With one exception, three of my professors assigned initial projects that required observing students in some form or another. And all of us are required to write a demographic study--a kind of narrative about the school we're placed in. So today I went into the belly of the beast, observing eight different classes and interviewing the school counselor and the principal.
Mostly I shadowed one student, Kailee, who I identified early on as a quiet kid with weak writing skills. I wanted to know more about her. I observed her in my Language Art Class (Laura was teaching), in a math class, in PE, in Woodshop and in Science class. I mean, I observed the whole class (it wasn't like I was just sitting there staring at her the whole time, that would have been peculiar), but I paid particular attention to her, her interactions in the class with her peers and the teacher.
Kailee is a classic slips-through-the-cracks kid. She is obedient, following instructions dutifully and pretty much immediately. She looks at the board when something written on it; she attends to the textbook when she is supposed to; she writes when she is supposed to write. She sits quietly and doesn't interrupt her peers. She never talks back, mostly because she never talks. And, more importantly, she is never spoken to.
Which brings me to the subject of wood shop. Edison has a wood shop program. And the more I think about it the more I think every child should take it (along with band and PE). It has been in these contexts that I have seen children at Edison able to be themselves without (too much) fear of reprisal from adults. This may have a lot to do with the great gentleness and generosity of the wood shop teacher, Brett Stall, or there may just be something about working with wood that just worked for a lot of these kids. (Also: the very notion of wood shop is terrifying to me, all those little middle school fingers moving so quickly around all those very fast and sharp and care-less saws. I don't know how Mr. Stall can do it without having repeated panic attacks.)
During wood shop, Mr. Stall spoke to Kailee on two separate occasions about the project she was working on. The first time she had to wait with a group of boys to have a little chat; the second time she finished a task and then went to show him her progress and get further instruction. He helped her measure a piece of wood, rearrange the letters in her name (she was making some sort of name plate) and get set up with a sander.
The two times that Kailee spoke with Mr. Stall were the only times she spoke to an adult during the entire day (at least as far as I was able to see). Put another way: of the 6 adults whose classes she was in, only one spoke to her with any sense of interest, care or concern. And that fact just about broke my heart. When I shared that observation with Mr. Stall at the end of the day, he got this far away look about him, as though he was simultaneous glad and horrified--glad, I imagined, because he had passed the test, hadn't let the kid slip by, and horrified because he cared about the kids and his school, and he knew, in that moment, that this girl, who he saw and worked with every day, was, as we spoke, slipping through the cracks.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Observations
My dedicated readers will note that I haven't been writing every day. That's because I'm only going to Edison two days a week while I take classes, and my classes started yesterday. And I decided that I'm really only going to write about my experience at Edison, since I'm not sure my experience at college is all that interesting--and it doesn't really fit within my vision for this little writing project. So expect some meditations two days a week about what I see and hear and feel and think at Edison.
Today I did several observations. One of our assignments is to pick a focal student and then go watch that child in action in a couple of other classes. I have already done some observations and written about them on this blog. For this round of observations I focused on two students, both of whom I identified as kids I wanted to know more about: Sadie and Selena. I then went and observed each child in a different class (Sadie in Social Studies, Selena in Band), and I focused my entire observation on the behaviors I observed, limiting myself to observations only--no interpretations or evaluations.
A few things I noticed Sadie in her Social Studies class. Sadie was basically in constant motion in class: rotating the rings on her fingers, biting her nails, examining her nails, twirling a lock of her hair, putting said lock of her hair in her mouth, adjusting her tee-shirt, her bra, reaching down to scratch her ankle (three times), leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms across her chest, leaning forward on her table and using her binder as a pillow, crossing and uncrossing her arms. In the thirty minutes I observed, Sadie did not speak a single word. I observed her writing something on a piece of paper four times in response to something she heard Mr. French say aloud. At least four times during the observation she turned around to look at a peer who said something--either in response to a question asked by the teacher or an unprompted outburst. She looked back and smiled at a boy sitting behind her twice. During the entire class, I saw her smile only once, immediately after Mr. French made a comment about "magical things never happening in the real world." I had a hard time seeing her face because of where I was sitting, but she appeared to be watching the screen from which Mr. French was reading and lecturing.
A few things I noticed about Selena in her Band class. Selena also moved, but her motion was less limited. During my forty minute observation, she left her perch from behind two purple congas to get a number of percussion instruments, a chair, her music folder and to take a pair of drumsticks away from another child. She spoke several times in class to several peers (all girls) who were seated near her and were also members of the percussion section of the band. When she spoke to the other students, she gave directions ("Look at page 22"; "stop talking"; "it's really simple, you just play every other beat"). The two girls she gave instructions two laughed in response to her instructions. At one point Mr. Glasson mentioned that he and his wife had been married for 23 years; Selena responded: "My parents have been married for 24 years." Immediately following her comment the two girls who had laughed before laughed again. Selena made eye contact with Mr. Glasson when he was conducting; she also appeared to be tracking the music when she wasn't playing.
I'm not entirely sure what I learned from doing these observations. I'm not inclined to draw any hard conclusions from them. I do like the discipline of the exercise, the focus on observable behaviors; there is an art to withholding judgment, particularly in the world of teaching and learning, where children feel as though they are under constant surveillance--and where that surveillance is pretty much always tied to judgment. I like the idea that, at least for a few hours today, I was there merely to see these children, to see and observe and not make any assumptions or draw any conclusions. I have this sneaking suspicion that, at the end of the day, what these children really want--more than learning to write sentences or factor equations--is to be seen and heard and known just as they are.
Today I did several observations. One of our assignments is to pick a focal student and then go watch that child in action in a couple of other classes. I have already done some observations and written about them on this blog. For this round of observations I focused on two students, both of whom I identified as kids I wanted to know more about: Sadie and Selena. I then went and observed each child in a different class (Sadie in Social Studies, Selena in Band), and I focused my entire observation on the behaviors I observed, limiting myself to observations only--no interpretations or evaluations.
A few things I noticed Sadie in her Social Studies class. Sadie was basically in constant motion in class: rotating the rings on her fingers, biting her nails, examining her nails, twirling a lock of her hair, putting said lock of her hair in her mouth, adjusting her tee-shirt, her bra, reaching down to scratch her ankle (three times), leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms across her chest, leaning forward on her table and using her binder as a pillow, crossing and uncrossing her arms. In the thirty minutes I observed, Sadie did not speak a single word. I observed her writing something on a piece of paper four times in response to something she heard Mr. French say aloud. At least four times during the observation she turned around to look at a peer who said something--either in response to a question asked by the teacher or an unprompted outburst. She looked back and smiled at a boy sitting behind her twice. During the entire class, I saw her smile only once, immediately after Mr. French made a comment about "magical things never happening in the real world." I had a hard time seeing her face because of where I was sitting, but she appeared to be watching the screen from which Mr. French was reading and lecturing.
A few things I noticed about Selena in her Band class. Selena also moved, but her motion was less limited. During my forty minute observation, she left her perch from behind two purple congas to get a number of percussion instruments, a chair, her music folder and to take a pair of drumsticks away from another child. She spoke several times in class to several peers (all girls) who were seated near her and were also members of the percussion section of the band. When she spoke to the other students, she gave directions ("Look at page 22"; "stop talking"; "it's really simple, you just play every other beat"). The two girls she gave instructions two laughed in response to her instructions. At one point Mr. Glasson mentioned that he and his wife had been married for 23 years; Selena responded: "My parents have been married for 24 years." Immediately following her comment the two girls who had laughed before laughed again. Selena made eye contact with Mr. Glasson when he was conducting; she also appeared to be tracking the music when she wasn't playing.
I'm not entirely sure what I learned from doing these observations. I'm not inclined to draw any hard conclusions from them. I do like the discipline of the exercise, the focus on observable behaviors; there is an art to withholding judgment, particularly in the world of teaching and learning, where children feel as though they are under constant surveillance--and where that surveillance is pretty much always tied to judgment. I like the idea that, at least for a few hours today, I was there merely to see these children, to see and observe and not make any assumptions or draw any conclusions. I have this sneaking suspicion that, at the end of the day, what these children really want--more than learning to write sentences or factor equations--is to be seen and heard and known just as they are.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Teaching With My Mouth Shut
An Introductory Note:
This piece describes a method of teaching in which the teacher (that’s me) projects typed words on a screen rather than speaking. One of the unintended benefits of this method is that there ends up being a written record of the class, both what I “said” and what the students said or wrote. For the purposes of this writing, I have used a serif font to indicate words that I or the students projected, and the sans serif font for the body of this meditation. All names (except mine) have been changed to honor the anonymity of my students. The transcript and meditation below represents about 15 minutes of an hour long lesson.
Teaching With My Mouth Shut
A few days ago I started doing this thing in my classroom where, instead of speaking, I merely sat at my little desk in the corner with my computer plugged into the overhead projector and I typed. I did not speak a single word. I was entirely silent except for the clicking of my fingers on the keys. I didn’t even really look up at them. I merely wrote:
Get out a piece of paper and a pen or pencil.
