Words from the mouths of my students, on the topic of suspensions, and dealing with misbehavior in schools:
"Like me myself, I've been through suspension 2 times, and I didn't like it. But I did things before thinking, so take this from me - getting suspended doesn't make you look cool it makes you look dumb. While you could be in the classroom learning a thing or two, your ass is at another site, looking stupid, not learning anything at all, just wasting your time."
"A student only misbehaves when they want attention, or have some serious issues at home, or just want to be seen."
"A student may feel unloved because they don't get it at home or they are getting bullied and they have so much anger in them that it makes them want to fight."
"Teachers and principals should think twice before suspending a student - like for example see why they are behaving this way or maybe look at the situation before suspending them to see who's the real victim."
"I feel like suspension works because when I get suspended, I learn not to do stupid things any more. When you suspended you don't learn the same as when you're in school, and your grades drop."
" Suspension changes peoples attitude and the way they respect their teacher and the school rules."
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The End of KASA
My co-teacher is having a baby next week. I couldn't be happier for her - she's already a great, dedicated mom to a bubbly 5 year old girl. Her last day is Friday, and she's been a trooper - if it weren't for the round beach ball of a belly that she carries in front of her these days, I may not even know that she's pregnant.
Wendy has always made things look easy. At times, she has even tricked me into believing that teaching is easy. When we are asked to do some new task for work, I groan, and she says, 'no problem, easy.'
I've been working as her partner teacher for three years. My last name is Klein, and hers is Santana. We decided to call our class (804) by the name KASA - Klein and Santana Academy. This name has the great phonetic resonance of 'casa', which means house in Spanish. In the wild world of numbers that New York City is, we went from being class 804 at I.S. 217 on 163rd in the 12th district, to just being KASA.
As one half of KASA, I have grown up, become more professional, more competent, more level headed. I've learned every day from this woman who is so different from me in so many ways, but who sees the world through eyes that I understand. In a job where each day can be unpredictable and wild, and can make you feel crazy, she's the one who has reminded me that I'm sane.
I could go on all day about how wonderful Wendy is, and what a gift it has been for me to have met her, and worked so closely with her. Suffice it to say that my excitement for her is tempered slightly by my grief over the loss of this wonderful partnership. Friday is the last day that KASA will really exist, as next year I won't be returning to this school. So these are the last days that I will have working with Wendy.
It's an enormous loss for me, but also one for my students. Wendy's instincts are so strong, her insights so clear. She looks at a struggling student and sees things that I don't. She remembers to take a breath and speak calmly when she's enraged. She knows when to walk away from a conflict with a child. After three years, I've learned a lot, but I still find my eyes drifting towards her for affirmation that my lesson is strong and clear, or for guidance on how to respond to a kid who is challenging me.
I know that I can stand on my own two feet - I don't need her the way that I did at the beginning. I've learned enough to go forward on my own - and to reduce my hysterics, I must remind myself that it's really only for a month. School ends June 27th.
But it feels like the end of an era to have her leave - I am propelled forward into the next stage of my life prematurely (and also years later than I'd planned). I find myself worried about teaching without her, when I know that I don't need to be.
This was a part of my life that I didn't plan on. I titled this blog, 'prelife', because it felt like I was still waiting for my life to begin - killing time while it figured out what it was going to be. I figured that after my two years of teaching, the next step would present itself to me, and that I could have growth and meaningful life experiences while I waited.
But life crept in. In my time here, amidst all of the terrible hard, painful days that I wouldn't wish on anyone, there has also been friendship and love. I met my wonderful husband here, and made several friends that I'll always have.
Next week, Wendy won't be here, and each day will feel different. It will be fine, but it's will feel like I'm passing time, getting through a strange patch. It won't feel real.
Together, Wendy and I created KASA, to give the kids a 'house' in the school. And somehow, my messy desk in my dingy, stuffy classroom, cluttered with four years worth of student work, and excess copies, became a kind of home to me. And when she leaves, an important half of that goes too.
Wendy has always made things look easy. At times, she has even tricked me into believing that teaching is easy. When we are asked to do some new task for work, I groan, and she says, 'no problem, easy.'
I've been working as her partner teacher for three years. My last name is Klein, and hers is Santana. We decided to call our class (804) by the name KASA - Klein and Santana Academy. This name has the great phonetic resonance of 'casa', which means house in Spanish. In the wild world of numbers that New York City is, we went from being class 804 at I.S. 217 on 163rd in the 12th district, to just being KASA.
As one half of KASA, I have grown up, become more professional, more competent, more level headed. I've learned every day from this woman who is so different from me in so many ways, but who sees the world through eyes that I understand. In a job where each day can be unpredictable and wild, and can make you feel crazy, she's the one who has reminded me that I'm sane.
