Rampant Racism

Just like last year, my final class of the day is the most difficult to manage. Students are hyper because they have either just had lunch or really want to go home, or both. They want to talk, to touch each other, to hit each other, to wander aimlessly around the classroom until I throw them out (which I will only do if I think they are posing a safety hazard, as was one girl who kept telling me to “shut the hell up” as I kept telling her to sit in her assigned seat).

And since yesterday was Friday, the level of student restlessness was about 10 to the 100th power worse than usual.

So there was that girl who kept wandering the classroom and telling me to shut the hell up. There was the other girl who kept arguing with me about the rules: “There aren’t any cell phones allowed in school, so take yours off,” she said. Sure it’s a double standard, but I’m the teacher, and I use that cell phone to sometimes call parents on the spot. Then there were the two guys who actually wanted to learn, who kept yelling at everyone else to “shut the fuck up.” And did I mention the other guy who was probably sexually harassing another girl in the back of the classroom? I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but whatever it was, it was getting her upset. I can tell him to stop, but I can’t duct tape his mouth shut.

As should be clear by now, there wasn’t much learning going on in the classroom. Shouting at them never helps, so I have adopted a policy this year of simply waiting, or saying student names individually and firmly to get their attention (although this is admittedly less effective when I have to say 15 names in a row: by the time I’ve said the name of #15, #1-10 are talking again).

I was getting frustrated, but I was also managing to keep just enough emotional distance to not feel completely dragged down by it all. And then D’Gray said something that really concerned me:

“You know how black kids are . . .”

I rounded on him immediately. “D’Gray, please don’t ever say anything so racist in this class again. I find that highly offensive”

“It’s not racist.”

“Yes, it is. Any time you reduce a person to a color, to one aspect of who they are, that’s racism.”

“But I’m not racist. My grandfather was white.”

“I didn’t say you were racist. I don’t think you are racist, but you said a very racist thing.”

“But I’m not racist.”

And so on.

At one point I mentioned classism, and Demane, one of the frustrated “I want to learn but these other asses are screwing that up” students, said “What does that mean? Please, I’d like to learn at least one thing in class today.”

So I explained it. And he learned something.

And then I went back to telling Jorry to sit down, and she told me once again to “shut the hell up and leave me alone.” This is the same student who, after I called her grandmother to inform her that Jorry had walked out of my class twice without my permission, said to me “Why do you bother? I never get in trouble.”

Of course there are differences between black culture and white culture. One has only to look as far as conventions for naming children, a trend which Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer has studied as part of his examination of “where blacks went wrong,” as he puts it (and which Steven Levitt outlines in his fascinating book Freakonomics). But many, perhaps most, of these students have internalized the idea that D’Gray made explicit yesterday: black kids are unruly and don’t care much about school.

Here is a thesis that bears some research: where do these attitudes in back culture come from? It certainly doesn’t help that President George W. Bush’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina makes him look like a racist bastard (although I’m sure the oversight was more an issue of socioeconomic blindness than racism), and makes many blacks in this country feel marginalized, even if they’ve never been within 500 miles of New Orleans (all of my students are convinced that George W. Bush is unrepentantly racist).

But here is the thing that scares me the most, the thing that bears the most research (or maybe Fryer or others like him have already done it and I’m just not aware of it): to what extent are these attitudes being disseminated within black culture by other blacks? Research—and even casual observation—has shown that black audiences statistically prefer black music, black television shows, black movies, and anything else that somehow becomes associated with “black culture” (Levitt notes on page 182 of Freakonomics that Newport cigarettes enjoy a 75 percent market share among black teenagers, for example, while the same cigarettes have only 12 percent of the market share among white teens, who statistically prefer Marlboros).

Although it is illegal to create any kind of forced segregation in this country, de facto segregation does exist, the kind imposed from outside (group A moves out of the neighborhood as group B moves in, for example) and the kind imposed from within (group A flocks to see the opening of a new movie starring a member of their ethnicity, while group B statistically ignores it). This being the case, my very unscientific but extremely gut reaction is that blacks get most of their negative stereotypes about blacks from other blacks.

Something I learned when I started teaching here, for example, is that skin shade carries with it all kinds of social value: light-skinned blacks are often more high-status than dark-skinned blacks. Maybe I was just sheltered and naïve, but I found that truth rather shocking. Maybe I had just seen too many documentaries about the civil rights movement, films like Eyes on the Prize that made the “black cause” seem monolithic in its unity.

