The Day After Break

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.

A Brand New Semester

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.

Classroom Setup is Not Decorating

Setting up my classroom last year was actually a major anxiety factor. In the school of ed I was shown examples of fantastic classrooms that won awards for being local museums, classrooms where the teacher had painted maps of the U.S. across the entire floor with their students and then shellacked over it, as well as a number of cases where the teachers had built large structures to create "labs of democracy" and simulations for Cold War war rooms and the like. Of course I wanted to have something like these when I set up my own classroom.

I spent a lot of time contemplating how I would set up my classroom. I bounced ideas off colleagues and peers, talked to friends in the field, etc. When I swaggered into my school in the South Bronx I talked about putting rules on the wall that the students discussed and developed during the first few days of school. I talked about constructing a wall in the classroom to replicate the Berlin Wall and divide the classroom when I covered the Cold War. I talked about making a democracy lab, teaching students how to make real decisions about their education. I talked and talked.

I didn't get as far as any of those ideas. Last year my classroom at the beginning of the year was a terrible mess. I mean, it was clean and all, but it looked like some people tried to make the walls "look neat" and then tossed 36 desks in all helter-skelter, partially because there was not enough room for them. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but much of what I put on the walls remained unchanged for the year and was not utilized at all by students. The desks were in no apparent order other than a failed attempt to put them in "collaborative groups." I can count on one hand the number of times my students attempted real group work last year.

Something that I did that is generally a very good idea (talking to veterans and asking for advice), but turned out to be pretty detrimental, was that I relied on our English teacher at the time for suggestions on how to set up our room. I judged as a new teacher that not stepping on toes, setting the room up generally how I'd like and making a few concessions to an older teacher with experience would help set me up for a solid start.

This "veteran" certainly talked as well. At the beginning of the year he claimed to have taught in South Central L.A. He claimed that he'd worked with a very similar population. At the end of the first two weeks of school he'd changed that statement to having taught "near" South Central L.A. and by the end of the third week he'd left the state.

I don't want to pass the buck to that teacher. I was just as responsible for not foreseeing the major problems that would happen as a result of a messy classroom. What I thought was that I wanted a lab for democracy, one in which students could take the problem of needing rules and order and come up with some pretty good ideas about what they needed out of a teacher. That is not how it turned out at all.

Basically the problem was that I was inexperienced with the urban population. I was relying on my success teaching with a pretty progressive agenda- one given to me on a platter at the school of ed. What I didn't know was that the students in this setting take liberties and any extra room given them and use them to rip new teachers apart. The term "give them an inch and they'll take a mile" doesn't exactly cover it. This is by no means majority of students, but enough to destroy the educational process and sometimes a classroom.

What I would suggest to a new teacher coming from a different background is to make sure the following things are true:

• Desks and furniture need to look very orderly.
• Rules need to be clearly posted.
• Have a bulletin board for student work.
• Have a bulletin board for materials related to the unit of study.
• Add a couple small personal touches.
  

Start small in this setting. You need to learn about the students first before you put up anything major or crazy. Things need to be highly-structured and simple. If the setting feels like one in which the students will be able to do what they like, they will. Allowing for some generalization, the ones that are problematic are because they do not have any kind of structured home life. Sometimes if these students do get a lack of structure at school too, a place where they expect structure, they react poorly. That was something I certainly I knew nothing about...

This year I'm branching out a bit more, making things more organized and utility-oriented where possible. Part of this includes the fact that I'm going to concentrate more on immigration, as many of my students are immigrants and many more have parents that are. To make the fact that everyone in the U.S. is an immigrant or a descendant of one, I'm going to cover entire ceiling tiles with flags from the various countries represented by our students and by major contributors to the population of the U.S. in the past (Germany, Ireland, Italy, etc.). I hope to get a few of those "crazy progressive" ideas into the classroom as well when my students are ready for them.


There's a lot to be said about setting up a classroom. Any pointers?



Today's Wine: I went with a colleague to the Bronx's Little Italy- Arthur Avenue. We went to a place called Dominick's where there is no menu for wine or food. We were given a few options, picked something to east and drink and were told how much to pay at the end. The wine was something made in Italy specifically for the restaurant. It was a pretty good Merlot.

The Students on Board

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.

The Push Back

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

NYC's Grand Grading Plan

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.

Fight!

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.