Month: October 2016

I am so tired of the word uncomfortable. It is as ridiculous as life itself, which can be quite uncomfortable, by the way. Everyone these days is worried about everyone else being uncomfortable. Good grief, man, this is teaching. Get over your bad selves and suck it up. The big world outside our classroom walls does not care about you, gives you no reasoning sometimes, and will eventually destroy you. Does that make you uncomfortable? Then stop reading now.
At six-foot-ten, I have been uncomfortable my entire life. I don’t fit. I don’t fit in cars, planes, clothes, desks, chairs–anything that is designed for a regular person does not suit me. Imagine being on a roller coaster where the metal thing descends over you to hold you in. When I rode some stupid carnival ride, I was too tall for the metal thing to wrap over me and lock. It wrapped over me, but didn’t lock. The guy told me to bend my knees, which I did for the two-minute ride. I was lucky it didn’t kill me.
You can’t say anything, you can’t do anything. Everyone is worried about how others will feel. I talked about front-page news the other day when the Torrance High wrestling coach was found guilty of sexual molestation charges. I asked my students today what they thought about all the media that is focused against Trump, and why it’s happening three weeks before an election. That might be hard-hitting to the wimpy, but, really, it’s just a question. I also told them that the “boy talk” of grabbing women has never come up in my 54 years of living. Never have I heard a male boast in such a way. I have many female students this year–they should know that males just don’t say these things.
Images of war are horrible, but shouldn’t they be seen?
The statue of David has full-frontal nudity, but isn’t it art?
Justin Bieber’s music is horrific to me, but some people like it.
This is the stuff of warnings, of iconic books that should have resonated with people and sunk in and made us change our habits. If anything, we’re worse. Huxley took away obstacles in Brave New World and made everyone happy with sex and soma. Orwell took away history, and the individual, and the truth, and made Winston love the party and Big Brother in 1984. Ray Bradbury, in a book that people dismiss as science fiction, wrote about how the minority opinion will end up being a dangerous one in Fahrenheit 451. All of these books warn of the destruction of the individual, that a move against society is a bad one.
Today we had a late start. We talked about what we’re teaching and when. Sounds pretty good, since all the new moves are towards collaboration and being on the same page, so to speak. The books chosen by the district are good, have some rigor to them, and offer the teachers a chance to change up their routine a little. You would think that’s a good thing. Nope. Comfort zones must be met, and the past has worked before so let’s keep at it. Never mind that our school has changed, that the past does not exist, that we’re going for a new focus–I WANT MY MTV.
Some teachers at our school have “Thwart the Entitlement Era” on their doors. It starts with us, though. Yes, the old man who you think is done is telling you to change if you want to be the change, or expect kids to change. What happens when we just keep beating that same drum and nothing new comes out of us? Come gather ’round, people.
And go ahead and hate the following song, because it’s not the version that’s already in your brain.

This is teaching in a nutshell (pun intended).
I ask my students many questions. For the most part, I want to bombard them with information so they’ll have words that their ears heard, and maybe that will spark something in them. Perhaps they will go on the blessed Internet and seek to learn more. Perhaps they . . . you know, that’s about all the “perhaps” moments that need to be explored. When something is of interest to kids, they look up more information on the Internet and go from there. Pretty much everyone does that now.
The subject of peanuts or allergies or both came up in class today and I told them that I have a friend whose kid has a really bad peanut allergy. Somehow, the word peanut made them speak of peanut butter–is smooth or crunchy better, in my opinion?
“I like crunchy peanut butter,” I said, “because then I know it’s made with peanuts and not a bunch of random chemicals that stay solid at room temperature.”
Yep, those are the types of answers you get from simple questions sometimes. I then asked, “What should be on the top of real peanut butter?”
Some said, “A lid,” but others got it right with “Some oil.”
We’re on the right track. We’re learning here, giving students the ability to use familiar, real-life situations to bolster their confidence, which leads to success from taking a risk (they take a risk because they have the confidence from previous correctly-answered questions).
And, when talking about real peanut butter, what’s the worst that’s going to happen. How about asking them, “So, at most, what are the two ingredients that would be in real peanut butter?”
They got peanuts. Once again, keep them confident. We’ll read hard books this year and they need to not be afraid of wrong answers. But they said oil after that. Some said sugar. Some said MSG. No one said salt. Not a one.
They thought they had it right, though, when they put two and two together. If it’s called peanut butter, it must be for a reason. “Peanuts and butter,” too many kids said. They looked really happy when they said it, too.
Oh, honors students. Ya’ll need to get out more. Funny, but not funny.

