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.

Things (this) Teacher Loves to Hear....

In a week, this cycle will be finished. No more Dramatic Literature. No more Musical Theater History. New classes, new beginnings, new chances for success. A chance to start over. Again.

So as we do our final resuscitation dance (or, as some of us like to call it, "How do we get to a 65?") here are a few things to remember us by:

"Ms. Jamie gets mad tight when you say gay. "

"Ms. Jamie, please don't skip any more parts in Rent. I wanna watch the WHOLE thing."

"Does everybody in Rent have AIDS?"

(In reference to the character of Angel in Rent) :"That's a GIRL?!!"

"Ms. Jamie, can I borrow Rent? I want to watch it home."

****

"Abigail is a smut."

"These girls are OD!"

(In reference to Elizabeth's Proctor's decision in The Crucible): "Oh, she better tell the truth. Jamie, does she tell the truth? OMG. I'm getting tight."

"Nooooooooo!!!!" (In reference to when I turned the film off.)

"Are we gonna watch it today? Can I borrow it? I can't wait till tomorrow."

"Oh, is a theme about choice like when Lady Macbeth chooses to kill herself? Or Macbeth chooses to kill Duncan? Or when he chooses to kill Banquo cause he's paranoid?"

"Oh, can I use this one? When John Proctor chooses to tell the truth and that shows his loyalty to his wife? Oh and the choice of the girls to lie?"

Halloween Candy for Lunch!

The second day of Parent-Teacher conferences and no one yet.

This double bubble I just put in my mouth from the communal/welcome Halloween candy bowl is already going stale.

Ah Halloween candy. I know you're crap, and yet I still eat you. Why? Because it's Halloween and even at 30 I still want to take advantage of the high fructose free for all.

After all the (actual) drama this week, today was perfectly quiet and chill.

Everyone who came took their quiz and, for all but two, aced it. And that makes me feel really good.

But back to the Halloween candy, or rather, my reenergized thoughts about grading after reading Linda Christensen's thoughts about it in Teaching for Joy and Justice. Yeah.

Grades suck. Especially the stupid number ones that I have to do. What's the difference between a 98 and a 95? A 88 and an 86? A 70 and a....you get the picture. Who knows and who cares? It's all subjective, relative, and just plain bullshit depending on who the teacher is and what she's supposed to be "grading." Yeah, yeah you can use rubrics but I saw through their objectivity facade my first semester at NYU. I mean they're better than papers dripping in arbitrary red pen, but still: it's all about a game of figuring out what the teacher wants and how to give it to her. And is that supposed to be the point of education? To please the damn teacher? How about a way to SHOW that you LEARNED something? How about a way to make you want to learn MORE?

Grades are like the doughnuts (and candy!) we give out here as rewards: bad for you and easily disposed of and then craved for again and again. The grades become more important than what's being taught. Who cares about becoming a better writer? I want my 92!!!

On this ranting note, here are some mini gems that caught my eye this morning as I perused Ms. Christensen's latest manifesto on teaching (Teaching for Joy and Justice, p. 272-275).

"I discovered early on that if I wanted to produce writers I needed to let go of grades."

"Our grading should match our pedagogy."

"In too many classrooms, grades are "wages" students earn for their labor."

"Numbers and grades "assess" or judge the paper, rather than provide feedback about how to improve it."

"...scripts are easier to teach and easier to grade."

"When I think about grading, I am reminded of Malcolm X's quote, 'I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.'"

"...I need to remind myself to begin with praise, to find what's working, to find the beauty before I find the fault."

So happy that I read that today. What a good place it put me in. No, really.

The irony of all this pedagogical ranting is that I work in a school where grading is MORE important than in other high schools. We give our students progress reports every two weeks so that they know how they're doing before it's too late (which is what happened in the schools they failed out of before). The problem with this is that 1) I'm grading all the damn time and 2) we fuel their addiction to grades while subsequently deemphasizing the importance of learning. It becomes all about the "benchmark," and less about, "wow, I've learned this new thing."

But I'm trying, like Christensen, to work my way into the mold. I try to make my "rubrics" as simple as possible and remind myself that I can't hold student A accountable for student B's work. Each student on their own. Differentiation, right?

Ah, grades. You are and always will be a part of my teaching reality. How to make you suck less?????

For now, that'll have to wait until I refuel on snickers (and the whole system and stuff completely f'ing changes). My double bubble is finally done.

Surreality

Tomorrow's Wednesday. That's the good news.

The bad news is obvious. And I'm afraid prolonged. The (non) trickle in of students will continue this week, so it already feels like today through Friday will be a wash. But hey, we keep on moving. Grades have to be put in the gradebook, credits have to be earned, and students need to graduate.

The most fascinating/disturbing/just plain sad comment of the day came from G, a new student:

"Why is everyone so mopey? All these people moping around. This shit happens in my hood every day. A woman got stabbed in front of my building last night. I saw my best friend get shot. What's the point in moping?"

His anger/frustration at the "mopiness" finally ended when he revealed that he used to feel bad about stuff (eg tragic death), but then it just kept happening and he felt helpless. And then, after avoiding the poem I had been pushing him to write all day, he poured his feelings out on paper.

And that, along with the small conversations we had over poetry (I am from pigs feet, power rangers, peanut chews...) and the Jay-Z pandora station, is why I am thankful that I'm an English teacher. Words, talk, and music. Our small step towards healing.

Oh and here's News 1 outside of the school. Someone also snapped my picture when I came in this morning. I wasn't sure whether or feel insulted, violated, or proud.

http://ny1.com/1-all-boroughs-news-content/news_beats/education/107959/teen-shot--killed-in-front-of-brooklyn-school/

....

A student got shot in front of my school today.

At around 3:00.

Right when school lets out.

It wasn't one of our kids.

I don't know if he's ok.

At was right near the bus stop; there were elementary and middle school kids there.

It was apparently a Crip thing.

I was upstairs grading their papers on Macbeth.

I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

Shit.

Monday Detox: Lesson Plan Edition

Holy cannoli, it's been awhile since I've updated this thing.

Let's see, what's happened?

1. We finished Macbeth. Overall consensus was that he got what he deserved. And the Macduff c-section twist was very much appreciated. As L put it, "Macbeth's a grimy asshole. I'm glad he got his head chopped off."

2. Benchmarks increasingly seem to feel overwhelming to both the students and I. I plan on making the next one low maintenance to help both of us out.

3. The girls love Leroy in Fame.

4. We went on our first theater outing. Hansel and Gretel at the New Victory Theater is an excellent piece of avant garde theater. The fact that all the students had to pay was $2 is beyond mind blowing. I even treated some to high-fructose corn syrup goodies I was so glad to be in Times Square with them. God bless not-for-profit-education theater companies!

5. I had an amazing gluttonous weekend and am paying for it today. But I guess it really wouldn't be Monday without a dull headache and some bloat, now would it?

6. This brings me to the title of this lil entry: my lesson plans SAVED my ass today. Because I had already done the work (of the plan at least), I could really focus my attention on functioning, which was pretty much all my brain could handle.

7. More kids seem to be falling through the cracks. Is it because there are literally more of them (we get new students every day) , or is that the cycle is already half way over and many have calculated their (non) pass rate? Either way, it's starting to feel desperate in here and I don't like it.