Wine: Chicken broth. I was feeling pretty awful at school today, personally.

K.I.S.S.

2009-10-24T18:30:00.000-04:00

Keep It Simple, Stupid

This was an acronym that was introduced to me last year by one of my mentors. It rings true on many levels.

During my student teaching in Heidelberg, Germany, I was living and working on a U.S. military installation. The middle school I worked at was about 100 yards from the barrack-style apartment I lived in with the other interns stationed at the Heidelberg base. I spent many nights at the school. I would re-arrange the desks for an hour in preparation of a mass-production simulation or to create a stage in the classroom for skits the students would write and perform to make sure we could still fit the desks in the room. The lessons I created, individually decent (not an amazing curriculum overall, however- I'd never learned how to plan and entire curriculum), were well-received by the students, who, while opposed to working like any other batch of middle-schoolers, would eventually engage in the material and try their best. Some of these lessons were so complicated and involved that they would fly over the heads of several of my lower-end students, but I had no idea how to differentiate for that.

In the city such complicated, in-depth lessons can be really difficult to pull off. For the first half of last year I was fighting between trying to create such lessons and trying to simply get something into my students hands that they would attempt to complete. By the spring I was leaning toward the latter, realizing that no matter how amazing the lesson was, if the students did not do it they weren't going to get anything out of it. I didn't know how to push them in a way that would be well-received and they let me know that I didn't really understand that.

As painful as it might be, if your students are not completing or even attempting the great, in-depth, complicated lessons you are creating, you need to tone it down. Keep it simple. The strangest thing I encountered at the beginning of last year was when even my most difficult students would take up a pen and copy things projected onto the wall. The students will get silent. I was genuinely freaked out. They do it because it's straight-forward- Look at words. Write them down. I'm not saying at all that you should just have the students copy notes all period (that doesn't work either), but you do need to figure out what they are used to and build from there. If they've never been made to think critically and are used to copying notes then doing a reading and answer five question in a class period you need to start from there and build up. You may think that you're delivering very horrible instruction, but in the long run you and your students will benefit if you meet them where they are, keep it very simple at first, and then work toward more complicated, in-depth lessons.

Today's Wine: Gnarly Head Cabernet. I was very proud of myself in this one. The first thing I said I tasted when I started in on this one was a mouthful of cherries- exactly what the bottle describes. Now, I'm not saying this feat will be repeated, but it was nice to know that I could taste something some wine expert said they tasted. Cheers!

You’re Going to Lose It

2009-10-21T20:31:00.002-04:00

When I was visiting schools I could potentially teach at in the city I observed a couple classes at a well-respected middle school in the West Village. During the visit I observed a teacher scream at a student in class for perhaps the first time since I was in school. I was disgusted by the behavior. The student then told me how terrible the teacher was and how she was always picking on her. I took the side of the student, of course, knowing for certain that there was absolutely no excuse for yelling at a student in class. I couldn’t even fathom what would drive a teacher to act that way and wrote the teacher off as a bitter, unhappy person individual with anger-management issues.

When I student taught in Germany I raised my voice in one of my classes with a hint of irritation on the very last day I was there. A student was enormously surprised by that, saying, “Mr. Lawrence has never yelled!” It was day two in Bronx when I unleashed my already healthy vocal chords on my class. It was the first time they listened to me in two very long days. I screamed at them as loud as I possibly could, the order to take their seats ripping out of me like I’d never directed speech at a human before. Sure I’d gotten angry at each of my five siblings and my parents and had yelling matches with them. This was different though. I stopped short of throwing things, but barely.

There was a day last year when I’d given the students a project, which they’d been asking for, and it ended with hundreds of colored pencils covering the floor at the end of the day. After reaming them out about it, getting them to pick up several of the pencils and sending them home, I walked around putting chairs up- slamming them onto desks- irate that another carefully planned lesson had been so wholly rejected. Our English teacher at the time asked if I was alright because I was visibly shaking. All I could say was, “I can’t even give them colored pencils!” and kept slamming desks.

There are a thousand things that you can tell a new teacher about getting angry. If you teach in the city you’ll probably hear a lot of them. The important thing to remember is that screaming at the students in the long run is not effective. Yes, it will gain attention and can actually be effective if used properly once a great while. In fact, in order to gain your students' complete respect you’ll probably have to prove to them at some point that you have a set of vocal chords simply to show them you mean business. Be careful though, as yelling at all frequently will make it lose its potency. Students will stop responding and stop listening. It also goes back to the idea that you need to show your students that you are in control of your classroom. If you’re yelling and screaming all the time it shows you can’t control yourself or your classroom, which will lead to even more management problems and probably more yelling.

To cut to the point, you’re going to yell. You’re probably going to scream. You will get so angry that you’ll shake and be unable to speak. There will be days when you go home and “banging your head against the wall” ceases being a figure of speech. When you take the train or bus home some days you'll feel like the last place you ever want to be is back in the school. Remember that you're fighting the good fight and that it will get better. Remember that you chose this field for a reason. Hopefully that reason was the students. If it was, you'll head back to school tomorrow for another go at it.

Today's Wine: Santa Cecilia Malbec 2009. This is a great wine, as agreed upon by three others I shared it with, and I picked it up for less than $10. Couldn't really find a review online for it, other than this one of course.

