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education and teaching

A Day at the Park

Sunday 24 June 2007 | 0 Comments

Last week, we took the kids in the program — who have been really working hard on their social skills of late and making great progress — to Carowinds, a theme park on the North/South Carolina border.

It had been years since I’d been to an amusement park. And it certainly showed me how much I’ve aged — within about an hour, after having ridden one or two coasters with the kids, I was thinking, “Well, if we were to leave right now, I’d be perfectly content.”

And then one of the kids got the idea to go on the “Drop Zone Stunt Tower.” A tower with seats that pull you up to some relatively impressive height — at least it seems that way at the moment — and then drops you. Fairly simple.

The specs are not all that impressive:

  • Tower Height:174 feet
  • Maximum Height Reached by Transports: 160 feet
  • Length of Freefall Before Braking: 100 feet
  • Highest Speed: 56 M.P.H.
  • Lift Speed: 16 feet/second

But the overall experience is — weightlessness for just a few moments.

And I must admit that I, another staff, and one of the kids (we split up for a while) rode it more times than we could later remember.

Imagine that — in my mid-thirties and still able to have fun in a park.

Still, I couldn’t help but think the unavoidable, the predictable: I can’t wait until we take L to such places…

Improvement

Thursday 21 June 2007 | 0 Comments

When teaching English as a Foreign Language, I often wondered whether I would work in an educational setting that provided such clear evidence of progress. When you take a first year class that speaks no English and help turn it into a group of kids almost all of whom pass the English language exit exam with good marks, there’s a definite sense of achievement.

Then I spent seven months working with autistic children.

A couple of the students finished the year as completely different children than when they started. Gains in reading ability, social interaction, verbal expression, math skills, and general life skills left me simply astounded, and understandably proud that I had something to do with it. (Seven Months)

Now, working with at-risk kids, I get a third example.

A young man came up to me the other day to tell me something.

When he first arrived, he spoke to me only when he absolutely had to, he cussed me out on a fairly regular basis, and he never, in any circumstances, looked me in the eye. He had trouble getting along with other kids, and if you judged him just from that, you’d come away thinking he was a fairly unpleasant person.

This time, his eyes wide with a big smile, he said, “I done something good today, but you didn’t see it.” He then told me about how he’d managed to keep his temper under control with another kid in the program whom he finds irritating.

It was the first time I’d ever seen pride in his face.

NCLB

Wednesday 20 June 2007 | 0 Comments

How effective is No Child Left Behind? Not very.

In fact, it harms our kids instead of helping them. How?

Here’s a letter from a parent who’s also a teacher with 21 years’ experience which explains the problems perfectly: Letter about Re-Authorization of NCLB.

Reading in America

Thursday 14 June 2007 | 3 Comments

Almost all of the kids in the program in which I teach have one thing in common: a hatred of reading. If I have them read a couple of paragraphs (say, 200 words total), they immediately begin complaining about how long that is.

"Man, that's too long!" is a common refrain in the classroom.

When I have them read something to me aloud, it becomes clear fairly quickly why they're not fans of reading: they're not very good at it. They stumble on very basic words, and don't recognize words they themselves use every day. And like most activities, the only way to improve reading is to practice -- to do it. But many of the kids in the program come from demographics -- low education and low income -- in which reading is not particularly popular, probably for the very same reason.

And so for them, the dilemma of the 21st century is intensified: how do we teachers, in a world of video games, YouTube, and music videos successfully encourage reading?

Teaching Trotsky

Saturday 02 June 2007 | 2 Comments

Given the fact that the lads in the program had a very weak grasp on recent history, I decided to do a six-weeks' grading period on 20th century history. A hundred years in six weeks means 16.7 years per week, and I knew it would be a very rough overview at best. That said, I started in 1917, with the Russian Revolution.

"Why are we studying this crap?" one asked. He'd been keen on learning about the 20th century, but an obscure revolution led by people with "weird" names in a country on the other side of the globe was not what he had in mind.

"Because what came out of the revolution, namely the Soviet Union and the totalitarian Communist state, shaped much of the 20th century." Already I knew that I was painting with broad strokes. The revolution had produced a communist state, but it wasn't immediately totalitarian -- unless you happened to be in the upper class. Value judgments aside, I went on.

