Thoughts on the Ending of Week 3 September 28, 2007

As of tomorrow afternoon, we will have been in school for 13 days.  This time next week, 10% of the school year will be over.

Not that I’m a math teacher or anything.

Here are some thoughts on those first 13 days of school.

Things I have Improved
As a teacher, I have gotten much better at many things.  One of those things is recognizing my own strengths and weaknesses as a teacher.  I do not need to be the primary “explainer” in my classroom.  Each of my students can be empowered as teachers.  If I’m working with a student who just isn’t getting it the way that I’m explaining it and someone near her gets it, I can ask that person to try to explain it more clearly.  More often than not, the student does and both students continue doing their work productively.

The next thing is that I have gotten much better about data and record keeping.  Much better.  I have always been organized, but this is ridiculous.  I have three ring binders for:

• Recording parent contacts
• Discipline forms
• Student Data
• Lesson Plans
• Curriculum Notes
• And much, much more.

I never have to go searching for anything anymore.  If a student gets out of line, I know where my detention letters are and my running list of students who have been assigned detention with me.   I have a Detention Wall outside my classroom door for posting the list of students who owe me time and what day that time is scheduled to be served.

It is making a difference in discipline.

I am also running a field trip for the entire school.  Seriously.  The entire school.  We’ll see how this works.

Things the District Still Sucks At

• Understanding that retaining a child one year does not mean the child should be socially promoted two years later.  I have had two struggling students bumped up to the 8th Grade because they are “over age” (14 in the 7th grade).  One of these students has expressed concern to me that the 8th grade work is too hard for her.  Of course it is.  She missed 7th grade.
• Understanding that special education students have IEPs and that IEPs are legal contracts that *must* be followed regardless of other issues within the school.
• Understanding that in order for teachers to create discipline in their classrooms, the school needs to back up the teachers.  If I assign a detention and receive parental permission to hold a student (in the form of a signed letter) I should not have to send my students out of the building at dismissal because of some perceived threat or fight.  These children owe me time and we both agree on that.  Let them serve their time; don’t fight it.  Especially when you keep telling me to assign detentions for misbehavior.  Assigning detentions does NOTHING if you never let me HOLD DETENTIONS.  Seriously.  I would think that this one wouldn’t need explanation.
• I cannot be in two places at once and you have no right to my prep time unless you are paying me extra for it.  I shouldn’t have to spend 10 minutes every day walking a class from Lunch to CAPA when they aren’t my responsibility during that time.  Yet, somehow, you schedule meetings on my prep time when I have to walk the kids.  Is this magic time?  Seriously, is it?  Because I can’t Apparate or Disapparate without splinching myself and N.E.W.T.s were not required for teacher credentialing.

Oh, and children are fundamentally insane.  So am I.  It works well.

The Real Day 9 of School September 25, 2007

Yesterday, my team and I had a meeting.  We are becoming the team that is getting the special ed inclusion class.  We will have to team lesson plan with the special education teacher because we are going to have a bunch of part-time special education students mainstreamed into one of our three classes.

Logistically, I feel a nightmare coming on.   The students move classrooms next Monday.

Organizing Contact Information September 17, 2007

So, as teachers, one of the things that we have to do is acquire a million ways to get ahold of parents in the event of an emergency.  This year, I combined all of these tasks into my favorite mapping website:  Google Maps.

With My Maps, I can make each of my students a little pushpin icon on a web-based map.  I can organize them by section (color-coded) and plan trips to multiple students based on where the cluster of icons on the map is.   All I need to access their address and phone number is access to my Google account.  Even with just one section entered, I can see the clusters of students around my school’s neighborhood.  This week, I will enter the other two sections.

This is awesome.  Bonus for pushpin icons in the three primary colors.

Day 7: Counting Up and Down the Seconds September 16, 2007

One of the on going problems in education is “how do you deal with the chatty class?” In my experience, there is always at least one — even in summer school, I had my silent class and my chatty class.

