Take What You Need

Today when I got to school, this was outside my classroom.

I'm not sure what was on the missing piece, and there was no information about who had put it up, but by the end of the day, this is all that was left.

And once again, I remembered why I love what I do and how thankful I am to be surrounded by amazing kids and passionate colleagues.

Fine. I'll tweet you.

Although I had a brief fling with myspace and have had a facebook account for years, I have never felt even the slightest twinge of desire to jump on the twitter bandwagon. The name stops me, first of all. I will forever associate it with the Disney classic Bambi, in which one character declares another character to be "twitterpated." The word "tweet" is ridiculous to me and while I can control who sees my thoughts on facebook, I cannot control it on twitter...and I don't really have anything that profound to say.

But then, another teacher mentioned that her students had asked her if she would set up a twitter account for homework reminders and so on, and it suddenly clicked. That might actually work.

So I contemplated it over break, and asked my kids about it (and got an overwhelmingly positive response), got a phone that will actually support a twitter app, and decided to just see how it works. The goal is to tweet things like "homework due tomorrow!" and "don't forget to sign up for the blood drive!" you know, lame stuff like that. =)

Meh....we'll see.

Coasting

It's been a while since I last posted and I was thinking the other day about why this is.

1. this year has been going so smoothly that I don't really have any angst to dissipate here
2. I found out my principal reads my blog and it really freaked me out
3. I am behind on grading (shocking, I know)
4. I redesigned two units and am having to redo everything in those units, which takes a long time

So suffice it to say, things are going smoothly, I need to grade, and I am very glad we have a day off of school tomorrow.

Per Our Conversation....

I've been thinking about this after a conversation with a friend this afternoon.

My Bucket List:
1. dye my hair with purple, pink, or blue streaks
2. get a tattoo (don't freak out, dad, I haven't done this)
3. spend 6 months traveling around Europe alone (cliche, but nonetheless true)
4. go to Vegas and people watch
5. go to New York and be a tourist
6. live in a really old building/industrial space
7. volunteer for a community organization
8. own and fix up an old house
9. visit Boston
10. get married (I think I live in the wrong city...)

Jobs I wouldn't mind doing
1. personal assistant (shopping for other people? Awesome!)
2. teacher coach (all the good parts of teaching, none of the grading)
3. personal chef (if only I could cook)
4. translator at the UN (if only I could speak another language)
5. teaching English overseas (if I wasn't such a weenie)
6. being a tour guide in Seattle (I could actually do this one)
7. being a tailor (I like sewing, so sue me)

Places I would like to live
1. on the beach almost anywhere
2. in a houseboat on Lake Union
3. on the shore of Lake Washington
4. on top of Queen Anne
5. in Ballard
6. in Wallingford
7. in Magnolia
8. in West Seattle

Counterbalance

As you may have gathered, Wednesday was Not A Good Day. On Thursday, I was still irritated with the kids on my way to school, so I decided I wanted to do something to cheer myself up a little. 2-3 days a week the kids do an exit slip at the end of class. It is a good way for me to get instant feedback on whether or not the kids understand a concept and is a great way to end class without the kids packing up ten minutes early (punks).

On Thursday, since I had been feeling like the world's worst teacher (THANKS, KIDS) I asked the kids to tell me something they had learned in my class this year that they thought had made them a better student. Really, I was looking for a little pat on the back. And it worked.

I did, of course, get the requisite idiot answers (some prime examples....'nothing,' 'WWI was bad,' and my personal favorite... '1.'), but most of the kids actually gave me some good stuff. Here are some of my favorites (written verbatim):

• I have learned to take good notes
• Something I've learned this year is pick the best details to prove my writing, because it wasn't something I am good at before.
• pointing out better details because these skills are going to be used for many more things in life
• Something that I have learned is how to explain my thoughts
• That I have to give a better deatails. So if I pick a quote, I have to give a good deatail
• The essay thing helps me in other classes too =)
• homework has made me a better student because I start doing a lot more homework and encourage me to want to learn more
• Something that I have learned in world history this year that I feel makes me a better student is the way we take notes. It's really helpful and organizing.
• Thinking about things at a deeper level
• how to make a good thesis. I will use it several times
• Finding specific evidence because I be getting unrelated evidence that doesn't go what we're talking. Now it really helped me, like the elimination thing (**teaching kids to eliminate the obviously wrong answers)
• how to find good evidence because I used this everywhere in other classes, not only just one
• be confident by myself because I feel better than before (from an ELL student)

I recommend this treatment for all burned-out teachers. =)

British Voiceovers

This completely made my week.

