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Greenville

Thursday 19 October 2006

Last Saturday we took a trip to Greenville, SC. The reason is simple: housing costs here are outrageous and we’ve decided we’ll have to look for more affordable pastures.

Greenville I

G’ville has the advantage of being close to the mountains and yet affordable. A home which costs $130k in Greenville (say, a 1,400 square foot three-bedroom home in good condition) would cost at least $200k here.

It’s good to look at the real estate section and not worry about the possibility of soiling yourself when you see the prices…

Suspension

Wednesday 18 October 2006

The typical suspension length at my high school was three days. I’d heard of year-long, but I never actually heard of anyone getting it. It was always out-of-school suspension as well. To my recollection, there was no such thing as in-school suspension at my high school.

There is certainly a move away from out-of-school suspension, for a variety of reasons.

The unappealing idea of students serving out-of-school suspensions roaming their communities during the day, possibly getting into more trouble, prompted some schools to create or expand their in-school suspension programs. In Louisiana, state officials became so concerned about suspended students missing instructional time that the legislature began funding in-school suspension programs.

The Kentucky Department of Education encourages school districts to develop policies that include well-rounded academic offerings for those students who stay in school during suspension. (Education World)

But it still exists. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t have a job, for a majority of the clients in our program are there because of year-long, out-of-school suspension.

Out-of-school suspension (for simplicity, just “suspension” hereafter) is the lazy way out, though. It puts the burden of educating the most troubled students on someone else. In our organization’s case, that “someone else” receives most of funding through “professional begging” — that’s what the organization’s director likes to call his continual grant writing.

Suspension addresses only the behavior; it does nothing to correct the causes of the behavior. To be sure, those causes are myriad and most of them out of the effective reach of a public school system. If a child has been suspended for the remainder of a school year, the situation has reached a point at which therapists are probably necessary. Short of dealing with the causes, school systems are simply putting off the inevitable: a sense of failure so deeply ingrained and reinforced that the child gives up on doing anything other than fulfilling everyone’s expectations.

An old saying comes to mind: “If you think you’re going to succeed, you’re probably right; if you think you’re going to fail, you’re still probably right.” School systems that kick the tough kids out of school are feeding into the latter. Then organizations like ours have one more shell to break through before we can start reinforcing the former.

How K and I Spent Saturday Afternoon

Sunday 15 October 2006

Translating course descriptions from Polish:

The course is presented in two parts. In the first part regarding the cadastre basics (semester V: professor Hycner), the course covers basic information regarding issues of land and building cadastre in Poland. The second portion regarding real estate economy (semester VI: Dr. Rutkowski), the course covers basic information regarding spatial development planning basics and information regarding real estate economy basics. The part regarding cadastre basics develops problems connected with establishing the land and building cadastre based on the existing land and building register. It also covers acquiring, storing, and actualizing cadastre information, which is developed in the laboratory, and students prepare cadastre documentation for a portion of the cadastral unit � using the most modern computer technology.

I was going to try to ramble on in a style similar to the original Polish of all these course descriptions, but it’s too hard. I guess you have to be “prof. dr hab. inz” to write like that…

The worst part is that for our purposes, we have to translate this as close to “word for word” as possible. A literal word for word translation, as in most cases, would make less than no sense. But the catch is that these are the writings of engineers and surveyors — in Polish they read awfully. So we’re trying to strike a “delicate” balance.

Translating anything is bad enough. Translating poorly written material is a nightmare.

Perspective

Saturday 14 October 2006

In the switch from science to social studies at the day treatment program with teach in, I’ve gone from trying to follow the appropriate grade-level curriculum in science to allowing the kids (and myself) a bit of freedom in what we’re covering now in social studies. (We switch subjects every six-week grading period.) On talking to the lead teacher, I realized that it’s not as critical that we follow the curriculum because there’s such a mix of kids.

M-Jezzy, of science fame, has been asking about slavery. How did it begin? Who started it? How’d they get the slaves?

