Looking back

Looking back on my second year teaching I can truly say I've grown a great deal on a professional and on a personal level. How?

1. I had a positive and productive relationship with my administrator
2. I was able to collaborate with colleagues
3. Colleagues were emotionally supportive
4. I loved most of my students
5. I focused on the things I could change
6. I focused on student growth in relation to our big goals
7. I earned a masters degree!
8. I was able to attend workshops for professional development
9. I've learned how to keep students engaged
10. My interactions with students are much more productive

Fun with conjugation

To lighten the mood during state testing, I am combining card games + mental math + conjugating verbs in Spanish. How? Our first game is 21 Blackjack. 

Students play the game in groups of 3's or 4's. After each round the winner doesn't have to conjugate any verbs, but the losers have to conjugate verbs based on the cards they have in their hand at the end of the round. Each suit (spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds) corresponds to a given verb, and each card value has an assigned subject pronoun. 

This is how it works

Global perspectives

How do I connect topics I am teaching to the real world?

One of our recent units was "la comida" - food. Food can either be very mundane and basic, or it can be unique and exciting. In order to make learning about food unique and exciting, one of the activities involved looking at an ordinary activity like grocery shopping from a local and global perspective. 

We compared grocery shopping the USA to grocery shopping in Venezuela.

Why did I choose Venezuela? Aside from it being a Spanish speaking country, Venezuela has a government and an economy that is very different from our own. On paper Venezuela has a republican form of government, but in reality the government has socialist tendencies and an economy that increasingly socialist with pockets of capitalist industries. What does grocery shopping have to do with socialism? In order to make necessities like toilet paper, flour, sugar, meat, and cornmeal affordable, the government subsidizes local farmers and manufacturers who supply government run supermarkets. This means that privately owned supermarkets do not have sufficient food or basic necessities. As a result, people are forced to shop at government run supermarkets. This sounds great except the government supermarkets are also low on supplies like beef, chicken, toilet paper, sugar, and flour. Why? The government subsidized farmers and manufacturers are not making a substantial profit by exclusively supplying government shops, so they only supply select items. 

Food shortages in Venezuela

What does this look like for the average consumer? People stand in line for up to 5 hours to get into the grocery store. Once they are in the grocery store there is no guarantee that they will find what they need. Some people wait weeks to get basics like toilet paper. My students' minds were blown at the thought of cueing up just to go grocery shopping. 

Toilet paper crisis

What was our classroom discussion like? We asked and answered some revealing questions. 

1. What is socialism and how is it different from our government?
2. What is supply and demand? How is this an issue in Venezuela's supermarkets?
3. How do we feel about necessities being available at a reduced price that everyone can afford regardless of occupation? 
4. What would happen to the EBT program if the USA adopted socialist policies?
5. What are some extremes we saw in the Venezuela supermarket crisis? How is this similar to and different from a trip to the supermarket in the United States?

The teaching and learning format for this lesson featured several video segments followed by open forum discussion on the issues presented in each video. At the end of class students answered reflection questions. 

My students will never look at grocery shopping the same way. 

Bread from heaven...

School has been canceled for 3 days. Why? Manna is falling...

Así es la vida

Talented students

Students are such talented individuals. It's amazing how they will always find an outlet for their creativity.

 

Should I have written this kid up for drawing on his desk? Probably.

Así es la vida...

What's conjugation?

We learned how to modify verbs in Spanish depending on who we are talking about. 

If you still don't know how to conjugate present tense verbs that end in -ar after multiple modes of presentation, you are beyond the teacher's reach. 

1st try: visual + auditory

Check out the awesome video

2nd try: traditional (some people like the no frills approach)

3rd try: kinesthetic (you made a foldable on neon green paper and stapled it into your interactive notebook)

OUTSIDE

INSIDE

I don't remember Spanish being this exciting when I was in high school.

Our wonderful students...

Here in the county we firmly believe in maximizing instructional time and reaching every student, but I guess this doesn't apply to the history department.

One unfortunate history teacher has classes of 25-30+ freshmen who still haven't learned how to behave. On one beautiful morning she turned her back to the class as she wrote notes on the white board.

