6 posts from 2007

    STOP MAKING PASSING EASY!

    I can't even estimate the number of times I've heard students at HSHS tell me, “Go ahead and fail me. I'll just pass during summer school,”  or, my favorite, “I never learned algebra/slope, I just took summer school.”  
    
    What?!  I'm appalled that MTC has anything to do with a summer school that has helped push students through the Marshall County educational system, and I'm glad this blog topic reminded me to say something.  I'm equally peeved that MTC is part of a system which helps to disarm my only real leverage against my students: their grades.

    Here's the culture I've observed.  We teachers go/went into summer school thinking that there isn't enough time to teach the entire course, anyway, so we should just give them the “lite” version with an even “liter” assessment and grading policy (ummm, no homework or books in my math classes).  At least they are learning something, right?  But why should students get credit for a full course when they've only learned an eighth of the material?

    As far as I can tell, here's why: it's a very short amount of time with a lot of material to cover; half the teachers for June are brand new, and all of the teachers in July barely have a clue what to do; parents and students are paying and expect results; schools expect results. 

    But for the question, “Why should students get credit for a full course when they've only learned an eighth of the material?”  the only responsible answer is, “They shouldn't.”  No matter the minor obstacles and inconveniences, students should not be given credit for material they did not learn.

    My proposals:
1.Give pass/fail credit instead of a letter grade  (is this already the case?)
2.Extend the length of the summer school and have one long summer school instead of two short ones.
3.Raise the expectations for work outside of school.  They come for 4 hours with 4 hours of homework.  They failed the first time, so they either need remediation or should have to make up for all that work they weren't doing.
4.Raise performance expectations.  Use real 9-weeks and semester tests from the actual courses. Other students had to perform at this level, so should ours.
5.Have second-years give the first-years a little extra help with planning the July session to make sure standards are kept high.

    That's all I've got for now.  I don't know if any of that will work, and I do know that I lack the experience to fully understand the problems behind summer school, but my logic is simple:   Passing is easy.  It shouldn't be.

According to Mr. Turnage, the administrator across the hall, I’ve been doing an amazing job.  According to Mr. Turnage, McDonald’s sausage biscuits are a well-balanced breakfast.

Actually, it doesn’t even matter how I’m doing, I’m still doing.  That’s a success for me when my 5th, 6th, and 7th periods are packed to capacity and I spend more time “managing” than I do teaching.

I’ve had a few minor successes.  Successlets.  I usually have at least two things a week that make me smile.  Students have been coming to tutoring after school for all kinds of math. That’s a success.  Today we were reviewing for a test, and two girls who came to tutoring yesterday were on fire answering questions.  One of the girls announced to her friend (and the class, thanks to what seems to be a holly springs high school absence of volume control), “Woah!  We learned something yesterday, huh?!”

Another success could be that my students have started writing two-column proofs on their own.  They aren’t exactly thinking on their own yet, but I’ll take what I can get.

I don’t know if this is a success, but I’m happy about it.  I feel like I can predict the behavior of most of my students.  I love this feeling.  I love feeling like I understand their personalities (at least a little).  “Knowing” my students enables me to:

1) back off when a student needs me to
2) push a student when he/she’s slacking
3) pre-empt fights
4) pre-empt an explosion (of anger, of name-calling, of paper balls, of anything else…)
5) pre-empt a classroom interruption from someone who needs attention
6) not be taken advantage of as easily

I still have thousands of problems in the classroom, but I feel a little freer with this foresight. Knowing my students can also be a disadvantage because I hate punishing/managing them now that I know more about why they are causing problems, but I guess that adjustment will come with time, too.  I'll ask Mr. Turnage for some pointers.

    My philosophy of classroom management this summer was that classroom management should create a respectful “safe space” for students to engage with the material without fear.  Hahaha  I still agree with that philosophy, but it’s completely irrelevant at HSHS.  My kids don’t care if our learning environment is safe.  They don’t even notice.  Why?  Because they don’t want to learn.  I do the best job I possibly can at encouraging students and finding validity in every comment or question.  I’m naturally a very supportive and encouraging person.  My classroom is plenty safe, but it really doesn’t matter since my students don’t want to learn, anyway.  So my philosophy for HSHS is probably that classroom management should be used to allow learning to occur in the off chance that someone in my class cares about the material.
    Surprisingly, I haven’t actually made any changes to the logistics of my classroom management plan.  I have the same consequences and rewards, and I generally stick to them (as best I can).  I’ve found myself to be inconsistent with exactly when I’ll give consequences for talking and disrespect, but my choices for what and how to manage my classroom haven’t really changed.  I won’t give consequences for bad body language, as my classroom management plan said.  That’s one change.
    Another major change that I never would have anticipated was that I added group consequences (just like I have group rewards).  When my 6th and 7th periods would rather chatter instead of listen to me when I’m talking (and I try my best to pick out individuals first), I have to give class warnings.  After two warnings, the class gets a writing assignment to do right then and we move into instant referral mode.
    A final thing of note is that I thought I, the teacher, could somehow instill in my students a sense of responsibility for their educations.  I thought a positive learning environment, a sense of belonging in the classroom (student work displayed), and opportunities for extra credit would encourage students to take control of their high school educations.  Turns out, I really can’t do that for them.  I can put the pieces in place, I can deliver the lessons, I can try to manage my classrooms, but I can’t make them want to learn.  I can’t make them care about their educations.  When they don’t care, classroom management becomes an even bigger problem.  It’s all related.  I’m trying to manage to help them feel responsible and to help them care, but I can’t manage any more until they start caring.