Straws that Break Teacher's Backs

The week of mid-winter break should be a glorious interlude in the school year...the halfway point between September and late (very late...stupid snow days) June. Instead, late February turns into the low point of the year. Teacher despair hits an all-time low and this year there is more despair than usual.

There is, of course, all the problems in Wisconsin. And the proposal in Detroit. And teacher cuts in Texas.

In addition, I have been working on my national board certification, which involves approximately 57 billion words written in a specific format proving that I am, in fact, a good teacher and haven't irreparably harmed generations of teenagers, whom everyone is counting on to Save America, because the Kids Are Our Future. It's been a rough week, and while I am not exactly where I want to be, I am close.

I was talking to a teacher friend last night, a fantastic, committed, professional who has been at our school for quite a while. She told me that she is considering putting in a request to move to to a different school in our district. I asked why, and she said that she felt like she needed to take a break from the kids. The kids at my school are needy. They require a complex formula of hand-holding, coaxing, pushing, punishing, manipulating, and love that should be the job of their parents, but is in fact often up to us, their teachers. This formula is even more demanding for us. As an example, while compiling evidence for my national boards, I realized that in my 6th period, a class with 22 kids, I have 4 kids who read at the 2nd grade level, and 4 kids that read at the college level, and the class average is a low 7th grade level. How do I give them 10th grade instruction when their reading skills are so low? It's hard.

I've often wondered what would happen to my teaching if I wasn't a spinster, if I had a husband and kids...or even just a boyfriend. Teaching where I do is unbelievably demanding. It requires constant focus and effort and doesn't leave much room for a personal life. It's why teachers in low-income schools burn out so fast. Teachers in my situation don't leave because they get better offers from other districts. They leave because they're mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. My co-teacher Clark arrives at school by 6:15 am and doesn't usually leave until 5:00 or 5:30 pm. I often spend my weekends grading papers instead of going out with friends and I spend my summers in classes and rewriting curriculum.

For now, I'm committed. But it's hard to stay so sometimes.

Grades and Comments

I have spent the last two hours entering grades, a mind-numbing and depressing process, if I do say so myself. I entered teaching just as districts began switching to online gradebook systems, so I don't know what it used to be like. I do know that my student's grades would have been a lot less accurate if they would have had to depend on me and my math skills. The online gradebook systems that I have used are all fairly similar, and at the end of the grading period you enter comments, along with the grades, that will then appear on the report card. The comments are pre-set, which makes perfect sense, since I always wish that I could say what I really think, and that is most likely not the best option in the long run.

Pre-set comments usually consist of things like:

• not working to potential
• missing assignments
• inconsistent work quality
• absences affecting achievement
• disruptive influence in class
• does not manage time well
• motivation and effort vary

But these pre-set comments simply don't capture what is actually taking place in my classroom. I need comments like:

• sleeps in class - even standing up
• has senioritis, and this sophomore level class will prevent them from graduating unless something dramatic clicks very soon
• flirting is interfering with his/her learning as well as the learning of every other male/female in the room
• comes back to class late after lunch, usually scarfing down the last scraps of a McDonald's lunch 
• completely and utterly unmotivated to do anything at all for any reason... ever... including impending shark attacks
• has to sit in the hallway most days for being disrespectful or rude
• calls me racist because I tell him to stop talking 
• has the maturity level of a 6th grader

I have realized that we as teachers create our own "teacher code" that makes perfect sense to us, but may not make sense to anyone else. Let me tell you what we are actually trying to say with those comments.

