Where To Go From Here

This school year started on a more optimistic note despite the layoffs and merger. I'd have only 11th graders, I'd be teaching American Lit--which I've taught before--and I'd have AP Lit. On top of that, there'd be no pigeons in my room pooping down the wall, and I'd have my own classroom where I could actually decorate. Even more, some of the kids I'd stayed for would be my students again. In some ways, I started the school year from a position of power because I decided to stay, and I essentially created my own reason: my AP kids and my AP class.

In spite of all of this, I'm back at square one again. My American Lit classes, while no longer 37 students each, present the same problem as last term. The students are beyond lacking in skills and totally unmotivated. Ironically, this problem is invading my AP class. What started as a group of 32 has whittled down to 11. In theory, these 11 are the most motivated, talented and capable students, but on a given day, only three or four show they are ready to accept the challenge of this course. With the AP exam less than two months away, that just doesn't work.

While unmotivated students are just part of the high school teacher's landscape, this problem is more complex. The apathy is so pervasive. It's not just the three knuckleheads in the corner--it's 75-80% of my students. Let me put it this way. My American Lit kids are working on an essay about Death of a Salesman. I chunk every part of the essay for them, and each day comes with a mini-lesson, a handout, a teacher exemplar and a conference. I wish a teacher in high school had done all I do for them when it comes to writing. We started this process a week ago this past Friday; their essay is due this Monday. That means they had over a week to work on this, and an entire week of class to work on their essay. This past Friday, most of them were still working on their intro. Really?

Each day I find myself questioning my own actions. Do I really want to stay up until 11pm working on this lesson when I already know what results it will yield? Is this really worth cutting into my time at home with my family? Should I really take 15 minutes to grade this essay and provide meaningful feedback when I know this kid spent thirty minutes writing this?

These thoughts are on the surface, but bubbling underneath are the larger issues that remain with me--the layoffs, the merger, my car and a more recent situation. I've debated whether or not I should write about this, but I've come to the conclusion other teachers have faced this, and I want them to know they are not alone.

A few weeks ago, a student and I were at a standstill over her cell phone. This should not be as I have very clear guidelines about the use of electronics in my class, and I had this student last year. She and I had a fine rapport. In fact, we had a great rapport. Something changed this year, and there was constant attitude and defiance over this phone for a period of about two weeks, so I conferenced with the parent. My expectations and consequences were very clear, but the following day in class her behavior was the same. On this day, I told her she was not leaving class without handing over the phone. She replied with several rude comments, and when I could not reach my admin, I released all students but her. As this was the last class of the day, I planned on keeping her a few minutes until one of my admin could come and take the phone. However, that's not what happened.

What started as an attempt to confiscate a phone turned into something very ugly. This student tried to move past me and go for the door, and I was just so sick of all of it. I was so tired of doing battle with her attitude and defiance. I was so over the phone. This student was not above the rules, and I wasn't going to let her move past me, walk out the door with her phone and assume she was above the rules. I grabbed for her phone which was in her shirt pocket, and she immediately jumped back and screamed, accusing me of touching her. She then proceed to get out her phone and call her mother, telling her mother I touched her. I was stunned and asked her if she was out of her mind. I can't remember the last time I was this angry. I was shaking, my face and ears were hot, and I could feel tears rising to the surface. I called for my admin again, and thankfully one of them responded. He came to my room immediately and took over for me. He confiscated her phone, escorted her out of my room, and I fell into my chair at my desk.

This is every teacher's worst nightmare, and I somehow thought this could never happen to me. How naive. I ran through the sequence of events again, and of course I realized at that moment what I did wrong. I should have never grabbed for her phone, and I should have never left myself alone with a student. While those were my errors, why on earth would she accuse me of something so heinous? Cuss me out, tell me you hate me--but this? My mind went to the worse case scenario, which is not difficult to imagine with all the recent scandals in the media. I sat at my desk shocked, and that shock moved quickly to devastation. I started sobbing. Then, my principal called me. I hadn't left a voicemail and she wanted to know if everything was okay. I told her no, then sobbed through the whole story. Luckily my admin supported me. The student was suspended and permanently removed from my class. She apparently has a track record for lying, and I guess the jig is up because she has yet to return to school.

Driving home that evening I was so quiet. Normally my mind is racing, thinking about this or that, but that evening I was still. No radio. No phone. Just me and my feelings, and boy did I feel. Did this student know all the ramifications that come with an accusation like that? No, but did she know enough? Yes. This felt like that day with my car. Both were so personal, but the difference with this situation is that the damage was on the inside, and I certainly wasn't going to wait around for eight months for this to be made right.