Sunday Nights

2009-10-18T19:50:00.001-04:00

Sunday nights are the cause for a lot of anxiety for teachers. In spite of how exhausted I was last year, I would lay on my cheap futon mattress in my bomb-shelter apartment and stare at the ceiling while my stomach turned. All of the things I still needed to do and all of the things that might possibly go wrong again in the coming week ran through my head like a newsreel. Because of that Sunday nights were one of the worst times of the week. My reaction to them was pretty mild, however, compared to what some teachers experience.

A colleague that worked with us last year (and has moved on to become a principal) was talking to me about how much she likes our administration. The topic of Sunday nights came up during this chat. She said that in a different position, one she didn't enjoy, she became physically ill every Sunday, dreading the week ahead. Her job was so terrible that she'd throw up! In our school last year she was one of the most respected teachers, both by staff and students.

Another colleague of mine last year admitted that every Sunday night she couldn't fall asleep on Sundays. She cried in her bed and waited for Monday and another whole week to start. This is a pretty well-balanced person who has since been very successful in the classroom. She boosts test scores while teaching students things they actually need to be successful in school and out of school. In short, she's a great teacher, but it certainly took at least that first year to get there.

Sunday's are probably stressful in any field. During your first year in the classroom, going into a full week after working all weekend to prepare for it can be pretty nerve-racking. Taking Sunday evenings off can help you get your mind off of school and get some sleep. As much as you want to feel prepared, being slightly less prepared (not unprepared) and on point with enough rest will be more useful in the classroom than being very prepared and exhausted.

Today's Wine: 2008 Terranoble Merlot. The problem I have with a lot of Merlots, especially the ones within my price range, is that they taste almost syrupy. They're not sweet, but the mouth feel is pretty thick. This one is a bit lighter, still fruity and not acidic. Pretty easy drinking. The sale, however, was that the sign at the liquor store read "A Terrifyingly Delicious Wine." How could you not buy it?

No Turn Over = Improved School

2009-10-16T21:34:00.002-04:00

There is a general feeling in our school this year that things are getting better. Aside from the night and day beginning of the year, the general mood is much more upbeat among the staff and students alike. It's almost as if the staff as a whole believes that we can really prepare our students for the future! Even the veterans are surprised at the change. There are certainly a lot of reasons for the change, but the fact that most of the staff stayed on board for this year was a major contributing factor to the improvement.

The only teachers that left the school were the ones that probably needed to move on. Because of this the experience of the staff grew tremendously and the awareness of what should happen and what can happen in our school became more solid before the beginning of the year. One of the mentors I had my first year told me very bluntly "The more we help you newbies the less likely you are to quit, which makes our lives and our students' lives easier in the long run." It's true- if the new guys don't cut and run it makes less work for everyone, which means the veterans can concentrate on teaching students rather than supporting a whole lot of new teachers.

When she said that I was shocked and offended. Even though I knew very well that half of all teachers quit in their first five years, I was taken aback by the statement. She was right though. Keeping first year teachers in the classroom is very important. The learning curve in the first year is enormous and if the staff is inexperienced one year, keeping everyone on board for the next means the experience of the staff increases dramatically.

We had a lot of new teachers (1-3 years in) last year. The staff's general level of panic was pretty high on some days (at least it was from my perspective) and the students could sense it. Although our students seem to be much more sane this year in general, many have calmed down from last year because they know the staff is better prepared and that there are fewer variables rolling around in the school.

Among other things, the increased experience of our staff is making teaching fun this year. I'll readily admit that it wasn't fun last year. The change is pretty nice.

Today's Wine: Green Tea- I'm still preparing for the urbanathlon, but I'll be back to wine by the next post.

It Get's Real (Tiring)

2009-10-13T21:44:00.001-04:00

This year has gone a whole lot better in general, but in spite of that there are certainly parts of the job that are hard to control and very difficult to improve. One of those things is reducing in the short term the amount of violence we see in the community and trying to get our most at-risk students to have nothing to do with it. It's also difficult to keep our students who have nothing to do with the major problems outside of the school away from those problems. It should be noted that the vast majority of our students have nothing to do with the violence that happens in their community. They cannot be blamed for the poverty they experience or the difficult tests they are put through on a sometimes daily basis. That said, it's part of our job to make sure they stay safe under our watch and give them a place where they trust adults and have social norms, rather than social uncertainties.

This past Friday we had the first major confrontation of the year right outside of the school. A former student of ours came by the school, as many tend to do, and some unruly gentlemen (three of our current students included) came to find him. This group of gentlemen confronted our former student and one pulled out a knife. Our former student then ran into the bodega on the corner, grabbed the butcher's knife from behind the deli counter and came out swinging.

This was fairly disconcerting for the rest of the people on the block, to say the least, many of whom were our students and staff. One of our teachers took it upon himself to dive into action and grab the former student with the butcher's knife, dragging him away from the scene and trying to diffuse the problem. Members of our justice team didn't seem too be far behind. The former student was dragged into the building and into the main office as I was coming down the stairs past the front door.

As I walked past the front door the principal gave the direct order, "(Nick James), we need a bullhorn!" I ran into the office and grabbed one and then headed out the door to help clear the block. The police were arriving and one of our Justice Team members was reaming out the teacher who stepped in, telling him how dumb the move it. I joined the administrators in clearing people out of the area, wondering what the hell was going on, but knowing full and well that the need to clear the block off quickly happened numerous times last spring and that there was probably some reason it needed to be done at that moment.