• not working to potential - actually means "your kid is smart, but ridiculously lazy...they could probably get an A if they tried even once in a while"
• missing assignments - actually means "seriously, your kid never turns in anything, even when I beg and plead"
• inconsistent work quality - actually means "I see flashes of brilliance and then sheer apathy....but mostly apathy"
• absences affecting achievement - actually means "maybe if you stopped keeping your kid home when they claim their 'stomach hurts' or taking off for three months for a family vacation to Samoa, your kid would pass this class. As it is, they never make up any of that missing work and then wonder why they aren't passing."
• disruptive influence in class - actually means "I am considering quitting this profession because your child makes me want to rip off my own arm and beat them to death with it."
• does not manage time well - actually means "two words: lazy and unfocused
• motivation and effort vary - actually means "lazy unless you have yelled at them the night before"

I often wish I could be far more direct, but we live in a culture that doesn't really respect that as much as we claim and a culture in which we have been told "you can do anything" so much that we actually believe we deserve special treatment.

Grades for Parents

I heard this on the news the other morning, but haven't seen it pop up much around the blogosphere, so I wanted to just throw it out there. A Florida lawmaker has proposed a bill that would require parents to grade the parents of their students. Grades would be based on three stipulations:

• A child should be at school on time, prepared to learn after a good night's sleep, and have eaten a meal.
• A child should have the homework done and prepared for examinations.
• There should be regular communication between the parent and teacher.

Now on the one hand, I applaud the recognition that student performance cannot be laid completely on the teacher. While I am not a huge fan of Hilary Clinton, I do think the often overused saying that she popularized "It takes a village to raise a child" is completely right. And part of that village is the parents. I see far too many students come to school without eating breakfast, and of course they can't focus on school when their stomachs are growling and they have a headache. I would love it if parents supervised their students' homework. And just today I just attempted yet another most likely futile email to the parent of Levi in a desperate bid to make his father understand the seriousness of the issues Levi is dealing with.

On the other hand, I don't see this ever becoming reality. This is something that will cause only problems between teachers and parents. Like standardized testing, it is focused on punishment rather than positive communication. But it is an interesting take on public education.

Stats

As part of my national boards certification, I asked the kids to fill out surveys with information that isn't easy for me to find...things like how many of them were born in the US, how many of them speak more than one language, etc. I started tabulating them today and thought the results were pretty interesting. 85 kids returned surveys over the last 3 days, so the results are not exactly scientific, but nonetheless, here they are:

76 % were born in the US
25 % were born elsewhere
60 % have parents who were born elsewhere
63.5 % speak more than one language
6 % speak at least three languages
36 % have moved at least 5 times in their life
33 % have moved school districts at least 3 times
33 % have been in the same school district for their entire schooling
39 % live in single parent homes
29 % live in multi-generational or extended family homes
Also interesting to me, is the fact that almost all of the kids understand that education is important...and they said that without being prompted or asked. A few said they thought school was boring, but for the most part they claim to like school.
 
Anyway, just thought they were interesting stats.....

Notes

From time to time, for one reason or another, I get notes from the kids.

Sometimes, they're funny.

(It says "Time Flys By In Your Class....................................when I sleep")

Sometimes they make me want to rip off my own arm and beat someone to death with it. This particular gem came from one of the laziest, most negative children I have ever met, who has made no secret of her dislike for me and my class. She currently sits in the back with the other super negative child in that class, they sit next to each other because no one else in class can stand sitting next to them. 

The heart on the bottom is the best part, I think. Do they really think that putting a heart on it makes it somehow ok? 

(It says "to be honest, the way you teach things does not at all help me learn. So then I just give up. Not just notes, everything!" and then a big, sloppy heart)

Most of the time though, they are just awesome. This one was handed to me last week by a student as she walked by me in the hallway. She is an ELL student in my 4th period who was supposed to be in the ELL history class and asked to stay in my class instead of moving.

