You Know What's NIce?

You know what's nice?

What's nice is having enough experience that I can leave my classroom Friday afternoon, exhausted from my migrane, not knowing what I'm going to do with my students on Monday, and not worrying one bit about it, because I know I can come in Monday morning, look at the book, and decide which short story to start that will get us productively 3.5 days through the shortened week 'til the end of the quarter.

What's nice is being confident and experienced enough to be able to gauge their ability against the material to create assignments that will fit perfectly into that 70% of a school week, so that I don't have to worry about it over the weekend.

That's what's nice.

Do You Hear That?

Woke up at 3 AM with a migrane. Almost didn't come in, but since I was going to give the writing prompt today, I decided I could make it.

The writing prompt, for those of you who don't know, is a quarterly test of students' writing skills. The kids are given a sheet of paper with a question, or a proposal, or something to read and respond to, and given the entire class hour to create an on-demand response.

Fast and Furious with a pen, you might say.

After I got them started, I sat on my stool behind my podium, half the lights out (light and noise are anathema to migrane sufferers), trying to score the essays from their novel exams from yesterday. It was slow going, what with all the interruptions to answer kids' questions & hush them when they forgot to give the late-finishers some quiet working time.

But there were a few moments when the room got quiet enough that we all could hear the soft pattering of the light rain on the concrete outside. That part was calming.

And now I'm going to go home and try to fall asleep in a dark, quiet room. I have three periods of essays to finish this weekend, plus about 160 book projects to read/score, so that next week I'll have time to read/score the writing prompt essays they produced today. Don't tell me how lucky I am to have summers off. I put in 2000 hours a year (40 hrs. x 50 wks.) just like anyone else: I just do it all in under 10 months.

One Piece at a Time

I've started a collection of my own office equipment.

When I moved into this room six years ago, there was no pencil sharpener. I bought one from Staples with a suction cup on the bottom, but the performance was poor. A student told her mother there was no pencil sharpener, and I was brought an electric one, which I used the rest of the year, but the sound of the motor grinding away was too much to deal with while I was lecturing, so I retired it that June.

I could have ordered one from the district warehouse, but deep down inside I didn't want one like all the other ones, so I want shopping on eBay. I actually wound up buying from a site called Etsy.com, and this one has all the uniqueness I could hope for.

First, it's retro, and I love retro, and I enjoy exposing young people to retro. Second, it's quirky: it holds the pencil and pulls it in with springs, so that your free hand can steady the sharpener, which stands on a foot, and isn't screwed to the table. Third, it presents a new experience for kids, who must walk up, fiddle with it, try to remember my demonstration, and conquer the challenge to sharpen their pencil, so ti provides a little entertainment.

Recently the paper cutter in the faculty lounge fell apart, and the new one, with all its safety features, is a nuisance, so I bought my own. It looks huge in the photo, but it's only 12" x 12", so is perfect for 8 1/2 x 11 sheets.

By then, momentum was working. I found a very unique stapler: one that doesn't use staples (with the green base, pictured w/ the hole punch). It punches a little slot, and cuts out a little tab, and folds the tab back and through the slot. The result is much like the little tearning/folding trick kids use to attach two sheets of paper together. It's the only stapler kids have access to, but they like it.

Ah, the hole-punch. I have a little one in my room that punches maybe 8 sheets at a time, but that's impractical for whole class sets of papers. There's an electric one in the office that will punch 15 sheets or so, but it stopped working recently. Now I have my own, it's very retro, and can accommodate about 30 sheets at a time. This makes a huge difference when I have 200 or 400 pages to punch. One pull of the lever and I've punched almost a class set. Sweet.

I know, they are little things, and I spent my own money on things I didn't, in a strict sense, need to buy for myself. But they bring a smile to my face, make me less dependent on the broken office equipment of the school, and add a uniqueness and personalization to my room (the kids only get to use the sharpener and the stapler; the cutter and punch are on a separate table with nothing else of student concern).

I'm thinking of collecting old typewriters to use simply as display pieces around the room: on top of bookshelves, etc. I can get them cheap. We'll see. Who knows what this might lead to…

The S-word

I've banned the s-word in my classroom.

