Tag Archives: education

Examples

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Dear Terrence,

Listening to you talk about what your mother does when she gets drunk, hearing your stories about how your grandmother can curse with the apparent fluency of a cliche sailor, I begin to understand how it is you have so few social skills. You’ve had no one to teach you these skills, through words or example.

Yet I’m still troubled. You’ve been in school now for nine years (counting kindergarten and this yet-to-be-completed year). Surely you’ve seen other students model these social skills you’re missing. So what’s missing in the equation? Recognition. You see these successful students as simply have a different nature than you, and to an extent, they do. They’ve learned and internalized behaviors that make them seem like they have a different nature, but in fact, you could be just like that. You just don’t recognize it. And unfortunately, no matter how many times I and other teachers tell you this, you won’t believe us.

Ever frustrated,
Your Teacher

Beauty

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Dear Terrence and Teresa,

Have you ever experienced true beauty? Your lives sometimes seem so lacking in it — the fruits you show in class make me wonder if you’ve ever been struck dumb by something truly, deeply, and unquestionably beautiful.

Listen to this if you haven’t experienced that kind of beauty.

Sincerely,
Your Teacher

Affirmation

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At the end of the last school year, I had students write a letter to this year’s students. It was, in a sense, something of an evaluation. I add the “something of” because it was not anonymous;  however, it did affirm some things I’ve been trying to accompolish.

I’ve tried to make the class to be rigorous: to be challenging but not impossible. Based on the comments, I think I succeeded.

  • This class is going to be one of the hardest classes that you will have so far in your life. You will learn many things in this class.
  • Let me tell you Mr. Scott is probably one of the hardest teachers you might ever have.
  • This upcoming year for you will take a lot of work. Mr. Scott has made this year very challenging for me. Although the work is extremely hard, I have become smarter and a better writer overall. If you think his class is tough, keep in mind that he is preparing you for what will come in high school next year. Mr. Scott is such a good teacher and helps you when you don’t understand. He actually teaches you what you need to know.
  • Although this year was very challenging for me I can honestly say that I have improved my writing skills tremendously. I hope that you will do the same. All it takes is hard work, attention and not giving up.
  • Even though this is a difficult class, it can also be very fun. I was never a good writer or reader, but I found many of the activities we did to be very helpful and it allows you to visualize what you are reading.
  • This class is not a normal class, nor the the teacher.  [... Don't] be a class clown.  Just respect him, and he will respect you.  [...] Mr. Scott is by far the most reasonable teacher.
  • The tests Mr. Scott gives you are a lot more difficult[ than the standardized, cumulative test given at the end of the course], and those are the ones you should really study for.
  • Oh and the tests in this class are uber hard. I mean, its [sic] crazy.
  • It’s important to always read the chapters in a novel when Mr. Scott assigns them to you.  You may think, “Oh, it won’t matter”, but Mr. Scott often has pop quizes [sic] on reading you were supposed to do.  Spark Notes can be helpful, but it’s better to just do the reading.  Because you can expect the questions to be things not covered on Spark Notes.
  • Coming into English 1 you might expect it to be relatively easy because of how easy the rest of your English classes have been, but it’s not.  English 1 for Mr. Scott is very demanding, there are many tough projects, and a lot of hard books to read.

If only I could get this kind of response from all of my students…

Effort

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Dear Terrence,

There’s really only one thing that’s required to pass my class: effort. There’s really only one thing required to be successful in life: effort. There’s really only one thing necessary for happiness: effort. There’s really only one recipe for healthy relationships: effort. There’s really only one path to riches of any sort, be they fiscal, emotional, intrapersonal: effort.

Yet you don’t tend to put forth any at all. I have to fight with you to keep your head up. I have to fight with you to keep a pencil in your hand. I have to fight with you some days even to look at the paper you’re working on.

“You won’t be able to do this in high school and pass,” I explain one day. “Certainly not college. And you won’t last a second on any job with this level of effort.”

“I know,” you respond. You say you’ll put forth effort in high school.

But you’ve created for yourself a habit that will be difficult to break. You certainly won’t be able to do it all at once, “cold turkey.” You’ll need to set milestones and achieve them, moving the goal line a little further back each time. And you have to begin now: high school will be too late. You’ll get so far behind so quickly, and you’ll reach an age at which you can make the decision for yourself about continuing your education, that I’m afraid you’ll just drop out.

