The Teacher Dudie

Thin Day

2007-02-24T06:34:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we had many, many kids gone due to activities. There wasn't a whole lot I wanted to cover with that many absences, so after reading over a poem we played Apples to Apples. They loved it. The only problem I saw was that one 9th grader made a really big deal out of the "cocaine" card, and while looking over one of my Native American kids' shoulder, I noticed he had a card that said "discovering America." Cuuuuh-rist.

Feb 8

2007-02-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

Yesterday after school I headed over to the clinic to get my knee checked out. I injured it about two years ago and while it's never really given me major problems, it's never really healed quite right either. These days it's hard to leave it in a deep bend (in fact, it won't bend nearly as deeply as the other knee) and if I leave it bent for any period of time it's hard to straighten out without significant stiffness and/or pain.

So I finally decided that, now that I have decent insurance, I'd get it checked out. The P.A. at the clinic referred me to an orthopod here in town at 1:15 today.

Getting the time off wasn't too horrendous. Lennie, the head office lady, is notoriously melodramatic about teachers requesting time off. Such requests are usually recieved by deep sighs and minor comments about being lucky if she can find anyone to sub. This time, however, Lennie simply said, "I'll see what I can do and give you a call." A few minutes before the first bell rang, she called and said she had someone to cover the last three periods of the day.

So I headed over to the doctor's office. After the routine paperwork, I was escorted into a small exam room. The doctor came in, asked a few rapid fire questions, felt around my knee for a minute or two, and left. An assistant of some sort took me to an X-ray room, zoomed in on my knee for a few quick X-rays, and then escorted me back. I'd tried to crack a joke about making sure the X-ray machine didn't zap my manparts by mistake, and the tech just kind of blew me off. Everyone in the place was absolutely humorless.

Back in the exam room, I read for about three minutes before the doctor came back.

"There's nothing wrong," he said.

"Okay," I said.

"The X-ray doesn't show any bone damage at all, so the pain you're feeling might be due to cartilage. We'll need an MRI to know for sure. Any questions?"

"Uh, no..." I began. Actually, I had a ton of questions and still do. I just couldn't think of them right at that second.

"Good," the doctor snapped. "My assistant will get the MRI appointment set up." He left.

And that was that. The entire trip took 25 minutes, with the doctor actually speaking with me for a total of about three.

Meanwhile, back at school, I missed my last three classes - which was actually kind of a nice break - and two IEP meetings, which is not cool at all. I had the foresight to email the special ed people with my thoughts about the behavior and grades of the students in question.

Tonight I'm trying to put together some sort of plan. One of our instructional facilitators gave me some great ideas, and Fridays are always kind of lame anyway with absences and such, so we'll see what shakes.

9th - wasn't there; asked substitute to have the students start the unit 3.1 test essay portion
10th - HW 8 and 9; Latin lesson on T/W; heritage of language & culture

Feb 7

2007-02-07T16:26:00.000-08:00

We have a screwy schedule at STHS - it's called a "modified block" and it means we have 8 periods on Monday, Thursday, and Friday, and block schedule on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Wednesday is also an "early out" day, but when they say "early out," they mean "early out for the students," because for teachers it means "early out for the students and then an hour of bureaucracy."

The last half hour of early out Wednesday is dedicated - or supposed to be, anyway - to silent, sustained reading. Now, let me be clear: as a language arts teacher, I'm all for silent, sustained reading. The more kids read, the better.

The trick is getting them to read.

Today wasn't actually too bad. Oh, sure, some kids just refused to read and drew or spaced out, but the majority did read. One of my all-stars, a dreadlocked 14 year old whose cognitive abilities are far beyond his peers', had felt the need to belt out lovesongs during the previous class, but he calmed down once the reading started.

... And We're Back!

2007-02-06T19:26:00.000-08:00

What exactly does one say after an absence of this magnitude? I dunno. So I won't.

But here's the deal. I'm officially a teacher now, and I spent a good deal of last summer daydreaming about publishing a novel based on my experiences as a first year teacher. And for the first few months, I was able to go home at night and write out scenes, stories, and anecdotes from the classroom.

Eventually I started slacking, mostly because I was just plain exhausted at night. Sadly, this means that many of my best and funniest stories are pretty much lost. Oh, sure, I know the stories - but they've dulled considerably even when I think about them now.

So this blog will henceforth be my repository of classroom stories. Let the games begin.

