Thin Day 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.  ¶ 6:34 AM 0 Comments

  Feb 8 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  ¶ 7:27 PM 0 Comments

  Feb 7 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.  ¶ 4:26 PM 0 Comments

  ... And We're Back! 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.  ¶ 7:26 PM 1 Comments

  The Last Part of the Semester 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.  ¶ 7:35 PM 0 Comments

  The Week 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.  ¶ 11:29 AM 0 Comments

  Friday 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.  ¶ 7:35 AM 0 Comments