What a difference a few years makes

Reading over old blog entries I can't believe how much has changed.  Michelle Rhee is no more and I am still a teacher at the same school - although under fairly different circumstances.  My opinions couldn't be more different.  In my first two years I had faith in Ms. Rhee.  While I didn't like a lot of her ideas for how to change the schools - the reliance on charter schools and NCLB testing in particular which I have never liked - I thought her heart was in the right place.  I believed in her rhetoric, that she cared about the students and would work tirelessly to help them achieve.  Boy was I a moron.  It is amazing the 180 I have performed.  Rhee was a master media manipulator.  She was able to take a complex situation and distill it into a few simple ideas.  Everyone who stood in her way was against the children and clearly against 'progress'.  She would do what was easy instead of what was right, going through a RIF to get rid of teachers, putting schools under harsh restructuring mechanisms, putting 'professional developers' into our schools who feed us a simplistic teaching rubric that is currently being used to make us all cookie-cutters in a large TFA-like system.  And what has it accomplished?  Each year has been more difficult for me as a teacher - this one being by far the most stressful and our testing scores fluctuate wildly or not at all.  And from everyone I talk to they are saying the same thing - there is something up with administration.  Something is severely broken, and the fish rots at the head so they say, so I say, why not cut off the head? (Thanks Dr. Horrible)

Hopefully when Gray comes in he will see the writing on the walls and bring us back towards a more positive relationship between administrators and teachers - though that seems increasingly unlikely given the negative hoop-jumping climate we are in thanks to Obama and Duncan's draconian 'policies' - why not beat the dead cash cow a little longer...  NCLB didn't work because the stakes weren't high enough!  That must be it...

But enough with the pessimism.  Maybe administrators, policy makers, the community and teachers can actually begin communicating as equals and teachers can once again be treated as professionals.  I know there are teachers who aren't doing their best and who maybe need to move on.  But I also know that they are not the biggest problem facing our schools.  And they are NOT the reason schools like mine's scores are low.

We need to get back to the bigger picture, we need to stop pretending that each school's problems can be solved in the same manner, we need to stop caring about these NCLB tests that we are going to fail because the system is rigged and not worth participating in and get back to EDUCATING our students and preparing them for life outside of these messed up walls.  Our students need to be able to THINK CRITICALLY, use logic, become engaged citizens who know and understand our world - history, economics, science, math, literature, art, ALL OF IT!  If we give them the literacy skills to interact with this planet then they should be able to learn and discover the petty details that our textbook wants them to focus on on their own (thanks Dr. Google).  Instead of having them 'learn' the basics, why not actually get them to learn about how to form and support their own opinions?

I know its easier for me as a social studies teacher, but I am pledging to IGNORE all testing initiatives that dumb down my classroom.  And I am not going to play the 5-step lesson plan game any more.  I am in the process of revamping my entire curriculum to move away from the DCTF/TFA model (man I really wish I had gone to a real teaching college for my masters...) to make it authentic, project-based and formative.

I want my students to have more ownership of their learning, and the only way to do that is to start giving them more power in the classroom and over the content.  The standards are stupid.  They were written by testing companies who wanted to write stupid textbooks and tests and make tons of money.  I'm done with it all.  If that gets me fired then I'll just become a martyr in the name of good teaching.

Happy new year yall.

Woah... a post?

I was just reading over this blog that I haven't used in over a year. Wow things have changed.

So here is an update:

I am still at the same school that I started in and I am now quite happy overall.

The Reduction In Force hit our school very hard, I picked up a lot of new students and had gigantic classes (around 28-35 students)

I taught AP Government for the first time and ONE STUDENT PASSED THE OFFICIAL AP EXAM (which is the first time in our school's recent history - past 10 years at least) and 4 earned 2s which isn't bad considering the obstacles that we had and probably also a record.

I am teaching a full year AP Government next year, I am getting supported by some of my administration and left alone by the rest.

Debate team was a moderate success. While we did not win any competitions (whoops!) we attended 4, which is the first time we have done that.

One of my classes participated in the United Nations conference at the State Department and we had 15 students attend which was fairly large group.

I taught US History for the first time and really enjoyed it.

My 9th graders from my first year starting behaving like mature students as 11th graders (unfortunately that was only for me and they were psychopaths in our poor science teacher's class)

My arch-nemesis was RIF'd which turns out made my life wonderful and the teacher who moved into her room is amazing and the opposite of everything she stood for and helping me learn and grow as a teacher.

So I am officially bucking the DCTF trend and happily entering my 4th year at the same tough-as-nails school that I started in and looking forward to it.

After my hard-earned vacation I will try and get back to posting about specific issues and things I will be doing to proactively deal with them for next year. Hopefully that will make me do it?