As her back was turned, one young scholar turned the lights off. As she turned around to confront the student, other students proceeded to throw textbooks at her.

This teacher then marched the class to the office, turned in her grade book, and drove home.

Not to worry, I'm 99.9% sure that none of the students involved got in trouble.

Whatever happened to kids who respect authority?

The perfect student?

Still riding the struggle bus...

In retrospect...

It would have been nice to know a few things before teaching in the county.

1. Everything is a teacher problem/The kids are not accountable for anything.

Let Billy's mom show up and accuse you of failing Billy. Even if you plan interventions and give extra opportunities for Billy to bring his grade up, it is not my responsibility to convince Billy that he should try to get above a 65 in my class. But don't worry, it's the teacher's fault that Billy didn't feel like doing group work, independent work, art activities, lab work, learning through song, etc. As a result, Billy's mom is in the right. It's the teacher's fault. Shame on the teacher for not doing cartwheels and back flips to get Billy excited about learning.  

2. Too many kids "need" accommodations.

Billy's dad wants Billy to sit in the front row, but I can't do that since I have more than 10 other students with a behavior plan that requires him/her to sit at the front of the room. I'm no magician, so there is no way to make more than 10 front row seats even if I have the room split in half with the kids facing each other. Well, sorry Billy's dad, request declined.

3. Alternative school is an ineffective rehab facility

Billy and Suzie are notorious for disrupting the classroom environment, and both have already received several days of in school suspension and out of school suspension. At this point both students now have a behavior plan which essentially allows them to misbehave without getting written up unless the teacher follows steps 1-10 on their "positive" behavior plan. Nevertheless, Billy and Suzie continue to disrupt class and are therefore sent to alternative school.

Problem solved? Not quite. Low and behold Billy and Suzie are on a 10 day plan at alternative school, so 10 short days later they're back in my classroom doing the same nonsense they were doing before they left. To sweeten the deal they are both now 10 days behind on classroom material.

4. Everybody knows somebody, so nobody gets in trouble

Before coming to the county I was told that we rarely ever have fights, because if a fight breaks out, the students are taken to the police station.

Since I've been here we've had at least 8 fights, so that means at least 16 students involved in violent activities on school grounds.

How many of these students have actually been handcuffed and/or escorted to the police station? Zero.

Why? Well Suzie's mom knows officer B., so he can't bring himself to handcuff her. And If he doesn't handcuff Suzie, then he can't handcuff Brenda either. Or, one of the students involved belongs to an influential family in the community, so we can't handcuff him or take him to the police station.

When there are no real consequences for bad behavior, the kids will do whatever they want to do.

Still riding the struggle bus...

Where's the library?

While chatting with a resident of the county about the new computerized GED, adult literacy programs, and computer literacy programs, it occurred to me that the library would be an awesome location for adult education programs. In many places the public library offers such programs for little to no charge for county residents. It then occurred to me that I had never set foot in the public library here in the county, so I asked where it's located.

Where indeed. It turns out that this county institution is closely tied to another upstanding county institution. The library is none other than the the former jailhouse. To sweeten the deal, it still has a hangman's noose and prison cells to boot.

Moderation and economy. Thrift and innovation.

Maybe the library/jailhouse combo is a thing like KFC/Taco Bell or Dunkin' Donuts/Baskin-Robbins.

The struggle is real.

Kool-aid pickles?

Kool-Aid pickles (kool-aid +sugar + pickles) are quite the thing in the county as well as in many other places.

Kool-Aid pickle

During break time (snack time) the school sells things like sports drinks, chips, nachos, fruit snacks, and of course Kool-aid pickles. 

On one fine afternoon several young female scholars proceeded to do "unspeakable things" with said Kool-aid pickles in the bathroom, so the school no longer sells this southern delicacy during break time.

Our fearless leader was deeply moved by these events, so she decided to make a public service announcement at the start of classes the following day. She kindly informed the student body that "we are aspiring to acquire greatness, not sucking to acquire greatness." 