Our former student wasn't hurt badly, but he looked like he'd been hit over the head with something and a few drops of someone's blood had to be cleaned off the office floor. Our current students who were involved in the incident had disappeared by this time. The police officer who arrives at our school whenever there is an issue like this said that had he been there when the student was swinging away that our former student may have been downed by his sidearm. Apparently this student and this police officer have had numerous run-ins before, but the comment from the police officer was somewhat unsettling.

By the end of last year I was reacting pretty similarly to stuff like this- some kind of numbness followed by a tired feeling that I seem to get whenever major disturbances happen. The feeling happened more toward the end of the year. Perhaps it's a kind of momentary resignation to the idea that regardless of how hard I try as an individual this sort of things still happens. Luckily no one was gravely injured. Unfortunately some of our current students were involved. On the bright side, we were six weeks in without a major incident when this happened.

Today's Wine: Lemon-Lime Powerade. This Saturday I'm running the Urbanathlon in Chicago with my three brothers, dad, an uncle, and a cousin. Because of this I'm not drinking any alcohol this week in hopes that my body will be better prepared for the race. My dad gave my brothers and me the charge of beating my cousin and uncle and I don't want to let the old man down.

PDs in the City

2009-10-11T11:12:00.002-04:00

Something I didn't anticipate when I was going through the School of Ed was that I would be given the opportunity to go to PDs (professional developments) on a fairly regular basis. I'm not talking about the PD I have every week at our school to talk about our social studies curriculum or school goals; I'm referring to the ones where you leave the building and sometimes the students behind and go to a workshop or event that is designed to make you a better teacher.

I would lump the PDs into two different categories: the workshop and the exhibition. The workshop PDs are those that are intended to give you new strategies and make you a better teacher and which many people attend just to get out of school. Oftentimes they are not that helpful, especially for skeptical teachers who don't really care to improve their practice and do not expend the necessary energy at the PD to learn something new.

There are a few of these that are in fact helpful. I went to a series of PDs last fall put on by Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR)that concentrated on management and were attended by new teachers and their mentors. The woman facilitating the PD was very helpful and actually did help me torelax a bit in the classroom. The PD did hand me some practical management strategies as well. This series was not during the school day, however, but on a series of Saturdays. Those willing to go to PD on Saturday are generally the type that actually want to improve their practice rather than just get away from their students, so the number who came and did absolutely nothing was pretty minimal. It wasn't devine inspiration or anything, and my year was still rough afterward, but I thought it was helpful overall and gave me some moral support when I needed it.

The exhibition PDs can be another story altogether. While also hit or miss helpful, they certainly can be entertaining. In the last year I've attended the Titanic Exhibit, the Bodies Exhibit (with some inhibition, as the source of the bodies is a bit sketchy), and Rock and Roll Hall Fame Annex (twice) among others. The Natural History Museum puts on PDs all the time, as does the Met and other major museums throughout the city. These places want teachers to bring students in and entice them to do it by giving teachers free admission on a given school night as well as instructional materials. Often times- although less often as of late due to budget cuts- these exhibitions are accompanied by wine, cheese, and amazing desserts (my girlfriend swears the best brownies in the world are at the Natural History Museum PDs). All this is quite a perk for being a teacher. While I haven't thought many of the exhibits would be appropriate for me to bring a a class to, it's a nice way to see and enjoy what the city has to offer so at the very least I can relate that information to my students.

This past Thursday I went with a group of teachers to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex in SoHo. It's a pretty good museum, but it's pretty expensive if you're paying to get in. We went last February as well and there was tons of wine and cheese and crackers. Walking around listening to Michael Jackson, Patti Smith, and the Clash with a bunch of buzzed teachers can certainly be an educational experience. Honestly I think it would be a pretty good trip for a music class, and has potential for a social studies/civic justice class if that class was taught through the lens of music reflecting major societal issues and ideas.

Today's Wine: The generic red that was served at the Rock and Roll Annex last February. Sadly there were no refreshments this past Thursday, but I shouldn't complain that I wasn't given a free lunch.

Edwize and The New York Teacher

2009-10-09T17:35:00.000-04:00

Every so often the UFT send out emails asking new teachers for stories about their experiences in the city. Last week one of these emails also asked for any blogs that had to do with this topic. I had a mind last spring to send them a few ideas, so this time around I said what the heck and sent the URL for On the Front Line with Wine.

The guy who coordinates Edwize.org (the UFT news website) replied and said he wanted to submit a couple of the posts to the editor of The New York Teacher for consideration as potential pieces to include in one of this month's editions. I believe this paper is circulated to most of the UFT's 200,00o members and at least 200 probably read it. Of those 200 I would predict that no less than 20 will stumble upon what I wrote and actually get through it. That would be cool.

The article being published in New York Teacher is my entry: First Year Mentors

It's on the main page of Edwize.org right as The Importance of Mentors.

This Ewize Coordinator also added this blog to the blog reel at Edwize.org way down on the right hand side under NYC Teachers.

Thanks to everyone reading!

