No surprise here

On my first day at my new job (I was laid off, had to find a new school or sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting to get my job back, found one that a lot of teachers might covet--not this one!) my students received a short writing assignment that was in conjunction with a small class project. I've done this assignment many times before with my previous students--from the "ghetto."

This particular activity involves making connections between vocabulary words (sounds easy, but making connections is a somewhat advanced cognitive activity). What did I find my from my new students? Sub-par responses. Lack of connections. Now, my previous students may not have had the most grammatically correct sentences. They may have invented their own sentence structures, but their ideas! Their ideas were great. They made well thought out connections; some connections even extended beyond the simple vocabulary and pulled in examples from the real world. A teacher couldn't ask for more. But at my new school...

At my new school where I've been told that students are "better" and "smarter" and "achieve more" the response were dull and thoughtless. I wasn't shocked, but I was in shock. I knew that my previous bunch were no less intelligent than these kids, but here it was plain as day. My new students may test well on the CST and CAHSEE, but when asked to work on more advanced levels, wow. No different. Maybe weaker. So what did I do? The majority of my students received Ds on their assignment (blasphemy!), and were asked to rewrite them.

The rewrites were better, and they've since avoided slacking off in the thought department. They are really starting to grow. But the real lesson here lies in the true data gathered: these kids are no smarter nor high achieving than my previous students. No matter what those standardized test scores say.

Free pass

The public school I now work at is overwhelmingly Jewish. Due to both the student and faculty population, when there are very important Jewish holidays, the school calendar states, "Local Holiday." Lucky me. I get a four day weekend.

So today, before our four day weekend, I assigned a small packet of homework to my journalism students. They need to learn how to count and write headlines. And who raises his hand to protest? The child with the perfectly kept Afro (and I'm not talking Jew-fro, here. I mean genuine, gorgeous Afro). "Excuse me? Homework? Don't you know there is an important weekend of Jewish observance?"

Thanks, Einstein.

"I'm Jewish. Thanks for the update. Do your homework; it's due Monday."

Were any of my fellow tribe members complaining about homework? No. They were not trying to get a free pass. And to them I say, l'shana tova. Now where's my apples and honey?!

Outdated Pedagogy and 21st Century Skills

I stumbled upon this article from Talk of the Nation on NPR. Very interesting way to look at education, and our approach to 21st Century skills. I would have to agree that our pedagogy is definitely outdated.

Kids say the darndest things...

My tenth graders are continually trying to make me laugh—I try my best to stay very stern and serious—and they are also inappropriate teenagers, which generally coincides with making me laugh.

We were working on some grammar, you know, combining two sentences into one with the help of our good friend: the conjunction. Well, if the conjunction starts the sentence, the period that separated the sentences needs to be changed into a comma (for example, changing “I followed the recipe. I burnt my cake” to “Before I followed the recipe, I burnt my cake”). We are making these corrections together, as a class, and I ask aloud, “And what do we do with the period?” To which one of my oh-so-witty students responds “Give it a tampon!”

Inside I was laughing, hard. Outside I was disappointed, seriously. It took all of my will not to laugh!

Martyr Syndrome

Movies always seem to portray teachers are martyrs. We come. We conquer. We leave. Take Erin Gruwell of Freedom Writers fame, for example. She worked incredibly hard, even at the expense of her marriage, for four years with the same group of students. She was able to move them “from apathy to action” (www.freedomwritersfoundation.org). And then, when her one group of students that she worked with for four years graduated, she left, too. She never worked in a public high school with another group of students. She never tested her curriculum to see if it could transcend the amazingly strong bond she had with that group of students. She went. She conquered. She left. And now, she’s famous and has a movie all about how amazing she is (ahem, was).

Then we have Michelle Pfeiffer’s character, Louanne Johnson, from Dangerous Minds (1995). Fictitious yes, but still following the teacher-as-martyr formula. Fresh out of the Marine Corps, Ms. Johnson has to conquer America’s battleground: the inner-city classroom. Gangbanger, parolees, teenage parents, galore! Johnson’s classroom is a walking stereotype of the inner-city classroom, but have no fear! She arrives. The kids could care less! But have no fear, Johnson reads every single book on teaching and classroom management ever written. But, alas! It still does not work. Until, she connects to her students through music, of course. And then, at the end of the year after many ups and downs, she leaves. What is the moral of the story? Can we only be great teachers for one year and then we need to leave?

What good are teachers who leave the profession after only a few years? Are we meant only to serve as martyrs? Now that my first class is graduating, I suppose it is time for me to leave the teaching profession, too. Time to make room for a new martyr.

This perception of teaching is absolutely ridiculous, and the mentality can be seen in the many charter schools that work their teachers to the bone and have incredibly high turn-over rates. They are not working to mold wonderful teachers for the future of tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow. They are just working to create martyrs. They wring every last drop of energy from these people, and then they leave the teaching profession forever. The same can be seen with Teach for America. The majority of their Corps members leave the profession after their contracted two years.

The teacher is not a martyr. That is not our job, and it never should be. If the teacher is meant to be a martyr, we will fall into the same trap as the movie-teacher recipe: we will leave. Teachers who leave the profession due to burn out are of no use to their students, and continue to reinforce unreachable expectations placed on the profession.

Oye vey

I was teaching Elie Wiesel’s autobiography, Night, to my students. We were discussing the idea of being dehumanized, as the Nazis had done to their prisoners. My students were coming up with the most fabulous examples of dehumanization: slavery, forced labor, starvation, loss of name. And then: plastic surgery. Wha?

In the back of my mind I thought maybe I knew where he was coming from, but I was also scared that I knew where he was coming from. So, I wanted to know if he knew where he was coming from. I asked him to elaborate.

“You know, when people get plastic surgery and they don’t look like a person anymore. They’re dehumanized.”

Mmmm. No. “Not quite.”

We moved on. My students kept coming up with the most amazing examples. They were making me so proud (mind you, this is the poopy class, so the fact that they were coming up with these examples was making me SO PROUD!).

We seemed to be winding down with ideas. I asked if anyone had anything else. And he raises his hand. “Yes?”

“I just want to go back to plastic surgery…”

And then, my class came to the rescue. “No!”

Deep breath. Thank you, kids, thank you.

Toto...

I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore when a student approached me to make small talk. He was grabbing a tissue from his teacher’s desk, where I happened to be sitting.

“Hello.”

“Hi.”

“I’m Joe.” (I honestly can’t remember his name, so he can have the standard Joe) “Are you a teacher?”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

“No, at another high school.”

“Oh. Niiiiice necklace! Is it Vera Wang? It looks like it’s from her latest collection. So nice.”

My first thought, “Vera Wang?! Child, I’m a teacher! I can’t afford Vera F’ing WANG!”

I don’t know if my students even know who Vera Wang is, let alone what her latest collection looks like. I relayed this story to a coworker, and she said when she’s asked where she got her clothes stores like JCPenny and Forever 21 pop up.

But I smiled, recognizing his attempt to connect with me through a comment, and said no. And then I said to myself, Toto, we definitely ain’t in Kansas anymore.