New Beginnings, Once Again

We've (I've) made it to Cycle III!

That's right folks, this is the last and final cycle of the year. The official end of year countdown has begun. The grand experiment that is my school will finish its second year (for better or for worse) in the next three months.

So that means that yet again, we start anew. New cycle, new students, new chances.

A new chance to make it first period. To second. To third.

To do some homework. To get a 65. To get a 95. To believe that you really are worthy of graduating high school.

My new chances? Advanced Writing Seminar and Playwriting and Performance II.

Advanced Writing (Dig the college sounding title?) is my small experiment within our school's larger one. I've always emphasized writing, but this time it will be explicit. The plan is pretty simple: genre by genre, we will play and explore and, with hope, eventually command.

And we started today. With, you guessed it: I am from.

(Seriously, what did progressive English teachers do before Linda Christensen saved us all?)

Is there really a better way to start off a new cycle, a new class, a new chance than writing about the different flavors of jolly ranchers you ate as a 7 year old? I think not.

"What was the name of that game again?
"Steal the Bacon!"
"My favorite food was fried chicken....macaroni and cheese...the pink starbursts."

It's simple.
It's low risk.
It's fun.
It's fulfilling.

At the end of a 55 minute period, my students got to know themselves, their classmates, and me a little bit better. They learned the tone and purpose of the class (we are going to WRITE) and perhaps even some of my teaching philosophy. The learned that they could write a poem (and in some cases a damn good one) in under 20 minutes.

Not bad for a new and final first day.

Winter Break 2010: Gluttony Rules!

(Note: this posting has nothing to do with teaching whatsoever. Hurray!)

My body is screaming at me to stop. And yet I must go on.

There are a few hidden gems of being a NYC teacher. One is Winter Break. Just when you think you might go absolutely bonkers with the snow, the cold, and of course, the kids, a sweet little week in mid February appears. And because of this salvation, you're able to make it until the next respite: Spring Break.

Some people go away to wonderfully warm places like the Bahamas. Me? I tried to eat my way through my home town, New York City. And what follows is a short list of my most memorable gluttonous experiences.

1. The Pork Pot at Asia de Cuba. I will probably never go to this restaurant again because it's way too expensive, but for a bougie Restaurant Week bargain, it was absolutely perfect for a week-off-from-school lunch. And of course it helped that I enjoyed it with a fellow fabulous teacher. The gimmick with this place is that they do Cuban "flavors" with Asian "preparation." Oh and they give you big ass portions so you can share. The pork was our main entree. And it was really f***ing good. On top of a braise of bok choy, it's salty, tender fattiness was pretty freaking divine. And we couldn't even finish the whole thing. Josh would never have let that happen.

2. The BLT sandwich at Choice Market. This event happened because of what we saw on that janky The Best Thing I Ever Ate show on Food Network this past Sunday. The theme was bacon and we were underwhelmed by the hosts' "best things" UNTIL we saw Ted Allen's pitch for the BLT at Choice. This is because 1) BLTs may be my most favorite sandwich ever and 2) Choice is kinda near our house. So a plan was hatched. A major hitch in the plan: I decided to go try this sandwich on the one day of the week when it snowed. All day. So I walked a mile in the wet, pelting snow for a sandwich. Was it worth it? Yes. Though the little bugger was a bit on the salty side (which for me is saying a LOT), it was as expertly prepared as Ted Allen promised. Bacon win. (But doesn't bacon always win????)

3. The Coconut Cake at Asia de Cuba. This gets a mention for its sheer size. Gluttony epitomized. It was good but it was more insane. Don't think we finished a quarter of it. Again, Josh wouldn't have let that happen.

4. Large Cappuccino and Scone at Financier's Patisserie. This is because of the foam. Oh when you sprinkle the sugar on it and slowly soaks in.......Yeah, this made me feel European and appropriately sophisticated in all matters breakfast. And dunking the scone in the foam. And it crumbles off a bit. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

5. Bone Marrow at Henry Public. This almost didn't make the list because I'm 90% sure it gave me weird dreams last night. And yet, in a posting about gluttony, how could I not mention it? It was appropriately fatty and salty and tasty and yet that's not why it made the list. It made the list because it's freaking BONE MARROW. Meat Butter. It is everything you're not supposed to put in your body and yet I happily did. It felt old school and deviant and wonderfully wrong. It felt like everything I should be doing on vacation. Glutton win.

So there it is for now. I'm gonna to party through my body's screams for greens and tofu and continue doing what I do until this vacation officially ends on Monday morning. Edamame and string cheese will be back in my diet soon enough. But today: I think I need to find an almond croissant...

55 minutes

Worst. Class. Ever.

Ok, I'm sure it wasn't, or won't be. But right now it sure as fuck feels like it.

