WTF? The March Edition

Maybe I should make this a monthly thing since there is a plethora of subjects worthy of a genuine 'WTF?'. This month's edition is thanks to my students who thought it would be a good idea to flash gang signs in my class when there was a guest teacher covering for me while I was proctoring the proficiency tests. One of the kids wrote 'F*** Crabs' in one of my textbooks. 'Crab' is an insulting term used for the Crips. I found this out when one of my students from that class came by after school and pointed the tagging on the book out to me. I asked her point blank about the gang signs and she said that they were indeed flashing signs in class. WTF? Did they think that everyone else in the class was just going to STFU and not say anything? So I had to email the deans with all the important information to see what the next step is. If what I heard is true then both those kids will at minimum get suspended and possibly expelled from school. We have a serious gang problem at my school and any gang activity is a one way ticket to behavioral school.

The other piece of news is that my school is going to be facing a major staff change next fall. Fortunately our principal won't have to leave but it will suck to lose half the staff. I've already started filling out the application to return next year. I love that school and don't want to leave. I do know that some of my fellow teachers will not be back next year. I just hope they make the right choice. It should be interesting to see what happens.

Comedy Corner

My teacher is sooooooo dumb...

'how dumb is he?'

He's so dumb that I can sign into class and then split without him ever knowing I'm gone!

It looks like the joke's on you moron... and that goes for your two friends as well. I use the sign in sheet to keep track of who is there, but I also look around the classroom to see who is there and who isn't. And when I am handing out progress reports and I call your name because you signed in... Well you get the idea. I had to write up three more students today. Two of them were the butt of their own joke today and the third left class 20 minutes early. All three got dean's referrals and two of the I am going to try and remove from the class.

The one thing that really angers me is a lack of respect and thinking that I'm really that stupid is really, truly disrespectful. Should be interesting to see what happens next week. The dean's office didn't look to happy when I told them what happened. There are advantages to working with the dean's office after all.

RVD

I was bouncing around cyberspace recently and ran across these two videos. The videos pretty much speak for themselves and they've become known simply as RvD.



And here is the second one.



The second one took place about three years after the first one. You do see a 'clone' at the end of the first RVD. It was an inside joke about his love of making clones in videos. The website is here.
It includes FAQs and a video interview with the two combatants. It's pretty cool what these guys came up with. I guess the force was strong with these two.

Romeo and Juliet

The play stays the same but the students don't. I shouldn't be surprised that this year's students wouldn't react the same way that last year's did but I am.

Last year's kids were a bunch of romantics, apparently I have a more bloodthirsty pack of kids this year. Many of them didn't really get into the first two acts because there was no violence, but they're way into Act III where both Tybalt and Mercutio both end up in the morgue. Last year the kids were not super shocked by the dad's anger when Juliet didn't want to marry Paris, but this year they were really shocked by how angry and how abusive he was with her. I am, however, worried that they are not taking this test as seriously as the first one and that they'll bomb this one. This happened with the second Odyssey test last fall and I can already see it coming. I guess they didn't learn their lesson the last time around. My honors kids are just starting the play so it will be interesting to see what they think of Romeo and Juliet.

The mess in Wisconsin

I wasn't going to comment, I swear I wasn't, but I simply have to put in my 2¢ worth. I've looked at the bill and the protesters and I'm just tired of the whole thing.

But.

To the 'teachers' in Wisconsin who called in 'sick'...

How dare you. How dare you betray your students and violate the terms of your employment contract because you have to donate more money to your retirement and health care plans. How dare you decide that you are more important than the financial well being of your state. In case you didn't notice your state is short about 3 Billion dollars over the next two years. What would you rather have? A smaller paycheck or classes of 40 students plus? Do you really think no teachers will get laid off if you win this battle? How dare you forget that your paycheck comes from the taxpayers. I hope that your employers not only fire you but revoke your licenses to teach. You are a disgrace to your profession. And that goes for you 'doctors' who fraudulently wrote sick notes for those same 'teachers' I hope you also lose your license to practice medicine. Maybe you ought to retake your ethics classes one more time since you obviously didn't pay attention last time around.

And I'm sooooo sorry that you won't be able to negotiate your working conditions and that you might end up getting fired at any time. That's called reality in the private sector. Before I taught I spend about 20 years working from every sized company and I knew that I could lose my job at any time. Hell, one time I got fired because an employee transferred in from another state and they needed to find a work station for him, last hired first fired. And it's not like there won't be competition for your services with all the different school districts in your state. If you don't like how you're treated at one place then take your services elsewhere.