But again, the real issue isn’t race, it’s socioeconomics. Statistically speaking, poor kids go to poor schools and do poorly in school. The poor, regardless of their ethnicity, often have narrow views on things like ethnicity and politics and sexual orientation. The poor and disadvantaged usually see the world in stark black and white; they haven’t learned to recognize, appreciate, and savor the shades of gray that make up life. Only education will broaden their minds and their horizons, but the drop-out rate among blacks and Hispanics in this country is astronomically high.

I’d like to end this post with a suggestion for improving this mess, but frankly, all I can think to do right now is finish grading papers and plan for Monday’s class.

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Two related stories about teaching from the New York Times:

"As Test Scores Jump, Raleigh Credits Integration by Income"

and

"Tenure, Turnover and the Quality of Teaching"

Thanks to Barbara S. for pointing these out to me.

The First Chink in My Armor?

I have a story about a student, and, like every time I mention a student here, I’ll make up a name for him. I’ll call him Virgil. The Roman poet Virgil was Dante’s guide into Hell.

Virgil, my student, not the Roman poet, is a student with many problems. All of my students have some kind of problem, or they wouldn’t be in this program, but Virgil . . . if I ever successfully imagined what Virgil’s life has been like up to this point, I’d probably collapse into a gibbering heap on the floor (or maybe that would just be the result of getting four hours of sleep a night these days).

Virgil is completely lacking in empathy. He is more self-centered than most of my students. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his rude and abrasive personality is a mechanism that protects him from whatever is the trauma that make up his life of being bounced around between a mother who can’t control him and a social welfare system that, for all of its good intentions, simply cannot care for him the way a good parent could or should.

Virgil had his cell phone out today. He was only checking the time, but rules are rules. I told him if I saw the cell phone again, I was going to have to take it. “Oh, OK,” he says, and I get the distinct impression, as I often get when talking to most of my students, that I might as well not even be there.

Thirty minutes later, Virgil has the phone out again. I don’t know what he’s doing with it, but it doesn’t matter. He obviously has the phone out, and if I let it slide, I’ll be fighting this from him and other students all year. So I walk over to Virgil and tell him I need his phone. I’m polite. I’m firm. I keep my voice even. And he flat-out refuses.

This does not surprise me. Very few students will simply hand over contraband the first time I ask for it. But after about five minutes of me standing there repeating variations of “These are the rules, I need your phone,” I can tell I’m not getting anywhere. And the rest of the class is getting restless. Loreese, who is actually one of my better students, keeps trying to get my attention, as if I’m not already involved in a serious issue with Virgil. “Mr. Richardson, what do we have to do? Mr. Richardson, what do we have to do?” she keeps asking over and over and over. All of my students are like this. When they want my attention, dammit, I better respond to them. When I want theirs, I practically need to shoot off fireworks in class to get their attention.

So Virgil is stonewalling me, arguing with me, not responding to me, and I have a class to teach. I know there isn’t a shred of empathy in his being that I will eventually be able to get through to, so I make a decision to tell Virgil he can keep his phone, but I’ll have to take this to the next level. According to the rules and consequences list the other teachers and I came up with in the days before school, that means I need to have a conference with his parent or guardian.

The only problem is, no one has a working home number for Virgil’s mother. And even if we did, we all know from experiences last year that a conference with Virgil’s mother is going to be less than effective. It’ll probably just make his behavior worse.

So now I have a student in my classroom who successfully refused to heed my authority, and the next step in my consequences chain isn’t going to be effective at all. I’m dreading the next time I have to take a cell phone or CD player away from a student in that class. Will they also stonewall me, braced by Virgil’s example of defiance? Or will I have enough social capital left with the other students that those kinds of distractions won’t be a problem?

The one thing I do know is that when Virgil is absent, we get a heck of a lot more accomplished in that class. There are some students who are so detrimental to the education of others that they should not be allowed in school, or at least not allowed around students who actually want to learn. The law says we have to keep him until he’s 17. And any student who gets special education services we have to keep until age 21 (I’m not sure about Virgil’s status in that regard).

I’ve been called a saint at least twice in the past two weeks by people who hear these stories I tell about teaching. I don’t want to be a saint. I just want to be a guy who does his job well and gets to go home and relax at the end of the day. I hear that special education teachers often burn out in five years or less. I’m not a special education teacher, but I deal with a lot of students who should have been classified as special ed years ago (severe deficiencies in reading and writing, which these kids have, are enough to get the paperwork moving, but since there is a limit on how many students can be referred each year, these kids have fallen through the cracks, and now they are in this program). I can see why special ed teachers can burn out so fast. When I deal with students like Virgil on only four hours of sleep a night, I’m heading for a burnout fast—or at least a day off.