 (It says "Thank you so much Mizz Darkside. Hi Mizz Darkside. This is a thank you colerful card for you. Thanks for being a nice respectful teacher! From all my classes, this is the class where I feel that I learn the most. Thanks for helping me. Your the best teacher in all _____high school! Also Mizz Darkside. Thank you! b/c from all my classes thiss is actully the only class where i feel that i learn. Your the best thank you!)

 This one was my favorite and made me tear up a little...but I have no idea who it is from. It has to be one of the seniors in my advisory, but I do not recognize the handwriting and there is no name on it. I found it in my box this morning.

 (It says "Dear Ms D I will never forget you. Ms D you are like a mother to me. U seen me grow up from a little freshman to a senior. U known me for the longest and you really know me. U listen to my problems and helped me in any way. Words can't thank you enough. Thank you")

and......cue tears now.

 This one is from one of my loudest students from last year, a kid that seriously underestimated her talents and shot herself in the foot with her disorganization from time to time. I despaired over her at the beginning of the year, but she got her act together by the end of the year and is doing really well this year. It is one of the cool things about sophomores...I get to see them (well, most of them) finally grow up.

(It says "he Ms Darkside - guess who?! Yup....its me, your worse nightmare! lol. jk, jk. Well, I just wanteed to thank you for being a great teacher to me last year, even when I was a pain in your butt. You have taught me to work hard, time management, and surprisingly discipline. I apologize if I ever disrespected you last year. You truely are a wonderful teacher and for that, I would like to say THANK you! Keep it up. *PS - Thanks for caring")

These cards totally made my week. Well, maybe not the second one, but the others were cool. And in the interest of full disclosure, I think some teacher had their kids do these because I got 4 of them on the same day. I do get random notes from time to time, but generally not all in a clump like this. But it was still cool!

What if....

I eat lunch with a truly fantastic group of teachers. We are all language arts and social studies teachers, and all fairly young (35 or younger). I have spent more than one lunch literally crying with laughter. This year, when one of us has a bad morning, we will come in to lunch and announce our declaration to give up teaching and work as a Department of Transportation Sign Turner - you know, the people that stand on the side of the road with the "Slow" and "Stop" signs in construction zones.

Today, someone asked what would happen if the same restrictions that apply to teachers were to apply to the sign-turners. Here's a short list of what we decided:

• Sign-Turners would be paid based on whether or not people ACTUALLY slowed down in construction zones
• The only measure of whether or not people were actually slowing down would be the number on the speedometer, not whether the number of accidents decreased
• Sign-Turners will be expected to pay for their own sign. And vest.
• Sign-Turners will be rewarded if they use aggressive measures to slow people down. Why rely on only the sign? Even an idiot can hold a sign, the truly GOOD sign-turners will fling themselves in front of oncoming traffic in an effort to really make a difference.
• From time to time, a study would be done that proves that people respond better to round signs rather than triangular signs, as triangular signs are challenging for round-preferential people to read. All signs would then be switched to the round shape for a few years, until another study proved that, in fact, triangular signs were superior because the shape catches people's attention.
• In an effort to address the needs of all drivers, sign-turners would be required to hold BOTH shapes of signs and only use the shape that a particular driver will respond to - even though it is illegal to ask the drivers what kind of sign they might best respond to.
• Other studies would prove that turning the sign clockwise instead of counterclockwise increases the likelihood that right-handed drivers will respond appropriately to the sign, whereas left-handed drivers repsond best to a counterclockwise rotation. Again, sign-turners will be expected to turn the sign in the appropriate direction in response to the needs of all drivers, including blind ones.
• Yet another study would determine that printing "STOP" in all capital letters on a red background creates the impulse to in fact go faster for some people (this is known as "oppositional defiance"), so printing "GO LESS FAST" instead will help defuse these tendencies and encourage them not to give in to their suffering.
• Telling blind people that they cannot drive is illegal. All people can do everything equally well. Sign-Turners will be expected to modify their sign-turning to compensate for the needs of all drivers.
• New Sign-Turners will be hired straight out of ivy-league colleges, because only the young can masterfully reach all drivers. Old Sign-Turners refuse to listen to the studies listed above, stating reasons such as "Been There Done That." How can the DOT expect to meet the needs of all drivers if the Sign-Turners are so resistant to change?
• Sign-Turners will be expected to call the mothers of all bad drivers to let the mothers know that their children broke the rules. How the sign-turner is supposed to figure out the correct phone number is up to the sign-turner, but if they do not contact the mothers, bad drivers will be allowed to continue to drive badly, since no one told them not to.

