Welcome Back!

Welcome back

So we've put in a week already, and the shit is already hitting the fan. For one, I had no idea that 6th graders could be so spastic. A room of thirty students leads to perpetual motion, perpetual chatting, and a tendency to give one the feeling that one is in a room full of parrots. Once one says something, it is echoed by three, five or more in the classroom. They are confused and frightened about being shoved into middle school, and they show it through passive aggressive moves (like not reaching up for a paper when it is being handed to them), constant giggling, and the occasional back-talk. I've been informed that they start to function better as a group by January. I can't wait.

In the meantime, I've found that 7th and 8th graders, by comparison, seem quite mature. I never thought I'd be saying that! Now, with that said, I've already had to call security on a charming lad who believed it would be a good idea to wander from my classroom, disrupt another class and then refuse to return to class when instructed by two teachers (including myself) on two separate occasions. To top it off, this lovely youth decided that yelling "this is bullshit!" outside the door, and then jamming the door closed, with me and my class locked inside, was a great start to the year.

The question remains, what will our new administration do to manage discipline this year? As the demographic has changed drastically in this particular school over the past 5 years, administration has had a difficult time keeping up with the problems this changing demographic (ie: lower ses) is presenting. Plenty of hand-holding has been done in the past, to no avail, as we've watched the problem students be given the chance, time and time again, to disrupt the classroom. This year, our entire administrative team has been replaced, and we're all very interested to find out how our new team will deal with discipline. Now is the time to deal more swiftly and directly with those children whose main goal in life is to upset the learning of other students. As I was told on Friday, "watch out for that kid," referring to the charming lad who locked us in the classroom, "He's in a gang. He's real trouble."

Saddle up Rough Riders! It's gonna be a wild ride....

Dead Kid

Not too many weeks ago, a former student, if that is what he is called, was killed by the police very near my school. This student, I never knew him, attended my high school for less than a year before dropping out. This boy was pursued by the police for stealing a car. This boy, who was 17, sped away from the police and a chase ensued. The boy was then reported to have actually run down a police officer. The officer was standing in front of the vehicle when he was run down and physically went underneath the car. So here's the deal: An invincible 17 year old boy plays "Cops" in a neighborhood, placing not only his own life in danger...which was unimportant to the boy at the time, but the life of the police officers and the citizens of the community through which he sped on his joyride were not even on his radar. As the case most assuredly had to unfold, the boy found himself dead at the wheel, as the surrounding officers, responding to the threat of the downed officer, filled him with at least a dozen rounds of bullets. Hmmm. Silly boy. What were you thinking? Were you high? Were you laughing? Were you crying? What possibly went through your mind in your last moments here on earth? Was it like it is in the movies, or perhaps in videos?

Now everyone knows this boy. He, of course, became a Cause Celebre to the students. Mail boxes artistically tagged with "RIP....." and students sporting tee Shirts with his year book picture as they photograph themselves in various stages of anger and stoicism. Students going room to room soliciting funds for the family and white boys speaking eubonics as they glorify a white boy gone to the "great hood in the sky". What is their rally? What is their cry of outrage? Nothing really. There is no mention of the officer. There was a sadness that permeated the school for about a week, but now it is gone. Is there anger? No. Who made the shirts? I don't know. Do the kids see themselves being shot down in the street by the police? Some do, some only fantasize about it, others just feel strangely drawn to a cause. And this cause went nowhere. It fizzled out like a bottle rocket in a puddle.

You're not charming

Some days I wake up and wonder how different I could possibly be from my old high school teachers. Although it was many moons ago, and I was the center of the universe, there had to be a point when my teachers looked out at me and thought to themselves, 'You aren't charming, funny or even interesting.' Now a teenager cannot conceive of this idea. We all know that when we were teenagers we were exactly the opposite...but something tells me that we were the only ones thinking this at the time. I watch so many kids vying for attention. They use volume, mediocre to actually quite insightful witticisms, and they take....I mean they take all the time. They walk up to my desk and snatch my stapler, tape, paper, etc, for no other reason than to get my attention. They love my attention. I sometimes react to this by saying,"Oh my, you really need my attention today. What can I do to give you more attention? I sure don't want you to feel sad because I'm not giving you enough attention!" I pursue them around the room until they hide from embarrassment. It is effective, but takes more energy or specific opportunity than I have to offer them all the time, but when I can do this, it works well.
I'd like to end the year with a bang, but I'm afraid that, like a colleague stated to me today, "I'm capable of caring less than the students." It is nice when they do care, but it is rare.

