Mosying and back-piecing

The kids took to today's lesson pretty well, and I think it worked just fine. Lots of good discussion in the groups, several little skills honed, even a last-minute mini-lesson on Cornell Notes I threw in there. However, the timing was off. It's an interesting teaching exercise to teach within in isolated lessons, unable to say to myself, "Oh, we can finish that tomorrow." As a teacher, my larger strength is my unit plans rather than the individual lesson plans. Teaching a fairly isolated 60-minute lesson to kids I may or may not be teaching for the school year is a useful exercise for me, because it makes me go at a rather rapid pace, something I'm not exactly known for in the classroom. I'm just rarely in a rush to do anything, whether it's teaching or in life, and tend to focus heavily on whether the kids are getting it rather than whether I'm getting through what I need to get through. That's not a bad thing - it's better to focus on the kids getting it than moving on just because I'm trying to cover "content" - but we all need balance, and this teaching exercise of isolated lessons (and no homework) offers that.

*****

Teachers don't get our class lists until August 19th. In addition, while a few of my colleagues have received their schedules in the mail, I have not. Every day, I anxiously open the mailbox hoping that my schedule is in there. It hasn't been, yet.

However, the students have started receiving theirs. So over the last few days, a steady stream of kids have approached me and told me they have me as their teacher. I don't know them that well, but I know them a bit, so every time it happens it gets me a little excited. It also offers a kind of interesting back-piecing of my schedule together. For example, I know I teach 1st and 2nd period, and 10th period, and 6/7th period. That leaves 8/9th period, which I think will probably be my class of IB Juniors, and 3rd, 4th, and 5th periods, which are split periods and will probably be my planning time. That's slightly different from last year, which is a good thing, because I like a little variety; I'm teaching the same classes as last yer so I need to find it whatever way I can.

I admit I'm getting pretty excited about the start of the school year. The wax on the second floor should be dry by tomorrow, and I hope to start getting up there and setting up my classroom!

The lesson that will change all their lives forever... Or... At least it's finally done. Let's see how it goes.

I have sixty minutes to spend with them. They got to choose between any one of four books - Dandicat's Breath, Eyes, Memory, Marcus Zusak's The Book Theif, Daj Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, and Allan Stratton's Chanda's Secrets. My job was to create a lesson that got all the kids involved, that introduced and reinforced the concept of the Areas of Interaction in the Middle Years Program, and "covered" the summer reading.

I've been racking my brain for the last week or so about how to do this. Finally, I have come up with something. I have to do this lesson nine times next week, so hopefully it'll be perfect by time 4 or so.

8 minutes: Introduction to Areas of Interaction and Areas of Interaction in the English Classroom

5 minutes: Introduction to the genre of Coming of Age / Students take notes

2 minutes: put students into groups based on what book they chose

30 minutes: time to complete group activities. I have created one for each Area of Interaction that can be applied to all of the books.

10 minutes: present 60-second book "commercials," which was one of the tasks in the group activity

We'll see how it goes. I'm excited, at least.

How it feels to be colored me

Today was our 'How It Feels to Be Colored Me' bag day, where we read the Zora Neale Hurston essay the previous day, focusing at her conclusion, in which she writes about seeing herself as a "brown bag of miscellany." The next day - today - we all brought in our own bag of miscellany and presented to the class.

Most kids remembered. Some put some thought into it. Some clearly did it just before class, as the girl with the McDonald's bag, in which she had her I-Pod (to represent her love of music), her pencil (to represent her love of writing), and her lip gloss (to represent her girly-girlishness). But others were very moving and revealing.

The one I remember most didn't bring a bag, though. He forgot. But as we came to this young man, this quiet kid with glasses who has come late every day this week, sitting in the corner, he stomped his feet, saying that it represented him being in school, and that's important, because of the pressure he feels to be the first male in his extended family to graduate high school. And that was cool, and gutsy, and made me pretty glad I'd done this slightly cheesy activity.

Shorts

I taught in shorts today. Yes, that's how hot it was in the school. I'd never wear shorts during the regular school year, but, damn, was I ever glad I did today.

The air temperature hit at least 91 today, with humidity, but I'm pretty sure it was at least 10 degrees hotter in my classroom.

*****

Today I taught that same lesson I started on Monday times #5, #6, and #7. Tomorrow, it's #8 and #9. That should be about the time it gets really good.

*****

It's funny, but my timing gets way off sometimes, probably because I'm finding the need to do things in radically different orders nearly every class period, just to make things fresh. I've also become notorious as the teacher who keeps the kids after the top of the hour, leaving a crowd of kids outside my room waiting for me to stop talking. You do it once, and it happens nearly every class period because it's a cycle that repeats itself.

*****

I met the most interesting kid so far in Summer Bridge today. I wish I could tell you all his first name, because that was pretty interesting in and of itself. But, otherwise, he walked into my room, late, wearing sunglasses. As I am prone to do, I went over and whispered for him to take off his sunglasses and walked away without looking at him, so he didn't feel the need to challenge me on it and could take them off without saving face. Which he did, but he also apologized, rather profusely, and ended up jabbering through much of the first ten minutes of my class. At first, with the profuse apology and constant jabbering, I got the feeling he was some sort of insincere kid, but, after a few minutes, it all clicked, that he was really genuine, that he really wanted to do well. He couldn't shut up at all, but somehow ingratiated himself into my good liking by the time 10:11 rolled around. Seemed a good reader, had some really interesting things to say about the Edwidge Dandicat novel he read over the summer, told me he has to get up at 5:30am to catch the 6:15am bus to get to school every day on time. He's a bundle of energy and will probably take up half my energy every day in his class periods, but I think I'd still be happy to have him on my class list when I get them in a couple of weeks.

