New contract

First off, I haven't decided for sure that I like the new contract. I'm going to write about it and think about it and talk about it for the next several weeks until the ratification vote. But, so far, so good. I like it more as I hear more about it.

I'm tweeting a lot more than blogging these days (140 characters easier than a thoughtful blog post with my load), but I think -- think -- I like the new contract.

I have had horrible administrations before, administrations that are vindictive, bullying, etc. I have been the object of said bullying. So, I understand the need for protections to guard against needless firing, bullying tactics, etc. It can be really bad.

But, I also have been the victim of what I see as unfair salary structures. I have worked alongside teachers who leave everyday 5 minutes after the bell ring and miss 20 days a year and make more money than me because they have a Master's Dgree (I have mine now) or because they have been in the system longer. They ditto the kids to death as their lesson plans.

This is frustrating to me and any good teacher. I did not go into teaching for the money but to see colleagues over the years pull in huge salaries for teaching a couple of classes is detrimental to morale. I have craved for a system that rewards good teaching.

The rub, of course, is how to measure that. But the details of the new contract that I've heard suggest that the ways the new contract will do it will be fair. This is what I heard from my union rep today:

1) It's not about achievement; it's about growth. Kids aren't being compared with previous year's kids, but with how they come into your classroom with how they leave it. That's what teaching is.

2) I'll now actually be encouraged to do things like go to national conferences to better my teaching. I was already intrinsically motivated to do this, and, for example, dropped a thousand bucks last year to go to (and present at) the NCTE. With this new contract, I could use that as a point to move to the next salary level.

3) I'll now have some financial incentive to be involved in more extracurricular activities and mentorship. I was already motivated, but I see no reason why there isn't financial incentive as well. Contributing to the school community is what good teaching is.

4) No one's salary will drop. And we all get a pretty substantial raise.

My fears:

A) I haven't heard what the student-performance instrument is yet. Teacher-developed? System-developed? Course specific?

B) Who is this 'panel' that will decide whether you have gone to the next salary level?

C) What red tape will there be for having these review-boards meet?

D) In general, what happens to non-tested areas? I don't teach an HSA class. What happens to my Theater teacher friend? Health? That needs to be spelled out.

There seems to be plenty of opportunities for disparity, cronyism, etc. But I like the ideas and look forward to the debates about it over the next few weeks. I hope some checks and balances will be in there, and won't vote for it if there aren't. But I like thinking outside-the-box. I like a lot of what I hear about.

And we'll be getting paid.

Day in the library

I am loathe to complain too much, so let me tell you about a great day with my 9th graders today:

We've made a commitment to offer Silent, Sustained Reading every Monday, as well as a visit to the library once a month. During library visits, students may read the assigned readings, but they also may explore other books they might be interested in. Our library is big, beautiful, and under-utilized, and we want students to have the experience of getting lost in a book there.

I was worried. A big area, where I can't see all of them? 33 ninth graders? Monitoring their engagement and their adherence to the rules (no socializing, no electronics, no homework) No way that would work.

But, folks, it was amazing. Some kids found a comfortable place to read and then read Persepolis, their assigned books. Others looked at the Young Adult section, picking up titles by Walter Dean Myers or Sharon Draper. Others read books about College Scholarships or Russia. I can honestly say I had just about 100% engagement at points, and my last class was so wonderful that I got to sit down myself and read for pleasure for a few minuts while the rest of the class did the same.

Great day.

Vocabulary

"I bet that made you feel morose," Kevin commented on my Facebook page a few weeks ago when I had made some sort of innocuous Facebook status update. Kevin was from the class of 2007, I think, and he remembered a vocabulary word he learned way back when was a Freshman.

This comment is ringing in my ear now, as I ponder vocabulary instruction in my class. This year, our team decided to teach the 9th graders 4-6 new words a week, all having to do with the literature we were learning. To learn 160-200 new words a year is a pretty amazing feat, I think. To actually teach them and have the students learn them: that's an important facet of English instruction.

However, the directive from the principal was, "Four words a week is not enough". Apparently, when my department head brought it up at the instructional leadership team meeting, several other department heads poo-pooed the idea, saying things like, "_______ Middle School does 10 a week".

However, is "doing" ten words a week what we want? How do we know that "doing" them means they're learning them? With four words a week, we were practicing flashcards and actually learning the words. This wouldn't happen with ten. So what is the goal here? The kids learning the words or the kids doing the words?

It's a strange place to be in, to be directed to do more of something that you just barely felt you were doing well. What's best for the kids? English teachers have writing skills (timed writing and planned writing), grammar, vocabulary, oral expression skills, and reading skills to cover. How is it that we're not doing enough vocabulary when I already felt we were a little too much spread out? It's something we'll deal with all year, and, in the meantime, we will increase the vocabulary and see what happens. But I always believed that teaching wasn't about throwing a bunch of things at the kids and hoping some of it sticks. If I teach something, I want to teach it well. This doesn't feel like it.

Persepolis, Year 3

In previous years, I did Persepolis at the end of the year, quickly, in between HSA tests, and after the 9th graders had gained some literary analysis skills.

This year, I'm teaching it at the beginning. I love it, but it's a much harder text than one would suspect. It's often subtle, and, like To Kill a Mockingbird, the protagonist doesn't really get it so we as readers have to step away and examine her from a different perspective. It takes some skills. Add in the fact that we are analyzing pictures as well as words, and this is a challenging text.

I'm teaching the hell out of it and I hope it's getting through. We'll see how the quiz goes tomorrow.