The Cardinal Sin

I am being very bad in fourth period.  While I have assigned a worthwhile project to the students and I intend for them to do a good job on it, I feel that I am basically just having them work on the assignments in class with little instruction.  Project Based Learning at its finest.  That being said, I am NOT wasting their time with busywork, I just also may not be strictly teaching new skills but having them practice ones they already have.  I suppose if I throw in some formative assessment I can work it out.

Last period of the day...

It is a universal truth that those entering the last class of the day must act completely insane and different from how they have acted the rest of the day.

At this point in my short career I have taught four classes at the final period of the day.  Three have been World History II and one has been Entrepreneurship.  All have been crazy.

It doesn't matter how big the class is (two classes had 20-25 student and the other two classes were under ten students). 

It doesn't matter what grade the students are in (most of the classes have a lot of 10th graders, but are mixed).

It doesn't matter what the students are learning (in the first semester my third and fourth periods are doing the exact same content).

It doesn't even matter how 'high achieving' my students are in other classes (I have had both top honors students and students who barely pass their classes in my fourth periods).

They all become different people when they pass through that classroom door.

Things that seem inconceivable in  my other periods become altogether too possible in my last period of the day:

Students talk out of turn at alarming rates.
Students get into physical and verbal fights.
Students yell.
Students run around the room.
Students don't complete a single assignment.
Students physically destroy each others' work.
Students steal the possessions of others.
Students from other classes walk into my room and do whatever they please.
The list could go on and on.

I understand that the day is long, but it doesn't justify the type of insanity I have often experienced in these classes (and the complete lack of control I seem to have over the situation).  While it isn't every day, it is far more often than I find even remotely acceptable. 

I am still trying to find ways to deal with this situation, because right now I really just try and ride the wave and power through it.  But that is very tiring and it isn't good for the students overall (When I give out surveys to the students to assess how the class is going, the only negative comments I ever get come from 4th period, and the big complaint is usually the behavior problems of other students).  I need to find ways to positively get the class under control.

I just don't know how to get through to them, to hold on to their attention throughout the day.  I know one thing I can do is make the lessons more interactive and as fun and relatable as possible.  But even some of (what I believe are) my best lessons have completely bombed in fourth period. 

Fourth period requires a whole different way of thinking and interacting with the class.  I can barely let them do independent work because it immediately dissolves into chaos.  I can't let them talk much or it dissolves into yelling matches.  I have to have a seating chart to keep certain students from talking all period and/or killing each other. 

One thing that has helped is making them stay quiet but allowing them to violate school policy and listen to their own music on headphones (but that stops working when an administrator comes in and yells at the students - and me by proxy - to put them away).

I may need to institute some type of regular physical stimulus to both keep them interested and release their pent up energy (calisthenics anyone?) but I honestly don't have any experience in that arena and I don't know how I could do that properly without wasting too much time.

Any suggestions for helping students release all that energy in a positive manner on a regular (if not daily) basis?

Empowering the children or Disheartening them?

I am asking for the advice from my peers (and any who care to give it).  Is informing students of the achievement gap and the structural factors that contribute to the achievement gap a worthwhile effort?  Will it serve to empower my students or will it just dishearten them?

I am personally of the belief that by showing students the truth about their current situation and help them learn about the social, economic and other structural factors that are standing in their way, that I could empower the students to take charge and work harder to get where they want and need to go.  I want them to see their obtaining an education as an act of social justice (and possibly even minor rebellion), something to do both for themselves and society at large. 

On the flip side, this may just make them think that everything is hopeless and out of reach.  I don't want them coming out of this kind of unit thinking that they are less than, that the cards are impossibly stacked against them, that everything is doomed to repeat itself.

Then there are the implementation questions + my initial thoughts on them:

1. Which classes would I present this information to?  I want to say all of them, I can relate this kind of topic to World History, Economics and all my government classes.  But at the same time, that may not be realistic.
   
2. When would I teach this to the students?  I think that this might be something to do near the beginning of the year.  Starting with the personal and working outwards to the global (or national in US Government).  Maybe instead of focusing on the schools I would instead focus on the communities at large and talk about the structural arguments towards both the achievement gap and poverty rates.  Could I get away with spending a week on this kind of unit?  There are many books that students have loved reading in the past (I could get a class set of Our America and also look at books/essays by William Julius Wilson -among others) and begin by showing what social studies can do while working on basic reading and writing skills and issues of social justice that directly pertain to my students.

I may spend some time this summer seeing if I can come up with an excellent and brief introductory week-long unit to the study of history and the social sciences using a topic that is more contemporary and relatable to the students and integrating lessons on the analytic frameworks we will be using in the course with the basic reading, writing and interpretive skills needed for social studies.

Changing

I realize that I am guilty of using this blog the same way that my fellow teachers use our collaborative sessions: to complain.

So I am now going to try and use this blog to do what I don't do: focus on the positive.

