Summer "Schedule"

Greetings, Loyal Readers!

Summer has begun!  So, the schedule will be a bit irregular.  My Summer schedule consists of a trip to ACL in Memphis, a vacation to Maine, two weeks at Rusticatio and Pedagogy Rusticatio in West Virginia, and then a trip to San Antonio for Worldcon with Sassafrass at the end of the Summer. 

I will have a lot to write about, but not all that much time to write it....So, I will post when I can.  Sorry for not having a more defined schedule!  However, if I don't post for a bit, I am not dead.  :) 

Hope you all are having a great start to Summer!

~Emily

Change

Over Reunion Weekend, I spent much time exploring the campus of my old school and catching up with my classmates.  Since we've left, many changes have taken place at the school.

The Leadership changed.  When that happens, you know changes are in order, for good or for ill.    A new headmaster, who is an alum, came in and made sweeping changes to the Deans, the academics, the college process, and the school design in general. 

The "new" headmaster has now been there for seven years.  In those years, he has turned the design of the school we knew on its head.  Good thing, too.  The school we knew was a strange place.  The priorities were strange.  A disproportionate amount of energy and resources were spent on Athletics, while music and theater struggled.  Education, too, was strangely funded and cared for. 

For the students, we have had a hard time getting "over" the experiences we had with the Dean of Students that came in our Sophomore year.  That had been an extremely unwelcome change...and dealing with her was like dealing with a Dementor--she just sucked the life right out of you and the school in general. 

But now?  The students are happy!  They say hi to you and hold doors--something, I am ashamed to say, we never would have even considered doing.  The faculty, too, seem happy.  The interior of the school received a much needed update two years ago, and yet, still retains the classic feeling that the Main Building once had. 

Good Change at a place like that requires careful, thoughtful people who are invested in the school or the company they work for.  You have to change an entire culture, create a community where there was none, and turn a place of low expectations on everyone's part into a place of high expectations. 

So how does one do that?  The answers are both simple and complex.  You don't come in waving your agenda around as the cure-all.  You meet the people--the students, the faculty, the staff.  You listen to their concerns.  You take walks around the campus and become a presence in the life of the school.  You reach out to the alumni.  Above all, you remember that this is a process and takes a huge amount of work and time and energy.  You look at the faculty and the leadership and you may need to make a bunch of difficult decisions about who stays, who goes, and what you want the leadership to look like. 

But it all takes me back to a few simple questions:  How do you make Good Change happen at a company, school, or in general?  What are the steps that make it different from "bad" change?  Obviously, these are a bit subjective, so here's an example:  One could argue that the INTENTIONS behind No Child Left Behind were good ones.  The implementation, however, was poor.  What could have made it a good change rather than a bad one?  Is there anything? 

That's a lot of questions, I know, but I would love your thoughts on it all!

Reunion

This past weekend was my high school reunion.  I had a really good time seeing old friends, meeting spouses and babies, and networking with members of my class and older classes.  I sang for the retirement party of my old Choir director, who was truly amazing and will be sorely missed. 

There were lots of moments that made me think--especially in light of my posts about dress codes and school.  Many members of my class hold clothing in high esteem.  I realize that clothing is a status symbol and all, and that at reunion you want to look good.  I, personally, had spent quite a while picking outfits and making sure I had a dress for each night and that they were the appropriate level of formal.  I tried to make sure they were tasteful, while still being fun. 

Believe me, I was pretty damn surprised to see one of the women, who has a 4 month old baby, show up wearing a silk dress.  Now, to be fair, she looked fantastic in it.  I hope I, too, will look that good when my hypothetical baby is 4 months old!  However, this woman quickly proved that she was still as spoiled as she always had been, because she was a) surprised and b) ran off crying when her 4 month old baby spit up on her dress. 

