Solid, tangible goals

Actual conversation among me and two teacher friends at a bar in Brooklyn. All of us are going into our 4th years, and all of us had to switch from horrible hellmouths of failing schools to new environments where some actual teaching and learning happens.

Teacher #1: "I think this is finally going to be the year where I don't have to tell a student that he needs to put his pants back on. I can feel it, I think it's finally going to happen."
Teacher #2: "I hope this is the year where I don't curse in front of a student. That's my goal."
Me: "I think since I have 6th grade this year instead of 8th, this will finally be the year where a student doesn't yell at me to suck his or her dick. I'm really excited."

Real accountability = real progress = real results.

Anything but math

The PE teacher was telling the students about his grading policy for the beginning of the school year. I forgot how amazing these kids could be.

Teacher: All right, so everyone starts at 100. If you don't participate for one day, you lose 15 points. What's 100 minus 15?
Students: (awkward silence) 80! 85!
Teacher: Ok, 85. If you miss another day, you lose 15 points. What's 85 minus 15?
Students: (even longer awkward silence) 80! 75! 75! 70!
Teacher: Um... 70. So if you miss again, what's 70 minus 15?
Students: (even longer, even more awkward silence) 65! 60! 65! 60! 55!
Teacher: That's a 55. So you miss 4 classes or don't participate and you basically fail... Ok, so that took awhile. Let's move on to the next topic.

and she was really just going to let him leave the office

This gem comes to your courtesy from another middle school in the SoBro.

One 6th grade student at this school had started out the year strong but had had a lot of absences lately. My friend was doing paperwork in the guidance counselor's office while this boy was talking to her. His excuse was, "Well, I have been having a lot of infections with my skin lately so I have had to see a lot of different gynecologists to talk about these issues." Somehow the counselor managed to not burst into fits of laughter and tears but she didn't say anything to correct him. They finshed up the meeting, and on the way out (thank god) my friend told him that the word "gynecologist" meant "someone who deals with women's...issues." Let's hope he doesn't make the same mistake again.

More tales from the grading site...

The week and a half that followed my first day of "training" and test grading never really got much better.

First, we spent 15-30 minutes every day getting set up. That means I showed up at 3:30, people slowly trickled in, and we never got started unti 4:00. We also usually finished between 7:00-7:15 and spent the leftover minutes filling in our time cards. Now, I am not a math person, but at $40 an hour per 200 graders, that adds up to roughly several gazillion dollars wasted of us sitting around drinking coffee and doing nothing.

The best part is when the state required that the booklets of a particular grade had to be finished and sent in that night. Every time, they had to scramble and ask people to volunteer to stay late to finish grading. I volunteered along with a dozen or so people a few times. Once I stayed until 9:00 PM. Meanwhile, all I could think was, "Gee, if they had handed out the booklets at 3:45 instead of 4:15, that would have been another 30 minutes of manpower among 200 people instead of 15 of us busting our asses to get this done."

The worst part, for me, as an overachiever, was getting labeled as such. Yeah, in middle school I was a big nerd. I thought by the time I reached a point where I was working with adults, that label would fade away. Nope. This one guy at my table was repeatedly telling me to slow down. When we finished a box and I would raise my hand to have them pick it up, he would pull my hand down. He would tell me to stop reading so quickly. Etc. I mentioned this to my friend who works for the DOE offices and her exact words were, "The higher up you get in the department, the more you see that. Having meetings about meetings. People sitting on their thumbs, getting paid to do nothing. Teachers getting cushy office jobs because they are horrible teachers are keep getting pushed through the system. That sort of thing."

Again. It instills a lot of confidence in the organzation, don't you think?

Tales from the grading site...

Oh, state tests, you are so beautiful. You take up 2 weeks of my life, you make my kids crazy, and you are inane and boring. I spent months leading up to you, freaking out, knowing my "grade" as a teacher is based on you and my kids' ability to pass or fail is based on you too.

But none of that, no none of it, prepared me for the MIND-NUMBING TASK that is grading the written portion of the exams.

I have to break this up into many posts, and really there could be endless ranting. But let me start with this. Day 1: I show up bright and early at 8:30 AM on a Saturday. We proceed to sit around for 15-20 minutes. We then get a 30 or so minute introduction from everybody, none of which is actually explaining what we are doing. But that doesn't matter since everyone at my table is a veteran teacher with many years of grading under their belts. They quickly explain the process of filling out the forms for me.

We finally begin the "training" portion of the day, where we read through books on what answers can be accepted in graphic organizers, short essays, and long responses for the 4th graders. Then they read them out loud for us. Then we grade sample questions. Then they tell us what the grades should be for the sample questions. Then we argue about what scores were given for grades for the sample questions, which really doesn't matter because the state made up the booklets in the first place and that's what we have to go by. This takes the entire morning. We actually have to leave for lunch late (12:15) because it takes too long and we have to take a test verifying that we are following the mandated scoring guides that everyone was arguing about. The grading itself does not actually begin until 1:15, and then goes until 3:30, where we stop and go home. What a use of a day. A sweet, sweet, taxpayer funded day.

The kicker? I scored higher and did better on the training and test grading than anybody at my table. I was also way more articulate and cognizant about explaining how I got my answers and reached all the right conclusions. When it came time to choose a "table leader" to re-read scores and organize materials, they unanimously pointed at me. I have one third of the experience of the next least experienced teacher at my table. Two were near retirement. One had a child almost my age. Glad to know I am somehow the most qualified person in the bunch. That makes me have A LOT of faith in the system.

