Heading Back to Teaching Next Week!

Hello Five Readers (more or less!) -

My 8 week vacation is drawing to a close and I am back in my classroom trying to ready myself for ~200 freshmen on Monday. These same students have been on break while I was on-break so we are back to "it" in a few days. LIFE SKILLS, what's that? The course I teach use to be called Education and Career Planning (ECP) but it was renamed circa 1999 to Life Skills for the Twenty-First Century. Initially with the name change came in-service trainings about how to teach Ethics and Morality. Some teachers embraced it and went for the whole 5 week package of lessons, me, not so much. Generally it's one week with 4-5 lesson plans but then reminded and referred back to when we moved on.

Unfortunately, while I was on vacation there was a number of horrible incidents involving teen bullying and subsequent suicides. Generally these have been middle school and high school but one well known incident was at Rutgers University on the East Coast. While I don't see much bullying or teasing it has to exist on this and every campus. I have an article ready to go but haven't developed questions yet to go with it. Will probably do that in the next day or two. My next post will let you know how it went. In the meantime, let's all PREACH TOLERANCE!

Still on VaCaTiOn...

Hey y'all,

Still on vacation till the end of October but stopped in to my school yesterday and walked into my old classroom. There are 41 desks in there and there had to be 47 kids, the ones without desks sitting in chairs. The teacher was showing a movie. No big deal, we show lots of movies BUT I had to wonder about class size and movies. Has anyone done a study to measure increased class size and the number of movies shown? It stands to reason that a teacher that is overworked is more likely to have an "easier" lesson plan that a teacher who might only have 28 or 30 students. I know that's how I feel.

Food for thought.

Not Another Top Ten List! ! !

'cause this one only has NINE!

Here is a link to a great article --

http://shine.yahoo.com/event/backtoschool/9-things-teachers-wish-parents-knew-2342257/ -- about the Nine Things Teachers Wish Parents Knew. I especially like numbers: 2, 3, 4 and 6 but all are good! What do you think?

Turning A New Corner

BEST PRACTICES in EDUCATION.

This blog has been long on whining and short on encouragement. I have finally decided to focus on WHAT WORKS and not so much on the problems of urban education. So the logo to the side isn't really a Best Practices icon for schools, but it was superior to what I could find on an images search so we will go with that, for now.

I will start with something small. For years I have been frustrated by the inability of my 9th graders to bring back (the next day usually) a handout I passed out the day before. This year (4 weeks old now!) I have made maybe 8-10 handouts (not a class set they use/return) but one that they need to take notes on, etc. Since I want them to SAVE them and not lose them, I have remembered every time so far to have them 3 hole punched for easy saving in their 3 ring notebooks. Ah... the lowly 3 hole puncher. We all have one or more in our classrooms and a few times a month some student will ask to borrow it. Even better though is two of three copy machines will make the punch for you as it prints your copies at the same time so the kids get theirs with the punches there. And for some reason this year I have remembered to punch their papers for them, in a small way to encourage them to be organized, save their materials and not lose them. It seems to be working too!

A New School Year!

Hi Everyone! (okay, "Hi" to the 2 or 3 that have stumbled upon this, likely by mistake)

I am three weeks into a new school year, my 15th year teaching. It got me to thinking about what I like or dislike about teaching. What I like is easy and is a longer list than the negatives. What I like is lesson planning, most of the kids.. their smiles, their questions, their work, their enthusiasm.

And then there is the not so good and this makes me think teaching has turned me (almost) into a pessimist. Of the forty or so students in my class (mainly 9th graders), 36 or so will be "on" and tuned in, and trying. It's the 4-5 kids per class that don't really seem to get it. Their "sins" include tardiness, surliness, no pencil, or paper, or backpack, sleeping in class, drawing on their desks-books-(borrowed) paper-their arm/hands...

I look at a glass and say it's half-full, no problem. I am a hopeful person, even when a student's history or past performance suggests otherwise.