Today's Wine: Luchado's Shiraz 2007. This is was all fruit. I actually drank it with the Trentatre Rosso in my last post. The blogger who writes The Blog Wine Cellar said that this was just another "out of whack Aussie fruit bomb." I thought that was interesting. After the Trentatre all I tasted was fruit with this one. I thought it was pretty good though.

The SLT and other Crazy Meetings

2009-10-08T16:04:00.002-04:00

The School Leadership Team (SLT) meets once a month to discuss major policy issues and other stuff going on in our school. Our union rep refers to this group as "the most influential body in the city" in terms of managing schools. The principal, vice principals, parent coordinator, union rep, parent rep, student rep and elected teacher reps are voting members, but anyone can come in and offer feedback.

An administrator asked me to come to this month's meeting to see if I could offer any ideas. It was pretty flattering to be asked (assuming he thought that I've had at least a couple good ideas in the past year), but I think it was a decent move politically on his part as well. This was the AP from Kansas asking me to come. We have a very similar background, especially for teachers in NYC. We both came from Kansas, went to the same university and learned to be teachers under the watchful eye of the same adviser/professor. We both chose urban education and both moved out to NYC to see what we could do for the students here. Whether that dictated the fact that we think very similarly or not, we do.

If I were an AP (and voting member of the SLT) and knew that a teacher in the building shared very similar points of view with me, I would definitely ask that teacher to come to the meetings. Ideas are received differently coming from teachers and administration, even if they are the same idea. Getting support for your ideas from the teachers is very important as it might be bolster support among other teachers rather than just sound like another idea an administrator has for the school.

At the meeting yesterday the first order of business was to pick a new secretary. The old one (my mentor from last year) is leaving this week to go on maternity leave. In order to secure a spot at the meetings and show I'm interested in contributing- not just wanting to blow a lot of hot air at my bosses- I volunteered and did the job yesterday. We'll see how it goes.

Advice for New Teachers:

Teaching is exhausting. Last year at meetings like this I felt pretty brain-dead and had very little to contribute. I also didn't feel like I knew enough about the school, the community or about education to contribute to major meetings like the SLT. The meetings I attended were generally mandatory and I usually just sat there and took in everything I could with my weakened attention span. I think that it's alright to do this (observe more than actively participate), though tossing in your two cents every once in a while is a good idea.

Additionally, don't burden yourself by joining a thousand committees. It's alright to say no to additional tasks. Everyone knows (or should know) that your first year is ridiculous and that it's unreasonable to expect a you to complete a lot of additional duties. I turned down several committees last year, as well as a couple coaching positions.

One group I found a niche in, however, was a grant writing team. The only thing that I really had to do was spit out onto paper a good amount of rhetoric that I learned in the school of ed to send to some committee somewhere else, who would then read it and consider giving us money. This grant writing team actually had a retreat (in addition to our bi-weekly meetings) where we were put up in a hotel in Midtown in order to get us away from the building and talking. Enough decent stuff was put on paper that we were awarded the grant we were shooting for ($250,000). At this time last year I was an expert in that- telling people the latest ideas in education in black in white on the page. Now I think I'm ready to start throwing in my two cents about how the school should be run.

Today's Wine: Trentatre Rosso 2007. This one is getting solid reviews as an inexpensive wine you can pick up at Trader Joe's (hopefully other places too?). It's a blend of Montepulciano, Cabernet and Merlot. Very solid, some strong tannins (I think I'm starting to figure out what that means) and very drinkable with anything.

Missing Home

2009-10-04T12:31:00.003-04:00

At this time last year I experienced something that I'd never experienced before in my life: homesickness. When I was growing up I starting going to camp for two weeks during the summer every year at the age of ten; I studied abroad in Europe for three months; I lived in Brooklyn for a summer and I student-taught over seas as well. Never in all that time did I feel much of a desire to head back home. Perhaps it was because I knew I hadn't left for good.

Last year what I was feeling around this time seemed inexplicable. Although I had a few friends in the city, I had buried myself in my work and holed up in my bunker-apartment in Queens. The sun started going down earlier and coming up later. I was arriving at school just before seven and leaving at six o'clock, saw no sun and really had no social life. On the weekends I stayed in trying to figure out how to make things better at school. In short, my job was consuming me and I wasn't very happy about it, though I wouldn't have said it outright at the time.

Two other first year teachers at my school took weekends last fall to go back to their home states and see their family. While I didn't have the cash for the plane ticket, it certainly would have done some good. Getting back into a familiar element away from the front lines is certainly good for the nerves. At the very least it helps you to remember the confidence and drive you left home with, if not regain some of it.

Today's Wine: The Shiraz pumped from my post on the 1st.

Do Not Smile or Scowl Until Christmas- Part 2

2009-10-02T21:38:00.001-04:00

Someone brought to my attention recently that the way I'm conducting myself in the classroom is also the way I'm conducting myself in meetings with colleagues. This must be part of finding the balance between the first and second years.

I've come into this year with a No Smile-No Frown policy in the classroom. While the desired effect in the classroom has been pretty well achieved (the students are aware of who is running the show and I actually feel like I'm in charge), the residual effect in cooperative team meetings has been that I've been kind of a d-bag. We tell our students that they need to code-switch between home and the classroom- meaning shut the profanity off, among other things- but I haven't been switching between the classroom and other professional work.