More to come once I catch up on all the sleep deprivation from working 12 hour days and weekends...

classic

Heard this story from a friend that used to teach in New Orleans. At best, it is only marginally related to teaching, but it is indicative of larger problems in society.

She had a friend who was doing research on Katrina victims. He was at a woman's house verifying and entering names for a survey. He looked at one name on the list and couldn't believe it. He said, "Your daughter's name is Shady Nasty?" The women said, "No, no, her name is Sha'Dynasty, they forgot the up-comma."

(Up-comma is my new favorite word.)

This, by the way, is a really fun game I play with fellow teachers. What's the weirdest name you have heard? I like the girl who introduced herself as "Camry. Yeah like the car." We had a boy at my old school named Yes. I have heard endless accounts of girls whose names are spelled Le-a and pronounced Ledasha. And Sha'Dynasty? Frankly, it's still almost as horrible as the name Shady Nasty would be.

close enough

The other day I was showing my students a story that mentioned the state Alabama. At least 3 of them shouted out something along the lines of "What the hell is Alabama?" To which one of my brightest scholars responded "It's the capital of New York!"

I'm gonna give you a moment to let that one sink in.

Okay.

I mentioned this story to my friend over drinks on Friday. She responded with this gem. She was working with a student one on one over how to read a map. She pointed out the various features, and stopped at a squiggly blue line to ask the girl what she thought that might be. Crickets. Finally my friend says, "It's a river." The girl says, "Ohhhhhhhhh." There's a few seconds of silence. My friend follows up with, "Do you know what a river is?" Silence again, and then finally, "It's like an ocean?"

Geography fail.

I am the queen of inappropriate conversations

Last year, our science teacher brought a museum exhibit to the school. I had to cover classes all day to make it happen, which I did, but it ended up making me kind of loopy. In the process, I met one of the boys (sorry, men) who worked for this exhibit. He was cute. He said something funny, I laughed, and the entire class saw me flirt and get girly when he was around. Whoops. Later I ran into him downstairs and he borrowed my keys, same thing. Totally unintentional, but these kids have sharp eyes. One of my girls even found out his name and how old he was. I told her that was inappropriate to discuss with me. She brought it up the next day too, and it became an inside joke with the class. After a week or so of laughter, we moved on with our lives.

Low and behold, this week, the same exhibit comes through. I thought nothing of it. Then I joked with one of my students from last year about the guy who was on the exhibit. He says, "Oh my god, yeah, it is the same guy! And he even asked if we had that same red-headed teacher." To which I responded, "Shut up! He did not!" like I was hanging out with my friends. Ugh, jeez, I need a filter.

Within 10 seconds the rest of the class was informed that me and the museum guy both had crushes on each other. (And I'm sure it had spread to the rest of the 8th grade by lunch time.) I was reduced to a giggling red faced girl and could not teach. Any time he would walk by, they would point, or try to take his picture, or one student even offered to run out and get his phone number for me. Oh. My. God.

The irony is I never even saw him in person, nor have I talked to him since our brief encounters last year. But Dustin (I think), if you're out there, I have about 50 kids who are dead set on you becoming my boyfriend. About half my girls think you're pretty dreamy too. I'm sure they'd love for you to come in again and talk about science. Even if it's during ELA class.

Hahahaahhaaa. Bad role model fail.

yep

My friend told a story at our weekly Thursday Night Dinner. I can't really do it justice except to qualify it by saying that we have to deal with this kind of nonsense on a daily basis.

Apparently a rumor was going around the 7th graders at school that this teacher (Ms. R) had a tube in her butt. This student approached her after lunch and that's all she said. "So-and-so said you had a tube in your butt. But don't worry, I told her she was totally wrong."

My friend was baffled. Like, "I'm sorry, can you explain this more? What is this tube you speak of?" Eventually she surmised that the child meant they were all gossiping that she was pumping up her butt with a tube to make it bigger. Thank goodness this girl was there to set the record straight. For the record, Ms. R also clarified that a) that didn't make any sense and b) she didn't really care what 7th graders were gossiping about her in the lunchroom but c) thanks for the support.

Dude, 12-year-olds are weird.

You can't expect a 4th grader not to laugh

My friend told me a story she still remembered from 4th grade. Her teacher was reading aloud a book where all throughout it, the main character would stop and say, "It's not my fault!" I guess she slipped and said, "It's not my fart!" Needless to say, all 30 of them cracked up laughing. I am curious as to how the rest of the lesson went after that...

adorableness

At a teacher happy hour on Friday, I was told this story by a middle school ESL teacher. It is so cute that it must be shared with the masses.

I guess she was trying to teach a lesson but her kids were getting too loud and feisty. After several attempts to quiet them down, she yelled, "You know what, why don't you guys just SHUT THE FRONT DOOR." (I applaud her for having the control to not say what she was really thinking, because I have definitely dropped the F-bomb before and it did not go over well.) The students got immediately silent and felt terrible, and then one really sweet kid got up out of his desk, went over to the classroom door, and closed it.

I do want to call this one an ESL fail, but truth be told, idioms are difficult. And this kid sounds like a winner.

PTC

One of my fellow teachers described a conference he had with a parent. Her son was an excellent student in fifth grade at our school, but had fallen down to become one of the worst behaving and lowest performing students so far in sixth grade. The mom agreed, and said, "I know, it's crazy, he has done a real 69 this year."

Complete and utter math failure. (But not from my co-teacher, from whoever this woman's teacher was 20 years ago.)