There is a story in the Bible of the old woman who loses a single coin. She drops everything until she finds it - like another story in the Bible about the (single) lost sheep. And therein lies the problem - I want EVERY ONE of my students to succeed. I should be grateful that 90% of them are trying, but I am always troubled by those 1 or 2, or 3 or 4 in a class who are in danger of.... dropping out, drugs, crime, suffering, suicide, etc.

I don't have a solution, but I am quick to encourage those rare days when a student who hasn't done any work in days (or weeks) surprisingly does work in my class on a particular day. I say something hopeful to reinforce it but I know that whatever caused them to "wake-up" and participate is unfortunately many times short-lived.

How to change student behavior?

I wish I knew!

Sorry for the sabbatical I was on (so to speak). I was busy turning 50 and other such nuisances of life.

We are a few days away from the end of the school year and about to send off a few hundred 9th graders into their sophomore year. And leaving behind, maybe 100 that are short on credits to move on. They will still be at the same school, as will their classmates who figured out a way to pass, but now as they begin their second but more important year-- like the old Clash song, "should I stay or should I go?"

Dropping out becomes an option for those who have a cousin or friend, or sibling who has already dropped out. There is less stigma now for dropping out and when they see their cousin working at Costco for $8.00/hr unloading trucks, it's sign me up!

Part of it's is just immaturity, preferring video games and TV over the harder work of reading books and problem solving geometry or English papers... but for others it could be a family problems, lack of parental involvement, or a failure to learn- or learn consequences for not trying hard in previous grades.

Every July with my new batch of freshman I go over goal setting as a topic. Sometimes I teach a 5 step method, sometimes 6 steps. It doesn't really matter. I might as well be explaining astrophysics in Latin to 2 year olds during their nap time. When I model and give the 9th graders examples of SPECIFIC and MEASURABLE goals with a date I write things like: "Go to tutoring after school for at least 30 minutes 5 times during July". Or I might give them another like "Go to the Los Feliz library Friday after school and check out a book - reading the first chapter before leaving."

Okay students, now you write something related to school improvement. And then they write: Do better in school. Try harder. Work harder. They may as well write "cure cancer" or "make peace in the Middle East". Nice words, nice ideas but that's all they are.

So do I forget about teaching this topic of achieving goals and trying new behaviors when I can't get most students to even follow directions on how to write a goal? Goal setting is the single most frustrating topic I teach, by far. Of course I had to give up teaching consumer finance after just two attempts as that was pure insanity on my part so that could give goal setting a run for it's money in the area of futility.

Sure there are ways to change behavior without setting a goal to do so. You can stumble upon a new behavior and like it and realize it's superior to the old behavior and a new habit is born. But I worry the youth born today, the kids who desperately need to plug in an I-Pod for that painful 2-5 minute walk between classes - heaven forbid they actually have a conversation with another person on the way.

Stay tuned. I will have another 200+ freshmen in about 2 weeks. Around 40 to a class, probably teach all 6 periods again. It will be a challenge and perhaps I can make the difference in a scant few but for others they are set, they don't need me. And too many others, even with 1:1 help won't succeed. An hour five times a week in my class cannot make up for 10-14 years of too much TV, too little parent involvement, or too many years of parent neglect.

As the African proverb says, it takes a village (to raise a child). I am trying to do my part but my part starts at home with the two young elementary aged sons, teaching vocabulary - reading with them, asking and answering their questions, modeling reading for pleasure, and perhaps most importantly, limiting their exposure to video gaming and television. My students think it's mean when I tell them my sons don't have a TV in their bedroom - they think it's love that their parents allow them one in theirs. It just shows how fast and far values have changes in a generation.

Almost Back to Teaching

My school year is ON for 4 months, OFF for 2 months (repeat) so my March 3 to May 3 break is almost over. What has happened in the meantime, school wise? My union voted (80%) in favor of taking 5 furlough days, unpaid, to save approximately $160 million of the $640 million shortfall it faces.

The unfortunate thing here is that these 5 days will be spread from May 28 to the end of June. The next school year there will be 7 such days, but at least spread out over 8-9 months of instructional time.