There are many things I could say about this.  I do not have children, but many of my friends do and I babysit for them a lot, so that my friends get breaks.  However, I guess what it made me realize, even though I knew this theoretically, is that I think practically, learned to laugh at myself, and don't run away from my problems.  This is clearly something that this particular woman never learned to do.  She had always struggled with it in high school, and I guess I had always assumed she would grow out of it.  I felt badly for her husband, who had not gone to school with us and was a stranger to us and to the culture, left alone with a crying baby, while his wife fled her problems and wept inside. 

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at such childish, petty behavior from an adult...I mean, I see it every day.  But I try to hope that people will grow up.  But this one little incident left me thinking the whole weekend about learning to function as an adult human being in the Real World.  We don't do a great job teaching students how to do so. 

Instead, we teach them that you can hide from your problems, that it's OK to do something as long as no one sees/finds out, that everything is high stress and high stakes.  Instead, the real life skills are that you have to think practically, and that you have to learn to take life with a sense of humor. 

I guess, the best place I can take this is to two simple words that adorn the front wall of my classroom: DON'T PANIC.  Approach things rationally.  So, how do we teach our students and our children and ourselves to do this?  What are the steps and lessons that we should teach?

Distractions, "HIdden" Messages, and Culture, Part II

Following up on yesterday's post, I want to discuss the many issues these articles and the ensuing discussions raised.

There are SO many issues at play here--there is our Culture, race, gender, class, religion.  I want to start with Culture.

As we are probably all aware, the culture for girls and women these days is intensely sexual.  Clothing, especially for young women, is becoming increasingly skimpy.  We know this.  Everything--from makeup to clothing to how young women are taught to act--is incredibly sexual and objectifying.

But we know this already.  We have to make a choice of what to DO with it.

Let me start by saying that I went to a school with a strict uniform.  I liked it, honestly.  It made my life easy.  I didn't have to worry about buying "the cool clothes" for school.  To be honest, I wasn't even comfortable in those "cool" clothes.  I will say that I am, in general, a semi-conservative dresser.  I was raised to think about the messages I send with my outward appearance--both by my parents and my 3-8th grade school.

I'll bring the issue of class in here for a minute.  The schools I attended through High School were private institutions.  My 3rd-8th grade school's imposing a strict uniform leveled the playing field in terms of what one would see of someone's socio-economic status.  No one had to know that the girl who sat next to me was on financial aid.  No one had to know that the girl who sat on the other side of me was the heiress to a huge fortune.  Instead, that outward visible "class" was a non-issue in school.  One of my friends commented that this made us ALL more comfortable.  No one had to worry about showing off and trying to show others up.

On the other hand, my High School was a different story.  We had a dress code, but it was that...not a uniform.  It became quickly apparent to me that the nice, quality clothes I had, with moderate length skirts and reasonable v-neck shirts just was not going to do.  I did not have "the cool clothes" and I looked "like a grandmother," as one girl notably put it to me.  Now, I don't know about you, but My grandmother wouldn't dress like this.  This is too young for her.

It also became quite apparent to me that if you were a friend of the Dean or were an extremely attractive girl, the dress code meant nothing.  No one asked THOSE girls to cover up.  No one asked the athletic boys--the jocks with the muscular arms--to put a shirt on over their "wife beater."  No one.

I asked a friend of mine who went to the same school about this issue.  She WAS one of Those Pretty Girls.  Most of the time, she was reasonably dressed, but I do remember one time that she wore a strapless dress "just to see what would happen."  She never got asked to cover up, never got sent to the office, but remembers that "all the male TEACHERS stared at me as I walked down the hall.  Not the male students.  The Teachers."

So, perhaps we really need to look again at our culture.  What are we telling the students?  What is with our lack of self control?  Why do we expect our students to have it when we don't have it ourselves?  And how are we helping our students by "removing temptation," when that temptation won't be removed in the "real world" and in college?

Distractions, "Hidden" Messages, and Culture

Inspired by a fascinating discussion my friends and I had about These Articles.