I could go on all day about how wonderful Wendy is, and what a gift it has been for me to have met her, and worked so closely with her. Suffice it to say that my excitement for her is tempered slightly by my grief over the loss of this wonderful partnership. Friday is the last day that KASA will really exist, as next year I won't be returning to this school. So these are the last days that I will have working with Wendy.
It's an enormous loss for me, but also one for my students. Wendy's instincts are so strong, her insights so clear. She looks at a struggling student and sees things that I don't. She remembers to take a breath and speak calmly when she's enraged. She knows when to walk away from a conflict with a child. After three years, I've learned a lot, but I still find my eyes drifting towards her for affirmation that my lesson is strong and clear, or for guidance on how to respond to a kid who is challenging me.
I know that I can stand on my own two feet - I don't need her the way that I did at the beginning. I've learned enough to go forward on my own - and to reduce my hysterics, I must remind myself that it's really only for a month. School ends June 27th.
But it feels like the end of an era to have her leave - I am propelled forward into the next stage of my life prematurely (and also years later than I'd planned). I find myself worried about teaching without her, when I know that I don't need to be.
This was a part of my life that I didn't plan on. I titled this blog, 'prelife', because it felt like I was still waiting for my life to begin - killing time while it figured out what it was going to be. I figured that after my two years of teaching, the next step would present itself to me, and that I could have growth and meaningful life experiences while I waited.
But life crept in. In my time here, amidst all of the terrible hard, painful days that I wouldn't wish on anyone, there has also been friendship and love. I met my wonderful husband here, and made several friends that I'll always have.
Next week, Wendy won't be here, and each day will feel different. It will be fine, but it's will feel like I'm passing time, getting through a strange patch. It won't feel real.
Together, Wendy and I created KASA, to give the kids a 'house' in the school. And somehow, my messy desk in my dingy, stuffy classroom, cluttered with four years worth of student work, and excess copies, became a kind of home to me. And when she leaves, an important half of that goes too.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Playing Favorites
This was originally published on The New York Times, Schoolbook: http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/05/14/the-student-who-made-me-a-better-teacher/
The Student Who Made Me a Better Teacher
May 14, 2012, 5:31 p.m.
By Laura Klein
Sedina was not what you would call a star student. Her aunt and mother were both on my speed dial for three years. She talked incessantly. She was stubborn. She was at her most joyful when she was being her most obnoxious self. Even today, I find notebooks scrawled in my furious, frustrated handwriting, documenting her transgressions and her blatant disregard of my authority.
She was the first student whose name I learned. For anyone who doesn’t teach, let me tell you that the first names you learn are not the “good kids” or the teachers’ pets.
Sedina drove me crazy every day all year, and she pushed me to be better every day all year.
She was 80 pounds of confidence and attitude; very smart, and very social. She was the most natural leader whom I had ever met, at any age. She was the ruler of her class — a class that was notoriously difficult to control. I figured out early on that if I could manage Sedina, I could manage her whole class. (Like all students I write about, her name has been changed to protect her privacy.)
She could reduce a peer to tears in a matter of seconds, something that she did with a casual relish when she felt she had due cause. Kids still tell stories about her power.
One day a boy insulted her, and she spun on him, demanding that he take it back. He refused.
“Take it back right now, or I am going to make you cry in front of everyone.”
Again he refused, aware now that people were watching, and not wanting to back down publicly.
“O.K., I warned you,” she said, before proceeding to verbally dismantle him.
In seconds his head was in his backpack, hiding his tears, and she had turned cheerfully back to her math homework, having handled the problem.
Her sense of justice prevented her from feeling badly for this, and the next day she and that boy resumed their friendship as though nothing had happened.
I was her teacher for two years, and through our daily battles, we created a relationship that was somewhat interdependent. She wanted what I had to offer her — knowledge and support, attention and guidance.
Despite myself, I admired her enormously — her feistiness, her ferocity and her vibrancy.
She was beautiful and strong-willed, and from the first day I taught her I found myself expecting more of her than of the other students — demanding more. As is always the case when you find yourself so invested in a student, I also found myself consistently disappointed, personally hurt when she didn’t live up to my high expectations.
During my two years as her primary classroom teacher, I watched her grow up — compassion and kindness slowly taking the place of the callousness that had characterized so many of her actions when I first met her.
Then she went to a high school that allowed her to have an internship, and she came back to my class as an intern for a year.
All together, Sedina was in my life consistently for three years, and now, for the first time since I began teaching, she isn’t.
Perhaps all teachers have one student for whom they are teaching. Sedina was that student for me. Even now, when I am no longer her teacher, she’s still the one.
She is the one whose attention I sought to capture, whose understanding of a new concept showed me that I had taught it well.
She’s the student who would tell me that I was doing badly, who would demand that I teach it again if she didn’t get it.
She critiqued my looks, my clothing, my lessons and my life choices.