I grew up watching Get Smart. One of the props in the show was the cone of silence, which would come down from the heavens (or ceiling), covering Maxwell Smart and the Chief with this clear, plexi-glass disaster that was supposed to let them communicate while preventing the rest of the world from hearing anything. It never ended well.

Torrance does not have a physical cone of silence, but no one ever seems to hear anything or know anything. Especially our students. It’s as if the Internet is a place where the whole world is at their fingertips, except what happens in the South Bay. I don’t teach little babies, and headline news is headline news, front page and all. So I talk to them, with them, and ask them what they think about things.
Today I talked about the Torrance High wrestling case–it’s the front page of the local papers, though I don’t know if it made the TV news. Students didn’t know. When I told them about the ruling, they asked how long ago the case took place. I had to tell them that the verdict came down yesterday. All the information out in the world, they have to have friends that attend other schools, they might hear things at our school, maybe something in their own homes, and it was like I was referring to something that occurred on another planet. Strange.
It’s similarly strange with the adults in our district. If you didn’t know about the court case and the decision handed down yesterday, I’m not sure how you would find out. Teachers generally eat in their own rooms, sometimes joined by another teacher. We don’t really have teachers’ lounges, and since we only have a 31-minute lunch period to get food in us, run errands, check email, go to the bathroom . . . I don’t think many large groups of adults eat together. We talk in passing, in stopping into other teacher’s rooms, by email, and sometimes a phone call. We have no water coolers to gather around either.
So how is anyone to know? When the refinery had a flare-up the other day, we got an email from the district, telling us the story. But in the same week, nothing is emailed about Torrance High. It is something that will affect everyone in the district. What should we tell people? What do we tell our students about what is in the papers? What do we tell TV news if they shove a camera/mic in our face? “Uh, I dunno. We haven’t really been told about it.”
I doubt it will blow over anytime soon, but, for now, enjoy the silence.

First off, Smokin’ Joe Frazier was a man. He wasn’t the smartest, didn’t have the gift of great one-liners, and wasn’t the prettiest either. But the man would fight you, and keep coming forward, and not understand when someone was bigger and stronger so that you might need a better fight plan. I have nothing but the ultimate respect for him, though, because he was a grinder, and he wore his heart on his sleeve. Sadly, after today’s news, all I can write is Rest in Peace, Joe Frazier, and I mean no disrespect with the following, a quote I will always remember.