At first glance, it appears that the older teachers have a method for keeping their classes silent and it is a method that works consistently for them. However, the method of silencing the chatty class has to be consistent with the teaching methods of the teacher. Teacher DG’s method for silencing her students might not work for me because DG uses direct instruction and “kill and drill” practice methods whereas I use an inquiry based approach which requires students to ask occasional questions to one another and encourages groupwork cooperation. In a “kill and drill”/direct instruction model, silence from the students is doable because there is no reason that the students should need to ask one another any questions. The teacher is the focal point of the classroom. Essential to my instruction is the ability to communicate to the chatty class that there are appropriate times and places to have a conversation with a friend about the argument that is going on between two other friends and that my classroom instructional time is not that time or place. My students have not quite grasped the ability to differentiate between conversation types and the fact that there are appropriate conversations (which I ignore or involve myself with) and inappropriate conversations (which will earn the student a reprimand of some sort).

In cooperative endeavors, it would be nice to be able to adopt a Harry Potter system of “Houses” and “Points.” However, I am not a witch with the magical ability to award and remove points with the power of my words. And, unfortunately, there are more important things for me to keep track of during the day than points from students within groups.

On Wednesday, I started getting on the right track again with dealing with the chatty class but the ongoing issue is that of punishing the whole class for one or two people talking.

Here’s a situation: Class comes in, takes seats. One or two students start working on the “Do Now” on the board. Teacher re-directs class and praises the two students who got to work right away. A few more students begin working; a large group of students is still chatting aimlessly. Time starts being counted for after-school detention. More student fall silent but now there are five students who continue talking past time being counted.

It is five minutes into class and there are students who finished the “Do Now,” students who are almost done, students who are just starting, and students who haven’t started at all.

We have now, four categories of students within a whole class detention: 1) Those who start immediately and thus shouldn’t be subject to detention (but since they now have to wait for the other kids to finish the work, they are more inclined to start talking), 2) Those who started after a reminder of the procedures and are probably going to finish the work before I move on, 3) Those who started after I threatened time after school who will only be done if I sink more time into this activitiy, and 4) Those who will not be done at all because they have no interest in starting.

To my mind, Groups 1 and 2 do not deserve detention. They have been working hard and deserve to go home on time. Group 3 needs to stay detention for as long as it takes them to finish up the classroom work from the day (meaning not just the “Do Now” but the other tasks they ignored from the day as well). Group 4 needs to stay an extended detention because I need to have independent conversations with these students and figure out what is going on with them. These students will need to get parental permission to stay after school to complete their work during extra hours.

However, on a day to day basis, it is difficult to track and categorize these groups and make it clear to the student which group they are falling into at any given point. That way when Robert complains that Sabrina got to go home on time even though she was talking, I can make it clear that Sabrina got to go home because she was already done with her work when she started talking and she was refocused after I moved on to the next activity (instructional issue – I need additional math work for my students to do when they have finished a task).

In an elementary school, color charts (Red/Yellow/Green/Black) are often used to tell students which group they are in. Students colors can be moved over the course of the class period. However, this color chart model does not work as well when you see three sections of students and would constantly have to change over the name cards with each new class coming in. I never remember seeing a high school equivalent of this. An additional issue is that of embarrassing the student — how do you clearly communicate what category a student is in without causing misbehavior among the rest of the class by taunting, etc.

Applying psychology to adolescents is no easy task; I need to have something in place by the end of this week to effectively deal with these issues.

Comments on School: Days 5 & 6 September 12, 2007

We got students on Monday. That was a little bit crazy. The kids have been good so far. They only misbehave when they get promised one thing and have it changed on them. I don’t make promises; frequently, I have to break the ones other people made. On behalf of the other people. It sucks.

I love my new students, though. Nothing too crappy so far.

But you know you’ve become a teacher when you ask permission from male friends to pretend they are boyfriends in order to get a bunch of 14 year olds off your back.