Rising standards, declining population

In my state, as well as many others, seniors are being required to present a portfolio at the end of their high school career as well as a senior project. The portfolios include student’s best works over the last four years, evaluations of work, post-high school financial plans, résumé’s and career plans. The senior projects are the result of a semester-long course which requires them to identify research, prepare, and present a specific topic-oriented paper. Not only does the student have to research the topic, but they have to volunteer service time with a mentor in the area of their topic. The culmination of this project is a paper with proper citations and a presentation before staff and community members. The judges are there to critique the presentation and determine if each student’s content, organization, presentation, and impromptu skills are below, at, or above average. This is something that is required in order for each student to graduate. If the presentation is below average, the student is to redo the project in order to receive his or her diploma. The standards are being raised.

School accountability is being monitored. This seems to be a direct outcome of NCLB. Is this good for students? I believe it is. Today, as I was trying to motivate a group of 9th and 10th low-level, at risk students to work on their little research paper (complete with note cards, citations and sources). I was asked if this was the type of thing that they will have to do in order to graduate. One of my most challenging students announced to the class that this is “a really easy” version of the paper that they will be writing in just a couple of years. The senior project has been a motivating force for the students to learn how to write. This is also requiring students to stand up and be not only recognized for hard work, but held accountable for not putting forth the effort. I wish there were more opportunities for accountability and more severe consequences for a lack therein.

The disservice that we do our kids is not making them more self-reliant. I am surprised by the number of students who do not have the ability to work independently. I find that independent workers are the exception rather than the rule. The number of requests that I get from students for me to work through their thought process for them is startling. Not only am I being asked to do the work for the students, am I restating directions for students who do not bother to read the instructions even once. Rather than read, they moan “I don’t understand!” We are working so hard on writing. We are working so hard on reading, but I think that we are facing a bigger demon.

I am being told, and witnessing, a dependence on technology that is unprecedented. Given a video screen, students are capable of sitting in front of a monitor, nursing entertainment hour after hour. Students abhor pens, books, dictionaries and paper, but will create a power-point with great care and investment of time. While that may seem good, and as I sit here in front of my own monitor sympathetically absorbing my own mind into the great Web, I am being told from these very graduating seniors that some of them are neglecting their social lives in order to play video games. A student today told me that she is averaging eight or more hours a day playing various video games. This is a demon that today’s adults have not yet considered a rising force in the youth of our culture. This is generating an apathy toward the written word that is technologically induced. It is a laziness that is rapidly driving us toward an oral-based society. A society that very easily may melt into a history of conjecture and fiction, because the written word is being blasted, like this very blog, into nothingness.

Death and Hypocrisy

So, today, the end of massive state testing at the secondary level ended with what the kids at my school call "the annual death". In the most catastrophic manner, a student, her entire life gleaming on the horizon, her high school career almost behind her, her future blazing like the sun, was murdered. The strangeness of this event is the fact that this child, 17, was a random victim of a schitzophrenic sex offender. Poor girl was taking a break during her shift at a local fast food joint at 8pm, when this man, after pacing back and forth a few times, reached into her booth and stabbed her with a kitchen knife. She died at the hospital one hour later. The tragic circumstances of a mother who couldn't be reached by telephone, arriving to pick up her daughter from work only to be informed of her child's death, is incomprehensible. The perp was apprehended, and from the pictures of his mug shots, roughed up a bit in the process.

The kids are in pain, of course. This girl was well respected by staff and students alike. The kids don't know what to do with their anger. One of my students bemoaned, "everything I can think of to do to that man is never enough. I can't think of a suffering that would do her justice." They want to attack the walls of the school. They want to tear it down with their anger. They want to create great works of graffiti art to express their pain and suffering. It's a genuine outpouring of pain and confusion. "Of all the people this could happen to, how could it be her?" they ask, bewildered.

One of the harshest facts that I learned today, outside of this child's cruel murder, was the statement that several students made to me regarding the mortality of their peers. "I was wondering when we were going to have our annual death. It hadn't happened yet this year. I was starting to wonder who it was going to be this time."