I was quite intrigued by the messages of these two articles.  As a teacher, we spend a lot of time "enforcing dress codes."  It is just something we get asked to do.  But what are the messages we are sending when we do so?

I see so many sides of this issue.  I have seen girls' clothing, specifically listed in student and parent handbooks as "distractions to other students" and even "distractions to boys."  I find it frustrating that these are the reasons given for not wearing certain clothing.

See, I am not in favor of wearing inappropriate clothing to school for EITHER gender.  However, I find the reasons often given for not wearing such clothing to be inappropriate.  As one of my friends pointed out yesterday, "Everyone needs to learn that clothing is about self presentation.  What messages do people send when they wear certain clothes?"

This is the way to pitch dress codes.  Not the "distraction" mentality.  By adopting the distraction mentality, we are doing everyone a disservice.  We are saying that no one has impulse control.  We are not even bothering to teach impulse control.  We are perpetuating the "she was asking for it by what she was wearing."  And that takes me back to thinking about infantilization and false control. 

Many years ago, I taught at a private school.  There was a piece of the dress code that forbade frayed skirts.  There was one day that one of my advises had worn a frayed skirt and she needed to see the Dean about a club she was running. She comes running up to my room during my free period and starts folding up her skirt and pinning it with thumbtacks.  "What are you doing?" I asked.  "Ohhhh, Ms. L, I need to go see Dean C and I have a frayed skirt."  I sighed.  "No, J," I told her.  "Paper clips.  Not thumbtacks.  It is less painful and looks like a fashion statement."  And lo and behold, it worked. 

Why, one might ask, did I knowingly help a student "skirt" (hahaha) the dress code?  Because her skirt was the proper length, it wasn't "inappropriate," and seriously, who cares.  It was a tasteful skirt with some fringe on it.  This takes me down the false control road, but I have already been there, and may go there again tomorrow.

There was a bit in the discussion where a friend of mine said that her school had a dress code "to protect the teachers."  While I do kind of see this point, what I see in this is the infantilization of teachers!  "Well, they have no self control and students don't have to either!"

So this is a rough sketch of where I might focus some attention for the next few posts.  False control, self control, objectification, and the multitude of separate issues contained in this issue (race, class, gender, and more!)

So, friends, what are your thoughts on the articles?  Keep the discussion going! 

Appreciation, part 2

Remember that post I wrote about Appreciation?

As the school year wraps up, I come back to that again.  See, we have this week, and then finals, and then we're done.  Yay summer!

I've been receiving gifts from students and reading the cards.  One common line that I see in all of them is something along the lines of, "Thank you so much for being a beacon of sanity in the madness that is this school," or "Thank you for making this year bearable."  Yes, these are actual lines from student cards.

I found these cards exciting but also sad.  Exciting because I did my job well (yay!!!).  Sad because one teacher and one class should not make your school day "bearable."  There should be no need to make school "bearable."

Tuesday was also the day that I saw a colleague that I don't normally see.  She, a Spanish Teacher, told me that she and another Spanish teacher had a meeting with the Superintendent about Latin.  The Superintendent evidently expressed the opinion that SHE thought Foreign languages were important--it was the Assistant Superintendent who didn't like them.  My colleague was beside herself.  No one in Central Office had appreciated that one of her students had been the highest scorer in Massachusetts on the National Spanish Exam.  No one.

My colleague told me that the Central Office Folks are so insincere and unappreciative.  Even if you teach Science and Math (the "important" subjects), they don't appreciate you.  But Foreign Language, my colleague said, is the ugly stepchild.  And yet, we are expected to come into school every day with a sincere smile.

So, I got to thinking:  We make the school "bearable" for the students.  Who makes it "bearable" for us?  Is that our poor Admin's job?   How can we make school "bearable" for the students if we aren't appreciated?

