Month: January 2017

I’ve noticed lately that these United States are worried about the appointment of Betsy DeVos for Education Secretary. It appears that she has money, did not attend public schools, and did not send her children to public schools.
Rumor has it that she is also the devil, will have every student on vouchers, dances in the woods next to a boiling cauldron, uses Bing as her search engine, and makes chocolate chip cookies from the pre-made chub. We all get it–she’s going to ruin education. And, that certainly goes against the mantra of making America great again.
My simple question is, “Why do people care? Now?” Have you looked at our rankings in education? There’s the state-by-state ones; there’s the worldwide ones. The United States does not always fare very well in these. A simple Google search (no Bing for me) finds our country 14th in education, according to Pearson. IPSOS Mori finds us 2nd in the world, though–in ignorance. There’s a list for everything, but we have many countries ahead of us.
Is it Common Core? Too much testing? The same-old, same-old? Underpaid teachers with limited resources? This generation of kids too stupid? Has social media destroyed our ability to do anything without our phones? The inner city? Affluenza?
And, again, why do people suddenly care? When we were cutting teachers, and budgets, and shoving 40+ kids into a classroom–this happened for years. I had over 200 students more than once–schools were an absolute disaster. It kind of focused teachers and students to do a better job, but, crap, the sky was falling and taking education with it. No one seemed to care then, maybe because our test scores were still solid and caused no alarm. We lost really good teachers because of budget cuts and the layoff process of last in/first out.
Betsy DeVos sounds like a horrible pick for Education Secretary, but education comes from the home first. Vouchers sound like a horrible idea, but schools will just shut their doors on kids they don’t want. They used to do that when I taught at Long Beach Poly. Six thousand neighborhood kids wanted in, but only forty-four-hundred got in. The rest were shipped elsewhere. Good schools will find a way to bend the rules in their favor.
Here are the positive aspects that might come from DeVos–parents and community members might take a look at school as something more than daycare and be a bigger part of the education process. Also, perhaps a level of competition will make schools more attractive to a prospective student. As I have said forever, and write here–What is your brand?
You play with the cards you’re dealt and, if all the higher-echelon college-bound kids supposedly leave your school to attend neighboring ones (that’s a rumor of North High, that good kids are going elsewhere so they can attend better colleges), then you adapt and adjust.
I wish Betsy DeVos lots of luck. Rather than focusing on doing what we know is the right thing to do with students, I’m sure people will spend time criticizing her. Like our students, we like to take the easy way out.

Second semester today. People wonder how we control students, to get them to blindly do things that don’t make sense–look no further than the first day of a semester. We sign pink schedule forms. Each kid brings each form around to all teachers, they sign them by their respective class and subject, and, at the end of the day, we collect all the pink schedule sheets from kids and take them down to the office. The office folk put them in a box and, the next day, or maybe even the same day, the schedules are thrown away.
Okay, I lied. We just sign them now. But up until last year, we went through the above routine. Kids would look at us and say, ‘You have to sign this.’ And I would answer back with, ‘What if I don’t?’ The bottom line is that I haven’t signed them in years because I knew about the end of the day, the box, and the disposal of them.
For the last years at school, we’ve been online. If a kid is in my class, they are online, in my class. It’s not tough to figure. You print what’s online, call roll for a few days, and move along. But, OH, the pink schedule papers. If they’re not signed by every teacher, the end is upon us. It’s hilarious that we convince kids that THIS matters, when it doesn’t matter at all. So it goes.
Two other things–Kim Till returned to North High. It was her first day. She did not return as a secretary, which was her previous job, but as Site Supervisor. She used to be the secretary for Site Supervisor, which is somewhat funny, if you think irony is funny. We had a SS, she was the secretary. He took many days off, so she pretty much ran the office anyway. But when the first SS went on leave, we had an interim SS, and she was still secretary. Then, the old SS came back, the interim went to Torrance High School, and she followed. Long story short, the SS at Torrance came back, North’s position opened up and she got it over everyone who applied.
I like Kim. She wants to have horses at our property in Montana. Never mind that she doesn’t have horses and that we don’t have room for them anyway–it’s a hope and dream. The sad part of the story is that she worked for North High for years, interviewed and received the job, yet, on her first day back, no one was told. There was no announcement, no ‘Welcome back, Kim’ ticker-tape parade. She was back, in an office, and if you passed by, you might have seen her. Late last night, my wife baked her cookies and wrote her a card to have me deliver to her. I did. I also welcomed her back. No ticker-tape parade, though.
The other thing happened during my last class. I wanted to show a TED Talk on my overhead, switched on my stereo to get some good volume, and forgot I had a Spotify playlist going. No big deal–the song that was playing was easily recognized as Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On?’ My students started to make strange noises, then there was an absence of sound, then there was a What is This? moment. Yikes. It’s Marvin Gaye. No one knew the song. I had to tell them the artist was black, was popular during the 70’s. Nothing. When I told them his dad shot him, a student said Marvin Gaye.
Do you know what’s going on? Not much. YouTube videos have Marvin Gaye, though.

