3 Down...

So here's what happened this week, in reverse chronological order:

At about 2 PM on Friday, I wandered into Mrs. CowCulus's room to ask if there was anything I needed to know about the Focus Assessment that I was supposed to giving to my students in each class on Monday and Tuesday. Mrs. CowCulus wasn't there, but her faithful sidekick Mrs. D. was, feverishly attempting to get something done on Mrs. CowCulus's computer. (More about Mrs. D, a truly wonderful woman, and the very fun relationship she and Mrs. CowCulus have -- both long-time teachers at MHS.)

Interrupting her mid-stream (which I would ordinarily feel bad about, but the only way to speak with Mrs. D is to interrupt whatever she's doing -- I've never yet witnessed an occasion she wasn't grading papers, working on a lesson plan, making up a quiz, etc.), I asked her about the Focus Assessment. (This is part of the turnaround plan for MHS -- all 9th and 10th graders get 15 minutes of instruction each math class on some topic that will appear on the standarized, state-mandated test, then an assessment on those topics every 3 weeks or so. Don't get me started (again) on the value of that.) Anyway, she lets me know she's attempting to print the tests and answer sheets for her class.

"Um, so am I supposed to do the same thing for my classes?"

"Yes."

"Um, it's 2 PM on Friday... is this something somebody told me already and I just forgot about, or is it something no one happened to mention?"

"Well, I haven't seen any emails about it, except for the one giving us the dates. But last year we had to print the exams, so I was trying to remember how to do that."

"So... these exams won't show up Monday morning like the Benchmark assessment did this week?" (Another long story, but that was earlier in the week, and thus later in this blog, possibly.)

"No."

"Hmm..."

"And of course, you'll need different tests for the 9th graders and 10th graders."

"What about my 11th and 12th graders?"

"They don't take it."

"So I need something for them to do also? I guess I would have figured that out on my own at some point. Any chance anyone was planning to tell me any of this, you know, before Monday?" (Given that we were 15 minutes from the weekend at that point, the answer to this question is clearly "no.")

There's more to this conversation, most of which is distinctly R-rated. At some point, Mrs. CowCulus came back in and informed us that in order for anyone to print the exams, they had to be trained on the system. Therefore, we were pushing the assessment back to Tuesday and Wednesday, with training on Monday. Moments after she sends this email, the technology coordinator sends an email stating the training will be on Tuesday. Stay tuned.

Of course, I am again left wondering whether the administration has any idea that there are teachers in the classroom who have no idea what they're supposed to do to make any of these things happen. What if I had actually been working (say, grading some of those 400 papers I need to finish before Monday at 7:30 AM), and hadn't run into Mrs. D to ask?

OK... I actually have to attend to my certification class now. Possibly I'll get back to the week past, in order to avoid grading all those looming papers.

Tuesday's Gone

Train roll on, on down the line,
Won't you please take me far away?

-- Opening lines of "Tuesday's Gone," by Lynyrd Skynyrd

So the situation is this: at least 20% of my students are ESE (i.e., special needs) or ESOL (non-native English speakers). Statistically speaking, 50% of my students won't graduate, and a lot of them already know who they are, because they're juniors or seniors, re-taking Algebra II and / or Geometry. They believe they can't do this work, because they've tried before and failed (or not tried and failed...), and they'd rather be anywhere on earth but the math class.

I gave a very, very basic Algebra I skills assessment today, and the median score was 7 out of 20. Meaning that, if I were teaching Algebra I and grading the way it's presumably supposed to be graded, roughly 70% of my class would fail. Not just fail Algebra I. But fail the early, basic elements of Algebra I. Algebra I. Unfortunately, I'm teaching Algebra II and Geometry, which means they not only have already passed Algebra I, they NEED Algebra I as the foundation on which to build the stuff I'm presumably trying to teach them. It's absolutely no wonder why I'm having difficulty holding their attention -- the moment I put an equation on the board with a variable in it, they're lost.

OK, that's a reality I need to deal with. I can deal with the skills issue. I can drill, I can do mini/focus lessons on Algebra I skills, I can hold after-school help sessions (not that anyone showed up when I offered today)... whatever. But I can't do that stuff if the people who are bored or uninterested or completely lost are disrupting the rest of the class.