Roster? I hardly know ‘er. (Day 4.5) September 10, 2007

Upon trying to write out my students’ roster for them so that I could copy it and bring it to the classroom for the first day of school, I realized something.

The roster has my kids going to two places at once.

Bad. Not complete roster.

I have a headache.

Classroom Complete! (Day 4) September 8, 2007

Yesterday was the last day in the building before the students show up on Monday.  My classroom still looked trashed because of all of the cleaning I did.  I planned on leaving around 5:00; I didn’t leave until 6:00.

But my classroom is cleaned.  My  room is set up.  Furniture is in place and most of my bulletin boards are arranged.  I know what’s going on the moment my students walk into the building on Monday.

The 7th grade situation was resolved with a new roster at 2:00 p.m. yesterday.  I’m paired with one reading teacher and our science teacher became our science/social studies teacher.  So, I see 3 classes for math, R sees three classes for reading,  and S sees three classes for each of science and social studies.  The other two teachers have two classes they see for math and social studies or reading and science (depending on the teacher).  All is well, but the uncertainty was killing morale.

I got home yesterday and passed out completely.  100%.  I slept from around 7:00 until 8:30 a.m.   It was crazy.

School. No School. School. Team. No Team. Team (?) Days 2 and 3. September 7, 2007

Yesterday, I was so exhausted after school that I couldn’t bring myself to detail the events of the day. I told myself that when I got home today, I would make a post explaining what happened yesterday. Then I would make a post explaining what happened today. Then I was exhausted when I got home. Now I’m finally making the post.

Day 2: Jones loses the Annex (Alternative) Building

On Tuesday, I mentioned the possibility that my school might lose its alternative building due to the district wanting to move an outside group (CEP) into the building to lease the space. On Tuesday afternoon, that became a reality. All of the teachers at Jones Annex were to pack up their classrooms and move into the first floor of Jones. Any regular classrooms on the first floor of Jones were to move to the second floor of Jones. My Special Education Colleague had to move her stuff from 112 (where she moved it at the very end of last year) to the Assistant Principal’s office on the 2nd floor–which was to become her new classroom. The AP was moving to the Counselor’s Suite (which is an incredible sacrifice due to the obscenely small space available in there). By the end of the day, Tifanie had her boxes and materials out of the classroom, but still needed to move her furniture upstairs. Meanwhile, I was continuing the battle to have my classroom materials organized and finish moving furniture.

Of course, prior to all of this happening, we had the privilege misfortune of sitting through a professional development DVD that stopped at 7-8 different points where we had “activities” we needed to complete. This took two hours. It was mind-numbing. And it didn’t tell me anything that I hadn’t also learned in Teach For America Literacy Support sessions in Institute last summer.

We, as a school, resigned ourselves to our fate for at least the first week of school. Our principal began drafting a letter to parents in hopes that they would be able to continue the fight where we failed. Everyone agrees that this decision was among the worst things that could be done to our student population. Our Principal is continuing to fight it, but all seems lost.

Day 3: What all logic and powers of persuasion fail to do, legalese does

This morning, we all show up at school and in our announcements meeting, we are told that the Alt is moving into the first floor and so the classrooms on the first floor (including the rooms that have been used as storage) are being moved out and organized today. Somewhere in all of this, someone finds all of the unused math materials from the after school program (Power Hour) and summer school for 2-3 previous years. I go downstairs and claim “dibs” on the 7th Grade math materials on behalf of the 7th Grade math teachers. Jackpot. I have plenty of material now to use for instruction and assignment if a student is out sick for an extended absence. While I’m downstairs claiming dibs on lots of stuff and bringing it upstairs, the Alternative School Principal gets a call from Our Principal telling him to stop moving classrooms and furniture and claiming an hour moratorium because of things going on in the region.

About 45 minutes later, we get an announcement: The Decision to Move the Alternative School to the Main Building has been Reversed.