And then what?

Concerned,
Your Teacher in Room 302

Handful of Hair

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Dear Teresa,

jerry-siegel-hairI cannot imagine what it’s like to feel the kind of uncontrolled rage you felt today. To be so out of control, so boiling with rage, that you don’t pay attention to who is around and whom you are swinging at that you strike not one but two teachers — that would terrify me. I would be afraid about what I might do to those around me, to those whom I love, to those with whom I work. And yet afterward, you were so calm, so matter-of-fact about it.

“That girl said such and such,” you explained as I escorted you down the hall to the office, “and so I,” and your arms began swinging wildly in imitation of how you initiated the fight.

It scares me to think of what your life might be like if this is your reaction to something as petty as a literal “he said that you said” situation. Gossip brings out violence in you? What a miserable life you’ll have, then, if you can’t foster at least some slight self-control.

Worried,
Your Teacher

Tabula Rasa

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Dear Terrence,

PyramidInvesting_DfnFig1_3DPyramidI handed out report cards today along with the notices to your parents about which classes some of you guys are failing for the year. Of course we only include the core academic classes in that list: English, science, math, and social studies. You’re failing all four.

Why?

I think we all know, but you provided eloquently ironic commentary on this when I asked you guys to do your quarterly grade assessment. Three simple questions:

  • What are your grades like?
  • Are your grades what you expected? Why are/aren’t they like you expected?
  • What specific actions can you take to change this for the fourth quarter?

When I took up the papers, yours was blank. Just your name in the corner. Nothing else.

This has your modus operandi throughout the school year. When I ask you about it, you always respond the same: “It’s hard. I don’t get it.” Surely you can’t say the same thing about this, though. Surely you understand this. It’s simple. But it’s hard: self-reflection, honest self-reflection, always is.

As I was thinking about today’s letter to you, I was helping my daughter with her homework. She gets monthly homework tables, and she’s trying to get the whole month done in a single week. Today she had to do the following:

Remember your 3-D shapes. Draw a sphere, cylinder, cube, cone, and pyramid. List something around your house that is shaped like each one.

“Daddy!” she exclaimed, “I can’t do pyramids!”

We looked online, found a drawing of a pyramid, talked about the lighter and darker lines, and she said, “Okay, I can try.”

That’s all you need to do. I’m not looking for perfection; no teacher is looking for perfection. We just need effort. You just need effort, because you’re creating such dangerous habits for yourself with this chronic underachieving.

If I could, I’d sit by you all the time, like I sat by my daughter, but I can’t. No one can. It’s the tragedy and beauty of growing up.

With hope,
Your Teacher

Park

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Dear Terrence,

I took my kids to the park today. Yesterday, too. “Daddy, can we come back tomorrow?” my daughter asked just before we left, so it looks like we might be heading back tomorrow as well.

VIV_9694-640x424

It’s a real privilege to be able to spend so much time with my kids. It’s one of the perks of being a teacher: I get spring break off too. And so I spend it with my family.

I wonder how many times you got to spend the afternoon at the park with your dad. I know you live with your mom, and for all I know, your dad could be out of the picture altogether. It’s not at all uncommon these days.

I know you’ll likely say, “It is what it is.” Perhaps. It is, but it shouldn’t be. I’m always a little taken aback at how cavalierly some of you guys take the fact that your parents are divorced. I cannot image my parents divorcing; I cannot imagine divorcing my wife. We’re in to for good — there is no problem we won’t work out somehow. And so I’ll always be able to take my kid to the park on sunny spring afternoons. Because it’s important — the smallest things always are.

I hope you’ll take this to heart when you start your own family. It’s likely to be difficult for you, not having any solid role model to serve as a pattern. Still, it’s possible. Just say to yourself daily, “My child will have a more stable family life than I did.” Say it now. Say it again. There — that’s a start.

Tired but satisfied,
Your Teacher

#21 — Filling and Creating Emptiness

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To harm a person is to receive something from him. [...] We have gained in importance. We have expanded. We have filled an emptiness by creating one in somebody else (50).

Perhaps the best example of filling an emptiness by creating one in another is bullying. Working at a middle school, I’m witness to many major and minor instances of bullying on a daily basis, and it seems to be getting only worse. Statisticians tells us that’s definitely the case, but even if they weren’t providing empirical evidence, I get enough anecdotal evidence daily to make a strong case.