The news out of Torrance today made me think of the quote. The Torrance High wrestling coach, Thomas Snider, was found guilty of molesting 25 kids. He was found to have male teen porn on his hard drive, and admitted to nude checks of athletes and their private parts to check for diseases, as if they were commonplace in wrestling and coaching. Other area wrestling coaches did not know of this “checking” practice. There are articles everywhere, and I will attach one at the end of this post.
First off, you have 25 kids in this lawsuit. Who knows how many there actually were? It’s a terrible situation for them because it happened then and is being brought up again now. I can’t put myself in their shoes, but it has to be awful.
And, it’s a black eye for our community and district. Things have happened at North High that weren’t discussed like they should have been, and the papers and local outlets did not report to the community either. This Torrance High story allegedly started at another school in the district, at the coach’s previous school, where a 33-yr-old man has now made claims against Snider for behavior twenty years ago. Did anyone know back then? How many teachers, administrators, or anyone else might have known that something was happening? And was it discussed? I have no idea, but, if it had been, maybe the situation would have ended there and spared 25 kids.
But this story is in the general media. It will probably make the TV news tonight.
It is Paterno and Sandusky at Penn State with the argument of knowing/not knowing? Was the communication level similar to our own school’s, where people knew things for years but hoped that the behaviors would change? I have no idea how far it goes up the corporate ladder of Torrance High and our district.
On every mission statement of every school in the world, though, is the term safe. North High’s reads “All members of the North High School community are committed to providing a safe, orderly and supportive environment where students learn to become effective communicators, responsible citizens and creative, complex thinkers.” Our faculty often nit-picks over the language at the end, but no one ever suggests a school should not be safe. “Safe” just left the building here.
These will be dark days. It doesn’t end here. How much does each kid get? There are 25 of them. How does this affect people in our district, and our budgets from here on out? Will teachers and administrators in our district be fired because of this? I have no idea. Until today, I knew of the case, but did not know the trial had started or that the jury was deliberating. It’s not discussed, and we too often don’t address what ought to be addressed.
Kids deserve better. Parents entrust their kids to us because they feel we offer a safe place. I respect so many of the people on our campus that help make it a safe place for students, but there are stories we just don’t know. And we should.
With no disrespect to the man himself, it’s still stuck in my head. Down goes Frazier.
http://www.dailybreeze.com/general-news/20161013/torrance-wrestling-coach-found-guilty-of-molesting-25-boys

I love part of a quote by William Faulkner from As I Lay Dying. It’s about getting down on your knees and praying and ends with “people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.” I realize that because there is the knee/praying talk, and the fact that it’s Faulkner’s South, that many people might look at this as a mere religious sentiment.
To me, words are a big deal. I stand by my word–if I say I’m going to do something, it is done. I would hope that’s the case with most people, where your word is sort of an honor code and you stand by what you say. But I don’t think that’s what Faulkner is going for, for I don’t think many want their salvation to be “just words.” When you’re dealing in words, the result is words, and that’s what education ends up being.
Words are what a teacher worries about, too. Are your students learning, or are your lessons just words? Words can look dandy on a paper, or tick all the boxes of a lesson, but they might only be words and not lead to anything else, like THINKING, or sparking intellectual CURIOSITY.
Bottom line for me–if you’re worried about words, that’s all you’re going to get in return. My salvation has come in the form of letters, food, weddings (former students have let me officiate their marriages), friendships, a current tenant is a former student, and more examples that keep me thinking and spark my curiosity and move me forward.
Faulkner.