Then I waited. The kids who were looking at the screen immediately did what the screen asked them to. I continued to wait. The kids that weren’t looking at the screen continued to chat with their peers, and then this interesting sort of cascade went around the room when I wrote this:
Julio, please take out a piece of paper and a pen or pencil.
One of Julio’s table-mates noticed his name, and tapped him on the shoulder, pointing towards the screen at the front of the room. Julio smiled, and took out a piece of paper and a pencil. Then I deleted his name and left the instructions up, highlighting the sentence and then underlining and de-underlining it by pressing command-U in rapid succession. Pretty soon the whole room was busy opening their binders and getting out their materials.
In about a minute, the whole room was ready to write. (A note on efficiency: this only took a little bit longer than it normally takes with me or Laura issuing verbal reminders about taking out paper and pen or pencil and putting other things away.)
Then I wrote:
Today we are going to write FIVE word sentences. And we’re going to use a new kind of word: the ARTICLE.
Please raise your hand if you think you know what an article is.
A bunch of hands shot up. I sat and waited for about fifteen seconds, longer than many of the kids wanted me to wait. They like to be called on (at least the ones who like to be called on), and they like to be called on fast. I looked out of the corner of my left eye and “called” a name. The child said what she thought, and I wrote it verbatim as she said it. The direct transcription of what the child says is an essential component of this “method.” It is tempting (I have been tempted) to paraphrase or correct what the child says before projecting it, but I have tried very hard to resist doing that for many reasons. I put my responses, when I chose to respond, in brackets. I also indicated the speaker by typing the child’s name with a colon, as though everyone in the room were taking part in a play.
Abby: It’s a word that modifies a noun. [Nope. An ADJECTIVE is a word that modifies a noun.]
Cory: It’s something that gets written about in a newspaper. [Yes. “Article” is what we call stories that get published in newspapers. But I’m thinking about a different article. I’m thinking about a kind of word.]
Any more thoughts?
Benji: It’s a word! [Yup. It’s a word. But I think I’m just fishing now, and the fish I’m looking for doesn’t seem to be in the pond, so I’m just going to tell you.]
The articles in English are: A, An, The.
A collective gasp rang out through the room.
Cool. So now we’re going to write sentences that use articles, nouns and verbs. Like this:
Article-Noun-Verb-Article-Noun
I need an example.
A bunch of hands shot up. I picked a name at random from the seating chart. A bunch of children who had been waving at me groaned. I typed Enrique’s name, and waited for him to come up with a sentence.
Enrique: The horse ate the cow. [Yup. That’s a good example.]
Ok. So for THREE minutes, we will write sentences like the example.
ON your mark.
GET set.
GO.
They wrote for three minutes. I gave them one minute reminders. I usually circulate during this time, but because I was being silent, I didn’t. I wasn’t ready to break character yet. I sat there, watching them write until the time was up. Then I wrote:
Thanks for writing everyone. I am going to call on seven writers at random. Keep your hands down. I am going to look down at the seating chart, not at you.
Tyler: The butterfly killed the lion.
Aislyn: The TV hid the remote.
PJ: The horse ate the fly.
Marni: The snake ate the snail.
Drake: The cat slapped the dog.
Athena: The tree ate the monkey.
Ron: The cat ate the food.
Thanks, everyone. You can put those back in your binders.
I first tried this out because one of my students is deaf. She has a cochlear implant, but I know that, even on a quiet day, it can be hard for her to hear instructions, even when I wear the little microphone she gives me each day at the beginning of class. So I decided I would try to write down and project all the instructions and as much of the class discussion as I could. I had no idea how powerful an organizing structure it would be.
Since that first attempt, I have done a couple of variations on it. I have given one student a microphone (our class has this funny PA system) and have that student read what I type, so the kids get to see it and hear it, and though the words are, in fact, mine, it feels to them like they are listening to their peers. When the students read the sentences they each use the microphone, and then they pass the mic to the next reader. This got many of the kids up and moving around the room, something they sort of naturally gravitate towards anyway. There is something captivating about the microphone. Some of them love it. And some of them hate it. But it has sort of changed the dynamic in the room, and as my loyal readers know, my fifth period class needed--desperately needed--a dynamic shift.
Some of my sixth graders thought something was wrong with me--that I’d lost my voice or something. A few of them recognized that it was a kind of game I was playing. Later, when I broke character and began to speak again, a few of them asked me: “Why did you do that, Gil?”
And I turned the question back on them: “Why you think I did that?”
Susan put it best: “Maybe because we get bored listening to teachers talk all day. And we might listen to one of our classmates better than we might listen to you.”
This piece describes a method of teaching in which the teacher (that’s me) projects typed words on a screen rather than speaking. One of the unintended benefits of this method is that there ends up being a written record of the class, both what I “said” and what the students said or wrote. For the purposes of this writing, I have used a serif font to indicate words that I or the students projected, and the sans serif font for the body of this meditation. All names (except mine) have been changed to honor the anonymity of my students. The transcript and meditation below represents about 15 minutes of an hour long lesson.
Teaching With My Mouth Shut
A few days ago I started doing this thing in my classroom where, instead of speaking, I merely sat at my little desk in the corner with my computer plugged into the overhead projector and I typed. I did not speak a single word. I was entirely silent except for the clicking of my fingers on the keys. I didn’t even really look up at them. I merely wrote:
Get out a piece of paper and a pen or pencil.
Then I waited. The kids who were looking at the screen immediately did what the screen asked them to. I continued to wait. The kids that weren’t looking at the screen continued to chat with their peers, and then this interesting sort of cascade went around the room when I wrote this:
Julio, please take out a piece of paper and a pen or pencil.
One of Julio’s table-mates noticed his name, and tapped him on the shoulder, pointing towards the screen at the front of the room. Julio smiled, and took out a piece of paper and a pencil. Then I deleted his name and left the instructions up, highlighting the sentence and then underlining and de-underlining it by pressing command-U in rapid succession. Pretty soon the whole room was busy opening their binders and getting out their materials.
In about a minute, the whole room was ready to write. (A note on efficiency: this only took a little bit longer than it normally takes with me or Laura issuing verbal reminders about taking out paper and pen or pencil and putting other things away.)
Then I wrote:
Today we are going to write FIVE word sentences. And we’re going to use a new kind of word: the ARTICLE.
Please raise your hand if you think you know what an article is.
A bunch of hands shot up. I sat and waited for about fifteen seconds, longer than many of the kids wanted me to wait. They like to be called on (at least the ones who like to be called on), and they like to be called on fast. I looked out of the corner of my left eye and “called” a name. The child said what she thought, and I wrote it verbatim as she said it. The direct transcription of what the child says is an essential component of this “method.” It is tempting (I have been tempted) to paraphrase or correct what the child says before projecting it, but I have tried very hard to resist doing that for many reasons. I put my responses, when I chose to respond, in brackets. I also indicated the speaker by typing the child’s name with a colon, as though everyone in the room were taking part in a play.
Abby: It’s a word that modifies a noun. [Nope. An ADJECTIVE is a word that modifies a noun.]
Cory: It’s something that gets written about in a newspaper. [Yes. “Article” is what we call stories that get published in newspapers. But I’m thinking about a different article. I’m thinking about a kind of word.]
Any more thoughts?
Benji: It’s a word! [Yup. It’s a word. But I think I’m just fishing now, and the fish I’m looking for doesn’t seem to be in the pond, so I’m just going to tell you.]
The articles in English are: A, An, The.
A collective gasp rang out through the room.
Cool. So now we’re going to write sentences that use articles, nouns and verbs. Like this:
Article-Noun-Verb-Article-Noun
I need an example.
A bunch of hands shot up. I picked a name at random from the seating chart. A bunch of children who had been waving at me groaned. I typed Enrique’s name, and waited for him to come up with a sentence.
Enrique: The horse ate the cow. [Yup. That’s a good example.]
Ok. So for THREE minutes, we will write sentences like the example.
ON your mark.
GET set.
GO.
They wrote for three minutes. I gave them one minute reminders. I usually circulate during this time, but because I was being silent, I didn’t. I wasn’t ready to break character yet. I sat there, watching them write until the time was up. Then I wrote:
Thanks for writing everyone. I am going to call on seven writers at random. Keep your hands down. I am going to look down at the seating chart, not at you.
Tyler: The butterfly killed the lion.
Aislyn: The TV hid the remote.
PJ: The horse ate the fly.
Marni: The snake ate the snail.
Drake: The cat slapped the dog.
Athena: The tree ate the monkey.
Ron: The cat ate the food.
Thanks, everyone. You can put those back in your binders.
I first tried this out because one of my students is deaf. She has a cochlear implant, but I know that, even on a quiet day, it can be hard for her to hear instructions, even when I wear the little microphone she gives me each day at the beginning of class. So I decided I would try to write down and project all the instructions and as much of the class discussion as I could. I had no idea how powerful an organizing structure it would be.