As a teacher, I find I have to walk a thin line. On the one hand, we’ve seen the headlines of recent years, this or that tragic suicide traced back to prolonged bullying, actions that have created situations in which some people feel suicide is the only alternative. Bullying, then, is literally a deadly serious, and as the authority figure in the room or hallways, I have a responsibility to put an end to it when I encounter it. Yet most bullying today is not like the bullying I occasionally encountered. Today’s bullying, ban and large, is verbal. Indeed, there is a whole category of bullying that could be only mental: cyber bullying. In other words, a lot of bullying is of the type “Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Yet the truth is, words do hurt. Still, we need resilient, self-assured kids who can take care of themselves and who know how to avoid internalizing the stupid little comments they hear and will hear, in one form or another, throughout life, so I don’t want to help kids become dependent on me — or anyone else — to swoop in and save the day every single time says something mean and bullying.

And so when I do encounter something that I judge to be relatively minor but still behavior that could be considered “bullying,” I try to strike a balance. I deal with the individual who said the hateful words, but I spend more time talking to the person to whom he or she directed the words. (That was a long way to get around saying “victim.” It was a conscious choice.) I tell her that there are individuals who only feel good about themselves when making others feel bad. To quote Weil, these individuals have “gained in importance,” but only in their own mind.

A Day in the Life

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Chalk dust is a thing of the past, as are dry erase markers. Today, I’m more likely to be frustrated with some technological glitch rather than dry skin from chalk dusk or headaches from whiteboard cleaner. The advantages, of course, vastly outweigh the disadvantages.

Notes from first and fifth about determining the main idea from progress report 4

Of all the high, sophisticated advantages, there are some more simple, basic boosts to productivity.

Notes from second and fourth periods

For example, I can save every single thing we put on the board. Which I’m sure can be somewhat overwhelming to some students.

Hidden Skills

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“Teachers, please check your email now. Again, teachers, please check your email now.” With the weather forecast that students had been bouncing around among themselves before school started — snow, sleet, blizzard, nothing, depending on the individual student’s optimism — it seemed obvious what the email would tell us. Sure enough: “School will be dismissed early today. Will let you know more details later.”

I finished reading and, turning around, met a chorus of pleas: ”What did it say?!” “Tell us!” “Are we getting out early!?” I just smiled and continued with where I’d been in the lesson.

“Come on!!” was the only response I got.

Still, I pressed on. We were working on using transition words as markers in an argument. “Even if” was our phrase of the moment, and I smiled and gave as an example, “Even if we have early dismissal today, it won’t affect our first period class.”

Still later, a trickle of announcements begins interrupting our work: ”Jane Doe, please come to the office for early dismissal.” ”Michael Smith, please come to the office. You have an early dismissal.”

It seemed obvious by now, but still, I said nothing.

Finally, though, the clincher: “Those students who borrowed a belt from Mrs. Thomas, please return them now.” With a mandatory belt a part of our school’s dress code, Mrs. Thomas has taken to lending belts to students who arrive without in an effort to help them avoid the inconvenient consequences. But that’s not what the students heard. They heard, “We’re getting an early dismissal.”

It was a teachable moment I couldn’t pass up. Recalling a student’s comment earlier in the year about how she never infers as part of her day, I asked the class, “Since you all now think you’re getting an early dismissal, would you mind telling me what skill you’re employing to reach that conclusion?”

Miss I-Never-Infer-And-Likely-Was-Only-Trying-To-Be-Contrary said, “We inferred!”

We went through the observations we’d made in order to make that inference:

  1. “You got that email. No one ever makes an announcement for teachers to check their email!”
  2. “You used that ‘Even if’ example!”
  3. “We’ve been having half the school called to the front for early dismissal.”
  4. “Everyone only has to take their belts back to Mrs. Thomas. You only have to do that at the end of the day.”

I agreed to each one, probing a bit further to get them to express their reasoning a little more fully. Finally, I asked, “What about the most obvious piece of evidence?”

Seemingly all hands in the room pointed to the window. “The weather!”

Only one thing to do — put a bow on it: “So don’t tell me you don’t infer endlessly on a daily basis.”

