Prop Joe, eyeglasses, geek chic, Mr. Bald, and Marlo

Last night, right before bed, I made the mistake of watching episode 4 of the 5th season of The Wire, which I've slowly been making my way through. For those of you who have not watched the final season, just skip ahead to the next paragraph. For those of you who have watched it, it's at the end of this episode where Prop Joe meets his final fate. For some reason, the final scene between Joe, Marlo, and Chris just haunted me. I just lay there for an hour or more in my bed, replaying it over and over again in my head. Joe telling Marlo that he'd treated him like a son. Marlo saying that he didn't want to be nobody's son. Joe's last plea. His eyes. Marlo telling Joe that it wouldn't hurt a bit, to close his eyes. Joe does this, reluctantly but dutifully. Marlo nods to Chris, and Chris shoots Joe. The camera closes on Marlo's face.

The vision of Marlo's face - somehow both calming and horrifying, and juxtaposed alongside Joe's last glance up at him - stayed in my head, unshakably, through most of the first hour of my many hours long insomnia last night. Haunted me. I couldn't sleep. This was compounded by the fact that I decided to work out for an hour on the eliptical while I was watching the episode, from 10pm-11pm, and by the fact that I drank a heckuva lot of water throughout the evening hours, so had to keep running to the bathroom.

I didn't fall asleep until it was almost time to wake up. I skipped the gym trip in the morning, and slept in an extra couple hours, waking up at almost 7 a.m. I still only got a few hours of restless sleep, though.

What does this all have to do with teaching? Not a whole lot. This is one of those entries that I might have put on my new more personal blog, Time Will Do the Talking, named after the Patty Griffin song, which I started writing dumb stuff in about a week ago, and where I'll continue to discuss things Baltimore, pop culture, and politics. But enough about that: this is about teaching, in a way.

Because I had to wear my glasses today.

I figured - correctly - that my eyes would dry out like crazy throughout the morning and afternoon, a day when I was very, very tired, and so wore my eyeglasses instead. Now, I hate wearing glasses, and much prefer contacts. Still, I got new eyeglasses over the summer, and I kind of like them. They're very old school. A colleague said I looked like I stepped off the set of the movie J.F.K..

I feel like teaching in the city can really make one both humble and honest. This was true today; my students' reactions were swift. This year's students were too scared, but last year's were not. I got called a geek from a smiling sophomore with big dorky glasses herself. I got called chic by Alexis, a diva of sophomore fashion. I was told I look nerdy by another. Another accused of wearing them only for fashion reasons. I was accused of not really having blue eyes, because they were harder to see behind the glare of the glass. I was accused of wanting to look smarter, but of not fooling anyone. Yes, they sure are honest.

Someday, I'm going to cause a huge ruckus with them all, and shave my head. It's really only a matter of time. While I am enjoying the salting of grey that is coming in at a few places, I think Mr. Bald will beat Mr. Gray by a few laps, and eventually I'll give in. I've spent the last several years wondering what I'd look like with a shaved head. Someday, soon, I'll know. And the kids will go crazy. Maybe best to make one of those big appearance changes over the summer, eh?

Manic Monday

The morning began, apparently, with me hitting the snooze button at least three times, making my 5 a.m. wakeup call come at 5:30 instead. That turned my relaxed 90-minute morning workout to a rushed 45-minute workout, and sort of made the whole morning harried. Gmail - where I always email myself my handouts for easy printout the next morning - was not working, either, so that was something else.

The 9th grade classes went okay - thank you, August Wilson, for writing a play that kids love more than anything else we read - but the Junior class turned into a class argument about a Neruda poem, and not a particularly pleasant argument. I want the kids to make radical analyses of literature, but I want them to have solid evidence for it, and that just didn't come through enough. I'll have to regroup them, and myself, tomorrow.

I could write a whole diatribe right now about my certification class, which I sat in from 5:00 until 7:45 after a very long work day, and the frustration of not learning anything because some bureaucrat somewhere decided that this is the ridiculous course that every teacher has to take every six years to remain certified, but I'll look at the bright side: at least it was air-conditioned this week and at least the professor didn't say anything about me grading papers.

The annual realization that keeping up is nearly impossible

I used to say that October was the roughest month for a teacher. It's the month where the optimism of the beginning of school has faded, just a little, and the month where you just have to accept that there is simply more work at this job than anyone can really keep up with in a timely fashion.