“Miss — why don’t you ever do anything with your hair? It’s just … limp, lying there like that.”
“Miss — don’t wear that again, you look terrible. No man is ever going to like you if you look like that. You look like an old lady.”
I loved her immediately.
Today Sedina is not the same girl I met four years ago. She is calm and self-possessed, confident but vulnerable. She knows who she wants to be, and works hard to be that person. She is aware both of herself, and of the world around her.
She still defends herself in inappropriate ways. She got into a fight early this year, resulting in a suspension at her new high school.
“I had to fight for my respect,” she explained to me when I showed disappointment at this turn of events. “I’m the new girl, so I have to show people that I’m someone to respect if they want to mess with me. I can’t back down.”
She reflects on life with wide eyes that neither distort nor accept the reality of the world in which she lives.
When she learned about the 50 percent graduation rate in her high school, she quickly deduced, “because all of the girls don’t know about how they get pregnant, and so they end up with babies and drop out.”
This is not the future that she plans for herself. “I want to be one of those girls who is really smart, but no one would expect her to be smart because she’s so cute and cool,” she tells me, and she delights in surprising people with a good grade.
I have tried to guide her to use her power well.
“You are so lucky to be a leader, Sedina, but you have to be responsible with that power.”
“Why? It’s not my fault if people want to follow me. That’s their problem.”
“A real leader is someone who people will follow anywhere — you can lead people to do good things, or bad things. You could make people include someone, rather than leave them out.”
Sedina is a girl for whom I have high hopes — and she has those high hopes for herself. She has everything that she needs to achieve great things, and she has a hunger for the future that I rarely see in kids I teach.
I still have wonderful kids every year, and I have kids who push me and teach me, and who help me to grow as a person and as a teacher. There are many more out there who have touched me in a million different,
important ways. But Sedina is the reason that I want to be my best.
I have had an impact on her. When she was inducted into the 10th grade National Honor Society this year, she sent me a message to thank me. We stay in touch, we go to lunch, we talk about the things going on in her life now, and her ideas about the future.
It’s a relationship that is very important to me — to see the way that she grows after leaving my class. After three years with her, my life feels a little bit smaller and emptier without her there.
Sometimes I feel bad for singling one student out as “special.” But perhaps all teachers need those students, to show you the best that teaching can be. I know that I need her, as an example of why I teach every day, no matter how hard or unrewarding it is.
She is a barometer of success — hers and my own. But perhaps more than anything, she is a reminder that kids grow up — that they transform, and that sometimes the worst-case scenario is not the one that comes true. Sometimes they become the best version of themselves, and that’s worth investing in.
The Student Who Made Me a Better Teacher
May 14, 2012, 5:31 p.m.
By Laura Klein
Sedina was not what you would call a star student. Her aunt and mother were both on my speed dial for three years. She talked incessantly. She was stubborn. She was at her most joyful when she was being her most obnoxious self. Even today, I find notebooks scrawled in my furious, frustrated handwriting, documenting her transgressions and her blatant disregard of my authority.
She was the first student whose name I learned. For anyone who doesn’t teach, let me tell you that the first names you learn are not the “good kids” or the teachers’ pets.
Sedina drove me crazy every day all year, and she pushed me to be better every day all year.
She was 80 pounds of confidence and attitude; very smart, and very social. She was the most natural leader whom I had ever met, at any age. She was the ruler of her class — a class that was notoriously difficult to control. I figured out early on that if I could manage Sedina, I could manage her whole class. (Like all students I write about, her name has been changed to protect her privacy.)
She could reduce a peer to tears in a matter of seconds, something that she did with a casual relish when she felt she had due cause. Kids still tell stories about her power.
One day a boy insulted her, and she spun on him, demanding that he take it back. He refused.
“Take it back right now, or I am going to make you cry in front of everyone.”
Again he refused, aware now that people were watching, and not wanting to back down publicly.
“O.K., I warned you,” she said, before proceeding to verbally dismantle him.
In seconds his head was in his backpack, hiding his tears, and she had turned cheerfully back to her math homework, having handled the problem.
Her sense of justice prevented her from feeling badly for this, and the next day she and that boy resumed their friendship as though nothing had happened.
I was her teacher for two years, and through our daily battles, we created a relationship that was somewhat interdependent. She wanted what I had to offer her — knowledge and support, attention and guidance.
Despite myself, I admired her enormously — her feistiness, her ferocity and her vibrancy.
She was beautiful and strong-willed, and from the first day I taught her I found myself expecting more of her than of the other students — demanding more. As is always the case when you find yourself so invested in a student, I also found myself consistently disappointed, personally hurt when she didn’t live up to my high expectations.
During my two years as her primary classroom teacher, I watched her grow up — compassion and kindness slowly taking the place of the callousness that had characterized so many of her actions when I first met her.
Then she went to a high school that allowed her to have an internship, and she came back to my class as an intern for a year.