And I have another worry: I ran into a gym teacher the other day I used to work with last year. His position was cut because of funding issues. He’s back teaching drivers’ ed at the school, but he can’t find a job actually teaching because, with almost 30 years of experience, he costs too much. I already cost too much for many districts because I have a masters. Will it just get more difficult for me to find jobs the more years of experience I get, thus placing me higher on the pay scale? I shudder at the thought.

Book Junkie

My name is Christopher, and I’m addicted to books.

That’s the first step, right? Admitting you have a problem? When I was 12, or 10, or however old I was when Mom used to bring stacks of books home for me to read from the Hastings Public Library, where she worked, reading to the exclusion of almost everything else wasn’t so much of a problem. Well, Mom and Dad did think it rather rude when I would bring a book to the dinner table and read instead of conversing over chicken in wine sauce, but, for the most part, reading books never really got in the way of anything.

And now I have a real job, a teaching gig that requires that I plan a new lesson every night, and I’m sitting here, not crafting an assignment or a list of discussion questions. No, I’m reading Trino’s Choice.

In my defense, it’s the young-adult book I’m going to start with my students on Friday (or perhaps Monday), so this reading is kind of like my homework; I’m getting a leg up so I won’t have to stay just one chapter ahead of the students (I’ve done that before, and it’s never fun). Also, the book is actually good.

It didn’t start off that way. When I wasn’t grading papers this weekend, I was reading Blink, Malcolm Gladwell’s examination of research into the mind’s ability to make split-second decisions. I’m also stuck halfway through The Scold’s Bridle, a tepid mystery by British author Minette Walters. I’m also about 100 pages into Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. I started Dante’s Inferno a few weeks ago (I stalled, but I’ll pick it up again, I’m sure). I read Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby for about the hundredth time three weeks ago. I have Gladwell’s first bestseller, The Tipping Point, waiting for me on my nightstand, along with the next Sano Ichiro mystery by Laura Joh Rowland: The Way of the Traitor. In the past three weeks, I’ve also read the first three volumes of Lone Wolf and Cub, a Japanese graphic novel about a samurai assassin and his infant son and their adventures in Tokugawa-era Japan.

In short, I don’t read young-adult books, so Trino’s Choice was something I had to read, rather that something I really wanted to read.

And then author Diane Gonzales Bertrand had to go and make Trino start to discover poetry. Trino’s street-tough attitude would have prevented him from allowing himself even the slightest interest in words for their own sake, but through serendipitous encounter with an ex-con poet who gives Trino a copy of his book, the boy’s mind starts to open. As a logo- and bibliophile, I’m a sucker for stories like that.

So I had to keep reading.

I’m not done yet. It won’t take me but another hour or so (this is a short book), but I can’t afford to stay up for another hour. I can’t even afford to be up right now. I should have my head hit the pillow so I can get more than four hours of sleep tonight. I don’t teach well when I’m exhausted. But I can’t turn in until this lesson plan is done. And that’s going to take me at least another hour.

But I couldn’t resist the logographic lure of this tale of a budding bibliophile caught between the life of a street thug and something richer and more wonderful between the pages of a book.

My name is Christopher, and I’m a book junkie. Now, if I could only get my students addicted . . .

The First Fight of the Year

I managed to keep two students from fighting in my first class. I wasn’t so lucky in my last class.

In the first class, Roman and Jeremy had been “gunning” each other for at least an hour, despite my firm reminder that respect is rule #1 in my class. When Roman started getting visibly agitated and telling the whole class “I’ll beat his ass,” in reference to Jeremy, I ushered Roman out into the hall. Not to yell at him, just to get him away from a hostile situation. He went and talked to the two student advocates, and no fists were thrown.

Fists were thrown in my last class.

Because that last class had wasted so much instructional time with side-chatter, I ended up holding them for three minutes after the final bell rang. There was some complaining—loud and childish complaining—but most of the students sat down. Some were trying to push past me out the door, but I just kept telling them to sit down, and I think I would have succeeded in getting them sitting down, had I not then heard “You wanna go?!”

I looked past the students trying to push past me, and saw Errol and Gus in very bad boxing stances: fists up but not protecting the face, weight so far back on the rear leg that moving forward—much less actually reaching your opponent with a punch—is almost impossible. It took me half a second to realize these two were serious, so I opened the door and called for security.

