"Professional" Development Part Deux (i.e. PD, PD)

AN INTERESTING MORNING...

The day dawned clammy and gross, and so did our exciting day of enrichment at my mammoth Bronx high school. Sans students, the atmosphere is usually relaxed, but not so this morn.

The principal began the day with a forty-five minute tirade about:

*our students' poor attendance (it's OUR fault because we do not call homes with enough aggression)

*how sick she was of being a "security agent" and how vigilant we had to be in the hallways. Then she announced that the "hall-walkers" at our high school were going to be locked in a classroom together all day and taught by the deans, to thunderous applause from the faculty who love their students so much and think they all deserve a chance.

*high demands about contacting guidance officers for more than two absences, headgear, cellphones, and so on.

...THAT GOT MORE INTERESTING...

At some point, between the principal's thinly concealed dictatorial rage and the lovable sarcasm of the new AP Security, a few female teachers, young and naive, got frustrated and started speaking out. WHAT procedure, exactly, were we supposed to follow for do-rags in our classroom? Whom did we call? Why was it our onus to make sure that students had no hats and electronic devices visible? This was perhaps said in a less-than-diplomatic (read: obnoxious) way.

*The AP security's comment that "no kid is supposed to get in the building with those devices" prompted hysterical laughter from most of the faculty. You could almost see steam rising from the principal's head.

*The continuation of complaints from the young female faction (YFFs) prompted a shout from the principal that she was getting "really pissed, we will not be an impact school, that i used to be in the classrooms and NOW I'M A SECURITY AGENT and that IF YOU DON'T FOLLOW THE RULES, GET OUT OF MY SCHOOL!"

Of course, such a magnanimous display of professionalism made the first year teacher feel great about herself and all of the senior teachers who have learned to put up or shut up and never speak truth to power feel guilty about their lack of rebellious spirit. Not.

In my corner of the auditorium, I cringed, shuddered, supressed (saving it all for Altruism Gone Wild!).

...AND MATURED INTO AN INTERESTING ELEVENSES...

Following this calm morning, our bglt awareness seminar was not attended by a significant portion of the faculty who were offended by the subject matter. Nor was it attended by the principal, who was busy sticking pins into a voodoo doll that was labeled "insubordinate teachers who don't like the rules."
While we in the sophisticated , bougie English department groaned at the simplicity of such ideas as "gender is a social construct" and "gender identity vs. gender expression" (not to mention "intersex") there were several faculty members who
*complained about the PDA displayed by "certain segments of the population"
*Asked whether the group presenting to us thought people were "born" gay and whether the presentation was "supporting/advocating a lifestyle that brings so much pain--aren't there alternatives?"

Fellow-ette and friends almost retched on the steps of the auditorium.

...THEN THINGS GOT BORING. WE HAD SOME TRAINING AND THAT WAS ABOUT IT.

*except for this final story. I will post it verbatim from an email i sent several hip, urbane friends o'mine:

"I was just sitting in my classroom writing up an agenda for the second semester, when I saw, not a foot away from my hand, a long, flicking tail, making a beeline for the trail mix my grandmother so kindly baggie-d up for me. I SCREAMEd and chased the f*cking mouse back from whence it came."

FINIS.

(Fellow-ette's typing fingers are tired)

Hey There-- You With the Stars in Your Eyes

The title comes from "The Pajama Game"-- a new musical revival to which my generous, theater-loving father took us on Wednesday. Broadway is everything real life isn't: clever, perfectly arranged, equal parts hilarity and poignancy, choreographed and in beautiful attire. The next morning as I shuffled down the urine-soaked steps of my favorite Bronx train station, the contrast was intense.

This is a NYC teaching fellow blog, and for the benefit of prospective fellows I've decided to try to flesh out my observations from rants into more detailed anecdotes. But this week was Regents week, so I had little to report in terms of students, as mine were all busy sleeping in and playing on their new PS2s and watching American Idol.

But I do still have several stories from the week that are amusing/insight-bringing:

*I proctored a regents for IEP students, for whom I had to read the ENTIRE test out loud. The strain on my voice was nothing compared to the strain the kids were evidencing trying to muck through the long, boring, forest of words (including the phrase "arduous novitiate").

*When I saw how upset my AP was with the difficulty of the passages I saw the hidden idealism that must have brought him into this field years ago. In fact, everyone was incredibly kind this week, and the love for the students was strangley enough far more evident without students to stress us out.