There’s one semester left for school this year.
One period of students took a final today and one kid asked what it could be on since we hadn’t learned anything this year. Many thoughts ran through my head, from sarcastic to mean to realistic. Instead of being mean to one student, I just told them that they had a couple of hoops to jump through–an essential question that wrapped up a recent reading, and a benchmark test that our district likes to see happen for data collection, among other things.
I felt bad for a while because I’m sure I did have students who didn’t learn anything in my class. But, as we all know, learning comes in so many forms. And, what comes out of the mouths of 15-yr-olds shouldn’t bother me. I’ve learned, over the years, that I am not the center of the universe for certain students and that everything isn’t about me. I mean, students have taken the time to tell me this years after I had them in class.
Based on semester one, my goals are a little different for semester two.
–make seniors suffer with tons of work. You know, like prepare them for college, and stuff.
–make sophomore honors sophomore honors. You know, like challenge them for taking a class with the word honors in it.
–be nice, patient, humble. Nod and smile. Remember that I have it pretty good.
–expose them to something new every day. Maybe then they’ll LEARN SOMETHING. Alright, so maybe that comment does bother me. A little.
–teach them.

When I used to go on job interviews, one of the lines I would say to a principal, or whoever interviewed me, was that I believed any kid who showed up to school was there to learn. I would never use that line now.
I now believe that any kid who shows up to school should be exposed to everything and that it’s up to him or her to do something with it. Olive branches should be in short supply.

Here’s the best thing that happened first semester. I had a girl who was thrown into one of my classes by her counselor. She has not done well since day one, and started behind all the others because the counselor put her in my class that had lengthy summer reading that she didn’t even know about until maybe a day before school when I emailed her because I saw her on my roll sheet.
This girl failed. She did most of the assignments, and still failed. She got behind and never recovered. She even resorted to downloading a short piece from the Internet and turned it in as her own. But yesterday, after class, she came up to my desk and asked if she could do something extra during the second semester to make up for the first, asking for at least a C. Yes! You’re never overmatched if you hang in there and keep trying.
Guess I have a new lunch buddy.https://youtu.be/0prgP6watdo

