Ms. Cornelius at A Shrewdnes of Apes asks

Have you evah?... thought that if one more kid who doesn't pay attention while you're teaching and who writes down nothing you say asks you what they can do to raise their grade the day after grades are due, you are going to snatch hanks of hair from your head?

Actually, Ms. C., I want to snatch hanks of hair from their head. Someday, they may have to put me into one of those jackets without hand-holes.

Bud the teacher got my juices flowing again with this beautiful photo.

My brother
My hope
My fear

Fast-running,
Dumb-talking
Little pain
In my

Heart every
Time I think
Of him

Doing
something stupid,
tearing through
the abandoned
lot on the way

home to read
his new book.

photo credit: carf

Five weeks left to go and

I feel like I'm still recovering from the speech season. With the showcase, State, the banquet and all the related drama, it's like it never ended, even though the last competition was over a month ago. I'm dealing with the ramifications of a thankless job that truly saps me. This season this year was not a good one on a lot of levels. The kids didn't do as well as they should have, and the kids' attitudes were poor. The seniors, in particular, showed lack of commitment as well as lack of respect for the team and the coaches.

I have spent a fair amount of time with my co-head trying to figure out the difference this year. What did we do differently? Were we too focused on expectations? Did we not include enough fun? Did we let the drama director push us around too much in the interest of keeping the peace? We can't put our finger on it, and that's at least as depressing as the crumminess itself.

The "end" is in sight.

There were a lot of things that were great about today.

• The kids did an awesome job setting up for the tournament; we finished up much earlier this year than last.
• After set up was done, we hit a local eatery and found colleagues there still enjoying congenial beverages. Excellent conversations were had and some good catching up was done with folks from other departments.
• We found the elusive draw envelopes.
• Only one student from second hour failed to turn in his research paper on time.

There was also some crap.

• I inadvertently hurt a friend's feelings. Thankfully, she was brave enough to tell me about it.
• A student who I've been struggling to keep on track had a spell today and I'm at my wit's end about the situation.
• It's past my bedtime, I can't sleep, and I have a very early morning tomorrow.
  

Survival of the survivalists?

I can't even pretend to say it's survival of the fittest right now. I've been at school until 5 so far this week. Yesterday, it was silliness and speechifying.

Today it was more calls to parents whose students are failing my class. My eleventh graders are not even really trying to swim. Three sets of guardians I can't reach: full voice mail boxes, never home, not at work.

A few of the stragglers are getting their acts together, but there are two who probably won't make it. One seems to be struggling with the idea of making up work from absences, and the other seems to have lost the will to do anything. She's told her counselor she's not depressed, but she only finishes work when I'm literally sitting three feet away reminding her to keep her head up and do her work. To catch up, she would need to stay after school daily so I can do the reminding routine, but she won't. Her parents are at their wits end, and so am I.

A Chance to Change the World?

A friend of mine from college help put Ruby's Bequest together, and I think it seems cool, even though I don't really understand it.

Since I don't quite get it, I'm stealing ARGNet's explanation:

The Institute for the Future once again opens a window into tomorrow’s world, this time letting us peer into 2010 where in the town of Deepwell a woman’s mysterious will has the townsfolk in an uproar. On December 7, 2009, the citizens of Deepwell learned that a woman named Ruby Wood left a “substantial” sum of money to their town, but with one condition - that the townspeople learn to take better care of each other. Who is Ruby Wood? No one in the town seems to know. The town will learn more when the last will and testament of Ruby Wood is opened on March 9, 2010.

In order to get a little outside help and advice on caring, the citizens of Deepwell have launched a website called Ruby’s Bequest, along with a town blog, Deep Into Deepwell, where citizens can discuss the bequest and other town interests. Accusations of being “the town that doesn’t care right” and the tragic death of an elderly citizen have upset many of the townspeople and sparked a debate about caring.

So, the Cellphone Issue

I'm feeling stuck on this one. On one hand, if I see another kid texting under their desk, I might just chuck the gosh darn thing out the firckin'-frackin' window. On the other, I see Scott's point, and Vicki's, too.

