Author: revotstover@yahoo.com

Yesterday was a late start, but things got started early. North High has sent our stuff off to WASC, to be reviewed, but we met as an entire faculty this morning. On a positive note, there was a cookie for everyone at the tables, along with some Valentine’s hearts and Nerds and erasers you wear as a ring. There may even have been a Kit Kat bar (fun size).
Like many other teachers, I sat in the back in the comfy chairs. There are 12 of these comfy chairs–four of each that surround a table. Instantly, though, we were ordered to come up to the other tables that had cookies and candy on them. The goal was that everyone would be at the table and be able to share goodies and ideas with the other teachers (never mind that we were already at a table, just in a nicer chair).
The WASC question of the day was “What do we do if they don’t learn it?” My mind went immediately to “Fail them,” but I don’t think this was the answer anyone wanted to hear. Then my mind took a turn to “Feel bad because it’s my fault,” which might have been a warmer answer. Either way, we had to read a 2-page article about WASC and PLCs and then write our answers to the above question on paper hearts that were on the tables. We got to share our answers and frustrations with the five other teachers, and then post our paper hearts onto a big piece of butcher’s paper that hung between bookshelves in the library.
I wrote a couple of the nice things I do for students–offering optional assignments that extend the lessons and being in my room during all the breaks and my conference period. I have a old set of Chromebooks that students know they can use at any time to catch up. I get it. Kids don’t have the same priorities and lifestyles that we sometimes want them to have, so a little extra accommodation isn’t a bad thing. Especially if they come around and take us up on it.
So we read an article that encompassed a page of paper, talked a little to our colleagues, then posted our paper hearts on the paper. No sharing between the whole faculty; just a nod and smile from the understanding folks at our table. After we had littered the butcher’s paper with our hearts, we were told they would not be used as data, but the butcher’s paper would be hung in the faculty hallway so we could see it when we passed to make copies or get our mail. I saw it today. My heart was still on it, which was nice.
We were then introduced to “new” faculty. The teacher who never existed, and is now out for the whole year on maternity leave, finally has a long-term replacement, complete with a full name. Another teacher in English who is out for the semester (maybe) has a replacement teacher who was only introduced by her first name, which I didn’t catch. Another department has a teacher or student teacher and her name is Taylor. Maybe she prefers going by a single name, like Cher or Charo.
Then two of the four administrators that were there yesterday gave their usual two candy rewards to teachers who do a great job for North High. The teachers who receive this candy, in turn, give one of the candy rewards to someone who they feel does a great job. So far, many teachers have been recognized, though some have not. Some have been recognized more than once, which probably means they are doing an exponentially better job than those not receiving anything.
And, to top it all off, out of nowhere came the Axe and Sword Award. Initially given to my wife many moons ago, it is the wooden trophy of excellence handed down every now and again from recipient to recipient. My APN teaching partner of 15 years, Gillian Hart, got it this time, and I have no idea why she had to wait so many years–this award has been around now for close to 10 years–because she gives so much of herself to North High School (sometimes too much).
All this action that took place, all the work and preparation put in by so many people to make the tables filled with sweets and a paper filled with hearts, and we were done 20 minutes early. I’m guessing many of the teachers that did not receive a candy award for excellence still used that time to go back to their rooms, grade papers, and work on what they were going to do that day with their students, maybe even the ones that have not “learned it” yet.

of 5th-grade math?
Our neighbor just brought her crying daughter into our palatial mansion because the kid was having trouble with her 5th-grade math. Never fear, because I kick math’s arse, thankyouverymuch. After yelling at the child for several minutes to stop crying and suck it up and put her big-girl pants on (alright, maybe it went down a little smoother than that), we got down to the numbers.
I’m going to go out on a limb and tell most people what they already know–what on EARTH are they doing to kids these days when it comes to math? First off, the problems were on her computer. And, instead of just getting to the down and dirty of solving something with pen and paper, we had to choose what the logical steps would be. What the hell? I can’t solve a problem anymore because I have to go through meaningless steps? Luckily, my steps mostly matched up with what the computer program wanted, and everything turned out okay in the end.
The worst part was that the girl knew how to do the problems, knew the basics of math, had a good idea of what the lesson was, but just didn’t know what this particular MATHBOT3000 was looking for. Thus, we teach them at an early age to follow directions, kind of, and choose what looks to be something that could be right if we took more steps to do it than any normal person. Hooray for America!!!
Since, it’s Valentine’s Day, I will not massacre any more poor students and revel in my victory over a computer program of math choices. Time to celebrate all that is good in life by going out early and having some food and drink before others think similar thoughts.
No matter how bad your day, I leave you with Sam Cooke. You are welcome.

