Reality Bites

It's incredibly hard. And I'm totally exhausted and overwhelmed. I feel as if I'm trying to lay down track in front of a freight train, currently barreling down the track I've already laid. It's about 100 yards behind me, traveling at about 80 miles an hour. Judgment day is coming, and right soon.

I got a classroom visit today from my Assistant Principal, and she didn't say much of anything in the 20 minutes she sat and observed. She then left and went to Ms. CowCulus's room. As noted earlier, Ms. CowCulus is the head of the math department, and is, I am confident, a kindergarten teacher reincarnated as a high school math teacher. She's very good -- she was MHS's teacher of the year recently, but her room is awash in posters and sayings and cutouts and word walls and decorative borders and cute wall hangings that have pockets for the calculators the students use and... and... and... So the AP (that's Assistant Principal to you -- public schools apparently acronym-ize absolutely everything, then change all the acronyms roughly every 4 years, just to keep everyone confused. Remember ESL (English as a Second Language)? Now it's ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Language) and occasionally ELL (English Language Learners). Anyway, the AP says to Ms. CowCulus... "Maybe you could help out Mr. Math Guy. His room needs a little help." For what it's worth, Ms. CowCulus later told me the AP didn't come down too hard on me, but I'm pretty sure the AP was trying to avoid piling on -- I'm already a haggard, twitchy wreck.

The stuff we have to do to meet state requirements, in the way of lesson plans, standards-based learning / testing, etc., is a nightmare, if you don't have a base from which to build, which of course I don't. I really can't do justice to all the paperwork and planning that I'm obligated to do. But the coldest slap in the face has been the amazing lack of math skills among my Algebra II and Geometry students. Algebra I, I could kind of understand, but these kids have presumably all passed Algebra I. The Algebra II kids have also passed Geometry (except for one young lady who is a senior and failed Geometry, and now has the great good fortune to have me for both Geometry and Algebra II. She told me on the first day that she hates math and she is terrible at it, and that nothing I say is going to convince her otherwise. Perhaps if she actually paid attention in class she might get more out of it, though...

Meanwhile, I had a kid yesterday look at me with a completely innocent, totally bewildered look when I asked her to finish solving the equation -2 + 7. It was as if I had asked her to add e raised to the i-th power and pi raised to the square root of 5. I spent an hour today going over the equation of a line. Example: "Okay, class, y=mx+b is the slope-intercept form: m is the slope, and b is the y-intercept. Now, suppose I tell you that the slope of the line is 3, and the y-intercept is 4. What is the equation of the line?" Blank stares. "Okay, well, in this equation, y=mx+b, m is the slope. So if the slope is 3, we get y=_x + b. What goes in the blank?" And so on. I am okay with going slowly through things, and explaining them in a number of different ways so that perhaps one will click. But while I'm explaining how to find the slope from two points ('rise over run') for the 7th time in the 6th different way, what are the kids who got it the first time doing? Aren't I doing the ones who already get this stuff a disservice by holding them back from learning more?

Anyway, it's an adventure. Each day, the first period is a real struggle, and I find my way a little bit better throughout the day. Still, I wonder if anyone will actually learn any geometry this year.

Minus 1

Okay, here's an example of what they're not telling me that they somehow expect me to know. Then, I promise, I'm getting off the "how come they didn't tell me these things" bandwagon.

Friday, I get a message to come to the Assistant Principal's office to pick up the Student Handbooks and some other things they have to sign. I was told that the students would get these things in their homeroom, and I was pretty sure I didn't have one, since no one had said I did, and I hadn't been given any information about them at all. I turned to leave. I could have left and thought nothing more about it, assuming my Algebra II class would be showing up at my door at 7:45 tomorrow, after 15 minutes in someone else's homeroom. I decided to ask if I had a homeroom.

It turns out I do, of course. So I asked my Assistant Principal what I am supposed to do in homeroom. Not to worry, she tells me, it'll all get explained at the big meeting during lunch Friday. Big meeting comes and goes. No explanation. I decide not to worry about it -- apparently, all I need to do is hand out the forms, tell them to return them signed by their caregiver, and send them on their merry way.

Today, Sunday, I was walking past an open office on my way to my car to go home, and stopped in to say hello. As we talked, she mentioned her homeroom class, which generated a discussion on what's entailed. Turns out, I'm supposed to hand out ID's and schedules, two things the students (who probably know what is supposed to happen in homeroom) are likely to want, and be unhappy that their homeroom teacher is clueless about. She tells me the ID's and schedules are in my box in the teachers lounge.

I go in there. Nothing. I go find the Assistant Principal in charge of scheduling, and as soon as she sees me coming she says "Oh, yeah... I need to let you know you don't have any ID's for your kids." This is 4 PM on SUNDAY. When was she planning to let me know?

"What should I tell them?" I ask.

"Well, we're going to round up their ID's from wherever they are and get them to the students on Tuesday."

"What about schedules, since that can't really wait until the next day?"

