This is why I could never be a reporter

Daily, or even weekly, deadlines are hard for me. So now I have a daily deadline -- I have to have a lesson plan every single day, along with regular test/quiz-making and grading, etc. -- and in my certification course, a weekly deadline that requires about 2 hours of reading and another couple of hours of writing. I'm not sure how it's getting done, but so far I've stayed just ahead of the oncoming train, so hopefully I can keep it up for another 75 days.

My principal called me "Captain F" in the faculty meeting yesterday -- apparently I have the highest failure rate of anyone in the school (49% of my kids received F's in the second quarter). He called me and 30 other teachers into his office earlier in the week for individual meetings to discuss the high failure rate (it looks bad to his bosses if a lot of kids fail), and I just laughed. I told him what I was doing this quarter to try to help kids do the work they needed to do in order to pass, but that if they're skipping class, coming unprepared, not listening or taking notes, not doing the homework and failing the tests, I wasn't planning to pass them.

Every kid also expects to be able to do something called "grade recovery," which is apparently the following plan: a) blow off all course work, classes, homework and effort for at least 6 of the 9 weeks, b) either don't take or fail miserably all exams during the quarter, c) skip the first few classes of the next quarter, then d) receive a "grade recovery" packet consisting of work they'll have to complete in order to improve their grade from D or F to C. The packet is expected to be short and easy. In the first quarter, I denied all requests for grade recovery, because I told them that grade recovery was for people who tried but for various reasons weren't able to pass the first time, not for people who made no effort but still wanted a good grade. This quarter, I've offered grade recovery to all who want it, largely because half of my students failed, and that's not good either.

But my grade recovery packet consists of every assignment we completed in the quarter, including a project on volume and surface area of polyhedra, and even if they complete that, they still don't get a C unless they pass a make-up end-of-quarter exam. They looked at me as if I had three heads when I explained the process to them. I have one student who had showed up twice this year -- once on the first day of school and once in mid-October -- and SHE wanted grade recovery.

Go re-read some of my early posts regarding the incredible lack of math skills my students have. There are, in my opinion, two reasons for that. The first is that our urban, low-income schools' "standard" class includes about 10 students who would not have been in the same schools as the "standard" kids 15 years ago, much less in the same classes. Are there benefits to reducing the minimum IQ required for mainstreaming and also including kids with "special needs" in standard classrooms? Probably. Certainly for those kids there are some benefits, although there are also ome negatives. But for the education of the rest of the students, it's an enormous drain. The in-class behavior, work ethic and motivation of ESE (Exceptional Student Education*) kids is often terrible, and it's usually contagious. Their inability to grasp concepts quickly means we spend at least 3 times as long on topics as I believe is warranted, which bores my good students and enables my mediocre ones to screw around and still eventually "get it" (contributing to my discipline problem).

The second reason for the incredibly low skill levels is that everyone is under pressure to increase the percentage of kids who graduate, and no one is under pressure to ensure they actually learn anything (except just enough to get a passing grade on the state exam). Middle schools send kids to high school who cannot add two integers together correctly, and are incapable of multiplying one fraction times a whole number, much less two fractions. So high schools dumb down the curriculum and then give passing grades to many, many students who can't even do the dumbed down work. We are encouraged, to the point of having one-on-one meetings with the principal, to improve our pass rate -- and we are never, ever encouraged, graded on or measured in any way with respect to ensuring they understand the course content. So it shouldn't be surprising that we pass kids who don't know anything. I'm appalled at how little the C and D students in my classes know -- the F students had to have been actively attempting to avoid learning anything, or else they would have accidentally picked up enough knowledge to pass the course.

So, while I want very much to get my pass rate up, and I'm really not proud of flunking half of my kids, I'm also not terribly concerned about it, as long as I'm doing the things I'm supposed to with respect to safety nets and second chances. I am. So I laughed when Mr. Principal called me "Captain F." He actually laughed, too, so I think I survived with my "good first year teacher" reputation intact.

All for now.

*This is presumably the outlet for the very gifted as well, but I've yet to see or hear of a gifted student getting any resource allocation from the ESE department.

On Aging

I don't often think myself old... even when my daughter was getting married, or both older daughters graduating from college / grad school in the same month, but occasionally it hits me in the face, like the other day.

I meet weekly with a small group of teachers who have many of the same students I have, to talk about issues we may be having with those students, and whether any of us have found good methods of dealing with those issues. The leader of this group is a history teacher who I've come to respect for her good insights and wise perspective. She mentioned her birthday was coming up. Someone asked which one. She answered she'd be 25. "My god," I realized. "I have a daughter older than you."

Makin' Copies.