The security guard was on his walkie-talkie as soon as I called out “Hurry!” I looked back in the room. Errol and Gus were now clinched, and Errol was getting the worst of it: Gus’s from-the-shoulder punches were weak and ineffectual, but they must have stung a little as they peppered Errol’s face. But Errol wasn’t just standing still. The two were locked in that street-tough “as long as we both hold on to each other this will look impressive but not hurt much” embrace, and they were careening around my room like a blaster bolt in the Death Star trash compactor. They knocked one of my box fans out of the window (into the room, thankfully, and not out into the street), they knocked one of my white boards down. I was afraid they’d knock my computer off of my desk.

Then one security guard was there, pulling the two fighters apart. Gus calmed down right away, but Errol was enraged, the way I always used to get when I was seven and the victim of some merciless teasing from my classmates. Errol wanted a piece of Gus, and one security guard wasn’t going to stop him.

Two more security guards showed up. The head of security showed up. The attendance coordinator showed up. The assistant principal showed up. I was stuck in the doorway/atrium between all of them, so when I let Gus out of the room, presumably to be taken away by security so we could get Errol out of there, Errol tried to charge his way through all of us in the doorway. He was flailing around so much as security tried to subdue him that I took a slap on the face. It didn’t hurt. I’ve been dropped by better punchers than this wild kid. But still, that’s not what I expected when I went into work this morning.

It hurts me more to watch some of these kids tease and insult and belittle each other pretty much constantly, despite my efforts to teach them a better way. So much anger and insecurity. I come home and I can still taste it, like the rancid tang of rotten meat coating my tongue, even though I have only smelled it and not eaten any. I get home and get on my ski machine and bask in the baptism of pouring-off-my-body-sweat that 30 low-impact minutes can give me. And I still feel awful. The only thing I can do is go back and keep trying. These kids are hard-headed, but mine’s harder. I’ve had more experience banging it into things. It’s a wonder I don’t have a concussion. Or an acute subdural hematoma.

Eventually security restrained and calmed down a howling Errol, even though Gus had slipped away in the confusion. It won’t matter, though: both boys have been suspended for 10 days, as per the Uniform Discipline Code of Chicago Public Schools. We can’t help them if they’re not in school, but we can’t let them solve their disputes with fisticuffs, either.

Battle of Wills

At some points during my summer vacation, I would think to myself in a very tiny voice, “I should be doing something about classes next year . . .planning, reading, something.” And then I would just as quickly reply to myself with “dammit, it’s my vacation. I’m not doing anything until August.”

As it turns out, a summer spent doing nothing related to teaching was probably the best thing I could have done.

Many times in just the past five days I have found myself thinking “Why didn’t I do this last year?” or “Why couldn’t I see my students from this perspective last year?” I don’t think I could have until I spent a summer just letting go and letting my mind process what was unprocessable last year in a kind of subconscious Zen meditation.

I feel like a whole new teacher.

For example, today in my final class I spent 40 minutes in a battle of wills with a handful of students who did not want to move from their old assigned seats to their new assigned seats. I warned them on Friday that I would shuffle the seating chart. Some of them didn’t believe me. Some of them just wanted to complain about the heat (I have mentioned how hot it gets in my classroom, even with two box fans going, haven’t I?). Some of them wanted to test me.

The class went something like this: I would ask a student to move to a new seat, and he or she would either move or complain. I would ask again. And again. And again. I kept asking until the student moved. Some took 15 minutes to move. I watched the time drift away. I deflected complaints that I was unfairly punishing everyone. I held my ground, and kept asking, sometimes firmly, sometimes in a flat, matter-of-fact tone. But I didn’t back down. I didn’t explain why they had to move. They just had to move. (Thank you, Rick Smith, for that chapter about “Inner Authority”).

Amazingly enough, to me, is the fact that it wasn’t the chronic screw-ups, the kids way below grade level, who were giving me the most problems. It was the A and B students.

Actually, the final student to move wasn’t going to move. Ever. He kept writing, kept pretending that he couldn’t hear me. That was worse, for me, than going up against a student who would talk back. I knew this student had exploded in other classes last year. I didn’t want him to explode in mine. So I whipped out my cell phone, called his home, explained the situation, and put him on with his mother. “Earnest” moved after that. He walked right out of my classroom.

He didn’t sit where he was supposed to, but my point about the seating chart remained firm. To the students, my seating chart, and the fact that I insist on assigning one, seems completely arbitrary. To me, it’s a way to establish and reinforce my authority in the classroom. They don’t have to understand that logically. I think if I tried to explain it to them, they’d just rebel more. So I just insist. Stuff like this you can’t learn in teacher education classes. Experience is the only way to really understand how much this can work.

Once everyone was either sitting in their assigned seats or out of the classroom, I started putting notes on the board. We had five minutes to cover what I had taken 20 to cover in my other classes. Then we moved on to the partner assignment (30 minutes) then journaling for the last 20.