This little, suburban town has grown into a greater metropolitan area. It is regularly host to teen suicide and homicide. If our kids are waiting for their peers to be killed, what are they feeling inside? What kind of future do they have to look forward to if they are constantly looking around them and watching each other senselessly drop to the ground? They throw out the questions of "What's the point of living a clean, upstanding life, when you end up dead anyway?" Underneath this question is "How can you guarantee me a future? You can't and you know it. You, dear teacher, are a hypocrite. You are selling snake oil."

They have a point. They have a reason to be angry, unimpressed, and cynical. I wish I could give them more than temporary techniques for focusing their anger. I wish I could show them a future, but I can't. For them, right now is all there is.

The Final Moments

In a frenzied haste, with excitement and exhaustion, we all lurch thru the finish tape. It is an extraordinary and very familiar feeling to see the backs of yet another year's associations pass though my doors for one last time, some with joy and playful exhuberance, and others with the hesitant steps of one who realizes they are, at that exact moment, straddling a world they understand and recognize as safe, and a new, unfamiliar future, full of endless possibilities and fears. Often, I'm as surprized by who races out of the room without a backward glance, as I am startled by those who hesitate at the door. Some are unexpected, some are familiar lingerers. It is the dawning in these faces I find myself dwelling upon the most. These eyes, softened by the fresh realization of temporality, scan the room and seem to plead for some invisible hand to escort them through the door, and into their new worlds. It's both endearing and bittersweet, but it always is. I no longer am surprized by the ones who stagger to the finish line with increasing fear masked by hostility, often directed toward myself, as the full impact of their approaching uncertainty looms closer. It is those children, those who have required the most vigilant care, nurturing and management, that often blow their tops at the year's end, creating for themselves the unfortunate legacy of a great year topped by a rotting peach. I wrote to a parent of one such child today, and I asked her that she please pass along the following message: although the final days were probably a disappointment, I thought he was a great kid, and that I had the highest hopes for his future.- with this message,. I wanted to absolve him of guilt. I wanted to return to him all the days he tried, with constant struggle of self and curriculum, to muddle through a difficult path toward manhood. I wish him well, as I wish all my students, no matter the course. And as I approach this same threshold, I throw my own hesitant, backward glance and I too wish them a fond "adieu".

What will they do?

I've been pondering this question for quite some time now. What will they do? I'm looking at a classroom full of, say, 10th graders. There are approximately 30 registered for the class. 20-25 attend regularly. Of those, being generous, 25, none of them are exceptional. This is not an advanced level class, but neither is it a remedial class. Things were going swimmingly with these students when we were doing creative poetry and in class readings, but suddenly the curriculum demanded that we enter into literature. We had three books we needed to read. The majority of the students stopped working. It was, and is interesting to me that these students, of average intelligence, refuse to read. They will not read a book either in class or on their own time. The last novel we just concluded was To Kill a Mockingbird. If a person polled the class for an honest number, I believe that maybe,(again, I'm being generous) 1/3 of the students actually read the book! The ironic part of this is that those same students, the students who do not read, rarely participate in class, much less complete in class assignments, are the most confrontational about their grades. They expect to be passing. They will look me straight in the eye and tell me that "I'd better be passing." with a glint of a threat in their voices. I'm appalled. I know that I was no star pupil when I was in the 10th grade, but I know that if I didn't read the material, especially if that was the crux of the entire curriculum, that I didn't have a chance. There was no doubt that I wouldn't pass. These kids are clueless. What do they expect will be happening to them in the future. They are going to be facing huge demands, and how are they going to stand up to these demands? Are they going to make veiled threats to their professors, employers, social workers, parole officers? Are they going to go to work when they have nothing else going on in their most exciting lives? Are they planning to work for something, anything? Several of these 10th graders lack of initiative to read was so striking that I did a quick reading assessment. I found that several of my students had a 6th grade reading level. 6th grade in the 10th grade! Big problem folks. The low level readers are the most disruptive. The readers who are challenged by Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird or Julius Caesar, are the most easily distracted by these disruptors, and those to whom the material is not challenging are frustrated and feel out of place. Why mainstreaming? Why can't we track our kids? How are we supposed to educate if we have 6th grade readers in a 10th grade class? I have so many angry students right now because they are not passing. When I tell them that they are not passing because they never read the book, I might as well be talking into a vacuum. All they see is that someone else who they don't consider any more intelligent than themselves is passing, so it must be my fault. I'm disgusted. Right now I see the labor force, the welfare rolls and the drug trafficking businesses booming with prospective employees, but there is no one left to doctor my babies, protect my community or teach my children. I'm very concerned.