"You should have those," she tells me.

"Yes, I should. Unfortunately, I don't."

"Oh, well, we'll have them in your box tomorrow morning."

"Righty-o."

D-Day Minus 2

So now there is one day of prep left prior to my debut in front of approximately 180 future leaders of America, who expect me to guide them along the path to greatness. I'm not even remotely ready.

However, I'm feeling reasonably good about my prospects for avoiding major catastrophe. Tomorrow will be all about putting together the specific items I want to talk about and what I want to say. I've decided to stop caring about the fact that my room is going to look like shit relative to all of the overachievers who are decorating their bulletin boards, putting up themed posters and otherwise making their rooms look like artists' renderings of award-winning 3rd grade classrooms. My department head, who teaches calculus, uses a cow theme (cow-culus... get it?) and has cows ("moooving ahead through math") everywhere. There's also an enormous tree on the back wall, for hanging vocabulary words from.

Meanwhile, one of the assistant principals wants us to teach a lesson each of the first 6 days on things like tardiness, dress codes, etc. The packet he sent around includes worksheets, group activities and quizzes. (Why am I late? (a) my previous class is on the other side of the campus, (b) I had to go to my locker, (c) the halls were too crowded or (d) I spent too much time socializing with my friends.) It's about third grade level ("Okay, class. Who can tell me some reasons why a person might be tardy? Now, how do you think we might be able to prevent that from happening in the future?") So it looks like I'm going to start out being a maverick. I'm going to talk about tardiness ("Don't do it. If you do it very often, you're going to have to stay after school to make up the time.") but I'm not planning to do quizzes and group discussions on the subject.

I'm more than somewhat disappointed that there was essentially no help for first-time teachers (of whom there are apparently very few) and "new to MHS" teachers, of whom there are a whole bunch. The latter group probably knows the right questions to ask, but not the answers. The former group really doesn't even know the questions. I've started a list of things I wish I'd known on Monday, and so far it has about 35 items on it. For most of those things, I've learned the right answer, but in several cases, I would have been much better served to have known it earlier. Of course, there are a number of things I still don't know, and I don't have any idea what it is that I don't even know that I don't know.

I guess I'll find out in a couple of days...

Testing

Took the Basic Skills / General Knowledge Exam here in Home State today, a key requirement for certification. You may recall from an earlier post (June 11th, to be exact) that individuals with a combined math and verbal ACT score of 42 or higher may be exempted from this exam back in the other state, but it's required here regardless of one's ACT or SAT score.

You may also recall that on June 9th I discussed the fact I'd taken several practice exams for this Basic Skills test, and was concerned about how difficult / tricky the questions were. On all three practice exams, I barely managed to pass the English Skills part of the test, because the mistakes they hid in sentences were (in my opinion) very difficult to find unless you are paying very close attention. Given my cavalier attitude toward testing, I could easily see myself failing because I wasn't giving each question due thought and deliberation.

So today, I took the actual test, and I swear it's a completely, fundamentally, totally different entity. It was perhaps the most ridiculously easy test ever. Find the error: Mary and he gave John and me the baseball us had asked for. OK, I can see how people might bite on the "he" or "me," but even if a marginally intelligent person with mediocre grammar skills was about to mark (a) or (b), here comes (c) -- "the baseball US had asked for." I used approximately 1 1/2 hours of my allotted 4 1/2, and it only took that long because I felt bad about finishing the sections so quickly, and went back and did all the questions a second time. The only question I had difficulty with was in the "basic skills math" section, because I don't recall what a scalene triangle is. Fortunately, the combination of answer options provided made the correct answer obvious, so I didn't fret too long over my weak vocabulary.

So that's done, almost. One of the sections requires writing an essay of "no more than 8000 words." My essay was, oh, 700 words, tops. Still, I have to believe it will pass, particularly given the unbelievably low standards for passing the other sections. Now I have to make it through Day 1 of school, which is seeming more and more daunting by the moment. I've spent the week cleaning my room and trying to figure out all the different stuff I am supposed to know, or need to know, or would be helpful to know... it's incredible. More on that later.

First Day Reflections

Interesting day. No provision for newbies, so I wandered into the main office area around 7:45, 15 minutes before the program was to start, and eventually asked the principal's secretary where I should go when it became apparent everyone else was renewing acquaintances and into their own agendas. Into the media center (didn't they used to be called libraries?), where about 40 tables were set up. Wandered around for a few minutes and finally sat at a table where there was a familiar face -- Melanie, from the classroom management course I took last week. Turns out the entire table was new-to-the-school people (4 of us), but 2 of them had prior teaching experience elsewhere.

The principal is also new to the school, and gave a pretty good introductory talk... took us through the data on how the school ranked (not pretty, at all), and was inspirational about improving it. A couple of off-hand remarks I heard through the rest of the day indicated that the change he represents is a welcome one; apparently, the administration at MHS had gotten very complacent and resigned.