Last year, losing so much instructional time would have caused me great anxiety. I always resisted the idea that teachers teach children first, their subject second. As someone who went into teaching because of his love for English and in spite of his distaste for youngsters in general, the idea was abhorrent to me. I wanted to teach reading and writing, period.

I have moved on. My primary focus this year isn’t teaching English. It’s teaching behavior, and patience, and how to work with others. It’s teaching responsibility and accountability and organization. They can’t learn anything about language until they learn those skills. So this year, I can retain my equanimity when students resist my authority and want to waste class time, because I know that what I’m teaching them by being a firm educator is, in the long run, more valuable than the plot of Romeo and Juliet.

The Best Teaching Tactic Ever

It’s been an interesting week. Despite the many “business-as-usual” difficulties we faced before the school year had even started, or perhaps because of them, the first week of school actually went rather smoothly. For me, at least, feeling like the bureaucracy of the system was against me caused me to focus on my classroom, dig deep, and become more self-reliant. Reading Rick Smith’s Conscious Classroom Management, especially Chapter 3, “Inner Authority,” didn’t hurt, either. It’s the best thing I’ve ever gotten from CPS, actually. I’ve started this year off confident in my ability to say “No,” or its variant, “I understand, and the answer is no,” and although my classroom does not yet run like a well-oiled machine, it’s already running more smoothly than it ever did last year.

Add to this newfound confidence that I am the law, fair and just, in my classroom, with the amazing tool of insisting that I dismiss the class, not the bell, and I think I might actually be on my way to something approaching a well-oiled machine. Sure, some students complain when I insist that they put their butts in their seats before I will let them go, but—and this is what amazes me—they actually do it.

On the second day, when I was enforcing this new rule in my classroom, “Rodney,” a student who would rather be anywhere else than school, fumed in his seat. “If we all leave, he can’t stop us all,” he said. “And if he does, I’ll pound him like that,” and he slapped his right fist into his left hand. But he didn’t make a move to get up. There was some laughter, but no one else tried to bum rush me, either.

The next day, “Jimbo Jones,” actually attended class. Jimbo loves to challenge my authority. He and Rodney sometimes skip class together. When class was over, the bell rang, and some students, including Jimbo, got out of their desks. “Wait.” I said. “Sit down. Sit down and I will dismiss you.” There was some grumbling, and no one grumbled louder or more profanely than Jimbo. Everyone else—including Rodney—sat back down. But Jimbo wanted to fight me. So he stood there, cussing just loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Jimbo,” I said, “Sit down in the desk, please.”

“Naw, man.”

“Jimbo, please sit down. No one is going anywhere until you do.”

“I want to hold everybody up.” He leaned against the desk part of the desk with the attitude that he had all day and not a care in the world. Except I knew he wanted out of my class.

Me again: “Jimbo, sit down.”

Then Rodney spoke up: “C’mon, Jimbo, sit down.”

And there were some other similar mutterings. And then Jimbo sat down. And I dismissed the class.

The sense of victory and power this new rule/ procedure gives me would almost be intoxicating if I didn’t know just how slender a thread it can be. This week, application of this tactic was easy. Next week or next month it might be harder. Or easier. These students can be a moody bunch. So I find solace in another bit of advice from Rick Smith, which I call “Zen mind, teacher’s mind”: “we are generally best served not ‘riding’ on the good experiences or making too much over the bad ones” (79).

I record my good experience here for posterity, so I can remember that it actually happened, and Monday starts with a blank slate.

In this vein, I should also record that Thursday did not end particularly well. My middle class was awesome—kids were learning all over the place—but my last class was awful. Not as awful as some from last year, but hardly stellar. About a quarter of the class kept sleeping, and I have yet to find a good tactic to keep students from putting their heads down. My gut reaction is always “sure, they’re sleeping, but at least they’re quiet.” I’m not proud of this, but it’s true. So I came home Thursday night hating my job, lamenting that I would once again get only about four hours of sleep that night because I had to stay up and plan for Friday, frustrated that I have students who cannot write a simple sentence, and terrified that I would fall asleep from exhaustion and not get anything prepared for the next day.

I did fall asleep. I made the mistake of lying down in my oh-so-comfy bed, next to my oh-so-cuddly girlfriend, and woke with a start two hours later—10:00. After lurching around my apartment like a drunken chimpanzee on Quaaludes for about a half an hour, I finally forced myself awake enough to write up a lesson plan. I was done in an hour (which must be a new speed record for me) and back to a peaceful, although too short, sleep (damn my 4:30 a.m. alarm). The anxiety in such moments sometimes makes my heart race, my head pound, and my body start like a cat licking an electric wire. It is the worst part of teaching.