All together, Sedina was in my life consistently for three years, and now, for the first time since I began teaching, she isn’t.
Perhaps all teachers have one student for whom they are teaching. Sedina was that student for me. Even now, when I am no longer her teacher, she’s still the one.
She is the one whose attention I sought to capture, whose understanding of a new concept showed me that I had taught it well.
She’s the student who would tell me that I was doing badly, who would demand that I teach it again if she didn’t get it.
She critiqued my looks, my clothing, my lessons and my life choices.
“Miss — why don’t you ever do anything with your hair? It’s just … limp, lying there like that.”
“Miss — don’t wear that again, you look terrible. No man is ever going to like you if you look like that. You look like an old lady.”
I loved her immediately.
Today Sedina is not the same girl I met four years ago. She is calm and self-possessed, confident but vulnerable. She knows who she wants to be, and works hard to be that person. She is aware both of herself, and of the world around her.
She still defends herself in inappropriate ways. She got into a fight early this year, resulting in a suspension at her new high school.
“I had to fight for my respect,” she explained to me when I showed disappointment at this turn of events. “I’m the new girl, so I have to show people that I’m someone to respect if they want to mess with me. I can’t back down.”
She reflects on life with wide eyes that neither distort nor accept the reality of the world in which she lives.
When she learned about the 50 percent graduation rate in her high school, she quickly deduced, “because all of the girls don’t know about how they get pregnant, and so they end up with babies and drop out.”
This is not the future that she plans for herself. “I want to be one of those girls who is really smart, but no one would expect her to be smart because she’s so cute and cool,” she tells me, and she delights in surprising people with a good grade.
I have tried to guide her to use her power well.
“You are so lucky to be a leader, Sedina, but you have to be responsible with that power.”
“Why? It’s not my fault if people want to follow me. That’s their problem.”
“A real leader is someone who people will follow anywhere — you can lead people to do good things, or bad things. You could make people include someone, rather than leave them out.”
Sedina is a girl for whom I have high hopes — and she has those high hopes for herself. She has everything that she needs to achieve great things, and she has a hunger for the future that I rarely see in kids I teach.
I still have wonderful kids every year, and I have kids who push me and teach me, and who help me to grow as a person and as a teacher. There are many more out there who have touched me in a million different,
important ways. But Sedina is the reason that I want to be my best.
I have had an impact on her. When she was inducted into the 10th grade National Honor Society this year, she sent me a message to thank me. We stay in touch, we go to lunch, we talk about the things going on in her life now, and her ideas about the future.
It’s a relationship that is very important to me — to see the way that she grows after leaving my class. After three years with her, my life feels a little bit smaller and emptier without her there.
Sometimes I feel bad for singling one student out as “special.” But perhaps all teachers need those students, to show you the best that teaching can be. I know that I need her, as an example of why I teach every day, no matter how hard or unrewarding it is.
She is a barometer of success — hers and my own. But perhaps more than anything, she is a reminder that kids grow up — that they transform, and that sometimes the worst-case scenario is not the one that comes true. Sometimes they become the best version of themselves, and that’s worth investing in.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Word of the Day
'Deadass'
"I'm going over her house after school"
"You Deadass?"
"Yea, deadass, I'm going there."
"She hit her right in her face!"
"No she didn't. I don't believe you!"
"Deadass, she just reached over and popped her! pow pow!"
'Deadass' means 'I swear'. It is used to emphasize how much you mean something that someone may doubt. It means 'For Real, For Real"
"My dog ate my homework."
"yea right."
"I'm deadass, he gobbled it right up!"
After years of hearing it, until today, I didn't really even think of it as a unique form of expression. For whatever reason, when today a student promised me that she was staying for after school tutoring, it struck me how strange the phrase was.
Student A: "I'm staying today."
Me: "Oh good, I'm so glad."
Student B: "Nothing's for sure."
Student A: "No, I'm deadass, I'm staying."
Me: "Oh well if you're dead-a, that means you're serious."
Student A: "Yea" (with no hint of amusement at her own way of expressing her seriousness).
"I'm going over her house after school"
"You Deadass?"
"Yea, deadass, I'm going there."
"She hit her right in her face!"
"No she didn't. I don't believe you!"
"Deadass, she just reached over and popped her! pow pow!"
'Deadass' means 'I swear'. It is used to emphasize how much you mean something that someone may doubt. It means 'For Real, For Real"
"My dog ate my homework."
"yea right."
"I'm deadass, he gobbled it right up!"
After years of hearing it, until today, I didn't really even think of it as a unique form of expression. For whatever reason, when today a student promised me that she was staying for after school tutoring, it struck me how strange the phrase was.
Student A: "I'm staying today."
Me: "Oh good, I'm so glad."
Student B: "Nothing's for sure."
Student A: "No, I'm deadass, I'm staying."