Today was the first day of finals. There’s a second day tomorrow. Then, that’s a wrap for semester one. Semester one, by the way, clocked in at a whopping 84 days, leaving us 96 days left for semester two. A 12-day delta between the two semesters seems a bit strange to me–I mean, if we had gone one more week of instruction it would have been an 89- and 91-day split. But what do I know?
I do know one thing and it’s worthy of my praise. That would be the North High JROTC program. Now, before I say some nice things about the program, let me also note that I have had some JROTC students in my English classes that were pretty lame. They talked too much, weren’t very respectful, and, for the most part, weren’t a good representation of the uniform. Others were great.
I think of JROTC today because they fed us. As teachers, we like few things–give us some peace and quiet, and feed us now and again. An “atta boy” would be nice, too, but it’s been so long. JROTC had 30 (maybe more) of their kids in the cafeteria after school doling out food to the teachers. This was all food they had brought, they had made, and they stood up straight, acted respectful, and piled many dishes onto our plates. It was a huge line of food–to go over the whole menu would be time-consuming. Needless to say, no one could have possibly gone hungry with the selections presented to us.
JROTC is a program at North High School. Master Sergeant Graham and Command Sergeant Major Duran have been at it for a long time, and they take in just about anyone who signs up for it. These are not hand-picked kids, or AP kids, or future collegiate all-stars (though some fit those billings)–they’re kids who have signed up for the class and experience of JROTC. Graham and Duran try to instill in them qualities befitting not just someone in the program, but of a human being. JROTC incorporates lessons in procedure, but also life lessons as well.
The last few years, on certain nights, JROTC has requested my wife to give lessons on public speaking, or speaking to a group, or anything that enhanced the students’ speaking skills. After all, she taught speech at North for 20 years. She was always glad to do it because the kids were so respectful, wanted to learn more, and knew that she was giving them information that would benefit them in the future. She would come home from that night, tired, but happy that she had helped out kids. She also noticed that she didn’t know many of the students, and that many of those students she didn’t know weren’t really the “cool kids” or the obvious kids on campus that you always see. But what was important, she realized, was that JROTC gave them that place to be on campus. Yeah, maybe they weren’t always the best kids in class (if they had been really bad I could have gone to Graham or Duran and the behavior would have definitely changed), but, in this type of group, this type of place, they were a family. That’s a big deal.
I have nothing but respect for the JROTC program at North High. Yes, it helps that I was fed today, but it’s really important for kids to feel that they have a place to belong in high school. High school is hard enough for students, and for them to call anything at school a “family” or a “place” means that something good is happening. There are so many levels of success in school, and in life, that we get blinded by grades and Common Core and every acronym that’s thrown around. A success for these kids today could have been looking teachers in the eye, asking what food they wanted, and providing it with a smile. Or, providing the food, or setting everything up.
The only bad part of the luncheon today was the lack of attendance. Fewer than half of our teachers showed up and SO much food was left over. On my way out, I thanked the kids and made sure to thank Sergeants Duran and Graham for doing this.
“Thanks for always doing this,” I said. “I wish there had been more of us to enjoy it.”
Duran didn’t hesitate in saying, “We’ll just keep on providing it, no matter what.”
That’s what most of us in education do. Sometimes people take us up on what we provide, sometimes not. But you keep putting it out there.https://youtu.be/bOoTfXa5TBI

