new class/ spring semester

Reflection 1 of Spring Semester and of my new classroom.

“Welcome to the wonderful world of your spring 9^th grade English Class, taught by me, Ms. Acton.” 

Okay, that one still needs a little work.  I’m ready though, with a bunch of icebreakers, a first unit that’s mostly ironed out, 4 days planned for getting to know each other and a strategy to lock one of the doors to my classroom and barricade the other with all the impressive physical mass I can muster in order to shake every hand - every day.  

I have just moments more.  

The ball drops and the curtains go up on Feb. 1, next Tuesday.  I’m ready and also, I’m not.  Hello Teaching!  Last semester, AC and DM who have been teaching at the HS for 16 and 22 years respectively, told me that they still have that anxiety dream where you are up in front of the class and suddenly realize that you have nothing prepared.  Man, I’ve been having that dream A LOT lately.  Yow. 

Since I have been forewarned and instructed that this semester is going to be insane while I’m getting my PACT (Performance Assessment for California Teachers -for those not yet in the acronym know) done, I’m going to follow the advice of my seminar teacher and use PACT specific prompts for all of these weekly reflections until my PACT is done on 4/14/2011.  For those of you who are not my supervisor, and probably for you too Kate, it may render these a little dry. 

PROMPT: What do you see experienced teachers struggling with at your school? What can you learn from this?

This seemed like a good start in order to introduce the concept that I am seeing a lot of experienced-teacher-struggle right now in my new CT, JW.  I took this placement in another small school at the HS) with the 9^th graders because it was very strongly suggested to me that AHA would like to hire me for next year to be their 9^th/11^th grade English teacher.  I knew that it was going to be a challenging spring placement and that I would be required to do more work than the average student teacher.  So, I know, I knew, and I only have myself to blame, and hopefully I will be getting a great job out of the bargain.  So these are some things I have generally seen some really great teachers struggling with are:

1. Staying present

2. Not getting complacent about teaching

3. Really getting to know your students

4. Not getting overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the job

And I guess right now the biggest thing that I can learn from all of those and this also applies specifically to my relationship with JW, is that teaching is an incredibly hard job to do well.  Being kind to yourself, your students and your fellow educators while trying to stay present, do your best work and maintain boundaries is a tall order.  I think it can be a real pitfall for a new teacher, hot off the presses and bursting with excitement about educational equity and new ideas, to judge veteran teachers for their current relationships with their jobs.  Yes, it is important to know what we believe and to recognize patterns that we don’t want to fall into and attitudes that we don’t want to reflect in our own teaching, but it is also incredibly important to recognize the humanity in every educator.  The ability to be critical without stripping another person of their humanity or villanizing them is a very important adult skill.  I think it is one I have struggled to maintain in the midst of this program.  It can be very easy to give in to bad-mouthing teachers we perceive as “bad” or “unfit” and I think that there is

a way that in groups it can be very easy to give in to that lowest-common-denominator urge to shit-talk.  So, as far as my situation goes right now, I’m resisting the urge.  I’m respecting JW’s humanity and the choice that he made to be an educator and believing that he has skills and ideas to share with me, and that there are things I can learn from him.  Okay, I know I really just scratched the surface of those 4 things, but I fell myself and my brain winding down and I’m starting to make a lot of typos… so, good night.

teaching persona

Reflection 2 of Semester 2:

This is going to be short and sweet sour.  It has been one hell of a week.  I’ve almost made it entirely through.  It’s better than when it began.  Failure is a valid outcome of effort; in fact, failure proves effort.  Try more = fail more, which ultimately means fail less.  This is what I’m thinking right now.  So, on to my prompt…

“How are you developing your teaching persona? Who is emerging? How has this changed as you have changed classrooms?”