I'm out of pity for the lot of you. Suck it up or find another job, preferably one in the private sector, a cold dose of reality would be good for you.

Honors or Not?

One of my jobs as an Freshman English teacher is to make recommendations about which English and History class my students should take next year. Last year I was way to nice to students, including my honors students and sent kids to Honors English, Honors World History and AP World History who didn't deserve it.

This year I was very selective. Only about 12 kids have the option of AP History and of my 66 honors students, 11 didn't make the cut and will be taking regular English and History classes. Of my 76 regular students only 5 will get to move up to honors classes and 1 will do AP History.

Of course students and parents may challenge my decision and some will. But I am comfortable that I made the right choices. If you got either a C or a low B last semester you have no business in an honors class, especially if the same teacher teaches it next year.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is one of those required texts that 9th graders at my school must read. I was admittedly nervous about teaching it last year and was pleasantly surprised by how well it went. Once students were able to get past the language, they really enjoyed the story.

Probably the smartest move I made (and repeated) was to show video clips from both the 1968 and 1996 versions of the play. And just out of curiosity I always ask which version they like better, last year it was about 60/40 old version. It's one of the essays they can write about on the test (Acts I & II). This year I was shocked that the old version won by about 85%/15%. I thought that the older version might be more popular but I was not expecting it to be this big a difference.

Another cool thing that happened this year was when one of my students connected the crow in Act I to Romeo and Juliet dying. I'll be honest, I never made that connection. Not that I never talked about it, I mean I literally NEVER made the connection between the use of the crow and the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, and I've read and watched the play several times. The best part is that while this student is one of my favorites due to her wonderful work ethic and smile, English is not her strong point. I was so excited I gave the essay to her TOR (teacher of record) so she could see it as well. And one of my students who is reading about the 6th grade level only missed one question on the scantron half of the test.

These are the days that make teaching the greatest job in the world. The fact that only one student failed the test out of the three classes who took it doesn't hurt either.

The Power of Words

For some odd reason the area I work in has asked that the word adequate be used in performance evaluations. I bring this up because while the district may think that adequate might be just fine and dandy for evaluations, every time I saw it on my evaluation forms (three) I was left wondering what the hell I did wrong that lesson, especially when my AP (Assistant Principal) gushed about the lesson to me when it was over. After talking it over with my neighbor who felt the same way I did, I emailed my boss and asked him if adequate was good or bad. He reassured me that it was a good thing and given his druthers he happily pick another term to use.

And people wonder why Nevada is ranked #49 in the USA in education? Obviously someone does not understand the real connotation of the word adequate. It may mean 'fine and dandy' but in the real world it means 'barely good enough'. Well that's the polite version anyway. Either the people who made this change were never English teachers and are therefore ignorant of the stress they are creating, or that creating stress was the goal all along. Someone at some point should have mentioned that using the word adequate in a review normally bodes ill for the employee who is involved.

That would be your tax money at work people...

Black History Month

I have mixed feelings about these things. I really do, is it really necessary to have a month dedicated to Black History, or Hispanic Heritage? But, since my HS wanted to know what we were going to do for BHM, I decided to dust off an old lesson I had not taught since I was an apprentice at the Andre Agassi school.

Right now my honors kids are reading 'Letter From A Birmingham Jail', and I am glad I did it. Most of them didn't have a clue as to what real racism was, or why Dr. King was held in such high esteem. Happily I can report that now my honors kids understand both, especially because they also listened to Dr. Kings's 'Mountaintop' speech, which is the one he gave the night before he was assassinated.

My favorite part of the speech is when Dr. King is talking about getting stabbed in NYC by a crazy lady (is this Palin's fault too?) and relating how if he had sneezed, the blade lodged in his chest would have pierced his aorta and he would have died. This report made into the NY Times and a 9th grade student then wrote Dr. King a letter saying how happy she was that he didn't sneeze! (she also mentioned that she was white) This got his audience and my class laughing at her earnest innocence. I found it interesting that out of all the letters he had received after the attack (including ones from the President) that the one that he remembered most was the one from the girl. I guess we should not be surprised at this because he was, after all a man of God, and not after the fame and fortune that he received.

I am also doing some biographies this month as well for all my classes, including William Wilberforce, Dr. Condolelleza Rice and Bishop Tutu. It might make a welcome break from Romeo and Juliet for my regular classes.

Spring Semester

Well, the first semester is behind us and now we're on to semester 2. Honestly I like teaching more in the spring than I do for the winter for a few reasons.