The struggle is real.

 

No sub, no problem

Here in the county many certified staff use all of their sick time and then some. The problem is that nobody likes calling out sick ahead of time, so the school is always scrambling to find a substitute at the last minute.

If we are especially fortunate, one of the bus drivers will stay on as a sub, but when lady luck is not on our side we push for more innovative methods.

Option 1: send the students to the gym so that 20+ kids can disrupt the gym class that already has 40ish students.

Option 2: send the students to the library so that the librarian can babysit 20+ kids with nothing to do.

On one such occasion when we resorted to option 1 (sending the kids to the gym), students used this opportunity to engage in "inappropriate activities" in the bathroom.

Such innovation, such preparation, such flexibility.

The struggle is real.

Enrichment?

The department chair decided that enrichment would be more effective if we allowed a few select students to run each classroom. These chosen elite would be the teachers delivering instruction and clearing up confusion in each classroom. Sounds awesome, but that's not how it worked out.

The students didn't respect their "peer teachers", so no "enrichment" took place. But no worries, we have a flawless plan in place. We will continue to run enrichment the same way for the rest of the year.

Here in the county we believe in continuing to beat the dead horse even when there are several signs telling us that there is no life remaining in the poor beast.

Well, I guess its easier to leave something broken instead of using precious resources to fix it.

The struggle is real.

CPR training...can someone help the nurse?

Sounds crazy, but this really happened. Our wonderful principal thought it would be in everyone's best interest to learn CPR and get certified. I also agree that learning CPR is pretty important especially when you work with children. So, we plunged into fall break with professional development ie. CPR training.

To speed up the process we broke off into groups of 4-5 people. My group finished demonstrating our mastery of CPR pretty early, so we sat back and watched the other groups in action. I noticed a middle aged woman seriously struggling to deliver the chest compressions and rescue breaths. I'm not the only one who noticed this because I saw other heads turn in see what was going on. Naturally, I was curious to find out who the poor woman was, so I asked my colleague sitting next to me. She leaned in close to my ear and whispered, "that's the nurse!"

I stared back at her with wide eyes. I couldn't believe it. My colleague noted my surprise and said, "girl, I'm dead serious, that's the nurse."I proceeded to shake my head in disbelief as my colleague then whispered, "if somebody passes out, you better say a prayer because the nurse can't help."

Apparently the CPR instructor noticed the struggle taking place, so she said, "can someone give this woman some assistance?" The look on her face was priceless when someone informed her that "this woman" was the school nurse for the school district.

Here in "the county" we have a long standing practice of hiring people who are under qualified and holding on to them even when there is evidence that the person is incapable of doing what the position requires.

The struggle is real.

seizures, strokes, what's the difference?

Say it ain't so. I wish it was a joke, but here in "the county" our esteemed psychologist, Dr. Z, just got through explaining that recurring absence seizures, which have gone undiagnosed, are akin to having mini strokes. Dr. Z, with his boundless beneficence, kindly explained to Billy's mother and grandmother that Billy is incapable of learning at the same level as his peers because of his recurring seizures. Let's clear up a few things first. 1. Billy has never seen a specialist ie. no neurologist 2. Billy has never had any neuroimaging studies 3. Billy suffers from absence seizures (drifting off/losing focus for a few seconds) not the dramatic tonic-clonic seizures which cause full body seizing 4. Billy has received seizure medication from the village general physician.

According to Dr. Z, since Billy "can't learn" he needs to be on the SpEd (Special Education) track (check out the post "SpEd is the new black"). True to form, Billy is now in SpEd and he now has an IEP (individualized education plan). Seizure problem solved...

Where do I come into this picture? I was on my planning period planning lessons and grading assignments when I got called to go to the "parent coordinator's" conference room. I'm thinking, "okay I must have a parent conference". Nope, the secretary tells me that my presence is required in an IEP meeting. At this point i'm extremely confused, so I ask what student this is for, and she tells me its for Billy. I'm thinking i'm in deep trouble for not following Billy's IEP even though I was never given an IEP for this boy, so I take his file and head down to the conference room. Dr. Z greets me warmly, as only Dr. Z can, and he tells me that my job is to sit there and listen. 