Since that first attempt, I have done a couple of variations on it. I have given one student a microphone (our class has this funny PA system) and have that student read what I type, so the kids get to see it and hear it, and though the words are, in fact, mine, it feels to them like they are listening to their peers. When the students read the sentences they each use the microphone, and then they pass the mic to the next reader. This got many of the kids up and moving around the room, something they sort of naturally gravitate towards anyway. There is something captivating about the microphone. Some of them love it. And some of them hate it. But it has sort of changed the dynamic in the room, and as my loyal readers know, my fifth period class needed--desperately needed--a dynamic shift.
Some of my sixth graders thought something was wrong with me--that I’d lost my voice or something. A few of them recognized that it was a kind of game I was playing. Later, when I broke character and began to speak again, a few of them asked me: “Why did you do that, Gil?”
And I turned the question back on them: “Why you think I did that?”
Susan put it best: “Maybe because we get bored listening to teachers talk all day. And we might listen to one of our classmates better than we might listen to you.”
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The Teacher Next Door
Matthias has been stopping by our classroom in the afternoons. I think he does this for two reasons, the most obvious being that he shares his classroom with another teacher, so during sixth period (our “free” period) he doesn’t really have a home. I also think that he’s lonely.
He’s new to the school, and he’s teaching a strange collection of classes; technology (and I cannot figure out for the life of me what a “technology” class is about: computers? threshers? bows and arrows? fire?) and one section of social studies. He’s part time, and he teaches another class in the morning at another school. He’s cornered me a few times--at the copier, in the parking lot--and I found myself in both situations trying to find graceful--and then not-so-graceful--ways out of the conversation. He’s a white guy like me, round in the belly, with a tendency to sweat too much and to overstay his welcome. He wears these little fedoras and floral print shirts that make him appear like he’s always about to go on vacation.
Two days ago he came in while Laura and I were debriefing a particularly disastrous class, and he just sort of sat down at a desk, listening to our conversation, chiming in with suggestions from time-to-time. That his suggestions weren’t terribly helpful is sort of beside the point. That he talked down to me, as though I hadn’t taught a day in my life was also beside the point. The point is: his presence signaled a kind of violation of the space for Laura. If she had been a cat, the hair on her back would have risen to the ceiling.
She said something about it to me the next day, how she just didn’t have time to chit-chat and socialize with the teacher next door. And I nodded in my sort of neutral, vaguely affirming way, and thought no more about it until I was driving in this morning and it dawned on me that since I had been at Edison, I hadn’t really thought about a single other teacher in the school--other than ones whose classes I observed, but I wasn’t really interested in them; I was interested in what the kids were experiencing. I really could have cared less about them.
And so I wonder what happens to the teacher like Matthias. Yesterday when he stopped by Laura looked real busy, turned her back to him, engaged me in a pretty intense one-on-one conversation. He came in, picked up some trash from the floor (“It helps me unwind; I was a custodian for 13 years.”), moved some of our desks around and, I suspect, sensing he wasn’t entirely welcome, moved on.
And I have to say my heart goes out to the man just a little this morning, because he’s extremely isolated, and he spends his entire day with children who, I suspect, don’t really want to be around him either (the way he talks about kids, I’m not sure I would want to be around him). And then he sort of wanders the halls, a little aimless, looking to connect, like these kids, perhaps, not knowing exactly where his place is in these echoey halls, which, when they empty out, have the soul-crushing feeling of a ghost town after all the gold has been ripped from the hills.
He’s new to the school, and he’s teaching a strange collection of classes; technology (and I cannot figure out for the life of me what a “technology” class is about: computers? threshers? bows and arrows? fire?) and one section of social studies. He’s part time, and he teaches another class in the morning at another school. He’s cornered me a few times--at the copier, in the parking lot--and I found myself in both situations trying to find graceful--and then not-so-graceful--ways out of the conversation. He’s a white guy like me, round in the belly, with a tendency to sweat too much and to overstay his welcome. He wears these little fedoras and floral print shirts that make him appear like he’s always about to go on vacation.
Two days ago he came in while Laura and I were debriefing a particularly disastrous class, and he just sort of sat down at a desk, listening to our conversation, chiming in with suggestions from time-to-time. That his suggestions weren’t terribly helpful is sort of beside the point. That he talked down to me, as though I hadn’t taught a day in my life was also beside the point. The point is: his presence signaled a kind of violation of the space for Laura. If she had been a cat, the hair on her back would have risen to the ceiling.
She said something about it to me the next day, how she just didn’t have time to chit-chat and socialize with the teacher next door. And I nodded in my sort of neutral, vaguely affirming way, and thought no more about it until I was driving in this morning and it dawned on me that since I had been at Edison, I hadn’t really thought about a single other teacher in the school--other than ones whose classes I observed, but I wasn’t really interested in them; I was interested in what the kids were experiencing. I really could have cared less about them.
And so I wonder what happens to the teacher like Matthias. Yesterday when he stopped by Laura looked real busy, turned her back to him, engaged me in a pretty intense one-on-one conversation. He came in, picked up some trash from the floor (“It helps me unwind; I was a custodian for 13 years.”), moved some of our desks around and, I suspect, sensing he wasn’t entirely welcome, moved on.
And I have to say my heart goes out to the man just a little this morning, because he’s extremely isolated, and he spends his entire day with children who, I suspect, don’t really want to be around him either (the way he talks about kids, I’m not sure I would want to be around him). And then he sort of wanders the halls, a little aimless, looking to connect, like these kids, perhaps, not knowing exactly where his place is in these echoey halls, which, when they empty out, have the soul-crushing feeling of a ghost town after all the gold has been ripped from the hills.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The Child In The Hallway
Bronson came into class today as a little bundle of energy. He couldn't sit still in his chair. He couldn't read along with the story we were reading; he just couldn't stop interacting with a friend of his who sat a nearby table. He was just so interested in everything that was going on around him that he couldn't buckle down (a funny metaphor) and do what he was supposed to do.
After warning him twice, Laura sent him out into the hall. I had already had a few one-on-one conversations with him, so I grabbed a copy of the story we were reading in class and the questions they were going to respond to, and I went out into the hall to see if I could help him think about the story.
He was resistant. He told me that was "just one of those kids who gets in trouble all the time", that "every class has one of those kids" and that he "didn't have any choice." He told me he had ADHD and that that basically decided his fate.
I told him that he had choices, that his brain was unique and different and that school wasn't really built with his brain in mind. (I didn't tell him that our school system didn't really have any children's brains in mind when they were designed, but I thought it.) I promised him that I had some strategies he could use and that if he trusted me and tried some things out that might be strange and different to him that things would get better.
Then he asked me if he could go to the bathroom. But he had lost his hall-pass. But he had another one in his locker. I was making headway with him, but then biology (or his desire or need for a break) intervened, and off he went to get his hall-pass, so I could then authorize him to take a piss. (I'm sorry; but I think that is a level of control all teachers should be willing to surrender.) When he came back I asked him to work for three minutes, then take a one minute break, then work for three minutes, then take a one minute break, and so on.
And then I let him be for about 10 minutes.
When I came back, he had re-read the story and was constructing a sentence in response to one of the questions. He had already answered two other questions on his own.
"You just made my day, Bronson," I said to him. He looked up and sort of smiled, an awkward smile, but a smile nonetheless. I told him he could come back into class, that we had moved on to other things. He said: "Ok. But just let me finish this one thing first."
And when he came back in, he was mostly distracted by his friends and the noise inherent in a room full of 35 children. But he got one more thing done in class, and when he left I could say to him--without the slightest hint of condescension: "Good work today, Bronson." And he knew I meant it and was proud.
After warning him twice, Laura sent him out into the hall. I had already had a few one-on-one conversations with him, so I grabbed a copy of the story we were reading in class and the questions they were going to respond to, and I went out into the hall to see if I could help him think about the story.
He was resistant. He told me that was "just one of those kids who gets in trouble all the time", that "every class has one of those kids" and that he "didn't have any choice." He told me he had ADHD and that that basically decided his fate.
I told him that he had choices, that his brain was unique and different and that school wasn't really built with his brain in mind. (I didn't tell him that our school system didn't really have any children's brains in mind when they were designed, but I thought it.) I promised him that I had some strategies he could use and that if he trusted me and tried some things out that might be strange and different to him that things would get better.
Then he asked me if he could go to the bathroom. But he had lost his hall-pass. But he had another one in his locker. I was making headway with him, but then biology (or his desire or need for a break) intervened, and off he went to get his hall-pass, so I could then authorize him to take a piss. (I'm sorry; but I think that is a level of control all teachers should be willing to surrender.) When he came back I asked him to work for three minutes, then take a one minute break, then work for three minutes, then take a one minute break, and so on.
And then I let him be for about 10 minutes.
When I came back, he had re-read the story and was constructing a sentence in response to one of the questions. He had already answered two other questions on his own.
"You just made my day, Bronson," I said to him. He looked up and sort of smiled, an awkward smile, but a smile nonetheless. I told him he could come back into class, that we had moved on to other things. He said: "Ok. But just let me finish this one thing first."
And when he came back in, he was mostly distracted by his friends and the noise inherent in a room full of 35 children. But he got one more thing done in class, and when he left I could say to him--without the slightest hint of condescension: "Good work today, Bronson." And he knew I meant it and was proud.