The Last Part of the Semester

2005-12-06T19:35:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks of class have flown by, but we really haven't covered a whole lot of territory for reasons. First, after the previously mentioned discussion about Intelligent Design, we spent another day talking about other religious issues in school – specifically, the interesting collision between private religious schools and public university admission standards. Second, the semester is coming to a rather abrupt halt. Thinking about it now, the discussion about religion seems like it took place in an entirely different time of year.

That was the Monday before Thanksgiving. Since then, we were given a day to work in small groups on mini-lessons to be delivered in class. Our group is going tomorrow, but more on that in a minute. In the meantime, here's a quick overview of the other groups and their topics.

Home schooling – An interesting phenomenon. Mostly this has an effect on public education because families who choose to home school sometimes also expect services from public schools to be available. I thought the history of home schooling was pretty interesting, since the modern home school movement (all education was pretty much home schooling in this country's early years) it apparently started as a leftist reaction to "traditional" education methods. It has since evolved into a fairly well organized movement, often associated with religious fundamentalists. Big surprise.

Zero Tolerance Policies – I'll admit that these policies originally made sense, but the presentation really made me think about how effective ZT policies really are or aren't. Long story short, I think that ZT policies can and should be used for certain offenses, but the result of those offenses should not always result in expulsion. Rather, I think schools should establish which particular offenses should be covered under ZT policies and then establish a procedure which guarantees the student has a chance to explain his or her actions. I think kids who point chicken tenders at other kids should probably not get sent home. This all hinges on the idea of local districts maintaining authority over their own ZT policies with perhaps some federal guidelines for what must be covered, like sex offenses, etc.

Moving Beyond Tolerance – This one was pretty straightforward. The group mostly outlined a few strategies for confronting racism in schools, and then had us write our thoughts on some posters.

Class Size – Just thinking about this one on my own, it makes intuitive sense that class sizes should be as small as possible, although our instructor did provide some interesting evidence to suggest that there is such a thing as a class that's too small. As with so many other issues in education, this one comes down to money – the largest chunk of school funding is teacher salaries.

Meanwhile, our group presents tomorrow on charter schools. Tonight I'm bringing all of our notes together for a handout and quiz, and also compiling everyone's citations. I'll be leading a brief discussion of the pros and cons of charter schools, and hopefully I'll have enough time to get into the propaganda on both sides in the debate. Charter schools are fine in theory and perhaps even on a grand, revolutionary scale that would scare some charter school proponents to death. But curriculum control is a big issue, especially when there are so many forces aligned against multicultural issues in education. I think charter schools may be the next battlefront in the culture wars. In the meantime, I have a ton of work yet to do tonight in this class alone – don't get me started on the amount of work for my other classes.

The Week

2005-11-20T11:29:00.000-08:00

This week we read articles and talked in class about a few issues that are important to me, most notably school funding. If you know me at all, you know that I'm pissed off about school funding.

We also had a guest speaker on Wednesday who talked about students with disabilities. Here again I was pretty interested because out of sheer coincidence I had had a troubling conversation with another Ed. major about funding and disabilities. This person had said something like, "as a business investment, we spend way too much on students with disabilities and not enough on the gifted and talented kids." I wrote to a former professor of mine looking for guidance on how to respond, and he wrote back with a simply fantastic answer... my current instructor even let me read that email to our class. Good stuff.

And then Friday... well, Friday reminded me just how tricky the evolution/intelligent design debate can be. Our instructor couched intelligent design in terms of a compromise between evolution and creationism, and because I had spoken enough that day, I didn't give the ID advocates the earfull they so richly deserve. ID is not a compromise. It is not, as our instructor said, halfway between evolution and creationism. ID is 99 steps from evolution and 1 step away from creationism. Everything I've read about ID indicates that its proponents, at least the vocal ones, are Christian.

My concern here is twofold: first, that teaching anything other than scientific fact in a science class subverts just about everything school should stand for. I'm aghast - literally aghast - at the idea of ID being taught in public schools, simply because it is an infinitely regressive argument and therefore not scientific fact and therefore not appropriate for public school. It is a religious theory, not a scientific one. It is, at its core, a transparent attempt to bring God into the classroom. Its proponents tend to argue that, well, if you can't prove it, how can you argue against it? To which I would say, well, we can't prove Yellowstone Lake was created by a giant bird who dropped water from its beak, either, so we probably shouldn't teach it.