We looked at the revolution, the outcome, and then spent most of our time on the Stalinist Soviet Union.

The classic free-market critique of communism is that it destroys incentive. If I'm going to get my needs met whether or not I work, why should I work? If I know that no matter how hard I work, I'm going to get the same rewards, why not just do what's necessary to get by? I used to think "Whether or not this argument is valid on a scale large enough to make an impact on society's production remains to be seen," but then I lived in Poland in the years just after the fall of communism. What I experienced were people who were supposed to be helping me -- after all, by my shopping in their store, I was paying their salary -- sitting and reading a newspaper, then looking up with an expression of disgust and saying, "What?"

A consultant who's been working with our program mentioned later, as an aside admittedly unrelated to his job description, that he felt I'd painted with strokes too broad and therefore misleading. He felt I'd blurred the lines between Stalinism and communism and that the lads would equate the two as being necessarily connected, synonymous even.

"Communism doesn't have to end in totalitarianism," he pointed out.

True enough, but I began thinking about this and realized something that one thing missing from the discussion is scale. To have a small-scale commune is one thing; to have an entire country that is communist is something entirely different. Small-scale communism can work because it can foster a tighter community spirit -- it can be more like "family." You're less likely to cheat someone whom you know, with whom you share common values, etc. Small-scale communism also tends to be more voluntary. Choice goes a long way in determining how much you'll play "within the rules" of a given society. Bottom line, because of the community sentiment and the voluntary nature, small-scale communism tends to be ideologically self-sufficient.

Marxism suffers from fatal oversimplification: all workers are saints and all owners are devils. There are saints and sinners among workers and owners alike, and communism cannot overcome the inherent selfish nature that so many of us have.

State-scale communism, however, is not ideologically self-sufficient, and it's largely anonymous. Corruption arises more easily when you have no idea whom you're cheating. Add the fact that communism historically has not been "voluntary" and you have an instant recipe for Animal Farm-type "cheating." And since it's not voluntary and the state has to keep a lot of people "in line," it's easy enough to evolve into a police state.

Talking with the consultant later about this, I sketched out the above thoughts, concluding that, to my knowledge, there's not a single modern communist state that hasn't evolved into a totalitarian regime.

He suggested Cuba. Aside from the imprisoned political dissidents, the fact that Cubans are shut up behind their own "Iron Curtain", and the lack of any oppositional political party, I guess I'd agree...

It’s a Beautiful Day

Wednesday 09 May 2007 | 2 Comments

It's rare that we wake up with a sense that today something truly fortuitous will occur. I guess that has to do with the etymology of the word:

1653, from L. fortuitus, from forte "by chance," abl. of fors "chance." It means "accidental, undesigned" not "fortunate." (Online Etymology Dictionary)

We can't foresee luck -- it would be the ultimate oxymoron.

All of that notwithstanding, I woke up this morning feeling positively positive. I arrived home in a bit of shock.

For some time, K and I have known we will be moving out of the Asheville area -- the real estate market is ridiculously overpriced. Yet where to go? We needed a place that's developing so K can get a job; we needed a place with good schools and lots of them. Greenville, just across the border in South Carolina, seemed the ideal locale.

Spring comes, and the school systems across the countries publish their anticipated and actual staffing needs for the next year. As such, for the past few weeks, I've been checking the Greenville County Schools website almost daily, applying for almost every English/LA position that appears.

Last Sunday evening I got a call.

"Have you accepted a teaching position yet?"

I think: "Are you kidding? I haven't even heard much of a 'we received your resume thank you very much.'" I say: "No, not yet."

"Would you be able to come this Wednesday for an interview?"

I think: "Try keeping me way." I say: "Certainly."

How fortuitous. I have an interview, and I can drop by a few schools as well.

I wake up this morning feeling that something good is going to happen. Something better than good -- something beyond unexpected.

First school: principal is there, but not available. We'll take your resume and be in touch.

Such has been my experience. It's understandable -- principals are busy, to say the least, and they don't have the time to see every single applicant who drops it to try to get a head-start on the rest of the pack.

