just another manic monday. - the bangles

This is slightly unorthodox, but today was wretched so I feel that it deserves its own post.

Well. I thought I lost control of my 9th graders a week or two ago. That little episode cannot even compare with what happened today. Basically, my Chatty Cathy class was chatty to the extreme today. By that I mean: 2 verbal warnings. Then a mark on the board (standing for 1 minute after the lunch bell till they got to go eat lunch). Then another mark.

Then 3. More. Marks.

All this while I was trying to get them to do a group reading of the short story.

Anyway, I found myself working in a group, while the 2 other adults were working with 2 other groups, so that we were all completely engrossed in dragging them through the story when the lunch bell rang.

My students vanished. I was left with just a couple lingering behind. They eventually left too - and then it was just me, staring at my marks on the board and feeling any shred of a sentiment that I am a teacher who follows through on what she says vaporize into the suddenly empty room.

And then the tears came. I tried to hold them back, but I was so upset that I couldn't get them to pay attention today and that they seemed to respect me so little. Good thing my cooperating teacher was there to encourage me and give me a much needed hug and good advice to make sure I let every student know that I would still make good on my promise to give them consequences for being so booger-y earlier (to put it VERY VERY mildly).

I let them know after lunch that they got lucky since I was working with a group and lost track of time. I had them serve 2 1/2 minutes of silence after the bell rang at the end of the hour. They will serve the other 2 1/2 minutes of silence on Wednesday when I see their class again. And I can assure them and myself that I will NOT forget next time they're rowdy before lunch. Few things speak to kids as much as denying lunch for a minute or two.

But I confess that I was most hurt today by recognizing the simple truth that I am such a passive person and this passivity is working against me as a teacher.

It's so easy at times like this to wish I was different. I want to cope with the frustration of failure by curling up inside myself and numbing the pain to the old familiar tune of, "If only I were ___________ instead of _________." If only I were bold instead of meek. If only I were loud instead of quiet. If only I were funny instead of goofy. If only I were confident instead of hesitant. Etc.

Succumbing to berating myself, however, never fixes the problem. "Duh." Here's what will fix my particular problem, or at least aid in the eventual fixing:

A pause.

Regathering of my strength and focus.

Prayer.

New plans.

Moving forward.

Ignoring the desire to whine about my personality.

Reveling in the fact that, as Anne so wisely learned, "tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it."

Basically, today I learned that my 9th graders are just not mature enough to handle any group or pair work. For the next several class periods, until I see improvement, they will have to deal with an ironclad structured classroom. Whatever it takes to establish myself as the boss and the law. I don't like it, but I'm going to do it so that, by the end of my time with them, we can move past this immaturity to something far more interesting and exciting.

In college, education professors like to focus on what I call the "fluff" of education - Web 2.0 tools instead of books, for example, along with sweet stories of reaching difficult kids and not giving zeros as grades. The truth is, those folks have been out of the regular classroom for Way Too Long. They have forgotten, or pushed to the back of their minds, the significance of first establishing control and management over the classroom. If you don't have control, you can have the coolest lesson in the world, and you'll never get to see it happen. First things first - establish authority and procedures for learning. Hopefully it won't take the rest of the semester for these students to straighten up and move past the madness to take some responsibility over their learning in my class.

week 5-6: only 10 minutes left of lunch! QUICK!

I have mere minutes to correct my error of not blogging about last week, here goes! (P.S., how did we ever handle 4 years of 25 minute lunches in high school?!)

Let's see, in week 5, my dreams of becoming a proper lesson planner (i.e. being AT LEAST 2 weeks ahead of the current week) fell apart in a miserable heap. I spent last week (and this week, unfortunately) planning for the next day - the night before. horrendous. One of my teachers has noticed this and cared enough to give me feedback about getting it together. I am proud to report that, although I felt the beginnings of a mini-meltdown gathering in my chest at her words, I quickly shoved the despair aside and instead got to work on catching up. This semester is proving each week to be a catalyst in improving my self-health and coping skills.

In other news, I had not set up a system for TARDIES, ABSENCES or LATE WORK this semester. This is proving to be a beast to deal with - a three-headed beast of a size that almost feels like Biblical proportions. I will have my very first detention next week (awww, precious...?) for tardies/skipping class, and no doubt I will be spending the rest of my free time at school this quarter prepping a late work binder and hounding kids till they give me assignments so I can get rid of their many zeros. Funny how often kids just Won't Turn Something In. Even when I'm standing right there, asking for it. Even when I am gathering everyone's papers. And they think we have NO IDEA if they skip class after lunch (when their stuff is STILL at their desk). Amazing. If I ever doubted the science behind the adolescent brain not being fully connected, I repent wholeheartedly. It's true.

Finally became the lead teacher in 10th grade this week! Julius Caesar is off to a good start. One sour moment today during 6th block...a few students were asking me when Mrs. B will return. When I explained that I'll be their main teacher through December, I got less-than-thrilled looks. Oh well. What can you do? They're stuck with me - and I with them. These lunch block classes can be the most difficult at times. Especially this one. Quite a few sassy kids here.

In 9th grade this week, I had my 1st experience of a total class failure to communicate. They literally Did Not Get what I was trying to teach about a narrator's voice.

More later, bell has rung! Tonight and tomorrow: Parent-teacher conferences and phone calls to parents! yay?

