By coincidence, I am sitting in one of my favorite coffeehouses where I sometimes bring my computer and write. I am winding down this blog soon, with just a few more posts -- mostly ruminations. As I ordered coffee from one of the staff, I stated that I was celebrating because I was officially retiring from teaching. As I went to the condiment counter, a woman there struck up a conversation with me. She stated that while she was working on a degree in mathematics, she decided it would be good to do substitute teaching. However, she said, after three years of this in a difficult neighborhood in Philadelphia, she got tired of the abuse, the physical threats, and the misbehavior -- tired of the students' entire attitudes towards both her and education -- that she gave it up. She congratulated me on my career change, and said she understood perfectly my feelings about substitute teaching. She had been through the same things.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
My Last Teaching Day ?
This past Friday may have been the day of my last teaching assignment. I was assigned as an intervention specialist to a wonderful educational/psychiatric facilities in the Unified School District. I had been an intervention specialist there before, so in accepting the assignment I knew exactly what I was getting into.
The facility has two classroom, and about 8 to 10 students in each room. They are classified as "special education" students. The students are severely disturbed kids, but there are as many as five teachers or intervention specialists in each classroom at a time. The main thrust of the teaching these students concerns relationships -- how to get along with their fellow students and with their teachers. During the day, throughout the week at various times, different students have actual psychiatric therapy sessions with a psychiatrists on the premises.
The day at this facility normally starts with a ten or fifteen minute meeting of the staff to discuss any adjustments in the schedule, as well as the special needs of various kids and what they are going through in life.
The schedule is fairly predictable -- a morning greeting period in which each child has the opportunity to explain how they are feeling and why. A cart with various things they can have for breakfast is wheeled in and they have a choice of what they want to eat, if they are hungry. This particular morning there was milk, fresh fruit (apples and bananas), and a delicious dish comprised of custard, fresh fruit (strawberries and blackberries), as well as dry cereal if the students wanted it.
This particular day was to be a low-key day in which kids would do not only some academic work, but also during educational periods could play with one of the two iPads each room was equipped with.
Then comes an educational period, in which children are given educational work to do -- perhaps reading, perhaps math. I was able to be useful here because I could sit with a child and get them to focus on the work at hand, and help them figure out answers and get through it. After perhaps 45 minutes, it was time for recess. The kids went outside,played basketball, shot hoops, ran around playing tag and getting fresh air while they exercised. I encountered one kid whom I had helped earlier that day, a Hispanic kid, who was almost in tears. I asked him why. He said he was feeling bad because he wasn't any good at basketball or most of the other things the kids did. He was also really disturbed still because that morning his sister at home had called him stupid and said he was a "bitch."
I explained to him that one of the reasons he wasn't as good as the other kids at basketball was that he was smaller than they were. The tall ones had an advantage in jumping up almost as high as the basket and slam dunking the ball into the hoop. I also told him that from working with him I was sure he wasn't stupid, and that he should ;learn to ignore the names his sister called him because they weren't true.
We came back into the classroom and "snack time" had arrived, during which the kids were offered fruit, cheese crackers and other treats. Then we started on another educational period, reading aloud or silently from various books each student had chosen, or doing math on pages in a workbook. Lunchtime followed this. The students were given lunch -- not a bad one at all, with burritos and fruit and milk.
After lunch, the kids returned to the classroom for more activities. On this particular day these involved games they played with each other, either on their iPads or on boards at their desks.
Another period following lunch was a "skills" period, in which the kids were taken outdoor and did various physical exercises that gave them a good workout. On this particular day, they lined up and the one in front ran as fast as he or she could about fifty feet to a marker, caught a ball that the supervising teacher threw to them from the starting line, then returned with the ball and gave it to the teacher.
My tasks were easy ones. I was there to do two main things, not to handle emotional breakdowns and tantrums. One of my tasks was to help the kids do their academic work when they were supposed to be doing it -- to keep the individual I was working with focused on the tasks at hand and help him or her take them to completion. Another of my tasks was simply that of supervision. No child is ever to be left alone, either in the classroom or outside in the recess area. There were times when all the other staff members had something to do, leaving me alone in the classroom with anywhere from 1 to 4 students. Sometimes I went outside and just watched or played with them. A favorite game is "Zombie Tag," in which the person who is it chases the others and tries to hit them with a very soft basketball, thus making them "it." I never understood exactly what this had to do with zombies, but I was a favorite "it." Despite the fact that I had a hip replacement a few years back and am not very good at speedy running, I did a lot of chasing around during these periods.
Finally it was time to clean up the room, pick up papers under their desks, sweep up any food spills, and prepare to go home.
This sounds like a fairly simple schedule, but what it doesn't note are the interruptions and assorted crises the kids go through each day. Make no mistake about it, these students are severely disturbed. One of the girls, for instance, is repeatedly exposed at home to her mother having intercourse with various boyfriends. Others are simply mistreated psychologically, told they are worthless or no good. If the tortures were physical, they would be taken away from their families and placed in foster care. But when they are mental, there's a difficult line to draw before this kind of action can be taken.
Every day one or more of the kids in each classroom have a "meltdown." Perhaps they are told they cannot leave the classroom without permission and they do this anyway. Or sometimes they fight with other students (in this case, both are expelled for a day or more). Or they simply will not do what the teacher tells them to do, and go instead into a screaming, kicking fit, throwing chairs. In some cases, the staff have to resort to physical handling of the kids. The facility has a "rubber room" where kids having screaming, spitting, kicking tantrums can be placed in isolation but under observation until they calm down and can be returned to the classroom. I was told on my first day at the facility -- I had been here several times before -- that I should leave the physical management of the kids to the regular staff. I did.
My feeling about this facility is that it is a very good one where the children from families that cannot afford psychiatric care for their children would be very happy to have a family member attend school. And wouldn't you know that the Unified School District is about to screw things up. The limit on the number of students in a special education classroom is presently 12. Starting next year, the District has raised the limit to 14. This facility is not large enough to handle the increased number, so it is being split up and the pieces moved to several other places.
What the District has done in increasing the number of special education students allowed in the classroom may help their budget, but in the future the rest of us will pay the price. In effect, they have primed the pump that will send even more people with psychiatric difficulties into the prisons.
In the meantime, it was a pleasure to work with dedicated professionals as competent as the ones at this facility, and hopefully to be a tiny part of help out a few kids.
The facility has two classroom, and about 8 to 10 students in each room. They are classified as "special education" students. The students are severely disturbed kids, but there are as many as five teachers or intervention specialists in each classroom at a time. The main thrust of the teaching these students concerns relationships -- how to get along with their fellow students and with their teachers. During the day, throughout the week at various times, different students have actual psychiatric therapy sessions with a psychiatrists on the premises.
The day at this facility normally starts with a ten or fifteen minute meeting of the staff to discuss any adjustments in the schedule, as well as the special needs of various kids and what they are going through in life.
The schedule is fairly predictable -- a morning greeting period in which each child has the opportunity to explain how they are feeling and why. A cart with various things they can have for breakfast is wheeled in and they have a choice of what they want to eat, if they are hungry. This particular morning there was milk, fresh fruit (apples and bananas), and a delicious dish comprised of custard, fresh fruit (strawberries and blackberries), as well as dry cereal if the students wanted it.