Other countries have longer school days and/or MORE days of school and here we are taking even less time in the classroom. But it's okay, on these extra days off I am sure the idle hours of our youth will be spent reading for pleasure, exercising, and such. Yeah, those things and brokering peace deals in the Middle East.

Movie Endorsement

Idiocracy came out in 2006 and unfortunately was only a minor hit. It is a favorite though among middle and high school teachers who see the film as a frightening prediction of where the world is headed, with a gradual drop in IQ and morals. Here is a clip-- http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1526530841/

What does this have to do with education? Schools are fighting the 24/7 onslaught of media. Some students-- maybe 20-25% are spending more time every day and week on-line, texting, gaming, and watching TV than they are reading, studying, practicing a sport or dance, or basically challenging or developing themselves.

Graduation rates are abysmal all across America, not just in large metropolitan areas but in school districts of every size. This link-- http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2009/0609/p02s13-usgn.html is a Christian Science Monitor (CSM) article that quotes a study called Diplomas Count 2009 that states there actually is a modest improvement in the worst/lowest school districts but that overall the US is "flat-lining". Quoting from the above CSM article, "in 1996, the national on-time graduation rate was 66.4 percent; by 2006, that figure had risen to 69.2 percent. Much greater gains were made by thousands of school districts, including some struggling with high levels of poverty." While it has improved, a 30% failure rate is beyond unacceptable. Would it be okay if 30% of our doctors or the mechanics who fix our brakes, cheated their way through school and really just kind of "faked it" when doing their jobs?

Overall, with a one parent family commonplace, many undisciplined kids have so much unsupervised free time that we are turning out a reverse Lake Wobegon generation, where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are BELOW average. Can a person at a critical time in their live afford to give up a year (or three) and then get it "together" years later without consequence? Some probably can but others are sowing a slacker lifestyle that may stay with them for life.

I always thought that what the US needed was a spiritual rebirth, and that it could be led by the President. I first thought that Bill Clinton during his first administration could - should have tried to lead us in this direction. Of course the ACLU would have been all over that, protesting we need to have separation of church and state.

Watch Idiocracy and laugh, and then go to bed and realize it's a scary and prophetic look at the future of the human race. And fat and uneducated Americans, the envy of so much of the world with it's prosperity, are leading the way. I have said too much, I have Jerry Springer re-runs to catch up on.

But a final thought. About 20 years ago an old college girlfriend (Joyce) and I were exchanging letters (before email) and I said at the time I couldn't imagine bringing children into such a troubled world. She said that since drug addicts and other criminals were still pouring out babies with reckless abandon, that us (as educated people who try to do the right thing) should also have babies as a way to fight against the decline we see all around.

And one more old girlfriend anecdote, this time from Katie. She told me she wanted to have a boy baby if she got to choose the gender of her future off-spring. "Why", I asked. "Because I think the world could use a few more good men."

Agreed.

Holy Good Move Batman!

January 4th was the first day of our new semester. I had 90% of my first semester students continue on from Life Skills into my Health class. Rarely do I ask a counselor to move a student out of my class or into another period but I did do this for a student from my first period class about a month ago.

"Jason" was in a fight with "Stephen" in late December. They are both in my first period class, and apparently things had been said during a computer lab in class, and they fought after school. Both students were failing my class but Jason had been the instigator and also had 27 tardies to my first period class.

Long story short, Jason got moved to my 5th period for the new semester in Health. After 8 class days, he's awake, participates, comes on-time; a total revitalization.

Two other boys both got moved from my 6th period last semester to my 4th period for unknown reasons (usually a scheduling conflict). In 6th period, with lots of off-task modeling behavior they were like most of their peers- talking too much and off-task. In 4th period now they are BORN ANEW! In this class of 26 girls and 14 boys, good behavior is the standard and they too have fallen in line without me saying a thing.

New seat assignments in a class sometimes does the trick, but not always. However, a move to a well behaved period can teach more how to behave and act much better than a stern lecture, warning or call home. Peers modeling and teaching peers is a powerful tool, if only we can harness it more often and in other applications.