Something I added to my arsenal this year, which was in the testing stages last spring, is a slightly deeper public speaking voice than whatever it was I used before. Last spring I consciously lowered my voice slightly and did my best not to raise the pitch when surprised, angry, etc., which worked most of the time, but I'm sure a couple of students wondered at times if I was hitting a second bout of puberty. Part of the current No Smile-No Scowl policy has been to include this deeper voice when addressing my students in the classroom. It certainly seems to help, but an insider tip from a colleague was that when I attend meetings and set out an agenda (very "I'm the man with the plan"), the deep voice is condescending and abrasive. As it turns out, my colleagues, while young, are no longer in middle school and should not be treated as such.

Last year I felt so thoroughly trounced that I rarely gave any long-winded epitaphs or really any feedback at teacher meetings. I was too tired and felt I really didn't know what I was doing and therefore didn't have much to contribute to the veteran teachers at such meetings. This year I marched in with my head high trying to show students that I knew exactly what I was doing so that they'd come along with me, but the reality is I certainly do NOT know everything and shouldn't address colleagues like I do. I also don't need to prove to my colleagues that I have healthy testosterone levels by flaunting my lower register.

Today's Wine: Sipavola Rosso Di Sicilia 2006. It was a NeroD'Avola/Cabernet Sauvignon blend, according to the menu. I had it at Cavatappo off 89th and 1st on the Upper East Side (down the block from my house). The wine was a smooth drink that went well with the spinach papperdelle pasta with duck ragu. The whole thing sounds fancy and tastes fancier (in my opinion).

Do Not Smile or Scowl Until Christmas

2009-10-01T23:01:00.001-04:00

Going through the School of Ed I was told, "Don't smile before Christmas."
Going through the School of Ed I was also told, "You know that line 'Don't smile before Christmas?- that's nonsense! Of course you should smile and show your students you care from day one!"

I'd like to endorse the former. When people say not to smile before Christmas they don't mean to literally not smile. They mean don't lighten up. After my student teaching I came to the city ready to work alongside students, ask them about their ideas and put my trust in them as students who, regardless of their issues, wanted to learn on some fundamental level. Trying that straight away was a terrible idea. My students thought I was "nice," which to them meant "this guy'll be easy to play." While most of them didn't try to tear me apart, those who tried certainly succeeded.

My smiling early soon dissolved into a scowl that was affixed to my forehead for the better part of the year. Not only did my students think I was a push-over, they thought that I had a terrible temper. The students actually trying in my class hated this and those who were causing the problems thought it was funny, so they pushed and pushed. It was a lose-lose-lose situation. If the students see you get angry and yell with any regularity, you can yell until you're purple and it won't help. Scowling and walking around pissed off really just sends them the message that you're angry with them. Would you be interested in working for a boss that was angry at you most of the time?

By the end of the year I was better able to control my reactions, as the students actions weren't surprising at all whatsoever, but I was still really angry about the whole situation. At the beginning of this year, however, I'd somehow gained the ability to simply not react to the funny things students have done or the more regrettable things they've done. I've certainly smiled, but not in reaction to anything inappropriate or during class when something has happened that is disruptive.

My advice to the First Years in the city is "don't smile and don't scowl until Christmas." Kids are hilarious and infuriating. Showing the students a human side is also important, however. The balance is difficult to achieve. When you're in front of the class you have to show them you're running the show. If you react by getting angry or playing along with students whose actions are disruptive, it may show them a weakness they can exploit. If you don't want them to push your buttons, don't show them where they can push.

When I was student teaching and substitute teaching I really, really wanted to get to the human side of teaching, show the students I was a real person and show them things they needed to know to be successful. Gaining their respect and trust that you can handle a class is much more important than trying to show them that you're human. In the city the students are going to test you and what they want to know is if you're cool under fire. You can get to the progressive education later. First gain the students respect. Without it you won't gain much else. To do that you have to stay in control of yourself and the class. While they'll show you in the most backward way, that's what they crave, need and demand and if you can't give it to them they won't give you what you ask of them.

Today's Wine: Indaba Shiraz. I picked this up at Trader Joe's for $7 and was incredibly pleased with it. The label says black cherry, pepper, etc. I wasn't really paying much attention past the fact that I really enjoyed it, however.

Settling In for the Long Haul

2009-09-30T21:00:00.002-04:00

We've now gone through two and a half weeks of school. I'm getting to know my students better and better and we're coming to know what to expect of one another. In another couple of weeks we'll have settled in quite nicely. The good news is that the place where we're settling is a good one in which to be, while the place I landed three weeks in last year was no where close to what I wanted.

While not every one of my students is listening and completing their work, I feel that the few problems I'm experiencing with management can be dealt with. Last year at this time my class and I had settled in for a repeat of WWI- trench warfare for the rest of the year. Because the tone set was one of struggle and me fighting to take control of the class, that was the routine we settled into the first month of school and it was one I had to deal with the rest of the school year. On most days the students and I fought to gain ground while in the long run very little progress was made. We spent the entire year charging across No Man's Land, them throwing paper balls, pencils and pens and me firing angry directives back at them, what seemed like all day every day. It as exhausting and it ground us all down.