Empathy

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empathy

The questions for the anticipation guide were seemingly straightforward. One would think that responses — “Do you agree or disagree and why?” — to these questions would be somewhat predictable.

  1. Sometimes, it’s better to remain ignorant about certain things.
  2. It’s fair to treat people differently based on their intelligence.
  3. It is better to be smart and lonely than unintelligent and happy.
  4. Our relationships with other people, not our achievements, are what fulfill us.
  5. It is better to accept your fate than to try to change it.
  6. It is important to have empathy for others.

Granted, for question one, adolescents might not necessarily have learned the beauty of ignorance. It seems unlikely that any adult would disagree with the statement, and in fact, a slight majority of the students agreed this afternoon.

Question two is a bit tricky: most kids think of it as a question of politeness and manners. I’m almost always the only person indicating agreement with the statement. When I explain about differentiation and remind them of special education services, most students understand where I’m coming from and smile at how I “tricked” them.

Question three is fluff. It gets conversation going, but there’s really no expected response for what I (and I hope others) would consider a well-adjusted, emotionally healthy individual.

Question four hints at the shallowness of materialism. Students seem split on the issue, but for eighth graders, one might expect that.

Question five is an interesting question for my students because so many of them — particularly those who struggle in school — are completely fatalistic. Perhaps they don’t see that in themselves, though, because many disagree with this statement.

Question six, though, seems almost painfully predictable in a room of well-adjusted, emotionally healthy individuals. The inability to feel empathy, after all, is one of the most horrifying aspects of sociopaths and one of the most tragic facets of autism.

So when a young man looked at me this afternoon with an expression of disgust and almost anger when I asked him why he didn’t think empathy is important, why he disagreed when almost everyone else agreed, why he seemed put off by the fact that I was unable to hide my surprise at his response, it left me briefly speechless.

“You mean don’t think it’s important to try to understand the lives of those less fortunate than you?” I asked after a moment.

“I never thought about it,” came the flippant response.

“And now that you’ve thought about it?” I continued.

He shrugged and glared.

 

Defining Courage

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I’ve been using ideas from George Hillocks, Jr.’s Teaching Argument Writing (Heinemann) in my classroom for some months now. South Carolina’s shift to the Common Core standards necessitates a shift in writing focus to argumentative writing, which is not the same as persuasive writing. The latter relies on rhetorical tricks — arguments from emotion, arguments from authority, etc. — while the former involves claims, counterclaims, evidence, warrants, backing, and a host of other rhetorical goodies.

We’ve been working on “how to develop and support criteria for arguments” (to quote Jim Burke’s blurb about the book), and one of the things Hillocks suggests is to use inductive reasoning to determine some general criteria from specific examples. The extended example he uses in his book is about courage, and since that fits perfectly with my current district-mandated heros-theme unit (the theme is mandated, not the unit itself — well, not entirely), I thought I would use it as is, out of the box, so to speak. Hillocks provides specific scenarios for students to discuss and generalize about. I gave students all the scenarios and told the groups to choose five.

We began working as a class so we could get the feel for the work, and I gave them as an example the easiest.

In the small town of Clinton, teenage boys liked to play “chicken” with their cars. Two boys raced their cars directly at each other. The first boy to swerve to avoid the crash lost. Were the boys courageous when they played “chicken”?

Obviously, the boys of Clinton might be foolhardy or immature, but a courageous act this is not. Indeed, it somehow seems to be the opposite of courageous. Yet a handful of students doggedly insisted, against the judgment of the rest of the class that this acts lack of overriding noble cause (not their exact words) made this foolish at best, that this was a very courageous act.

“They’re risking their lives! They could die!” they persisted.

I thought it might be a fluke, perhaps some kids insisting on playing devil’s advocate. But these same kinds held the same line in all similar scenarios.

Harry learned that millions of dollars in gold would be moved by train from Washington, D.C. to Chicago. He knew it would be heavily guarded and protected by the very best alarm systems. The security guards were top-notch and heavily armed. Harry and his two companions were also heavily armed when they dropped from a bridge to the top of one of the train’s boxcars. They immediately took fire from a guard stationed on the top of another car. They returned fire, killing the guard. Was their attempt to steal the gold courageous?

Who cares about these guys’ motivation? Who cares that they were violating countless moral dictates and laws for material personal gain: these guys were risking their lives and that made their acts courageous.