Which brings me to my second concern. If we're going to teach human origins in anything other than scientific terms like "hydrogen" and "water" and "useless leftover organs like the appendix that sure don't seem like they were designed by some intelligent creator," then we're going to wind up devoting a whole lot of time to a whole lot of creation myths. In other words, if we teach ID, what's to stop other groups from insisting that their version of human origin be taught? I'm envisioning weeks of story time dedicated to every single creation myth ever, replete with quizzes on trivial "facts" of various groups' belief systems. As soon as we open the door to ID, we open the door to every religious wackjob and their wild-ass guess at where we came from.

Let's keep this one simple: if it can't be proven, it shouldn't be taught in science class. If you don't want your kid to believe in evolution, if you want your child to be cowed into religious obeisance in the face of reason, fine. Teach them at home or at a religious school. But as long as they're in public school, they will learn about one of the most important scientific theories in the history of human existence.

Friday

2005-11-12T07:35:00.000-08:00

On Friday we discussed a few different articles about SES and school funding, which is my biggest hot button issue in education. Thankfully, the rest of the class also seemed to get it, so maybe there's hope for change somewhere down the road. If you're not angry about school funding, you really, really should be.

Catch-up

2005-11-10T15:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'll readily admit that there's no way I can accurately describe everything that's been going on in class for the past three weeks. I'll summarize as best I can, and then elaborate on an interesting thing that happened in class on Wednesday.

October 24 - Our readings for today were about gay slurs in school, and our responsibilities as teachers when we hear such slurs. I think it's interesting that often, our response will depend on the school's policy. While I pretty much think teachers have a moral obligation to address sexual harrassment of any sort, it may also be encumbant upon us to report those incidents if our school has a Zero Tolerance policy.

October 26 & 28 - The university has a GLBT group that does "safezone" training for people who will be affected by gay/lesbian issues. I've been through watered down versions of this training a few times now as part of my other job, so this wasn't really new. What was new, though, were some of the stats behind just how many people are affected by GBLT issues or are gay themselves. There is absolutely no doubt that I'll be dealing with this stuff in the classroom one way or another.

October 31 - Wore my Hunter S. Thompson costume to class. Two people got it instantly and cracked up. Everyone else looked at me weird. This is precisely how the rest of the population generally reacts to that costume. In class we discussed socioeconomic status (SES), one of my Big Issues.

November 2 - In class we talked about class and did an interesting chart. We discussed the fact that a ridiculously low percentage of the population controls a ridiculously high percentage of the wealth. Not good.

November 4 - I missed this class, since I was at the local high school doing surveys for another class. Before the period started my mentor teacher told me it was her most problematic class, and while it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd imagined it would be, it was still pretty out of control. My mentor had to redirect and/or refocus discussions at least 7 times, and in the surveys the responses indicated that most of these students really don't like reading/writing. Turns out something like 6 of the students in this class have been on IEPs or in alternative schools as recently as last month.

November 7 - Our readings focused on the issue of legacies in college admissions, an issue which I honestly had not given much thought to. Turns out I should. Legacies (children of alumni) often are less qualified than other studens and also perform below average once admitted to prestigious schools. This comes at the cost of other, more academically qualified students not getting admitted to the school - and the sad fact is, an Ivy League school on your resume does wonders for your career.

November 9 - This brings us to last Wednesday.

On Wednesday, we split into groups and devised classroom rules. This seemed pretty straightforward, and since I've already had to do that on a few different occasions, the most recent being for an online portfolio over the summer, I just pulled a few rules out of my memory and suggested them. One of them is, "water, fruit, and breakfast bars are the only snacks allowed in class."

Now, this seems eminently reasonable to me, or it did seem eminently reasonable. Unless someone can convince me otherwise, I won't allow candy or soda in my classrooms. For one, I don't need my students going bezerk on sugar rushes while I'm trying to teach. I also think students get distracted by the pretty wrappers. Finally, I fully intend to be the kind of teacher who practices what he preaches; I, too, will drink only water (so no coffee for me in the classroom, which might be one of the toughest aspects of my teaching career).

Okay, so I suggested this rule, and other students suggested their ideas, and the instructor wrote them all down on a document projected onto the wall. As a class we went over the list and hammered out details.

Then the instructor read a letter from a woman living in poverty. Now, I've lived in poverty - in Laramie 13 years ago and for a few months in Seattle in late 1997. It's not pretty; I remember having $7 to my name on a Sunday morning, starving, and not getting paid until the following Friday. I've gone hungry, folks, and I've been to that point where your pride is shattered because you're crying on the phone with your mom, asking for money even though you're an adult and should be making it on your own, and failing. I didn't steal or anything, but I was tempted. And I damn sure learned a lesson about how ridiculously out of touch it is to say "well, the poor are just too lazy to bring themselves up." By the grace of God I had family to support me. If I hadn't, things might have gotten dramatically worse.