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Exploding Class...
My fifth period class blew up--again. Or, rather, they have been in a perpetual state of combustion since about day one. Hard to say what exactly went wrong today. As we debriefed the debacle after school, Laura and I came to the conclusion that we had changed too much up on them--a new seating arrangement (clusters instead of rows, thank god), and two new modes of interacting (reading aloud into the room and small group discussions at the new tables). It was too much for them. And the question we asked them to discuss (if you could make a school, what would you do all day?) was way over their heads. (Sammie wanted to have marshmallow walls and desk made of candy corns; Martin would have a school day composed entirely of video games; Norton simply wouldn't attend school and would sit around doing nothing all day.)
What is most frustrating is that we are trying so hard not to merely replicate for them what they have already experienced--control, control, control. But they cannot control themselves. And I do not mean merely "sit still and pay attention." That is not what I want. At this point I would settle merely for the spirit of cooperation. And I ask myself what that would look like in a sixth grader. For the ones having the hardest time it would look like...eye contact with me when I'm giving instructions. Eye contact with whoever is reading aloud or speaking at the time.
I have never encountered this kind of mass resistance to schooling. And of course I can't really blame them, given what I've seen them have to do in other classes--and in this class. The difference is that they don't really trust that we are--that I am--doing this for them; I think at the end of the day they have doubts--and they have reason to doubt--that their teachers give a damn about them.
I raised my voice at a student today. I told him to "back off." I needed to do it. I told him later that I was sorry I had to raise my voice at him, but he had crossed a line at a terrible moment. And I was forced to drop the hammer on him.
I don't know why, but all this thinking and musing and strategizing about this class reminds me of this odd interaction I had with a colleague at the photocopier this morning. Mrs C is one of the substitutes I saw on Friday; she asked the kids to copy definitions from the science textbook; and I think that later in the day she overheard me describing what I saw to Laura in the staff room at lunch. I think she heard me say: "I saw a lot of reading out of text books and following instructions" and though she didn't really enter into the conversation, I could tell she heard me and had some reaction to the observation I made.
So I saw her in the copy room. She was making copies. She asked me if I wanted to visit the class again. I said that I might at some point in the future, but that I was really just trying to get an anecdotal sense for what the kids had experienced before they got to my class. She made a somewhat defensive comment about not having access to the course materials yet, which is why they were reading out of the books in class. I told her I was just trying to understand why a few of my students had such a hard time with my class. Then I said: "School seems pretty hard for some of these kids."
"Were some of your kids home schooled?" she asked.
I didn't really understand her question. There was some deep disconnect in the conversation. "Not that I know of. It's just that...well...schooling, the business of schooling, is really quite hard for some of my students."
She looked at me a little bit sideways. "What do you teach?"
"I'm a student teacher."
"Special ed?"
"No. Just a teacher. Of 6th and 7th graders."
And then the copier finished mechanically reproducing her handout, and she scampered off. I'm not sure the dialogue above captures the essential strangeness of our conversation. But it felt like we were two people who spoke the same language but couldn't really communicate with each other. I could speculate about why I thought she was confused; I have a theory, something to do with being brought up in a system that privileges crowds and the majority, that favors silence and obedience. But I'm doing my best not to put people into boxes.
One thing is becoming clear to me: there are way too many boxes in this place. And so many children doing everything they can to fit neatly inside them and to knock down the walls.
What is most frustrating is that we are trying so hard not to merely replicate for them what they have already experienced--control, control, control. But they cannot control themselves. And I do not mean merely "sit still and pay attention." That is not what I want. At this point I would settle merely for the spirit of cooperation. And I ask myself what that would look like in a sixth grader. For the ones having the hardest time it would look like...eye contact with me when I'm giving instructions. Eye contact with whoever is reading aloud or speaking at the time.
I have never encountered this kind of mass resistance to schooling. And of course I can't really blame them, given what I've seen them have to do in other classes--and in this class. The difference is that they don't really trust that we are--that I am--doing this for them; I think at the end of the day they have doubts--and they have reason to doubt--that their teachers give a damn about them.
I raised my voice at a student today. I told him to "back off." I needed to do it. I told him later that I was sorry I had to raise my voice at him, but he had crossed a line at a terrible moment. And I was forced to drop the hammer on him.
I don't know why, but all this thinking and musing and strategizing about this class reminds me of this odd interaction I had with a colleague at the photocopier this morning. Mrs C is one of the substitutes I saw on Friday; she asked the kids to copy definitions from the science textbook; and I think that later in the day she overheard me describing what I saw to Laura in the staff room at lunch. I think she heard me say: "I saw a lot of reading out of text books and following instructions" and though she didn't really enter into the conversation, I could tell she heard me and had some reaction to the observation I made.
So I saw her in the copy room. She was making copies. She asked me if I wanted to visit the class again. I said that I might at some point in the future, but that I was really just trying to get an anecdotal sense for what the kids had experienced before they got to my class. She made a somewhat defensive comment about not having access to the course materials yet, which is why they were reading out of the books in class. I told her I was just trying to understand why a few of my students had such a hard time with my class. Then I said: "School seems pretty hard for some of these kids."
"Were some of your kids home schooled?" she asked.
I didn't really understand her question. There was some deep disconnect in the conversation. "Not that I know of. It's just that...well...schooling, the business of schooling, is really quite hard for some of my students."
She looked at me a little bit sideways. "What do you teach?"
"I'm a student teacher."
"Special ed?"
"No. Just a teacher. Of 6th and 7th graders."
And then the copier finished mechanically reproducing her handout, and she scampered off. I'm not sure the dialogue above captures the essential strangeness of our conversation. But it felt like we were two people who spoke the same language but couldn't really communicate with each other. I could speculate about why I thought she was confused; I have a theory, something to do with being brought up in a system that privileges crowds and the majority, that favors silence and obedience. But I'm doing my best not to put people into boxes.
One thing is becoming clear to me: there are way too many boxes in this place. And so many children doing everything they can to fit neatly inside them and to knock down the walls.
Friday, September 16, 2011
The Grind
It's the end of a long week. And our fifth period class exploded again today, but I think I have a better sense for why and how. I went and observed the first two classes that many of my students attend--or sit through as the case may be--to try to get a sense for why many of them came in to fifth period so spastic and unruly. (Besides the obvious: they are 11 years old.)
Here's what I saw. First and foremost, two of the classes they attended were conducted by substitutes. And that meant that they had "work" periods. In a science class that meant looking up the definitions for (basically meaningless) words and copying those definitions onto pieces of paper and then putting those pieces of paper into the proper sections of their binders. In a social studies class that meant drawing outlines around all of the continents, then coloring in the continents and bodies of water, then labelling all the continents. (The outlining and coloring had already been done by the teacher on a map that was projected on the screen, so I saw quite a few dutiful students looking up at the screen, selecting the right color, then coloring in the right land mass or body of water. It looked more like a coloring lesson than a geography lesson). In a math class that meant picking their favorite number, writing it real big on a piece of paper and then thinking of other things that came in twos or that used the number two, and then filling in a piece of paper with that information.
The kids that could follow instructions got heaps of praise. The kids that had trouble following instructions--or sitting still and quiet--got heaps of negative feedback. One of the children I was most interested in, Brian, received a great deal of entirely negative feedback from both of the teachers he was with. I imagine that by the time he got to my classroom, he had been told all day by every adult he had encountered that he was a bad kid. Now, no one said: "Brian, you are bad kid." But every adult I saw interact with him told him what to do, how to do it, and, more often than not, to stop doing whatever it was he was doing.
It seems to me that the kids who "succeed" in this place succeed because they can suppress whatever natural (I use the word loosely) instinct they might have.
I also heard teachers telling students again and again: "this is important." It's important to write the HW in the planner, to take out the right sized piece of paper, to put your name in the top right corner of that paper. I kept hearing all of these adults say to all of these children: "this is important." And though none of the students responded to it, I could see (body language, eyes rolling, below-breath muttering) that what they were being told was not, in fact, important.
In the time I have been at Edison, I haven't heard a single teacher ask these kids: "what is important to you?" We ask them what they are interested in, their hobbies, but most of these kids haven't been asked what matters to them.
So by the time they get to Fifth period language arts, many of them having been following instructions to complete tasks that are, let's be honest, basically meaningless to them for four hours, with a thirty minute break for lunch (words overheard: "after we get through the lunch line, we really only have about 5 minutes to eat and then five minutes to run around the gym"), and then they have to write sentences. And because of the math tracking at the school, most of the kids in the room hate writing almost as much as they hate math, and it feels almost unethical to subject them to more meaningless stuff that they hate, merely because I believe (and I do believe) that learning to write is good for them.
I hope they get the rest they need this weekend. I know I'm going to try to. More of the grind is coming at them--like a combine, harvesting wheat--on Monday.