After a quiz in each class today, it was time to do some media literacy. I realize the topic has such a broad brush, but we’re talking about things that kids can do that they do already. They just don’t know that they do it all the time. Does that make sense? I go along the lines that students are bombarded with images and slogans and products online, so much so that they have a hard time looking at anything and processing it.
I took a picture from one of my former student’s Facebook pages and displayed it on the overhead projector screen. It featured two girls and two guys. I asked my students if they knew these people. They didn’t, though many thought my former student looked like someone from Gossip Girl.
I asked them again–do you know these people? Once again, they couldn’t figure out what I was asking because they’ve never been asked to do something like this. So I broke it down for them, asking questions to stimulate them to pass judgement, to have an opinion based on the facts shown in the picture. Suddenly, people they had never met before, and never will, became frat boys, sorority girls, salesman, golfers, businessmen. They were at a party, at someone’s nice house, a wedding. One guy was more athletic because he had a sturdier jaw, but the guy who was redder in the face had drunk more that day. The guy on the right had a nice watch, which is why he rolled up his sleeve. It was to show off that sucker.
Oh, I know, it was not annotating the two articles and coming up with an essential question. But Malcolm Gladwell wrote Blink, where he dedicates many chapters to how we can immediately process something and come up with a pretty close assessment of the situation. Since Blink will be a sophomore book this year, I figured this fell under the teacher-talk term of anticipatory set, where you stimulate interest for something bigger that comes around later.
Plus, watching my students create their scenarios from just a few questions was FUN. Yep, that word again. Students who had no clue what I meant with “Do you know these people?” created a whole world for them real quickly. We even tied it into The Catcher in the Rye, the book we’re reading in senior English APN right now.
I asked, “Would you like to hang out with these guys?” The answer was no. “Why would Holden not want to hang out with these guys?” It took a millisecond to hear that Holden would have thought they were phonies.
Sweet. A victory on day 94. Thanks, social media.

Today I showed my students a seven-minute video of Henry Rollins. I don’t think anyone knew who he was–at least no one let on that they did. It’s because he comes from a different world than the one my students live in. He’s fifty-five and works non-stop. Movies, podcasts, music, spoken word, his show on NPR, and whatever else, Henry Rollins keeps himself out there, but just not in the circles my students travel in.
I’m not saying Henry Rollins is good at anything in the way of talent. Although, I did see him many moons ago with Rollins Band opening for The Dickies, and he pretty much rocked like an uncaged animal for about an hour. Not sure that’s talent, but he was very physically present. And, whether you like his books, podcasts, or spoken word performances, he still has them out there. You can find tons on YouTube just by typing in his name. I’ve listened to his show many times on NPR, enjoy his perspective on music (hey, he’s my age so we have some common ground) and life, and appreciate him in his more subdued state on the radio.
The video I showed will play at the end of this blog. Actually, I will put my wife’s TED-Ed lesson up there, complete with video and topics to explore, along with questions. I don’t know what my students take on it was, but I always let that sit for a day and then come back with something the next. I’ll ask them some questions, we’ll discuss the difference between talent and tenacity, and maybe even explore the meaning of discipline when it’s used in the sense other than punishment.
I watched the video five times which I never had before. The first time I watched I took it as just the simple story of how he got a lucky break, took it, fought to keep it, and the rest was history. But after repeated views, it started to hit home a little. Granted, I really appreciated that he didn’t sugarcoat anything and tell all young people to follow their passions. Some kids are never going to have great passions, despite whatever we shove down their throats, and hearing about it all the time must make them even more bitter. The deal with Rollins was not that this was his passion, but a CHANCE to do something that he MIGHT like. It also helped that he did end up liking it and held onto it by being tenacious and outworking the other guys that may have had more talent.
It hit home with me because I used to like writing. I was a Creative Writing major and later went back and received an MFA in Fiction, hoping that something would come of that. I was always deadline-driven–never missed one–and tried to go above and beyond what was expected. I liked writing and thought that I could produce something interesting. Sadly, because I was in the initial MFA class of Long Beach State, the final standards were not that high. We did not have to produce an entire novel, which I think was expected at the program’s outset. Instead, we produced what we had, which I did.
After graduating with my MFA, I did not have the discipline and tenacity to go back and finish what I started. I believed that friends and fellow writers were placating me when saying they liked what I wrote, and, because I’m super critical of my writing, I didn’t know what to believe. Then the paycheck of teaching came around and my book hit the back burner.
I started this blog with the hope of stimulating my desire to finish my book, and it has, for it has awakened my discipline once again. It doesn’t matter to me if people don’t like what I write, but I have produced something every single work day, and then some. Trust me, it’s not as easy as one might think, especially when writing about work and its ridiculousness. And, I’m not out to “get anyone” here, even though many have it coming.
Thanks, Henry Rollins. You make me a little introspective, but you also inspire me to be more tenacious and outwork the next guy. And I don’t care what my students got out of it because they’re still young. It was enough for them just to hear it, process it, and file it away. Perhaps someday Rollins and I will resonate with them.
Enjoy the video and feel free to check out the lesson my wife created. For the petty and uncomfortable folks, try not to steal it and call it your own. http://ed.ted.com/on/GoVABVv7