This particular day was to be a low-key day in which kids would do not only some academic work, but also during educational periods could play with one of the two iPads each room was equipped with.
Then comes an educational period, in which children are given educational work to do -- perhaps reading, perhaps math. I was able to be useful here because I could sit with a child and get them to focus on the work at hand, and help them figure out answers and get through it. After perhaps 45 minutes, it was time for recess. The kids went outside,played basketball, shot hoops, ran around playing tag and getting fresh air while they exercised. I encountered one kid whom I had helped earlier that day, a Hispanic kid, who was almost in tears. I asked him why. He said he was feeling bad because he wasn't any good at basketball or most of the other things the kids did. He was also really disturbed still because that morning his sister at home had called him stupid and said he was a "bitch."
I explained to him that one of the reasons he wasn't as good as the other kids at basketball was that he was smaller than they were. The tall ones had an advantage in jumping up almost as high as the basket and slam dunking the ball into the hoop. I also told him that from working with him I was sure he wasn't stupid, and that he should ;learn to ignore the names his sister called him because they weren't true.
We came back into the classroom and "snack time" had arrived, during which the kids were offered fruit, cheese crackers and other treats. Then we started on another educational period, reading aloud or silently from various books each student had chosen, or doing math on pages in a workbook. Lunchtime followed this. The students were given lunch -- not a bad one at all, with burritos and fruit and milk.
After lunch, the kids returned to the classroom for more activities. On this particular day these involved games they played with each other, either on their iPads or on boards at their desks.
Another period following lunch was a "skills" period, in which the kids were taken outdoor and did various physical exercises that gave them a good workout. On this particular day, they lined up and the one in front ran as fast as he or she could about fifty feet to a marker, caught a ball that the supervising teacher threw to them from the starting line, then returned with the ball and gave it to the teacher.
My tasks were easy ones. I was there to do two main things, not to handle emotional breakdowns and tantrums. One of my tasks was to help the kids do their academic work when they were supposed to be doing it -- to keep the individual I was working with focused on the tasks at hand and help him or her take them to completion. Another of my tasks was simply that of supervision. No child is ever to be left alone, either in the classroom or outside in the recess area. There were times when all the other staff members had something to do, leaving me alone in the classroom with anywhere from 1 to 4 students. Sometimes I went outside and just watched or played with them. A favorite game is "Zombie Tag," in which the person who is it chases the others and tries to hit them with a very soft basketball, thus making them "it." I never understood exactly what this had to do with zombies, but I was a favorite "it." Despite the fact that I had a hip replacement a few years back and am not very good at speedy running, I did a lot of chasing around during these periods.
Finally it was time to clean up the room, pick up papers under their desks, sweep up any food spills, and prepare to go home.
This sounds like a fairly simple schedule, but what it doesn't note are the interruptions and assorted crises the kids go through each day. Make no mistake about it, these students are severely disturbed. One of the girls, for instance, is repeatedly exposed at home to her mother having intercourse with various boyfriends. Others are simply mistreated psychologically, told they are worthless or no good. If the tortures were physical, they would be taken away from their families and placed in foster care. But when they are mental, there's a difficult line to draw before this kind of action can be taken.
Every day one or more of the kids in each classroom have a "meltdown." Perhaps they are told they cannot leave the classroom without permission and they do this anyway. Or sometimes they fight with other students (in this case, both are expelled for a day or more). Or they simply will not do what the teacher tells them to do, and go instead into a screaming, kicking fit, throwing chairs. In some cases, the staff have to resort to physical handling of the kids. The facility has a "rubber room" where kids having screaming, spitting, kicking tantrums can be placed in isolation but under observation until they calm down and can be returned to the classroom. I was told on my first day at the facility -- I had been here several times before -- that I should leave the physical management of the kids to the regular staff. I did.
My feeling about this facility is that it is a very good one where the children from families that cannot afford psychiatric care for their children would be very happy to have a family member attend school. And wouldn't you know that the Unified School District is about to screw things up. The limit on the number of students in a special education classroom is presently 12. Starting next year, the District has raised the limit to 14. This facility is not large enough to handle the increased number, so it is being split up and the pieces moved to several other places.
What the District has done in increasing the number of special education students allowed in the classroom may help their budget, but in the future the rest of us will pay the price. In effect, they have primed the pump that will send even more people with psychiatric difficulties into the prisons.
In the meantime, it was a pleasure to work with dedicated professionals as competent as the ones at this facility, and hopefully to be a tiny part of help out a few kids.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
A Strange Day
I accepted an assignment at the "upper campus" of a local school, then went and reported to the office at the stated time. It turns out that after about fifteen minutes I was told that the regular teacher had shown up, but that everyone responsible for posting jobs had failed to cancel the job request. I was asked then to go to the "lower campus" to see if I was needed there. I did so, reported in, and waited around another fifteen minutes until I was told there was no need for a substitute teacher there, either. However, they did have a job for me. I was assigned the task of sitting in a chair (or standing and wandering around) in the main entrance lobby and directing everyone to their right into an office where they would receive a piece of paper allowing them to enter the school -- or, if they were strangers who had no business there, they would be asked to leave the school watched to see that they did so. I was given a Walkie-Talkie by the head of security, and took my place by the front door.
Most students complied automatically and without a fuss when I asked them to check in first before entering. Two who did not, however, stick in my mind. The first was an arrogant Caucasian kid wearing a big sombrero who simply ignored me both times I politely requested that he report to the attendance office to get an admit slip. The second was an African-American kid, who simply reeked ghetto, and who looked me straight in the eye and then just ignored me, walking past into the corridor. In each case I informed security via Walkie-Talkie and the took care of the situation.
After two hours, the principal came by and said that I had to stop the job because of union regulations, and relieved me of my Walkie-Talkie. Since I had reported for work and signed in at both campuses, I was going to get paid anyway, so this didn't bother me. I signed out. The head of security, someone I had worked with for several years, told me he was sorry things had worked out this way and as far as he was concerned I had been doing the job better than the normal security man he usually had doing it.
On another note, I had lunch with one of my school associates yesterday and we had a conversation about the situation in our city's schools, and how for substitutes it seems to be getting worse and worse every year. She suggested that I sub for a different but nearby city, where the kids were much better behaved and generally didn't seem to have the attitude that our city's kids had. "You know," she said. "In this city, you're dealing with as bunch of crack babies."
Most students complied automatically and without a fuss when I asked them to check in first before entering. Two who did not, however, stick in my mind. The first was an arrogant Caucasian kid wearing a big sombrero who simply ignored me both times I politely requested that he report to the attendance office to get an admit slip. The second was an African-American kid, who simply reeked ghetto, and who looked me straight in the eye and then just ignored me, walking past into the corridor. In each case I informed security via Walkie-Talkie and the took care of the situation.
After two hours, the principal came by and said that I had to stop the job because of union regulations, and relieved me of my Walkie-Talkie. Since I had reported for work and signed in at both campuses, I was going to get paid anyway, so this didn't bother me. I signed out. The head of security, someone I had worked with for several years, told me he was sorry things had worked out this way and as far as he was concerned I had been doing the job better than the normal security man he usually had doing it.