Here's what I saw. First and foremost, two of the classes they attended were conducted by substitutes. And that meant that they had "work" periods. In a science class that meant looking up the definitions for (basically meaningless) words and copying those definitions onto pieces of paper and then putting those pieces of paper into the proper sections of their binders. In a social studies class that meant drawing outlines around all of the continents, then coloring in the continents and bodies of water, then labelling all the continents. (The outlining and coloring had already been done by the teacher on a map that was projected on the screen, so I saw quite a few dutiful students looking up at the screen, selecting the right color, then coloring in the right land mass or body of water. It looked more like a coloring lesson than a geography lesson). In a math class that meant picking their favorite number, writing it real big on a piece of paper and then thinking of other things that came in twos or that used the number two, and then filling in a piece of paper with that information.
The kids that could follow instructions got heaps of praise. The kids that had trouble following instructions--or sitting still and quiet--got heaps of negative feedback. One of the children I was most interested in, Brian, received a great deal of entirely negative feedback from both of the teachers he was with. I imagine that by the time he got to my classroom, he had been told all day by every adult he had encountered that he was a bad kid. Now, no one said: "Brian, you are bad kid." But every adult I saw interact with him told him what to do, how to do it, and, more often than not, to stop doing whatever it was he was doing.
It seems to me that the kids who "succeed" in this place succeed because they can suppress whatever natural (I use the word loosely) instinct they might have.
I also heard teachers telling students again and again: "this is important." It's important to write the HW in the planner, to take out the right sized piece of paper, to put your name in the top right corner of that paper. I kept hearing all of these adults say to all of these children: "this is important." And though none of the students responded to it, I could see (body language, eyes rolling, below-breath muttering) that what they were being told was not, in fact, important.
In the time I have been at Edison, I haven't heard a single teacher ask these kids: "what is important to you?" We ask them what they are interested in, their hobbies, but most of these kids haven't been asked what matters to them.
So by the time they get to Fifth period language arts, many of them having been following instructions to complete tasks that are, let's be honest, basically meaningless to them for four hours, with a thirty minute break for lunch (words overheard: "after we get through the lunch line, we really only have about 5 minutes to eat and then five minutes to run around the gym"), and then they have to write sentences. And because of the math tracking at the school, most of the kids in the room hate writing almost as much as they hate math, and it feels almost unethical to subject them to more meaningless stuff that they hate, merely because I believe (and I do believe) that learning to write is good for them.
I hope they get the rest they need this weekend. I know I'm going to try to. More of the grind is coming at them--like a combine, harvesting wheat--on Monday.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Acrostics
Yesterday, in response to Monday's train coming off the rails, we shifted gears a little bit. We gave our sixth graders a concrete--and seemingly fun--activity: to write acrostic poems using their own names.
For many of the students it was entertaining and fun, and for much of the time the room was a noisy, vibrant place. Kids turned around to share their imaginative and silly lines with each other and seemed enthusiastic show their poems off to Laura and me. It was chaotic and noisy, and I promise you that not every child was "on task" for most of the time, but they seemed to enjoy it. Quite a few of them got stuck on words they couldn't think of; some of those kids went to the book shelves in the back of the room and grabbed a dictionary; some of those kids sat there silently fuming that they couldn't figure out a word that started with the letter Q and described them in some way. But just about all of them worked through it. I heard a lot of poems about lions and monkeys and football and princesses.
And then there was Andrew. Andrew is not built for school, and he knows it. And he has known it for a long time. And I suspect that school has reminded him, again and again and again, that he doesn't belong at school. And I suspect that that feeling of not belonging ways heavily on his 11 year old soul.
Andrew did not know where to begin. So he did nothing. I stopped by his desk, crouching down to meet him at eye level.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
He looked up at the lesson projected on the screen. I tried to imagine what it looked like for him, a series of random words in some random order.
I asked him to write his name on the page. I used the word "vertical". He shook his head. I said: "One letter on a line. Skip lines between letters."
"Good job. Now come up with one word that starts with each letter in your name."
He said nothing, avoided eye contact.
"I'm gonna give you a few minutes to do that on your own," I said; Malikah and Molly were chirping a few rows back about wanting to share their poems with me. I circulated for a while.
When I return, Andrew had written nothing new on the page.
"What's going on, Andrew?" I asked.
"I can't think of anything that makes sense." I had heard this before.
"Ok. So I'm giving you a new rule: what you write isn't allowed to make sense. Your goal is just to come up with a word--any word--that begins with each letter." I gave him a dictionary and asked him to flip through and pick a random word for each letter.
He stared down at his desk. "Andrew, are you with me?" He was silent, avoided eye contact. "Please flip the dictionary to the "A" section." Continued silence. "Andrew, are you in there?" More silence. "Hey man, this poem thing isn't that big a deal." Echoes in the silent well. "Andrew, I'm standing two feet from you, but it seems like you're a thousand miles away." Nothing. "Andrew, can you just let me know that you still exist?" Nothing. "Andrew, please say the word 'yes'".
"Yes," he said.
By the end of the period, he had plugged in a word for each letter in his name. (For "n" he used the word "nacelles".) I hope I can find some sort of sanctuary space for him as the year progresses.
For many of the students it was entertaining and fun, and for much of the time the room was a noisy, vibrant place. Kids turned around to share their imaginative and silly lines with each other and seemed enthusiastic show their poems off to Laura and me. It was chaotic and noisy, and I promise you that not every child was "on task" for most of the time, but they seemed to enjoy it. Quite a few of them got stuck on words they couldn't think of; some of those kids went to the book shelves in the back of the room and grabbed a dictionary; some of those kids sat there silently fuming that they couldn't figure out a word that started with the letter Q and described them in some way. But just about all of them worked through it. I heard a lot of poems about lions and monkeys and football and princesses.
And then there was Andrew. Andrew is not built for school, and he knows it. And he has known it for a long time. And I suspect that school has reminded him, again and again and again, that he doesn't belong at school. And I suspect that that feeling of not belonging ways heavily on his 11 year old soul.
Andrew did not know where to begin. So he did nothing. I stopped by his desk, crouching down to meet him at eye level.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
He looked up at the lesson projected on the screen. I tried to imagine what it looked like for him, a series of random words in some random order.
I asked him to write his name on the page. I used the word "vertical". He shook his head. I said: "One letter on a line. Skip lines between letters."
"Good job. Now come up with one word that starts with each letter in your name."
He said nothing, avoided eye contact.
"I'm gonna give you a few minutes to do that on your own," I said; Malikah and Molly were chirping a few rows back about wanting to share their poems with me. I circulated for a while.
When I return, Andrew had written nothing new on the page.
"What's going on, Andrew?" I asked.
"I can't think of anything that makes sense." I had heard this before.
"Ok. So I'm giving you a new rule: what you write isn't allowed to make sense. Your goal is just to come up with a word--any word--that begins with each letter." I gave him a dictionary and asked him to flip through and pick a random word for each letter.
He stared down at his desk. "Andrew, are you with me?" He was silent, avoided eye contact. "Please flip the dictionary to the "A" section." Continued silence. "Andrew, are you in there?" More silence. "Hey man, this poem thing isn't that big a deal." Echoes in the silent well. "Andrew, I'm standing two feet from you, but it seems like you're a thousand miles away." Nothing. "Andrew, can you just let me know that you still exist?" Nothing. "Andrew, please say the word 'yes'".
"Yes," he said.
By the end of the period, he had plugged in a word for each letter in his name. (For "n" he used the word "nacelles".) I hope I can find some sort of sanctuary space for him as the year progresses.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Hallie and Heartbreak
A significant portion of my afternoon was spent searching for Hallie--or, rather, trying to figure out why she wasn't in our 5th period class.
Hallie was brought to my attention this morning when the SPED teacher (special ed, for you acronominally challenged readers) stopped by to ask how she was doing and to tell us a little bit about her. She suffers from an anxiety disorder which plays out in all sorts of interesting ways for her at school. She has "behavior goals" associated with her tendency to pull our her hair and also for her extreme chattiness in class. I had noticed the latter, but not the former. I asked the SPED teacher what I should do should I notice the hair pulling, and she said that she wasn't sure, but that she'd get back to me.
I went about the rest of my teaching day, sort of anticipating seeing Hallie with this new lens, but when fifth period rolled around she wasn't there. 5th period was a kind of disaster (see below). So when school finished up and I did some logistics with a few papers (and by "logistics" I mean entering in grades and by "a few" I mean around 120), I went down to the office to ascertain where, in fact, Hallie had been during our fifth period class.
I spoke with the following people in my search: the registrar, the guidance counselor, Hallie's sixth period science teacher, the front office manager, and, finally, the assistant principal. No one knew where she had been. I pieced together the following: that she had spent an unknown period of time in the main office sometime before lunch; that she had not signed out to leave school; that her schedule had recently changed (assistant principal: "She's probably confused"); that she had attended sixth period (sixth period teacher: "I'm sure she skipped your class. She's already said some things about what the older kids say. I'm sure she heard an older kid say that you can skip class by hiding out in the bathroom. I bet that's where she was."); and that there wasn't a coherent system for tracking children (assistant principal: "Thanks for following up on this. If you all don't tell us, then we never know where the children are").