The bad news for first year teachers is that if you've gotten off to a rocky start, you have to wait until next year for a brand new one. The good news is that it's not too late to really dig in, make sure things are consistent and get to work. While the year is going to be a trying one, your learning curve can be drastic and your students can certainly learn a lot. Make sure you're talking to colleagues and always working to make things better. Start developing procedures and ideas with your students and, even if they don't seem to be working, stick to your guns as you get bigger guns.

If you're doing anything like I did last year, you may be trying a thousand different things right now simply to get the students quiet and working. That's a mistake. Pick a couple strategies and stick to them. The students need structure and if you are trying a new management strategy every two days they know that if they ignore you enough whatever "rule" you're trying to push on them will go away. Working to improve does not mean trying a thousand new things with your students. In part it means working to get your game face on and to keep it on, as well as figuring out your teacher persona. As you do that, variation will decrease and your management will improve.

Today's Wine: Laurel Lake Chardonnay Reserve. This was a wine we had on Saturday's wine tour. I haven't posted much about white wines because the big reason for posting about wine is to promote good health and the white wines don't do nearly as much for you a the reds. That said, when I come across a white I really like it's something I usually tell my friends about. This one fits the bill. It's smooth, hardly acidic and you can really taste the vanilla and fruit.

Here's to Cultural Sensitivity

2009-09-28T17:30:00.001-04:00

Today New York City public schools get the day off for Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews. There is such a large Jewish population in New York and there are so many Jewish teachers in the public schools that the city has to recognize the holiday, or there wouldn't be enough subs to go around. Back in Kansas there are many fewer Jewish residents, so few in fact that when I was growing up I hardly realized that things such as antisemitism still existed, as I didn't realize there were sizable Jewish populations left in the U.S. While I can't be certain, I don't think a single one of my students is Jewish. There's also no way I can be certain their knowledge of the holiday, but I would guess that it's pretty minimal.

Today I'm taking the time to run errands and relax a bit. While still getting a few things done, it's important to take time out when it's given to you even at this point in the year. One nice thing about getting the federal holidays and the Jewish holidays off is that you get to run around and enjoy the lunch specials in the city that people with other jobs often get to take advantage on a daily basis. I'd like to chalk this one up to getting to know the city a bit better and thereby improving my ability to teach "local culture."

Today's Wine: Jelu Malbec 2005. This is a decent red, but you can probably get a better Malbec for the same amount of money.

First Year Mentors

2009-09-27T20:55:00.003-04:00

Something that got me through the first year was the ability to rely on veteran teachers to advise me on how to fix the problems I was experiencing. During the two weeks leading up to school I was still suffering from the syndrome that struck a lot of us at the School of Ed: a confusion between enthusiasm/knowledge of new ed theories and experience in the field. I was also stricken with a bit of the assumption that being fresh out of college gave us unlimited advantages over our elderly colleagues.

After the shenanigans of the first day of school last year and a second day that wasn't much better, I trashed my carefully planned first unit and went on hands and knees to my mentor. I asked her to give me a lesson- any lesson that could possibly work in front of the students. I admitted for the first time perhaps in my entire life that I had absolutely no idea what to do to solve a problem. "Eating humble pie" seemed like an understatement.

She told me to stand up and walked me step by step through a very basic lesson plan that with which the students would be familiar and that they might actually attempt to complete. It was in that first week that nearly all the arrogance was washed out of me (not all of it, but close). I was so tired and defeated that there was no way that I could think that I was a hot shot of any sort, especially as a teacher.

Things got better in large part because I started asking questions. I asked a lot of questions. In addition to the mentor that the school assigned me (one of the best teachers I've ever met and one of our most senior staff members at the ripe old age of 38), I took on two other mentors- the woman who taught my course the previous year and the assistant principal who actually went through my School of Ed back in Kansas fives year before I did and who had my job a couple years prior. This team of mentors propped me up throughout the year, gave me feedback, lesson plans, and unit plans and saw to it that I survived. Without them it's quite likely I wouldn't have made it.

My advice to newbies is to find a mentor or two who you respect and trust at school. If the mentor the school assigns you is not helpful, which has been the experience of a lot of my friends, do what you have to for them and find another one to actually talk to, bounce ideas off of, and from whom you can get the support you'll need. Make a habit out of talking to them and running ideas by them. They should be able to give you ideas on management and planning that you probably won't think of otherwise.

Today's Wine: Yesterday I went on another wine tour out on Long Island to celebrate the birthday of one of my mentors. We had a lot of wine of course, but I thought I'd slip in a dessert wine to mark the celebration: Duck Walk Vineyard Boysenberry Fruit Wine. It was really tart, but really good and would go well with any fruity dessert.

Very, Very Tired

2009-09-23T22:49:00.001-04:00

After a couple weeks last year I was aching for more sleep and wondering how it was at all possible that the teachers at the school didn't look like zombies. Going into the year I thought that working harder would do the trick when it came to planning and management. Incorrect.

Last year's journal quote:

At the end of the second week I'm experiencing am exhaustion I've never experienced before. It's worse than the semester in college during which I was averaging about four hours of sleep a night over the month leading up to finals week; worse than fourteen hour shifts at a short-order restaurant during which I tried to convince sixteen year-old potheads to clean coffee machines while at the same time being hounded by the elderly for more jelly packets they intended to steal.

I came home on Friday with the very real intention of drinking a bottle or two of wine to numb whatever I could feel. I made it through most of dinner and half a glass of wine and passed out with my head on my folding table and slept nearly through the night.