    Part of white privilege is being able to forget or ignore race.  Only white people in a white town in a white society would say that they don't see color.  I remember when that whole concept clicked for me-- my little “ah-ha” at a racial reconciliation discussion.  I remember, too, when I understood that black people sitting together in the cafeteria had to do with comfort zones and shared culture-- that being with “your people” (whether white, black, Latino, jocks, artists, or potheads) wasn't about superiority or favoritism (though those things are all interrelated, too), but was about safe space and, well, comfort.  Alright, so all those things made sense to me before I joined teacher corps.
    Joining teacher corps actually made those phenomena real for me.  Teaching 99.5% black students all day, going to football games as one of the only white fans (the others being Molly and one or two other white teachers), and knowing many many more black people than white people in Holly Springs has caused some unexpected moments for me.
    Moment 1: Holly Springs Homecoming Parade.  I was walking around the square, searching the sea of black faces for my students, when I saw these three white women.  I was like, “what?  White people?”  and then I realized I was shocked by my own reflection with Molly and Jamie by my side-- “Oh that's right!” I thought, “I am white.”  After my nice little reminder, I was aware of being different.  Of standing out.  I wasn't colorblind then.
    Moment 2: “Ms. Dole, who you think you is?”  After school I let a student look through my iTunes.  He found some R&B and hip hop, and he asked me that question.  Maybe because I'm a teacher.  Maybe because I'm nerdy.  Maybe because I'm white.  I think it was because I'm white.
    Moment 3: “that part of town.”  Students were asking me where I lived.  One student said, “Do you live over in the... the...”  “what?” I asked.  “... the Caucasian neighborhood”  haha I asked him why he couldn't just say that and he replied, “well, you don't want to know what I was going to say.  I was going to say, 'white neighborhood.'”   hahahah  He thought it'd be wrong to use the word “white” around me!  I'd never heard a black person with the same hesitation for using the words "white/black" as white people have!
    Moment 4: The church decision.  We've all heard about how segregated Sunday mornings are.  I came to MS planning to join my students' church, thinking I'd go both to be spiritually fed and to become a part of the community.  Since I've moved into Holly Springs, though, I've only gone to white churches.  At first I went to them because they were close, convenient, and the only churches I knew about.  The other day I realized that I'll probably stick (for a few more weeks, at least) to my white, Episcopal church to have “white time” in my comfort zone.  I think church has become my lunch table.  I think church has become my lunch table, and I don't like it, actually.  I'll accept it for now, but I don't like that churches in Holly Springs are segregated.  I like even less being on the white side of that line-- the economically and socially privileged side-- when the whole point of going to church is to love and serve God and His people.  Ignoring social and economic injustices in a white faith-based club is not God's plan for us or me.  I'm digressing here.  My point was going to be that I'm now experiencing how important it is to have racial safe space/ be among your people.  I think my point has become that I've experienced a need for white time that, at the moment, weighs as much my ideals.  Will I switch churches?  I'm not sure.  I know I'll try.
    So anyway, I'm not exactly sure how my conscious opinions have changed.  I can't write about it in an overview— there are just too many directions to go with it—but I'm sure my answers to more specific questions about race have changed.  I certainly have a different (deeper?) experience of race. 