"Men at some times must be masters of their fates; the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." Cassius, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

week 4: on the eve of week 5

Whoops! I let the week get away from me! Quick recap:

Week 4 was a week in which I realized that it is trickier to put freshmen into groups than I previously thought. Here's what it sounded like in my classroom on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Me: Okay, now I want you to get into groups of 4. How about, you 4, you 4, you 4 etc.
Students: [silence]
Me: I mean, push your desks together and get into groups.
Students: [blank stares, some lethargic movement that eventually ended in groupings of 4]

They are so funny. Funny haha and funny strange.

Big news: I had my FIRST MAJOR DISCIPLINARY ISSUE this week.

It involved the aforementioned group activity, in which I gave each group posterboard, coloring materials, and relatively simple directions: to draw and color an image from the story, with 2 quotes from the story, that capture the mood of the short story. So simple, a fun end-of-the-week activity.

But for 1 group of 3 boys, who were goofing around the whole class time, the temptation to add a little something extra to their drawing was too much.

When I went over to check on them, I found myself looking at a very bloody rendering of the violent climax of the story, with an extra addition: a thought-bubble from one of the stick figures, with a bed - a stick figure - and a dog. In. That. Order.

I was ticked. I really was upset by this. I was so upset that I got onto them pretty intensely (for me) and told them that unless they came to seminar and redid the assignment individually (free of creepy suggestive images), each boy would get a zero. Two of them came in, two didn't. 1 of the absentees had football, and the other just didn't show. I think I'll give those two 1 more chance before it goes down in history in the gradebook.

Oh, the joys of teaching English to goofy/creepy freshman boys.

In other news: I went to a GIFTED IEP meeting, which is quite the opposite of a regular IEP meeting. These Individualized Education Plan meetings involve the student, their parents, and their teachers. I only stayed for 15 minutes because there was literally nothing I had to worry about for this high-performing student. So different from last week's IEP meeting, in which the student is being encouraged to just make C's so he can pass this 3rd round of English 9.

Plans for this week: Learning about characterization in Langston Hughes' "Thank You, Ma'am" and Judith Ortiz's "American History." We will examine Facebook profiles and how they share DIRECT characterization (name, date of birth, personal info) as well as INDIRECT characterization (profile picture, people they are friends with, things people write on their wall). Then we will make FB profiles (the paper version) for characters in the stories we've read so far. A teensy bit of Web 2.0 making its way into my classroom, finally!


on what makes a book:

"To those who know and love them, books are recognizable, as as forests are, and cities, by their structure (branching and rebranching), their complexity (enormous), and their size (big enough to get lost in). A book is usually something we can carry in one hand, yet if it is a real book it is also larger than we are: a city or forest of words that can feed us and swallow us up and transform us. A book is not a catalogue or list; it has to make more sense than that. It is not a stack of cordwood but a tree: a branching, leafing, flowering structure, unfolding in the mind, where it can find the space it needs." - Unknown (Kyle, who wrote this incredible thing?!)

week 3: flexability...frustration

I wrote such a sunny entry last week, but this week changed things up a bit...

On Monday I learned that 60 more freshman students had enrolled at the school than were anticipated. This meant that some of the freshman English classes were shuffled around and even pulled from some teachers' schedules in order to re-hire a teacher whose position was eliminated last year. What did this mean? It meant that Ms. S was ecstatic to have only 5 classes to plan for, with 2 free hours for planning. It also meant that I lost her 6th hour class, which had some awesome students whom I was sad to let go.

Now I have 2 freshman classes (with 17 kids that have IEPs) and 3 sophomore honors classes. Things are going to shift a little bit to accomidate the very different needs of these kids. But this is part of what teaching - and life - is about, I suppose. Learning to deal with dramatic changes on the fly. Not getting your feathers too ruffled. Rolling up your sleeves and doing the dirty work.

You may be thinking, "Well, duh. How do you not get this is what life means?" But the fact is, I have very rarely set out to accomplish a task by working step by step from A to B to C to D to E to F to G etc. Most of my life I have wasted time trying to find short cuts from A to G - shortcuts that require the least amount of work and the quickest avenue to success. Too bad most of the time, these shortcuts really don't exist. So I end up doing a whole lot of nothing. It is deiniftely possible to fritter your life away wishing to get somewhere when all you need to do is get up, step forward, open the door, and GO.

I think I'm finally in a place in my life where I have no other option but to work my hardest to get from step A to step B. This is a good thing. I have students who need my instruction to be differentiated so they can come away with understanding. I have supportive teachers who can lead me in this and I have the wise advice of countless individuals available through my educational communities online. Not to mention the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control that comes from my Lord who led me to this school for such a time as this.

How sweet it is to know that God knows all of our days before one of them comes to be. How delightful to rest in the certainty that He has a calling on each of our lives, and that He will bring His purposes to pass. The key is to keep the communication line with Him wide open.

Anyway, I learned about flexibility this week, and I experienced some frustration with my lessons. I truly felt like the kids were stone-bored and hating me by the end of the week. My CT and I had taken turns reading a 17-page short story aloud, since we don't yet know who can read aloud and who can't. My CYOA activity did not produce the shining eyes and bright smiles that I anticipated. After class I couldn't hide my disappointment.

Good thing God placed me with these wise, experienced teachers. The CT wanted to know why I thought it was a failure when at one point, ALL the students were reading the books and making decisions like I asked them to, completely engaged. She reminded me that high school students will RARELY if EVER give me the facial expressions of joy and/or interest during instructional time.

I am learning that teachers can NOT measure the success of their lessons based on the looks on students' faces.

THis 3 day weekend is oh-so-welcome. On Tuesday I have my first clinical observation, with the 1st freshman class of the day. I need prayer if you can spare it. :)


"Do not follow me! Let's just be fabulously where we are and who we are. You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies!"

(on reunions, from Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli)