Monday, October 27, 2003
The path before me lies...
Yesterday morning, I walked towards my classroom as I normally do on Monday morning only to be confronted by approximately 30 dead (or dying) mice and rats lying in the middle of the hallway. The exterminator had apparently forgotten to remove all of the traps and had instead chosen to display his handiwork proudly to all the passersby.
As I stood for a moment and watched those rodents, trapped and dying with their quivering hind legs still moving in an all too clearly vain struggle for escape (conscious or otherwise), I realized how very appropriate the imagery was given the circumstance. I think I sometimes see the same expressions in the eyes of my students as I close the door to my classroom.
NB: One respondent noted that there is a sizable contingent of rap and mainstream hip-hop figures who have actively attempted to promote education and self-awareness through their music, including Chuck D, Mos Def, and dead prez. To clarify, in my previous post, I did not intend to discount their efforts, merely to emphasize that those messages are not really having as broad an effect as I wish they might. (Also, just in case people fear I have lapsed entirely into depressed cynicism, rest assured that I do have a few good students...but their stories do not weigh nearly as heavily on my mind.)
Yesterday morning, I walked towards my classroom as I normally do on Monday morning only to be confronted by approximately 30 dead (or dying) mice and rats lying in the middle of the hallway. The exterminator had apparently forgotten to remove all of the traps and had instead chosen to display his handiwork proudly to all the passersby.
As I stood for a moment and watched those rodents, trapped and dying with their quivering hind legs still moving in an all too clearly vain struggle for escape (conscious or otherwise), I realized how very appropriate the imagery was given the circumstance. I think I sometimes see the same expressions in the eyes of my students as I close the door to my classroom.
NB: One respondent noted that there is a sizable contingent of rap and mainstream hip-hop figures who have actively attempted to promote education and self-awareness through their music, including Chuck D, Mos Def, and dead prez. To clarify, in my previous post, I did not intend to discount their efforts, merely to emphasize that those messages are not really having as broad an effect as I wish they might. (Also, just in case people fear I have lapsed entirely into depressed cynicism, rest assured that I do have a few good students...but their stories do not weigh nearly as heavily on my mind.)
Studenticulture: Not a word.
Nothing like a school assembly to make one realize how vacuous and superficial the American media has rendered the youth of the nation. Such was the case on Thursday when last period was cut short so that all the ninth graders could hear the music of an authentic New Orleans blues musician. The performance, delayed due to general lateness to the auditorium, was actually very good, but I doubt that most of my students appreciated it. In fact, I found it hard to focus on the music with students talking or complaining about the heat. The concert had been preceded by a silly skit by the school drama group pushing students to expand their musical horizons beyond hip-hop, but given the fact that students in my class were laughing uncontrollably during a blues concert, I have a feeling the suggestion fell on deaf ears.
It was an experience which confirmed in my mind the persistent danger of the uncontrolled and unmitigated exposure to media which I fear has facilitated the near complete brainwashing of my students. My more left leaning acquaintances may wonder how I can so wholeheartedly embrace this established watchcry of the conservative establishment, and given my relatively short experience in the classroom, they might have some justification to their argument. I say however that even with only a few months under my belt, several trends have become all too apparent among my students, and the media is the entity that might most effectively explain the majority of them. This is not to belittle other socioeconomic, racial, or other factors that might have had an impact on modern society as a whole or the microcosm that is my classroom. Those are certainly important...but the specific issues with which I concern myself here, though perhaps created by those factors are almost certainly reinforced by the pernicious specter of the modern media.
Perhaps the foremost of these is the sheer egoism of my students...their self-centered view of the world. Aristotle had nothing on these guys...if it were up to some of my students, the sun would revolve around them. Now some might say that such is the typical teenage attitude, and in part they would be right. Clearly, my high school students, like their peers all over the world, are more concerned with their own personal and social development than with the content I am delivering in the classroom. This is understandable. This I can accept. What I can not accept is their setting forth the idea that they already know everything and refuse to believe that a teacher might know more than them. One of my students, who right now is failing my course, had the gall to tell me a few weeks ago that he knew more about science than I did.
“Oh,” I said. “Look...you are a ninth grader. This is your first high school science course. I am your teacher. I have taken 4 years of high school science and many years of college science courses. It is very unlikely that you know more science than I do.” (The student confirmed my point to be correct by showing he was unable to draw straight lines correctly with a metric ruler. He remained undeterred.)
How does the media play into this? (I can already see some of you wondering if I was planning to abandon my little thesis...) Look at the sitcoms or listen to the music that my students are exposed to on a daily basis. The protagonists of these t.v. shows or rap songs are all equally egoistic. Their adventures and experiences seem to indicate a world created for their amusement. The world is not a place to learn or grow, but to coast by on personality...with enough personality, money, fame, women, fast cars...all these things will come. They come to school to be entertained, not educated...and when they find the material boring, they stand up and put on a show.
This segues neatly into another issue, the disconnect between hard work and success. My students view the antics of sports stars, cinema icons, and musicians on a daily basis. They talk about them all the time. They see their success and wonder why they shouldn’t have an equally good shot. No problem at all there. But, thanks to a very limited media-guided perception, they also assume that such success will be automatic. I can’t tell you how many of my students think they are going to be basketball players someday, but I do know that those who do tend to think my class is less relevant than those who don’t. Most likely they are the ones who on a constant basis tell me that I am trying to fail them. Of course...that’s the reason I let you have full access to your notes! Because I’m trying to fail you! (My reasoning on this last point never seems to fully get through.)
And then there is the issue of authority figures. How many admired rap idols do you know who exhort obedience, diligence, or respect for teachers in their music? I have as yet not found one. and would imagine relatively few exist. Face it, that kind of message would not be popular. The consequences however are that students are instead encouraged to take the opposite approach to authority, constantly questioning and attacking it. They take personal offense at little things like wearing a uniform or being asked not to chew gum or just going to the bathroom before class....or doing classwork!
Moving back to that assembly for a moment, consider this situation. After the musician’s set, the drama group came on to give a demonstration of improv. They did an activity called the hotseat, where students in the audience were given a choice of three situations and they could vote which they wanted to see acted out. Needless to say the final one, featuring a student who socked the princiapl in the jaw, got near overwhelming support, and during the course of the skit any time the actress playing the offending student badmouthed the principal she was greeted with booming cheers and catcalls. The other student on stage, who was attempting to be a voice of reason, was similarly booed. Given that the principal was in the room, I don’t know how the students could be so bold. I also do not know what the drama group was thinking...by the end of that afternoon, part of me was seriously wondering if a riot might break out.
Anyhow, the point of all this rambling is that student attitudes towards stink and I feel that the media is if not responsible than highly influential in cultivating them. This is no doubt reinforced by environmental factors (family structure, etc.), but the media strikes me as a somewhat more malleable force. Less inertia than most other parts of the system. If change were possible, I think it might best be achieved through that avenue.
I remember reading that Dorothy Parker, pressed by some of her Algonquin Round Table associates to use horticulture in a sentence quipped that you can “lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.” If only studenticulture were a word, then I could achieve a similar level of erudite wit in making my observations, instead of merely becoming depressed.
Nothing like a school assembly to make one realize how vacuous and superficial the American media has rendered the youth of the nation. Such was the case on Thursday when last period was cut short so that all the ninth graders could hear the music of an authentic New Orleans blues musician. The performance, delayed due to general lateness to the auditorium, was actually very good, but I doubt that most of my students appreciated it. In fact, I found it hard to focus on the music with students talking or complaining about the heat. The concert had been preceded by a silly skit by the school drama group pushing students to expand their musical horizons beyond hip-hop, but given the fact that students in my class were laughing uncontrollably during a blues concert, I have a feeling the suggestion fell on deaf ears.
It was an experience which confirmed in my mind the persistent danger of the uncontrolled and unmitigated exposure to media which I fear has facilitated the near complete brainwashing of my students. My more left leaning acquaintances may wonder how I can so wholeheartedly embrace this established watchcry of the conservative establishment, and given my relatively short experience in the classroom, they might have some justification to their argument. I say however that even with only a few months under my belt, several trends have become all too apparent among my students, and the media is the entity that might most effectively explain the majority of them. This is not to belittle other socioeconomic, racial, or other factors that might have had an impact on modern society as a whole or the microcosm that is my classroom. Those are certainly important...but the specific issues with which I concern myself here, though perhaps created by those factors are almost certainly reinforced by the pernicious specter of the modern media.
Perhaps the foremost of these is the sheer egoism of my students...their self-centered view of the world. Aristotle had nothing on these guys...if it were up to some of my students, the sun would revolve around them. Now some might say that such is the typical teenage attitude, and in part they would be right. Clearly, my high school students, like their peers all over the world, are more concerned with their own personal and social development than with the content I am delivering in the classroom. This is understandable. This I can accept. What I can not accept is their setting forth the idea that they already know everything and refuse to believe that a teacher might know more than them. One of my students, who right now is failing my course, had the gall to tell me a few weeks ago that he knew more about science than I did.
“Oh,” I said. “Look...you are a ninth grader. This is your first high school science course. I am your teacher. I have taken 4 years of high school science and many years of college science courses. It is very unlikely that you know more science than I do.” (The student confirmed my point to be correct by showing he was unable to draw straight lines correctly with a metric ruler. He remained undeterred.)
How does the media play into this? (I can already see some of you wondering if I was planning to abandon my little thesis...) Look at the sitcoms or listen to the music that my students are exposed to on a daily basis. The protagonists of these t.v. shows or rap songs are all equally egoistic. Their adventures and experiences seem to indicate a world created for their amusement. The world is not a place to learn or grow, but to coast by on personality...with enough personality, money, fame, women, fast cars...all these things will come. They come to school to be entertained, not educated...and when they find the material boring, they stand up and put on a show.
This segues neatly into another issue, the disconnect between hard work and success. My students view the antics of sports stars, cinema icons, and musicians on a daily basis. They talk about them all the time. They see their success and wonder why they shouldn’t have an equally good shot. No problem at all there. But, thanks to a very limited media-guided perception, they also assume that such success will be automatic. I can’t tell you how many of my students think they are going to be basketball players someday, but I do know that those who do tend to think my class is less relevant than those who don’t. Most likely they are the ones who on a constant basis tell me that I am trying to fail them. Of course...that’s the reason I let you have full access to your notes! Because I’m trying to fail you! (My reasoning on this last point never seems to fully get through.)
And then there is the issue of authority figures. How many admired rap idols do you know who exhort obedience, diligence, or respect for teachers in their music? I have as yet not found one. and would imagine relatively few exist. Face it, that kind of message would not be popular. The consequences however are that students are instead encouraged to take the opposite approach to authority, constantly questioning and attacking it. They take personal offense at little things like wearing a uniform or being asked not to chew gum or just going to the bathroom before class....or doing classwork!
Moving back to that assembly for a moment, consider this situation. After the musician’s set, the drama group came on to give a demonstration of improv. They did an activity called the hotseat, where students in the audience were given a choice of three situations and they could vote which they wanted to see acted out. Needless to say the final one, featuring a student who socked the princiapl in the jaw, got near overwhelming support, and during the course of the skit any time the actress playing the offending student badmouthed the principal she was greeted with booming cheers and catcalls. The other student on stage, who was attempting to be a voice of reason, was similarly booed. Given that the principal was in the room, I don’t know how the students could be so bold. I also do not know what the drama group was thinking...by the end of that afternoon, part of me was seriously wondering if a riot might break out.
Anyhow, the point of all this rambling is that student attitudes towards stink and I feel that the media is if not responsible than highly influential in cultivating them. This is no doubt reinforced by environmental factors (family structure, etc.), but the media strikes me as a somewhat more malleable force. Less inertia than most other parts of the system. If change were possible, I think it might best be achieved through that avenue.
I remember reading that Dorothy Parker, pressed by some of her Algonquin Round Table associates to use horticulture in a sentence quipped that you can “lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.” If only studenticulture were a word, then I could achieve a similar level of erudite wit in making my observations, instead of merely becoming depressed.
Friday, October 17, 2003
Sideways Stories from Underwood High*
At midnight last night I determined that if there were a just and merciful God, He was certainly not a baseball fan in any true sense of the word. As I watched, all hopes for a slightly entertaining World Series were swept away as the New York Yankees dismantled the Red Sox's seemingly established lead at the bottom of the 8th inning. Part of me remains convinced that if I had not been watching or concerned about the game's outcome it might have turned out differently...the same part that believes a guy named Heisenberg. But whether that is true or not remains uncertain...all I know is that for me today started out with the Red Sox losing (the game ended around midnight EST) and progressively went downhill from there.
Every alternate Friday my school holds professional development meetings. These are intended to supplement our summer orientation with the district, any graduate courses taken for certification (in my case two per semester), and of course the recently begun New Teacher Academy run by the district and slated to run for 18 alternating Wednesday sessions. Unfortunately, given their relatively broad audience, these meetings have tended to vary in terms of relative usefulness. What good, for example, is a discussion of the school's new style guide when my students can barely read or write complete sentences? Or finish a simple lab on how to use a mass balance? Or pass an open note quiz on how to calculate the area of rectangles and circles?
[The author of this blog would like to apologize for the previous digression into ranting about his students' academic deficiencies. This blog entry will now return to some semblance of normal narrative before moving on to critiquing those same students' behavioral deficiencies. Thank you.]
In any event, due to the short day, the periods at school were cut from 90 to 60 minutes. This is a mixed blessing from a lesson planning perspective, because although it is easier to plan fewer activities, standard classroom routines no longer take up the same proportion of class time. Today however, I decided to give a science diagnostic to my G.P.S. students and use that to take up the majority of the period. (Physics continued with its pursuit of vectors and vector components using my new video-game based technique...Pac-Man and Mario can teach vectors, even if I can't really draw the latter.) Everything went basically without a hitch in my first period class. Only the standard complement of fools and idiots who do not understand the idea of NOT TALKING during a test, even if it does not count. But it was relatively manageable chaos, and I even got to chat with a visiting parent, so that was good too.
The trouble began in my final period, which I nickname the Dirty Dozen. The name comes from the number of students who regularly show up to participate and their complete and total disrespect for the school environment. The moniker is actually rather unfair to about half of them, who actually do try to learn, but given the extremely disruptive nature of the other half, the amount of learning progress in that classroom is generally about 2/3 to 3/4 of my other physical science class. There are several students, for example, who are something of a clique/gang/"team" (the last is their own term for it) and are continuously yelling, singing, calling out to other students during my class. And of course phone calls have proven almost entirely ineffective...
But returning now to our narrative, after the beginning of class vocab list had been copied down, I assigned a student to pass out the answer key for the diagnostic. During this time one of my students, a girl who has been on the upswing in terms of her behavior, asked if she could lower the window. She was cold. It was understandable. And since she had asked permission (a rarity in my classroom, let me tell you), I gave her permission to do so. After attempting to close the window nearer to the front of the room, and meeting with opposition from one of the students sitting nearby, she went towards the back of the room.
In the back, near the other window sat a student with a past history of disciplinary problems, including a suspension the previous week and a detention just the day before for hurling profanity laden insults towards the head of the math department. (He skipped the latter.) The reason for that suspension was an unwillingness to change his seat, which I only subsequently learned was due to his asthma. Consequently, when the girl arrived wanting to close the window, he might have been understandably upset. And so, the minor verbal interplay that developed between them would have been acceptable if it had remained limited to that.
It didn't.
One moment it was just a small argument. The next the asthmatic student was out of his seat slamming the window open. As the girl went to close it again, the asthmatic was out of his seat, bear-hugged her and rotating her 90 degrees attempted to shove her out the window sideways.
Attempted nothing...he did put her head and neck out the window.
Fortunately it was over in a moment or two thanks to the girl's struggling, although I'd like to think that perhaps the realization of the seriousness of his behavior was responsible. As soon as it was clear the student was safe, I called security. This was around 12:20. Within five to ten minutes, I had about half a dozen different administration officials in my room during the course of the afternoon. Both students were escorted away and ideally I would be able to coninue my lesson.
There is no "ideally" in this business however.
I lost real control over the class. They were all revved up by the chaos, playing into it and continuously adding more energy to the system. I was reduced to having them copy material from the textbook...the whole section on mass...before they were allowed to leave for the day.
Of course, things were not that simple. Because then it was time for me to take a trip to the police station! That's right...I had to make an official statement on the incident. Rode in the back of the school police cruiser to South Philadelphia. Got a chance to chat with my window bound student and her cousin on the way there, met her folks at the station...did some simple science demos to liven up the wait. Gave a short statement (nearly identical to the one above) to the detectives at the precinct and after watching my student plaster my name as graffiti on the police department bulletin board (which I consider something of an erstwhile honor), bid them all farewell and went back to school.
It had been about 3 hours. I missed professional development. My parent phone calls for the end of the week would have to be postponed because of more pressing organizational concerns, and let's not forget that I had not eaten or drank anything since my morning oatmeal except for a handful of raisins that I keep in my desk. (The remnant of a science experiment from a few weeks back.)
An experience to be sure, and although it will likely have some positive results, it closes off a short week that foreshadows many more challenges in the future. What good will the arrest of one student for misdemeanor assault do me when the remainder of my ever expanding last period class is generally irresponsible and disrespectful? Getting rid of one rotten apple does not restore the bag. But we shall see...
Tomorrow, in an attempt to drown my sorrows, both literally and figuratively, I am going whitewater rafting on the Lehigh River. Should be a lot of fun. Coincidentally some old friends from college are traveling to Harvard early in the morning for a quiz bowl tournament. And to think, I was naive enough to believe that the end of my participation in such events would mean I could sleep in on weekends. (Silly rabbit...sleep is for kids.)
Here's hoping I return from the expedition damp, triumphant, and slightly more ready to face my students on Monday, that my friends shatter all opposition with their knowledge of medieval literature, Japanese history, and obscure legal jargon (maybe a smidge of Norse myth for old times sake), and that the Marlins keep their winning streak alive...
[NB: I have updated (actually, more accurate to say created) a list of links to other blogs that I try to check on a semi-regular basis and whose comments I find interesting, humorous, insightful, or some combination of the three. If anyone whose blog appears below wishes to be removed from the list, feel free to contact me using the link below.]
*Underwood is, as mentioned in an earlier post, a pseudonym for my actual place of employment.
At midnight last night I determined that if there were a just and merciful God, He was certainly not a baseball fan in any true sense of the word. As I watched, all hopes for a slightly entertaining World Series were swept away as the New York Yankees dismantled the Red Sox's seemingly established lead at the bottom of the 8th inning. Part of me remains convinced that if I had not been watching or concerned about the game's outcome it might have turned out differently...the same part that believes a guy named Heisenberg. But whether that is true or not remains uncertain...all I know is that for me today started out with the Red Sox losing (the game ended around midnight EST) and progressively went downhill from there.
Every alternate Friday my school holds professional development meetings. These are intended to supplement our summer orientation with the district, any graduate courses taken for certification (in my case two per semester), and of course the recently begun New Teacher Academy run by the district and slated to run for 18 alternating Wednesday sessions. Unfortunately, given their relatively broad audience, these meetings have tended to vary in terms of relative usefulness. What good, for example, is a discussion of the school's new style guide when my students can barely read or write complete sentences? Or finish a simple lab on how to use a mass balance? Or pass an open note quiz on how to calculate the area of rectangles and circles?
[The author of this blog would like to apologize for the previous digression into ranting about his students' academic deficiencies. This blog entry will now return to some semblance of normal narrative before moving on to critiquing those same students' behavioral deficiencies. Thank you.]
In any event, due to the short day, the periods at school were cut from 90 to 60 minutes. This is a mixed blessing from a lesson planning perspective, because although it is easier to plan fewer activities, standard classroom routines no longer take up the same proportion of class time. Today however, I decided to give a science diagnostic to my G.P.S. students and use that to take up the majority of the period. (Physics continued with its pursuit of vectors and vector components using my new video-game based technique...Pac-Man and Mario can teach vectors, even if I can't really draw the latter.) Everything went basically without a hitch in my first period class. Only the standard complement of fools and idiots who do not understand the idea of NOT TALKING during a test, even if it does not count. But it was relatively manageable chaos, and I even got to chat with a visiting parent, so that was good too.
The trouble began in my final period, which I nickname the Dirty Dozen. The name comes from the number of students who regularly show up to participate and their complete and total disrespect for the school environment. The moniker is actually rather unfair to about half of them, who actually do try to learn, but given the extremely disruptive nature of the other half, the amount of learning progress in that classroom is generally about 2/3 to 3/4 of my other physical science class. There are several students, for example, who are something of a clique/gang/"team" (the last is their own term for it) and are continuously yelling, singing, calling out to other students during my class. And of course phone calls have proven almost entirely ineffective...
But returning now to our narrative, after the beginning of class vocab list had been copied down, I assigned a student to pass out the answer key for the diagnostic. During this time one of my students, a girl who has been on the upswing in terms of her behavior, asked if she could lower the window. She was cold. It was understandable. And since she had asked permission (a rarity in my classroom, let me tell you), I gave her permission to do so. After attempting to close the window nearer to the front of the room, and meeting with opposition from one of the students sitting nearby, she went towards the back of the room.
In the back, near the other window sat a student with a past history of disciplinary problems, including a suspension the previous week and a detention just the day before for hurling profanity laden insults towards the head of the math department. (He skipped the latter.) The reason for that suspension was an unwillingness to change his seat, which I only subsequently learned was due to his asthma. Consequently, when the girl arrived wanting to close the window, he might have been understandably upset. And so, the minor verbal interplay that developed between them would have been acceptable if it had remained limited to that.
It didn't.
One moment it was just a small argument. The next the asthmatic student was out of his seat slamming the window open. As the girl went to close it again, the asthmatic was out of his seat, bear-hugged her and rotating her 90 degrees attempted to shove her out the window sideways.
Attempted nothing...he did put her head and neck out the window.
Fortunately it was over in a moment or two thanks to the girl's struggling, although I'd like to think that perhaps the realization of the seriousness of his behavior was responsible. As soon as it was clear the student was safe, I called security. This was around 12:20. Within five to ten minutes, I had about half a dozen different administration officials in my room during the course of the afternoon. Both students were escorted away and ideally I would be able to coninue my lesson.
There is no "ideally" in this business however.
I lost real control over the class. They were all revved up by the chaos, playing into it and continuously adding more energy to the system. I was reduced to having them copy material from the textbook...the whole section on mass...before they were allowed to leave for the day.
Of course, things were not that simple. Because then it was time for me to take a trip to the police station! That's right...I had to make an official statement on the incident. Rode in the back of the school police cruiser to South Philadelphia. Got a chance to chat with my window bound student and her cousin on the way there, met her folks at the station...did some simple science demos to liven up the wait. Gave a short statement (nearly identical to the one above) to the detectives at the precinct and after watching my student plaster my name as graffiti on the police department bulletin board (which I consider something of an erstwhile honor), bid them all farewell and went back to school.
It had been about 3 hours. I missed professional development. My parent phone calls for the end of the week would have to be postponed because of more pressing organizational concerns, and let's not forget that I had not eaten or drank anything since my morning oatmeal except for a handful of raisins that I keep in my desk. (The remnant of a science experiment from a few weeks back.)
An experience to be sure, and although it will likely have some positive results, it closes off a short week that foreshadows many more challenges in the future. What good will the arrest of one student for misdemeanor assault do me when the remainder of my ever expanding last period class is generally irresponsible and disrespectful? Getting rid of one rotten apple does not restore the bag. But we shall see...
Tomorrow, in an attempt to drown my sorrows, both literally and figuratively, I am going whitewater rafting on the Lehigh River. Should be a lot of fun. Coincidentally some old friends from college are traveling to Harvard early in the morning for a quiz bowl tournament. And to think, I was naive enough to believe that the end of my participation in such events would mean I could sleep in on weekends. (Silly rabbit...sleep is for kids.)
Here's hoping I return from the expedition damp, triumphant, and slightly more ready to face my students on Monday, that my friends shatter all opposition with their knowledge of medieval literature, Japanese history, and obscure legal jargon (maybe a smidge of Norse myth for old times sake), and that the Marlins keep their winning streak alive...
[NB: I have updated (actually, more accurate to say created) a list of links to other blogs that I try to check on a semi-regular basis and whose comments I find interesting, humorous, insightful, or some combination of the three. If anyone whose blog appears below wishes to be removed from the list, feel free to contact me using the link below.]
*Underwood is, as mentioned in an earlier post, a pseudonym for my actual place of employment.
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
I know Weinstein's parents were upset...but it sounded so fake."