On another note, I had lunch with one of my school associates yesterday and we had a conversation about the situation in our city's schools, and how for substitutes it seems to be getting worse and worse every year. She suggested that I sub for a different but nearby city, where the kids were much better behaved and generally didn't seem to have the attitude that our city's kids had. "You know," she said. "In this city, you're dealing with as bunch of crack babies."
Thursday, May 15, 2014
The Frustrations of the Job
Is it time for me to retire ? This has increasingly been on my mind recently as I experience deep frustration at both the students and our educational system. If I had to lay the heaviest portion of the blame on anyone, however, it would be on the students and their families. This past Friday's assignment presented a great example.
I was assigned the job of substitute teacher for a day of eighth graders at a middle school. When I got there I was greeted cordially by not only the main office desk staff, but also by a young woman I had met there before who, it turned out, was to be my assistant all day. She is a wonderful young lady -- perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties, an African-American with three children, v ry bright and positive. She shared with me at various times of the day her aspiration of going back to school to become a fully credentialed teacher, her interest in anthropology, and her hopes of advancing into a better career than just that of being a "teaching aide."
From a substitute teacher's point of view, it looked as though it would be a very easy day. My assistant knew all the students, so she took attendance immediately when the period began, a chore that was a lot easier for her than it would have been for me. One of the handles the students always take advantage of with substitute teachers is that the substitutes almost never know them by name, which lets them act with a much greater degree of anonymity and immunity than they can with their regular teachers.
Before the first class began, my assistant shared something with me that boded an unpleasant day" "You know," she said. "These kids walk all over their regular teacher."
The day, however, was a lot easier than her comment had made me suspect. There was a lesson plan, about a third of a page handwritten and addressed not to me as the substitute teacher but to my assistant. Except for several half-hour study periods, one before and one immediately after lunch, each [period was to be shown the second half of the movie Schindler's List.If I were to do the least possible work, I could just sit behind my desk and let the students watch or do whatever else they wanted to do (other than fight, rough-house, o create disturbances).
It quickly became obvious trhat more than half of each class wasn't interested in Schindler's List, and preferred to chat and look at their cell phones. The last period really took the cake. Out of twelve students present )others had been taken from the class to take an exam), every single one of them occupied him or herself with a cell phone. No one watched the movie.
To increase the chance that some of the students might possibly watch the movie, the teacher had prepared a two-sided sheet with 25 questions relating to the movie. My assistant knew the individual students very well. She announced to the class that we had a sheet of questions that would be discussed on Monday, and that she and I would go through the class and offer a copy to anyone who wanted to do the work. She asked the students to take a sheet if they were going to answer the questions before Monday, but not to if they weren't going to do the work. "If you're just going to leave it on your desk, its a waste of paper."
It's a truth that if students in a class don't want to do their classwork, they won't, and there is nothing any substitute can do to make them. What I chose to spend time doing was to circulate through the class each period, seeing who was watching and who was not, and try to get some of the students engaged. I found a few who, having already seen the first half of the movie and presumably having had at least some introduction to the movie from the teacher, still did not know that the story is a true one. I tried to raise certain questions:
Have we ever had concentration camps in this country. Were plantations using slaves a little bit like small concentration camps ? What happened to Japanese-Americans at the beginning of World War II ? I pointed out that our concentration camps still existed and just needed a little work before they could be opened for business again. And then a long, roundabout explanation. Had they ever heard of Senator McCarthy in the 1950 ? Did they know how he set this country into an anti-communist hysteria ? I explained what had happened back then. What would happen, I asked, if we had another man like the late Senator McCarthy, someone who wanted to ride to prominence on the backs of members of a minority group ? Who would such a man pick to persecute ? Who would he go after ? Who is there currently enough feeling against so it wouldn't be too much of a possibility that Americans could turn against them ?
How about undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans ? A base of people already exists in this country who favor sanctions against "illegal aliens." Should we deport them all ? We haven't money enough to pay the fares for 11 million people to return to their homelands. Should we provide them with a path top become citizens ? "No," the Republican right thunders. That would be rewarding criminals for their crimes.
Suppose we just gathered them up and put them in our already built concentration camps ? What a boost it would be to local economies if we hired thousands of guards. I tried to drive home an idea that undocumented Hispanics live in an extremely vulnerable position, especially if another Senator McCarthy comes into national prominence.
And the final proposition I tried to emphasize is Santayana's famous statement that those who are ignorant of history are destined to relive it.
Maybe a half dozen students that day learned this.
By the end of the day I was filled with a slow simmering anger, which I could not express. I had begun to feel that the kids on their iphones, should be kicked out of school and sent home. They just didn't appreciate or understand the importance of education.
And that is why I have begun to question whether or not it has become time for me to retire.
I was assigned the job of substitute teacher for a day of eighth graders at a middle school. When I got there I was greeted cordially by not only the main office desk staff, but also by a young woman I had met there before who, it turned out, was to be my assistant all day. She is a wonderful young lady -- perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties, an African-American with three children, v ry bright and positive. She shared with me at various times of the day her aspiration of going back to school to become a fully credentialed teacher, her interest in anthropology, and her hopes of advancing into a better career than just that of being a "teaching aide."
From a substitute teacher's point of view, it looked as though it would be a very easy day. My assistant knew all the students, so she took attendance immediately when the period began, a chore that was a lot easier for her than it would have been for me. One of the handles the students always take advantage of with substitute teachers is that the substitutes almost never know them by name, which lets them act with a much greater degree of anonymity and immunity than they can with their regular teachers.
Before the first class began, my assistant shared something with me that boded an unpleasant day" "You know," she said. "These kids walk all over their regular teacher."
The day, however, was a lot easier than her comment had made me suspect. There was a lesson plan, about a third of a page handwritten and addressed not to me as the substitute teacher but to my assistant. Except for several half-hour study periods, one before and one immediately after lunch, each [period was to be shown the second half of the movie Schindler's List.If I were to do the least possible work, I could just sit behind my desk and let the students watch or do whatever else they wanted to do (other than fight, rough-house, o create disturbances).
It quickly became obvious trhat more than half of each class wasn't interested in Schindler's List, and preferred to chat and look at their cell phones. The last period really took the cake. Out of twelve students present )others had been taken from the class to take an exam), every single one of them occupied him or herself with a cell phone. No one watched the movie.
To increase the chance that some of the students might possibly watch the movie, the teacher had prepared a two-sided sheet with 25 questions relating to the movie. My assistant knew the individual students very well. She announced to the class that we had a sheet of questions that would be discussed on Monday, and that she and I would go through the class and offer a copy to anyone who wanted to do the work. She asked the students to take a sheet if they were going to answer the questions before Monday, but not to if they weren't going to do the work. "If you're just going to leave it on your desk, its a waste of paper."
It's a truth that if students in a class don't want to do their classwork, they won't, and there is nothing any substitute can do to make them. What I chose to spend time doing was to circulate through the class each period, seeing who was watching and who was not, and try to get some of the students engaged. I found a few who, having already seen the first half of the movie and presumably having had at least some introduction to the movie from the teacher, still did not know that the story is a true one. I tried to raise certain questions:
Have we ever had concentration camps in this country. Were plantations using slaves a little bit like small concentration camps ? What happened to Japanese-Americans at the beginning of World War II ? I pointed out that our concentration camps still existed and just needed a little work before they could be opened for business again. And then a long, roundabout explanation. Had they ever heard of Senator McCarthy in the 1950 ? Did they know how he set this country into an anti-communist hysteria ? I explained what had happened back then. What would happen, I asked, if we had another man like the late Senator McCarthy, someone who wanted to ride to prominence on the backs of members of a minority group ? Who would such a man pick to persecute ? Who would he go after ? Who is there currently enough feeling against so it wouldn't be too much of a possibility that Americans could turn against them ?