1. Romeo and Juliet. While this will probably make eyes roll and groans abound, I do enjoy teaching Shakespeare. Now understand that while I admire Shakespeare and understand his importance in Western Literature, I don't worship at the altar of 'The Bard'. I've only read 4 of his plays and only a handful of his sonnets.

What I enjoy is watching inner city 9th graders not only understand R&J, but really get into a play that is more than 400 years old. I enjoy opening their eyes and ears to the power of the written word. I like teaching them about the symbolism contained in the play, and I hope that I get another moment like last year when Romeo proposed to Juliet and I had a student audibly go 'Oh!... ahhhhh' when she understood what had happened. I love it when I get a kid like last year who averaged about a 19% all year... except for Romeo and Juliet when he averaged an 81%. I like it when hardened kids get sucked into the romance and tragedy that is Romeo and Juliet. And no, there are no Shakespeare posters in my room, hopefully there never will be...

2. Poetry: What irritates me about HS poetry is that it's really PiNO. Poetry in name only. Sure they talk about rhyme schemes and meter, and even bore er teach kids about a few important poems and poets, but seriously? Is that the BEST they can do?

Needless to say I ignore the garbage in the textbooks and created my own month long introduction to poetry unit. Gone are the idiotic poems and half-assed explanations. Instead the kids get to learn about the poetic form and what makes a ballad a ballad. I show them what rhyme schemes are and why they matter. I teach them the difference between major forms of poetry. We listen to poems being recited over the speakers and then learn about poets and poems.

When they are done, they know what the difference between a ballad and a heroic couplet is. They know why pastorals are important and why Shakespeare and Marlowe used blank verse to write their plays in. They get the joy of reading fun poems like 'The Tale of Custard The Dragon', and see the emotions behind poems like 'Warming Her Pearls' and 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night'. They also learn about Haiku and Tanka poetry.

Finally they get to write some of their own poetry. They must write a haiku, a tanka, a ballad and a heroic couplet. If they want extra credit they can give any of the forms we study a try. I don't really do much with meter or the really technical part of poetry for a couple of reasons: I don't care and I don't want to bore them to death.

3. Extended teaching time! By this I mean no vacations. I like vacations but honestly November and December are wasted months because kids are always on vacation mode. They are either getting ready for a long weekend or just coming back from a long weekend. It's impossible to really teach because you can't build any momentum. I like having a long stretch where I can really just go for it with my teaching and not worry about long weekends and extended breaks.

4. Summer vacation! When you look at reasons 1-3, would it surprise to you find out that I'm pretty much wiped out when summer break starts?

Before I forget, I wanted to mention something funny that happened this week. My honors students are reading 'Letter From A Birmingham Jail' before they start on Romeo and Juliet. The teacher across the hall from me asked me for a copy of the letter so he could read it over the weekend. Mr. J., who is black came up to me on Monday and said this about Dr. King... 'Dr. King's got a little thug in him doesn't he?' I laughed about it in agreement. Mr. J. was impressed with the courage and backbone that Dr. King possessed and was surprised by his willingness to call other religious leaders on the carpet and properly chastise (well chew them out) them for their lack of support for the cause of civil rights.

I'll never look at Dr. King the same way again.

Pearl Harbor

Today is the 69th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and this history geek just could not resist a mini lesson on the attack. So yesterday I went online and found a cool 17 minute video on the attack from Discovery.com, and showed it to my class and then had them write about what they had learned. Not surprisingly, not many students knew that today was an important historical date, and even though it put me behind in my lessons, it's worth it. There are some events that everyone in the USA should know. The Declaration of Independence, The Civil War, The Apollo Missions, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are a few of the biggies. The best part was that most of my students payed serious attention and one even asked why they had interviewed a Japanese pilot.

There are times it's good to be a teacher.

Donors Choose

After getting shot down attempting to have my school buy novels for the classroom (because they were not on the approved list), I decided to find another way to get the books I want into my classroom without emptying my wallet (that would be a neat trick considering it's a cash free zone).

Enter Donors Choose, a website that allows people to donate to projects that teachers post, helping them acquire items like projectors, computers, trips and more. Some of the projects are very cool and some make me mad. I mean how bad is it when a math teacher is asking for a white board? Seriously? The school can't flipping spring for a white board? That's not even a luxury, that's a necessity. Wow... just wow.