But I digress. So we arrive back at Dr. Z's analogy. If seizures are the same thing as strokes, then hunger pangs are the same thing as ulcers. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he tells a student that migraines are a symptom of permanent memory loss, or better yet, a fever means certain death.

                                                              seizures <-----> strokes 

                       (over excitability of our circuitry) <-----> (embolic or hemorrhagic)

I'm no neurologist nor am i a synaptic physiologist, but I happen to know a bit more than a thing or two about physiology and neurobiology. 

Well, when it comes to school psychologists I suppose the worst is better than none. 

The struggle is real

SpEd is the new black...

Say what? Not really, but SpEd (special education) is definitely in vogue in "The County". From developmentally delayed students to students who never learned to read, the school psychologist and his minions brand these students with an IEP (individualized education plan) and group them all into SpEd.

Who gets put in SpEd? The girl with orthopedic problems, the developmentally delayed girl, the epileptic boy who suffers from absence seizures, kids with anger/behavior issues, and hundreds of kids who are in high school but cant read or read at a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade reading level.

To make the task of educating "diverse learners" even more interesting, this God fearing state took hold of the gospel of "no child left behind" and went forth to make disciples with the doctrine of "inclusion". What is inclusion? It means that all of the gifted SpEd students, yes even the ones who cant read, take all of their classes with the "regular" students. Since the diversity of my classroom contains so much variety, I had to alter the complexion of my interventions. For example, with collaborative learning groups I make sure that a student who can actually read is the group reader, and a student who can listen, understand, and communicate effectively is the group presenter. Let's not forget about Billy or Suzie, that guy or gal who "struggles" with reading. His or her job is the group questioner. When Group A is stumped Billy can raise his hand for assistance from the teacher, and nobody needs to find out that Billy is in the 9th grade and reads at a 3rd grade level. Inclusion success? The jury is still out on this one.

To include or not to include, that is the question. If inclusion does not help SpEd students improve both socially and academically, then the doctrine of inclusion should be revisited. As it is, inclusion means more planning on the front end for teachers and ultimately more paperwork. This takes time, a precious commodity that teachers lack.

The struggle is real.

....and I'm my own grandpa

Not really, but I am my own TST (teacher support team). Awesome students, not so awesome students, average students, failing students, students who have failed this class one or two times before, and students who just don't care; I deal with them all, I plan lessons to accommodate all of them, and I plan interventions to reach all of  my "diverse learners".

In the great state of <insert name here>, much like other states, we classify students based on tiers.

Tier 1 = typical students
Tier 2 = students at risk of failing
Tier 3 = students who have failed 2 or more classes in the past

Once a student gets to Tier 3, the TST, comprised of much smarter people than myself, is supposed to step in and plan awesome interventions that the teachers can implement in the classroom. In "The County" I am officially my own TST. Even though I document interventions and students' responses to intervention, nothing ever comes of it. It is amazing how progressive the education system is in the nether regions of our beloved country.

At the end of the day, If you are failing a class where there are 3 tests, 5 in class art projects, and 20 daily grades/classwork assignments, then you deserve to fail. Aside from the sheer quantity of assignments given in the first 9 weeks, I have used collaborative learning groups, learning through song, educational videos, and tons of graphics.

There comes a time when the blame slides off the teachers back and creeps up on the student. The blame then leaps onto the student and grabs him or her around the neck and clings tightly. That time is now. If Billy and Suzie choose not to complete assignments, it is not Ms. Smith's job to convince them that it would be in their best interest to make an effort to complete their work. If Billy and Suzie are absent more times than they are present, it is not Ms. Smith's job to hunt them down to give them 3-4 weeks worth of make-up work. Even when Ms. Smith goes above and beyond the call of duty to put together missing work for Billy and Suzie and she then tells them that they need to complete this extra work by <insert date here> to pass the class, it is not Ms. Smith's job to force Billy and Suzie to complete said make-up work and turn it in before grades are due.

The struggle is real