How about undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans ? A base of people already exists in this country who favor sanctions against "illegal aliens." Should we deport them all ? We haven't money enough to pay the fares for 11 million people to return to their homelands. Should we provide them with a path top become citizens ? "No," the Republican right thunders. That would be rewarding criminals for their crimes.
Suppose we just gathered them up and put them in our already built concentration camps ? What a boost it would be to local economies if we hired thousands of guards. I tried to drive home an idea that undocumented Hispanics live in an extremely vulnerable position, especially if another Senator McCarthy comes into national prominence.
And the final proposition I tried to emphasize is Santayana's famous statement that those who are ignorant of history are destined to relive it.
Maybe a half dozen students that day learned this.
By the end of the day I was filled with a slow simmering anger, which I could not express. I had begun to feel that the kids on their iphones, should be kicked out of school and sent home. They just didn't appreciate or understand the importance of education.
And that is why I have begun to question whether or not it has become time for me to retire.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Am I a Bigot ? You Be the Judge.
If I go into a high school class as a substitute, I can guess fairly well what I will encounter. I know that the students don't like substitutes. I've been told that many times by people who've attended high school, by substitute teachers, and by students actually in high school classes. I may have mentioned elsewhere that four or five times in my substitute career I have had a class file in and sit down and one of the students has remarked to me, :You know, we don;t like substitute teachers." The first time I was told this, I didn't know what to say. After that I formulated an automatic response: "If I wanted love, I'd get a dog."
For me, the chance actually to teach something to a class is a wonderful experience. It comes only rarely. Usually the regular teacher has made copies of classroom work and home work to be done by the students. The classroom work most often takes no more than fifteen minutes. This leaves about forty0five minutes during which the students could be doing work for other classes or their homework -- which most of them rarely do. This gap contributes greatly to the students' opportunities to gossip (loudly), gather in groups, and engage in mischief. The greatest way a regular teacher can help a substitute is to leave enough work for each studI can be fairly certain what I will encounter among the Asian studentsent to do that wIill fill the hour, and to attach weight to that work that really affects each student's eventual course grade. But sadly they usually don't do the former and almost never do the latter.
All this said, let me describe what I will usually see from a class where I substitute. It will divide itself into three or perhaps four,groups depending on how you want to break down the class's population. There will be the Asians -- Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai students. There will be the African-Americans. There will be the Hispanics. And there will be the Caucasians.
I am going to make generalizations about these groups, but let me warn you. The generalizations apply to the majority of students in the group, but definitely not all.
The one thing that applies to almost all the studients will be that they will try to play games on their electronic devices, hide them beneath the level of their desk, and waste their time. That's why most teachers have a "No Electronic Device" policy.
I can be fairly certain that the Asian students will apply themselves to the work I pass out. And when they have finished that, they will probably work on studies related to other classes they are taking. Now and then there will be an exception -- a student so intelligent that anything he is given is like child's play. Usually it is a boy. And this kind of Asian student may do a lot of chatting and laughing and fooling around. But chances are that he is very, very intelligent -- too intelligent for the work the teachers give him. He may choose to pass his class time as a smiling wise-ass.
The Hispanics in a regular class will be a mixed bag. Some will do their work and some will not. Some of the ones who don't do their work don't do it because they don't understand enough English to know what is required of them. Similarly, the Caucasians will also be a mixed bag. Some will work as though they are serious about their studies. Others will try simply to chat and fool around.
And now we come to the most problematic group, the African-Americans. They are problematic to me because I want badly for them to succeed, and yet most of them engage in behavior that tends to prevent this.
I can be fairly certain that most of the African-American girls (most, but not always all) will try to gathere in one or more groups and chat, and will try to avoid doing any work at all. More often than not, a pair of them will try to turn the class hour into nail shop or hair shop, in which will start braiding or combing another;s hair. And if they are told to stop and get to their classwork, they give utterly indignant looks as though this kind of behavior is appropriate. There are always one or two who adopt what I've come to call a "princess attitude," as though they are just to good to do schoolwork or follow the instructions of a teacher.
Among the African-American boys, most will predictably try to gather in groups and chat and use their electronic devices. Usually a group like this has a leader, a fellow who is a prominent athlete, and who wears the symbols or engages in minor behavior that reminds everyone of his status. Maybe he will wear his varsity jersey to class. Maybe he will carry gym clothes and make a big deal out of letting everyone know he is a jock.
But one thing is certain: most the African-American boys and the African-American girls seem not to realize the value of an education. It is as though they have been taught that school isn't important, that it doesn't make a difference.
Before you jump on me and call me a racist, let me add a few more observations. The behavior of the average African-American students in the school system where I teach is not due to their race. It is due to their culture. It is due to what they have been taught by their families and their peers. They don't know that the lifetime earnings of a college graduate amounts to about a million dollars more than the lifetime earnings of a high school graduate. Ask them what they want to do in their careers and many will say they want to be a professional football or basketball player. They seem not to realize that their chances of actually becoming a professional athlete are infinitesimally small.
All of this is a matter of culture, not race. Culture -- the sum total of what they have been taught to believe -- is what makes the difference. Students with the same skin color who come from African cultures are utterly different. Go to our International High School or to any English as a Second Language class and you will see highly motivated students with a thirst for achievement. But that same thirst seems not to be in the make-up of most of our African-American students. Attitude does not stem from skin color.
There is something I have come into the habit of trying to do during these classes. If there is an African-American student whom I guess shows promise, I try to take him or her aside and tell them something. I say, "Just understand that if you work in school and college, you can do or be anything you you want to do or be." I also make it a point to tell them that although they may love someone very much, if that person tells them that they cannot do or be what they want, that person is wrong. Love them, I say, but don't believe that you cannot succeed.
For me, the chance actually to teach something to a class is a wonderful experience. It comes only rarely. Usually the regular teacher has made copies of classroom work and home work to be done by the students. The classroom work most often takes no more than fifteen minutes. This leaves about forty0five minutes during which the students could be doing work for other classes or their homework -- which most of them rarely do. This gap contributes greatly to the students' opportunities to gossip (loudly), gather in groups, and engage in mischief. The greatest way a regular teacher can help a substitute is to leave enough work for each studI can be fairly certain what I will encounter among the Asian studentsent to do that wIill fill the hour, and to attach weight to that work that really affects each student's eventual course grade. But sadly they usually don't do the former and almost never do the latter.
All this said, let me describe what I will usually see from a class where I substitute. It will divide itself into three or perhaps four,groups depending on how you want to break down the class's population. There will be the Asians -- Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai students. There will be the African-Americans. There will be the Hispanics. And there will be the Caucasians.
I am going to make generalizations about these groups, but let me warn you. The generalizations apply to the majority of students in the group, but definitely not all.
The one thing that applies to almost all the studients will be that they will try to play games on their electronic devices, hide them beneath the level of their desk, and waste their time. That's why most teachers have a "No Electronic Device" policy.