I drive to the second school. The receptionist doesn't know where the principal is, but gets on the now-standard walkie-talkie and asks the principal if he's able to come meet me. He's in his office, and within a few moments, I'm sitting across from him as he looks over my resume and asks a few questions. Then: "Okay -- you've got five minutes. Sell me."

I'm not dressed for an interview; I'm not expecting an interview; I'm certainly not prepared for an interview at this moment -- but apparently I'm having an interview.

What do I say? Long story, and perhaps I'll share it here. Probably not. Suffice it to say that I do fairly well. How do I know?

"Well, I don't want to make a decision right now," the principal says, "But let me get in touch with your references and I'll be in touch."

There are moments when you're fairly sure your ears are compacted with wax, or have been blown like Pete Townsend's, or are submerged in water -- certainly he didn't say by implication, "You're almost hired."

At any rate, I walk out to my car in a bit of a daze. "I knew something good was going to happen."

Lunch with a friend, then I change into my Superman suit and head across town to the interview. The actual interview. The scheduled interview.

Questions about

  • the integration of technology and instruction;
  • how I keep up with developments in my field;
  • my comfort level of teaching to rigid standards (i.e., NCLB);
  • how I might go about creating an atmosphere that is conducive to learning;
  • what sorts of professional development programs might help me feel more comfortable teaching;
  • how I might bring my life experiences into the classroom; and,
  • how I dealt with the cultural and linguistic differences while teaching in Poland.

More questions, more answers -- I am hot. I speak with a fluidity that I've never experienced in an interview. I'm enthusiastic. I'm succinct yet not wooden.

In the past, I've had absolutely awful interviews. I walk out to the car fighting the temptation to go back and say, "Look, let's not play games. I know I blew it. Thank you for your time."

During a pause in the interview, I think, "I might have a chance at this job!"

After that pause, I hear "And how would you respond if I offered you the position right now?"

Count to ten. Slowly.

I sat stunned for at least that long.

I think: "What would I do?!? Fight the urge to dance on the table! Swallow the 'barbaric yawp' that's muscling it's way up my throat!" I say, hoarsely: "Are you offering me the position?"

"Yes."

Count to ten again. In the meantime, I look at all the other faces in the room. I remind myself that it's May, not April. I slap myself mentally and shout, "You're just sitting there like a zit, you dolt!"

What to say?

I go with the subjunctive voice:"I would ask when you would want a decision."

"Now," she says, with a warm and polite smile.

Red flags! Flashing lights! "Danger, Will Robinson!" Our Kia adventure made me hyper-sensitive to any kind of "decide now" situation. What's going on? Do they have so few applicants? As Julie Andrews asks in Sound of Music, "What's wrong the the children?"

As delicately as possible, I ask why the rush.

"Because we simply don't want anyone else to snatch you up."

I did wake up morning, didn't I? I remember having my morning tea, followed by a now-rare morning coffee. No, I'm out of bed, showered, dressed, sitting in a conference room being offered a job, being told that my interview was "exemplary."

After a tour of the school, meeting faculty and staff along the way, I go with my gut feeling. Back in the administrative offices, the principal says/asks, "So I'll call you tomorrow?"

"No, I don't think that will be necessary."

The last person I meet on my way out is the secretary. "She'll be sending your paperwork to the district office today," says the principal.

And so, come August, I'll be the new eighth-grade Language Arts teacher at Hughes Academy of Science and Technology.

Chinese Math

Thursday 26 April 2007 | 0 Comments

America, in general, is lagging far behind a lot of the world regarding education, and this is particularly true with science and math.

Who’s ahead of us? It might be easier to ask who isn’t ahead of us.

Not surprisingly, the Chinese, in their quest for world domination (Mwa-ha-ha!), not only have cheap labor on their side; they also have a higher level of mathematics achievement, I’d venture.

The BBC recently put up two questions from two tests: one, a test intended for first-year university students in English schools; the other, a question from a Chinese pre-entrance exam.

Here’s the English problem:

English Math

That’s pretty simple. Even I, having used no geometry for close to twenty years now, can do that with no problems.