This year, I think it's happened sooner. I could sense a mountain of papers throughout the week, but felt like I really needed to plan more than anything else. I had to create a new document about incorporating quotations, this time for The House of the Spirits. I hemmed and hawed over that document for hours, and then emailed it to my colleague, and the two of use hemmed and hawed over it for hours afterward. I had to create adapt a document about Socratic Seminars, and the same process occurred. Re-inventing the wheel is one thing that makes teaching interesting, but it can leave an annoying sense of deja vu. Haven't I made this sort of thing before? Where is it? And then you find it, and you realize that it's not very good, and you have to adapt it, or, heck, make it anew.

It's important for me to get work back quickly to the students, particularly my 125 ninth graders, who need to see some immediate feedback of the work they're turning in. I was proud of myself in getting last Friday's quizzes back to them quickly, and hoped to get this Friday's quizzes back to them quickly, as well. Didn't happen. I took home stacks and stacks of work, and got through maybe one stack. I did create a pretty cool new document about incorporating quotations, this time for Fences and for 9th graders and not 11th graders, and that took a while. I also mapped out the rest of my unit for my two current texts. But grading? Didn't do that so much, despite my kitchen table being covered with stacks and stacks of grading to complete. Also didn't call home like I wanted to - since I make nearly all my parent calls on my personal cell phone, I was hoping to do that when the minutes were free on the weekend. Didn't happen.

And it's frustrating, because I want to be a teacher who can just get work back to the students right away, and I just wonder if that's possible with a load of 150. And then I wonder if I'm just using that class load number as an excuse, that I just need to work harder. And that's usually a dilemma I feel in October, not September 15th. Let's see if I can get out from under this mountain of work this week, though...

First Socratic Seminar

Yesterday, we attempted to do our first Socratic Seminar in IB English 3.

The students told me they had never done a seminar before, so this was a big deal, and something I was worried about. Seminar is a pretty essential piece of an IB English classroom, because its roots in self-discovery and questioning align well with the IB Program's goals of independent thought and inquiry. I've rarely been totally satisfied with the experience as a teacher, though; there always seems to be something that's missing.

And, I admit that I had trepidations about this group doing a Socratic Seminar, as well, especially after they had told me they had never done one. We about halfway through Allende's The House of the Spirits, though, and it certainly was time to start talking about this strange and wonderful book.

I was pleasantly surprised in the kids' discussion, though: lots of insightful comments.

The issues were as follows:

* A few kids dominating the discussion.

* Lapses into street talk.

* No contextualization of the quotes used.

Still, not bad for the first time. In fact, I think it was a pretty darn successful lesson, one that could have been much better if the classes were a bit longer (I miss the 90-minute block schedule, especially on days like these).

I used Huff English's Socratic Seminar guide to help set up mine.

7 years later

September 11th happened in my 2nd week of my teaching career. I remember I hadn't yet received my first paycheck as a teacher.

The news came slowly. I heard an off-hand comment from a skittish woman I worked with that the U.S. had been bombed, but had no idea that it was a big deal until shortly before noon, when the principal came on the PA. He explained, briefly, what was happening, and told us school was out, and that was that. Kids cheered. No one really knew that our world had changed.

I went home to my two roommates, also new teachers, and we sat in a coma of television coverage for hours. I welcomed the fact that school wasn't cancelled the next day; returning to a degree of normalcy was helpful.

I dug up my old blog and checked out my entry I wrote that day. It is not particularly insightful or well-written, but it certainly put me in that moment again. Which is important to do.

Djimon Hounsou as Troy Maxson

One of the challenging aspects of reading through some scenes in Fences in class is finding an appropriate Troy Maxson. I usually play him the first day, so the kids see the level of expression and intensity I'm expecting. But then I try to get a kid to do it, but sometimes it's tough. Troy needs a good reader, because August Wilson's language only comes alive into poetry.

My second period has about five boys in it. I don't necessarily have a problem having a girl read the part, but they have to want to, and they have to have the presence. Instead, they just all begged me to read it again. I relented. But, halfway through the reading, I handed the script to an African kid sitting up front. I knew he got the highest score on the quiz last week, so I figured he was a good reader. I also knew he was kind of shy, but that he was in Drama class, so I thought he would do it.

