End of First Semester! A jumbled recap

I have officially finished teaching my first semester. The students have taken their finals, *hopefully* turned in their projects, and now all there is to do is grade the huge stack of work that I have left to grade by the end of next week. While I do not think that I was wildly successful, transforming their lives beyond recognition and making them perfect little angels, I do think that I was a good enough teacher for my first attempt.

I am disappointed in myself on a few counts though. It was sometimes very hard for me to get work done at home, and I preferred to surf the net, read, watch a movie or a TV show, cook, and go to the gym instead. While none of these things were particularly bad things to do (except maybe all the TV show watching), I was spending way too long on them to purposefully avoid doing work.

This was especially true with the lesson planning. There were too many days where I did not plan out a long unit, and instead went with the day-to-day planning instead. In fact I would say I did this the majority of the time. This clearly made my lessons not as good as they could have been, and while I think that none of my lessons were disastrous, there were certainly days where I resorted to actually using the text book *shudder,* or having non-activity/project based lessons. I really need to get with the program on this front and start really making good unit plans that really have a specific purpose that unifies them and makes them interesting. I also need to come up with creative activities that promote interactive learning and higher-order thinking.

While these are difficult things to do, and I do not expect to be able to do them all in my first year, I know that I could have done better had I just applied myself a bit more and really put more hours into creating the lesson plans.

My students have overall been really great. Even the crazy (and crazy huge) freshman class has improved beyond belief. I mean when I first got them I could barely get a sentence out before they were all talking and it was total chaos. I had to give them “a serious talk” every day about their behavior and their grades. And towards the end I very rarely had to do that, and they were policing themselves. Not little angels by any means, but they began to realize what they could and could not do if they wanted to do well in my class. And I think I got through to a lot of them. I certainly wasn’t the only one, but considering how wild they were, I was very impressed with the overall improvement, I think I did a good job with them, all things considered.

The 10th graders were overall very strong. The only students in danger of failing really are the ones who had too many absences and then did not put in the effort to make up the work. This is something I also need to get on top of, because I need to be a little more organized overall so that I can effectively deal with these situations and make it a bit easier for them to get back on track. That being said, their missing class isn’t my fault, and they have to be willing to pay the consequences for their actions. I mean today one of my students asked if she could take the final during 2nd period because she had to “do something” with her mother during the afternoon. And she would be missing her science final all together. I obviously said no, and what did she honestly expect me to say? You can’t miss the last day of class if your class is having their final exam, unless a) you have an excellent excuse or b) you don’t mind getting a ‘0’. The fact that her mother was going to allow her to miss class is ridiculous; somebody needs to get their priorities in order.

In terms of content, I am practically convinced that there is no other class I would rather teach than 20th century world history. While US Government sounded like a great course, there is too much that they don’t know, so I have to seriously rethink how to teach that class. But since I’m teaching it again this coming semester, I should hopefully be able to figure things out more, and damn but this is a great year to be teaching this course, and next year will be even better, so maybe I will try and keep it instead of giving to the teacher next door, who would just mess it up even more anyways... I wonder which teachers will still be at here next year (apparently people leave in droves from time to time). If some of them leave, maybe I can get in on hiring some young teachers like myself for the core program and making this a staff that I could imagine staying with for longer and actually propelling us into a new era.

I have no idea what to expect. I'll just have to ride out the storm and do my best to be a good teacher, and hopefully a much much much better teacher, in the coming years. I mean as far as I know I can only get better now right?

Wasting Time

[When this post was written, I was sitting in an all school assembly run by my Director]

I am currently sitting in an auditorium for an assembly. This is supposed to last from 2:00 – 2:30. We shall see if that holds. Now this assembly is just another example of how we have forgotten the #1 principles of economics: efficiency. Apparently I, as the most anti-capitalist in the program, am also the most efficient with my time (minus the science teacher – I am sure she is better with her time than I am). I don’t stand for wasted time. It drives me crazy. So here are some examples of how we waste time.

• Morning “Collaborative” Meetings: Every morning we have a “collaborative” meeting from 8:10 – 8:45+ . Teachers are supposed to arrive at school by 8:10 every morning. So each morning we should have all the teachers in the meeting. But do we? Hell no.  The science teacher, the math teacher, the Spanish teacher, and me. We are the teachers that arrive on time every day. And if we really go for every single day, then it is just me. Now every morning, the Director basically tells us a few announcements and then we discuss random things and never come to any conclusions or rational decisions. Basically it is time that I could be spending preparing my classroom and preparing lessons but instead I have to just sit and listen to the Director tell me things that have never once been helpful. She uses tons of jargon and offers no helpful tips for running the classroom. The few times I have tried to make things happen I get blank stares and/or they get mad at me. And if I ask questions or question one of the rules they make up, or question how they say they want us to run the classroom (heaven forbid) then I basically get treated like I am stupid and know nothing. And you’ll just have to take my word for it, I am not condescending when I bring up these suggestions, I sincerely ask the questions and put in my two cents. But nobody understands me except for maybe the Science teacher, they act like I am from outer space.