Me: "Oh well if you're dead-a, that means you're serious."
Student A: "Yea" (with no hint of amusement at her own way of expressing her seriousness).
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Incommunicado
“How are your students doing with testing?” the man on the treadmill next to mine is a superintendent in Westchester. He’s a very nice guy, and the students in his district are also in the midst of testing.
“Pretty good,” I answer, and in my mind flashes a picture of Kiara, one of my students, with her head on the desk in a puddle of tears. “Most of them seem to feel good about it so far, but ugh, one of my girls just had a breakdown this morning during the listening portion.”
It’s my mistake. I should have left it at, ‘pretty good’, because that is all that anyone really wants to hear. But it’s just not the whole truth, and for some reason I felt compelled, as I often do, to present a more complete picture.
“Really?” he sounds concerned and surprised, “what happened?”
The second book of the ELA test consists of a listening portion, in which a passage is read aloud to the students twice, while they take notes. They answer a few questions about the passage, and then are asked to write an essay about some aspect of it.
“She just put her head down, she was really exhausted I guess, and she couldn’t focus while the passage was being read, she didn’t take a single note, and just gave up. Eventually someone told me and I was able to go to her and convince her to finish the reading comprehension part at least, but it’s a shame because she should have done pretty well.”
“Did you do any practice tests with them?” he asks this gently, not wanting to imply that I haven’t done my job, but perhaps thinking that it was something that hadn’t occurred to me.
“Yea, we did a month of practice tests – “ I want to keep talking, to explain about Kiara, to tell him that she’s a great girl but she spent the whole night before testing in the hospital, and then came straight to school, worn out from the experience and carrying with her concern for her family member. I want to explain that she has given up before, that she’s already planning to get a GED instead of go to high school, and that it’s hard for her to see the point in all of this. But I don’t.
Instead, I just shrug, and finish the conversation. “Sometimes the pressure of the actual day gets to them I guess.”
He nods, getting it. It’s nice when someone nods like they get it, and feels that they understand the situation. If only they actually did.
I am the man in Avatar, who traveled into the strange world of ‘Pandora’, and saw everything through the eyes of the outsider. He came back, and recorded his video diaries, describing what he saw. He was fascinated, intrigued, curious. But then, as time passed, the strangest thing happened. He stopped being an outsider. He became a part of their world, and when that happened, everything became a lot more complicated. It became much harder to communicate that world to his fellow outsiders.
When I started working in the Bronx, I was an outsider. I grew up in a town that bore no resemblance at all to the community that I traveled to every day. It could have been another planet that I was traveling to – or at least another country, but in truth, it was just a twenty minute drive uptown from my apartment. I saw things that were new to me, though I had always considered myself to be fairly enlightened. I took note of the slang and the styles and the food. I learned about the norms in the way that families operated – different from what I was accustomed to, as well as the expectations that my students had of themselves, and the unique array of challenges that they faced. I learned about these things, and I shared what I learned with people who had not traveled there.
At work, everything was shocking or funny or scary. Everything was a big deal, because I was a teacher, and I was working with kids, and things that happened to them mattered. Everything was important because they were important. Rarely did a day pass when I didn’t observe something worth recording, or taking note of. The crazy things that kids would say or do – the way that they would flaunt their indifference to my authority, or tease one another; the wild ways that they would act out – flipping desks, throwing things, banging their own heads against walls – all of these were stories to be told. I was an outsider looking in, and my language was still that of the community that I was raised in.
But, like that man in Avatar, eventually something shifted for me. I guess it’s the simple act of caring that transformed the experience. I cared from the first day, but I didn’t really understand. To truly care about a person, you have to understand them. That slow shift from finding my students amusing and charming and infuriating and lovely - to seeing them as full people, happened slowly, and without my knowledge. One day I just realized that they weren’t strangers anymore.
When the ‘others’ become people, you feel a responsibility to them that you didn’t feel before. The truth doesn’t change, but suddenly, there’s a need to portray it accurately, to show the whole picture. And the more you know, the more complicated the picture is, and that makes it much harder to paint. You want others to understand what you understand - to see the good in the story about someone doing something bad. To have the back story that makes something crazy seem more reasonable. You want them appreciate the breathtaking beauty of the resilience in the children, even as the stories that you tell paint them in an unattractive light.
Sometimes I think, ‘just shut up, Laura!’ because when I open my mouth to share something simple about work, I find myself blabbering on at length, while my audience’s eyes glaze over. If I start to tell a story, I now find I have to tell the whole thing, so that no one walks away misunderstanding these precious ‘others’. And no one really wants to sit through the whole story – it’s like hearing the family history of people that you have never, and will never meet.
And yet, the experiences, even after four years, are big, and real, and impactful. And it’s lonely to keep them to myself. When friends or family ask how I am or what's new, often, the stories about my work are the answer. To not share feels like withholding.