So in class we had a discussion about poverty and not blaming the poor for being poor. One guy in the class whose previous comments have hinted at typical redneck cluelessness, said something about homeless people in his hometown taking advantage of the system. Our instructor promptly addressed his jackassery (and at this point I should mention that I've struggled lately with negotiating the boundary between letting dumb comments go and standing up for what I believe in... and have made the conscious decision to start pushing back on the bullshit).

After that discussion, the instructor went down the list of classroom rules we'd created, and brilliantly revealed the assumptions almost all of us had made. . . in other words, the rules almost invariably referred to material items like cell phones, clothing, or grooming standards: things which people in poverty simply cannot always afford to pay attention to. And then the instructor came to my rule about water, fruit, and breakfast bars and said, "Do you really think poor kids have ever had breakfast bars or fruit in the pantry?"

Now, I stand by my rule. I think it's a good rule and ultimately leads to a healthier lifestyle. But it sure did make me think long and hard. It was one of those moments, which I personally think are good for the soul, that forced me to take a new perspective and evaluate what I'd believed.

Happy Amazonersary to Me!

2005-10-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

On October 22, 1997, I woke up on a mattress on my friend's living room floor, grabbed a cup of coffee at an espresso stand on Seattle's Broadway Avenue, and caught the 7 bus (or maybe the 34) downtown. Autumn in Seattle is a very special time; ragged gold clouds hover over the Olympic Mountains in the morning, and dead leaves lie in the gutters, waiting for the day's inevitable shower to wash them into the Sound. The city smells clean, even at the bus stops.

Once downtown I made a connection for a bus that took me south, into Seattle's industrial district, past the Kingdome and the site where two new stadiums would rise, past the West Seattle Bridge, past gloomy warehouses and grimy storefronts, to the intersection of 1st and Dawson. The bus was full of people who looked nothing like me, most of whom got off at the same stop. We walked as a group to the front door of the large warehouse. Once inside, a guy with dreadlocks looked up our names on a clipboard and sent us off to report to various corners, tables, or more likely, groups of metal carts.

Amazon.com was indeed the Earth's Biggest Bookstore, but only in the technical sense. There was no fiction section; no row of Tom Robbins selections. Rather, on any given (though labeled) spot on a shelf, there would be hundreds of copies of the same book. My first job, as a temp, was to pick books: you grabbed a library cart, signed out a sheaf of packing slips (the same slips you received with your order) with titles and bin numbers, and away you went.

We all looked like freaks. Seattle in 1997 was Goth heaven. If you weren't Goth, you were punk – what the blues are to Chicago, punk is to Seattle. But the freakishness belied the unbelievable niceness of the city and its various subcultures. And everyone, absolutely everyone, smoked.

I was even a freak for being normal by most standards. But that was part of Amazon's secret – the informal motto was that no one cared what you looked like, as long as you worked hard. It was the closest thing to a genuine meritocracy I've ever seen. Some of my punk friends had barely graduated from high school, yet were assistant managers making important decisions every day. Jeff Bezos stopped by the warehouse many times, as often as not with a group of gawking suits. He really is a funny guy, and he really is a genius. He really did deserve Time's Man of the Year award in 1999.

Eventually I was hired on fulltime, one of two temps from our group of 37 to get offered a position. A few months later I moved on to the Customer Service department downtown, a shorter bus ride and more often than not, an ass-kicking bike ride up Pine Street after work. I worked my way up in CS, becoming a trainer and loving it, and taking a position as a salaried Training Manager in West Virginia because I thought I needed more of a challenge. By then it was 2000, our stock was about to plunge, and we started hearing rumors of dress codes for CS. I moved to Lexington as a low-level salaried manager in a warehouse. Two years later, sick of spreadsheets, Six Sigma, and the unrelenting pushiness of MBAs (we old-schoolers called them "Management By Ass") and new-to-the-company upper echelon managers, I quit.

Happy Amazonersary, Teacherdudie. Glad I did it. Wouldn't go back for the world.

Sex and Freshmen

2005-10-20T15:50:00.000-07:00

The past three class periods have been dedicated to discussions of gender expectations and sexual orientation. Now, I'm totally fine with this stuff, and I don't mind talking about it in a college level class, but I was a little surprised to hear some of the students saying things like "I think high school students need to hear this."