Sometimes, lunch is the only thing that gets me through the day.

Update

* third period is going better...I moved some kids around and it's improving a little.

* Daisy ended up in the principal's office the other day and apparently is mad at every single one of her teachers....from this year AND last year. Life will be tough for that kid.

* 2nd period got a stern lecture yesterday when I realized that their class average was 52% when all my other classes are around 72%. Why? Missing homework.

* I am exhausted. I am planning on taking Monday off.

* We are still having major technology issues, the kids still can't check their grades and some teachers still can't use the new gradebook system we got this year.

* The old technology we had worked just fine.

* I'm just sayin'

* I have strong suspicions of this new movie Waiting for Superman but since I am a responsible adult, will watch it before publicly stating my opinions.

one year later

One year ago, I broke my right arm while ice skating.

One year later, I have had surgery to install a plate in my right elbow that is daily increasing my chance of later getting severe arthritis, a 2 inch scar, and a small area around it that is completely numb.

One year later I am still dealing with insurance, doctor bills, and workmen's compensation.

One year later I still do not have full range of motion.

One year later I still cannot touch my right shoulder with my right hand, cannot touch the back of my neck with my right hand, and cannot reach nearly as far with my right hand as I can with my left hand.

One year later I am officially 5% disabled....most likely for the rest of my life.

And one year later I am glad it wasn't worse, glad I still have the use of my hand, and glad that I can still do the job that I love, despite the fact that my kids have felled me with a nasty flu bug.

Cooking with Gas

Well, actually, I cook with electricity, but what kind of title is that? I started a new blog for cooking...you are welcome to come on over if you want.

The Diffident Chef

Reset Buttons Would Be Nice

5:15....alarm goes off, I get up and discover that the cat is apparently mad at me and left me all kinds of fun presents in the hall, the bathroom, and the kitchen. So awesome to discover when half asleep.
6:00...racing out the door to take some friends to the airport, forget my water on the counter (this will be important later...)
6:05...forget which side my gas tank is on, pull into the gas station backwards
6:07...attempt to zip up my jacket, only to discover I have put it on inside out
6:30...discover that everyone in Seattle is taking off from the Southwest terminal this morning, and have decided to creatively park in the dropoff lanes, so instead of being able to get out and give my two best friends a proper sendoff, I have to basically push them out of the car while it is still moving.
6:35...get on I-405 instead of I-5 to return a misplaced engagement ring (long story) and come to a total halt at milepost 3. I proceed to spend the next hour and a quarter going so slowly that it doesn't even register on the speedometer. It took me that long to go 4 miles due to a flaming bus crash on the smallest, busiest freeway in Seattle.
8:15...almost get into an accident by missing the exit and nearly heading to Canada instead of Edmonds
8:20...GPS sends me PAST the school my conference is on
8:25...park in the very last row of the parking lot and RUN to try and make the 8:30 class on the second floor on the far side of the building.
8:45...realize I forgot my water and go to vending machine. Put in $1.25 and am given the message that the water is sold out. Push the coin return and get back 60 cents.

Some days, it would just be better to push the reset button and start over. =)

*******************************************
It's been a busy summer. I took off the weekend after my last post and spent three weeks with my dad helping him farm. I had internet access, but no time to blog. I got back on Sunday and the next day my two best friends came in to visit. They left this morning and I am in the midst of a conference regarding a teaching program that will be consuming my life for the next 8 months (more on that later), so I am going to leave this here, and pick it up later. School is starting soon and I am itching to get into my classroom on Monday!