Here’s the Chinese problem:

Chinese Math

From BBC.co.uk

Limitations

Tuesday 27 March 2007 | 0 Comments

The other day, I got a comment at another website that meant more to me most other comments I’ve received put together:

Hello! I want to say thanks, because you was (no, are still) very good english teacher… you’s lessons helps me very much, now I’m live in Ireland, and I m still learn… If you want to write me: [email and name redacted]: 1,2e ”zarzadzanie inf, terrorysci…”bye

In a class of “difficult” students (who, in retrospect, were angels), this young lady was one of the few students I could count on consistently. She caused any disruption; she rarely came to class unprepared; she rarely wasn’t smiling and happy.

Naturally, I wrote back. And of course I got this in return:

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. t the moment you cannot send a message to [reacted], try again later 1: retry timeout exceeded

I tried again, knowing it was a futile effort. Still, the thought that it might not go through, and she’ll think my response to her invitation to contact her was, “Um, no thanks,” irritates to no end, so I tried. And yet again.

And so, I. Z., if you are reading this, please know: I wrote you back, but onet.pl is cranky and often does not take email from my account.

Which leads me to a question for all tech folks who read this (both of you): What could be causing a consistent problem with delivering email to Polish servers from a given account here in the States? I’ve asked tech support for my web host — they think I’m crazy. But consistently email sent from any address that uses the server this site is hosted on gets bounced back, or simply disappears. As in, “Did you get that email?” “What email?”

What I wouldn’t give, sometimes, for a return to consistent use of regular mail for correspondence…

  1. -1 ↩

Learning to say “Okay”

Friday 16 February 2007 | 2 Comments

For many of the young people in the program where I work, one of the formal goals that forms part of the forest of paperwork about them is "Learn to say "Okay.'" What that means in practical terms is fairly simple: many of them are unable to accept criticism -- broadly defined as anything even apparently critical of them or their actions -- of any kind from adults.

A scenario from not so long ago illustrates how many things are going on that can make it difficult for someone just to say, "Okay."

Two boys, in class, are doing something disruptive. Fidgeting with something, throwing it back and forth (maybe a jacket?) or something. I couldn't see clearly what it was, but it caught my attention and I deemed it a distraction.

"Hey, guys, stop doing that, please."

"Doing what?" one asks simultaneously with the other's plea of innocence: "I wasn't doin' nothin'!"

Now it really doesn't matter what they were doing. It really doesn't matter if they were doing anything at all. The best response to bring the whole exchange to an end, to prevent it from escalating into something more serious, to ensure not getting into trouble, is to say, "Okay."

"If you have a problem with that," we tell them, "you can talk to the teacher afterward. If you don't know exactly what the teacher is asking you to do, you can ask for clarification after saying "Okay.' But getting defensive, taking it personally, exaggerating it into a personal affront will only make the situation worse."

And so going back to the above scenario, I reminding the boys that one of the skills they're working on is simply saying "Okay" and moving on.

"I ain't sayin' "Okay' to something I didn't do!" one replied indignantly.

"Why not?" I asked. "In saying "okay' you're not admitting to guilt. You're not doing anything other than acknowledging that you heard and understood what the person in authority -- be it a teacher or not -- is saying."

"But I didn't do nothin'!" he protested.

"But that doesn't matter." I responded. "In protesting it, particularly in the manner you're doing now, you're not doing anything to help your situation."

"Are you telling me that if someone accused you of doing something..."

"Whoa, wait -- I'm not accusing you of doing anything. I simply asked you both to stop. If you weren't doing anything, then clearly I wasn't talking to you. Even if I was addressing you alone and said "Stop doing that" and you were behaving perfectly, the best response is to say, "Okay' and move on."

"Move on?! You're the one making an issue of this" he said, voice pitching upward into a virtual screech, eyebrows raised just enough to say -- inadvertently or purposely -- "You're an idiot for saying that."

"No, I'm using this moment to remind you of a skill you're working on and to try to get you to practice it."

The boy couldn't accept that saying "Okay" even if you're completely innocent is anything more than an admission of guilt. And to prove his point, he brings up a most fascinating example: "So you're sayin' that if you walking down a street and cops come up to you and say, "You look like this guy who just robbed a bank,' and arrested you, that you'd just say, "'Okay.'"