Which, on its surface, is entirely true. Your average 17 year old certainly does need to hear about sexual orientation and gender expectations and that Othering someone because of those things is simply unacceptable. What I have a problem with is me being the one addressing it. I'm an English teacher. Unless we're talking about a text, I have no business discussing these things with high school students. Not to mention the fact that in the current political climate in education (see, for example, the discourse surrounding the Intelligent Design hooey), any teacher who opens his or her yap about sexual orientation is likely to get crucified by some self-righteous parent.

There are some things that need to be taught, but never will be, in public school.

Gendered

2005-10-12T14:32:00.000-07:00

For the past week or so in one of my education classes, the sole topic of discussion has been gender. Gendered behavior, gendered expectations, gendered roles, and any combination of the three. Today's reading assignment discussed how gender operates in schools, and was specifically an indictment of the "boys under assault" theory perpetuated by several authors over the past few years. Now, like the article's author, I'm always willing to listen to theories that sound silly, so when I first heard about books like this, I thought, maybe they have a point. Maybe all the attention we've been giving to girls has in fact hurt boys. Maybe boys have actually been victimized by attempts at gender equality; maybe boys have unintentionally been marginlized by Title IX. Maybe, I thought to myself, they have a point.

They do not, in fact, have a point. They are, in fact, full of crap.

Behind the research (my favorite quote from the Publishers Weekly review: ". . . she bolsters her findings with extensive footnotes and data from such sources as the U.S. Department of Education." Because, you know, anyone kooky enough to claim that boys are treated unfairly in schools had better be swinging some heavy lumber in the research department), behind the alarmist rhetoric, behind all this BS about boys being victims in schools, one can see what's really going on. Conservative authors are taking the culture wars into public schools, where they perceive the Left has an advantage; specifically, this boys-as-victims hooey is a political reaction to feminism, a movement which very astutely noticed that adult women weren't the only ones affected by sexist behavior. So while feminists were the first ones to point out that a problem exists in public schools, and that the problem was rooted in sexism, the spate of authors claiming that the discourse is hurting boys are actually the ones politicizing the discussion.

I'm willing to bet these authors aren't necessarily all that concerned about how boys are treated in the classroom, unless they are directly related to said boys. I'm also willing to bet these authors are very concerned about advancing a political agenda that includes refuting feminism.

So in class we talked a little bit about this stuff and I mostly kept my yap shut. We did briefly discuss the notion that boys need good role models, at which point little bells went off in my head. Yes, boys certainly do need good role models, but male teachers aren't - and cannot and should not be - the only place those role models are found.

And that train of thought opens up a huge can of worms that I just don't feel like getting into here.

Hallelujah!

2005-10-12T14:30:00.000-07:00

I just found out that I'll be allowed to keep my RA job when I do my student teaching in the spring. This is almost entirely good news, except that it means I have to be an RA and live in a cinderblock for another semester. But at least it means food, shelter, and not moving my crap in the middle of winter.

a quick summary

2005-10-10T08:45:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a relatively laid-back two weeks. Mostly we've been focusing on coming up with essential questions and thesis statements, in preparation for writing our big paper. Actually, "big" isn't really the right word- it's only 9 pages, and with research and an interesting topic, that's fairly easy to write. Then again, I haven't been writing well - or motivated - this semester, so maybe I need to be careful not to jinx myself.

I think I'll be focusing on the correlation between school funding and test scores. This interests me for a few reasons, mostly because I'm strongly inclined to pursue justice in areas where I perceive an unfair advantage. Unfortunately, those areas are usually connected somehow to people I know and like (friends of my dad and stepmom, for example) or conflict directly with friends/family in philosophy.

Somehow I have to reconcile all this, but it probably doesn't make any sense without more detail. Complicating matters is the fact that I am a product of the system I now criticize.

So, let me just come out and say it: school funding is categorically unfair. If you defend the practice of funding schools based on property values (or at least, distributing money based on local property values, thereby keeping tax revenue confined to your own school district), you are complicit in an unfair system. Don't harp at me about your hard-earned money; don't tell me that you're taxed unfairly already. I don't care about your perception of the government's tax philosophy.

I used to think this was an implicitly racist system, and I'm willing to bet some data would back that up. I'm thinking now, however, that it's less about overt racism (although some attitudes in suburbia, reflected by those in power, are repugnantly ill-informed) and more about the rich protecting themselves.

Don't get me wrong. I don't blame people for being rich (but I used to). I do blame them for being cold and thoughtless about their wealth.