• Random assemblies and programs: We have had the occasional assembly, or grade level meeting, or presentation. All of them have basically been a waste of time. The director goes through random rules, she makes speeches, she berates the students, and it just goes on and on. I understand that we have problems w/rules being broken and generally bad behavior, but there must be a better way to go about getting these rules to happen. These large assemblies just don’t help anybody, and they waste what little precious class time we have. Not only that, the students tend to resent them because there is no real positive message being passed on, and it is so repetitive that the kids are sick of hearing it. They know what they are supposed to do, the question is how do we convince them that it is a good thing for them to do, that it is in their best interests. These kids don’t care about the school in terms of what makes us look good, so when the Director just tells them to do this or do that for the school it doesn’t do anything. We need to really show them why these things are important, and I know I have had a hard time getting through, but we have to keep trying.

• School Plays: We had this weird play/variety show that involved like 50+ kids (although only maybe 4 did anything and the rest just “danced” on stage). But basically the week before winter break several of my students were missing class on a regular basis to be in this show, and when I saw the show the only thing they did was stand around on stage. And they missed 3 classes, which is the equivalent of 1 week in regular schedule days. Now a play is all well and good, but the rehearsals should be AFTER SCHOOL. Not on class time.

• Then there is the wasted time that I see occurring in several of the other teacher’s classrooms. Now I walk in, or walk by some classrooms and they’re just sitting and talking. I have had students take REFUGE in my classroom during 2nd period because they aren’t doing ANYTHING in their class. They’re just sitting. And this is partially because some teachers simply check out and think that the semester is over. Right before winter break students were complaining because apparently I was the ONLY teacher who was carrying on as if we were continuing to have class. I don’t have nearly enough time to cover everything I need to cover, and I’m sure many of the other teachers are in the same position. So how can they NOT be teaching? We need to expect that EVERY DAY counts if we want the students to think the same thing. I mean it was no wonder that none of my 10th graders came on the last day of class before break, because the teachers hadn’t planned anything for them to do, and basically told them it was OK to not come.

If we disrespect the student’s time with such obvious wastes, then how are we supposed to expect them to respect our time? And if the school really wants to be a top school, then we really need to get our act together and stop wasting all this time.

Why block scheduling should be abolished

So as I may have mentioned the semester ends next Friday (the 18th). This will end "1 years worth" of class for my 10th graders and 1 semester for my 9th. Unfortunately, this is a load of horse manure, they have received far less than that. For one, if they miss one day of class then they have basically missed 2 days because they miss one block class. Therefore it is a lot easier for students to fail a single class, just missing a week and a half is enough because you end up missing a lot of class time and fall very far behind.

Apparently there are "studies" that prove that block scheduling is more effective than regular scheduling. But I would like to see these so called studies. The only things I can think of are that you get more class time per class (80 minutes every day of the week) and the kids have fewer classes to juggle at a time.

But what if you want to read a book or two in your history class? You basically have half the time to do it outside of class than you would regularly because you have 20 weeks to complete a full 40 weeks of material. So that severely cuts down on the amount of homework you can give. You have to do fewer projects as well, doing a lot of the work in class.

The biggest problem though is continuity. When my kids leave after next week I won't get them back until the following year to continue from where we left off. Now how much history will they remember going in to the next year? Even if I did my job, the answer will be very little. And frankly, who can blame them? I have trouble keeping information in my head, let alone stuff that I may not be enthralled with. But it isn't as big a deal in history as it is in say MATH and science. I mean who can keep math equations in their head 6-8 months and then be expected to just move forward? It is ridiculous! Students can't reasonably be expected to practice for 4 months what they should be doing year round. Basically it provides a very incongruous experience for the kids and I honestly think it just doesn't work.

Now I do like having 80 minute classes, since that's how I've been taught. And I would have to learn how to create a 50 minute lessons if we changed. BUT I think there is a way to maintain a combination of year round schooling and block scheduling. This is what I had in high school and I think it worked rather well. Basically you have a "modified" block schedule. This can be done in a number of ways but the way my high school did it was to have regular 55 minute periods Mon, Tues, and Fri. Then on Wed. and Thurs. you would have 90 minute periods. So on Wed. you would go to period 1, 3 and 5 and on Thurs. you would go to 2, 4, and 6. This worked rather well, and I think you could modify it even more to accommodate the 8 period schedule. This way science classes can still have labs, you can have longer periods once a week, but not every day. Thus having year round classes.

In the end I don't know if I could teach long term in block scheduling, but its fine for now. I just seriously think if DC wants to improve its test scores and long term viability it will have to ditch this block program. Block may work in other areas, but it doesn't work in DC, not at all.