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education and teaching

Meet You Tomorrow

Monday 18 August 2014 | 0 Comments

Dear Terrence,

We haven't met, but by the time twenty four hours pass, we will have met. I might not even realize it yet, for you sometimes manage to keep yourself hidden in the rank and file, just another face in a sea of first day jitters, but more than likely, I'll have a pretty good idea who you are, and how many of you there are as well.

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Part of me wants to say something like this: It's all up to you. Whether I meet you or not is a simple question of self control. You could simply blend in, follow the examples you see around you of successful students, and you could just disappear before you even make your entrance. I want to say that's possible, but I'm not sure a thirteen-year-old has that kind of fortitude. At your age, you tend to make things more complicated than they really are, and combined with your fatalism, that makes it highly unlikely that I won't meet you. You'll feel unjustly accused, or you'll suspect someone across the room is talking about you, or you'll simply need some attention, or a thousand and one other motivations might click and then we'll meet.

I could actually be on the lookout for you: all I have to do is take my roll sheets down the seventh-grade hall and ask for references. It seems unfair now, and I strenuously avoided any comments from anyone about any of my students, but truth be told, that's what "real life" -- whatever that might be -- is like.

All that being said, I have no doubt I'll figure out who you are fairly quickly. At risk kids wear their cracks on their sleeves even when they think they are being impenetrable, and your body language will likely give you away. So the real question is, what then? When I figure out who you are, when I tell you the jig's up, what then? Hopefully, I'll do better with you this year than I did last year, which was better than the year before that. But will it be enough? Can we make it?

We'll start to see tomorrow.

Concerned as always,
Your Future Teacher

Updated

Friday 15 August 2014 | 0 Comments

It took me four years and two principals, but I finally succeeded in my brilliant plot to take control of and completely redesign the web site for my school. It went live today.

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The district decided a year later that WordPress had such significant security issues that they couldn't continue using it. Funny, Washington Post, Time magazine, and the New York Times all seem to feel differently since they use it, but what do for-profit companies know about using secure software?

Back Again

Tuesday 12 August 2014 | 0 Comments

We'll be starting school in a week, meeting (some) students in two days, but today, the faculty gathered to do two things: deal with the myriad administrative announcements and clarifications that make up the bureaucracy of public education, and get caught back up with colleagues.

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Last year we faced the stress of a new principal: what will change? What will stay the same? After a year with this man, who has done an excellent job at transforming some problems at our school as well as keeping everyone on their toes, we know that we're in for more of the same this year. It's good and bad. I have this lurking fear that changes we know are coming are going to make me let go of some of my most prized pedagogical possessions -- lessons, units, techniques that might not work with the new approach (educational fad or not? too early to tell) well be taking as a faculty. Yet change is often good. Still, on this end of it, it's a bit daunting.

Will and Temptation

Wednesday 06 August 2014 | 1 Comment

prayerIt’s far too late for this little girl to be heading to bed, but in these last few days of summer vacation, we’ve grown lax.

We kneel for evening prayers, and I think of something Father L said to me today during confession, and it gives me an idea.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son,” we begin, already falling into that rhythm that shows we aren’t really thinking about what we’re saying. We begin, and as we pray “Thy will be done,” I stop L.

“What’s something you can do to help make this come about, to help bring about God’s will on Earth?” L shrugs, so I clarify: “What is God? He’s love, right? So to fulfill God’s will, we must love. So what’s something you could do to help fulfill that?”

She thinks for a moment. “Not yell at E,” she replies confidently. We all do it: we get frustrated or worried with what the little two-year-old bundle of fascination and excitement is about to do, see potential disaster (or sometimes actual disaster), and call out, “E!” He heads for furniture with a drill: “E!” He snaps the head off a doll: “E!” So L and I talk about how we should all take that to heart.

Returning to the prayer: “and lead us not into temptation.” Time for reteaching: “What are we sometimes tempted to do, something that really goes against God’s will of love?”

“Yell at E.”