*There was a serious feud between the "grade inflaters" and the "we're tough-ass graders" when we were grading the ELA regents. I will elaborate upon this further some other time, but suffice it to say that the arguments on one side were "Let's give some of these seniors help graduating" and on the other side were "we are going to grade BY THE BOOK because we are so much smarter than these kids." Maybe my bias is showing... hope it's not ugly. My feeling about it all is simply that wealthy white kids get SO many boost in life-- tutors, college counselors, parents with money and connections. By looking at certain kids' essays with a kind eye, we're barely making a dent in the inequality.

So much for my promise of no rants...

Til next time
/fellow-ette

Fellow-ette's Thank Yous

*To blogger swvl who leaves me loving comments when i most need a boost.
*To an anonymous middle school math teacher out there who shared the womb, and now this experience, with his adoring sister across the boogie-down bx.
*To blogger franticthefillyfellow for her encouragement on the job and via various electronic media
*To the distant possibility of grad school, employment at a news media outlet of some sort, and/or fame, all of which keep me going.
*And many many thanks to a group of students I like and understand more every day (with NOTABLE exceptions, usually Fridays), who have been royally screwed over by a system that doesn't care. There are the funny, rowdy ones, the quiet ones who break out in giggles unexpectedly, the faithful ones who visit me during their free time, and even the obnoxious ones who remind me that I'm supposed to be an authority.

Finally, I'd like to thank my sense of humor for perservering despite a group of colleagues (with NOTABLE exceptions) who don't get my jokes. Today I chipperly asked my AP, after he warned us to keep the regents listening passage close to our persons and secret, if he minded that "I showed that passage a couple of kids in the hallway--that's cool, right?"
And later, when he said he wanted to encourage bonding, I asked if that ran contrary to his "divide and conquer, then they won't stand up to me" strategy.
Sigh. I know I always say this, but i think the people never laughing at my jokes thing is really the killerest of all the crap I put up with. Or maybe my sense of humor just works better with my 15-year old boys!

The weekend makes things rosier

Perspective, and a little time off have changed my attitude thus.

Looking through my kids' intensely labored-upon (and often funny!) essays and finals, plus an afternoon chat with a fellow fellow who works at a similarly large and heartless high school reminded me just what we are all up against. And just as I try to applaud my kids in my heart for making it to school every day even if they don't try as hard as i like, i have to pat myself on the back too, for being here and doing this and caring. Certainly, none of my superiors will commend me, so lavishing love on myself is totally appropriate. On to regents week...

Friday philosophizing

Today was day two of our mandatory three-day exam period. The purpose of this exam period is not to test our students' intellectual growth, but rather to keep them away from "runnin' the halls"-- otherwise, the absurdity of having EVERY single subject test for three straight days would be, well, more noticeably absurd.
The anxiety and restlessness was palpable-- when exams were turned in (which by day two become glorified worksheets to all of us) the antics were loud, the protests slightly nastier than usual. My favorite student (he of the long-ago bathroom pass confrontation, now a reformed expert on Lord of the Flies) was stoned and kept giggling and swearing he "forgot" everything he'd learned.
I felt reduced to near first-week-of-school humiliation and antagonism. I have come to expect this on stressful days for my students, but it still stings: I test them, they heap revenge at my feet. To top it off, I arrived in my room, latte-laden, to find my bathroom pass had gone missing, which brought before my eyes the possibility of humiliation before the top dogs.
All in all, a tough day... my back hurts, i am tense and irritable, and i have two days of exams and a project to grade by monday. But as my brother, a teacher too, wisely said: you survived this, you can survive anything. so that's the attitude i hope to adopt.

PPS

Numbers update:


number of times I've fallen asleep on the subway:

now, 2 (once with drool)

number of times I've clocked in late

now, 1

Number of thank yous I received for throwing my kids their party

surprisingly many!

Donut holes...

Yeah...
These are what I fed my kids today, in honor of our long-awaited completion of Lord of The Flies. Don't know who was happier that we were done, me or they (or you, faithful reader?)




Today was one of those real rough ones... a day in which I decided that I could never do this for a second year. As per usual, itt wasn't because of my students. Au contraire...it was because of the hour-long delay on the 5 subway line due to fallen tree limbs... i had to clock in nearly an hour late, flustered, restless, rain-splattered. My AP spied the snacks and asked me what I was giving them food for, my room was chaotic enough.
BLAH. On days like this, I've learned that the best thing I can do is be kind to my students instead of trying to impose control/learning.
So instead of groans and complaints, one of my sometime-friend/sometime nemeses told me "Miss, your party was hot." Not a bad deal... and I rationalize it by saying that giving them unstructured time that's condoned and encouraged helps foster social skills and imagination (I actually think it does).

Tomorrow is essay-writing. They visibly blanched, but it's the most important thing we do. It gets them ready for the regents.