New rule, starting Jan 4: we've hired someone to make the copies for us - we're no longer allowed to make our own - and we have to submit the request 48 hours in advance. And we're limited to 1,000 copies per month. Of course, given that I have yet to have a worksheet ready for one of my courses more than about 6 hours in advance of the course, I'm unlikely to need the 1,000 copies.

I'm pretty sure this rule will go away very quickly, given that virtually every teacher in the school is going to go nuts the first time they need a worksheet or an article or whatever copied for their class the next day. That said, it's going to be a right regular pain in the class between now and then.

The 1,000 copies per month thing sounds like kind of a lot, but keep in mind -- I don't have textbooks. So if I want to assign homework, particularly on something like polyhedra (which no one can draw freehand), I have to produce a worksheet. That's 80 copies each day I assign homework. If I give a quiz or test, it's another 160 copies over 2 days. Which means I can give 12 homework / quiz / test pages per month, or about 1 per week, since I only meet with the same kids every other day. God forbid I should give a 2 page test or homework assignment.

Interesting Stuff

I gotta get to bed, so this is going to be short, but with any luck, I'll come back and edit it after the state visit on Wednesday.

I prepared extensively for a geometry lesson, with multiple handouts and lots of thought put into how to step the kids through a multi-step process that was going to be important for them to be able to get through.

First period is a disaster. (It starts with a kid who won't surrender her phone, forcing me to call security to escort her to the administrator's office). Virtually no one is paying attention, and the ones who are, are grousing about not understanding, my going too fast, etc. I can't get anyone in the room to focus on the work and get through the step-by-step process.

Second period... same process, same preamble regarding the work, etc. It goes incredibly well, the group all gets it, and we whip through several examples and extra problems with time to spare.

Third period was in between, but generally positive.

Why? The 1st period class has a personality, driven by a few students but contributed to by many. And that personality is not good for their education or my sanity. More than half the students are flunking, and one reason I prepared the lesson I did today was to give them a chance for an easy, good grade based on attempting the classwork. All it actually did was further separate the ones who are flunking (none of whom even attempted to complete the work) from the ones who are not (virtually all of whom completed the work).

Apropos of Nothing

Because I'm a new teacher, my principal is supposed to, in the first 45 days, have a pre-observation interview with me, observe me in the classroom, and have a post-observation interview, after which I generate a plan for what I'm going to work on. He sent a note out a couple of weeks ago to me and a few other teachers to stop by his office THAT DAY, as early in the day as possible, to have the first meeting. I stopped him in the hall and we scheduled the meeting for the following day at 1 PM. I sat alone in his office until 1:10, at which time he walked in, asked "Are we supposed to have a meeting?" and told me he had a 1 PM observation of someone else he had to do. I left, saying that he should call me when he wants to reschedule. I haven't heard from him. Of note, we're now approximately 60 days into the year.

Meanwhile, he actually did an observation of me when the state poobahs were in town (don't know why), but I've gotten no feedback from him about it, and no paperwork of any kind regarding it.

My father

My father died yesterday.

Most of the traits I believe myself to have that I like are inheritances from him, including his facility for math, his quick wit and his sharp sense of humor. Every time I come up with some elaborate hoax to perpetrate on a co-worker or create some very personalized toy or trinket to give to a friend, I think of the similar things he did in the years I was growing up. I claimed never to have forgiven him for taking my "Gulf No-Knocks" horseshoes (a gas station giveaway back in the days they fought for your business with promotional items) when I was eight, promising to replace them the next time he bought gas, not realizing the promotion had ended. Secretly, though, I thought it was kind of cool he'd used the horseshoes as part of some gag on a friend at the office.

We weren't as close as I would like for a father and child to be. I don't know when, exactly, we stopped trying, but we did. I know he was disappointed with many of the choices I made throughout my adult life, and I was disappointed he wasn't more accepting of them, or at least more accepting of me despite the choices. I will undoubtedly err in the opposite direction with my own children, and their remembrances of me will be colored by their disappointment I didn't provide more guidance in their lives. I can live with that.

A minister came into his room at the hospice yesterday while my mother and I were there and asked us what we would like to pray for, for him. I chose peace. I don't believe he found much peace during his life, and it would be good if he could find some in death.

So, my father is dead. May he rest in peace.

Mea Culpa

So I'm getting irritated with my friends and family who haven't been posting to their blogs (what am I supposed to do when I should be doing lesson plans if you haven't updated your blog recently?) and I'm at least as guilty as they are. So here's a blog post.

Topics I should cover soon...

The state visit to each of the turnaround schools.
New teacher hired, and some kids moved from everyone's geometry classes into his.
"Unpacking" our data to differentiate our instruction.
The note sent to all new teachers, plus all teachers who are on double secret probation.
Parents wanting grade recovery.

we'll see...