Winning and Losing

I had a conversation with a friend this weekend about winning and losing.  He commented to me that he had spent most of his life trying not to lose rather than trying to win.  There is, obviously, a fundamental difference between these two.  So I started thinking about the various games that we play each day--the game of work, the game of school, the game of life.

These days, we all spend time trying not to lose.  This seems to show one of two sides of people.  It can breed in some a competitive side that people often call "playing to win," but it isn't.  It's trying to screw others over so that YOU don't lose.  The other side of trying not to lose is giving up so much, because "you're going to lose anyway."

Trying to win is an interesting concept.  People define it in many ways.  Many think that eliminating all competition is winning.  They will do it by whatever means necessary!  If it means tattling, they will tattle.  If it means screwing others over, they will.  If it means putting on a nice face and feigning politeness, they'll do that too.  Anything.  Literally.

But the way I look at it, winning may mean eliminating the competition.  But I see it as eliminating the competition by altruism and collaboration rather than by screwing others over, or just trying to be "the best." See, true winning is done by honest means, not by witholding the notes your classmate asked for, because they were sick that day, just so that you can score higher on the upcoming test.  True winning is done by learning from your mistakes, so that you don't make the same mistake twice.  True winning is collaborating with your competitors, so that together, you all bring a piece to the puzzle and build the best thing possible.

Schools these days don't breed that.  SURE, we talk about collaboration, but do we do it? No.  Teachers don't collaborate (Latin and History could do something together...Latin and Science....etc...), and we don't encourage it among our students either.  As long as they are getting The Grades, we don't care.

The paradigm IS shifting though, especially among newer teachers.  We are beginning to encourage true winning now--building community and sharing and collaboration.  What have you done to encourage this?  What steps can we take to keep encouraging true winning, rather than fear of losing?  How can we shift the paradigm to playing to win rather than trying not to lose?

To Be Rather Than To Seem

On Thursday Morning, I was chatting with C, my assistant principal.  She mentioned that she had to go do some walkthrough observations.  I nodded knowingly.  "Don't worry," she said. "I won't bother you.  Your students are always on task, even when they aren't."

I found that statement interesting.  "How so?"  I asked.  C didn't hesitate.  "They are always having discussions related to what they are doing, and they are always listening to each other and learning from each other.  They help each other, they talk each other through issues, and they make sure that their groups understand.  In another class, that might be shut down as 'needless chatter' but, as I said in your evaluation, you encourage related conversations."

This, to me, was interesting, but not surprising. Too many of my students come to me from classes where they are chastised for asking a question, for helping a friend, for turning a lecture into a discussion.  Let's be fair here, even I would put an end to my students chatting, say, about their weekend plans, and sometimes they do need that direction.  But that is why listening to the conversations happening in your classroom is so important--so that you know when to let the conversations continue and when to end them.

But so many teachers have not learned to listen.  Their job is to dispense knowledge and the students' job is to passively absorb their words of wisdom.  The students can "look" On Task, with their noses stuck in packets and reading textbooks, but are they really?  What are they actually learning--not memorizing so that they can regurgitate it on a test--but learning so that they can use it in the real world?

The great Roman statesman Cicero famously wrote about Cato the Younger the words "esse quam videri," commenting that Cato preferred "to be, rather than to seem."  How can we make sure that On Task means that the students are actually working with the material?  What can we do to facilitate that transition from looking On Task to being On Task?

One Mistake is OK

Before one of my classes yesterday, I was sitting in on the Mandarin class at my school.  "Ms. Y," one of the students asked, "Can I pleeeeease retake the test now?"

Ms. Y looked confused.  "K," she replied, "You only made one mistake on the test.  You don't need to retake it!  One mistake is OK!"

"No it's not," M protested.  "I can't believe I messed that up!"  He continued to beat himself up for the one tiny mistake he made, resulting in him getting a 98 rather than a 100.  Ms. Y refused to argue with him.  One mistake was OK, and she was sticking to that.  She told me later that she has been working with this student all year on being able to make mistakes.