The discussion is starting to get less and less productive as we range farther and farther off topic. Or are we off topic? Is this how the boy equates all these things? I decide to play along.

"Yes, I would. Or at least I hope I'd have a cool enough head to say that."

"But you didn't do it. Are you saying that if they said, "You robbed this bank,' that you'd just say nothing, that you wouldn't tell them you're innocent? They'll take you to jail and what -- you'll end up spending ten years in jail for something you didn't do?!"

Right here, though I suspected it moments earlier, I realize the young man didn't have a firm grasp on the workings of our criminal justice system. And another thing begins dawning -- we're really getting off track. Does this help the young man understand the situation? Is he just trying, like so many of the boys do, to get me so wrapped up in a discussion argument exchange that it's just a matter of whoosh! blink! and the whole class is over? I decide, somewhat against my better judgment, to continue.

"Just because they arrest me doesn't mean I'll be spending ten years in jail. There's a trial first, and in the meantime, I can be released on bail. But think of what they say, what you hear on TV, every time they arrest someone." Almost together we recite the Miranda warning. Then I continue, "Now if I'm an idiot, I'll start blathering on about how I'm innocent and how I didn't do anything and then, in court, that will be used against me, because the irony is, it makes me look guilty. If I'm smart, I'll shut my trap completely until I can get a lawyer."

"But if you didn't do nothin'""

"Especially if I hadn't done anything," I replied.

Finally things are winding down, and a boy enters from the other group.

"Hey, Mr. S, let's ask him if he'd just say "okay.' 'Eric, if someone framed you.'"

And now everything is mixed up. Nothing is as it started. We're no longer talking about whether or not saying "okay" helps you in a situation even if the request is relatively arbitrary; we're no longer talking about whether or not saying "okay" is an admission of guilt -- we've moved off into the netherworlds of arbitrary, six-sixty-degrees-of-separation tangents that suck up time and accomplish nothing.

Or is it simply that he doesn't understand what I mean? Are all these scenarios that we've been bouncing off of each other identical to him?

In the end, he simply says, "Well, if that's a skill, I guess it's a skill I won't use."

And I think, "Okay -- we'll try again tomorrow."

Stating the Obvious

Monday 05 February 2007 | 0 Comments

"You've got kind of a big nose, huh?"

The words fell like grenades as the three of us bobbed about the shallow end of the pool. My best friend was talking to my new girlfriend my first girlfriend, truth be told who'd been the axis of my existence for the previous week of band camp.

The words hit her fairly hard, too, for her eyes teared up and she swam away.

I said something icy and hateful to my friend and swam off to comfort my lady.

Truth be told, she did have a nose that was a bit on the large size, though of course I was not foolish enough to admit it when my friend protested later, "But she does have kind of a big nose."

"You didn't have to say anything," I thought. I said, "No, she doesn't!"

She herself admitted it sometime later, with a laugh, even.

We were all twelve, and yet somehow my friend had not yet learned that you don't have to say everything you're thinking.

Many of the boys I work with daily, at age fifteen, even sixteen, still have not learned that either. If I go into work with a bit of razor burn, I get comments. Endlessly. If they think my clothes are somehow unfashionable, they let me know, then stand around in a circle and laugh about it as I stand there.

It's funny -- when I was their age, I did the same thing. But my friends and I talked about teachers' razor burn or mismatched wardrobe in hushed tones, and we would never be presumptuous enough to think that we could mock the teacher as if he were a peer. But that is exactly what many of the boys at the center do.

The worst was the first time I cycled to school. When they saw me in typical cycling clothes everything spandex, basically they howled with laughter. "Oh my God!" one literally screamed. "Look what a faggot Mr. S looks like!"

Part of what I try to do on a daily basis, then, is to encourage them to whisper among themselves instead of talking among themselves. And this is particularly frustrating, because it seems to them that I'm simply annoyed by their behavior and trying to punish them in some way or other. Quite frankly, it's easy to ignore such immaturity (and that's really all it is), but that's not my job -- and therein lies the frustration.