Last Monday was Yom Kippur, the most sacred of Jewish holidays. Traditionally, this is the day when the fate of every person in the world is officially sealed in the Book of Life for the coming year. It is a day traditionally spent through fasting, meditation, prayer, and the occasional discarding of a chicken in a river. (Literally casting off sins by assigning them to a fowl.) Back in that ideal world I referred to in my last post, I would have been spending this past Monday in a synagogue meditating on the failings of the past year and my aspirations for the future one...unfortunately, as you might have guessed, things did not go precisely as planned. I should not have been surprised. They rarely do.
My Yom Kippur started off bright and early with a trip to the post office to mail off my rent for the month. The post office where I get packages and such is basically on the same block, but I discovered that to mail anything with higher priority than just a stamp, I needed to hike down a few more blocks to a postal supply center. But within twenty minutes, I was waiting for the bus to Center City. I listened as the people around me chatted about their personal concerns and tried not to focus on the fact that I had not eaten or drank anything.
Got on the bus, got off the bus, did some banking downtown, then on to the subway for a trip to UPenn, where I'm taking graduate courses. I obtained course packets, submitted my tuition payments, and tried to figure out if I could get a parking pass since I have to drive down there twice a week. (Long answer: maybe, but... Short answer: not really...no.) Then back up to Broad Street to pick up my broken car and then, exhausted, back to my apartment to grade for the rest of the afternoon.
It was a productive day, sacrilegiously so, but I want to consider something that continues to puzzle me about this rare opportunity provided by the school district to pursue my personal and professional salvation all in one fell swoop. I refer of course to the practice of granting Yom Kippur off. Now as a Jew, even a relatively unobservant one like myself, having the day off is a blessing of sorts, and in most of the Northeast, public schools grant this holiday without so much as a second thought.
As I stared bleerily over my student's poster projects and lab reports however, I realized that very few of them were using the day for its original intent, self-reflection and repentance. Most of them were likely at home watching television, playing video games, hanging out with friends, or some combination of the three. This is admittedly a rather idealized vision of how my students behave outside the classroom, but the point remains, to my students Yom Kippur is just a weird sounding holiday with very little significance. One or two of my students asked me what it was last Friday, and I explained it cursorily as a Jewish holiday.
In retrospect, that would have been an ideal "teachable moment", whereby I could open up to my students about my heritage and form a meaningful bond with them all the while providing greater social context. Instead, my hurried response revealed two things: my discomfort in opening up to my students and my distaste for sidetracking in my classes. The former is arguably the more significant, but the truth is at this juncture, I find it difficult to trust students who prefer to hit people with rulers than measure objects with them. Or students who, for now real reason will throw an opened condom into a girl's hair... Sorry folks...not the best way to win a teacher's confidence.
This is not to say that I avoid the issue all together. Every week I do a structured activity about what new or good things happened over the weekend. Of course, the students generally refuse to pay close attention to the rules I set in place regarding commenting during other people's stories, but I feel even small steps like this weekly ritual can be equally effective as larger ones over a long enough period. Perhaps the deeper question is did I avoid mentioning my connection to Yom Kippur because of a lack of trust or concern over the impact of the admission of my heritage among my students. Jews and African-Americans (the majority of my classes) have historically had a complex, not always amicable, relationship. The effect of my revelation was unpredictable. At the same time, I wonder if I was a coward.
On the subject of diversions from my lesson plans, I will simply state that one of my goals for the coming year is to transcend the linear and become a more free-flowing, fast-thinking, and organic teacher in the sense of being capable of responding instantly and effectively to changes in student temperament and understanding. Until then, I remain bound by the scaffold of the lesson plan.
It is ironic that I end this post with an exaltation on the importance of structure in my current teaching strategy...one that in point of fact diverts entirely from the rest of the post! Ah, the irony...
Perhaps I should rest now and reflect on my sins, both literary and personal.
Last Monday was Yom Kippur, the most sacred of Jewish holidays. Traditionally, this is the day when the fate of every person in the world is officially sealed in the Book of Life for the coming year. It is a day traditionally spent through fasting, meditation, prayer, and the occasional discarding of a chicken in a river. (Literally casting off sins by assigning them to a fowl.) Back in that ideal world I referred to in my last post, I would have been spending this past Monday in a synagogue meditating on the failings of the past year and my aspirations for the future one...unfortunately, as you might have guessed, things did not go precisely as planned. I should not have been surprised. They rarely do.
My Yom Kippur started off bright and early with a trip to the post office to mail off my rent for the month. The post office where I get packages and such is basically on the same block, but I discovered that to mail anything with higher priority than just a stamp, I needed to hike down a few more blocks to a postal supply center. But within twenty minutes, I was waiting for the bus to Center City. I listened as the people around me chatted about their personal concerns and tried not to focus on the fact that I had not eaten or drank anything.
Got on the bus, got off the bus, did some banking downtown, then on to the subway for a trip to UPenn, where I'm taking graduate courses. I obtained course packets, submitted my tuition payments, and tried to figure out if I could get a parking pass since I have to drive down there twice a week. (Long answer: maybe, but... Short answer: not really...no.) Then back up to Broad Street to pick up my broken car and then, exhausted, back to my apartment to grade for the rest of the afternoon.