I record my bad experience here for posterity, so I can remember that I did actually survive it, and Monday starts with a blank slate.

And hopefully more than four hours of sleep.

One down—170 or so to go . . .

The first day of school has come and gone for another year. I got there earlier than anyone else on my team (6:36 a.m.), and stayed later (4:30 p.m.).

In between, I made copies of adjusted class period schedules for all of our teachers, worked with everyone else to coordinate getting our students to the right classes, checked in on everyone during my planning period to make sure everything was running smoothly (relatively speaking, of course), took away two cell phones after making clear that I did not even want to SEE them in my classroom, called the parents of those students on those cell phones (with the students’ permission—they wanted those damn things back) to make it clear that next time the parent would have to come up to the school to retrieve said cell phone, and took away one Mp3 player from a student who was too busy listening to music to hear my warning about not using personal electronic devices during class time. The ironic part? He wasn’t even supposed to be in my class at that time. Had he simply read his schedule better, he might have avoided losing his Mp3 player. I was willing to call his home to explain the rules to his sister (who he said looks after him) but he didn’t want that, so his Mp3 player is locked away in my file cabinet, and will remain there until his caretaker comes and gets it.

I sweated so much my brand-new tie was soaked through where it was touching the shirt that was touching the back of my neck. Needless to say, the shirt was soaked, too. And the wicking T-shirt underneath. It’s why I switched to more expensive wicking undergarments (even my socks) from cheaper but more creep-uppy-when-sweaty cotton. It gets hot on the third floor in an old building with no air conditioning (because the wiring can’t handle the power requirements without extensive capital improvements, apparently).

Thankfully, traffic was light on the way home (relatively speaking, of course), with the only major slowdown being to rubberneck at a nasty-looking accident in the southbound lanes of the Day Ryan. That traffic didn’t look like it was going to go anywhere anytime soon.

I got home, did 10 minutes of tai chi, did 30 minutes on my ski machine (a hand-me-down from Lisa, who told me I could have it if I just took the thing out of her apartment), ate a stylish dinner of PB&J sandwiches and chicken tenders, washed down with a can of Vernors, that ambrosial ginger ale of the Midwest, and sat down to blog.

It’s already past my bedtime (the alarm is set for 4:30 a.m.), and I still have to make up some seating charts and plan some kind of class for tomorrow. I held off from any actual teaching today because about half of my students just didn’t show up. It’s hard to get a regular classroom flow going when students pop in like fireflies and fade away just as quickly.

I got through the first day of school. Now I just have to get through about 170 more.

Kinesthetics + Moral Support = Happier Me

After spending over half of my Saturday in my classroom, cleaning out old materials, putting up colorful decorations, and organizing my desk and other supplies, I feel much more ready to take on the first day of school.

As I was moving around my room, getting the sense of it, imagining myself teaching in there this upcoming year, I realized that it was this concrete imagining—actually being able to SEE myself teaching in THIS specific space—that was making all the difference in my anxiety level (it’s lower than it was last week, but still above baseline). Then it occurred to me: I have never been a particularly kinesthetic learner. Even when training in karate, I always found it more helpful to define the movements and concepts linguistically, as opposed to just observing my instructor and then imitating him or her. But when it comes to teaching, I find myself to be VERY kinesthetic. If I can’t move around, manipulate things, get a sense of my physical space and the things in the room I can touch and interact with, I have a much harder time visualizing teaching at all, much less teaching a specific lesson. And if I can’t visualize it ahead of time, the lesson suffers.

Educators these days either preach about Robert Gardner’s theory of “multiple intelligences” (linguistic, bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal) or spend many professional development hours listening to such preaching. “Make sure your lesson plans address the different modalities of learning!” is not only a popular catchphrase, it’s a requirement—implicit or explicit—in some districts.

But I never hear anyone preaching about the other side of the coin, how a teacher can best teach. The assumption is that most teachers, if left to their own devices, will simply talk too much, and lecture the students into boredom. I know that I have been guilty of this current cardinal sin of teaching enough times in the past to make me rather sheepish when the subject is brought up. But I am rarely, if ever, completely still in the classroom. I like to move around. I move back and forth in front of the blackboard, trying to infuse whatever I write on it with the same enthusiasm I feel about my subject. Even if I’m more or less stuck next to an overhead, I still move around as much as possible. I don’t particularly like overhead projectors because I have to keep my writing on the transparencies small—i.e. normal and unexciting—and I can’t move around as much. I like to walk around the classroom, getting closer to students to help them feel and share my interest in the story we are reading (and it’s a good classroom management tactic, too).