Good luck to all of us.

intelligants

Sigh... my students ALL mispelled "intelligence" on their LOTFlies essays, which is ironic because they showed SO MUCH of it in their thinking. The further down the road of this job I get, the more I side with Kozol et. al-- placing the blame squarely on society's shoulders. When are we going to radically redistribute the wealth?

Also, WHY did Heath Ledger not win the golden globe? He is such a fine sexy gay man.

It's Friday Night...

and I fell asleep on the subway this afternoon.

But how many weeks at this job can I actually label as good? I'm pleased with how well it's gone.

Your love is like, a rollercoaster baby... (my week of teaching is the equivalent of the "your love" here)

Since my latest pet procrastination project (that's ALLITERATION, kiddies!) is getting people to actually read this blog instead of keeping it under wraps, I'm going to put some good searchable keywords in here right now.
New York City Teaching Fellows.
Education. Public Education.
New York City Teaching Fellows.
Education. Public Education.

Samuel J. Alito.
Dick Cheney.
Samuel J. Alito.
Wonkette's new novel.
Pornography!

Did that last one sound a little desperate?
Anyway, the title of tonight's brief posting is inspired by the up-and-downness of the past week. You've already heard, faithful readers (now I know there are only two of you-- I love you dad!) how nice Monday and tuesday were, at least in part. Wednesday was a horror day. I should have known it-- I had my sophs write a practice essay to get them warmed up for the final...having not written an essay in a month, they FREAKED on me, and even though it was four paragraphs seulement, after the assignments were turned in the focus turned down. Two of my students even sang "joy to the world, the teacher's dead."
But it was a tit-for-tat, cause when they were loudly hip-hopping I just hit 'em with the old "Who sings that song? Oh really, well why don't we keep it that way?" zinger. Their friends' shouts of "OH, SHE CUT YOU!" inspired the new song. I was saved from despair by a student who requested to see photos of me on the web (no, you cannot follow suit, pervert who searched for pornography) and changed my computer desktop pattern to an "I love you" motif. AWWWW. She, and another student who calls me "fams" and the five or six dedicated souls who have thoroughly digested Lord of the Flies or "LOTF" as I've dubbed it, sustained me.

Today I came to school determined not to yell. Even temper-boy (the one whose fight I broke up earlier in the fall) having a major flare-up couldn't stop me today. I let it all float past me. Thank god it didn't blow up in my face.

til next time,

/disgruntledteach

PS: read my blog! here's the address: http://disgruntledteach.blogspot.com

A LITTLE LESS NOISE THERE

Before I start complaining about this'n'that, I want to say that yesterday was one of those amazing amazing days...all three classes went well. After searching the Bruce catalog, I played the new Springsteen song "devils and dust" (narrated by a soldier in the Iraq war). I wanted my students to understand the relationship between fear and violence and this song seemed to speak to it ("fear's a powerful thing/it can turn your heart black you can trust/take your god-filled soul/and fill it with devils and dust"). Both groups of sophomores actually did a great job connecting the narrator's journey from human to savage to Jack's similar journey, which was exactly what I was hoping for, and despite hearing varied complaints about the song's wackness, I think they really liked it. We read the book, and I asked for their homework last night a prediction for who was going to die first. They got very heatedly into it, most correctly guessing that it was Simon and Piggy, but a few wildcards piped in with the idea that Jack's violence was going to come back and get him. If only!

Today was another story...


The day began with a radio announcement that Ms. Principal wanted "No Movement today!" because there had been three huge fights outside school this morning. We understood that it happened because security is now making our kids take off their shoes as well as belts, empty pockets, etc, and so the warm weather and longer waits stirred things up. So I absolutely could not get my third period kids to focus on anything. Dice were rolling, giggles were spreading, I gave up on playing the LOTF tape and gave them a quick quiz, hoping they'd come off with a few main plot points.

The teacher next door told me that my fourth period kids always make so much noise that he wants to come in and rescue me every day, which pissed me off of course. But at least my six-seventh period sophomores were BRILLIANT today. We breezed through grammar, discussed Lord of the Flies in record time, and had enough time left in the end for me to teach them a basic lesson in FREUD!!! I taught them the significance of superego, id and ego, and then elicited the characters and symbols that represented id and superego (FYI: jack and the Pig's head/Lord of the Flies are id, Ralph and the Conch Shell are the superego) and we talked about how on the island, not only are everyone' individual ids taking over, but the allegorical ID of Jack is assuming chiefship. In a sense, we mapped out the major symbolic structure of the whole book. I think we were all amazed. I had a glow about it, despite my freshmen cursing at each other for forty-straight minutes.