On the oceanfront, Mr. Jones heard a swimmer shouting for help. He saw sights indicating that this part of the beach was extremely dangerous because of undertows. A lifeguard asked Jones to help him move a boat into the water to be used to help rescue the drowning man. Instead, Jones said, “Don’t be silly!” He ran into the water to swim out to the drowning person. Was Jones’s effort to save the swimmer courageous?

Who cares that the lifeguard clearly knows something Mr. Jones doesn’t, hence his insistence on using the boat? Who cares that in acting impetuously, Mr. Jones was likely giving the lifeguard another potential victim. He was risking his life, and that’s all that matters.

I know of course that much of this is a function of age: thirteen-year-olds are quite fond of justice and courage, and they see the lack of the former in as many places as they see examples of the latter.

The Privilege of Teaching

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“You’re raising our daughter! She spends more time with teachers than with her parents,” a parent once told me regarding a student.

It was the first time anyone had said aloud what I’ve thought often enough. Such notions most forcefully — and most obsessively – worked their way into my thinking when we began leaving our daughter with “strangers” at day care. It was a stab of guilt, feeling K and I were somehow neglecting our responsibilities as parents, letting someone do the majority of our childrearing for us.

The irony of being a teacher myself didn’t go unnoticed. I thought of a film — I can’t remember the title — that had a scene in which a young girl drops off her child for day care then heads uptown to her job as a nanny.

I see into parts of their lives no one else sees. A young man writes, “I ask my mom [to play chess with me]. ‘I’m too busy at the moment. How about later?’ Knowing that later will be near 7 PM, I slither back to my room.” It’s a vivid flash of what his evening is like, of what he might be experiencing at the very moment I’m reading his paper. It’s a window few look through.

Free Time

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Dear Terrence,

The other day was a teacher workday, which means we teachers are at school while you kids are free. I wonder what that freedom brings you.

I know you have more “freedom” than the average student because of all the out-of-school suspensions you’ve served. I’ve often wondered about the wisdom of that. I’ll bet in some ways, at least during some of the more tiring stretches of the school year, OSS seems more like a gift than a punishment. After all, there’s no one to make you do this or that. You get to choose who you spend your time with. You can pass that time however you please.

Or can you? Perhaps your mother makes you clean house while you’re serving OSS. Maybe she has a long list of tasks that she expects completed fully and well when she returns from work. Possibly, but somehow I doubt it. She might be struggling just to get enough money to keep a roof over your head and food on your table — she might not sweat the small stuff. Whatever it is you do during those OSS days, I’m fairly certain you prefer it to what you do at school.

And all of this makes me wonder about the wisdom of OSS. I’ve already mentioned to you that I think you would benefit from some direct instruction in how to learn, in how to be successful in school and life. Couldn’t we replace OSS (and ISS, for that matter) with something like that? It would be tricky, because we would have to find a teacher with a certain patience and dedication to young people because, let’s face it, you and your friends can be a real handful in the classroom. It seems possible and even desirable, but I somehow doubt it will ever happen. The American school system likes to think of itself as being cutting edge and progressive, but it’s still relatively set in its old ways in many regards, and how to help students like you is a perfect example.

So I don’t really know what you might be doing today during your day off. Whatever it is, I hope it’s not what I’ve heard in rumor among teachers: I hope you’re not spending all your time trying to impress the members of some gang — for all I know, your gang, for I hear, as the colloquial expression goes, that you “bang.” I have some thoughts I’d like to share with you on that as well, but for now, I’ll let you get back to whatever it is you’re doing on your day off.

With hope,
Your  Friend in Room 302

Lost

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Dear Terrence,

I heard today: You’ve been tossed out of alternative school, with your latest offense being the proclamation to a teacher that she could just “— off.”

It’s time I took the gloves off, so to speak. That’s stupid. That’s simply stupid. Look back over your long, checkered school experience: when has something like that evermade a situation better? When has such behavior ever helped? When has such behavior ever brought about anything but more trouble from a teacher? When as a teacher ever replied along the lines of, “Oh my! I’m so sorry to have offended you.Please forgive me!”? When has such language ever helped get you out of trouble? When has that language ever done anything other than get you into more trouble?

I swear, sometimes I think you guys simply don’t think.

Annoyed and saddened,
Your Frustrated Friend in Room 302