Current educational theory is much invested in Gardner’s theories. But only as they apply to students. I wonder how much better I could make that all-important first day of school if I had known, from the last day of school last year, or even from the beginning of August, or with only a week before school started, what room I’d be teaching in, and what resources I would have access to; if I had been able to spend more time getting the FEEL of my classroom, that kinesthetic connection that I find essential to my teaching. I wonder if other teachers feel the same way. This is a subject that NEVER once came up for discussion in any of my teacher education classes. Certainly, we need to focus on our students, to meet them where they are so we can see to their educational needs. But if teachers’ own needs aren’t being met, how can we meet our students’ needs?

It’s a question I have only recently begun asking myself, spurred not only by my experiences here, but also by reading Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers (Moulthrop, Calegari, and Eggers, 2005). I’d settle first for better working conditions, but these authors think the biggest and most important change should be a drastic increase in teacher’s compensation (which, just for the record, I’m not at all opposed to). Either way, this statement has particular resonance for me:

“The mood of a school starts with its teachers. If teachers are content and can be proud of their work and compensation, their self-respect trickles down and is felt by every student.”

Now, I’ve never been a firm believer in any kind of “trickle-down” theory, but this one makes a lot of sense to me.

For now, in lieu of that salary commensurate with the amount of responsibility and stress of the job, I’ll take the kind of interpersonal support I’ve been getting from a few key people.

Although the Achievement Academy is currently without a principal, the regular high school principal has been fantastically supportive of not only the Achievement Academy as a whole, but also of me personally. He mentioned the other day that he noticed I was showing leadership initiative in trying to get things done for the Academy. That was a nice pat on the ego, good fuel for the effort I’ve been expending these past few days.

My parents, of course, have been their usual unconditionally supportive (and parentally concerned) selves, especially my father, who has 32 years of teaching experience to share with me. He, more than anyone else I’m close to, I think can acutely share my disbelief and disappointment at some of the circumstances I have had to navigate.

My girlfriend’s parents have even gotten in on the act, offering moral and other kinds of support; they read this blog. If nothing else, knowing that I’m being heard and appreciated is a wonderful comfort.

Speaking of my girlfriend, she’s been an absolute dream. Not only does she provide unwavering, unconditional, and unselfish support in all ways, shapes, and forms of which she is capable (she, more than anyone else, has seen exactly what the stress of this job can do to me), in addition to all of this, she came with me at 8 a.m. this morning to help me clean and arrange my classroom. And she actually enjoyed herself! If dating me doesn’t prove that she’s crazy, this most definitely should. When given the chance to arrange things, whether they be desks or computer settings or bulletin boards, the OCD in both of us has a chance to swell, shine, and pulse in a simpatico beat that makes normal people stare incredulously, then shrug and shake their heads. She’s definitely the right woman for me.

And perhaps the most unexpected, but no less appreciated, support has come from some of my former students. On Thursday, when we Academy teachers were realizing just how many desks and computers and books and such we needed to move between rooms before Tuesday (everyone was moved to a different room) someone had the idea of calling up some of last year’s freshmen. I whipped out my laptop, upon which was my call log from last year, and proceeded to call about ten different students and ask their parents for their help. Every student I got in touch with agreed, and most of them even showed up the next day. Legal reasons prevent me from mentioning them by name, but they know who they are. And they got lunch out of the deal. One of those students even came back for a second morning of work. There wasn’t as much heavy lifting to do, but he still helped out tremendously.

So now I have a physical sense of how I will teach, and I have a supportive net to fall into when I need to duck and cover from the strain of teaching.

Now all I need are some finished lesson plans and the inner authority to keep my classroom running smoothly. I’d love about another month to prepare—hell, I’d take one more day than the two I currently have to work with (and I’m taking tomorrow completely off—I’ve earned it this past week), so I’m looking at having all of my remaining prep done—syllabus, letter to parents, lesson plans about the rules, signs and attendance sheets for the first day, and a host of other things that will just keep growing until next June—on Monday.

I guess that’s why they call it Labor Day, right?

Making Sacrifices, Getting Sacrificed

I worked for a large company years ago. I was part of the telephone customer service team for a large bank. But the department was relatively small, and the business was well-run, for the most part, so I never got the feeling of what it is like to work in and for a bloated bureaucracy.

Now I do.