So that is that for today! Hopefully things will quiet down as finals approach. Tomorrow we read the passage where Simon dies-- my kids who have read ahead (READ AHEAD????) are already horrified and sad....

hungova post '06

I woke up this morning and inhaled a grande latte to prepare myself for a day I was otherwise unprepared for. My cold is in that frustrating purgatory between full-blown flu and just a trifle. I feel like shit, but cannot justify taking serious remedial action. I was rushed getting ready this morning, due to a TV that was wedged into the tv room closet, and my heroic AP had to help de-wedge. But class was going well. My students were actually engaged in their reading of Lord of the Flies due to the promise of watching the first half of the film.

Then, during third period when the announcements went on, I let the students skootch around to get ready for the movie/finish answering questions while I rewound it and did administrative stuff like hand in the contract. I turn my back and in walked the principal and my AP to micromanage the arrangement of my desks [supposedly we are protected from this in our contracts]. Sadly, at said moment, two antisocial boys were about two feet behind the others, while my eager beavers were up front ready to ogle the movie. Three or four guys were standing five minutes after the pledge was over. It was a moment of chaos in an otherwise wonderful lesson-- the one moment my supervisors were there. I think I am cursed!

However, that was the only bad occurence in an otherwise low-key day. I had a delightful pizza and bitchfest with a colleague after school and it was the perfect way to end this week...

DRUNKPOST 2006

MARGARITA SPECIAL

This is the beautiful substance, imbibed in a small but potent quantity, that is fueling tonight's educational musings. I hereby apologize for not only all of the typos in this posting, but in all other postings in this blog, as well as all past text-messages, instant-messages, voicemail messages and college or job applications.

Today's highlights included one of my love-hate students putting tape on my back, my entire 3/4th period class talking throughout the entire lord of the flies listening/reading, one of my smart freshwomen clamming up and refusing to do work because her classmates were being rude and not letting her read. Another freshman had to be dragged to my class by a snotty teacher who went to my rival college and also had a fling with a blood relative of mine (oh, the webs we weave), which was somewhat awkward.

Good things that happened? A favorite of mine, one who said it was nice how much i appreciated him, came back after a two-day absence, I actually killed some of my freshpeople with a joke that WAS NOT a crude imitation of their hood-talk. I gave one of my favorite girls "Matilda" to read and she is on page 53. She says that she's surprised by how different it is from the movie. Go figure. I amused my sleepy post-lunch sophomore crew with a story about me falling alseep in a fourteen-person seminar. True story, folks. I think I earned even less credibility as an authority, and more as a badass/friend figure (is that why five of my boys almost broke my school-issued computer with their frantic attempts to guess my password? "harrypotter" was the most original try.)

Well, with one day left I am considerably more relaxed. Earlier in the week, my AP was popping his head into my room constantly to check on the arrangement of my desks--updated during transit-strike down-time-- and has satisfied himself, so I'm less afeared of his presence.

Well, once more, that's all for now from this disillusioned young white liberal teacher in the ghetto. The burrito I ate, in company with my margartia and another young idealistic teacher who landed a job at an actually good school, is unfortunately giving me heartburn. I'm hoping that the booze in conjunction with my weariness will knock me out before the situation worsens.

Follow-ups

I wanted to follow up with a fond remembrance of the day I played "working class hero" for my kids. Some of my rowdiest, most obnoxious boys fell in LOVE with the song and said it was "tight" and sung along. So far, I have not been able to get it together enough to introduce more music to the curriculum. Any one out there have an idea about how to integrate bruce springsteen into lord of the flies?

06, yo! (who is this man?)

This man, Cam'ron (of the loose rap conflagaration known as "Dipset"), has more influence on my chillun' than I do.

****

Well, it's been a long long time since I posted. A transit strike has come and gone, as has a trip down to Puerto Rico, an actual party attended on New Year's Eve, and believe it or not, a New Year. Being back at school has been entirely anti-climactic. Everyone is sleepy and apathetic. The great attachment I feel for some of my students is balanced by the serious annoyance I feel towards severak others. Both of these strong sentiments are numbed by all of our disaffection towards Lord of the Flies, school in general, and the steady blahs of winter.

*One of the most important things I've discovered is how docile and cooperative my students are in smaller groups. During the transit strike, my students were both sweet ands cooperative-- because there were less than 7 per class. This only reaffirms my deep belief that classes in urban public schools should be SMALLER, not bigger, than private schools.

*My first student is pregnant. I thought that this wouldn't bother me much since so many other girls in the school are pregnant, but in the end I still find it sad and disturbing. This girl is special, too, a musician and free spirit.

Well, that's all for now. Hope that 'o6 is treating my small but loving readership well, and I shall try to update with more frequency.