I can be fairly certain that the Asian students will apply themselves to the work I pass out. And when they have finished that, they will probably work on studies related to other classes they are taking. Now and then there will be an exception -- a student so intelligent that anything he is given is like child's play. Usually it is a boy. And this kind of Asian student may do a lot of chatting and laughing and fooling around. But chances are that he is very, very intelligent -- too intelligent for the work the teachers give him. He may choose to pass his class time as a smiling wise-ass.
The Hispanics in a regular class will be a mixed bag. Some will do their work and some will not. Some of the ones who don't do their work don't do it because they don't understand enough English to know what is required of them. Similarly, the Caucasians will also be a mixed bag. Some will work as though they are serious about their studies. Others will try simply to chat and fool around.
And now we come to the most problematic group, the African-Americans. They are problematic to me because I want badly for them to succeed, and yet most of them engage in behavior that tends to prevent this.
I can be fairly certain that most of the African-American girls (most, but not always all) will try to gathere in one or more groups and chat, and will try to avoid doing any work at all. More often than not, a pair of them will try to turn the class hour into nail shop or hair shop, in which will start braiding or combing another;s hair. And if they are told to stop and get to their classwork, they give utterly indignant looks as though this kind of behavior is appropriate. There are always one or two who adopt what I've come to call a "princess attitude," as though they are just to good to do schoolwork or follow the instructions of a teacher.
Among the African-American boys, most will predictably try to gather in groups and chat and use their electronic devices. Usually a group like this has a leader, a fellow who is a prominent athlete, and who wears the symbols or engages in minor behavior that reminds everyone of his status. Maybe he will wear his varsity jersey to class. Maybe he will carry gym clothes and make a big deal out of letting everyone know he is a jock.
But one thing is certain: most the African-American boys and the African-American girls seem not to realize the value of an education. It is as though they have been taught that school isn't important, that it doesn't make a difference.
Before you jump on me and call me a racist, let me add a few more observations. The behavior of the average African-American students in the school system where I teach is not due to their race. It is due to their culture. It is due to what they have been taught by their families and their peers. They don't know that the lifetime earnings of a college graduate amounts to about a million dollars more than the lifetime earnings of a high school graduate. Ask them what they want to do in their careers and many will say they want to be a professional football or basketball player. They seem not to realize that their chances of actually becoming a professional athlete are infinitesimally small.
All of this is a matter of culture, not race. Culture -- the sum total of what they have been taught to believe -- is what makes the difference. Students with the same skin color who come from African cultures are utterly different. Go to our International High School or to any English as a Second Language class and you will see highly motivated students with a thirst for achievement. But that same thirst seems not to be in the make-up of most of our African-American students. Attitude does not stem from skin color.
There is something I have come into the habit of trying to do during these classes. If there is an African-American student whom I guess shows promise, I try to take him or her aside and tell them something. I say, "Just understand that if you work in school and college, you can do or be anything you you want to do or be." I also make it a point to tell them that although they may love someone very much, if that person tells them that they cannot do or be what they want, that person is wrong. Love them, I say, but don't believe that you cannot succeed.
In Which I am Asked a Most Peculiar Question That Warned Me
Here was an assignment I do not feel I was up to, because of my lack of skilled classroom management techniques.
This morning when I reported to a local middle school and checked in as a substitute, I was asked a most peculiar question that warned me this would not be an easy assignment. I was asked -- for the first time in my years of substitute teaching -- if I had any belongings such as my wallet or phone that I wanted to have placed in a locked space in the office before I went to class.
I didn't because luckily my phone was at home charging, and there was little of value in my wallet, which i carried in my left front pocket, so I declined.
I was accompanied to the classroom, where the security man accompanying me unlocked the door and let me in.
All seemed normal -- except that there seemed only to be about half the usual number of behavioral exhortations on blackboard and paper notices on the wall. Usually these ar=say such things as "Treat each other with respect," "do not bully," "raise your hand if you have a question," and so forth.
If I have complained at times because I do not have the opportunity actually to teach students, the lesson plan left for me was a dead giveaway that nothing significantly educational waqs going to happen to these 7th graders if I did what I was asked to do.
It was a Wednesday, a short day in many of the local schools. Instead of getting out at 3 pm, school got out around 1 p.m. According to the lesson plan left for me, the first period consisted of my taking attendance, and then the students were to play a word game in which one team or leader though of a letter and the rest of the class was supposed to guess words that started with that letter. Remember that this was a 7th grade class, which means that they should not have an elementary school mentality, and that they should be two years away from high school.
As the students filed in at the beginning of the class, I noted that none of them looked different than other students. There were no Downs Syndrome kid, nine showing signs of extreme autisim, or any symptoms like that. They seemed a bit noisy but they went to their assigned seats. I introduced myself, put my name on the board, I picked the student who seemed most in charge -- most aggressive looking, more a leader than the others, and asked his help in taking attendance, and also in getting the students started on the first activity. He did fine with the attendance, but but didn't try very hard to get the other students into the word game. In fact, most of the students were clearly not interested in the activity the teacher had planned for them, and showed this by ignoring it.
The "lesson plan" left for me commented after outlining the day's activities that these kids usually react with anger if confronted, and the way to deal with them was to state the behavior I expected, wait ten seconds for them to conform, state it again, wait another ten seconds, and then state the consequences of not obeying.
But let us run down the rest of the activities for the day. The second period was to be devoted to the students going to the computers and playing games on a selection of web sites. Probably two of them actually did this, while the others visited whatever sites they wanted to visit and tried to keep me from knowing this. The third period was to be devoted to another game, bingo, of which we were to play four different versions. The third period was to be devoted to a board game -- the students had their choice of which among 5 or 6 they wanted to play. There was then a lunch period a half-hour long. After that there was to be about 45 minutes of reading, in which each student was to select a book from a wide range of books at the back of the room, and sit quietly at his or her desk and read, As far as I could see, this was the only period of the day in which students might actually learn something -- if they read the right book -- and the remainder of the day was a total waste of time.
The day started with one girl in the class. All the others were boys. About midway through the morning another girl arrived with a permission slip to be admitted. She had had a doctor's appointment and was just getting to school. When I asked her what was special about the class, she mentioned something about "anger management." About a few minutes after the second period started, a taller boy appeared, too. He was listed on the attendance sheet, so I let him in. At first he seemed more mature than most of the others, and so did the tall girl who arrived late. He went up to the tall girl and hugged her. It seemed just friendly and not sexual, so I said nothing.
I made the opportunity to have one-on-one chats with the tall girl and also the fellow who had hugged her. Both had spent much of their lives in foster homes, she in about 16 of them and he in more than twenty. Having known another person who had been in more than 16 foster homes before he had turned 18, I knew that the foster home situation in California, as in most other states, is a terrible system that practically destroys the people placed in them. I asked the boy that if he could change any one thing about the California State foster system, what would he change. His reply was that he would find a way to give the child a way to choose what family he wanted to go to. He wanted children to be able to go to a home where people actually cared about him. The word he actually used was "love." I asked him how, if given choices, he would know this before going to a family. He was short on specifics, but he said he would know.