That seems to be the key to meaningful prayer for a seven-year-old: connect it to real life, make it simple, and reinforce. Sort of like teaching in the classroom…

The Queen of England

Monday 23 June 2014 | 0 Comments

Sure, I’m just basing this claim off anecdotal evidence I’ve experienced in my own classroom, but I’ll make the claim nonetheless: today’s kids just don’t have the imagination of past generations. I base this on the experience of students in creative writing classes having nothing to write about, and when given help with discovering the wealth of topics that surrounds them, they usually wrote about video games or thinly veiled remakes of various films.

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The scene that greets me almost every day arriving at school goes a long way in explaining this, I believe.

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The Girl, at this point, doesn’t suffer from such a lack of imagination. She’ll take a blanket, old sheer for window treatments, and heavy winter gloves and declare herself the queen of England.

Goodies for the Teachers

Thursday 05 June 2014 | 0 Comments

The chocolate treats we sent L’s teachers were such a hit we decided to do the same for E’s teachers. And when I say “we” in that sentence, I mean K.

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Measuring Success

Sunday 01 June 2014 | 0 Comments

They come in as strangers, and by now, their reactions and behavior are almost predictable. I have only a few more days with these students who've undergone so many transformation in less than a year, and then soon, they'll be strangers again. One or two will send an occasional email, that's certain; I'll see one or two here or there every how and then. Some have younger siblings, so I'll see them at awards nights in the future or in the car line if their sibling is the first dropped off. The rest, though, disappear for all intents and purposes, as I repeat the process next year, learning new names, new faces, new habits.

How do I know if it's been a successful year, though? What metric allows me to make this determination? Is a letter from a student enough? Are test scores enough? (Our principal informed us that our End of Course exams for high school credit courses were the best "in a long time." Is that a good metric?)

Letter

Friday 30 May 2014 | 0 Comments

Someone -- the administration I would assume -- has put the kids up to writing end-of-the-year notes to various teachers.

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The next day, I told her, "That's about the sweetest thing any student has ever done."

The Delicacy of Sharing

Saturday 17 May 2014 | 0 Comments

Teaching our daughter to share has been a constant challenge, as I'm sure it has with most parents. L likes and even expects others to share with her, but getting her to return the favor -- that's always been a trick. A few events of the last few days, though, makes me think we've made real progress.

Friday, we were to meet a friend of hers from her first grade class at the end-of-the-year school party, a carnival with a few rides and some games scattered about the school ground.

"We're supposed to meet at six at the silly string!" she told us, countless times.

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We arrived at the silly string area -- a roped off portion of the field where kids ran about spraying aerosol string on each other -- at the appointed time, but no friend. We got a ice treat, went on a few rides, and then suddenly discovered L's friend, also Lilly.

With her mother's blessing, Lilly went off with L and me, but before long, she'd run out of tickets.

"Daddy," L said with a grave expression. "Give me the rest of the tickets. I want to slip them with Lilly."

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The second episode: today, during L's preparation time before ballet portraits, I sat with E at the table to do his albuterol breathing treatment, but he was having none of that.

"No! No! No!"

No amount of cajoling, explaining, or begging could help.

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L came to the rescue, offering the Boy use of our family Nexus so he could play his favorite game, a vehicle-based shape-matching game.

He sat patiently for the treatment, playing his game and clapping furiously whenever he finished a round.

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"Bravo!" he cried, as did I, though for both L and E.

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Finally, in the evening, mowing the yard after almost two weeks' neglect, I came upon a patch of matted grass, so I headed in for the dethatching rake. As I returned, I noticed a curious patch of dry grass with bits of gray about it. I walked over, pulled the grass aside, and found a burrow of baby rabbits.

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L came over to get a peek, and Papa brought the Boy over.

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"What an odd place to burrow," I said. Indeed, for it will be a disaster if our cat finds it, which is not as likely as it might seem given her age and general laziness.

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Still, I'm happy to share our yard -- for once, it's an animal that seems harmless.