The Alt is staying at the Annex. We have our first floor back. And now, all of the teachers who moved their classrooms from the first floor need to move back.  My special education colleague gets to once again return her stuff to 112. Again. Sheesh. We’re teachers, not a moving company. Shouldn’t we be paid extra for this? Of course not.

All of this happened by about 10:30 a.m. this morning. You might wonder: why the sudden reversal? Did our regional superintendent finally see reason and space constraints? Of course not. This is the School District of Philadelphia.

The grand scheme was ultimately defeated by the lawyers. The Annex already held a non-profit group that did work with students and the district has been given them that space for some time. CEP wanted to lease the whole building; the non-profit group would have had to pay CEP rent. The non-profit has no maintenance/building funds because they work in conjunction with the district. I assume the district has a contract with them for that space even though they don’t pay. So the district can’t kick them out onto the street. The plan ultimately fell through because the District couldn’t house a non-profit and for-profit group within the same school building.

No logic. No reason. Not in our students’ interest. Pure contract law and prior rights to the space. Welcome to a district run as a business rather than a system of schools. (We don’t have a School Board, we have a School Reform Commission. We don’t have a Board Chairman, we have a CEO.)

That wasn’t the worst part of my day. Or really, the day of any of the 7th grade teachers.

Downtown struck again at around 11:00 a.m. when they called the school and said that due to enrollment, we had to cut at least three teachers — we were overstaffed. Cutting teachers at this point screws everyone over. Especially those teachers.

My Teach For America colleague who has been planning for 7th grade social studies got told that she’s our new 8th grade social studies teacher. She has to move classrooms. The 8th grade teacher, it seems, is gone. The 7th grade isn’t getting another teacher. Our class sizes are too low (22-25 students each; contractual max is 33). So, instead of having six groups of kids, we have five. Instead of having 20-25 student in our classes, we are starting the year with 26 – 29. Oh, and the entire roster needs to change because somehow between the two math teachers, the two literacy teachers, and the science teacher, we have to teach all five sections social studies.

There are three ways do this (Math1, Math2, Read1, Read2, Sci). A block of M/R is 90 minutes. A block of Sci/SS is 45 minutes.

(M1 + R1) and (M2 + R2 + S).

Option 1: Best for Behavior Management and Classroom Instruction

M1 and R1 teach their sections only math and reading. M1 teaches math and science, R1 teaches reading and social studies.

M2, R2, and S group. M2 and R2 teach Math and Reading to their three sections. S teaches science and social studies to their three sections.

Option 2: Best for Certification Issues — in this case, M2 is me. In the previous case, the Ms and Rs were interchangeable.

M1: Three sections of Math (M1, R1, S)

M2: Two sections of Math (M2 and R2) and two sections of Social Studies (M2 and R2)

R1: Two sections of Reading (M1, R1) and two sections of Social Studies (M1 and R1)

R2: Three sections of Reading (M2, R2, S)

S: Five sections of Science () and one section of social studies (S).

Option 3: Worst for behavior management, instruction, and certification. This of course was the one that was first proposed and the only one I’ve heard on the table. (M2 is still me)

R1: Three Sections of Reading (R1, M1, S)

M1: Three Sections of Math (R1, M1, S)

R2: Two Sections of Reading (R2, M2) and Two Sections of Social Studies (R1, R2)

M2: Two Sections of Math (R2, M2) and Two Sections of Social Studies (M1, M2)

S: Five Sections of Science (ALL) and One Section of Social Studies (S)

In the last option, you might not see it, but R2 is seeing R1’s kids — kids she never sees otherwise. And M2 is seeing M1’s kids — kids she never sees otherwise. That kind of schedule spells management disaster at my school; I know because I had to deal with it at last year. It was miserable. Management is hell because the students think of themselves as X’s kids and it requires a lot of conversations, trust, teamwork and cooperation to pull off the kind of discipline required to make that kind of cross-team connection work. My school lacks a lot of that and forcing us into that situation would make it worse, not better.