When I asked the tall girl who had been in foster homes what she would change, she talked about greater state supervision and better selection of the families. Most these days just foster kids for money, she said. She wanted much greater care in the state's admitting families into the program. She wanted a case worker to come to the family once a month. As it is, she said, a case worked comes twice a year. She also commented that the families taking in foster children do not seem to be thoroughly investigated before they place children in their custody.
It seemed to me that these two students had a little more maturity than the others in the class. I learned otherwise near the end of the day when suddenly the girl came chasing after the boy right uo to my desk, and there was a loud crash and the sound of shattering glass as the girl threw a glass coffeepot at the boy, it hit the board behind me, and pieces of glass went all over the floor. She claimed he had "touched her." I asked if it had been in any way sexual. She stated no. Fortunately a security guard had been walking right by the classroom door, heard the noise, and within about ten seconds came in. He hauled the two to the office. The boy, I saw from some paperwork, was expelled for a week or two. So much for my belief that I could accurately assess any signs of maturity.
The last period of the day was to be given over to reading. Each student was to select a book from a large array of books at the back of the room, and to spend 45 minutes reading. What the students all selected were the sort of Japanese graphic novels that are read from back to front. Not a one of them picked a book that was mainly text with only supporting illustrations.
These were profoundly disturbed students, the entire class of them. They had been placed in the class for good reason, because in an ordinary class they would be unmanageable and would cause such trouble that this would prevent other students from learning. I doubt if I would ever again accept an assignment with this kind of student even though they need someone to look after them during class time. Somewhere my interests need to be taken into account, I told myself. I want to be in a situation in which students who might need help with their schoolwork can actually learn from me. This wasn't it.
This morning when I reported to a local middle school and checked in as a substitute, I was asked a most peculiar question that warned me this would not be an easy assignment. I was asked -- for the first time in my years of substitute teaching -- if I had any belongings such as my wallet or phone that I wanted to have placed in a locked space in the office before I went to class.
I didn't because luckily my phone was at home charging, and there was little of value in my wallet, which i carried in my left front pocket, so I declined.
I was accompanied to the classroom, where the security man accompanying me unlocked the door and let me in.
All seemed normal -- except that there seemed only to be about half the usual number of behavioral exhortations on blackboard and paper notices on the wall. Usually these ar=say such things as "Treat each other with respect," "do not bully," "raise your hand if you have a question," and so forth.
If I have complained at times because I do not have the opportunity actually to teach students, the lesson plan left for me was a dead giveaway that nothing significantly educational waqs going to happen to these 7th graders if I did what I was asked to do.
It was a Wednesday, a short day in many of the local schools. Instead of getting out at 3 pm, school got out around 1 p.m. According to the lesson plan left for me, the first period consisted of my taking attendance, and then the students were to play a word game in which one team or leader though of a letter and the rest of the class was supposed to guess words that started with that letter. Remember that this was a 7th grade class, which means that they should not have an elementary school mentality, and that they should be two years away from high school.
As the students filed in at the beginning of the class, I noted that none of them looked different than other students. There were no Downs Syndrome kid, nine showing signs of extreme autisim, or any symptoms like that. They seemed a bit noisy but they went to their assigned seats. I introduced myself, put my name on the board, I picked the student who seemed most in charge -- most aggressive looking, more a leader than the others, and asked his help in taking attendance, and also in getting the students started on the first activity. He did fine with the attendance, but but didn't try very hard to get the other students into the word game. In fact, most of the students were clearly not interested in the activity the teacher had planned for them, and showed this by ignoring it.
The "lesson plan" left for me commented after outlining the day's activities that these kids usually react with anger if confronted, and the way to deal with them was to state the behavior I expected, wait ten seconds for them to conform, state it again, wait another ten seconds, and then state the consequences of not obeying.
But let us run down the rest of the activities for the day. The second period was to be devoted to the students going to the computers and playing games on a selection of web sites. Probably two of them actually did this, while the others visited whatever sites they wanted to visit and tried to keep me from knowing this. The third period was to be devoted to another game, bingo, of which we were to play four different versions. The third period was to be devoted to a board game -- the students had their choice of which among 5 or 6 they wanted to play. There was then a lunch period a half-hour long. After that there was to be about 45 minutes of reading, in which each student was to select a book from a wide range of books at the back of the room, and sit quietly at his or her desk and read, As far as I could see, this was the only period of the day in which students might actually learn something -- if they read the right book -- and the remainder of the day was a total waste of time.
The day started with one girl in the class. All the others were boys. About midway through the morning another girl arrived with a permission slip to be admitted. She had had a doctor's appointment and was just getting to school. When I asked her what was special about the class, she mentioned something about "anger management." About a few minutes after the second period started, a taller boy appeared, too. He was listed on the attendance sheet, so I let him in. At first he seemed more mature than most of the others, and so did the tall girl who arrived late. He went up to the tall girl and hugged her. It seemed just friendly and not sexual, so I said nothing.
I made the opportunity to have one-on-one chats with the tall girl and also the fellow who had hugged her. Both had spent much of their lives in foster homes, she in about 16 of them and he in more than twenty. Having known another person who had been in more than 16 foster homes before he had turned 18, I knew that the foster home situation in California, as in most other states, is a terrible system that practically destroys the people placed in them. I asked the boy that if he could change any one thing about the California State foster system, what would he change. His reply was that he would find a way to give the child a way to choose what family he wanted to go to. He wanted children to be able to go to a home where people actually cared about him. The word he actually used was "love." I asked him how, if given choices, he would know this before going to a family. He was short on specifics, but he said he would know.
When I asked the tall girl who had been in foster homes what she would change, she talked about greater state supervision and better selection of the families. Most these days just foster kids for money, she said. She wanted much greater care in the state's admitting families into the program. She wanted a case worker to come to the family once a month. As it is, she said, a case worked comes twice a year. She also commented that the families taking in foster children do not seem to be thoroughly investigated before they place children in their custody.
It seemed to me that these two students had a little more maturity than the others in the class. I learned otherwise near the end of the day when suddenly the girl came chasing after the boy right uo to my desk, and there was a loud crash and the sound of shattering glass as the girl threw a glass coffeepot at the boy, it hit the board behind me, and pieces of glass went all over the floor. She claimed he had "touched her." I asked if it had been in any way sexual. She stated no. Fortunately a security guard had been walking right by the classroom door, heard the noise, and within about ten seconds came in. He hauled the two to the office. The boy, I saw from some paperwork, was expelled for a week or two. So much for my belief that I could accurately assess any signs of maturity.
The last period of the day was to be given over to reading. Each student was to select a book from a large array of books at the back of the room, and to spend 45 minutes reading. What the students all selected were the sort of Japanese graphic novels that are read from back to front. Not a one of them picked a book that was mainly text with only supporting illustrations.
These were profoundly disturbed students, the entire class of them. They had been placed in the class for good reason, because in an ordinary class they would be unmanageable and would cause such trouble that this would prevent other students from learning. I doubt if I would ever again accept an assignment with this kind of student even though they need someone to look after them during class time. Somewhere my interests need to be taken into account, I told myself. I want to be in a situation in which students who might need help with their schoolwork can actually learn from me. This wasn't it.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
A Great Assignment
I spent the first day today on a three-day assignment where I had an excellent time and where I know I am going to have two more excellent days. The job was at a middle school and I was substituting for a science teacher.
Just about everything concerning this job was excellent. The regular teacher had written out a clean explanation of the times and classes when I would be working with students -- always a great start.