This year I'm a bit tired, but the reduced stress level and the fact that I'm not yelling at all in my classes has helped me keep from being fatigued. Last year I hit a level of exhaustion that wasn't healthy. While I'm pretty tired writing this right now, and a bit stressed out about getting everything done for this unit and for Friday, I know that I'll at least get something planned and that it will most likely go relatively well. Last year I was scrambling every waking hour to try to make my life at school better. That just made things worse.

Tonight's Wine: Charles Shaw Cabernet. I'm going out to Long Island again this weekend for a birthday wine tour, so I should pick up a few things that are a bit more interesting. The catch is that I need to drink more Charles Shaw to be able to afford those more interesting things.

Follow Through

2009-09-21T00:01:00.000-04:00

Last year as I began the year I was wrestling with a lot of assumptions that were based on my experience student teaching and substitute teaching. The problem with these assumptions were that many of them were wrong and/or applied to a vastly different setting. The result of many of these assumptions and my presumed success as a student teacher left me incredibly confident. That, paired with my inexperience with the urban population my students were part of, led me to make a major mistake: telling students how I was going to act and what I was going to do to help them and being able to follow through with those statements.

It is impossible to know exactly what to do on the ground if you haven't already been there. Telling students exactly what you are going to do for the entire year when you have no real experience is ludicrous. It writes your own sentence on the wall and paints you into a corner that's very difficult to get out of.

An example of something I promised last year was that I wouldn't be absent a single day. Because I hadn't missed a single day as a student teacher or substitute teacher I made the assumption that I could make it the entire year without missing day. Clearly this is a stretch, especially for a first year teacher who will almost definitely become ill at least once during the year. I had to leave school early and call in one day last February because I was deliriously sick. I barely made it home from school, nearly passing out on the train and on a platform when transferring, which could have been pretty bad news.

It may seem pretty commonsensical, but make sure that you do not make a single promise unless you are absolutely sure you can keep it. Don't say things like all papers will be graded and returned the next day or that you're going to take every student who finishes all their homework to the movies. That's unrealistic, and the first time you don't follow through with what you say you're students will call you out on it and their trust in your word will be shattered, sometimes permanently. Many of these students have been lied to by adults all of their lives. If you follow suit I can guarantee you'll lose those students and the chances of you getting them back are slim.

Today's Wine: Dry Creek Old Vine Zinfandel. A lot of people hear the word "zinfandel" and assume the wine is a terribly pink, terribly sweet beverage that a lot of "wine weenies" (as my own parents have dubbed themselves) drink to show their friends they can drink wine like adults. Zinfandel is in fact a legitimate variety and the old vine zins that I've had have generally been pretty good and spicy.

The Push Back

2009-09-18T22:00:00.002-04:00

Week one this year was quiet. The students came in ready to get started; attendance was very high and there were very, very few discipline problems school wide (including a day with zero suspensions school-wide, which is the first since I started working there). While celebrating a smooth start that will help with the rest of the year, I prepared myself last weekend for the counteroffensive by the students. Based the intelligence I gathered from their teachers from last year, to whom they ran downstairs to talk to after school each day last week, they think that the eighth grade team "means business" this year. Intelligence is good and fine, but the students' actions speak more poignantly.

This week the students began their push back. Caught off guard by the organization of the staff from the outset, many of the students on the cusp, those who need one or two others to get the ball rolling to take part in the shenanigans, have kept quiet and done their jobs in class. Even still, the individuals with chronic behavior problems are testing boundaries, as are the whole classes. The important thing to remember is that there are solid policies in place and that the staff (myself included) needs to stick to those policies without exception.

Exceptions to the rules get teachers in trouble. I approached last year with a "benefit of the doubt" mentality that dug a hole so deep that I was crawling out all year. It dawned on me eventually that the term differentiate was not intended for disciplinary action. If a kid screws up they need to know it. Period. Making little exceptions to appease certain students ends up snowballing into a complicated, difficult-to-enforce code of conduct.

My advice to First Years and Newbies: Get help developing appropriate classroom guidelines for your student population. Stick to those guidelines no matter what, no matter how much paperwork they entail initially. If you don't it'll create a lot more paperwork and headaches down the road.

Tonight's Wine: 3 Buck Chuck

Parent Association- Meeting 1

2009-09-16T22:00:00.001-04:00

Tonight was the first Parent Association of the year (not PTA- something to do with Title I funds doesn't let us call it that). These are once-a-month meetings that all staff and parents are invited to so that they might talk about getting parents more involved in the education of their children and to connect with the community.

On the ground they drag along for what seems like hours when the only part that is really essential for teachers to attend is at the very end- talking to the parents. These meetings at our school last more than twice as long too, as every word going through the mic has to be translated into Spanish for half of our parents. Don't get me wrong, this is incredibly necessary and needs to be done, but it certainly doesn't make the meeting more exciting.

Don't be fooled, connecting with parents is incredibly important. A lot of people disregard this part of the job because it takes too much time. That's true, it does take way too much time. It's one of the things that gets put on the back burner and is never pulled forward. It's one of the million things that should be done very well and all the time but is not because when you teach kids there are dozens of these things that could be done and really should be done to get students the education and support they need, but are impossible if all or even most are attempted in any depth (especially for new teachers).