Now, given my upbringing in an upper middle-class family, I need to stress that A) yes, I'm biting the hand that fed me - almost literally and B) I'm actually fiscally conservative on most issues... with one big exception reserved for school funding.

Okay, I actually need to head to class. More on this later.

The Past Week, pt. II

2005-09-25T10:04:00.000-07:00

On Monday and Wednesday we watched Bowling for Columbine, which is often a very powerful film and occasionally hilarious. If you haven't seen it I do recommend checking it out, despite whatever apprehension you have about Michael Moore. In fact, if you've never seen a Michael Moore film but have heard all about how evil he is, I strongly recommend checking it out. Don't let the media - whether conservative or liberal - tell you how to think about his movies. See them for yourself.

On Friday we read an article about how race issues might shape up by the middle of this century and had an interesting conversation afterwards.

That's really about it.

The Past Week

2005-09-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

Well, technically I was supposed to journal about the following questions over a week ago, but then I had a big weekend trip out of town and then I got distracted by schoolwork during the week, so I'm only getting around to these now.

How do "white people" balance issues of ethnic pride with historical perspectives of social justice?

Well, some don't. But most do, and I think they do it through domestic traditions such as family recipes and traditions. In my case, my German and Scottish ancestry directly links me to some fairly nasty episodes in European and North American history. My great-great grandparents were German immigrants who settled on land once inhabited by Native people. Is that my personal fault? No, of course not. But I am a direct beneficiary of the farm and the prosperity that followed.

The thing is, I don't particularly feel German or Scottish. I feel white, yes, but my ethnicity is really less and less important to me as the years go by. I used to really enjoy reading about Scottish history (and my mom even made me a kilt once), but these days I just don't really care anymore - mostly because the more I thought about this infatuation I had with my Scottishness, the more I realized the claim was in name only. I have a Scottish surname. Big whoop. That doesn't make me Scottish any more than painting the word "turbo" on the side of a '78 Gremlin makes it go faster.

What does it mean to be "white?"

It means being not categorized as something else. Just like being rich means not having to worry about money, being white means not having to worry about race. I'm growing more and more convinced of this.

What is the role of social class?

To separate and categorize. I have yet to figure out why people need to classify other people, but I think it has something to do with how easy it is to deal with someone when you can categorize them first, especially if that categorization is "Other."

Does "whiteness" justify/explain cultural exclusion - i.e., "I'm American, everyone else should be!"

Nope. The whole discourse around Otherness is not, in fact, about "liking" differences in culture; it's about recognizing that the differences exist and are not a basis for making value judgments.

Monday, 9/12 and Wednesday, 9/14

2005-09-14T16:23:00.000-07:00

On Monday we had a guest speaker from the College of Education. Mostly he talked about the university's phase program and how it affects students at different levels of their academic careers. This reminded me of a pretty funny story about a typo on my Phase III application, and after class I asked our instructor if I could share the story today. The Phase III application is the ream of paperwork that goes from the College of Education to various school districts in the state as seniors apply for student teaching positions in the state.

Our instructor very graciously allowed me to offer some quick advice at the beginning of class today. It was mostly common sense, but the most important thing to impart to students filling out this application in my mind is to spell-check. When I filled out my application, I had included a sentence that went something like, "A few of my residents attended Local High and enjoyed their English classes because. . . " Or at least, that's what I meant to write. What I actually wrote was ". . . attended Local high and enjoyed. . . "

See the subtle difference? In the first sentence, the students attended Local High School. In the second sentence, the sentence in my official application, those students attended school while high. This, you might guess, could be construed as slightly problematic.

I got it fixed before too many people saw it, but it's a funny enough story that I thought I should share it with the class. I think a few of them got it, but mostly this class is a year away from filling out their application anyway so I think some of them were uninterested and definitely unimpressed.

Which is fine. They didn't enroll in this class to hear a grad student tell funny stories about an application they don't care about. But I think the few people who are about to fill out their Phase III application appreciated the effort; at least one student in the class scribbled furious notes as I taught.

An interesting day, all in all.

Friday, 9/9

2005-09-11T19:34:00.000-07:00

In class on Friday we mostly talked about our papers. The conversation mostly focused on how each of us had at one point experienced Otherness and how we might use that experience as teachers. A pretty laid-back day.

Dichotomizing and "Racism in the English Language"

2005-09-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

In Wednesday's class we talked about the ways in which society aggregates and disaggregates people. This is fairly straightforward stuff; think of how we single people out or better yet how you have been singled out, and then try to understand why and how that happened. This is essentially a discourse about Otherness, a theory that dates back to Lacan for sure but was probably around long before that.