Hopefully there will be a viable solution when we show up tomorrow. I have to have trust in the Leadership Team. Most of the time, they know what they were doing. I just wish they would involve the 5 teachers it actually affects into the rostering conversation.

School starts Monday.

Back to School: Day One September 4, 2007

Last year, I was horrible about updating my livejournal to reflect the events and cultural moment of my school. I was barely surviving daily life — blogging, it turns out, is not one of the basic necessities of life. I am going to try to be more consistent about it this year, in part because there appears to be an unfurling story that I want to have documented for posterity.

Today, we returned to school. I have been planning for the past couple of months, but today was the day that you actually bring all of the plans and materials back into the school and start setting up your classroom.

Well, theoretically. . .

What I did Today

At the end of last year, I moved all of my stuff from room 323 to room 329. I had been told that my classroom would be moving there and all of my materials needed to be moved to my new classroom. Both of those things were true, but over the summer, they changed my classroom AGAIN from 329 to 324. So, I had to move all of my belongings from 329 to 324.

In addition, I had to go out and clean out 324 from the materials that the previous teacher (a long term substitute) and apparently another teacher left behind. Things I found today include:

(1) Nearly all of the teacher guides to all of the seventh grade math text books.
(2) The entire set of 7th grade science materials (that were apparently chillin’ out in this classroom last year. It seriously filled up a cabinet. I found them at the end of the day today.
(3) The roster binder (attendance documents) for the old 7th grade science teacher’s sixth grade class.
(4) Old math computation workbooks, unused.
(5) 8th Grade Math PSSA workbooks.
(6) 2 each of the following: 7th grade math curriculum, 7th grade science curriculum, 8th grade literacy curriculum.
(7) Literacy across the curriculum workbook sets for 6-8 science and 6-8 math (3 total)
(8) A whole set of Global History textbooks from at least before 2003.
(9) A classroom set of dictionaries.
(10) Lots and lots of colored construction paper. I mean, lots.
(11) Two copies of <U>The Best American Short Stories – 1987</U> (?)
(12) Two broken overhead projectors.
(13) A lot of trash including old, outdated science workbooks.
(14) 5th grade social studies materials (WHY?)

My cabinets are now empty (except the one full of science materials, which we will address tomorrow) and ready for me to move around tomorrow.

What I am Doing Tonight

(1) Purchase a piece of wood that is approximately 26″ by 12″ to nail into my locker door so that I have a secured locker.
(2) Acquire milk crates for storing supplies.
(3) Purchase table buckets for putting classroom materials into.
(4) Pack up my car with the last of my school materials so that I can do classroom organization and set-up tomorrow.

Anyway, that’s the least interesting part of the first day back at school. No return to school would be complete without discussion of state testing.

So here it is.

My school didn’t make AYP. We are still in Corrective Action for the millionth year in a row. But we did reach our targets for more of our student population. In 2006, we met 19 of 29 targets. This year, we met 26 of 29 of our targets. (Among other things, our white kids failed to meet the target in Math and our English Language Learners failed to meet the target in literacy).

However, our school growth leader made an excellent double bar graph that represented the data from year to year. She compared each class to itself and demonstrated that every class that comes into Jones performs at higher and higher levels each year. The longer they stay with us, the better that they do. We are making a difference; we just haven’t gotten to the state target yet.

None of our target categories or target areas slid backwards this year, either. EVERYBODY grew. THAT is amazing. That means I didn’t screw my kids over last year as much as I feared.

The Bad News

The Region (districts within the District) decided unilaterally and behind the back of my school’s administrators this summer that they were going to close our alternative building and lease the space to CEP. So, we now have to figure out how we’re going to house 6-8 more teachers and 200 more students at our main building next week. Chances are, by then, the district will realize that this is an impossible task to accomplish because Jones simply does not have the instructional classroom space to house that many more students. Even if we held classes in closets, there wouldn’t be enough.