State of Being

Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy BusyBusy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy BusyBusy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy

Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids Working harder than the kids

Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop Needs to stop

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver's work has been speaking to me lately. I've been ho-hum about this poem before, but it's because I've never really understood it like I understand it now. This bowls me over.

"Wild Geese"

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.


Or this one:

"The Journey"

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Disappointed in Mfume, Cummings for appearing for Jessamy

I am saddened and disappointed by the appearance of Mfume and Cummings at the rally for Jessamy yesterday. This tacit approval of the way violent crime has been handled in Baltimore by Baltimore's old guard is disgusting.

Vote Bernstein on Tuesday!

First couple of weeks going well

Not too much time to blog lately. I feel like I'm working 14-hour days these days, every day, if not more; I'm at school until at least 5 or 6 and then I'm home to sit at my computer and plan. It feels good -- this year, so far, I am really liking these kids -- but I cannot maintain this pace. Part of the issue is that I spend plenty of moments wasting time or energy. My classroom gets horribly messy, for example, by the end of the day and it's probably because I haven't worked out the systems that I need to work out to avoid spending so much time picking up at the end of the day.

Still, this shouldn't be a negative post, because, despite the work, the year feels like it's going to be a great one. The 9th graders are a somewhat tough group, but they are wonderful, earnest little sponges that really want to do well. I am trying plenty of new things with them this year -- Daily Grammar Practice that I write myself, using sentences from the literature, with a follow-up analysis questions as our daily drill; beginning the year linking Persepolis and Fences and a Humanities unit about how trauma creates character; weekly timed writings and (purposeful) silent sustained reading time. Our 9th grade team has two new teachers, as well as the department head and an administrator-type, so we are working together as a team more than I ever had. It's slightly more stressful this way, worrying that everyone is basically doing the same thing every day, and trying to differentiate instruction for different kids in the classes, but the reflection that comes with working with skilled educators and being able to articulate that with new educators has been valuable.

With my seniors, we are jumping right into James Baldwin right now, and he's become one of my favorite writers to teach. It's only my second year teaching his non-fiction, but the kids connect with it right away, as his writing is just so powerful and moving. One of my favorite assignments this unit will be to have the students write a personal essay in the style of James Baldwin.

So... great first couple of weeks. I really need to reboot this weekend, but I'm working the Ukrainian Festival tomorrow, schilling pierogies, and again on Sunday night at the restaurant. Oh well. The Tuesday off-day will be nice. Busy busy.

Being a better reading teacher

Last year, I was so overwhelmed creating curriculum and units for IB English IV that I felt like my 9th graders got a bit of a short shrift. I can coast through the 9th grade classes; I know the literature well that I can almost recite it in my sleep. Some real teaching did occur with them, in the second semester, as we did a Literary Circles unit and then, of course, with Shakespeare. But, otherwise, I felt like I was being too pedantic and penalizing in my instruction.

We're getting a different sort of 9th graders these days. They're less readers than before. I don't know if this is a city-wide or a nation-wide issue with the advent of technology, or if I'm just teaching classes with lower-skills level than, say, five years ago. But the change is real and I have to adjust accordingly.

This year is six days old but, for the first time, I wish I had a specialization in Reading Instruction. I'm already digging out my Cris Trovani books and reviewing what I need to be to be a good reading instructor for these kids who are coming in reading with extreme difficulty.

Today, I had the students read silently for fifteen minutes, shut their books, and then answer four questions based on the Ladder of Question (Literal, Inferential, Experiential). Some students, literally, got through just a page and a half, and still couldn't tell me what was happening. I was so happy to have one such young man come for Coach Class after school, and we slowly went through the story, meticulously, stopping after every sentence, summarizing, defining. He's perhaps the toughest kid I have so far this year, but he came after school with a dramatic new attitude and, well, it really just made me so happy. But also concerned, once I heard his reading skills up close. Someone has done him wrong. I'll work to right it.

Anyhow, here are some of my goals for being a 9th grade teacher this year:

1) Less assigning, more teaching. Less is more. Teach these kids how to read.

2) Focus more on the way we read, not about soaking up the content. Sometimes I'm so in love with the literature that I focus primarily on this, without teaching them how to take meaning from it like all good readers do.

3) Be less penalizing, more positive.

So far, so good -- except #3 is the toughest.

"Either they don't know, it don't show or they don't care about what's goin' on in the 'hood." -- Dough Boy from "Boyz n da Hood"

Today it was 87 degrees in my classroom at 7:02 a.m. when I arrived and heated up throughout the day. At around noon, the principal was out in the hallway and I expected her to start telling teachers that they had received notice from the system that because of the inhumane teaching/learning conditions, we were being sent home early. Nope. The news soon swept through that the County -- most of which are air-conditioned, I thought -- let out early. After all, we did have Code Red (dangeorus) Air Quality along with the high temperatures.

So we slogged through the day, and this teacher was feeling increasingly light-headed.

This is starting to seem, for me, to be a social justice issue, a haves and have-nots issue, between the county and the city, and between people making decisions in air-conditioned offices versus the people working in conditions suitable to miners.

The other part of me is less certain, though. I grew up in Michigan, and I'm certain we had temperatures in the 90s in school, and we weren't let out. But we started after Labor Day and the heat was never coupled with the sort of humidity we see here in the mid-Atlantic. Plus, there, or at least where I was, there is more land, and my school was one floor. Our schools sits high and has four stories, and each story gets hotter and hotter.

So, yes, we should have been let out.

That being said, I can't believe how good the kids are being. I hope it's not like that scene in The Wire, where they turn up the heat so the kids are more docile, and that they're just polite and wonderful kids that I'm teaching this year. I'm sure the latter! :)