I look forward to hearing from Hallie tomorrow about where she was today.
Fifth period broke my heart today. There were quite a few logistical things to go over (or, rather, we decided that we must go over more logistics), and Laura likes an orderly class environment. The kids came in less than orderly. Many were down right distractible and visibly exhausted, having just endured four 55 minutes classes with a mere 30 minute break for lunch. And then they were made to endure a barrage of instructions: take out your planner, copy down the instructions from the board, put away your planner, get out the HW, hand forward the HW, get out a piece of paper and a pen, put away your binder, summarize each paragraph of this assignment. The assignment rigamarole took 15 or 20 minutes in periods 1-4. It took almost 50 minutes in period 5, mostly becuase the kids were bored, and a group of boys weren't shy about expressing their boredom and distaste for the assignment--and the class. And Laura got into a power struggle with about five boys, and, at least from my observer's point of view, she managed to "win" the power struggle by shutting the kids down, but that victory came with a high price: we lost a lot of time and we basically never got to the fun, play with words and sentences exercise that had gone pretty well with our other classes.
So much of the time was spent demanding (and not really getting) the compliance of a group of pissed of boys, who, in this writer's humble opinion, had every reason to be pissed and disengaged, since they were basically being told how to fill out forms and to complete an assignment that most of them already knew how to do and didn't care much for. If I had been those boys, I would have been pissed off to.
What breaks my heart about the way it all went down was that I can see the course the ship is on, and it's heading for the rocks. The boys Laura went to war with mock her when she turns her back on them, and I see this gap growing and widening between them. And we've only had three class meetings. In three class meetings those boys have learned that what she wants is their obedience and their compliance, and that what matters is what she wants them to do.
I suggested to Laura that we switch things up with period 5, that we do the fun, engaging stuff at the beginning of class and leave any logistics we might need to deal with for the end of class. Worst case scenario, we lose some logistics in favor of giving the kids an opportunity to do something that is fun and engaging and interesting--and that is, frankly, more about their learning than the forms and the logs and the homework.
Hallie was brought to my attention this morning when the SPED teacher (special ed, for you acronominally challenged readers) stopped by to ask how she was doing and to tell us a little bit about her. She suffers from an anxiety disorder which plays out in all sorts of interesting ways for her at school. She has "behavior goals" associated with her tendency to pull our her hair and also for her extreme chattiness in class. I had noticed the latter, but not the former. I asked the SPED teacher what I should do should I notice the hair pulling, and she said that she wasn't sure, but that she'd get back to me.
I went about the rest of my teaching day, sort of anticipating seeing Hallie with this new lens, but when fifth period rolled around she wasn't there. 5th period was a kind of disaster (see below). So when school finished up and I did some logistics with a few papers (and by "logistics" I mean entering in grades and by "a few" I mean around 120), I went down to the office to ascertain where, in fact, Hallie had been during our fifth period class.
I spoke with the following people in my search: the registrar, the guidance counselor, Hallie's sixth period science teacher, the front office manager, and, finally, the assistant principal. No one knew where she had been. I pieced together the following: that she had spent an unknown period of time in the main office sometime before lunch; that she had not signed out to leave school; that her schedule had recently changed (assistant principal: "She's probably confused"); that she had attended sixth period (sixth period teacher: "I'm sure she skipped your class. She's already said some things about what the older kids say. I'm sure she heard an older kid say that you can skip class by hiding out in the bathroom. I bet that's where she was."); and that there wasn't a coherent system for tracking children (assistant principal: "Thanks for following up on this. If you all don't tell us, then we never know where the children are").
I look forward to hearing from Hallie tomorrow about where she was today.
Fifth period broke my heart today. There were quite a few logistical things to go over (or, rather, we decided that we must go over more logistics), and Laura likes an orderly class environment. The kids came in less than orderly. Many were down right distractible and visibly exhausted, having just endured four 55 minutes classes with a mere 30 minute break for lunch. And then they were made to endure a barrage of instructions: take out your planner, copy down the instructions from the board, put away your planner, get out the HW, hand forward the HW, get out a piece of paper and a pen, put away your binder, summarize each paragraph of this assignment. The assignment rigamarole took 15 or 20 minutes in periods 1-4. It took almost 50 minutes in period 5, mostly becuase the kids were bored, and a group of boys weren't shy about expressing their boredom and distaste for the assignment--and the class. And Laura got into a power struggle with about five boys, and, at least from my observer's point of view, she managed to "win" the power struggle by shutting the kids down, but that victory came with a high price: we lost a lot of time and we basically never got to the fun, play with words and sentences exercise that had gone pretty well with our other classes.
So much of the time was spent demanding (and not really getting) the compliance of a group of pissed of boys, who, in this writer's humble opinion, had every reason to be pissed and disengaged, since they were basically being told how to fill out forms and to complete an assignment that most of them already knew how to do and didn't care much for. If I had been those boys, I would have been pissed off to.
What breaks my heart about the way it all went down was that I can see the course the ship is on, and it's heading for the rocks. The boys Laura went to war with mock her when she turns her back on them, and I see this gap growing and widening between them. And we've only had three class meetings. In three class meetings those boys have learned that what she wants is their obedience and their compliance, and that what matters is what she wants them to do.
I suggested to Laura that we switch things up with period 5, that we do the fun, engaging stuff at the beginning of class and leave any logistics we might need to deal with for the end of class. Worst case scenario, we lose some logistics in favor of giving the kids an opportunity to do something that is fun and engaging and interesting--and that is, frankly, more about their learning than the forms and the logs and the homework.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Names
Today was school picture day. So Laura and I took our students down to the gym to have their photos taken. I took it as an opportunity to have a few cherished little one-on-one interactions with the kids so that I could learn their names. I used a few strategies to accomplish this task. I identified the ones I already knew because they had made an impression on the first day. I said hello to each of these kids, said their names a few times, and basically told them and myself that their names were in my brains. Then I went around and asked the kids to tell me their names. I had conversations. I walked around the gym saying their names again and again and again. A number of kids, whenever I said their names, would turn around and look at me as though they thought they were in trouble for something. I associated them by who they sat with, what little pieces of information I already had about them--the girl who didn't like to be compared to her sister; the boy who always wore a ski cap; the boy who looked like a former student of mine; the girl who loves to sing in her church.
When we got them back to the classroom, we had them do a little bit of writing, and I walked the room, saying under my breath "Kelsey's writing", "Dylan's using a pen". Etc. I also cheated a little by looking at the names they had written at the top of the page. And while Laura was leading the activity, I basically sat there with my class list quizzing myself. By the end of each period, I felt like I had about 90% of the names down.
On my way out the door today, I passed a kid whose name I thought I knew and asked him: "Is your Donnie?" And he said: "No, it's Dylan. But nice try."
Outside the building I saw a child, and I was sure her name was Danielle, because she had the same name as two other girls in her class. Her name was actually Darcy.
It was exhausting work, trying to get all of their names. I imagine that 30% of those names will disappear from my brain over the weekend, but I have a little writing sample from each of them, so I'll spend a little time tomorrow trying to refresh my memory. And then begin again on Monday. I do think they noticed that I was trying--that I was working very hard--to learn their names. A few of them even expressed a little gratitude for it. It strikes me as a pretty damning condemnation of the system that they were surprised to see me even attempting to get all of their names.
Walking back from the gym to class, I pulled Alex--a particularly bouncy and distractible child--away from--or off of--one of his peers. Rather than scolding him or chastising him, I merely asked him to walk back to class with me. Melanie--the child who loved to sing in the church--joined us. I asked him to tell me a few things about himself. He told me that he loved birds, toucans in particular. Melanie, who I think was pretty hungry for attention, asked me if I wanted her to do the same. I told her that I did. She told me that she loved to sing in her church. I learned that both of them lived near the school.
As we were preparing to enter the classroom, Melanie said: "Can I ask you something? But I'm not sure it's appropriate."
"Go ahead," I said. "We'll see if it's appropriate."
"Do you go to church?" she asked.
I thought for a moment, not about my answer but about her question. I was struck, first and foremost, by her concern about the appropriateness of the question. I suggests an underlying sensitivity to a person's faith, but also a sensitivity to the boundaries that exist--that must exist--between teachers and students, about what students are allowed to ask.
This is what I said in response: "I think it's great that you ask me if that was an appropriate question. I think it's a fine question. I don't go to church." And then we were at the classroom door, and it was time to return to the world of sentences. I wished I had had more time to give her some context. What I think she was doing was trying to figure out what sort of person I was and to make a connection. And I have this sneaking suspicion that that nascent connection couldn't have emerged were it not for my obvious effort to get to know my student's today, even the only things I learned were a few names and a few child's interests--toucans, singing, the spiritual world.
When we got them back to the classroom, we had them do a little bit of writing, and I walked the room, saying under my breath "Kelsey's writing", "Dylan's using a pen". Etc. I also cheated a little by looking at the names they had written at the top of the page. And while Laura was leading the activity, I basically sat there with my class list quizzing myself. By the end of each period, I felt like I had about 90% of the names down.