I decided today that the main thing I need to do is to look at every new day as a new opportunity to get it right.

Labor Day Weekend

Update: The starting quarterback for the mighty MHS team was tossed from the game late in the first half for throwing a punch at a player who hit him out-of-bounds, and the second stringer is apparently a one-dimensional running quarterback. So MHS squandered a 16 - 0 halftime lead (in which the starting QB was 4 for 5, 115 yards) to lose 22 - 16. Bummer. MHS had at least 4 unnecessary roughness penalties. One wonders what practice will be like next week... I know I wouldn't want to be there.

Meanwhile, it's 10AM and I've done three loads of laundry, gone out for breakfast and read the paper, run all my errands for the weekend (needed a yardstick, whiteboard cleaner, markers, and groceries) and, were it not for doing this blog entry, I would have started my lesson plans for next week. Working 6:30AM to 2:30PM makes for an interesting daily rhythm.

Friday Night Lights

I went to my first high school football game in a long, long time tonight. I left in the 3rd quarter, but the good guys were winning 16 - 6. Go, Home Team!

Anyway, it was fun to walk around and see the kids being kids, with boy- or girlfriends and hanging out or tossing a ball around or whatever, and not feel any need to monitor their behavior or want them to be doing something different. A surprising number of my students said hello, although a few studiously avoided looking at me as they passed. Hey, I wouldn't have wanted to chat with my high school teachers at a football game either. (Well, actually, I had an English teacher who I remember as something of a babe, so I guess I would have wanted to hang out with her. But you get the point.)

Meanwhile, my first two classes today were just miserable. Couldn't get them to focus, couldn't get them to shut up, etc. We had a pep rally (tonight was the first game of the season) during 2nd period, and I guess everyone was feeling frisky, especially with the long weekend coming up. Regardless, it was no fun. Third period, however, went very well... sort of what I was imagining my classes would be like, back before I got in front of actual students in an actual class. So maybe it's doable. Plus, amazingly, I got kudos both from the department head (Mrs. CowCulus) and the principal. He said really nice things to me about how good he thought I was, which I sincerely appreciated, but had to wonder about -- the only classroom visit I've had was from the AP for a few minutes, and her key finding was that the room was substandard. So how could Mrs. CowCulus and the principal really have any idea if I'm any good? I actually asked Mrs. CowCulus that question, and she said that I'm asking all the right questions, showing that I know what I should be thinking about. Okay, but doesn't execution count, too? Whatever... I'll take the kudos. I need'em.

The principal also asked me what I needed, and I said "two months." I really just hope that I haven't lost the class by the time I get good enough to actually teach them something.

Round 2

So I met with the restless, relatively unruly class today. Not really much better, but there are some things I can do that can make it work, I think. I had a bit of a "come to Jesus" meeting with them, talking about the fact that I'm not going to put up with constant chatter, half a dozen kids having to go to the bathroom, unresponsiveness, etc., and that I was willing to work on ways to make the subject and the discussion more engaging, but that they were going to have to work on ways to get what they needed out of the class, and they were going to have to settle down and pay attention.

Maybe the thing that's most frustrating is that I have no idea if I'm any good or not. No one, other than the kids, has ever seen me teach.

But hey, my word wall is nice, so I got that going for me.

And Now for Something Completely Different

My final class of the day yesterday was incredibly restless -- the ones who weren't trying to sleep were talking, attempting to surreptitiously text or, I don't know, play video games under their desks. Finally, one young lady spoke up, asking if there was any way I could make this stuff more interesting.

A dagger to my heart, in any number of ways. I think this stuff is riveting, of course, and more fun than tournament Foosball. More importantly, I think I'm just about as funny and interesting while discussing mathematics as Tom Cruise on the Oprah Show. Apparently my students disagree.

I've had trouble keeping this group's attention, regardless of the flow of the lesson - short groupwork periods punctuated by mini-lessons, long lecture followed by long groupwork, mini-lesson plus directed class discussion... whatever, I can't keep them awake. So the young lady mentioned another teacher's style, and could I give that a try. I spoke to the teacher in question and he's using something called "Power Teaching" by Chris Biffle. I've looked at the videos and, well, it ain't me, babe. That said, I can certainly incorporate a key principle or two of what he's talking about -- (1) micro-lessons (30 seconds or less) (2) active student engagement -- they must participate, and (3) learn, pair, share - after I teach it, they turn and teach it to their neighbor.

