Halloween for Our Children

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

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.

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

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

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?