So now, if I talk about something negative here, then I will have to give a proposed solution to the problem.

Otherwise I will just focus on the positive.

Authentic as it gets

Well today my small Constitutional Law class and I were 20 people away from a life changing experience and were 'forced' to settle for a great experience.

Let me set the scene..

In March I took my students to see oral arguments for a Supreme Court case (Abuelhawa v United States).  We didn't get to see the whole case being heard but we did catch the last 20 minutes and it was a lot of fun.  The case was about whether or not someone should be charged with a felony for minor possession of a narcotic because they used a cell phone to facilitate it.  What I noticed when we left was that even though we had gone through the background of the case, the students had a really hard time understanding what was going on when we were in the courtroom.

Taking this into consideration, and after reading an article in the Washington Post about a school in Virginia that did mock Supreme Court cases, I decided it would be fun to take an upcoming case from the Supreme Court and have the students be the lawyers and do all the leg work.  So first I gave students brief summaries of the cases and then we picked one that interested them.  The students picked the case Safford Unified School District v. Redding.  This case was about a student who was strip searched when students were looking for illicit prescription drugs (in this case 400 mg prescription ibuprofen).  The student says her Fourth Amendment rights were violated and she was traumatized by the experience, developed ulcers and had to leave the school.  The school district basically says it was protecting their students and they need to maintain the right to do so.  Once they had picked the case they were assigned to teams representing the two sides.

The first thing the students had to do was submit legal briefs.  They worked together and performed research using only primary sources (the same sources that were used in the case) reading and citing previous legal decisions on the case (local, appellate and en banc), relevant Supreme Court decisions, and the sworn statements used in the case.  While the final briefs were far shorter than the real thing, the students used legal terminology and made multiple outlines, drafts, and numerous revisions to come to their final product and gained experience using legal evidence and making strong arguments based solely on the law and interpretation of the law.

The students then had to present 'Oral Arguments'.  First the students had to write a persuasive speech representing their side.  This forced them to pick only the strongest arguments for their side and work on their persuasive writing and speaking skills.  Then they had to present the speech in front of their peers.

The next step was to simulate what it would be like to be in front of the Supreme Court Justices (who get to interrupt you at any time and interrogate you mercilessly).  Because our class is too small to have a set of Justices, I decided to arrange it as a debate, where they would get to question each other and force the other side to answer potentially damaging questions.

The culmination of this project was for us to go to the Supreme Court and hear the Oral Arguments for the very case we had been studying ourselves.  The students picked a very popular case, and one that has gotten a reasonable amount of press (far more than the other case we attended though certainly not a landmark case).  I decided we had to arrive at the Court early because seating is very limited and it is first come, first serve.  I figured that if I arrived by 5:30 then my students arrived by 6:30 and we would be fine.


I arrived at the Court around 5:35 and to my dismay saw a huge group of people already waiting.  I ended up being about the 70th person in line.  My students arrived and were able to join me (with a little bickering behind me) and we patiently waited in the fairly cool/cold weather to see if we were going to get in.  I was not very hopeful but my students jokingly 'kept the faith'.  After lots of time in line, we received the final 'placeholder' issued by the police at #75.  We kept waiting since we only got one for the six of us.  At one point we were offered $100 for the placeholder (which in retrospect my students said we should have taken haha) by a supposed friend of one of the attorneys trying the case.  Apparently the parents of one of the attorneys trying the case was actually behind us in line as well, clearly no special privileges were given to anyone.


In the end we were about 20 people away from getting a seat for the whole trial (and when there are only about 200 seats total 20 is a lot).  I probably would have needed to get there at least an hour earlier and the students would have had to have been there with me to avoid a riot.  So we didn't really have a shot since the fifth student arrived around 7 AM.

We then moved directly to the 5 minute rotation line and were the first group to go inside.  We went in, put our things in the little lockers, heard 5 minutes of the case, and were then led out.  While we only got to hear a tiny portion of the case my students did not come across as very disappointed and were animatedly talking all about the case as we left.  I can only imagine what it would've been like for us to hear the whole thing if 5 minutes got them going.

Here are the highlights of what we did get to witness:

• Safford Unified School District was presenting and was talking about how the school district had to be able to protect their students from illegally using prescription medications and that there had been a history of students getting sick and abusing these drugs.
  
• One of my students who represented Safford in our class was very excited that she heard the very argument she used in her paper used by the lawyer
• Ruth Bater Ginsburg began to pull Safford's case apart
  
• Another student who represented Redding was very excited that the Justices seemed to be very harsh on the Safford lawyer

In the end, while we did not quite get the potentially life changing experience that we wished we could have gotten, I think that we ended successfully.

Case and point: 3 out of 5 students are now saying that they are seriously thinking about law school (when before none of them had any interest).