It’s rough out there. Imagine if you were a senior in high school, and were forced to take the required senior English course–if you’re older than a senior in high school, you don’t even have to imagine this. At North High School, we offer English 4 (in seat and online), APN (that’s the class I teach with Gillian Hart when I teach English 4 to the same kids she teaches Gov/Econ), and AP Literature. Those are the choices. We used to have other choices for senior English–Philosophy/Thanatology, World Masterpieces, Contemporary Literature–but those were recently removed so that there would be more English 4.
The goal was simple. If we got rid of all those horrible options for students, there would be a more singular class, one where teachers could collaborate together, be on the same page, thus making the English 4 classes interchangeable, but with differing teaching styles, of course. It’s not about robots teaching yet (although the Stoverbot3000 is at the ready), but about getting rid of options so that we can generate better lessons for all and know that each student is getting a similar experience in senior English.
That’s fine and dandy until something happens that to the great machine. In this case, I write of the teacher that doesn’t exist anymore despite teaching at North for 10 years. That teacher is gone, off to repopulate the world with another child, while the class has been led (word choice) by a substitute teacher who no one knew about, and now another substitute teacher who came in a week after Christmas break. We were sent an email with her name. So, since Thanksgiving, students have had one substitute without a subject credential until January 9th, when another substitute replaced the first one.
With all the collaboration, and PLCs, and RTI, and Common Core, and standards-based instruction, and common formative assessments (and summative, too), one would think that the machine could plug just about anyone into that position and it would run like clockwork. You would think.
The reality is that most of our school doesn’t even know about this situation–the teacher, the replacements, or the kids involved. I would not have known myself unless seniors who don’t have me as a teacher came into my room at lunch and started talking about it. They told me there was a sub in the class for their regular teacher, but she really didn’t know what to do, so the kids just kind of “hung out” and didn’t do much. Kids. Filled with silliness and hyperbole, until . . . I introduced myself to the sub and offered to help her with anything senior-oriented, since I’ve taught seniors forever. And she seemed relieved, since her efforts to find out what to do were met with “Ask so-and-so,” then “Ask another so-and-so,” and then “Ask the original so-and-so” until she gave up.
I haven’t talked to the new substitute teacher, but the students also have been worried that they’re going to fail because nothing’s been graded. They claimed they have had little assignments here and there, but nothing had really been serious. Once again, I was a little doubtful of their claims until I went online and saw they hadn’t had an assignment recorded in their grade since November 21st, the day the teacher who never existed left school to have a baby.
Today, though, ONE day before finals, 10 assignments were graded and added to their total. One day before finals, after an over two-month wait for updating, these seniors now know their grades. And they better be happy with them, because there’s not much time left to raise them, since we start finals tomorrow. Once again, this is a required class for ALL students, and since we strive to keep all students meeting the A-G requirements, and encourage them to attend four-year universities immediately after graduation, the stakes are high. Students must pass the class to graduate and must receive a C or higher to attend college out of high school.
Did parents not know of this? Were they pacified somehow by students who thought they could coast by with no assignments and no updated grades? Wasn’t there a four-year-university-bound student in the class that was worried about his or her future?
Every day we ask our kid about school. You should, too, because the only way I know of this story is from random students who eat in my room at lunch now and again. And, if this is what we now know, what don’t we know?

I like the quote “good is the enemy of great.” It’s on Gillian Hart’s white board, and since I’m in her room often because of classes we share, I see it up there all the time. I’m old, too, and exposed to many circles in life, so I see things that are present.
That may be hard to contemplate for some, but what I mean is simple–if you don’t know it, or are not exposed to it, you sometimes can’t see it. After Trump’s inauguration, there were MANY quotes on social media from George Orwell. Orwell wrote 1984, your basic totalitarian-government-is-bad book that should be on just about everyone’s must-read list for this year. None of my students had seen any quotes from Orwell on social media. My argument is, even if they had seen the quotes there was no reference point for the words to make any sense. If you don’t know it, you can’t see it.
I’ve written at length about how important it is for students to be exposed to things, to know everything, and to be lifelong learners who are curious. It’s common sense coming from any teacher. And our students are good, though we want them to be great. They’re good, fine, adequate, sufficient, average, decent, swell, nice, and, most of the time, get things done with little argument. They get it done, but oftentimes at a base level. If my minimum word length for writing is 300 words, some write 300 words, as if 301 or more might hurt them.
Educators talk about the application of rigor–how we should challenge our students by having rigorous lessons that have them go above and beyond. Any teacher could assign something that met higher standards for students. Just last week, when I gave a test on Camus’s The Stranger, I took one of their questions from a university source that I found online. Students complained. They said it was hard, that they weren’t sure of what to put for an answer. Yes, it was hard, because even though I had hinted at the answer many times in class, I hadn’t come out and given it to them literally. Inference is not always easy.
Recently, I’ve seen papers online of former students. Some are notes on all the Presidents. Some are notes on Environmental Science terms, complete with their definitions. Some are Calculus notes. By the way, all those classes are AP classes–advanced placement kids who will go off to college filled with answers for a test, but no reference for it in life. Maybe that’s the nature of AP tests–the spilling back of information learned to adequately answer the question posed.
Yesterday, my students turned in a paper on a musical act that had them incorporating and integrating quotes and learning how to cite a paraphrased piece. I had MLA rules on one side of a handout; an example from the master (that’s ME) was on the back. I told them to parrot it, to do whatever it took to get things absolutely correct and beautiful, as every clue on how to do it perfectly was contained on my paper.
Not one paper was correct.
One student cheated. Her paper was correct, had no mistakes, but wasn’t about a musical act. I found it easily online. It’s the second paper in as many days that I’ve found online.
Songs were in italics (nope) while albums were also in italics (yep).
I was told that ‘N SYNC not only did “Bye Bye Bye,” but “I Want It That Way.”
There must be a new movie out called “The Sound of a Music,” for I only know The Sound of Music. It must be a short film, too, since the title was in quotes.
And so on. Not one paper was correct. They were good. They were almost right. But none–NONE–out of 50+ papers were spared the pen.
Writing is rigor. It is a discipline that we don’t like because it means grading papers. But teaching is also rigor. Everyone talks about how all the great teachers need to come together and make good students great. What no one ever accounts for, though, is that it goes both ways–that great students can make good teachers great.
Maybe when I take a break from late starts and collaboration and common/formative assessments and PLCs and RTI and Common Core and standards-based teaching, maybe when I look at data and synthesize my criteria for a rubric, maybe, just maybe I can be great again. Well, that’s assuming I’m even any good right now.