In spite of this fact, it is important to attend meetings like this these. Word gets around. If one parent tells another parent that they saw you at a Parent Association meeting, that's powerful. Last year I attended the first few meetings and then stopped because they took up a lot of time and it took over an hour to get home on the train. The last thing I wanted to do was sit through a meeting to say hello to a couple parents and to simply tell them that their child was doing well or needed to improve behavior. When I stopped going new parents showed up and asked where I was.

Calling parents all the time about the bad stuff grinds on you. It grinds on you because you have to tell them that the student you are trying to educate is screwing up, sometimes very badly. It can feel like you're not doing your job, that you can't do your job, and that you're reporting that fact to other people. Calling parents every night about the bad stuff gets old and makes you not want to even talk to parents. Attending PTA (or PA in this case) meetings will generally allow you to interact with the parents that don't generally get the phone calls.

My advice: Go to the Parent Association meetings. You may hear some things about your school you didn't know and you might gain the respect and cooperation of a number of your parents. It also shows your administration that you are interested in doing more than the bare minimum (whatever that is).

Wine of the Day: Concannon Pinot Noir. It's smooth, light and dry. Went well with the sushi tonight. This is a pretty inexpensive bottle, too- about $13.

Home Field Advantage

2009-09-13T23:16:00.001-04:00

This past week I experienced part of "it gets better." While I knew that I would see a lot of my students from last year, I was much more focused on preparing myself to receive my new students than to interact with my old ones.

The eighth and the ninth graders were both brought into our multi-purpose room where they were going to be called out by their first period teachers to be brought upstairs. When I walked into the room I was met not by my new students but by a dozen of my students from last year. There reactions were more than enough to loosen me up and get me excited about the year. Much to my surprise, all but one either said or very clearly showed they were excited to see me.

If that was not enough, my new students saw that my old students were excited to see me. I had old students coming into my room and asking to come back to my class who literally had to be pushed into my classroom last year.

Are you kidding me?! Students who I fought and struggled against and sometimes with for ten long months now indirectly convincing whole classes of students that I'm a good teacher (however true that is). Backed up by a lot of structure and increased self-awareness, it's no wonder that my students listened to me for at least three days.

The most important part of the year is certainly not over, however. This next week is going to be incredibly important, as I'll have to show students that I can actually back up what I said this week. In spite of that, the tables have turned considerably. Perhaps now my students and I are on the same side? That would be cool.

As for home field advantage, last year my students had it. This year I have it. And that's awesome.

Today's Wine: Really a wine from yesterday and my favorite of the fifteen or so that I tried. It was the 2005 Merlot from Roanoke Vineyards. I bought a bottle for $45, figuring I would splurge at at least one of the vineyards. Generally I don't drink that much Merlot, but this one really was exception. It was also a great tasting room and our favorite staff.

Surveying the Damage

2009-09-12T22:57:00.002-04:00

Last night was the first Friday of the school year. This one was drastically different building-wide and was cause for celebration rather than recovery.

Last year at the end of the first week the eighth grade team had been smashed, trampled and burned to the ground. At the end of the work day on that Friday I was found in my room staring blankly at the damage that had been done to the room and to my ego. I felt so numb that to make any decision was nearly impossible. It was at that point that I was rounded up with the rest of the newbies and ordered to go to the staff's locale of choice: a bar off Arthur Avenue near what used to be our sister school.

The staff was exhausted and many of us were licking our wounds. My overloaded classes had blazed a trail for chaos and I was holding on for the ride. I had no idea where it was going to take me, but at the bar I was able to get some reassurance that I was still alive and breathing; that the rest of the staff was behind me and my deflated team. The principal of our school is very concerned about the staff (in a good way) and generally lays down a few fistfuls of cash when the staff goes out after major mile-markers during the year, the first Friday being one of them. Things took a while to turn around after that, but the staff that attended that night made it clear that they were behind the new teachers.

Yesterday I went to the same locale as last year not only to celebrate the success that was seen school-wide, but to see how the new teachers were doing. While some of them seemed pretty tired, there was no sign that the a group of a hundred students had trod them into the ground. It was nice to see.

We all agreed that the school got off to an exceptionally smooth start. A few things put into place helped with this, especially a lot of planning and prep work by the administration and guidance team. The number of new teachers to the school and the field was also drastically smaller. I credit this in part to the economy being in the crapper during the past year- no one wants to give up there job, especially as the NYC DOE put a hiring freeze on what suddenly became decent jobs because of their security. I would give more credit, however, to the fact that our principal was able to hire a lot of solid candidates last year who didn't cut and run when they saw what the job is.

So, after surveying the damage, it looks like there was not a whole lot done, which allows us to move forward into the new year with a lot of life and energy.

Today's Wine: This weekend I went to a wedding out on Long Island near a bunch of wineries, so I took the opportunity to do some tastings and pick up a few bottles that I probably won't find otherwise. Out of respect for the victims of 9/11, today's wine is Lieb Cellar's "September Mission Merlot," which is dedicated to those lost during that day's tragedies. A portion of the profits go to the September Mission Foundation, which sets up cultural and educational programs to remember the victims of 9/11. The wine itself is pretty earthy and not bad at all. It also sells for less than ten bucks a bottle ($9.11). Only 200 cases were made.