That day something snapped inside me. While I was--and still am--devastated that a student I've worked with for two school years would turn on my like this, I'm just so done. I'm tired of being a pawn in someone else's game. I refuse to be manipulated anymore by budgets, by admin, by students, by parents. Though all work environments have their politics, the emotional demands of this profession and my current work environment have shaded the way I see the world, and not for the better. I'm guarded, I'm quiet, I'm bitter, I'm untrusting, I'm pessimistic, I'm emotionally numb. This is not who I am at the core, and to save myself, I need to get out, but the question is, where do I go from here? If I'm not in the classroom, where am I?

Passing the Baton

Hard to believe an entire month went by without a post. January was a whirlwind that I can barely recall. After coming back from winter break, I had just two and a half weeks to prepare the kids for finals. After exams, the new term began the following week. Luckily for me the preparation was minimal since I was teaching the same courses. AP continues on and American Literature starts over. However, that means I get all the kids who failed my course, which is a lot. 58% to be exact. That number is according to one of my principals, but I think it may be higher. I'm not thrilled about getting all the kids who just failed my class, but I do feel like this could be a sort of second chance. I've blogged multiple times about how this class was like this wall--no way through to them no matter what I did. Well, at least that's how I perceived them, but try telling that to my principal.

In fact, I had a meeting with her about a week ago regarding that exact topic. It was sort of like a more mellow version of the meeting from hell. She asked me if I was aware of my fail rate and if it alarmed me and if I have a plan for fixing it. I was on the defense, and in truth I had every right to be. Part of me feels as if my job is on the line because of the number of students who have failed my class. She says many parents have called complaining about their child's grade and she has encouraged them to come in and speak to me. I tried to maintain my composure, because inside I was thinking, "And what in the hell am I supposed to do? The term ended two weeks ago. This is so after the fact! Where was the concern a month ago?" Don't get me wrong. A parent is a teacher's--and a child's--best ally, but really, how are you going to occupy my time before and after school with all these meetings about something that is done and over with? Anyway, it was a more mellow meeting because there was no yelling and because it was 7:30 in the morning, but inside I was steaming. I have now told her twice what I see as the reason the kids aren't passing, and that I don't know how to fix it so I need support from her, and both times I've walked away with a list of things to do. Support comes in the form of meetings where I'm given more work. I will say, though, that I had two parent meetings with one of my principals present in each meeting. In the one meeting my principal from last year attended, she told the student and his parents that he needs to step up his game and that as a junior who is lacking many of the basics, he needs to be in tutoring if he expects to pass. That is essentially what I told my other principal, who in her meeting conveyed that instead I need to step up my game. At least I have one administrator on my side.

Moments like these make me question, am I crazy? Are my expectations really that high? Who is right--me or them? Hillary, who is now my TA one period a day, reaffirms that I am not crazy. She recently released some pent up frustration over grading some timed writings from my American Lit classes, and as I listened to her, I almost thought I was listening to a recording of myself: "These kids can't write! How have they been passed on to 11th grade? This is like middle school writing! Where are the parents?" In fact, she is sometimes harsher than I. What I love about her honesty is that she can walk up to the kids and say things I cannot. After grading some homework, she called a student over and asked him why his homework looked the way it did: "Did you do this like five minutes before class started? What's wrong with you that you can't spend thirty minutes at home doing this the right way? What grade are you in? Do you want to graduate on time? What are you so busy doing that you can't pass this class?"

In her most recent tirade of honesty, she and another AP student of mine--Tamara--decided they wanted to talk to one of my classes about their writing. After a round of grading timed writings, Hillary shared with Tamara the extent of the students' poor writing skills. They came up with a plan: type up some essays so the entire class can see the poor grammar and mechanics, read them aloud so the students can hear the poor grammar and mechanics, show exemplar essays they (Hillary and Tamara) have written so the students can see and hear what their writing should look like, and finally, implore the kids to take ownership over their own learning and writing. Hillary and Tamara did this all of their own accord, and while part of me was just so amazed by their initiative and concern, another part of me wanted to break down and cry. Really?! I get more support from my 11th grade AP students than I do from one of my principals?!