Threats of write-ups.

Stopping and starting class. Over and over. Feeling like it was my first day on the job.

All for talking. Stupid god damn talking. Because today is the first day back for many (as opposed to yesterday, when we actually started back). Because we run on a bizzaro (ahem, alternative) time frame - where Tuesday is Monday unless it's Wednesday and Thursday is Friday. Because it's easier to laugh than try sometimes. Because it's still the case that doing your work isn't cool. Because it's somehow just as important to please the teacher as it is to say something hurtful about the new girl's weave.

I love my job.

But 5th period sucked. 4th period wasn't too hot either.

And yes, I'll reflect on what I could've done differently how my lesson needs to be tweaked blah, blah, blah. But right now I'm just tired. And pissed. And tense.

In a school where a "second chance" both means everything and nothing, 55 minutes is too much of not enough.

Coffee with Arne

On this wonderful day off from school in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I just spent a few moments with my coffee and some thoughts of Mr. Arne Duncan, Education Secretary for this here US of A. Said thoughts are about the teaching profession, a subject I have just a little bit of passion for.

Here's the whole piece, worth a gander I think.

http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/winter09_10/duncan.pdf

And here are some things from the piece that make me go hmmmmm.....

"In the factory model of education, teachers are interchangeable widgets who keep the educational assembly line moving. Teachers today are not paid based on their skill in the classroom or the difficulty of their teaching assignments."

"No area of the teaching profession is more plainly broken today than that of teacher evaluation and professional development...The truth is that students and teachers don't live in mythic Lake Wobegon, where everyone is above average. Yet we have an evaluation system that pretends otherwise. As a result, great teachers don't get recognized, don't get rewarded, and don't help their peers grow."

"It's not just the students who suffer....teachers have to live with the results of other people's bad teaching - the students who don't know anything."

Hmmmm.

Learning from Nothing

"That's just like Ms. Jamie. Making us learn something out of nothing."

- D, 1st period, Playwriting

And that's why I love my job. Despite what you may have heard, all the days off and the free health insurance isn't why I teach in one of New York's poorest neighborhoods. I mean all the mind-blowing bureaucracy is a sweet perk, but if you ask my why I do this, I'll give you a full-on Lean on Me answer.

I do it for the kids.

I do it for those micro moments when D puts pen to paper to brain.

I do it because making better readers and writers may be the most revolutionary act in the world.

I do it because students like D make me laugh. I do it because she did learn something today. Along with about 50 or so of her colleagues. And I only teach 4 classes. I do it because watching my students "learn from nothing" (otherwise called ENGAGEMENT) may be one of the greatest joys of teaching. I do it because MUSIC is an amazing teaching tool. Ice T, Johnny Cash, Ella Fitzgerald as explicit instruction. Yes. I do it because watching your "good ideas" manifest in front of you feels really freaking satisfying.

I do it because inciting a covert locavore revolution in my other English class is dangerously fun. (Today we debated advertisers' role in childhood obesity. And it's only Tuesday. Come on!)

A food revolution in Brownsville?

Hope.

I do it because I'm really, really tired and yet I felt the need to write this blog post. For catharsis. For posterity. So I can remember that funny thing that D said 8 hours ago. I do it because those comments ARE my day.

Questions

Why I am so freaking frustrated?

Why is mediocrity such an epidemic in this school system?

Why is differentiation still a debated topic in staff meetings?

Why does having "high expectations" need to be defined?

Why do students come with neither pen nor paper (every day)?

What are we preparing them for?

Why do we want to be a school?

What's the point?

How do we care with purpose and urgency?

In a job that's so difficult, how come we insist on making it harder?

Why do we settle?

What does alternative mean?

Why do we do this?

Why is everyone so chill?

What can I do?

Experiments in Food and Learning

There are two basic ways of capturing the attention of the American teenager: sex and food.

- Frank McCourt, Teacher Man

The experiment has begun. Tomorrow will mark the end of the first week of my latest pedagogical brain child: Food and Literature. The verdict: so far, so good. Fried chicken, ham biscuits, cream cheese bread, and Indian curry have already been topics of conversation. Also on the agenda: exploring cookbooks as a literary genre, asking about the purpose of recipes and rituals, and of course, writing. Is it "rigorous" learning? I'm not sure yet. But it is keeping things interesting - for me and (I hope) the kids.

So what is Food and Literature?

C, a student in my 6th period class, apparently still wants to know. In response to the question, "What would you like to learn in this class? " he replied, "I would like to learn how food and literature connect with one another to make a class."

Ouch.

Oh well. Like I told him, I'm still trying to figure it out myself. Hopefully we'll have a better idea - the both of us - tomorrow.

Or Monday.