“Can you get brunch on Saturday?”
“No, I have to visit a student in the hospital.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry that they are sick.”
I’ve simplified it, made it palatable. Yet, I’m not going to that kind of hospital. I’m visiting a student in an inpatient psychiatric treatment center. And the back story is long and horrible, and a visit there is different than a visit to a hospital.
I know that I’m lucky to have gotten to this point – to feel like I really know my students, and to understand them. It makes me better at my job, and it means that I get much more out of it now than I did when I first started. But it makes me feel like a bit of an alien in my own life sometimes. My travels have been all consuming – admittedly I care a bit too much. I don’t let it go at the end of the day, and I don’t walk away from it all unscathed.
It’s exhausting to convey the simplest things about my day, and the little people that I spend it with, and feel like I’m not getting through. I feel guilty when I leave a people with a bad impression about my students. Often people shake their head in wonder at the crazy things that I tell them, as though they are all lost causes, and there is no hope. I want to convey the hope, but I also have to paint the sea of hopelessness that it floats on. But often, the sea is all that people see, and I realize that I didn’t paint the hope in a bright enough color.
“Pretty good,” I answer, and in my mind flashes a picture of Kiara, one of my students, with her head on the desk in a puddle of tears. “Most of them seem to feel good about it so far, but ugh, one of my girls just had a breakdown this morning during the listening portion.”
It’s my mistake. I should have left it at, ‘pretty good’, because that is all that anyone really wants to hear. But it’s just not the whole truth, and for some reason I felt compelled, as I often do, to present a more complete picture.
“Really?” he sounds concerned and surprised, “what happened?”
The second book of the ELA test consists of a listening portion, in which a passage is read aloud to the students twice, while they take notes. They answer a few questions about the passage, and then are asked to write an essay about some aspect of it.
“She just put her head down, she was really exhausted I guess, and she couldn’t focus while the passage was being read, she didn’t take a single note, and just gave up. Eventually someone told me and I was able to go to her and convince her to finish the reading comprehension part at least, but it’s a shame because she should have done pretty well.”
“Did you do any practice tests with them?” he asks this gently, not wanting to imply that I haven’t done my job, but perhaps thinking that it was something that hadn’t occurred to me.
“Yea, we did a month of practice tests – “ I want to keep talking, to explain about Kiara, to tell him that she’s a great girl but she spent the whole night before testing in the hospital, and then came straight to school, worn out from the experience and carrying with her concern for her family member. I want to explain that she has given up before, that she’s already planning to get a GED instead of go to high school, and that it’s hard for her to see the point in all of this. But I don’t.
Instead, I just shrug, and finish the conversation. “Sometimes the pressure of the actual day gets to them I guess.”
He nods, getting it. It’s nice when someone nods like they get it, and feels that they understand the situation. If only they actually did.
I am the man in Avatar, who traveled into the strange world of ‘Pandora’, and saw everything through the eyes of the outsider. He came back, and recorded his video diaries, describing what he saw. He was fascinated, intrigued, curious. But then, as time passed, the strangest thing happened. He stopped being an outsider. He became a part of their world, and when that happened, everything became a lot more complicated. It became much harder to communicate that world to his fellow outsiders.
When I started working in the Bronx, I was an outsider. I grew up in a town that bore no resemblance at all to the community that I traveled to every day. It could have been another planet that I was traveling to – or at least another country, but in truth, it was just a twenty minute drive uptown from my apartment. I saw things that were new to me, though I had always considered myself to be fairly enlightened. I took note of the slang and the styles and the food. I learned about the norms in the way that families operated – different from what I was accustomed to, as well as the expectations that my students had of themselves, and the unique array of challenges that they faced. I learned about these things, and I shared what I learned with people who had not traveled there.
At work, everything was shocking or funny or scary. Everything was a big deal, because I was a teacher, and I was working with kids, and things that happened to them mattered. Everything was important because they were important. Rarely did a day pass when I didn’t observe something worth recording, or taking note of. The crazy things that kids would say or do – the way that they would flaunt their indifference to my authority, or tease one another; the wild ways that they would act out – flipping desks, throwing things, banging their own heads against walls – all of these were stories to be told. I was an outsider looking in, and my language was still that of the community that I was raised in.
But, like that man in Avatar, eventually something shifted for me. I guess it’s the simple act of caring that transformed the experience. I cared from the first day, but I didn’t really understand. To truly care about a person, you have to understand them. That slow shift from finding my students amusing and charming and infuriating and lovely - to seeing them as full people, happened slowly, and without my knowledge. One day I just realized that they weren’t strangers anymore.