On my way out the door today, I passed a kid whose name I thought I knew and asked him: "Is your Donnie?" And he said: "No, it's Dylan. But nice try."
Outside the building I saw a child, and I was sure her name was Danielle, because she had the same name as two other girls in her class. Her name was actually Darcy.
It was exhausting work, trying to get all of their names. I imagine that 30% of those names will disappear from my brain over the weekend, but I have a little writing sample from each of them, so I'll spend a little time tomorrow trying to refresh my memory. And then begin again on Monday. I do think they noticed that I was trying--that I was working very hard--to learn their names. A few of them even expressed a little gratitude for it. It strikes me as a pretty damning condemnation of the system that they were surprised to see me even attempting to get all of their names.
Walking back from the gym to class, I pulled Alex--a particularly bouncy and distractible child--away from--or off of--one of his peers. Rather than scolding him or chastising him, I merely asked him to walk back to class with me. Melanie--the child who loved to sing in the church--joined us. I asked him to tell me a few things about himself. He told me that he loved birds, toucans in particular. Melanie, who I think was pretty hungry for attention, asked me if I wanted her to do the same. I told her that I did. She told me that she loved to sing in her church. I learned that both of them lived near the school.
As we were preparing to enter the classroom, Melanie said: "Can I ask you something? But I'm not sure it's appropriate."
"Go ahead," I said. "We'll see if it's appropriate."
"Do you go to church?" she asked.
I thought for a moment, not about my answer but about her question. I was struck, first and foremost, by her concern about the appropriateness of the question. I suggests an underlying sensitivity to a person's faith, but also a sensitivity to the boundaries that exist--that must exist--between teachers and students, about what students are allowed to ask.
This is what I said in response: "I think it's great that you ask me if that was an appropriate question. I think it's a fine question. I don't go to church." And then we were at the classroom door, and it was time to return to the world of sentences. I wished I had had more time to give her some context. What I think she was doing was trying to figure out what sort of person I was and to make a connection. And I have this sneaking suspicion that that nascent connection couldn't have emerged were it not for my obvious effort to get to know my student's today, even the only things I learned were a few names and a few child's interests--toucans, singing, the spiritual world.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
180 Some Odd Children
I taught today, or perhaps maybe I should say that I co-taught today. It was the first full day of school for everyone at Edison Middle School. I got there around 8 o'clock, and found a note from Laura saying that she might be in late because she had to deliver her dog to the vet. The classroom was quiet. Driving in I saw this orange morning light over the hills behind the school, and there was something peaceful and serene about the whole thing. It was a very beautiful morning. And sitting in the classroom I was reminded of the seasonal shift--a kind of tectonic motion from one state of being to another--from summer to the school year.
Around 8:45 the kids were released--like water from a dam--into the hallways, and the spaces were saturated with noise. The jostling, the bustling, the navigating space, the celebratory hellos and the awkward questions, the opening and slamming of lockers, the shrieks of girls reunited with prized friends, separated by summer, the boys crashing into each other, making a game of the space, their bodies. It's a joyous ruckus, a cataclysm of bodies moving through and resisting the closed space.
I stood in the hallway with Laura, guiding children to and fro. I saw a few students who I met yesterday and some of them said cautious hellos. By about 9 o'clock most of them were in the room. Laura went to assist a child with their locker, and I went back to the classroom, where almost 40 children sat in desks, waiting for something to happen.
I wish I could remember them all. When I taught at a small private school, each class would have a distinct flavor, with only 10-16 kids it was easier to get that taste early on. But with so many children, th scale of the operation makes such fine distinctions a challenge. I can say this: the first three periods (before lunch) were much more orderly and were lacking almost entirely in any negativity. Periods four and five (after lunch) were less orderly, and there was a palpable challenging boy energy. One child kicked things off by announcing to Laura that he loved tacos. Later he said that he liked her pajamas; she replied that they weren't pajamas (he retorted, half under his breath, that he knew that) but that she was happy he liked them.
I would not have worn to school on the first day the pants that Laura wore; they were very much like pajamas, but it was clear the boy was trying to get under her skin. She had to snap at him later.
A few things of note. We use this amplification system. We wear these little microphones around our necks, and our voices are piped in through the ceiling. It is a strange thing, to hear one's voice projected so loudly, and I don't like the message that it sends: that the teacher's voice is the loudest and, therefore, the most important. So I had to adjust to that. The mics were complicated by the fact that only one of them could be on at the same time, so we had to keep turning them on and off, which, in its own way, perhaps, modeled the whole only-one-person-speaks-at-a-time thing.
We basically did get-to-know-you exercises and got a brief writing sample from them. I told them two things about me: that I love teaching and hate middle school. Most of them seemed to respond to that second thing. Each kid said their name and then one thing they were interested in. I walked the aisles, making eye contact with each kid and sort of repeating back to them what they heard. I made a point to say every kids name and to reflect back to each of them what I had heard. What they are interested wasn't terribly interesting to me. They said they liked sports or hunting or music or art. A few of them said things that were fairly specific. One child plays the oboe; another likes jazz guitar; another likes platypi.
Laura took roll in each class. I had a few cringing moments when it came to her pronunciation of their names. She butchered quite a few of them, and, perhaps because she was nervous about that, she overcompensated. I'm thinking of a kind named Dre, whose name was written as such in the roster, and she called him Dree, and everyone laughed, and he corrected her politely, and then she butchered his last night, and he corrected her politely on that one, and then she called him Dree again, and he kind of gave up. The thing that made me cringe the most was that it was usually the brown children in the room whose names she butchered the most, and she kept talking about how she didn't speak Spanish and sort of drew this spotlight in closely on them.
I took notes about each kid, the names they liked to be called. It dawns on me now, writing this, that most of today was about getting to know the kids names. I think I probably have about 30 or so down. I caught myself in class, when I was doing the teaching, scanning the room, looking at kids, trying to get the names.
I think the overwhelming message they get from Laura is that they need to behave and play by the rules. I think the overwhelming message they got from me is that I'm interested in getting to know them. I think in the aggregate there was a kind of balance between order and discovery, but I'm sensing this ying-yang thing developing between us.
Not that there is tension. There isn't. We had a good time in the room together; we shared space pretty well. I left the building today tired but happy. It's going to be a good year.
Oh. And the principal stopped in on our 5th period class and watched us doing the writing sample. It made me self-conscious for about 12 seconds, and then I tried to forget that he was there. After all he was just another adult in the room, and I'm not really beholden to him in any way. Besides, I was doing pretty good work.
I'm going to remember that Serena lit up when I told her that I remembered she didn't like to be compared to her sister; that Brynne wanted to write about both of her parents houses; that Matthias lit up when I remembered his name and told him that; that Glenda read her entire writing sample to me before handing it in and seemed proud of what she had written; that Ralph wrote about what the trees looked like on the street where he often rode his bicycles.
Around 8:45 the kids were released--like water from a dam--into the hallways, and the spaces were saturated with noise. The jostling, the bustling, the navigating space, the celebratory hellos and the awkward questions, the opening and slamming of lockers, the shrieks of girls reunited with prized friends, separated by summer, the boys crashing into each other, making a game of the space, their bodies. It's a joyous ruckus, a cataclysm of bodies moving through and resisting the closed space.
I stood in the hallway with Laura, guiding children to and fro. I saw a few students who I met yesterday and some of them said cautious hellos. By about 9 o'clock most of them were in the room. Laura went to assist a child with their locker, and I went back to the classroom, where almost 40 children sat in desks, waiting for something to happen.
I wish I could remember them all. When I taught at a small private school, each class would have a distinct flavor, with only 10-16 kids it was easier to get that taste early on. But with so many children, th scale of the operation makes such fine distinctions a challenge. I can say this: the first three periods (before lunch) were much more orderly and were lacking almost entirely in any negativity. Periods four and five (after lunch) were less orderly, and there was a palpable challenging boy energy. One child kicked things off by announcing to Laura that he loved tacos. Later he said that he liked her pajamas; she replied that they weren't pajamas (he retorted, half under his breath, that he knew that) but that she was happy he liked them.
I would not have worn to school on the first day the pants that Laura wore; they were very much like pajamas, but it was clear the boy was trying to get under her skin. She had to snap at him later.
A few things of note. We use this amplification system. We wear these little microphones around our necks, and our voices are piped in through the ceiling. It is a strange thing, to hear one's voice projected so loudly, and I don't like the message that it sends: that the teacher's voice is the loudest and, therefore, the most important. So I had to adjust to that. The mics were complicated by the fact that only one of them could be on at the same time, so we had to keep turning them on and off, which, in its own way, perhaps, modeled the whole only-one-person-speaks-at-a-time thing.
We basically did get-to-know-you exercises and got a brief writing sample from them. I told them two things about me: that I love teaching and hate middle school. Most of them seemed to respond to that second thing. Each kid said their name and then one thing they were interested in. I walked the aisles, making eye contact with each kid and sort of repeating back to them what they heard. I made a point to say every kids name and to reflect back to each of them what I had heard. What they are interested wasn't terribly interesting to me. They said they liked sports or hunting or music or art. A few of them said things that were fairly specific. One child plays the oboe; another likes jazz guitar; another likes platypi.
