Liberal

Yesterday, I took a group of 33 kids to the Oklahoma City Zoo.  I wrote a grant in September to take them and the Friends of the Zoo paid for the trip, including admission and the cost of the bus.

The kids didn't have to do anything special to get to go.  They were selected on the basis of their good attendance and lack of failing grades.  They averaged about a "B" on their report cards. They also didn't have any mark on their record regarding poor behavior.  It was truly a reward as they didn't know they were selected until we sent home the permission slips last week.

And what a delightful time! I took them as far around the zoo as I could in the time we had.  We took sack lunches from the cafeteria and ate in the courtyard.  The kids wandered in and out of the ice cream shop and the gift shop.  The zookeepers and attendants complimented them on their politeness.  Several bought small trinkets for their moms.

I just loved watching their faces as they petted animals and as we slid down the slides together.  Since I'm at the zoo frequently, I narrated the animals we encountered, citing the punishment of Prometheus when we came to the vultures and never even stopping to breathe in the reptile house because I talked so much.  Then we had an hour long program on how to train animals with the education department and a demonstration with a prehensile-tailed porcupine. Back at school, we wrote thank you notes and talked about our experience. I wonder if I wasn't the one who was impacted the most.  Most of my kids don't have insurance of any kind and some have a parent who has been deported.  None of the politics in American life are their fault. They are the ones left to deal with it.

After school, these kids will go back to their lives of working on the weekends- most have jobs or do child care for their parents- and of not always having enough to eat. I can tell though, that these kids are loved.  Poverty does not necessarily equal neglect and my students, my children, my kids yesterday were complimented by the director of education. She said that a different group of students had been through earlier (I won't mention which group, but they were from Edmond), and that she would without hesitation prefer to have our group back any day. And that we were welcome to do so.

A few weeks ago, I got into a discussion about politics with a conservative person. I love this person and ended up changing the subject to preserve the peace.  Yeah, that's how much I love my cousin.  I mean him.  I mean, this person.  :O I said that President Obama did me a favor when he put a cap on how much of my income could be taken by the student loan people.  He argued that when I signed the student loan papers, I knew what I was signing.  Actually, no, they do not give you that information when you sign the contract and most people aren't educated enough to research or discern that information prior to going to get their education.  Lenders take advantage of that fact at the outset.  But my uh, discussion partner differed, saying that in changing that law I was in fact hurting the economy.

So many others will get through college the same way I did.  If I didn't sign those student loan papers I would not have the skills or knowledge (or credentials) I have today.  In his mind, it's not an ass-raping, it's just good business.  But if people don't get student loans, they cannot go to college.  Fine, he said, then they don't go.  But I don't think he has thought that far down the line.  Those who cannot afford it are historically disenfranchised anyway and this would perpetuate the cycle.  He said I was a liberal and that I'd spend my life giving away other people's money.

Yesterday, I took 33 children with me.  The grant was only for 30, so I paid for the other 3 out of my own pocket.  The money I earn as a public school teacher in one of the poorest schools in the state.  I have no working technology in my classroom, save a chalkboard and white board.  I and my two English department colleagues are expected to save our school from being part of the state takeover which will occur if we don't get them passing scores on the end of year tests.  And for this I make less than $33k per year.  And I'll pay my student loans.  And I provide all of the things that the district does not. And I get to be a part a greater good, something bigger than myself. Yes, my salary comes from the taxpayers and I think it's money well spent since most of it goes right back where it came from.

You want a definition of liberal? That's liberal.

Pretty Well Settled

I had 12 students show up all week for lunch detention.  We finished Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and all present agreed that it was the best book that they had ever read.  Six girls, six boys.  Most of them are low-level readers.  I am so happy.  Sometimes other teachers pop in at lunch just to behold the sight of these kids and I engrossed in our book and happily munching on cafeteria fare.  Some of these kids believe they will never be good readers.  Some of them don't follow the book so much as listen to my narration. That's ok too and that's also why I read it out loud.  They are interested in stories and in this book.  Every day they tell someone who was absent what is going on. It's normal and natural and this, I believe, is the way to encourage literacy. This part of the day is what reminds me why I got into teaching.  The big question is "What are we going to read next?!".  I offered the other Alexie book, Flight, and also The Hunger Games.  They picked Flight.  I'm not sure how they will like it since the story line is much different than the first book, so I offered to keep Hunger Games as a backup in case we decide to abandon the book.  I also tweeted Sherman Alexie to let him know how much we loved the book.

My regular classes are going well.  My 8th graders- cynical as they are- are just finishing and enjoying The Outsiders.  They like it and have done a good job so far.  They are impatient with reading and resist doing more than a chapter a day.  We are working on the attention span. I'm not sure if they know that part of it. Next up is Walter Dean Myers.  While Alexander Nazaryan may decry the usefulness of Myers, and insist that students would benefit more from Homer and Aristophanes, I advocate first getting children interested in reading.  Yes, perhaps Lysistrata with its overt sexual humor and Martial's epigrams are somehow elevated to high art and of benefit to readers, they can't get there from here.  I'm scaffolding.  Perhaps at the end of the year, as a reward. But until then, until my students understand how to approach a reading at all, I want them to learn to enjoy learning how to do that and Myers can help us farther along with his accessible language and stories that my students can identify with.

My 7th graders, having just finished up with an expository writing unit, are now eager to return to literature. They are perusing Virginia Hamilton novels and will seen become engrossed in the stories of early African Americans.  And for me, I have offered a school-wide initiative to help us get on the same page with vocabulary.  I'm selecting a word every week for the school, and we are putting it up on the marquis.  Then the word, definition and an example will be read every day with the morning announcements and the other teachers will join in to help reinforce the lesson.  I like it, overall. The faculty are seemingly behind the idea as well so we'll see how that pans out.  The first week was a success.