Another student-free day, but this one started with the refinery having enough issues to elicit a shelter in place. So at least we got to start a half-hour later.
We are still trying to figure out what to do with tardies. There are so many options out there, but some teachers don’t follow the tardy policy so it’s hard to come up with something new. I believe in locking kids out–a tardy sweep, if you will–and rounding up all the kids who couldn’t make it to class by the bell. Tell them beforehand. Remind them over the loudspeaker. They do not like being herded like sheep when locked out of rooms after the tardy bell rings. And, each day we have done this in the past, kids have HUSTLED to class, rather than loping along while staring at their cellphones. I hate tardies, but I have good enough kids where it doesn’t affect me. But, when we’re talking about preparing kids for the real world, just what world rewards you for being late all the time? The sad part of the event was seeing that one of the questions posed on paper read “do to” instead of “due to.” So there was that.
We then went over our disaster drill policy and emergency preparedness handbook. I felt like such a professional as I fished through boxes of binders–unmarked to keep us guessing–until I eventually found mine. Our new site supervisor then read the names of every faculty member, made us stand, and told us what our duties were in case of a disaster. These facts were all on a paper, but he read every name. He also went over the different types of disasters and how the bells would sound. My favorite part was sitting next to my disaster partner. The teacher that now has my partner’s room brought over the binder, which still had the roll sheets from last year’s class. This means that even though we have to turn in our binders, nothing happens with them (except they get put in boxes). Same stuff, same evacuation routes that tell you one route on one page and another route on another.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, sings Roger Daltrey, via Pete Townsend’s words.
We filled out our WASC sheets that dealt with data. Data? I never see any. In our defense, we don’t nationally test anymore, or test in the state, so that hurts. But there’s AP results we never see.
We played a game dealing with PLC’s. There were 18 questions and we had about a minute to answer each one in a multiple-choice format. I kind of liked the kahoot app, but it took a lot of time. Perhaps I can use it with students in a shorter time format.
Lunch (and breakfast from Panera) was good. ROTC comes through every time and are a gem on our campus. The kids do a good job of presenting their brand, which is professional and nice.
We came back from lunch to have the administration reward teachers who collaborate well with peanut M & M’s. They said something nice about four teachers, who, in turn, had to say something nice about someone else. Sadly, I was shut out from receiving anything. The only thing I get rewarded with at school are many students and many different preps. As, Groucho Marx once said–“I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as its member.” And if he didn’t say it, Woody Allen used it in either Annie Hall or Manhattan.
Before we broke into our grade-level groups, we got to vote on our slogans/vision statement. There were 40 of them on the walls of the libary–pieces of paper with the slogans stuck on them, stuck on pieces of construction paper–and we had to affix a blue-dot sticker on the ones we liked to represent North High. I was happy to see that Community, Identity, Stability made the Top 40 cut, but did not see many stickers next to it. I guess we don’t have a brave new school.
We quickly moved past all the norms from the day before. The term “tabled for later” was used again, in some format. Hands were raised to show we were a good audience and were back on track. It was all fine and dandy–people are trying.
Tomorrow we are back with our students. Jeff Buckley will sing my thoughts and Leonard Cohen’s.

Student-free days are those wonderful occasions where teachers get together and work as a team to set new standards in education. Led by an intrepid administrative team, whose experience is invaluable in these situations, each shareholder is privy to a learning experience that is like “trickle-down teachonomics,” where teachers are able to take away lessons and information that can be used in their classrooms, and beyond. Everybody wins, from the administration down to the teachers, which is passed down to students, the community, and the brand of the school, in general.
Our student-free day did not go perfectly. It was nice to be fed by ROTC–the kids were really nice and attentive and professional and doled out food to the masses. It was somewhat downhill after that. The 10 presentations that we didn’t get to do in our last WASC-oriented late start were done here. 10 presentations on the same thing. We did have a group do a parody of “YMCA,” though. YMCA? WASC? Pretty good stuff to see colleagues out there having some fun.
We worked on our vision statement after that. We were given slogans from major companies, which is not bad to pull from, since it gives the public an easy slogan to memorize. But of the ten slogans that were given to us, two were the exact same one, five of them used “engages” as their verb, “primer” was used instead of “premier,” and the visions kept referring to “all” students, as if everyone falls into similar categories. We wrote some slogans down on papers and submitted them–we vote tomorrow.
There was group work, where each person tried to remember letters on a pyramid. After we determined that it was hard to do that as an individual, the group worked together and remembered all the letters. It’s a good reminder that, sometimes, groups can get done what individuals can’t.
The highlight was our principal singing. He sang a song called “The Drinking Gourd,” about the Underground Railroad and how the drinking gourd was code for the Big Dipper. It happened. He sang a capella, but did get some help from adults with the chorus. Usually, I would have something snarky to write, and others kind of snickered here and there, but even though the piece didn’t necessarily fit with what we were doing, he put himself out there. There’s something to be said about that, especially in front of a crowd that would probably not do the same thing.
The non-highlight was the subject of norms. I forget the exact norm we were discussing, but it was tabled for later because it was said that it might make some people uncomfortable. Uncomfortable? Here we all were, in a room together, trying to make our school a place that parents would want to send their students, and we were worried about adults being uncomfortable. It’s a word that came up last year and affected me. Things were written, more things were written, something needed to be done, but the buck was passed until the subject died because people were uncomfortable.
You see, we are uncomfortable when we do things that are wrong, or when we wrong certain people. But you discuss, you see where people were coming from, you adapt and adjust, and maybe you figure things out so people aren’t uncomfortable. We are better than this. We are adults who don’t need trigger warnings or safe spaces. We all have feelings, but there are also facts.
Close with the positive–our principal sang today. I was uncomfortable for him, but I always am when people sing in public. Guess what? Despite my comfort level, it is done, time has passed, and the past is not happening right now.