I got my room today, but while I am now more or less happy, the decision has caused hard feelings in the rest of the team. Not feelings toward me, but feelings of betrayal in the teacher I displaced, feelings directed at the general unfairness of a situation in which faceless bureaucrats we have never met make decisions that affect the immediate comfort and workability of our employment situation.

Here’s how it works:

Students need teachers. Teachers cost money. Therefore, it makes wise business sense to hire only as many teachers as the amount of students warrants.

So the number-crunchers look at last years’ year-end enrollment data to project how many students will be at Y High School this year, and allot budgetary resources accordingly.

In a perfect world, last year’s numbers would always be pretty close to this year’s numbers, so life at Y High School could remain fairly smooth.

But, as my experience lately has shown me, and as I have heard from others who have been in this system longer than I, life at the beginning of the school year is never smooth. I didn’t have a room. One of my colleagues was shifted to another position at the last minute. Actually, this happened to at least three people I know, and in one case, a pay cut was the result. This when he had been told at the end of last year that he would have the same position.

And today we find out that instead of X number of students, we will have X + 300. All to fit into eight not-overly-large classrooms. And we’re not getting more space, that’s for sure. If teachers cost money, capital improvements/ expansions cost MONEY.

OK, this sounds bad. And it will be—for at least two weeks. Maybe more, but after two weeks, the sad truth is that many of our students will stop coming for a variety of reasons. Some will be chronic truancies. Some will move and not tell anyone in the system. Some will transfer to another school. Some will run away from home. So, eventually, conventional wisdom is that no matter how many students a teacher starts the year off with, societal attrition will reduce that number by anywhere from 25 to 50 percent.

So, although our principal is doing all he can to get us more desks, on the first day of school, we will have rooms with about 20 desks, and each class will have at least 30 students.

Assuming, of course, all of the students who are on the rolls actually show up to school. It’s always a crapshoot, but I’d feel better if we were looking at more desks than students. Then again, if that were the case, I’d probably be out of a job as soon as the number-crunchers figured out a more cost-effective student-to-teacher ratio.

I’ve been complaining about the bureaucracy that I find myself mired in, but, really, the higher-ups in the bureaucracy aren’t faced with any really attractive choices.

Ugly Choice #1: They could hire as many teachers as they think they will need to service every student effectively. And then when attendance numbers drop and stabilize in October, the system will be paying for more teachers than the system needs, and the taxpayers will point an accusatory finger at the district for overspending. To avoid this, all of the “extra” teachers will be pink slipped. No “wasted” tax dollars, at the cost of seriously undermining recruitment and retention in the district.

Ugly Choice #2: The number-crunchers could hire as few teachers as possible, which they know will mean over 40 students in some classrooms, depending on the school, but which will keep the budget in line, at the cost of teachers’ sanity and a classroom climate conducive to education. But this situation probably won’t last long, so what’s a week of quality instructional time lost against thousands of dollars of budgetary savings?

Since money is the most important thing in our society, it’s obvious which choice the number-crunchers make year after year. Education is seriously under-funded, so to make every penny work, fewer teachers are asked to.

Those who are asked to, however, face a monumental challenge in the first few days or weeks of school. How can a student be comfortable enough to learn when he or she doesn’t even have a desk to sit in? With not even a desk, students will feel angry and/ or neglected. Some will start to act out. In a room of 30 or more students, one angry student can cause a nasty behavioral chain reaction. Maybe some expert veteran teachers can get some learning happening in a situation like that. As a second-year teacher, I’m not sure what kind of success I will have.

And teachers don’t have much choice other than to play with the hands we are dealt. Because, the bottom line is, the kids are coming on Tuesday, whether we’re ready or not. We must rise to the challenge, like teachers do every year, to be ready.

While I am proud of myself and my team for working together, despite hot rooms, rising tempers, and personality conflicts, to get ready for our students, I can’t help but feel a little used. The students have to come first. Teachers don’t just make sacrifices, teachers are sacrificed. Large bureaucracies—and, more importantly, the public that spawns them—know that good teachers will always break their backs doing whatever it takes to be ready to teach their students, and so, intentionally or not, take advantage of them.

Bureaucracies make their unpalatable decisions because of money, and money is dependent on wildly fluctuating enrollment numbers. And whether a student comes to school or not is ultimately the responsibility of the parent. Too many times, the answer is “not.”

Of course, the only way that’s going to change is through education.

I guess teachers are screwed any way I look at it, caught in a catch-22 that only wide-spread and monumental school & societal reform can ever hope to fix. Maybe I should look more carefully at Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 program. Critics say it doesn’t go far enough, but at least it’s a step in the right intention.