The Importance of Punctuation

I'm sure you've probably heard of the book by Lynne Truss called Eats, Shoots and Leaves in which she talks about the importance of punctuation and bemoans its declining importance in the US and the United Kingdom. This week, I noticed a sign that would seem to indicate that things are not really improving.I think this might be far more funny in New York or somwhere else with a large Jewish population, but it was still funny (and deeply disturbing) to me. If you aren't up on your Jewish vocabulary, click here for a definition of "bris."

Why Cleaning Your House is Important

Because when walking across the living room with a plate of food in one hand and a glass of milk in the other, it is somewhat disconcerting to catch your toe in the computer cord and stagger like a drunken clown into a chair while the other foot slides out from under you on a magazine, while you meanwhile attempt to balance the aforementioned plate and glass of milk, which you KNOW will stink Forever and Ever if you spill it into the upholstered chair you just fell over and into while trying to prevent two broken arms in less than a year and still preserving the dinner you just spent half an hour cooking. This will inevitably result in the total failure to save anything at all, resulting in the loss of your security deposit and a chair that will have to be recovered for the third time.

Not that this has ever happened to me or anything.

Wednesday Somalia

I have been wanting to get involved with some kind of volunteer work, and while I was initially looking for a women's shelter to volunteer with, I ended up volunteering with a Somali organization in the Seattle area. This organization has several tutoring programs that are set up with the local school district (not mine) and one of the programs is run thorugh an apartment complex that has a very large Somali population. As it turns out, this apartment is actually in MY school district, so several of the kids know me and I even have a few of them in my classes this year.

I was a little nervous going into this, since the thought of teaching AFTER a long day of teaching was a little daunting. But as it turns out, I absolutely love doing this. The kids that in my classroom are timid and demure are chatterboxes and stinkin' hilarious when you get them on their own turf. When I walked in last week, I was asked for help within 30 seconds. Unfortunately, it was with math, which is....an area of weakness for me, to put it mildly. But we figured it out together and I had so much fun that I ended up staying an extra half hour because I wasn't watching the time.

As part of my volunteer training, I learned some interesting things about Somalia. For example, did you know that the Somali language did not have a written version until 1972? And they haven't had a functional government since 1991. Education was mandatory to age 13 before 1991, but now only about 8% of kids go to elementary school and only 5% of kids go to school beyond that age. Can you imagine how hard it would be to go to school here in the US when you've never been to school at all in your own country? No wonder some of the kids we get struggle so much. In addition, 40% of the population of Somalia is dependent on external aid and Somalia is considered the worst humanitarian disaster in the world.

We aren't sure exactly how many Somalis are in this area, but Western Washington has the third largest Somali population in the United States, with an estimated population of between 40,000-70,000 in this area. Somalis are Muslim and fairly conservative, and the kids (especially the girls) are not allowed to stay after school for tutoring or whatnot, so they have a tutoring program in this apartment complex. There are 2 Somali men who run this program and they do the best they can, but there are between 40-50 kids that come and they all are there for help with their homework.

This is a population in our school that we have a tremendous amount of difficulty reaching. These are the parents we can't get hold of and the parents we literally cannot talk to because they don't speak English. Can you imagine how much of a difference it would make if those parents knew us BEFORE their kids reached high school? So right now, I am working on some fellow teachers to come with me and I am so excited to be doing this. So now you know where I'll be on Wednesday nights.....

By the way, I had to reinstall comment monitoring because I have been pretty seriously spammed over the past few weeks. I'll take it off again after a while, sorry!

Lost in Space

I'm not sure where the last two weeks went....sorry.

This is the last night of my one-week mid-winter break (don't be jealous...we don't get out of school until the end of June) and while it is always lovely to have a break from school, it is also kind of nice to get back into the routine. I tend to do better with routines, and I know the kids do too.

It is also nice to go back with everything graded, and the next month all planned out. I guess that means all my paperwork will get done on time for a change this month.

I'll try not to go so long between posts....