After today, there will only be double digits left to go for the year. Unfortunately, there will be 99 days left.
Today was a pretty monumental day for kids and teachers. There’s this new President in town named Donald Trump and, BOY, is he shaking things up in these United States. Just this last weekend, millions upon millions of women from all over our country went out on Saturday and marched in solidarity of one another, in recognition of female equality, and, in many instances, to protest this fella Trump.
I have 160 students. One of them marched. She went to Los Angeles to join close to a million others. Gillian Hart, with whom I teach APN, marched in Redondo Beach. I always claim that kids want to be a part of something, to feel like they belong to anything. This was an easy opportunity to belong to something rather historic, and one person went. Maybe if it had been extra credit.
In one of my classes we discussed why it would have been a good thing to join one of the marches. And they were very stoic and thought I wanted that certain lesson-plan answer.
“To show support for women,” they said.
“To protest Trump,” they said.
“To be involved,” they said.
I told them that those reasons were all good and fine, but that, if they remembered correctly, it was a beautiful day on Saturday, sandwiched between two storms, so the city was a little less dirty.
“Oh, but the public trains would still have been gross,” they said.
“There would have been so many people,” they said.
“There might have been weirdos and hobos,” they said. Students won’t say “bums.” They think that the correct word is “hobo.” I have no idea why.
But I kept at them, hoping that this certain word might come out of their mouths, a word taken for granted in education these days, and one that doesn’t enter their lives much either, I’m guessing. “Come on,” I said. “It was nice out, you didn’t have to be at school. You might even have had–”
I waited for the word. It didn’t come quickly.
“You know? Being out and about and trying new things. That’s all–”
Finally someone said “Fun,” but almost as a question. Fun? As if they had all forgotten.
Every day we laugh in class. Each of my classes. Kids will be passing in the hallways, looking like they’ve joined the zombie apocalypse, and stare a little longer when we’re laughing, or having fun, or I’m playing music, or overacting (English teachers are great failed actors). They stare because they, too, have forgotten.
Our principal, in his UC Santa Cruz days, was featured in Life magazine. Pretty cool stuff that our head guy had an article about him in the early 1970s in a hugely popular and much-read magazine. Our principal was probably in his early twenties and offered this quote–“Education must begin with an exposure to joy and variety. Ideas have a way of creating people.” I’m sure if you search those words, the entire article will come up.
I think of that quote all the time when I see lifeless teenagers walking around campus because that’s where they are forced to go. If we gave them an opportunity for variety and joy, if there was a chance for them to take a fun class (gosh, that word again), I swear they would do it. They would be awakened from their slumbers if there was something to be awake for. They’d have something to talk about other than YouTube videos.
At this writing, though, on Day 80, it’s a zombie apocalypse that speaks of YouTube videos. Only one thing will change it, too. Day 180.

