3 Fires... 7 days

Yeah I think that says it all. We had a fire last week, a fire Monday and a fire today. This has basically meant 2nd and 4th period haven't done work in like a week. To add to that they had predicted a huge storm on Friday and there was ice everywhere BUT DC, but nonetheless about 1/2 the kids were out if not more.

So yeah my US Govt. class has been moving forward in 1st period but everyone else is stagnant.

On top of that, on this coming Friday we have parent teacher conferences, which aren't a waste of time but are being held from 12-7 so no class once again. And I mean tops I have had 12 parents come in, and now that I have fewer students I doubt that I'll get as many. But I am calling several parents each day leading up to it in order to maybe get them to show.

Fire!

There was a pretty big fire on the 6th floor of the building today in the janitors closet, they actually used the sprinklers up there apparently. I didn't see or smell anything so I have no idea what happened. But apparently the teacher who found the fire said that he could tell from behind the door that he could feel the heat, but the door was still locked. So either a kid pushed something under the door to light the fire (i.e, firecrackers) or chemicals just caught on their own somehow behind a locked door.

The teacher who pulled the fire alarm noticed that nothing happened when he did. So basically the fire alarms in our building were no longer working. (They are hopefully working now... since it would be illegal I'm pretty sure to have students in a building with no working fire alarm. I heard about the fire first from students who ran around yelling "there's a fire there's a fire!" Then finally on the PA system they announced that we should go down to the ground floor.

After that they told us to all go outside, and it was pouring rain and freakishly cold so two other teachers and I sat in my car to at least keep out of the rain. We were there for like 40 minutes or so I think, not sure. About 3/4+ of the students left during this time.

Afterwards, when they let the remaining few students back in we went into the auditorium and were eventually given an announcement that all the students were to go to the cafeteria to finish lunch (since that is when the fire started). Then they were eventually brought back to the auditorium at 1:30. After that we just had to sit in the auditorium until 3:15. Nothing happened, nothing was going on, we just sat in the auditorium and nobody could leave. Big waste of time.

Apparently there were legal reasons for not just excusing the students and going home ourselves, but I have a hard time imagining what they could be for students who are 15 and up.

Anyways at least only 1 of my periods was wasted and not two.

Rant

First off 10 minutes have passed and I have 3 students out of 15. Not making me happy.

Secondly, we will never have a productive collaboration meeting with these teachers. Apparently I do need to go to a school where people think more like I do about what RIGOR is. And maybe the fact that we need to try and standardize it a bit so we can know what it is, because this staff clearly doesn't know much about it.  I can't work here forever, a few years and only if we get a new staff who are young and/or progressive and/or open minded along the way.

Ok time to go... I'm in a bad mood already. Stupid Wednesday.

My day today

On a random note, a mom yelled at me today over the phone. She said she was coming here to talk to me, but maybe she won't. She's mad at me for failing her child for the 2nd advisory (though I let her pass the class overall) w/out apparently informing her of the fact that her child was failing. This is probably true, so I decided to just back down since I had no real proof that I had told her her daughter was failing. THAT BEING SAID he daughter failed 3 out of 4 classes (the 4th being PE) that advisory so maybe instead of yelling at me she should yell at her daughter. But what I learned is that I need to update parents regularly and not necessarily by phone (which is really hard and ridiculously time consuming). Other teachers sent out regular notices by mail (which doesn't cost anything since the school pays for postage). So I'm going to come up w/a template and then I can just make copies and send it out to the children's parents when they're failing. That should work.

Otherwise 4th period went really well today. We are working on creating thesis statements for history papers (which can be really really hard depending on the topic) and coming up w/the whole "so what" issue. The kids are doing good jobs for the first attempt and tomorrow we will work on writing the rest of the essay. They'll do rough drafts over the weekend and have to have edited it once themselves then we'll edit it again in class and then they'll write their final drafts as homework! yipeeeee things are looking good in one class at least. Also I had to implement the 'point system' in my 11th grade class starting tomorrow. I hate the point system it is so childish, but it works, there is no doubt about that. So they'll get the point system. If that doesn't stop them the next step is a seating chart. After that, notices will be sent home with alarming regularity, and the worst offenders parents will be called. In my 12th grade class we worked on writing outlines, it is surprising how few of them they've ever done, half the kids didn't really know how to write one at all, and only knew some bizarre format for English that wasn't really an outline but more like 'things every english paper needs to cover.' Anyways, that seems to have helped them a bit I hope (as long as they actually USE the outlines of course). Here's hopin...

Benefits and Drawbacks to being a "small learning community"

Now in general small learning communities are a truly great idea. That being said there are some things that can get really annoying about them, so I'm going to list some of the pros and cons as I see them.

Pros

1. Students and teachers really get to know each other
• Aside from the obvious benefits this can also lead to greater overall control of the student body because everyone knows everyone (pretty much).
• This means students are less likely to slip through the cracks
• It is really easy to catch students skipping, etc.
  
2. Collaboration becomes far easier in the core subjects because students can be grouped together allowing classes to be coordinated
3. Classes tend to be smaller
4. Students get more personalized attention
5. I am the (un)official chair of the Social Studies department*(see note)
   

Cons

1. A lot of times fewer classes can be offered (the solution here is to have several small learning communities in a larger school building together so that there can be cross pollination when it comes to electives)
2. Teachers have to teach multiple classes (What I mean here is that I teach 3 different classes across 3 different periods, unlike my friend who only had to teach one class three different times last semester)
3. I have to be on multiple committees (I am on the recruitment and awards committees - I was assigned them)
4. Less able to have sports teams and clubs (this can also be solved by having multiple small learning communities grouped together into larger groups overall)

*Note: I went to a social studies committee chair meeting yesterday afternoon and it was actually pretty cool because it wasn't actually professional development. Instead we were talking to the head of social studies in DC and he was asking questions about how we should test students, how to get kids from middle school to high school, and other interesting stuff like that. A lot of the department chairs were really cool and it is a meeting that I would like to go to again if possible and something that I would like to participate more in if possible. This might be the way to get my whole wanting to be involved with policy thing out while still being in the classroom. Maybe I want to try and become a department chair at a larger high school or something (though I'm sure that would have plenty of drawbacks)

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.