I had much written, but it was about my wife. I no longer want to post it.
Perhaps the title will imply that I have a hard time forgiving people who are mean, don’t care about students’ well-being, only worry about their agenda, have mistakes in their emails and on their boards, lie to my face, are apathetic, and will never move North High forward, no matter how many acronyms they incorporate or workshops they attend.
I would like to write that we’re all in this together, but using the word all makes almost statement false.
But you will get to see my smiling face. And we’ll tolerate each other. That’s all that matters, right? https://youtu.be/Z9rkyKD1MRw

I don’t share many articles on Facebook. I don’t really read many when people share them either, but when articles come out that compare 1984 and Brave New World, then I’m in. My honors classes will read both books–oh, wait, let’s write that again. My honors students might check out either of those books from the library and have them in their possession at one time or another. Hope that cleared things up.
But the article was cool. You can read it yourself if you CLICK HERE. I loved the idea that people are wrong that Trump has created the world of Winston Smith and Orwell. Instead, it’s the world of Huxley, of our world becoming “a technology-sedating, consumption-engorging, instant-gratifying bubble.” A few old-timers get it, especially those of us still in teaching, otherwise known as the battle between content and content. Wasn’t I clever there? The first “content” is what we try to teach; the second one is the “content” our students have in doing little.
We’re reading 1984 right now. The first part is hard–I have told them such, but today, while asking questions on a quiz they turned in online, the student cone of silence reared its ugly head. The quiz was five questions of Chapter One of Part One, around 20 pages. There were some ugly, tumbleweeds-floating-though-the-class moments when I tried to get a discussion of the same questions they turned in online. Does a student forget so quickly? They must have, for they just stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language. Not much to tell me that wasn’t supreme, surface-level stuff. Booooooo! to not reading.
But they were nice enough to tell me that MATHBOT3000 will be ready for business next week. It’s coming to Torrance, so you never know when it might be coming to a town near you.
On a positive note, we hit the 90/90 today. 90 days down with 90 to go. I can do that in my sleep, though I’m not sure some of my colleagues can. Wait, positive note here. I have 90 days to make a positive impact with my students, one that will stay with them forever.
Oh, and Sequoia is this weekend. So, yeah, APN in the trees and snow. I’ll read some Whitman on the bus, something most have never heard. Some have never been over the Grapevine. Some have never seen snow. Everything is teachable. Well, unless you ask students to read. Crap, there goes the positive moment.