The following day, I felt like a proud parent watching the two of them talk to my American Lit kids. Did they totally get through to them? No, but they said some things that needed to be said. Some of the kids giggled about the mistakes in the grammar and mechanics, and Tamara and Hillary shut them down immediately. They told them it's not funny--that they will be judged by their ability to communicate, and right now in their essays, they all look and sound dumb. They need to get their shit together or they won't graduate. Their apathy is bringing down the junior class, and they (Hillary and Tamara) work so hard and don't appreciate their dead weight. While some educators may chide me for letting Tamara and Hillary speak so freely, I know I made the right decision. Someone had to put it out there and call it by its name. We educators tip-toe around the issues, afraid of hurting a child's concept of self. We would rather our kids feel good, move on to the next grade, even graduate, than read or write. At the end of the day, it's true, and it took two 17 year-olds to really get me to see that's what's going on. While I think it's sad that they felt they had to give this speech since they knew no one else would, I'm so incredibly proud of them. It takes a lot of guts to get in front of one's peers and say this is not good enough . . . and I guess I have to take their example and do the same.

The Stranger in the Photo

Have you ever written an essay with your students?  When I have the time, I try. This time I wanted to do this assignment, which was modeled after Donald Murray's "The Stranger in the Photo is Me," and I'm so glad I did. While the students taught me so much about them, I was able to learn so much about myself.

Here is my essay:

I have many childhood photos I can recall. 

One where I am in red overalls with a Raggedy Ann, holding a pie fresh from the oven, on the front flap. My golden brown hair frames my chubby cheeks. I’m wearing blue canvass shoes that have a Snoopy and a Woodstock on the side, but one shoe is obscured because I have my leg tucked under me. I am not yet four, and in my big brown eyes, I have all the brightness and delight of a child that age.

In another, my long hair hangs over my tan shoulders as I lean down above my puppy dog cake, ready to blow out the seven candles. I’m with my mother and grandmother in an Amtrak train that’s Chicago-bound. My Snoopy doll, which I called Snoopy Snoopy Smup Smup, is sitting in the seat next to me. A sense of delight and wonder as I embark on my biggest journey yet and another year of life fill my eyes.

In these photos I’m a gregarious, fearless child. I’m gregarious because I know no stranger. I’m fearless because I don’t yet know the sharp edges of this world. In these photos I’m the same child who, at five years old, walks onto a stage in a dark theater and sings “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” to a row of balding, cigar-smoking men who are casting for Damn Yankees. The spotlight and the whispers of these now faceless men do not intimidate me. I sing with the confidence of a child who knows no shame.

But one picture in particular haunts me. In this photo I’m about four years old and I am neither happy nor sad. Kermit the Frog, who hangs around my neck, is smiling, but I am staring at the camera as if I’m in mid-sentence. I have on my pajamas with the little elephants and lions—pajamas I remember well. They are pink and footed, and they are the ones I was wearing when, as I unzipped them, discovered the horrors of chicken pox.  

In this photo I am striking a pose, but not like that kind of pose. It’s someone else’s pose. I can tell because my little magnetic number and alphabet board is faced toward the man taking the picture, and not me.

In this photo I see a sense of sadness that I could not have known then, but as my older self—the self who has seen what’s on the other side—I see an eerie foreboding. At times I think that my child self is standing on a precipice and staring down into the rabbit hole of my adult life. At times I think that my child self—trapped in this forever mid-sentence—is saying, “Stay right here!”  

But as a child I wanted to do everything myself. I wanted reassurance, but I wanted independence more, like the moment I first tried out my lifejacket. At five years old I was ready to swim in the big lake, but I had my mother hold on to my lifejacket so I was sure it worked, and then I was off. Just as I rushed into big girl swimming, I rushed to my adulthood, but as I did so, I was inadvertently rushing into moments that shattered the person I could have been. Along the way, I collided into the men who stole my innocence, my mother abandoning me, my grandmother locking me out of the house, my hospital stays. In each moment, that gregariousness, that fearlessness, that independence died.

Life can chisel away at a person’s soul, and in my rushing, I never knew that. I hadn’t watched my great-grandfather die, hadn’t watched my grandmother age, hadn’t watched my baby brother find a juvenile record, hadn’t felt the punch of unemployment.

Just as I was posed in this picture, I was posed throughout my childhood, mostly as the victim. As I grew up, I tried different poses myself, and never ones that benefitted me: the depressed one, the silent one, the angry one, the defensive one, the shamed one, the bitter one. 

As I look back at those moments that killed what I could have been, those moments—and many other wonderful ones—are what gave rise to what I am today. My arms, which were the first to hold both my little brothers; my hands, which held my wife’s as we spoke our vows; my eyes, which have stored in them all the stunning mountains and canyons I’ve seen; my mind, which can give poetic language to what I think and feel; my feet, which allow me to stand before my students each and every day. 

The little girl in the picture doesn’t know any of that. She just wants to cling on to her innocence, and she wants me to stay with her forever, but I can’t. I have to grow up and become what life intended me to be: a wife, a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister, an aunt, a teacher, a friend, and ultimately, a survivor. 