That's right. Students in my classroom are not allowed to say "Shut up." The first student who fires an s-word invariably begins an alternating volley of the same, and I can see the furrowed brows as they spit the phrase at each other. It creates a nasty atmosphere. So I've banned it.

I instruct my students to say "Have a nice day" as a substitute.

Why?

One, because I hate that plastic little motto and its superficiality, so I'm co-opting it for my own use as an insult to it.

Two, kids can say "Have a nice day, Michael" in as nasty a tone as they want, and it still doesn't cut, even if everyone knows it's code for the s-word. So it takes away their ability to slash at each other.

Three, everyone sees the humor in the change, and now will playfully lob a "Lisa, have a nice day" at the talking kid with feigned exasperation, who can only respond with "No, Lauren, you have a nice day!" At this point everyone is smiling, the atmosphere in the room is light instead of angry, and we can move on with our business.

When someone forgets and lets an s-word fly, I remind him with "Sara, don't use the s-word" with just a bit of ersatz shock. The kid will invariably repeat herself, auto-correcting with "Have a nice day."

Hey, you can laugh all you want: it works. And they take ownership of it and run with it.

And if you don't like that, you can just have a nice day.

Wrongs of Spring

It's 7:45 AM. It's a beautiful spring morning: there are birds twittering in the trees outside our classroom; the scent of flowers and growing things is in the air; the temperature is rising slowly as Helios drives his chariot higher and higher into the sky. A marvelous morning.

And my students sit in their rows, noses down, pencils being chewed, bubbling in column after column of empty bubbles, making multiple-choice choices. They're taking the last of their state tests.

They don't hear the birds. They don't smell life in the air. They don't see the increasing blueness of the sky. They're trying to decide if the passage they just read is an example of satire or parody.

I think irony is a more apt description.

Rites of Spring, II

The state testing schedule we're trying this year makes sense: kids show up to a different "period" each day for a big testing period: the first day of testing, to their first period class; the second day, to their second period class, etc., then the rest of the day is a block schedule, where they go to three of their six classes on alternating days. The block schedule never brings them back to their "testing" period on the same day. Sounds more complicated than it is.

So on any given morning, kids are taking all different tests all over campus: the English test in their English class, and so on. I have no idea what they're doing in their elective classes for over three hours.

But it's working for me: I administer the same test day after day. No having to remember what test, or two tests, have to be done on any given day. Big relief, because I've made mistakes in the past, not giving the test I should have, then having to squeeze it in on another test day after my kids finished that day's test. This is much easier for me, but more difficult for the administration and the clerical staff: every day the test booklets and answer documents are collected, and re-sorted so that each kid's test booklet and answer document matches the "period" that the next day's test will take place in for every student on campus who is testing (basically, everyone but seniors). That's a lot of hand-sorting, but so far it's been flawless on my end. We have a fantastic clerical staff up in the front office.

The last good part of this schedule is that instead of trying to cram in five other periods after the testing period that all last half an hour, we have only three, so they can be just about a normal class-hour long. Feels much more normal, and my planning hardly hiccups, aside from not burdening them down with a lot of taxing work during "dead week." Fortunately, we're reading and discussing a book, so their brain cells are not being called upon for yeoman's work right now, anyway. "Dead week" mostly signifies the school's suggesting that we not assign homework during the testing period.

Other schools have approached state testing by having a series of minimum (time on campus) days: test from 8AM to noon, then turn them loose until the next day. Our minimum day runs from 7:30 to 12:16, with a 10-min. break in the middle, so totals 4hrs. 25min. of actual instructional time. Right now we're covering everything easily with 3 1/4hr. testing blocks, so we'd have to figure out what to do with them for about 1.25hrs. Considering our contract's stipulations, and bus schedules, it's probably not feasible for us to go that route, as direct and simple as it is. Welcome to bureaucracy-ville. I'd say let's go from 9AM (that's when we begin on Mondays anyway) 'til 12:30. That would give us the 3.5hr. testing block we're using now, then nada.

Not likely to happen. You can't turn the Titanic: all you can do is re-arrange the deck chairs.