I have substituted for a few classes where I walked into the classroom and found no lesson plan and no obvious work to be done. In cases like that, I have had to wing it and do a song and a dance about whatever subject the class concerned, and/or I have asked the students to spend their time reviewing work for the class and doing homework for other classes. Compared to that sort of situation, today's classes were wonderful.
The schedule involved other teachers bringing their classes to my room, where I took over the students and gave them pages of work to do and then turn in by the end of the hour. Some of them had difficulty understanding some of the reading on the sheets, so I was able to move among the class to those who had raised their hands for help, and give some assistance.
Before the day started, when I signed in at the main office, I had the foresight to ask for the number I should call in case I needed security. It turned out that I didn't need it. The students were fairly well behaved.
I also went to two classrooms on either side of mine and introduced myself. I asked what measures they recommended for taking care of troublesome kids. Both teachers told me that I had three good recourses. First, I could send one or more students to their own classes. Since kids are much quieter and better behaved with a teacher they know to be a "regular teacher" instead of a substitute, these two teachers didn't mind. Second, I was given a name of a staff member who seems to be in charge of discipline and told that I could send a kid to him anytime, and have one of the other kids accompany the malefactor to make sure he got to this gentleman. And third, I was told not to hesitate to send a student to the principal's office.
With these three behavioral tools, I was armed and ready for whatever might happen. It was quite a contrast compared to a few schools I've worked in recently where almost no sanctions for misbehavior are provided, and where, having denied a substitute the tools he or she needs for classroom management, they then blame the substitute if the class does not behave.
The kids were third and fourth graders. Don't assume that the little, younger students cannot be difficult. When they are badly behaved, they all tend to run around in the classroom at the same time, and it is almost impossible to get them seated and doing productive work.
One of the great aspects of today's work that made me happy was that I was not confronted with what I have elsewhere called "the Black princess complex." Many Black young ladies seem to start behaving as though they are "princesses" and deserve no discipline when they are in the firth or sixth grade. This may sound like a racist remark, but any substitute in my school system would immediately recognize what is meant by "the Black princess Complex" if you simply named it to them. We've all experienced it, and it is one of the most maddening things to deal with a student who shows no respect and who has "an attitude."But today's classes had no "princesses" in them. The kids were not yet old enough.
One lf the teachers bringing a class to my room in the afternoon stopped me as I would leaving for the staff lunchroom. She told me that her class, which was coming after lunch, had several problem kids, and I should not hesitate to send them to another classroom or to the principal. One of them, a student larger than the others, was aggressive and got into fights. Three of the students, she warned me, seemed to have weak bladder control, and if they asked to go to the bathroom they should be sent there immediately.
The student who often fought showed up in the classroom about fifteen minutes before lunchtime was over and asked if he could help. I gave him the job of passing out worksheets to every place in the class so the kids would have them as soon as they arrived. I also asked him to be a scorekeeper for me. I set up a big chart on the whiteboard, one side designated with a big + and the other side with a big -. I told him I would instruct him which names belonged on the chart, the plus being for the names of students who worked and the minus for the names of students who just fooled around.
A number of teachers in various schools I have subbed in have had a system where they award red tickets such as what one might get at the movies, and which the students can use eventually, when they've amassed enough, to "buy" prizes. I announced that students would get tickets at the end of the class for completing their work. And five minutes before the period ended, I asked for all the students' worksheets, quickly scanned them, and awarded tickets to kids who had completed answering the all the questions on the worksheets.
The pugnacious kid didn't get into any fights, and simply felt important. And most important, although the students were a little noisy at times, about 95% did all their work and were awarded tickets.
I would be the first to admit that my classroom management skills are not first-rate. But with the help of other teachers and with the sanctions that were in place and ready to be used, today went so well I am looking forward to tomorrow.
Just about everything concerning this job was excellent. The regular teacher had written out a clean explanation of the times and classes when I would be working with students -- always a great start.
I have substituted for a few classes where I walked into the classroom and found no lesson plan and no obvious work to be done. In cases like that, I have had to wing it and do a song and a dance about whatever subject the class concerned, and/or I have asked the students to spend their time reviewing work for the class and doing homework for other classes. Compared to that sort of situation, today's classes were wonderful.
The schedule involved other teachers bringing their classes to my room, where I took over the students and gave them pages of work to do and then turn in by the end of the hour. Some of them had difficulty understanding some of the reading on the sheets, so I was able to move among the class to those who had raised their hands for help, and give some assistance.
Before the day started, when I signed in at the main office, I had the foresight to ask for the number I should call in case I needed security. It turned out that I didn't need it. The students were fairly well behaved.
I also went to two classrooms on either side of mine and introduced myself. I asked what measures they recommended for taking care of troublesome kids. Both teachers told me that I had three good recourses. First, I could send one or more students to their own classes. Since kids are much quieter and better behaved with a teacher they know to be a "regular teacher" instead of a substitute, these two teachers didn't mind. Second, I was given a name of a staff member who seems to be in charge of discipline and told that I could send a kid to him anytime, and have one of the other kids accompany the malefactor to make sure he got to this gentleman. And third, I was told not to hesitate to send a student to the principal's office.
With these three behavioral tools, I was armed and ready for whatever might happen. It was quite a contrast compared to a few schools I've worked in recently where almost no sanctions for misbehavior are provided, and where, having denied a substitute the tools he or she needs for classroom management, they then blame the substitute if the class does not behave.
The kids were third and fourth graders. Don't assume that the little, younger students cannot be difficult. When they are badly behaved, they all tend to run around in the classroom at the same time, and it is almost impossible to get them seated and doing productive work.
One of the great aspects of today's work that made me happy was that I was not confronted with what I have elsewhere called "the Black princess complex." Many Black young ladies seem to start behaving as though they are "princesses" and deserve no discipline when they are in the firth or sixth grade. This may sound like a racist remark, but any substitute in my school system would immediately recognize what is meant by "the Black princess Complex" if you simply named it to them. We've all experienced it, and it is one of the most maddening things to deal with a student who shows no respect and who has "an attitude."But today's classes had no "princesses" in them. The kids were not yet old enough.
One lf the teachers bringing a class to my room in the afternoon stopped me as I would leaving for the staff lunchroom. She told me that her class, which was coming after lunch, had several problem kids, and I should not hesitate to send them to another classroom or to the principal. One of them, a student larger than the others, was aggressive and got into fights. Three of the students, she warned me, seemed to have weak bladder control, and if they asked to go to the bathroom they should be sent there immediately.
The student who often fought showed up in the classroom about fifteen minutes before lunchtime was over and asked if he could help. I gave him the job of passing out worksheets to every place in the class so the kids would have them as soon as they arrived. I also asked him to be a scorekeeper for me. I set up a big chart on the whiteboard, one side designated with a big + and the other side with a big -. I told him I would instruct him which names belonged on the chart, the plus being for the names of students who worked and the minus for the names of students who just fooled around.
A number of teachers in various schools I have subbed in have had a system where they award red tickets such as what one might get at the movies, and which the students can use eventually, when they've amassed enough, to "buy" prizes. I announced that students would get tickets at the end of the class for completing their work. And five minutes before the period ended, I asked for all the students' worksheets, quickly scanned them, and awarded tickets to kids who had completed answering the all the questions on the worksheets.