Today, Donald Trump became our country’s President. Today is also Friday. These two statements are both true. Friday will last until Saturday comes around. Trump will last as long as he can serve the American people.
I think of Trump as nothing but an entertainer, and entertainers are allowed to entertain as long as they make money for the people they serve. Happens in music, movies, and TV all the time. We’ll see how long he lasts–I’m sure there are tons of betting odds out there based on his Presidential longevity. He most definitely inherits a country that seems to either hate him or love him, and offers plenty of sound bites for people to feel certain ways about him.
Me? I didn’t vote for him or Hillary because I live in California. No matter who I wanted to get those 55 electoral votes, they were going to Hillary. I’m also not looting, or telling others what to do to undermine his Presidency, or filling people’s absent memories with a hagiography of our previous administration.
Today is Friday and Trump is the President of the United States of America. What are you going to do? I mean, there is a Chrome extension that replaces every picture of Trump with a picture of a kitten. That’s fun, right?
My biggest worry with Trump is that nothing will change in education, the place where I have spent the large majority of my adult life. You can appoint the greatest minds in the world, show them other countries where education is valued at a premium, make success an incentive, but I don’t know how we are going to make schools great again. And saying it is not enough (though I believe that if you say something enough times people will buy into it as Gospel truth).
Last year, our principal claimed we had alleviated our bullying problem at school. Many teachers applauded. Others laughed. There will always be bullies–in school and in life. Move along. Yesterday I was shown a video of a North High kid who was being goaded into bouncing up and down while saying “Ass.” The kid is a freshman, in Special Education, and had a video of him bouncing and saying “Ass” while a caption read something like “What do you enjoy eating?” That’s bullying. The girl that showed it to me was in my room at lunch, we saw the dean walk by, I told her to catch him and report the video. She did and the dean said he would look into it.
Today I addressed the video with my students, who claimed it would disappear in 24 hours on Instagram anyway. Many had seen it, but didn’t care much because they knew it would be gone in a day. Because that was Thursday. Today is Friday. The video probably is gone now. Hence, no more bullying and the world is a great place.
It all comes back to entertainment. We have to keep upping that ante to get people to watch, to get them to hit those like buttons. I mean, drinking urine was so yesterday.

I’m not a big fan of Thursdays, and the reasons are pretty simple. School has happened for almost the whole week, we’ve traversed Hump Day and Taco Tuesday, yet all we have to look forward to is another day of school. I’m sure students feel the same way.
The day ends, though, and there are always ways to wind down, to decompress and figure out the plan of attack for tomorrow. Writing helps. A good piece of chocolate helps. Some lemonade with lime added to it for that tang. Music at high volumes before the wife gets home. Shoes off. On hot days, pants off (Hey, you kids, get off my lawn!!!). Mindless television. News that I may have missed. Perhaps a good dinner that features salsa, beans, rice, tortillas, and a protein–yes, Mexican food solves most problems for me.
Today, in class, I watched a BuzzFeed video on people drinking their own urine. Students had to present something they found interesting, and my student sold the video well. She didn’t find drinking urine interesting, but how many clicks it received and that, in a weak moment, that she had actually watched it out of boredom. I suppose I find that interesting, too–that people gravitate toward anything. And, hey, it’s a media-literate class for seniors, a place where questioning and looking outside the usual box is encouraged.
After all, you could be doing ALL THESE OTHER THINGS, but, instead, people are watching videos about pee. I was going to upload the video at the end of this post, so I went to YouTube and typed in “buzzfeed d” which quickly gave me the option to click on “buzzfeed drinking urine.” So I clicked, and, right at the top of the list, there was the video we watched in class with 2.7 million views. It gets worse. Scrolling down you can easily find these videos–
What Happens When You Boil Urine? 1.7 million views
Drinking Each Other’s Pee 5.8 million views
People Drink Sewage Water for the First Time 3.7 million
People Share Horrifying Pee Stories 2.5 million
and so on.