Now I gotta figure out how to make that work...

Teach-by-Number

MHS is a "turnaround" school, meaning... well, I'm not sure exactly what that means, except that the students have not scored well or improved on the state-mandated tests for the past few years, and thus we're in a special category. There is a miniscule amount of additional money attached to being a turnaround school, like having a full-time English coach rather than half-time. However, there are apparently dozens of additional requirements, including one that requires all teachers of 9th- and 10th-graders to spend "10- to 15-minutes" each class period going over questions of the type that may appear on the State Assessment. These are called "Focus Questions."

[The following couple of paragraphs are an aside, and constitute a rant about how much paper I'm allowed to use. I'm not kidding - I have a paper allotment.] The Focus Question forms are designed to be used as handouts, allowing the kids to mark on them in the same way they'd mark on the State Assessment (e.g., filling in the bubble for the letter of the correct answer and doing "gridded response," which is something I am incapable of describing in less than 600 words). But the forms are typically two pages long, and I have 175 students in 6 classes over two days. So in a week, I would go through over 1000 copies and 500 sheets of paper, even if I copy the form two-sided. I'm presumably alloted 1000 copies per month, so if I do it the way I'm supposed to, I will have gone through my entire allotment in a single week. Even if I'm actually alloted 1000 pieces of paper (rather than copies), I'm done in two weeks.

Of course, I also don't have any textbooks for 145 of those students, so if I want to assign homework, I need to give them a worksheet. Assume I give homework every night, but I manage to squeeze all the questions onto a half-sheet of paper. I'm using another 35 sheets of paper a day, or 750 a month. Want to give a quiz? That's 175 sheets. A test? At least 350 sheets. Semesters are 9 weeks long, and I'm told we should give about 3 tests and maybe 3 quizzes. 1500 sheets of paper over 2 months. Want to send a letter and your syllabus home to the parents? 500 copies on 350 sheets of paper. Hand out your rules and regulations, policies and procedures? Another 350 sheets of paper. In a typical month, I would reasonably go through 5,500 copies (on about 3,000 sheets of paper).

One reasonable solution would be to project the State Assessment form onto the whiteboard using my laptop. Except that we have no LCD projectors for the math department. (There are 24 in the school, but they're all allocated to Reading.) I've tried using overheads, but they can not be seen in the back of the room. So I've been writing the questions on the whiteboard "before" each class. The "before" is in quotes because I typically finish writing the questions at about 5 minutes past the bell. The students, meanwhile, have been milling about in the classroom during this time, waiting to get started. I'd leave them up for the next class (the questions, not the kids), but I don't have enough whiteboard space to do that, largely because all my spare whiteboard space is consumed by the "workshop model" and "standards-based" instruction stuff that must be up and visible in all areas of the room. Why the students need to know we're working on standard A.1.9934.BC.2 "Using geometric forms to... blah, blah, blah..." is something no one has even attempted to explain, but is nonetheless state-mandated for "turnaround" schools.

Anyway, going through the Focus Questions actually takes about 25 minutes, so if you include the extra 5 minutes at the beginning of the period, I'm using 30 of my 90 minutes on ancillary stuff. If I thought it would be helpful, I'd probably be okay with it. But it's truly ancillary -- it bears no connection to what I'm teaching, and I'm not allowed to change it in any way to conform. So these kids, who are already confused by trying to understand the math I'm supposed to be teaching, are now getting bombarded by new stuff that doesn't fit in anywhere. It's inconceivable to me that this isn't just more confusing, rather than helpful. And I can't find anyone who disagrees. (Not that I've been asking anyone else -- in fact, the only questions I've asked about these Focus Questions is how I should present them. Of course, the moment I ask, I get a 10 minute harrangue about how nuts they are.) But tomorrow morning, I'll be at it again, discussing the Focus Questions.

So I've spent a week-and-a-half trying to meet the state and county mandates for word walls, workshop models, Focus Questions, Lesson Plans, etc. Fine. I can live with that. But I'm getting up at 4 in the morning and leaving the school at 4:30 in the afternoon, and in all of that time, I'm spending about 45 minutes each day working on what I'm actually going to teach in my subject area. That can't be good.