When the ‘others’ become people, you feel a responsibility to them that you didn’t feel before. The truth doesn’t change, but suddenly, there’s a need to portray it accurately, to show the whole picture. And the more you know, the more complicated the picture is, and that makes it much harder to paint. You want others to understand what you understand - to see the good in the story about someone doing something bad. To have the back story that makes something crazy seem more reasonable. You want them appreciate the breathtaking beauty of the resilience in the children, even as the stories that you tell paint them in an unattractive light.
Sometimes I think, ‘just shut up, Laura!’ because when I open my mouth to share something simple about work, I find myself blabbering on at length, while my audience’s eyes glaze over. If I start to tell a story, I now find I have to tell the whole thing, so that no one walks away misunderstanding these precious ‘others’. And no one really wants to sit through the whole story – it’s like hearing the family history of people that you have never, and will never meet.
And yet, the experiences, even after four years, are big, and real, and impactful. And it’s lonely to keep them to myself. When friends or family ask how I am or what's new, often, the stories about my work are the answer. To not share feels like withholding.
“Can you get brunch on Saturday?”
“No, I have to visit a student in the hospital.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry that they are sick.”
I’ve simplified it, made it palatable. Yet, I’m not going to that kind of hospital. I’m visiting a student in an inpatient psychiatric treatment center. And the back story is long and horrible, and a visit there is different than a visit to a hospital.
I know that I’m lucky to have gotten to this point – to feel like I really know my students, and to understand them. It makes me better at my job, and it means that I get much more out of it now than I did when I first started. But it makes me feel like a bit of an alien in my own life sometimes. My travels have been all consuming – admittedly I care a bit too much. I don’t let it go at the end of the day, and I don’t walk away from it all unscathed.
It’s exhausting to convey the simplest things about my day, and the little people that I spend it with, and feel like I’m not getting through. I feel guilty when I leave a people with a bad impression about my students. Often people shake their head in wonder at the crazy things that I tell them, as though they are all lost causes, and there is no hope. I want to convey the hope, but I also have to paint the sea of hopelessness that it floats on. But often, the sea is all that people see, and I realize that I didn’t paint the hope in a bright enough color.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Books That Saved My Class
My students hate to read.
"Okay everyone, 15 minutes of independent reading!" I will announce enthusiastically.
They groan.
For 15 minutes, I encourage them, push them, remind them, and correct them.
"I need to see a book on your desk!"
"Um - there's a difference between holding a book and reading a book."
"I noticed that your book is upside-down."
"How are you reading that book if it is still closed?"
"Please sit up, and open your eyes."
It's a battle every time. I tell them to read any book that they want. I encourage them to read books from our class library, and from the school library. I remember the books that I would get lost in as a child, and they were no works of literary genius. To me, reading is the point - getting cause up in a story, connected to a character, letting it linger in your mind after it ends. This is how you become hungry for books - and that is what I have wanted for my students.
This year, I have found success. I have taken to ordering books based on their preferences, and on recommendations from others. It turns out that in their local library, it's hard to get a hold of a book, because usually there are very few copies. Luckily, my principal has budgeted to allow for books to be ordered, and my classroom library has been completely revitalized as a result.
Here, for all interested readers and frustrated teachers of urban youth, are the books that my class has fallen in love with. (I'll keep updating, these are just the ones that leap immediately to mind)
'A Child Called It' by Dave Peltzer
"Drama High" a series by L. Devine
"Emako Blue" by Brenda Woods
"The Coldest Winter Ever" by Sister Soulja
Sharon Flake - "Bang", "The Skin I'm In", "Who Am I Without Him", "Begging for Change" and "Money Hungry"
Sharon Draper - "The Battle of Jericho", "Tears of the Tiger", "Darkness Before Dawn", "November Blues", "Just Another Hero", "Double Dutch", and "Copper Sun"
"The Diary of a Wimpy Kid" Series
The "Blue Blood" Series by Melisa De La Cruz
"The Uglies" Series
"The Color Purple" by Alice Walker
"Everything Is Fine" by Ann Dee Ellis
The Bedford High Series (by Paul Bedford and others) - especially 'The Gun' for boys
"Tyrell" by Coe Booth (boys are crazy about this book)
"Monster" and "Dope Sick" by Walter Dean Myers
"Skeleton Creek" by Patrick Carman
"Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher
The books get stolen and borrowed and lost. Students from other classes show up at my door begging to borrow books, and I always say yes, though my own students protest.
Maybe they won't be able to get the books that they want in the future. Maybe they still won't remember to read each night or in the summertime. But they are all getting a taste of how wonderful a book can be - how it can transport you, and leave you breathless, dying for more. Feeling that way is a gift - one that I got when I was very young, and have never lost. Maybe I think it's so important that they understand it because once you learn that you can go to books to get this feeling, you can always find it for yourself. You don't have to rely on other people - which they often can't.
So I keep ordering books. They aren't all nice books, and they may even not be school appropriate - but they are usually raw, and real, and engaging.