And this brought me back to Perfection.  I have spent a great deal of the year teaching my students that I am not looking for *perfection.*  Instead, I am looking for proficiency, and a willingness to learn from their mistakes.  I am not looking for the student who can memorize everything and spit it back at me, but the student who knows what questions to ask.  That's what I care about.

I want to see their BEST work.  Their best work is not Perfect work.  Your best can always be better--otherwise 'improvement' would not exist as a word.  If you don't get a perfect score, read the comments, ask me the right questions, and learn why.  Maybe you'll do better next time.  Don't ask me the "Why didn't you give me a 100?" question.  Ask me "Why is this incorrect?  Did I need to use the subjunctive here?"  I'll happily walk you through it!

The advice I gave to my Seniors as they prepared to head to college, was the following:  "Take risks.  Don't be afraid to make mistakes. When you do make mistakes, learn from them.  I know everyone tells you this, but I think, and I hope you do too, that we lived it in this class, and I hope you all can apply it to the college world."  My students agreed.

How do we learn that mistakes are OK?  What can we do to encourage risk-taking and learning from our mistakes?

Giving a Damn

Yesterday, I had my "End of year performance evaluation" with my assistant principal.  As part of my evaluation, she had read the student evaluations I had had my students complete, both about my class and also about themselves and their participation in my class.  She got first crack at them--I hadn't seen them yet.    These were evaluations that I had written for them--there are not school wide evaluations.

Anyway, she looked at me with a smile and said, "I am SO glad to know that you give a fuck about your students."  Surprised, as anyone would, I think, be at that statement, I simply blinked at her.  With a laugh, she produced an evaluation from the top of the pile.  Written in the space under the question 'What could Ms. L do to help you out more?' was the following answer:  "Nothing.  Ms. L is an incredible teacher.  She is strict, but she is strict because she gives a fuck about us.  Like, she actually cares--none of this "yeah I really care about you all" crap."

In case you are curious, the evaluation was great!  I was pretty excited about that.

But that's not the point of this post.  I couldn't get the words written by my student out of my head.  My assistant principal and I talked a lot about forming bonds with students.  But I guess what really got me on this is that this was not the only student who realized that my strict boundaries and rules applied to ALL of us in the class, me included, and it was me showing that I cared about them and wanted them to take safe risks and make good choices.  Not only that, but it was not lost on the students how much some other teachers' lying words of caring were untrue.  NEVER would I say that I am the only teacher who cares for her students at this school.  NEVER.  Don't read it that way.

What I am saying is that the way to show students we "give a fuck" about them is to set rules and boundaries and to make sure that they apply to YOU as well as to them.  Don't set up the oft-seen "us vs. them" mentality.  If you listen to the students, they are more likely to listen to you in return.

How do you show students you care?  Did you have a teacher who was really good at showing they cared? How did they show it?

Conversations

Yesterday morning, my students and I had a conversation about gaming.  Yes, that really happened.  We talked about game design, rules of games, games we played, how we liked them, and why.  In case you haven't guessed, I LOVE game design and gaming.  But the cool part for me is that I didn't even initiate the discussion.  M was just wondering about how to get past something in Bioshock....and she asked J...and off went the conversation.  

The students needed to get work done on a project, but they were able to get done what they needed to get done and have an interesting and much needed conversation.  They were tired--it is, after all, the end of the year--but somehow, we still managed to both get our work done and have some fun.  

Making connections with students is important.  Through those "random, disruptive conversations," you learn, if you listen to them and take time to think about them, what makes students tick.  Especially now, at a time when EVERYTHING is either a "review packet" or "just one more thing before the final," these conversations are SO important.  For one thing, they relieve some tension.  For another, they show that I the teacher respect them the students.  For another, they show that they the students respect me the teacher enough to HAVE that conversation, while getting their work done at the same time.  And they even asked my opinion.  For the first few minutes, I had just been listening.  