I have spent the last few weeks setting up my project on Donors Choose and today I was informed that my project has gone live and that a company has already covered the first $300 of the project. So I am going to do something and I never thought I would do and ask for your help. If you could donate a couple of dollars to the project it would be greatly appreciated, not just by myself but by my students. And please look at the other projects and if you find one more to your liking, by all means, donate to them.

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving

It's going to be an odd Thanksgiving this year. Not odd in a bad way but odd all the same. You see normally we either visit family and friends for Thanksgiving or they come here. This year it's just the family. It's cool in a couple of ways.

1st of all, we don't have to have the house all picked up for guests. Secondly we get to teach the kids how to cook. Right now my wife is teaching the kids how to do cranberry sauce, and later my son and I will be deep frying a turkey in the back yard. This is in addition to baking pies and making fruit salad (yummy yummy) and real whipped cream. And since we are not traveling there is no traffic to fight or TSA agents to spend personal time with.

Finally I'm thankful for my family, my health and my job. I am one of the lucky ones here in Vegas who has a job and still has a house to call home.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and remember WHY we celebrate it in the first place...

Used Books

For an English teacher they are a God send. They allow me your humble blogger to amass a fairly large collection of books for my classroom without having to file bankruptcy. While I love new books and have bought them from time to time or gotten them as presents, I prefer to get as much for the money as I can. Luckily for me there are two stores here in Vegas that are close by and both of them have a YA (young adult section) to make it easier to find books my students might be interested in.

The local libraries also have used books but so far their selection has not been great. I also use the internet to get used books, which is good and bad. It's good because you have a plethora of choices, but bad because of the shipping. Now I don't blame the vendors, they need to make money and when the book is only $1.00, I understand that the profit is in the shipping. And I can still get double the books vs. getting them new at the bookstore.

I know that there are several good e-readers such as the Kindle and the Nook from Barnes and Noble, but I can't read large blocks of text on a screen and it's just. not. the. same. There is something intimate about holding a book in your hands and physically turning the pages that simply cannot be duplicated by an e-reader. I'm not against them, they're just not for me.

Now my only other problem is that I'm running out of room for my class library. I did find another bookshelf but I'm not sure where to put it. It's a good problem to have. I also need to start getting some graphic novels for my classroom as well as some manga.

Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving.

The Walking Dead

It's not often that I will watch a series on TV, especially a miniseries, but I am making an exception for 'The Walking Dead.' From the time I saw the first commercial I was excited as all get out about the series. I have watched the first two episodes (thank goodness they replay it on Friday nights) and can't wait for the next one.

Now don't be fooled, this show is for adults only. It has graphic violence and adult language, not to mention it's very creepy. It's also very well written and the zombies look very very real. If you like creepy shows give this one a try.

What you may not know about this Zombie Apocalypse miniseries is that it's based on a comic book. Yep, a comic book. And it's not the first time comic books have been used for TV Shows and movies. I'd get the comic book compendiums if they weren't so expensive, like say $50.00 each.

One last thought, I had a student tell me they loved the book I picked out for her. The funny thing is I don't have a clue as to what book I picked out for her. But hey as long as she liked it, it's all good. Speaking of books, I got 12 of the 16 books I ordered online. Yea, I'm a geek like that...

Revenge

Revenge is the theme of 'The Cask of Amontillado', one of Poe's more famous short stories. In this story the narrator tells about the revenge he takes on the poor soul who dared to insult him. I like this story because it's fun to show how Montressor gets his revenge and teach them about theme at the same time. The students like it because it's dark and creepy and allows them to safely fantasize about really getting even with someone who has done them wrong.

Thematic webs come in handy here because it allows the student to write down all the things that Montressor does to get even with the ironically named Fortunado (Italian for fortunate). For example he uses his knowledge of wine to bait him to coming to his palazzo to examine a pipe (110 gallons) of Amontillado. He then pretends to be concerned about his cold and 'tries' to talk his drunk (he keeps him drunk as well) victim out of venturing under his empty (no witnesses) palazzo to the catacombs where the wine is. I could go on but go read it for yourself. It's pretty cool in a creepy way.

That is the first of the three stories my students will be reading. The other two are 'The Most Dangerous Game' and 'The Necklace'. In addition, my honors students are finishing up 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and I got my kids to the library for the 2nd quarter book project.

Testing

Testing is a necessary evil in teaching. Now the trend to see if teachers can teach is to do standardized tests and based on the performance of the students over several years you get a good idea of which teachers can teach. Or can you? Does that really tell you which teachers can teach or which teachers can teach to the test? What about writing? Does the ability to write to some random prompt mean that the teacher is able to effectively teach writing? Or can they just teach students how to write to a prompt?