In teaching, it’s sometimes hard to believe what students say. But after you keep hearing them again and again, it might actually be true.
My post yesterday about a class having six subs was probably not right–the list is a little less. Maybe. But it is one that has had subs that have to leave after 30 days, and that means they’re operating on an emergency credential. Not a big deal if the person is teaching well, or if the kids can get that person back after a one-day hiatus, but I don’t think that’s the case either.
Long story short, though, students were talking again before class about their math class and how they are going to get another teacher. But, hold your horses, it’s time to warm up the MATHBOT3000. Every kid that was talking about this class claimed that they would be taught via a computer program for the rest of the semester. Holy, Euclidian Geometry! Has someone designed a STOVERBOT3000 for math? Say it ain’t so.
I’ve heard this a few times for a few days, and it doesn’t really sound too far-fetched to believe. Which begs the question–why do kids have to come to school for a computer-taught class? That sounds like kids could be a pajama-wearing, cereal-eating, music-blasting student. Who knows? Maybe MATHBOT3000 will need someone to monitor and maintain it. We don’t want another HITCHBOT on our hands.
When it’s all said and done, it’s just what kids say.
Today, I was thrilled when one of my kids told me that he was happy about being in APN, the senior class where I teach the English side and Gillian Hart teaches the Government/Economics side. The same kids come from her class to mine for a two-hour block. They also perform community service, which is built into the class. Right now, our students tutor at Edison Elementary School, which is next door. The program has been around since 1972.
This student mentioned above told me he was thinking of not taking the class because he was told that he should not take APN, that it was a “fun” class. He used air quotes for “fun.” This is a student with a mid-range grade-point-average, one that will probably prohibit him from going to the upper-echelon colleges, who was in a regular English class. Yet, being told not to take the class because it was “fun” made him think twice.
Three novels, British poetry, short stories, narratives, personal statements, along with media literacy and semantics–that’s the fun. Oh, I kid. The fun part is that Gillian Hart and I have dealt with professional jealousy for years, and no matter how hard the adults try to take down our program (for it is ONLY the adults) we still get about a third of the senior class to sign up for it. It might be fun many days, and students should appreciate that. But they might also appreciate that we don’t give them busywork, or talk to them like we are the supreme leaders who have all the answers and they are mere pawns in our chess game of life. Maybe they buy-in to the “fun” because we prepare for them for college and present a classroom world to them that is outside their previous realms of thinking.
I can guarantee one thing–the teacher that thinks we’re fun has never received two emails in the same week from previous students who want an honest and critical response to their short story and graphic novel, respectively. It’s lifetime learning, critics of ours, and that sometimes starts with–wait for it!–fun. What on earth did you get into teaching for?
But, maybe this is all moot. It’s just kids talking, right?

My students talk to me in class. No matter what they think of me as a teacher, no matter how much they hate reading and writing and taking tests, I think they know that I’m not too full of crap. So they talk to me. Sometimes they put it in writing. Most times, I wish they wouldn’t talk, because even though I’ve tried to stay out of the loop this year and just go about my business with my students, I hear too many things that are just embarrassing.
And, with that written, I don’t feel like divulging what they tell me. If I told you that students were disappointed because they are on their whatever number teacher, would that be surprising? Because you should have cared after the second teacher, or the third, and so on. Sadly, I doubt this happening fits into our school’s definition of transparency, so the cone of silence has been activated.
Some of my students got moved around today. One kid was happy to get out of a certain teacher’s class; the other was mad that he got put into that same class the other got out of. The student that got moved into the class had no idea why the move happened. I have a guess–after the one student left, they moved someone in. This is not Thunderdome where two men enter and one man leaves. This is filling holes.
I could go on forever, but it’s Thursday, my favorite, and I don’t like being reminded of why I feel embarrassed. Instead, I will feel empathetic to the teachers, plural, that tell me they wake up all night, don’t sleep well anymore, are on edge even at home, and don’t know what to do because they don’t think anyone cares.
Tomorrow is Friday and I like most of my students, past and present. We’ll build on that for now.

Today was one of those long days. The school part was fine, but after school it just kept going. Today was the first local scholarship meeting. Probably a hundred seniors filled out a lengthy application to submit for local scholarships in the community. Toyota, Exxon, and many other nearby businesses give money back to schools for good students.
To represent the seniors today was the department chair of special education, three of our four counselors, the college and career technician, two English teachers (I was one of the two), and a social science teacher who also is our Activities Director. No one from World Languages could make it, none from Math, none from Science, none from Art, none from Applied Tech, none from PE. Three teachers of the seniors that took time to apply for these valuable scholarships made it to the first meeting. Actions speak volumes.
Walking out of that room, I went across the way to the Library, where students tutor other students after school until 4:00. I’m always reminded of how good I still have it at school because I knew most the student helpers in there, if not all. They’re the really good kids at North High, many of whom I had just seen on lists for local scholarships. And there they were, helping out after school, which always is a reminder of why most teachers come to school on a daily basis.
My day was fine. We checked out Catcher in the Rye for my seniors and 1984 for the honors sophomores. My regular sophomores didn’t listen well to a TED Talk, but it didn’t speak to them like others talks might. They still did their other work. It was school, which is becoming more and more of a job these days.
I’m tired right now. The teacher I talked to after school in the library is tired, too. But we’re not tired of the kids. We’re tired because of the machine, the one that tells us that up is down even though we can see with our own eyes that this is not the case.
How can others not see it?

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.