I was originally puzzled by the idea of a teaching persona.  I’m not much of one for personas in general.  I’m sort of a take-it-or-leave-it guy.  Case in point, I find that if I dress up “too professionally” for teaching (say anything more dressy than a cotton sweater or shirt with buttons) I feel so uncomfortable and unlike myself that I find it much harder to teach.  So, I thought teaching personas might be great for some but would clearly not be for me.  Not so.  I’ve recently realized that I do, in fact have a teaching persona.  It is very similar to my actual person, except that it’s more, well, adult.  Sort of an uber-me, who is always fair and sees everything that’s happening and does not hesitate to say whether something is acceptable or not, and is never sarcastic, even when being blatantly insulted.  I like it.  It is a version of myself that has a distinct gravitas.  I didn’t have it last semester.  Maybe because I hadn’t found it yet, maybe because my students were Seniors, maybe because I didn’t need it as much with such a strong CT as AC was…  But now that I’m in the land of Freshmen I am really glad to find this more serious and grounded and thick-skinned self. 

Also, I accidentally came out to my class on Wednesday.  I say accidentally because that wasn’t how I had planned to do it…  I misheard K. say “B. is gay.”  She swears up and down that she actually said “B, yay!”  I believe her, why not?  But I had said to myself that at the first pejorative use of the word gay, I would make a definitive statement about how I felt about that usage.  So, I did.  I said (and really it just kind of came-out) “I’m not okay with the use of the word gay in a pejorative or negative way in my class, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m gay.” Then K. said, “I didn’t say gay” and she explained and I said okay, but I’m still not okay with it.  And then E. (a perpetual sarcastic comment maker) said, “that’s awkward”.  There were a bunch of titters, and I said, “Let me make myself very clear E., and everybody, I do not feel awkward about being gay.”  To which D and Ka. and Kh all shrieked and said, “oh, she told you!” or something like that.  And then we talked about it for a little bit, some of them said they had not noticed that I was gay and were surprised and we defined “pejorative” and discussed different usages of words and I felt very lucky to teach in Berkeley. 

I’m off to dream of quizzes and graphic organizers… 

Jack of All Trades... Master of None

"I do not strain at the position- /It is familiar- but at the author's drift; /Who, in his circumstance, expressly proves/ That no man is the lord of anything,-/ Though in and of him there be much consisting-/ Till he communicate his parts to others."  -Shakespeare from Troilus and Cressida ( a convo. between Ulysses and Achilles, this is Ulysses speaking) 

Oh, thank you David Hawkins (in your article that I had to, but had no time to, read for Anna's class this week) for that lovely quote. It rang so true for me and my struggles this year. As many of you probably know, my partner Devon is getting her MFT, and she often tells me that therapy school makes her feel crazy. To this I frequently retort, "and teacher school makes you feel dumb". It's true, at least for me. There must be something to it then, as Ulysses says "no man is the lord of anything... till he communicate his parts to others". There is the old adage that many members of my family quote frequently, either in reference to themselves or to other family members, "Jack of all trades, Master of none". It serves as a poke at our relentless and restless needs to change careers and hobbies as soon as we gain a working knowledge and basic skill-set. I know a little about a lot, it's true. The subject matter knowledge as well as the confidence in both that knowledge and my skill as a teacher that seem to be necessary to teach well do at times, escape me. I love the idea of empowering the student. It strikes me as my true purpose in teaching to propose new systems and information and facilitate interest and growth. Not always sure HOW to do this, but I definitely see the straight and narrow road (often from the ditch off to the side) of teacher as facilitator. In the article there is a long story about the author searching desperately to find a common interest in order to gain the trust of children, and it rang true even to my experience of the adolescents in my 9th grade class. Although it seems to me that it is far harder for the adult to feign interest and be believed by an adolescent than a young-child. So, I must always try to find some way to identify with and relate to the material I am teaching. When I read a passage in the book we are reading that I find particularly interesting, or that I believe is a very appealing example of figurative language, I always get their attention. So back to the real.  Always that.  Are you distracted and anxious?; then that's what you teach.  Are you bored and thinking of something else?; then that's what you teach.  Authenticity and knowledge coupled with the desire to facilitate interest, learning, and growth, that's what we need. A sturdy box of all kinds of tools and a wide array of interests do come in handy after all... "jack of all trades, master of knowledge"... perhaps?