The rest of the day was less helpful. I peppered the principal's secretary with a hundred questions -- I didn't have any idea who else to ask regarding things like where I go to get my ID, how to get my computer, how to get stuff carted out of my classroom (which has apparently been the repository of all spare file cabinets since 1963), who I should talk to about getting more student desks (there are 32 in the room and I have 2 classes of 35 students), how I can get a new whiteboard, etc.

It occurred to me this evening as I was contemplating the day, that I will walk into the classroom on Monday having spent a total of 1 day in the last 35 years in a high school classroom, and, if it weren't for this career-changers program, without any guidance as to what to do or how to do it. The thought that I might have conceivably been hired in the city where my younger kids live and walked into that classroom completely cold is a frightening one. Not that a week's worth of advance instruction is a lot, but at least it gives me a framework. It also makes me wonder, and I mean SERIOUSLY wonder, how the vast majority of teachers make it through their first few days. I've been around a fairly long time, and experienced a lot of new jobs, new places, etc., which gives me some grounding, at least to the extent that I know what I don't know, and am not embarrassed to ask someone about it. Maybe the Education majors out there learn it all from their student teaching or other places, but I feel as if there is virtually no support at all for first-year teachers within the school itself, and I wouldn't want to be in that position if this were my first job out of college. Maybe there will be more support coming through the rest of the week, but I don't see it on the schedule.

Classroom Management Training

I'm mainly writing this post for myself, so that if I ever get asked to evaluate various parts of my certification training, I'll have written it down somewhere while it was still fresh. So feel free to soldier on, dear reader, but recognize that it's mainly a disquisition on how not to run a seminar on classroom management.

It was a two-day seminar, with different instructors each day (although why this was the case is unclear). Those of us in the career-changers program received the text for this course several months ago, but I hadn't spent much time reading it. The first-day instructor at one point clearly indicated the slide presentation she was giving was hers (noting she had forgotten to change the date on the first slide, which was September 17, 2007), but later in the day seemed to imply that she had nothing to do with writing the presentation.

One thing is clear, however -- she didn't proofread it. In addition to the "September 17, 2007" issue, there were several other typos, including at least one sentence that was gibberish.

Part of good classroom management is arranging the physical space to accomodate the type of interaction you're expecting to have with the students. (I know this because I was actually listening during the seminar.) So, for example, if you expect lots of small group work, cluster the desks together. Or, if you want mostly discussion among the entire class, try to arrange the desks in a large semi-circle or U. Et cetera. Of course, if you can't move the desks around, you live with what you have. But if you can, it's a good management tool. The first day was nothing but lecture and full-class discussion, but the easily-movable desks were arranged in clusters.

Another key element of good classroom management is varying the teaching style -- some lecture, some small group work, some large group discussion, etc. This is important even in 60- or 90-minute classes, so if you have the kids all day like in elementary school or a seminar, it's absolutely critical. So the entire first day was nothing but lecture and large group discussion.

Another part of classroom management is keeping the group on-topic. This is admittedly harder to do when you're talking with adults who want to tell stories that are semi-related, but we spent 30 minutes in a discussion of whether it was against the county's policy to grade homework (it is), and given that, what you could do to ensure homework gets done anyway. Great discussion in many respects, but far afield from how to manage the classroom. Moreover, since the county employee couldn't answer the question and didn't really know what standard practice among other teachers is, it was just a bunch of people with no information trying to guess at a right answer. Highly unproductive and, as noted, off-topic.

Final point on the first day's lecturer: she used imprecise language in instances where precision was very, very important. Specifically, several times, she responded to a question about whether some action was OK to do in the classroom with "Oh, no. You can't do that." Further probing revealed that about one-third the time, this meant "Doing that would be a mistake because it will cause more trouble than it's worth," one-third of the time it was "You can try that, but in my opinion, students will not respond the way you want them to," and one-third the time it meant "That's illegal." OK, maybe we shouldn't do any of those things, but there's a pretty big difference between "that's probably not going to work" and "that will cost you your job."

Second-day lecturer was dramatically better, with much more interaction, much more varied activities and a better slide presentation. Also, the desks were in the same place, but it made sense on the second day because we did lots of small group work.

Pent Up Demand

I sent a note to everybody I had an email address for letting them know I'd taken a math teaching job at MHS here in Home State, and within 24 hours over half of them had written back congratulating me and saying very nice things about how great it is I'll be teaching and how good they think I'll be at it.

It's always nice to be loved, of course, but the thing that struck me was how noble people consider me for doing this -- like becoming a firefighter or Mother Teresa or something. From my perspective, there's a very selfish aspect to my becoming a teacher, particularly with respect to providing for the kids. I've pretty much said to them "hey, you're on your own financially. Good luck and god speed. Oh, and if you have a few extra bucks, I could use some graph paper for my Geometry class."

I also got the sense that a lot of the people who were just finding out about the career change were somewhat wistful, as in "Gee, I wish I could afford to chuck this crappy job and go teach high school." In any case, it will certainly be an adventure. And what more can you want out of life?