One of my favorite parts of that group was this young man playing off a white girl who also read the Dandicat novel. They don't know it yet, but they're both bright active readers who are my favorite kinds of kids. Both wanted to be heard a lot today, both raised their hands for every question, yet their other responses couldn't be more different. I love that sort of variety. Sign them both up for my class in the fall.

Also loved to see the little brothers of several kids I've taught before. Made me feel both old and good at the same time, emotions which, when combined together, make me feel ready for my 31st birthday, which is approaching in one week.

Spiels and Hope

During Summer Bridge, I am teaching the same lesson nine times over the course of the week. In past years, I've been terribly bored with this schedule; it just gets pretty tedious to say the same things over and over and over again to different groups of incoming 9th graders.

While I still might get bored this year, I find myself a little more accepting of the schedule so far. First of all, I'm really in need of a vacation and some down time after the month of intense Shakespeare study, so not having to plan a new lesson every night gives me some time for myself and my own endeavors (including cleaning my office, which is stacks and stacks of junk after the month of being too busy to do anything about it, plus finishing up syllabi and course maps). Secondly, at least for the first few times through the lesson, I'm intrigued by how it takes shape.

See, I'm basically giving a lesson on A Hope in the Unseen. But I start out with a round around the room, where I hear from the students their name, their middles school, and their favorite book they read in middle school. Sometimes I'll ask them other things, like if they've had relatives who went to the schoool or whether they've done their summer reading. Then, we take a "practice quiz" ovfer the book, something I tell them is a way to figure out if they're ready for August 25 (the first day of schol). It's 15 questions, multiple choice, and we score it together; I never see their scores and tell them to take it for what it's worth.

Then, invariably, I go on little spiels about certain topics:
Spiel #1: "Dreambusters" - in A Hope in the Unseen, Cedric talks about dreambusters, the people who say "You can't" or "You won't," and how he has to ignore them and do his own thing. I tell the students that everyone has their own version fo this, and it's important that we all find the strategies to resist, whether those "dreambuster" come in the form of hallway hangers or forces in our neighborhoods.

Spiel #2: Not taking the easy route - I tell the sutdents that it's easy to float by through high school, to get a grade of a 68 or a 71 average, and do fine by those standards, to "pass" and that's it. You'll get yoru diploma, I say, but not much else. I tell them to work hard, to accept nothing less than an 80 in any class, and take control of their education by ensuring this.

It seems like in every section, I come to these spiels in different ways - they'll be a response to a student's answer to a question, or in my closing remarks - and I'll vary the examples and the way I tell the stories. But, otherwise, they'll be pretty similar. And, even though they weren't part of my rudimentary plan for the lesson, they seem to be doing well with it. Most of them come up with the question, "Why would we have chosen this book for you as summer reading?". What I don't want to hear is that "Oh, we're poor, and we're black, and you all want us to be like Cedric." No. Not true. Cedric was by no means a perfect student; he had no balance in his life, could not adjust well socially, and often was haughty and unaccepting of others. But, we all can take things from Cedric's story and apply them to our own lives, whether it's the refusal to give up, the hard work, the faith, the goal-setting. And, for our students, I hope they see the transition from middle school to high school could have some similarities to Cedric's transition from high school to college.

All in all, a good day, with some great (and still quiet) new kids.

The first reactions to summer bridge

1. They're so little!

2. If only they stayed this quiet all year...

3. Most did their summer reading! And they liked A Hope in the Unseen!

Summer Bridge

On Monday, Summer Bridge begins. I have taught in this program, which gets rising 9th graders ready for their freshmen year of high school, just about every year I've taught, and generally have enjoyed it. This year will be rougher than most, probably, because (a) I get no break between the Teaching Shakespeare Institute and the start of Summer Bridge; and (b) North Avenue has been their worst ever in terms of organization of staff for the program.

For the latter point, allow me this: our 9th grade classes are generally around 330-350 students. Yet, our allowance from North Avenue for Summer Bridge was 9 teachers. The reasons for this appear to be mostly about red tape - some students weren't issued student ID numbers by North Avenue, which puts their numbers off for staffing; others were apparently not counted for other reasons. Regardless, we're going to have that many show up, putting our class sizes for Bridge in the 40 range. From what I have heard, this is the result of a new staffing model from North Avenue, and it's kind of a bummer.

This is one of those things that you'd think would be greatly improved with schools having more independence in terms of funding. And, at first, North Avenue was going to let schools fund this summer program independently. But, somewhere along the lines, they changed their minds. And we're mired in some red tape or something else that is causing us to have some huge class sizes for this preparing-for-high-school couple of weeks.

Classes of 20 or 40, though, you still need bang-up lessons, which is what I've been trying to do all weekend while I fend off the cold from the end of the Teaching Shakespeare Institute. Back to it.