I'm asking these questions because I seriously don't have an answer. I totally get the idea that teachers need to be able to teach in a measurable way, and that it's not like a job in the private sector where if you're in sales, all you boss needs to do is to look at the numbers and they can tell if you're doing your job or if you're a mechanic and it's easy to tell by the quality of your work if you know what you're doing.

Teaching isn't like that. You can use standardized tests but then the weakness is that teachers will stop teaching properly and simply teach to the test. And honestly if they start using testing data to see if I'm a good teacher or not the pressure will be huge to do just that. That will be cool for the teachers but not the kids because real life is more than a scan-tron and a proficiency prompt.

There are just some issues that don't have good answers...

Moving On

No I don't mean Moveon.org... Different thing altogether.

I meant moving on from bad news. As you know a fellow teacher took his own life on our campus Monday afternoon. Yesterday was hard as we pretended to do our staff development day. Today the students returned and things began to return to some sense of normal. To be honest we teachers needed this more than the students.

The students took this better than the teachers, at least in my room. I only had to send one student to the library for the grief counselors and I did talk to them about trying to avoid the rumors and reminded them that he had a family and to consider them before they opened their yaps. The other good part is that they were taking the interim assessments today and tomorrow so they didn't have time to dwell about what happened.

Monday they're in the library for their next book project.

Finally I need to address the election for a bit. The GOP needs to understand that they have a lease on the House of Representatives and not the keys. If they don't try to accomplish what they want to do then they're out on their butts. And locally we need to keep in mind that Carson City is not the reason the district has money problems. They didn't decide that the classroom only deserves 25% of every dollar that they send to Las Vegas. That is a different group of people. If you're angry fine, but direct your anger in the right direction.

Suicide

Update: They released the name and I knew him. I often talked to him during lunch and when I saw him on campus. We were both hired about the same time and shared many of the same students both last year and this year. He was a committed teacher who wanted the best for his students. The story is here if you want to read the whole thing.

Today was a tragic day at my school. Just before 3pm, a fellow teacher of mine took his life on campus. I don't yet know who it is and in a way it doesn't really matter. A family is now without a father, son, husband and brother. Students are now without a teacher and the staff is without a teammate.

To those of you making cracks online at the local news sites, you can go F*** yourself. The school is a Title 1 school, but the majority of my students bust their asses to get an education and deserve better than the juvenile cracks you so *bravely* posted online. Most of the problems we have come from off campus, and when we find kids who bring pot, guns, gang-banging on campus, we expel them.

The staff at my school is a pretty tight knit group. While we may not know every single teacher (there are about 120 spread across 4 or 5 buildings) we all put our kids first and we all are willing to help each other out in a pinch. We share resources and ideas. There is very little BS as far as politics go. It exists of course but kept to a minimum. Tomorrow's staff development day is going to be odd indeed to say the least. So when you read about the story and see the stupid comments remember that it was a person who died and he will be missed by his family, fellow staff and by his students.

This stuff really truly sucks.

The Yellow Wallpaper

Rarely do I inflict my favorite stories and poems on my students. I was not a big fan of that when I was a student and I do my best to give them literature they are actually interested in or that are wonderful illustrations of themes, symbols etc.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is an exception. It is and remains my favorite short story of all time. I read it in one of my college English classes and was hooked. It's not the easiest story to read, I had to read it five times to understand what happened and a few more to really get what the author was talking about. Because it's a difficult story I only have my honors students read it and I offer extra credit to any regular student who reads it on their own.

At first my students thought is was 'retarded and lame' but after they got about a page in, they really began to enjoy it. Interestingly they have not freaked out about it like last year's class where kids were getting dizzy and ill from the descriptions.

Another interesting thing about this story are all the things people have decided that Gilman was talking about, social injustice, equal rights for women, that sort of thing. And while I believe that in her subconscious mind she may have been addressing those things in reality she had a different purpose in mind.

Here is why she wrote it in the first place.

Many and many a reader has asked me that. When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.

Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and -- begging my pardon -- had I been there?

Now the story of the story is this:

For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia -- and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest-cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in 1887.

I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.

Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again -- work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite -- ultimately recovering some measure of power.

Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.

The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate -- so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered.

But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading "The Yellow Wallpaper."

It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.

SOURCE: The Forerunner, October 1913.

My students will read this article once they are done with the story and answer a few questions about it. I always find it interesting how readers and viewers react to art weather it be literature, poetry, paintings or music. We tend to put into it our own life experiences and that is what makes it fun.