Kids are carrying around wicked-awesome technology all the time; there's no way they're going to leave them at home, and if they have them with them, they're going to use them, unless we all go the way of Spokane's schools. Why not let them use their phones like game show clickers, or planners, or itty-bitty web surfers?

I'll tell you why I'm not.

1. I feel like it's one more thing for me to figure out and take time out of my curriculum schedule to teach
2. There is a have and have-not issue in my school. I don't see this as a huge deal: in fact, I think folks who are scared of cell phones in the classroom are using it as an excuse. I do know some of our kids don't have them, though, and I'm not going to make things tougher for kids who can't afford them, or whose parents actually keep them unplugged for some potion of the day.
3. This is the biggest one: I don't think I can keep it under control. I don't want kids having their phones stolen off their desks, and I can't keep my eye on all of them, all the time to keep them on task. I know Dan would think it was probably my fault, but I'm afraid that my "with-it-ness" starts to decrease in inverse proportion to the number of kids in my class over 34. I'm exhausted.
   

March Already?

This quarter is flying by. I can't believe we only have four weeks left until spring break and the end of the term.

Honors has been a wild ride, made more so by my absences, planned (IB curriculum writing) and un (I've had a sinus infection for going on four weeks now, and the meds I just finished haven't helped). We started speeches only a day late last week, but since I had been out when their outlines were due, it still feels completely out of whack.

I'm reaching the end of my rope with my 11th graders. Some of their skills are so low. The curriculum is super literature heavy, but their writing needs a ton of work. I feel pressured to get through everything--I have to get through Huck Finn, and we haven't even finished Romanticism. Today I returned their comparison essays--Thoreau vs. Decl./Ind. or the Speech at the Virginia Convention--with only a letter grade, then posted a list of the problems I found and asked them to assess their own essays and then do a re-write. We'll see how it turns out--the rewrites are due on Wednesday.

The first half of 2008-09

Inspired by Dana's post reflecting on the year so far, I thought it was time to throw down.

Like everyone else, I had a busy year. Last year was my first year as co-head coach of our school speech team. The season, which included sending one of the kidlets I have coached for the last two years to State, coincided with the last semester of my Master's degree. At the same time, I was planning my August wedding and worrying about continuing contract in my third year at my school.

As my husband and I learn how to live together, I am amazed by how little free time I found this fall. I graduated in May, and speech is just starting to build up, so I don't know why I was still at school until after four more than once a week when the sun was still up at that time. Amazingly, I've felt more in tune with kids than ever before, but less interested in planning and curriculum.

I dove back in right around Thanksgiving, with a little toe-twiddle-in-the-water-idea about Lord of the Flies. A friend was telling me about the IB approach to lit, which has the kids reading on their own with set deadlines and guiding discussion themselves. I didn't keep my fingers out of the discussion pot as much as I would like (I've been thinking about the word facilitator as opposed to teacher), but it was pretty wicked awesome all the same.

I decided to really commit to the Folger Shakespeare Set Free method for the first time with Macbeth, and it's a lot more interesting than slogging through day by day, but the foot draggers aren't getting what we don't examine in class. We'll see how the last week goes. Then I set them loose with A Midsummer Night's Dream, one of my favorite units.

This month I'm going to IB training, which I find both thrilling and terrifying, since it sounds like more interesting teaching (facilitating, as above), but also like more work than I can even conceive. Also, I may wind up writing an AP curriculum in the next few weeks, since we're losing one of our two AP teachers next year.

Hmm. Much change afoot.

Another reason we can't pretend the outside world doesn't affect our students

This well-written essay by Latoya Peterson at Racialicious points out the reason our society has been unable to eliminate rape: the legal definitions of rape leave out "not-rape," the situations that would be hard to prosecute, even if girls felt they could report.

This phenomena is not particular to girls and women; there are boys and men who are victimized as well. If it's not about sex, then what is it?

As anyone who has sat through health class or a student safety inservice can tell you, the issue is power.

Our society continues to center power on people who abuse it. Companies that waste investor money, adults who take advantage of children, and politicians who pander to special interest groups teach our students that they don't have power and no one cares what happens to them.

What will we, as educators, do to change this? It's not our job alone, but we can't ignore the fact that the children who will lead the country tomorrow feel powerless today.