In explaining that we’d be looking at slavery next week, I got a response I’d been thinking I might hear, but had hoped to avoid nonetheless. Basically, a young man asked, “What can a white guy teach black people about slavery?” Now, to his credit, it was very polite — surprisingly maturely and subtly phrased, in fact. It was more like, “I don’t mean any offense or anything, but, you know, I’d rather hear about slavery from someone who’s experienced it, someone whose people experienced it.”

“That’s a very good point,” I said, thinking, “Am I glad I did some research before mentioning this,” for that’s exactly what I found:

In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) sponsored a federal project dedicated to chronicling the experience of slavery as remembered by former slaves and their descendants. Their stories were recorded and transcribed, and this site presents dozens of select sound recordings and hundreds of transcriptions from the interviews. Beyond the content of the interviews, little to no biographical information is available on the individuals whose interviews appear here.

These interviews are available at PBS’s site for their series Slavery and the Making of America.

An Agenda

Friday 13 October 2006

Yesterday, one of the boys in our program asked if he could use the computer for a little while. “No problem,” I said. He’s had a great week, and it was a slow morning.

The week was much improved over the past. We were both frustrated about how things were going in my class — he much more than I. At the end of the last six weeks, when we were working on science (now we’ve switched to social studies for the second six weeks), M-Jezzy (his nom de plume at our program’s blog) was trying to make up some missed work, and getting very frustrated about it.

“Man, I just hate science,” he exclaimed.

“That’s fine,” I said. “Not everyone likes science. What we can do, though, is use that as a way to make up some of your work.” I instructed him to log into our blog, akacoolpeople.com, and write about science and why he hates it. “Explain three reasons you don’t like it, and we’ll count that as one of your missed assignments.”

He wrote,

I do not like science at all. And i,ve got three reasons why. One reason is because it is so confusing. likewhe gives the homework out. I dont know what he is talking about beause. They would be so many things that he is talking about. An the other reason iswhen he gives the i want know what to do because. It will be so many things that you would have to look for an you would have to do so much research. And the last reason is the things that he teaches in class i dont know wat in the world that hebe talking about. Likewe was talking about an atom an what i have to study about it is so hard because. The atom has so many things in it. And you will get mixed up with all the parts of an atom. Beceause you will not know how to put them in oder. An if you get this and you are really feeling wat i am saying to you then mail me back M-JEZZY out. I hate science so bad i wish i did not have it at all. (science)

I read it and thought, “What an indictment of me. I obviously don’t explain things for him, and I can’t even make myself clear when assigning homework.”

Depressing.

But fixable.

I talked to the head teacher about it; I talked to the program director about it; I talked to the head counselor about it. The consensus: M-Jezzy does not deal with ambiguity well (as if anyone really does). Like most people, he wants to know where he’s going and what he’s going to have to do to get there.

Starting this week, I began something new. Something obvious. Something basic. Something I should have been doing all along. I blocked off a portion of the white-board and wrote an outline of what we’d be doing, including information about what kind of activity it would be.

Next class, M-Jeezy was like a different young man — much more attentive, much more focused, much more involved. He asked penetrating questions, and he didn’t giggle too much.

A success, I thought.

Back to yesterday morning. M-Jezzy sits down at the computer and logs into “aka cool people,” and starts typing. This is what he writes:

now sence my teacher was started to put the agenda on the board i am starting to learn more in class and i know no wat to do.And i am not getting confused write me (Agenda)

I can’t remember the last time I felt so good.

Yet it was not what M-Jezzy wrote that made my day — it was that he did it spontaneously.

Fighting Back the Smile

Wednesday 11 October 2006

Sometimes, the kids say things that are humorous, but not necessarily because they’re trying.

Yesterday, I was talking to a young man about an altercation we’d had. I was trying to get him to see that he was arguing with me.

“I wasn’t arguing with you!” he exclaimed, offended.