Laura took roll in each class. I had a few cringing moments when it came to her pronunciation of their names. She butchered quite a few of them, and, perhaps because she was nervous about that, she overcompensated. I'm thinking of a kind named Dre, whose name was written as such in the roster, and she called him Dree, and everyone laughed, and he corrected her politely, and then she butchered his last night, and he corrected her politely on that one, and then she called him Dree again, and he kind of gave up. The thing that made me cringe the most was that it was usually the brown children in the room whose names she butchered the most, and she kept talking about how she didn't speak Spanish and sort of drew this spotlight in closely on them.
I took notes about each kid, the names they liked to be called. It dawns on me now, writing this, that most of today was about getting to know the kids names. I think I probably have about 30 or so down. I caught myself in class, when I was doing the teaching, scanning the room, looking at kids, trying to get the names.
I think the overwhelming message they get from Laura is that they need to behave and play by the rules. I think the overwhelming message they got from me is that I'm interested in getting to know them. I think in the aggregate there was a kind of balance between order and discovery, but I'm sensing this ying-yang thing developing between us.
Not that there is tension. There isn't. We had a good time in the room together; we shared space pretty well. I left the building today tired but happy. It's going to be a good year.
Oh. And the principal stopped in on our 5th period class and watched us doing the writing sample. It made me self-conscious for about 12 seconds, and then I tried to forget that he was there. After all he was just another adult in the room, and I'm not really beholden to him in any way. Besides, I was doing pretty good work.
I'm going to remember that Serena lit up when I told her that I remembered she didn't like to be compared to her sister; that Brynne wanted to write about both of her parents houses; that Matthias lit up when I remembered his name and told him that; that Glenda read her entire writing sample to me before handing it in and seemed proud of what she had written; that Ralph wrote about what the trees looked like on the street where he often rode his bicycles.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
A few children arrive...
Laura and I spent the morning huddled in the library, since Edison's orientation for incoming 6th graders features eight graders doing a welcoming activity; our classroom was taken over by two 8th grade girls, who came in, politely moved all the desks around, and then went about their business.
In the library I sat dreaming about place, how places can be defined, which texts we might use with young kids to think about the places we occupy, how places can feel familiar or not, how we are marked and shaped and defined by the places we inhabit. In the library I overheard one of the little orientation groups going through their motions, and felt that odd thrill as an adult and a teacher of watching kids do some of the work I love best. There was something sort of strange and awkward, even pained about the way the girl leading the group operated--overheard: "Now that we've done something together as a group, we will all learn each other's names." The girl was bossy and controlling and a little strange, and it was one of those odd moments as a teacher when you can see young people rehearsing these adult roles, butchering them in their own weird, emerging way, and feeling that combined thrill--wanting to intervene and assist, and wanting to sit back and let the children be themselves.
And then we returned to our classroom, at lunch, got the overhead projector going, prepared for the influx of kids, and about 12:45 (right on schedule) they started to shuffle in, first one at a time, leading for a little bit of awkward, two adult on one, then two, then four, then six student conversations. At a certain point there was a critical mass, and it became hard for us to do the polite one-on-one introductions, so we waited, and the room started to fill. We told the kids that there were supposed to be thirty kids, and that we would begin when everyone arrived, and so there was this constant counting of children--by us, by them--as new children would enter the room, and arguing over how many there actually were in the room (amongst the children), and then recounting, and then more recounting as other children entered, and speculation about the child who was in the office, and then our deaf student came in with his two interpreters, and Mrs Auburn, the "general" watched for a little while, and I took notes as they went around the room introducing themselves.
And then we went and opened lockers, and helped the children figure out the locks, which you might think would be an easy or simple task, and it was for some of the children, but for many it was not, and so I did that thing where I tried it, showed them how to do it, and then made them do it, and for some kids (D'Angelo in particular), it just never happened the way it was supposed to, but then he got it open, on like his fifth try, and he said: "I think I just wasn't pushing the latch hard enough." And there it was: learning. At one point I asked him, since he was clearly frustrated, if he wanted to put his fist through the locker, and he sort of smiled and looked at me and said: "Yeah."
I cannot imagine that I will know all of their names. I know a few of them, mostly the ones that talked a lot or that asked a lot of questions or who sat in the front of the room. I made an effort to circulate, to get to the back of the room, to try to see the room from as many angles as I could, to see them and also to try to see what they were seeing--an impossibility, I know, but it's worth the effort to try.
It felt good to be back in the room with the kids, good to be doing that back and forth, the questioning, the responding. I felt a little awkward, a little rusty, particularly in my responses to what they had to say. I hope to remember to do some of those little affirmations, like when Kyle said: "My name is Kyle, and I'm deaf," I was glad to be able to say: "Thanks for that, Kyle."
And then later Laura talked about how we would use the microphone to speak so that everyone could hear us, and I thought for a minute about what all that might have meant to Kyle, who doesn't hear very well. It seems like he hears some; he has a coclear implant. I caught myself for a moment addressing myself to his interpreter, then stopped and redirected: I have never worked with a deaf child before and will have to be mindful of that.
But it's good to be back in their midst, amongst the strangeness and their desire for a fresh start and to connect with their peers and the adults who have been charged.
I had to leave the classroom early, and little Jason, who sat by himself in the back of the room and who had assisted us by turning the lights on and off for our presentations, looked up at me as I walked out of the room, and he sort of smiled at me and waved goodbye, and I said: "Goodbye, Jason."
And something about that interaction struck me as sacred: a strange adult and a strange child engaged in the day to day business of being alive.
In the library I sat dreaming about place, how places can be defined, which texts we might use with young kids to think about the places we occupy, how places can feel familiar or not, how we are marked and shaped and defined by the places we inhabit. In the library I overheard one of the little orientation groups going through their motions, and felt that odd thrill as an adult and a teacher of watching kids do some of the work I love best. There was something sort of strange and awkward, even pained about the way the girl leading the group operated--overheard: "Now that we've done something together as a group, we will all learn each other's names." The girl was bossy and controlling and a little strange, and it was one of those odd moments as a teacher when you can see young people rehearsing these adult roles, butchering them in their own weird, emerging way, and feeling that combined thrill--wanting to intervene and assist, and wanting to sit back and let the children be themselves.
And then we returned to our classroom, at lunch, got the overhead projector going, prepared for the influx of kids, and about 12:45 (right on schedule) they started to shuffle in, first one at a time, leading for a little bit of awkward, two adult on one, then two, then four, then six student conversations. At a certain point there was a critical mass, and it became hard for us to do the polite one-on-one introductions, so we waited, and the room started to fill. We told the kids that there were supposed to be thirty kids, and that we would begin when everyone arrived, and so there was this constant counting of children--by us, by them--as new children would enter the room, and arguing over how many there actually were in the room (amongst the children), and then recounting, and then more recounting as other children entered, and speculation about the child who was in the office, and then our deaf student came in with his two interpreters, and Mrs Auburn, the "general" watched for a little while, and I took notes as they went around the room introducing themselves.
And then we went and opened lockers, and helped the children figure out the locks, which you might think would be an easy or simple task, and it was for some of the children, but for many it was not, and so I did that thing where I tried it, showed them how to do it, and then made them do it, and for some kids (D'Angelo in particular), it just never happened the way it was supposed to, but then he got it open, on like his fifth try, and he said: "I think I just wasn't pushing the latch hard enough." And there it was: learning. At one point I asked him, since he was clearly frustrated, if he wanted to put his fist through the locker, and he sort of smiled and looked at me and said: "Yeah."
I cannot imagine that I will know all of their names. I know a few of them, mostly the ones that talked a lot or that asked a lot of questions or who sat in the front of the room. I made an effort to circulate, to get to the back of the room, to try to see the room from as many angles as I could, to see them and also to try to see what they were seeing--an impossibility, I know, but it's worth the effort to try.
It felt good to be back in the room with the kids, good to be doing that back and forth, the questioning, the responding. I felt a little awkward, a little rusty, particularly in my responses to what they had to say. I hope to remember to do some of those little affirmations, like when Kyle said: "My name is Kyle, and I'm deaf," I was glad to be able to say: "Thanks for that, Kyle."
And then later Laura talked about how we would use the microphone to speak so that everyone could hear us, and I thought for a minute about what all that might have meant to Kyle, who doesn't hear very well. It seems like he hears some; he has a coclear implant. I caught myself for a moment addressing myself to his interpreter, then stopped and redirected: I have never worked with a deaf child before and will have to be mindful of that.
But it's good to be back in their midst, amongst the strangeness and their desire for a fresh start and to connect with their peers and the adults who have been charged.
I had to leave the classroom early, and little Jason, who sat by himself in the back of the room and who had assisted us by turning the lights on and off for our presentations, looked up at me as I walked out of the room, and he sort of smiled at me and waved goodbye, and I said: "Goodbye, Jason."
And something about that interaction struck me as sacred: a strange adult and a strange child engaged in the day to day business of being alive.
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