I'll leave you with an exciting quote from the other article I limped through this week by M. S. Friedman: "It is also impossible to safeguard the student by any distinctions in content, such as what is 'progressive' and what is 'reactionary,' what is 'patriotic' and what is 'subversive,' what is in the spirit of science and what is not. These are in essence distinctions between the propaganda of which one approves and the propaganda of which one disapproves." HEY! 

equity and concessions

Back to the prompts: 
"Describe a moment in your classroom that filled you either with hope or despair when thinking about issues of equity"

Well, I have this big burning question that relates pretty solidly to equity.  "Am I helping my students when I make concessions, chase students down for work, give extensions, and sometimes even hand-hold through the work process?"  The truth is that when it comes down to it, I do these things for my special ed. students (which is fine, appropriate, and even mandated) and then I also do it for my lower-achieving students who are almost all students of color (as are most of my special ed. students...).  So here is the equity question.  Now I'll lead you through the "moment" and my pondering.

I have this student T.  I love T.  Let me just say that first off.  T is the only African-American male in my 2nd period English class (There are only 8 male students in total).  He is one of the oddest, most spaced out kids I have ever met.  He has a very bizarre sense of humor and is one of the most even tempered teenagers I have ever met.  Essentially, he is a checked-out Buddha.  He is clearly brilliant, but not a very successful student.  So, I started going after him.  I want your work.  I want your work.  I want your work.  And, much like with D and J (my two African-American seniors that I harassed out of flunking Fall semester) it started to work.  T is most definitely not the only kid in my class I am doing this with.  Several other students have benefitted from my chasing them down and haranguing them for work.  But with T, I took it to a new level.  Let me also add here that T is a student who I really believe needs an IEP or at the very least a 504 plan.  His checked out stuff is for real and he has a very very hard time concentrating or remembering what is said in class even when he appears to be listening.  So, here is the new level.  When his rough draft persuasive letter was 4 days late (it was the second Final Draft typing day for the class) I sat him down next to my desk, and refused to let him leave until he wrote it.  I literally coached each successive paragraph out of him.  It was like pulling teeth and I definitely neglected my other students in the process.  Then I stayed for lunch the next day (so not convenient for me and not my normal day to stay for lunch) because he had promised to come in to type his final draft (he doesn't have computer access at home and I was afraid that if his only option was the library, he just wouldn't do it.)  So, he stood me up, which made me cranky.  I left him a note that said Ms. Erby will let you type it in her room, but he never came down to see it.  So when he strolled into class on Friday, I took the note off the door where I had left it and handed it to him.  He was super apologetic, "Ms. Acton, I forgot.  Can I do it today?"  Well, Friday is my normal day to stay for lunch for quiz makeups, etc... so I said yes.  He then taped the note I left him the day before to his shirt and wore it for the rest of class. Completely cracked me up, of course. So, lunch came around and he showed up!  Wow!  He typed up his letter and emailed it to me. As he was beginning, I rifled through his folder and found another assignment for class he had completed (perfectly) and never turned in.  T!  This was worth 10 points!  He smiled sheepishly at me, and said "oh."  good grief!

So here are my thoughts about equity and the situation with T.  Am I helping or hurting?  I mean, obviously in some ways I'm helping. T will get a better grade now, but he's also pretty dependent on me for the trend to continue.  If I stop giving him extra time and help, he will most likely stop doing well in my class.  With another student I've been giving extra attention to, K, it's not like that, I chased her down, showed her that I cared and valued her and she started doing work, I have to remind her for sure, but not hold her hand.  Is hand-holding good?  It's clearly not a solution because I can't help T. in every class for the next 4 years.  So, what should I do?  I hate to see a kid flounder and that's exactly what T. was doing before I intervened.  What should I do now?  Am I being paternalistic in offering this type of assistance to students of color?  I wouldn't consider offering it to most of the white students in my class, but then that's also because none of the white students in my class are in T's (or even K's) boat.  Am I evening the playing field?  Do the short-term effects outweigh the fact that I am not achieving long-range self-reliance for T?  Oh my brain is starting to hurt.  Enough of this for now.