Ultimately, what the Region is trying to do will have no direct benefit to our students. CEP will be a resource center for young adult education throughout the district and the region and our students will have to suffer for the existence of that resource center. It is a horribly conceived, horribly implemented plan and the fact that the Region is trying to do it behind our backs SUCKS.

This isn’t going to happen on my principal’s watch. If it does, he might very well leave this school — which would be a damn shame. The only reason I was willing to risk sticking around this school for a second year was because I serve under one of the best principals in Philadelphia and I’m privileged enough to know it. Whenever he speaks, he renews my belief that administrators can be in it for the children and can expect their teachers to be in it for that same goal as well. I trust his decisions because I know he is making them with the same best interest in mind that I make them everyday in my classroom.

If this was to get to the point where my principal would actually consider leaving my school, I might very well lead the teachers into the revolt down to the alternative building and have us chained to the building until they are willing to make the decision this year that is in the best interest of our students and their families. For so many reasons — overcrowding, separating students, violent offenses — this is not.

Back to School Shopping: Teacher Clothes and Day 0 September 3, 2007

I am cross-posting part of my back-to-school debate that I was having this week about teacher clothes. I made a post to my friends-only livejournal that I use for general wankery and existentialist crises. I have modified it slightly to fit within this format.

The Post

Philadelphia does not officially have a dress code for teachers. In most places where that is the case, the assumption is that teachers are perfectly capable of dressing to a professional standard. That is not always the case at my school. Officially, we, as teachers, could dress in cargo shorts and t-shirts every day and not be in violation of the dress code. Some teachers do this. Only the Principal wears a suit; teachers are frequently in all manner of dress, although most manage to keep it in the professional range during the cooler months. Despite the standards of decency and the fact that my Teach For America colleagues and I are frequently the youngest teachers in the building, it is not infrequently that I see normal district teachers suffering from wardrobe malfunctions of an extremely inappropriate nature.

As a person one full year out of college, my wardrobe varies in degree between ridiculously casual to ridiculously formal. Wearing ridiculously casual clothes to school undermines my own authority as a young teacher. Students do not take me seriously. Wearing ridiculously formal clothes to school undermines my own authority as a teacher. Students feel as if I am overdressed for their community and interact with me as if I am a ridiculously formal person. They are less comfortable bonding and building the relationships fundamental for success. I have very few clothes in the middle-range and women’s clothes are expensive, time-consuming to shop for, or both.

Men have an easy way out of this conundrum with the old interchangeable standby: collared button-down shirt + tie and slacks.

I have been struggling to create an equivalently professional female response to that male wardrobe. The goal is interchangeability of parts, ease of shopping, ease of laundering, and within the middle of the range of appropriate dress for teachers.

(Note: Students at my school are required to wear navy blue collared shirts and khaki bottoms every day as their uniforms.)

I was thinking that this year, instead of fluctuating back and forth between ridiculously casual and ridiculously dressed up (depending on laundry and not necessarily reflective of class activities) I would instead, adopt a teacher uniform of polo shirts of varying colors and dress slacks of normal colors (such as khaki, black, navy, or grey). I believe that it will fulfill the goals I set out; I have been unable to come up with a good female equivalent.

I polled my friends and for the most part they agreed that it would be a reasonable thing to do. Only one really stood out as saying it was unreasonable; we have been having a side conversation in which I have realized that he is coming from a position in which uniforms are inherently bad because they make the wearer a “tool of the man.” I am of the belief that if I am a tool of the man, I am a tool of the man regardless of what my wardrobe is. It is the functionality of my job and not what I wear while doing it that determines my value and individuality. Given our fundamentally different take on the value of individuality and uniformity — especially within a structure in which I daily witness students demonstrating their own individualities within a structure of uniformity — I do not believe that it would be unreasonable for me to adopt such a “teacher uniform.”

It should be pointed out, however, that I have not yet gone out and purchased my polo shirts and pants. I’m still a little bit iffy on the idea.