I have had some trouble with the construction.  I've had bronchitis twice since it began. I was sick over the whole holiday and have had to stop running.  Let me say that again: I had to stop running for the time being.  Running is how I stay in shape and it's how I keep my asthma in check. I cannot and should not be exposed to a dangerous work environment and I tried pretty hard to ignore or deny the implications.  But my last trip to my doctor- where he advised me to find a different job while giving me a steroid shot in the butt- that made me see the light.  The remodeling is going on all around us, and all precautions have been taken.  We are stuck with just dealing with the dust, mold and noise.  And probably some asbestos too.  There was a public meeting to address health problems for students and faculty and the companies told us we would need to transfer. That's what the environmental officer said, anyway. I met with my principal and we decided that if I can't get someone in one of the adjoining buildings to trade with me, he will transfer me to another school.  I'm just getting going in this school; why would I want to switch in the middle of the year? I feel as though I am part of things there and part of the force that will get us past the CRT gatekeepers at the end of the year. I'll keep you posted, but it's most important to be able to breathe and I'd rather just work with people rather than any litigious entities.

But what about my kids? Where can they go? How can they even know to ask?  To be continued...

Calambres

I've been a bit on the busy side of things lately. Between my teaching job (which doesn't even fit into the 40 hour work week), the two classes I adjunct teach and this dissertation defense, I haven't had time to write much.  I'm stressed because this is the longest I've gone without posting.  My friend L.Bangs remarked the other night that I need to write more.  And believe me, friends, I have stuff to talk about.

I have finally gotten to a point with my students that I can begin moving them from dependent learners to independent learners.  For instance, students commonly ask me if they might sharpen their pencils. I put up a sign that reads: "Independent Learners may sharpen their pencils whenever they need to, as long as the teacher is not lecturing". My next step with them is to tackle responsible use of the bathroom pass.  I have scaffolded this with my 8th grade class. They have now earned the privilege of moving their desks into the groups they want and can do community work.  If they do well next week, they can be trusted to use the bathroom pass at their own discretion. I wanted them in the configurations they chose. I want them to learn respect and to be respected in turn and for our classroom to be a place of learning.

I gave new vocabulary words last week too. "Home Language" and "Standard English" and "Code-Switching" all came up. We discussed openly - in all of my classes- whether or not one language was better than another, the importance of code-switching and why we need to study English. It went well and the spirited ones are becoming more focused. The less interested ones seem to be paying a bit of attention.

What has helped too is the ESL teacher who is coming for two of my classes.  I make use of her and have her work with struggling readers/writers who seem to founder in language and are shy.  They like her because she is nice and quiet and a native speaker, so she is a safe person to ask if they need to in Spanish.  Let's face it- I am a good teacher but the ESL teacher is a great augmentation because she shares a language context that I do not.  And I am all about using that to help those kids. They need it. They deserve it.  Sometimes the languages get mixed up.

I was explaining the concept of quickwrites to my kids. Quickwrites are writing where we just put down our ideas on a topic or tell a story as quickly as possible without thinking too much about it.  It's the warm up to our class and is a great way to generate topics for further writing. I gave an analogy (and taught that word along with it) of stretching before playing a sport. "What does stretching do for you?" I asked. "Helps us not get..." said one of my students. "Get..?" I inquired. He looked puzzled. Sometimes my students will know a word in Spanish and not know how to translate it. "Calambres." He turned to his friend next to him. "Cramps." said the kid.  You stretch so  you don't get cramps.  "That's why we do quickwrites. Nobody wants calambres." Some of my girls giggled. They later told me that calambres are also associated with menstrual cramps.  Fortunately, this was first hour.  I practiced the word on all of my other classes.  I got it wrong a few times and students delighted in correcting my pronunciation.  "Hey, I have to get it wrong in order to get it right." It was a wonderful and teachable day.

Followed by a few days of mindless testing.
Two steps forward, one step back.

The day we discussed home language and code switching, I was also being observed by the principal. We used poetry to talk about verbs and more on the use of analogy.  He's been hitting us over the head about curriculum so I was nervous.  When we got a chance to meet about it, he mentioned how much the kids participated in the discussion and the writing and that they seemed to be learning.  It was a good evaluation.  At the end, I confessed that the exercise we did was not in the curriculum script that was handed me as I walked in the door. It went far beyond and he could see that this was true.  He didn't have much to say about that.

School seems to be leveling off. I'm working out issues one at a time. It's really my health that is in the front seat today. I've been going at it a little aggressively. This week in addition to teaching at the middle school, I also taught my Tuesday night class at Osu-Okc. Then I ended up back there until 8 on Wednesday night and subbed in on Thursday night for someone else. Three 12 hour days in a row is a little too much. And my dissertation defense is next Friday. One week from today. And I am not ready yet. And I haven't graded all of those papers. And I need to work out. I did work, despite the aching in my lungs. And it all came down on me today.

I had to go see my doctor after work.  I have been coughing and wheezing for two weeks. Then I got a sinus infection and a really sore throat. It's all from my asthma. The doc gave me a steroid shot in the butt, an antibiotic and some cough syrup made with codeine. And a strong admonition to come earlier next time so that it doesn't get that bad.

So I had my own calambres this week. I didn't warm up properly or get enough rest and paid that price.  I'm going too much, running too ragged and trying and failing to be Wonder Woman. I've been typing with one eye closed and pausing to yawn. So tomorrow I cancelled my plans to be in the parade and to help someone move and I'm going to sleep in instead.  Because next week is going to be a hell of a week.