"I'm Sorry, Dave: I Can't Do That"

Government-mandated grade book, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways:

1. I need an internet connection to use you.

2. You require that I "upload" changes. My grade book makes changes in real time.

3. You're not very customizable. My grade book used multiple colors for categories, just for a starter.

4. You have few options: drop a low test score: whoopie! My grade book lets me do that and a dozen other things, including "anchoring" a grade so that a final grade can be pre-determined, no matter how the individual entries add up. This function is very useful when, for example, cutting a deal with a failing student who will deliver a body of custom work by a certain date in exchange for a guaranteed passing grade. But there are so many different options and functions my grade book has that it makes you look like a model T Ford next to the freaking Space Shuttle.

5. You actually screw up students' grades by forgetting to include some assignments in your calculations: oh, you let me put in my custom characters (√+, √, and √-) for quick-to-mark homework assignments and handouts, but you will deceive me by showing my check-mark, then figuring it as a "0" in the actual math. I have to take out the √, upload the page, re-insert the √, then re-load the page again in order for you to recognize the assignment. You lying piece of s—oftware.

6. There's no way to tell that you're senile brain has "zeroed" a full-credit score unless I roll my cursor over EVERY CHECKMARK to force you to show me how you're treating it. I will pass the cursor over 7 check-off assignments and a pop-up window will declare "√ = 10" for a ten-point assignment for each, but when I pass the cursor over the 8th assignment in that series, you will admit that for this one, "√ = 0." What the hell?! A kid's score shows full credit (a little "A"), but you're sticking him with no credit (a little "F") and pretending nothing is wrong.

Oh: 7 check-off assignments times 5 classes times 35 kids each equals 1225 possible points of error that I need to check individually. Hey, Thanks!

7. You imported all of my 6th period students into my 4th period class, leaving with with double-enrolments, a class of 68 students, and kids who saw that they had two English classes, one of which they were failing. I had to drop all those double-entries manually, and you STILL try to sneak a kid in once in a while, you glitch-laden piece of junk. It's frustrating enough to try to use you when you're running properly.

8. Because of the Parent Portal, I have parents e-mailing me asking why their kid doesn't have a score for a certain assignment, because they (the parents) don't know how interpret the marks that the program displays on their end. I have to remember to hide the assignment from public view until ALL scores are in, but that's not the default setting, so if I don't remember to do it, it displays to parents, and they freak out.

9. Creating printouts of students grade summaries, for a single test, or overall grade, is like pulling teeth. Clun-ky.

10. If I arrange assignments by category instead of date, which makes sense if I want to see an overview, then when a new student comes in, he's automatically failing as soon as the counselor adds him to my class, and I have to go in and excuse 20 or 30 assignments to start him off with "zero attempted, zero scored." What a pain. My grade book program only calculated a grade based on scores I actually put in for the new kid, an never penalized him for earlier work. Intuitive, huh?

11. When conferring with a student about what could happen to his grade if he turns in a good final project, I will create the assignment, then add his supposed future score, and show him the possible result. But as soon as I create that assignment and "turn it on," EVERY OTHER KID IN THAT PERIOD GETS A ZERO CALCULATED INTO HIS GRADE, because there are no corresponding scores for them. That throws the entire grade book into chaos just to show one kid his possible future score. There have been times I've forgotten to turn that assignment back off, and then every kid's grade is inaccurate until I catch it or it's brought to my attention by a panicked student the next day.

This grade book is a fail. Teachers lose autonomy, flexibility, options, and ease-of-use, in order that students and parents can look over my shoulder 24 hours a day. I'm not hiding anything, but I can hardly say that this is "my" grade book anymore.

Next, they'll be asking us all to plan our lessons together. Wait: THEY ARE!

We're really going down the big, bureaucratic, centrist-thinking, forced-mediocrity tubes. Compared to how it was when I started, it's hardly recognizable anymore.

The Rites of Spring

Early-release day today, because tonight is Open House.

I never seem to time things right for Open House. Ideally, teachers have lots of colorful, impressive work up on their walls that screams "We've been doing important educational things here: your kid can be president someday!" Well, maybe Corey Snow, but that's a whole different story.