The pugnacious kid didn't get into any fights, and simply felt important. And most important, although the students were a little noisy at times, about 95% did all their work and were awarded tickets.
I would be the first to admit that my classroom management skills are not first-rate. But with the help of other teachers and with the sanctions that were in place and ready to be used, today went so well I am looking forward to tomorrow.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
All Things Are Connected
"Special education" encompasses many types of students, ranging from those you might never guess are any different from "normal" (whatever that means) to those who are almost non-functional and need another human being taking care of them constantly. While I was actively teaching almost every day at a local high school, the teacher of a class of high functioning special education students in the 11th grade decided one day to walk out. She had had enough, and simply quit. And as she left, she took with her almost everything she had placed on the walls as instructional aids and decoration.
I was asked if I wanted to take over the class. I was eager to have a long-term assignment. Never knowing what sort of class one is going to be working with every day involves a certain amount of stress. Twenty days (at five days a week a full month) in a given school year was supposed to be the legal limit for a substitute teacher to teach any group of special education students. I accepted the assignment eagerly.
At that point I was walking on crutches, waiting for a hip replacement operation that was still several months away. After I accepted the assignment, I discovered I had gotten myself into an interesting situation. For five periods a day, the class population consisted of shifting portions of the same group of about 12 students. One period there were six students who worked on math. Each one had different skills, so each one had to have lessons and worksheets and explanations geared specifically to him or her. But most challenging was the fact that for at least one period a day I had all twelve gathered in the class together, and there had been no textbook they'd been working from. For this class, I asked the assistant principal who'd given me the assignment what I should be teaching, what book I should use, where my materials were to come from. I got got three words of guidance: "Teach 'em science," she told me. And that was that.
I accepted the assignment at the end of a Friday. The teaching was to start on Monday. I had the weekend to get organized, to decide just what it was I was going to teach and how I was going to do it.
In this case one of my greatest weaknesses became a strength: my interest in almost everything. And I suppose that what many consider to be a failing of old age (I was in my early seventies) also helped. I was (and still am) a talky old man.
As an aside, I might add that the reason old folks are so talky is that they have far more hooks upon which to hang experiences on, more ways to relate to experiences, than students. To a student, an old song may be just an old song. To someone much older, a song may stir up many associations: it may have been heard outside an outdoor cafe late at night while bicycling through Southern France just outside some ancient Roman ruins that have been there for two thousand years. And that, itself, may summon up the wonder of history and the Roman Empire.
It also helped me during this assignment that I have an excellent education. With my high school diploma from Phillips Exeter Academy (then and now considered to be one of the best secondary schools in America), a B.A. from Dartmouth College, graduate school in English from the University of California at Berkeley, and further graduate school (in writing) at what was then called San Francisco State College, I knew what good teaching was. And having been in about 18 different countries, lived in three, and speaking three languages fluently and a smattering of a few others, I had had a wide range of experience. I am not tooting my own horn here, but I am trying to indicate that in watching the videos and explaining them deeply, I had considerable background to draw upon.
I've often found that coincidence shapes my actions. In this case I had been watching a fascinating series of videos called "Walking with Dinosaurs." In a half dozen or more episodes, filmmakers and scientists had created life stories about dinosaur species that had lived millions of years ago. The depictions were the most realistic I had ever seen. You would have thought the episodes had been made with the help of a time machine and that real dinosaurs had actually been filmed.
Is there anyone who doesn't have as fascination with dinosaurs ? Perhaps a few adults who have become so jaded they're no longer interested in just how strange and wonderful and magnificent these creatures must have been. If this fascination is something that can be outgrown, then in my early seventies I must still not have outgrown my childhood.
I'd like to claim that my way of using my dinosaur videos was fully developed from my first day using it. It wasn't. But my sense of wonder was. And in the first few days I worked o\ut a method through which I could communicate my own sense of wonder as well as a great deal about science. By mid-week I had given each student a notebook which they were to write in during this science class. The night before each class, I reviewed a section of the video and made notes. Part of my notes included a list of words -- vocabulary -- to try to teach. And more of my own jottings contained ideas that flowed from what the students were seeing.
This was not to be the sort of lazy, do-nothing video fest I have seen a few teachers in our system use to duck out of serious academic work. The videos in this case were to be used to accomplish two things: 1) To stimulate the students' interest; and 2) To introduce serious scientific concepts that could be explained and that they could learn about. The dinosaurs were bait, excuses to bring up serious subjects every educated adult should know.
We saw different species of dinosaurs. What is a species ? What makes one different from another ? Who was Darwin ? What idea did he have that shook the world ? Who was Wallace. Did species evolve in one place that broke into pieces (Africa and South America) ? Or were species transported by accident from one place to another and evolved into different species. What is a carnivore ? What is an herbivore ? Look at the map. What was Pangea ? What is a fossil (Look, here's one I brought from home) ? What is DNA ? How much do we share with chimpanzees ? How do we know the continents were once together. What are volcanic, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks ? What are minerals ? What are elements ? What states can a substance be in ? How are solids, liquids and gases different ? And so forth, for twenty days. What is evolution ? How does it work ?
And somewhere in there, the most basic question of all, which comes up in discussion over and over and over: How do we know what we think we know.
This kind of teaching excited me, and I think that most of the time it excited most of the students. "Write this down," I would say, referring to the subjects and definitions I had put on the board before they viewed another section of the video.
These were special education students. I had no idea how much the terms and definitions and all the material I was throwing at them and that they were copying into their notebooks would stick. But at least they were being exposed to it.
During all this, my hip was deteriorating. My pain was so acute I took a Darvon each day before I went to school. At the beginning of this month-long assignment, I had had to use a cane to move around in class. After two weeks, I used crutches. The last few days I came into the room and sat in an office chair on wheels. I moved around that way, looking at what students were writing. At that point, when I drove into the school parking lot and parked my car, a student or another teacher would often ask if they could carry my bag while I went to the office and signed in. I must have looked terrible.
In class I used the Socratic method. What is "extinct" mean, I would ask one student. Name some animals that are now extinct, I said to another. How do we know there were dinosaurs ? I asked still another. "How do we know what we think we know ?"
On the last day of the last week of my assignment, one of the students came to me and asked, "We saw all these different kinds of dinosaurs. Where did humans come from ?"
And then I knew I had succeeded. They wanted to know.
My month-long term of teaching the class drew to an end. Still no teacher specializing in teaching special education was on the horizon. On my final day of the month with these students I was informed that since no special education teacher had yet been found, did I want to continue to teach the same students for another month. Somehow they had gotten around the legal restrictions and I could continue teaching the same students during the coming week.
I was enjoying the class so much that I didn't hesitate. "Yes," I said. "I would love it."
That weekend my hip became worse and worse. I live on a hill, with thirty steps from my house up to the street where I park my car. My wife was bed-ridden, and I cooked meals and fed her and took care of her. On Monday, when I started off to work I found that despite the Darvon, I could not get up the steps to my car without crawling.
I called the school and explained that I was no longer physically able to get to school. My hip operation was still a month or two away. The woman I was speaking with over the phone, whom I knew very well and who may have been responsible for my originally getting the assignment, told me she understood. They would find someone to fill in. My job then was to get better as quickly as possible.
I put the phone down and cried.
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