    I was never one to enjoy algorithms.  I remember sitting in class in high school learning about Jefferson's voting method for partitioning House seats-- a method in which you have to calculate and round fractions over and over until all of the seats disappear-- and I was bored out of my mind!  I felt like a machine.  Why should I be wasting my energy on something that just requires brute force and repetition?  What is this teaching me?   That academic snobbery never really left me.  I still don't like algorithms or busy work; I don't like doing any work that doesn't require thought or creativity.  What's the point of my working when anyone can do that stuff? (because, obviously, I'm better than the average person...)
    But all jokes aside, there is an intellectual laziness that can take over a student who relies on algorithms.  This is terrible news for my Algebra II students.  They crave algorithms.  If they get a certain type of equation to solve, they want to know the exact method-- the steps-- to follow to solve the equation instead of the rules they must obey.  When I give them a framework in which they must operate (like, rules of keeping a balanced equation or of multiplying one row and one column of two matrices), they don't know what to do inside of it.  They want instructions from start to finish.  I give them the map and legend, but they want a mapquest printout of step-by-step instructions.  Who taught them to stop thinking for themselves?  Or better yet, who didn't teach them to think at all?
    Let me take a step back.  The girls in my class were clever and smart.  They could figure out problems stated to them in non-mathy terms (my favorite of this session was, "You have two shirts and three pants, how many outfits can you make?").  When those problems were put into math language, they backed away ("You have n objects of one type and m objects of another, how many pairs of objects, one from each category, could you make?").  When I showed them the steps to solving a similar problem, they followed those steps to the letter and got the problems right!  Picking up on this pattern, if I wanted to have a successful class-- a class in which my students found answers and appeared to be learning-- I built in an algorithm.  I gave them clear steps and examples for solving a type of problem.  I did exactly what all their other teachers have been doing.  I gave them the easy way out, and I didn't make them think more than they absolutely had to.
    When they are already at this point of non-thinking, it's so hard to break the cycle.  We'd almost have to re-teach them everything.  We could simply change our expectations and work slower.  Instead of wanting them to solve problems by the end of a period, just aim to teach them what the problem means in each case.  Ah! word problems.  A whole "nother" blog to write!  For this session I was focused on accomplishing something by the end of the period: overall effectiveness of the lesson.  Should I have slowed down?  Maybe.  They wouldn't have been exposed to about half the things I tried to teach them if I had slowed down. 
    Algorithm or not, I suppose my lessons taught them something mathematical, so they were helpful in that way.  exposure?  practice?   And learning an algorithm can be helpful...as long as every like problem appears in that same form... which is about as likely as every woman wearing the same brand of blue jeans.

    When I started reading the Reluctant Disciplinarian, about two weeks ago, I was scared I would fall into Rubinstein's same problems.  That I would try to have my kids like me, try to be the "free form" new-age teacher or something.  His mistakes seem natural for someone coming straight out of college: I didn't enjoy busy work or endless rules when I was in high school, either.  But he makes the good point that students expect a teacher to do certain things and act a certain way.  To maintain control, teachers need to maintain respect, which they won't keep by acting like a student.  Or at least not proving teacher-dom.
    Based on my MTC award, "The Jekyll and Hyde Classroom Manager Award," I'm less worried about classroom management now than I was a few weeks ago (and when I read the book).  And let me explain: I don't yell at or Hulk-out on my kids.  I don't turn evil, and I don't make them cry.  I just will give a consequence or restate an instruction to a student as soon as he steps out of line, even if that means I have to go from Kinda-bubbly-and-very-excited-about-math Ms Doyle to Don't-even-think-of-tapping-that-pencil Ms Doyle (or Ms Dole, as my students call me) within 10 milliseconds.  Polay and Jeremy promise it's a good thing!  haha  My strange form of classroom management is not strange at all to me.  It just happens.  Which I guess is a good thing.  It probably happens because I honestly think my lesson is super-interesting and very important, so I don't see any reason for the students not to pay attention.  Obviously I realize that not all students like what I'm trying to teach them, but when I'm teaching I want my students' full attention to learn whatever beautiful thing we're learning.  In summary: I'm relieved to know that I do have an inner drive to keep a work-oriented classroom.
    To return to my intended topic... I did learn things from the Reluctant Disciplinarian.  No groupwork until the classroom is used to routine and the teacher knows the students relatively well.  Be yourself and be confident in yourself.  Ask for help.  "...help students claim the power, and responsibility, for their education."  The best teacher I've ever known did that-- encouraged us to claim responsibility for our education.  I didn't realize that's what she did, but that's exactly what made her so great.  Mrs. Crosby didn't take crap or excuses, and she showed us that we shouldn't make these excuses for ourselves.  Our teaching styles are very similar, actually, but I'm definitely nowhere near her level. Maybe someday.  That's a good goal to have.
    The kids want the teacher to be in charge.  I loved when Rubinstein wrote about the feeling of it being time for another disciplinary lecture.  I totally know that feeling!  For me, I just want to check that my boundaries still exists.  Whether it's to be secure in those boundaries or learn that I don't have them anymore, I tend to push the limit every so often in my classes, jobs, or responsibilities. Having that in mind will be helpful and will help me anticipate and understand behavior problems-- it'll encourage me to use my classroom management, too, since that is what the kids are looking for.  Awesome.
    The last best piece of advice was that teachers only have a certain number of words before the students lose patience and tune her out.  That makes so much sense, and I've felt that, too!  In college I would be hanging on a professor's every word for the first two classes... or one class... or half a class... and then I'd start to tune her/him out. Students do that!  Man, that inspires me to use those first two days to get procedures and rules understood. Honestly, I didn't see the urgency in dedicating the first few days to rules and procedures, but when I realize that students will quickly learn to tune me out, I know that I have to get those things in quickly at the very beginning.  Gotta remember that one.