It’s no wonder books have become hard to read when there are all these urine videos out there. And I know there’s this voice in the back of their heads that says, “Hey, who ever got rich reading books? We could make a video about drinking something foul and parlay that success to big riches.” At Long Beach Poly, kids were going to rap or play sports to get out of the city–now they can make a video and put it on YouTube and millions can enjoy their urine.
Go ahead, do a YouTube search on most-watched videos. You won’t know any of them. And, if you do, nothing I’ve written on this blog probably makes sense.

Yesterday I posted about a sophomore class of mine only having 12 of 32 students turn in an explanation/informative essay. I must correct myself–it was actually 13. I realize each individual class period is different, but, for the most part, my first four classes are decent. Some talk too much, or joke around, or not do work, or turn in work in pencil, or not read, or fail every test, or laugh with their friends, or spend time on their phones, or do work from other classes, or use my microwave after the bell has rung, or take pictures of me in class and then put that picture on the Internet, or cuss, or turn their backs on me–all ridiculous, sure, but a quick raise in octave of my voice can snap all those behaviors right back to normalcy. I don’t thoroughly despise the chaos, for it means they are engaged in something, and it’s not a big deal when it’s “go time.” They’re kids. They need some fun in life.
But those are my good classes–APN English for seniors and Honors English for sophomores. The class I end my day with is regular old sophomore English, home of the 13 for 32. It’s an eye-opening class to me because I’ve been spoiled by APN and Honors English over the years. I student-taught in 1987 and had a class of regular juniors. I taught at Long Beach Poly for four years and never had an Honors class. Some of my classes at Long Beach Poly were even deemed “basic.” At North High, over my 17 previous years, I have taught regular seniors, freshmen, and juniors. I also taught Creative Writing which did have some Honors kids in it, but also featured students who were in there to make up credit for failing English a previous year. I’m no stranger to the regular student.
I keep looking for ways to make English easier for my regular sophomores. You can find learning and lessons in almost everything, and the curriculum we’ve tried this year has worked here and there, but there are too many kids who don’t want to play along. After the 13 for 32 debacle I wanted students to get some points, to get back in the game by doing something they could easily do. Their assignment? Try something new.
Talk about keeping the playing field even. For those who might not think that assignment worthy, I offer that it involves speaking to the class (a Common Core standard) who would be listening (a Common Core standard), and that “trying something new” opens up anyone to circles previously unknown or untried. It’s kind of tricking them into speaking in class–I mean, come one, we try something new all the time–but it’s also so good for them to hear what others are doing and that there really aren’t a bunch of amazing people in class that a student should fear. You see the way others write and/or speak and, most of the time, you don’t feel so bad about yourself. That was my goal here.
What does one say about the best laid plans? This–when I got up in front of my students and asked them what new thing they tried, I got several responses. One went along the lines of, “That was due today?” Another sounded something like, “I didn’t know what to do.” Perhaps I heard, “I didn’t do anything.” I know I heard, “Can we have more time?”
Try to let that sink in. I have 40 minutes of class left, all of which were to be used getting students up and speaking about an easy topic so everyone could show that they are better than the previous day.
This is how I end each day at school. Actually, I end it trying to pull out of a parking lot that has double-parked cars blocking me at every turn. In each car is a parent, parked in the lane that should be moving, sometimes with their hazard lights on, waiting for their kids to come. Cars have to pull around them; I have to tell them I’m leaving so they’ll move their cars. Sometimes, the parents look annoyed that I should want them to move their cars so that I can leave and others might not have to pull around them. They look as if this is the valet parking often found in elementary schools, where parents wait in long lines to make sure their students don’t have to walk far from the curb.
This is what parents do. Why should my students’ behavior surprise me so?