So, I take these conversations and listen to them.  I mull them around in my head and get ideas from them--ideas for games for use both in and out of class, for class activities, for ways to engage those students who need it, and even get the whole class engaged in an activity.  So, why is it that we squash them?

Because we have "so much to cover," or "if The Powers That Be walk in and we aren't 'learning'."  But I find that we all learn more from the conversations.

How do we demonstrate to both the Powers That Be and to our fellow teachers that these conversations are both useful and necessary for real learning?

Dropping the Ball

This week is a screwy schedule at school.  No day is a "normal" whatever-number-day-it-is schedule.  We're doing the last round of MCAS testing, and there there are a bunch of assemblies.  So times are changing, periods moving, and classes being relocated.

On Monday, P, one of my students who is partially home-schooled and only comes in for two periods of the day, came running in to class 20 minutes late.  "I'm so sorry, Magistra," she panted, "They neglected to tell me about the schedule change!"

She was, understandably, peeved.  As a new teacher at this school, I understand her frustration.  Too often, changes are not communicated well, because "everyone just knows" what they are and will be.  So, I find myself having to ask about them.  All the time. But I can figure these things out because I have a vague idea of when testing sessions, etc... are.  A partially home-schooled student has no idea.

As it turned out, NONE of the students knew of the schedule change.  No one had bothered to tell them.  Only the teachers knew.  And of course, they didn't tell the students.  They didn't even bother to POST IT in the hallways!! So, my period 4 students showed up to my class, when they were supposed to be at period 6.  And I was left being the person to tell them all of this.

In the case of "serving all students" or "making sure all faculty have the correct information," the School has dropped the ball.  Both of these quotes are taken directly out of the information that the school distributes.  This is not the first time this has happened.  In fact, it has been happening all year to poor P and to me and to other new teachers.

What is the message that we, the new teachers, and students like P have been receiving?  This might be a self-evident answer, but as P put it, "Yeah, they don't really care about me.  They don't communicate with me or my family at all."

My full-time students were frustrated.  "No one tells us anything!" complained M.  "Well," J said, "This might be the first time the teachers have known something about actual school operations that we did not know!"  (Usually, we teachers don't know about schedule stuff, but if you ask the students, they do!)

So, today, I think about messages once more, specifically in connection with administration and "the powers that be" Dropping the Ball.

How can we create clear communication channels?  Who has had an experience similar to this?  How did you handle it?

Feeling OLD

On Thursday, I got together for lunch with some former students of mine, now in college.  All three of them will be Juniors next year and are Classics majors at three different colleges. 

All three of them had the same thing to say:  "I didn't learn to think like I needed to for college in High School."

We talked about working with students and learning to think like one would need to for college, for the real world.  Two of them are thinking about teaching as a career and the other one is probably headed to Law School.  K complained bitterly about how no matter WHERE they went or WHAT they did, they would need to know how to think.  They were just expected to know how to think in College, but it was a skill they had never learned. 

"Where would we have learned it?" asked G, the only guy in the Lunch Bunch. 

L shook her head.  "Certainly not at our high school.  No one knew how to think there.  Be glad you got the hell out of there, Ms. L!"

I took the opportunity to direct the conversation.  "What would have helped?" I asked them.  "How would you help your students learn to think?"

"Having real discussions," G offered.  "Like we're expected to do in college.  Not being TOLD what the book means, but actually talking about it."

"Not doing 4 bazillion packets," said L.  "Those are the most useless things ever."

"Teachers and Admin being Honest with students.  Admin being honest with teachers.  Well, Honesty in general," K shared.  "Honesty is what puts the trust to share, to think in the right place.  I'm always honest with my study group students."

I put this to you, loyal readers, because this makes me feel so old!  These are my own former students talking about helping future students and learning from what happened to them as students.

What would you add to their list?  How can we teach up and coming generations of students to think?