It was a productive day, sacrilegiously so, but I want to consider something that continues to puzzle me about this rare opportunity provided by the school district to pursue my personal and professional salvation all in one fell swoop. I refer of course to the practice of granting Yom Kippur off. Now as a Jew, even a relatively unobservant one like myself, having the day off is a blessing of sorts, and in most of the Northeast, public schools grant this holiday without so much as a second thought.
As I stared bleerily over my student's poster projects and lab reports however, I realized that very few of them were using the day for its original intent, self-reflection and repentance. Most of them were likely at home watching television, playing video games, hanging out with friends, or some combination of the three. This is admittedly a rather idealized vision of how my students behave outside the classroom, but the point remains, to my students Yom Kippur is just a weird sounding holiday with very little significance. One or two of my students asked me what it was last Friday, and I explained it cursorily as a Jewish holiday.
In retrospect, that would have been an ideal "teachable moment", whereby I could open up to my students about my heritage and form a meaningful bond with them all the while providing greater social context. Instead, my hurried response revealed two things: my discomfort in opening up to my students and my distaste for sidetracking in my classes. The former is arguably the more significant, but the truth is at this juncture, I find it difficult to trust students who prefer to hit people with rulers than measure objects with them. Or students who, for now real reason will throw an opened condom into a girl's hair... Sorry folks...not the best way to win a teacher's confidence.
This is not to say that I avoid the issue all together. Every week I do a structured activity about what new or good things happened over the weekend. Of course, the students generally refuse to pay close attention to the rules I set in place regarding commenting during other people's stories, but I feel even small steps like this weekly ritual can be equally effective as larger ones over a long enough period. Perhaps the deeper question is did I avoid mentioning my connection to Yom Kippur because of a lack of trust or concern over the impact of the admission of my heritage among my students. Jews and African-Americans (the majority of my classes) have historically had a complex, not always amicable, relationship. The effect of my revelation was unpredictable. At the same time, I wonder if I was a coward.
On the subject of diversions from my lesson plans, I will simply state that one of my goals for the coming year is to transcend the linear and become a more free-flowing, fast-thinking, and organic teacher in the sense of being capable of responding instantly and effectively to changes in student temperament and understanding. Until then, I remain bound by the scaffold of the lesson plan.
It is ironic that I end this post with an exaltation on the importance of structure in my current teaching strategy...one that in point of fact diverts entirely from the rest of the post! Ah, the irony...
Perhaps I should rest now and reflect on my sins, both literary and personal.
Friday, October 03, 2003
"The trouble with first impressions is that you only get to make one."
Beginnings have always proven a challenge to me, both in writing and in life. Perhaps that is why I initially procrastinated when I considered starting an online journal, despite a long time interest in the enterprise. As I began to write this evening, I flipped through the volumes on my bookshelf searching for an effective hook in the writings of Joyce, Warren, and Heller or a creative blog title in the hidden mysteries of Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan Poe. I pored over the archives of other people's web logs and examined how they commenced their respective literary journeys through cyberspace. But to no avail. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but the responsibility must ultimately fall on me to set the right tone for this blog. So, I'll begin with an introduction and an explanation, so that you (whoever you are) may know something about who I am and why I thought this would be a worthwhile venture.
My name is Ben, and I am currently working as a teacher in an urban school. People often wonder when I mention my profession whether or not teaching was a lifelong goal of mine. And as I sit here now after a month in this position, I wish deeply that I could respond positively to that question. I wish that I could say that it has always been my dream to be a teacher, to reach out into the community and improve the lives and minds of children. Perhaps in that ideal context, I would describe my vast student teaching experience and list off a slew of teaching strategies that have proven, on the whole, effective, with only one or two students finding the material challenging. My classroom in this utopian fantasy, would have ready access to all manner of materials and my lesson plans would always be well tuned, well rehearsed, and well written. And in that world, what few difficulties I had would not be further compounded by a lack of parental involvement and the educational experiences that students received before reaching my classroom.
But that world is not my world.
My world is a classroom at an underresourced public school in Philadelphia. What limited teaching experience I might have had did not and perhaps could not have prepared me for the challenges of the position. In fairness, I suppose I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, but at the same time, the gap between knowledge and understanding is often a wide one, as I learn each and every day.
My name is Ben. I graduated from an Ivy League school with a degree in history.
I was initially told I would be teaching social studies in the district, but that opportunity was snatched away within a month of my decision to work in the city.
I have never taught history. At the rate things are going with me these days, I likely never will.
In the past few months, I have taught English as a second language, briefly, and now I teach science.
Rather, I pretend to teach science. Physical science and physics, to be precise. That's 2 classes, 10 lesson plans a week. Each class lasts 90 minutes thanks to block scheduling (more on that perhaps in future posts), and I also have graduate courses to attend. In short, my job has in large part consumed my life.
I generally get about 4 hours of sleep a night. Last night I got 5.
My name is Ben and after a month in an urban classroom, I have learned much but simultaneously realize how very little I know. And I write now not of science content knowledge but of the skills needed to run an effective classroom. I was given an intensive teacher training program, but it provided me with only a glimpse at what my ideal classroom should be. Through a glass and darkly, as someone once wrote, I saw what the future held, but not clearly enough that I could truly prepare for it.
