Holiday Parties

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

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

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

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

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.