There’s been a huge push lately in public education for students to attend four-year colleges. Now that may not seem like a big deal, except the push is for students to enter four-year colleges right out of high school. And that’s where some teachers have an issue, including me.
There was data not many years ago that I will never believe. I just have seen too many success stories to make me think the numbers are correct. It went along these lines–for every 100 students that enters a junior college with the intent on attending a four-year university, only four percent made it to that level. That’s right. Four kids out of every hundred kids with INTENT to transfer. Seems a little hard to believe. What happens to the other 96?
Do any of the four-percenters read this? Anyone who went to a 2-yr that has transferred to a 4-yr. There’s a comment button below.

Yesterday was World Teacher Day.
Nothing in my mailbox, nothing from students or fellow teachers. Nothing on the bulletin. Nothing over the loudspeaker. Nothing today to make up for the nothing yesterday.
When it comes to me, this doesn’t matter much because I’ve been around. I’ve had really great students over the years who have taken the time to tell me how much they enjoyed my class. These same students stroke whatever ego I have left when they tell me that what they learned from me is the same thing that colleges are teaching them. Parents stop me at local stores to say hello and tell me things that are nice to hear.
Sadly, not everything is about me. We have first-year teachers (along with others who don’t have the most experience) who get that job, get stuck out on the island that is their classroom, and teach their kids in a bubble. Three math teachers last year came to our school and left in the same year. I don’t know the reasons because I never got to know them.
In the English department, we had a new teacher get hired a week or two ago. I wouldn’t know the exact particulars because she has never been introduced to our department or our school. We just had a late start the other day that included the entire faculty. I went in to introduce myself the other day, but she had her back turned and was talking to a student.
World Teacher Day? Not necessary for me, but it might be nice for someone new to be recognized for what they’re doing in class. Note to self–say hi to the new English teacher tomorrow.

People don’t do things for no reason anymore. There’s always got to be something in it for them. Same deal with the clown scares. Really, people? Some guy or gal is going to dress up as a scary old clown and roam the streets of cities, scaring little children (and people who still are little children)?

Not even a possibility. For one, there’s no money in it. Two, the cops would roll up on this clown so fast it wouldn’t know what hit it (no pun intended).
Come on! Next thing you’re going to tell me is that we put a man on the moon or that Muhammad Ali actually HIT Sonny Liston. PUH-leeze.
So, today, students came up to me in class with a tweet or post on their phones that claimed clowns were at North High, lurking in our parking lot. They, of course, had descriptions of their evil attire, the ghastly make-up, and whatever weapon they were wielding. After all, there was a posting on social media that this was real.
“Picture, or it didn’t happen,” was my response, and that was that. Okay, a few boys tried to inch out of class to catch of glimpse of the hellish clowns, but they didn’t get far.
Fast forward to after school. I walked out of school with my next-door-classroom neighbor, like we often do after the final bell. But today, the principal was in the parking lot with campus security. I have never seen the two of them in the parking lot at any time, so I quickly put two and two together as we walked past them.
“Oh, you’re looking for clowns,” I said. And then, because I’m so darned clever, added something along the lines of, “Well, looks like we’re the only clowns here.”
I appreciate the pro-active stance of patrolling the parking lot after school, but there are hundreds of cars with many parents, students, and teachers in the vicinity. The principal knew I was joking around and said, “What’s that song about clowns? ‘Bring in the Clowns’?”
“‘Send in the Clowns,'” I said. “But I prefer some Smokey Robinson.”
I actually prefer the English Beat. Either version, the tears are real.
https://youtu.be/VY98T36ZC60