Vindication

While I've been a slacker in terms of posting over the last two weeks, what you are looking at above is one of the reasons I've been missing in action. My 9th graders have been the victim of a persuasive unit geared towards the oh-so-relevant topic of cuts in our state's education budget. I tortured them with articles from newspapers, and I even forced them to learn about their state senator. Then I had the gall to assign them one final writing assignment: writing their state senator, persuading him not to cut our education budget. Oh, did I mention they actually had to bring in a business-sized envelope and a stamp? 


Okay, not all of my 9th graders felt hostage to this situation. Some of them actually found this empowering, or, at the very least, somewhat interesting, but a handful literally became hostile at the mention of bringing a stamp. Yes, a stamp. Writing the letter didn't set them off, nor the business-sized envelope, but the stamp did. When I turned the outrage back on them, and asked them how would these letters get mailed without a stamp, they proposed I get the stamps. Me?! I literally screamed back, "I'm not your mother! Get it yourself! You will be paying bills in four years, and you will need a stamp. Figure it out yourself!"

I don't know if it's because next week is the end of the term and they are just as spent as I am, and just as done with me as I am with them, but there were some pretty heated moments in the past two weeks. Moments where I stopped teaching and sat at my desk to sip coffee and grade papers, moments where I ran out of referral slips because I sent enough students to the office, and moments where I lost my cool and screamed, "If you don't give a shit about this, than neither do I!" During these moments, I don't recognize myself as a teacher, and I feel like some alien has invaded my body. I feel like someone else is running the show, not me--the real me.

But, when the kids turned in their letters, they had their stamps and envelopes. I had a few students read their letters out loud, and I was moved in a way that I've not felt in the classroom in quite awhile. I'd met with all of them while they worked on their letters, and I knew what they were writing about, but to hear their own voices behind their profound words was poignant. In that moment, I knew that I, or this assignment, had broken through to several of them, and even if it didn't, they at least had a letter, an envelope, and a stamp. Driving home last night, I was exhausted, yet there's this other feeling peering beyond. Something like vindication.

I teach in an environment where I feel crazy all day until I talk to someone--a colleague or a loved one--and know that I'm not. The thinking (of some of the kids and some of the people running the place) is so contrary to what I know and believe. I'm unable to articulate it yet, but those letters, those stamps and those envelopes were like a winning point. Finally, a winning point.

What If It Was Up To The Students?

I am grading my first stack of essays for the school year on this long weekend, and I can't decide what is worse--stabbing myself in the eye or reading these papers?

In fact, I don't want to grade the other stack sitting on top of my printer. Instead, I want to run far, far away and pretend this never happened. Ever.

Why such a vile reaction you ask? Try swallowing this: a class mean of 52%. That's right. Just plain ugly. 

Like every good teacher, I went back in time and considered everything I had taught up until the day they turned in their essays. I'll admit, there were things I could have done differently. In the future, I want to offer them more time in class to work on their writing, and I'd like to utilize more student-created examples (sample paragraphs written by students). I think I need to have more conferences as well so I can talk to them about what they think about their own writing.

However, as a fourth year teacher, I've never experienced such low essay scores. Either I'm a worse teacher this year, or this group is really far behind in their writing skills. And their homework-completion skills. And their self-advocacy skills. 

As teachers, we are taught that when we encounter a failing class average like this, we did something wrong, and when we do, we have to go back and re-teach those standards and skills. However, our school's pacing does not allow for that, so I'm stuck in this eternal conundrum of needing to pause but being forced to move on.

But what if it was up to the students to go back and fix their errors? 

A colleague of mine has a poster in her room with a list of all the things school does not teach students, like life is not fair and in the real world, no one cares about your feelings. It makes me laugh each time I see it, because it's so true, yet we continually do our kids a disservice because we're so damned worried about their self-esteem. In the real world, what does a person do when he/she does not understand something? Wait for the college professor in a lecture hall of 100 students to pull her aside and say, "Nancy, you look confused. Should I explain this concept in a different way?" Or better yet, does the boss walk up to Ed, stating, "Your work is below average, so I'm going to sit here and walk you through it." If that's the way the real world works, I must be missing out.

Here's my course of action: make the students fix it. If they received a C or higher, they can choose if they want to revise their essays; however, if they received a 69% or below, they must make an appointment with me during office hours to workshop their papers, then they will have a week to revise their work.

In the real world, it's not always about getting it right the first time (though that is encouraged), but about what one does upon encountering obstacles or, even worse, failure.