“Well, be that as it may, you’re arguing with me now.”

His eyes got really big — wide with disbelief. “I am not arguing with you,” he exclaimed as if he were shocked that I’d even suggest such a thing.

Please Don’t Give Us Homework!

Tuesday 10 October 2006

There’s a “movement” to abolish homework, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Vigorous scrutiny of the research, they argue, fails to demonstrate tangible benefits of homework, particularly for elementary students. What it does instead, they contend, is rob children of childhood, play havoc with family life and asphyxiate their natural curiosity. Learning becomes a mind-numbing grind rather than an engaging adventure.

Who said all homework was mind-numbing? Perhaps these teachers should be thinking of more original alternatives than photocopied worksheets and such.

Who said homework has to impact family life? Here’s an idea — the parents become more involved in their children’s education and work with them.

Is this more of the no-wrong-answer-fuzzy-math theory of education?

In an era of more rigorous academic standards and vertebrae-straining backpacks, most American schools seem to be assigning more homework in earlier grades. For two decades, experts have propelled this trend with dire warnings that students in nations such as Japan are besting Americans because they diligently do more homework.

The problem is not the amount of homework we are or aren’t giving our students. It’s the time spent in actual instruction, particularly at the high school level.

  • The Japanese school year starts in April and consists of three terms, separated by short holidays in spring and winter, and a one month long summer break. (Source)
  • Japanese students spend 240 days a year at school, 60 days more then their American counterparts. Although many of those days are spent preparing for annual school festivals and events such as Culture Day, Sports Day, and school excursions, Japanese students still spend considerably more time in class than American students. (Source)

So it’s not just the amount of homework. Imagine that…

Take Five

Monday 9 October 2006

With Take Five, the Dave Brubeck Quartet proved you could play jazz in 5/4 time | JAZZ.FM91One of my favorite albums is Dave Brubeck’s 1959 classic Time Out, with probably his most famous piece, “Take Five.” The quintuple time signature (5/4) could give it a somewhat jerky feel, but Dave’s light touch smooths the piece and provides minimalistic base for Paul Desmond’s now-timeless melody.

Playing in 5/4, I would imagine, is all about self-awareness. It’s such an odd time signature and so rarely played that I would think it takes a conscious effort to stay in time.

It’s almost as if Brubeck and Desmond were writing a soundtrack for events forty-seven years in the future, a commentary on some of the difficulties the kids I work with have, and how they deal with it.

“Why don’t you just take five?” A question that comes from my lips almost daily. “Take five” means, in our program, getting up and walking to the front foyer and taking a break from a situation that is in some way upsetting. Staff can tell the kids to take five if the staff member feels things are getting out of control, and the kids can simply say, “I need to take five.”

I imagine that the circumstances leading up to those “take-five” moments feel a bit like the 5/4 time signature played badly: jerky, unpredictable, out of control.

From the outside, it often seems like the smallest thing has set a kid off.

  • Sometimes, I have to ask a kid to stop talking so I can finish explaining something, and boom. “Why are you always on my back?!”
  • Occasionally, a couple of kids are talking, so I stop talking and just wait for them to finish. And then wait for there to be silence so I can continue. “Man, why you just standin’ there?! I wanna get this class over with.” Usually, the one who says this is one who was talking.
  • Every now and then, insisting that a kid correct his work — providing negative feedback, in other words — upsets him to the point of distraction, even if I’m sitting there working with him. Indeed, this can make it worse.

In all these situations, and many others, I find myself thinking, “What’s going on here? Why is this simple request to be quiet or to correct a wrong answer so upsetting?”

Such moments are harsh reminders of the simple fact that I see only a small portion of their lives — almost incalculably small. These behaviors didn’t appear instantaneously, and they were reinforced by events that I’ll never know about and could do nothing about even if I did.

Bottom line, the reaction doesn’t make sense, and the reason why they’re occasionally reacting in such ways is the same reason they’re in our program and not still in school.