The names that I use when discussing my teaching situation will be anonymous, on the off chance that any of my students or fellow teachers should stumble upon these words in their searches on the Internet or what have you. It is likely that some of what I say will be negative, and I do not wish to offend. Only to report my perceptions on the extraordinary situation into which I have inadvertently plunged myself. My idealism has at times been thoroughly shattered these past few weeks. And many days it feels as though I can no longer effectively keep my thoughts bottled in.
On to the page then! Be it silicon or on paper...On to the page where I can lay bare my passions and frustrations! On to the page and to hell with the consequences! Because once it is in print, tangible or otherwise, it becomes real. It has meaning, or at the least staying power. That, I hope answers, at least in part, the question of why I started this journal.
Because my name is Ben, and I am a nobody, an invisible person with no effect on the world at all. Or perhaps I am an everybody, an untapped potentiality of a person capable of shaping society for the better. A person of moderate ability asked to complete a noble, but perhaps impossible task, to soldier on whatever the cost with only a dream of eventual respite to guide him. In what form that respite will come...who knows? Yet still it guides us.
My name is Ben, and this is my story.
A pleasure to meet you.
Beginnings have always proven a challenge to me, both in writing and in life. Perhaps that is why I initially procrastinated when I considered starting an online journal, despite a long time interest in the enterprise. As I began to write this evening, I flipped through the volumes on my bookshelf searching for an effective hook in the writings of Joyce, Warren, and Heller or a creative blog title in the hidden mysteries of Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan Poe. I pored over the archives of other people's web logs and examined how they commenced their respective literary journeys through cyberspace. But to no avail. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but the responsibility must ultimately fall on me to set the right tone for this blog. So, I'll begin with an introduction and an explanation, so that you (whoever you are) may know something about who I am and why I thought this would be a worthwhile venture.
My name is Ben, and I am currently working as a teacher in an urban school. People often wonder when I mention my profession whether or not teaching was a lifelong goal of mine. And as I sit here now after a month in this position, I wish deeply that I could respond positively to that question. I wish that I could say that it has always been my dream to be a teacher, to reach out into the community and improve the lives and minds of children. Perhaps in that ideal context, I would describe my vast student teaching experience and list off a slew of teaching strategies that have proven, on the whole, effective, with only one or two students finding the material challenging. My classroom in this utopian fantasy, would have ready access to all manner of materials and my lesson plans would always be well tuned, well rehearsed, and well written. And in that world, what few difficulties I had would not be further compounded by a lack of parental involvement and the educational experiences that students received before reaching my classroom.
But that world is not my world.
My world is a classroom at an underresourced public school in Philadelphia. What limited teaching experience I might have had did not and perhaps could not have prepared me for the challenges of the position. In fairness, I suppose I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, but at the same time, the gap between knowledge and understanding is often a wide one, as I learn each and every day.
My name is Ben. I graduated from an Ivy League school with a degree in history.
I was initially told I would be teaching social studies in the district, but that opportunity was snatched away within a month of my decision to work in the city.
I have never taught history. At the rate things are going with me these days, I likely never will.
In the past few months, I have taught English as a second language, briefly, and now I teach science.
Rather, I pretend to teach science. Physical science and physics, to be precise. That's 2 classes, 10 lesson plans a week. Each class lasts 90 minutes thanks to block scheduling (more on that perhaps in future posts), and I also have graduate courses to attend. In short, my job has in large part consumed my life.
I generally get about 4 hours of sleep a night. Last night I got 5.
My name is Ben and after a month in an urban classroom, I have learned much but simultaneously realize how very little I know. And I write now not of science content knowledge but of the skills needed to run an effective classroom. I was given an intensive teacher training program, but it provided me with only a glimpse at what my ideal classroom should be. Through a glass and darkly, as someone once wrote, I saw what the future held, but not clearly enough that I could truly prepare for it.
The names that I use when discussing my teaching situation will be anonymous, on the off chance that any of my students or fellow teachers should stumble upon these words in their searches on the Internet or what have you. It is likely that some of what I say will be negative, and I do not wish to offend. Only to report my perceptions on the extraordinary situation into which I have inadvertently plunged myself. My idealism has at times been thoroughly shattered these past few weeks. And many days it feels as though I can no longer effectively keep my thoughts bottled in.
On to the page then! Be it silicon or on paper...On to the page where I can lay bare my passions and frustrations! On to the page and to hell with the consequences! Because once it is in print, tangible or otherwise, it becomes real. It has meaning, or at the least staying power. That, I hope answers, at least in part, the question of why I started this journal.
Because my name is Ben, and I am a nobody, an invisible person with no effect on the world at all. Or perhaps I am an everybody, an untapped potentiality of a person capable of shaping society for the better. A person of moderate ability asked to complete a noble, but perhaps impossible task, to soldier on whatever the cost with only a dream of eventual respite to guide him. In what form that respite will come...who knows? Yet still it guides us.
My name is Ben, and this is my story.
A pleasure to meet you.