He was awesome. He has one of the thickest accents of any student I've ever taught, and made me look at the part in a totally different way. It reminded me of having, say, having Djimon Hounsou reading as Troy Maxson, in my classroom.

This year, more than ever, I'm requiring that the kids read the play at home, and analyze it, answer questions, etc, and we're only doing bits and pieces in class. At the end of the reading of it, they'll be put into acting companies and be required to direct and perform scenes. But we're still doing bits and pieces together as a class, and Act I.3 was a definite must-see.

Literature and Baseball and Fences

"See, hitters know where they like the ball when they're hitting. I like the ball on the inside part of the plate, so I can turn quickly on it and pull it down the line," I said, standing at the imaginary home plate in my classroom, with the imaginary bat, facing the imaginery pitcher. "Troy Maxson was also a big guy, though, but he liked the ball up and out over the plate - a fastball on the outside corner was his pitch of choice. That's why he says that 'death ain't nothin' but a fastball on the outside corner' - because it's something he can handle." I gestured with my imaginary bat towards the outside corner of my imaginary home plate.

And with that little moment, you can probably tell why I loved today. I got to talk about literature and baseball all day.

Fences has long been a favorite of mine. The story of a former Negro-League baseball star who was never able to make much of a living at the sport he excelled at, he is now a garbage collector. His son is being recruited to play college football, but he resists, saying and thinking that sports are a white man's game, something that will never bring success. Learn a trade, he says, like fixing cars, and forget about that sports stuff. He hides his pain, his bitterness, and his disappointment behind this protection of his son, but doesn't do a great job of dealing with it: he eventually drives his son away and, later, his wife, with an outrageous act of unfaithfulness, an act that he explains to his wife using baseball metaphors: "... you born with two strikes on you before you come to the plate. You got to guard it closely... always looking for the curve-ball on the inside corner. You can't afford to let none get past you. You can't afford a call strike. If you going down... you going down swinging. Everything lined up against you. What you gonna do. I fooled them, Rose. I bunted. When I found you and Cory and a halfwy decent job... I was safe... Then when I saw that gal.. she firmed up my backbone. And aI got to thinking that if I tried... I just might be able to steal second. Do you understand after eighteen years I wanted to steal second."

There's this motif of baseball linked to tragedy throughout the play. It's not only that Troy Maxson is a classic tragic hero, a protagonist brought down by a tragic flaw, by his own errors in judgement. It's also that he emphasizes this point by constantly mentioning tragic baseball players: Josh Gibson, perhaps the greatest baseball in the history of the game, black or white, is mentioned twice in the first scene. Today, I told the students about how he hit more home runs than Barry Bonds, about how he died at the age of 35 under somewhat mysterious circumstances, just two months before Jackie Robinson broke the color line. Wilson has Troy mention Roberto Clemente in the last scene of Act I. The famous Puerto Rican star died during his playing career in a plane crash. Sandy Koufax, the first Jewish-American baseball star, is also mentioned, and it's pretty clear it's purposeful; Wilson wants us to see baseball as a metaphor for America here, as he's using the sport's racism as a critique of the American dream, and connecting that with tragedy.

I got so into it today. Wearing my Negro Leagues Baseball t-shirt, and gave my "lecture" - one of about five lectures the kids will hear from me all year - by running around the room as much as I could, adding pictures and anecdotes and the aforementioned invisible-batting-stance moment. My principal walked in at one point, and I thought I was in trouble, because he left, and my department head came down about three minutes later. In my head, I imagined him running down to her, and saying something like, "You better get your teacher in line. He's down there talking about baseball, that's it." But, instead, my department head stayed and watched me, and asked if she could video-tape me, to keep the lecture in the archives so she could show it in the future. We agreed that I'd come and be the guest lecturer in her class on Monday instead - an accessible and working video camera in our school school, as if - so that made me feel good.

I was worried that I'd bore the kids with my 15 or 20 minutes of discussing Negro League baseball, and the various baseball allusions in Fences, but several seemed really into it.

But Desharnae, a girl that I've had all of two weeks, was kind of right when she smiled and said, "I see what you tryin' to do... I like it. Using any reason to talk about baseball. I see what you doin'." Yup.