It occurred to me during this discussion that one of the main reasons we habitually create Otherness is that it's simply easier to deal with someone when they are categorized. Assigning Other qualities to someone lessens the emotional workload required to actually engage and accept someone whose backgrounds are vastly different from our own.

Meanwhile, the reading was also interesting. It dealt mostly with the seemingly innocuous but very problematic nature of connotations, especially when it comes to color, in English. I've actually given this stuff a lot of thought before, and I've come to think there are three kinds of problematic speech: the obvious use of offensive language (think of the high school teacher correcting a kid who says a homework assignment "is so totally gay"); the hidden but important connotations of color as discussed in the reading; and finally, the power structures embedded in language as identified and explained by Foucoult, Derrida, and all those other French dudes (my life will never be the same after that Senior Seminar class). I won't get into that last one other than to say that those in power protect themselves via language in many different ways, most of which are very hard to detect.

Good stuff!

A Raison D'etre

2005-09-08T15:34:00.000-07:00

As it turns out, we're supposed to journal in one of my Ed. classes. As it also turns out, my instructor actually said the words, "If you blog you can just post to that and call it good."

Well, alrighty!

Thus, The Teacher Dudie will be posting mostly about that class from now until December. Sure, sure, he may post other relevant things as well, but be prepared for reflection and rambling pertaining to obscure reading assignments with which you, gentle reader, will probably be unfamiliar.

Ready?

Screw You, APA!

2005-07-26T15:55:00.000-07:00

As a former English major, I'm a big fan of MLA formatting. It's handy. It's contraction-friendly. And you're even allowed to start sentences with "And."

APA on the other hand is a pain. I understand the necessity of having formatting rules, and I understand the necessity of standardization of those rules, but I don't understand why the rules themselves have to be so ridiculously nitpicky.

I got an 18/20 on my paper. I lost points because of APA formatting issues. Grrrr.

A Moment of Educator-ese

2005-07-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from a paper I'm writing:

The current system in the United States suggests implicitly that some students are more valuable than others because of their ethnicity or economic status and that prosperity is the primary measurement of success. From my constructivist perspective, the ideal education system would not only be structured to provide true, meaningful equal opportunities, but its curriculum would be designed to encourage children to think about and understand the world and their role in it. Education must inspire inquiry.

Poetry, man. Poetry.

Observation Day

2005-07-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

Part of my current class requirements includes an observation at a local school. Now, observations are tricky in this state during the regular school year, and during summer it's even trickier. Mostly this has to do with school availability – there simply aren't enough classes going on within a reasonable distance. The only schooling going on in town right now is at the elementary school; our class is filled with Secondary Ed. majors, so observing wee little tykes didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Of course, that didn't stop us from trying it anyway.

Now, I'm terrified of all little kids to whom I am not directly related. They scream when they feel like screaming. They say wildly inappropriate things. They smell. Which I guess is to say, they're just like grownups but without all the layers of grownup bullshit. And so on the car ride over to the school I had visions of being traumatized by unholy terrors who would peer deep into my soul and promptly rip it out.

After a quick meeting with the principal, we picked rooms with corresponding grades we thought we'd like – which struck me as similar to asking which method of torture we'd prefer. Seeing no difference between bamboo shoots and cold pliers, I sat back and waited for everyone to pick first. When it came my turn I had a choice between 3rd graders and a mixed class of 4th and 5th graders. Thinking back to my elementary school days, I remembered that my 3rd grade year was very, very bad. I hated my teacher Mrs. Jensen. Oh, how I hated that woman and oh, how she hated me. She sure was mean for a grandmotherly type.

Hell, I thought, might as well face those demons. Forget the bamboo and pliers, comrade, I'll take hard labor in the gulag! And so off to 3rd grade I went, prodded and joined by my classmate A., whose sister is a teacher at this school.

After brief introductions with the teacher and paraprofessional, the kids came in, keyed up and sweaty. This class always begins with a community circle, which is designed to start the day on a socially positive note.

As we stood in the circle, a girl with stringy hair and big eyes looked up at me. I smiled. She moved two steps away, hiding behind the boy next to her even though she's the tallest kid in the class. The idea behind the circle is that each person holds an inflatable rabbit head ball, tells the group their name and their favorite place (that second part changes daily), and then passes the rabbit head to the right. When it came to the little girl she passed immediately, and it was my turn.

I stammered. Who am I? How do I want these kids to address me? Until that very moment, I hadn't thought about it one damn bit. I looked at A for support. She shrugged. I looked, panic-stricken, at the teacher.