But I don't have any colorful, impressive things to put on my walls for tonight: I have the rough draft of an essay that isn't even marked; I have a packet from our movie study of Of Mice and Men that isn't marked; I have a stack of Scan-trons that would look silly stapled to the wall. I could rush through some of the papers in the next couple of hours just to have something on the wall, but only about 1 out of 20 parents look at that stuff anyway, out of idle curiosity.

Here's my solution: I've edited together video clips of my juniors reciting portions of Poe's "The Raven," and I'm going to pump the videos from my laptop (trusty ol' gal that she is) through an LCD projector and just let the video run while I mingle and chat with parents. The videos are about 10 minutes long, which is how much time each class period of parents is with me, wo the video will be bell-to-bell. Anyway, tonight it will be "The Raven" as recited by your kid, maybe. Definitely a classic, and looks to be a crowd-pleaser, even though I think it's sort of a cheap-out.



Note: there seems to be a problem with the videos: the audio is fine, but the video is stuck in a fast-forward. Whatever, Google.

The kids actually did a good job with it: trying to capture the eerie mood and the fragile-but-steadily-dissolving sanity of the narrator, and to see their performances reminds me of the kind of nuance and subtlety they are capable of at this age. Anyway, parents should like.

That means the laptop will be conveniently un use, and won't be available to look a kids' grades. With Parent Portal (grrr) in place they should be up on the kid's grade anyway: asking me in person reveals that they're not in the electronic loop.

He'll Never Walk Again

So much for my "sturdy" desks. This one lost a bracing arm last year (welds let go), and then developed a slowly-worsening scoliosis, until it finally collapsed in on itself, book, student, and all.

It was pretty funny, because no one was hurt. The students, of course, wanted to re-assemble the desk to set a man-trap for an unsuspecting student in a later class, but I put the kabosh on that.

There's no way to salvage the book basket, or I'd have a screwdriver in my hand this very moment.

On the upside, my worst-behaving kid ("Blurter" from a previous post) checked out of my class today: his discipline file got thick enough to move him to a more appropriate (smaller, more restrictive) environment, in hopes that there still may be some chance of educating him. I wish him luck, and count my blessings: when he was suspended, the class ran fairly well. Huggy Bear says word on the street is that all of the kids in that family are wild. He was the way he is well before I ever said "Good morning" to him.

I used to really feel for these kids, wanting to reach each and every one, and let myself become sad at their departure. I still want the best for them, but I realize that they are going into someone else's hands now, and that my influence on them has ended. I have to turn to the students I have, and make good use of my time with those who still look to me at the front of the room. It's egotistical of me to think that another adult won't be able to have a deeper impact on him than I did.

The truth is, I don't know what my final effect will be on any of my students: what they take, when it will help or influence them, and whether the influence will have been from the content of the class or because of who I am.

There's a lot of trust involved in this career.

Book Migration

The desks in my room are fairly sturdy, and provide a large, flat work space. But their Achille's Heel is the book basket.

They are made of round metal strands, about the diameter of a pencil. Each basket is attached to the underside of the seat by spot-welds, which cannot endure the weight of students' feet, and often snap off by such treatment. Many of the baskets have suffered such a fate, and have been discarded, leaving nothing at all to hold books.

Not that it's a great design to begin with. They have the depth of serving trays, and are open on each side; more like flat shelves under the desks. So the books tend to slide to one side or the other, and will fall to the floor with the slightest provocation. "Kids, turn your desks to face your working partner" results in twenty books flopping to the floor. It's just another struggle against entropy.

Kids grab whatever book is handy: desk, floor, basket. So some baskets have three of the same book; others are empty.

It all drives me absolutely batty. Between the strewn books and the leftover food packaging from their snuck-in food (a battle all its own), the room can look pretty trashed in just a couple of days. Add to that my own disorganization up front, and it really changes the psychological climate of the room.

I day-dream sometimes of improving the baskets. It would take some welding, and some hardware attachments and strips of wood, but that would still leave the basket-less desks. Sigh.

I'll make the last class of the day straighten up, which is their Friday ritual. And then the slide will begin again on Monday morning.

And don't get me started about the crooked rows of desks.