"Just tell us your name," she said.

"I'm Mr. P.," I said. Forgetting that I was supposed to also share my favorite place, I passed to the boy next to me.

We went around the circle like that, kids telling their names and favorite places, me standing there terrified but projecting confidence. Hey, when all else fails, act like you're in charge.

So I was standing there with my hands on my hips, and soon I felt a tickle on the back of my left wrist. I looked down, and the previously shy girl was trying to stick her head through the gap between my arm and torso. I smiled but moved my hands into my pockets. She pulled my hand out of my pocket, put it back where it was, and stuck her head all the way through.

Panic, Hunter S. Thompson once wrote. It crept up my spine like the first rising vibes of an acid frenzy.

Now, I've never done acid, but goddamn if my spine didn't get chilly as the girl kept playing with my arm.

"Amanda*," Mrs. C said. Amanda didn't respond. Amanda was clutching my wrist and staring at my watch.

"Amanda," Mrs. C. said again. Amanda hid behind me.

"AMANDA," Mrs. C. said, "you are disrupting the community circle. George is waiting patiently for his turn but he can't go because you're not paying attention."

Amanda let go of my arm but didn't exactly stand at attention while George spoke. The community circle wrapped up, and then the kids broke into groups for their reading project.

The reading project basically involved groups of three kids taking sections of a book, reading and/or memorizing lines, and then acting out those lines in chronological order. A and I worked with the same group of three boys because it was pretty obvious they needed help (I should mention that a pretty high percentage of the kids attending summer school at this school have mild to severe emotional and/or learning challenges). As we watched and tried to keep them on track, though, I noticed it wasn't that they couldn't read – one of the kids who had struggled in the community circle could blaze through his parts without any problems – they simply had a hard time concentrating.

And actually, even that's not accurate. Saying they had a hard time concentrating makes it sound like they knew they were supposed to be concentrating. Without being unduly harsh, I'm not convinced these little guys really understood what was going on.

The recess bell rang.

I saw teams forming up in the field beyond the playground. The principal held a red playground ball and was generally leading traffic from the pitcher's mound. Is it? Could it be? Why yes, yes it is. It's a game of kickball.

Once I got within about 20 feet of the field, kids from the class (including two from the reading group) asked me if I wanted to play. I wasn't dressed for it, but try telling that to a swarm of excited kids. Besides, I was planning on playing the second I saw the red playground ball. I can buy new pants; I can't let this experience get away.

A. joined in on our team, too, with a few other adults helping the opposite team. I joked with my instructor, who had come over to watch, that this would be a perfect Adam Sandler moment – just take that playground ball and start beaming little kids in a random demonstration of might. Instead, I kicked a few weak foul balls until finally poking one into shallow right.

A. followed and blasted one into deep right. As I was rounding second base, one of the kids pointed up at me and said, "She kicked it harder than you did!" And as much as I wanted to turn that great teaching moment into a lesson about gender expectations, I was too busy trying to get to third base wearing dress shoes and slacks. I had a kickball game to win.

Actually, there were no clear winners. The principal made sure each and every kid got a chance to kick, and pretty soon the bell rang.

After recess the kids presented their sections of the book. Mostly the kids just got up and read from their book, hopping around the room when prompted either by the plot or by the teacher. Our group was by far the least prepared, but also the most willing to improv. In the midst of a story about an alligator that decides to add children to its daily lunch menu, the kid acting the part of the alligator said, "I have clever tricks and nasty plans, and I'm hoping to find a little child to eat who has a whole bunch of extra chub."

Some of the adults in the audience cried from laughing so hard.

After the presentations we only had a few minutes left, and the kids worked on math flashcards. Once again A. and I worked with the same three boys, who just weren't interested in flashcards. Pretty soon it was time for us to go.

(We returned the next day and observed other classes; this time I went to that mixed 4th and 5th grade class, which presented its own unique set of challenges and experiences – but I'll skip the details on that one.)

Lessons I Learned From Observing Elementary Kids

1. Any activity that lets kids share their personal experiences is guaranteed to have great participation.

2. Boys really seem to need physical activity at recess; they also really liked and respected (as best as that term can be applied to 7 year olds) the teachers/administrators who participated with them.

3. This experience went a long way in alleviating the fears I had about kids. I'm even thinking about dedicating some of my non-existent spare time to volunteering at the local Boys & Girls Club.

4. Elementary education is all about soul. There's simply no other way to put it.

[*Obviously, names have been changed.]