Independent Reading is something to look forward to now, a time when I don't remind them to be quiet, or have to threaten them with homework or quizzes on the book. Now, 15 minutes isn't nearly long enough, and they always ask for more. I don't have to tell them why or how. They just read. And they like it.
Monday, April 16, 2012
The Day After The Test
This was originally published on The New York Times, Schoolbook blog.
http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/04/16/gearing-up-for-test-day-and-then-what/
Those who think that there is too much pressure to “teach to the test” find this time of year to be infuriating. Schools typically cease to focus on their regular curriculum and begin to prepare their students for these venerated exams.
Some schools stop all social studies and science classes, as well as gym, art and enrichment activities, so they can spend all day on test prep in Math and English. This overhaul of the curriculum is extreme, but not unique. Unfortunately, for the students, it sends a larger signal that learning for the year is just about done.
At the middle school where I teach, we prepare by taking practice tests, timing them, going over the answers and familiarizing students with scoring methods. We teach strategies — how to restate the question on short answer questions, how to organize their essays and make sure that they answer completely.
The tests are theoretically designed to measure how much students have learned in the classroom throughout the year. But the reality is that educating students on how to take a test can determine success nearly as much as learning the content.
Is this a terrible thing? Sometimes. But sometimes not. It really depends on how you answer the question: Is it valuable to learn how to take tests?
The truth is that we do use standardized tests to measure achievement — not only in middle school, but in high school, college and after. Some people “test well” and others do not. It’s not a perfect measure of achievement or knowledge, but it is the one that we use, and our students are well served when they are taught how to demonstrate their knowledge in this way.
Some of my brightest kids have terrible time management skills, and consistently find themselves having finished only half the test with only minutes remaining. Others have a habit of flying through the test, racing the clock, and giving up on all questions that seem vaguely unfamiliar. They have to be taught to take their time and to write something even if they aren’t sure.
All of them have to be taught to write down their thought processes, even when it seems painfully obvious, so that the person scoring their test can give them credit.
The reading passages are excruciatingly boring, and my students groan audibly as they read them. They get caught on challenging words, such as “folly,” the focal point of the listening section of a test several years ago. They also get stuck on passages that seem easier but are related to issues to which they have not been exposed, like farming or rural life.
As a teacher, I spend two or three weeks teaching to the test. During these weeks, I show my students scoring rubrics, we talk about how long they should spend on each question, they identify reading strategies that are most helpful. And we practice, practice and practice.
Two or three weeks out of the year doesn’t feel like much, and I don’t mind doing it, because I do know the importance of these exams. But the real problem, perhaps, is that I spend seven months teaching for the test.
In some schools, passing the state exam is a given; students don’t think about the exams because it’s not a challenge that they strive to overcome. In my school, where most kids think of grades as passing or failing, rather than nitpicking over percentages, the state exam is a hurdle to leap. It’s a goal that they understand, because everyone knows someone who has had to go to summer school or been left back because they failed one of their exams.
And so, unfortunately, I and my fellow teachers find ourselves using “The Test” to motivate them far more often than we use loftier goals that they can argue with. “You’ll need this in high school,” doesn’t pack the same punch as, “this may be on your state exam.”
My school does shut down, as all schools must, during the tests. And we do teach strategies that are specific to this test rather than to a lifetime of literacy. But that’s not our main failing, because in a system whose success is measured by those test scores, we would be foolish to do anything else.
Our failure is that we struggle to inspire them beyond the test. Every year, I think that I will overcome this, and I try to push them to achieve for reasons other than the test. And every year, after the test, when I load up my PowerPoint and write the daily objective on the board, I hear groans and shocked sounds.
“Why are we learning?!” they ask in a panic, “We finished the tests!” They look at me as though I missed the memo.
And every year we have to recommit them to learning, reestablish the reasons that they need to be in their seats for the sunny months of May and June, when they struggle to comprehend why they can’t just be outside.
“You know, no one is going to come to school after the test,” one of my strongest students informs me.
“Well, you can fail for attendance, even if you pass the test,” I counter.
“Oh. But we won’t have to be doing too much work, right? We can go on trips and stuff? What’s the point of working after the test?” Her grades are high. She is generally well above average in terms of motivation and effort, but she gives voice to the average sentiment of the students.
We always find something new to motivate them — the need to have a pristine, packed portfolio, or the final report card grades that are forwarded to their high school. And it is always something external, though it seems that the desire for knowledge, the ability to read and write on their grade level, the need to feel smart, should be what drives them.
I tell myself that they are young — that 8th graders are always motivated more by the external than the internal. But it seems like the biggest failing of the test — on top of the countless ones that we usually discuss — is that it gives kids a false barometer of success.
How sad to feel that the measure of your worth and the only reason to strive is contained in the number that you earn on that one day.
http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/04/16/gearing-up-for-test-day-and-then-what/
Those who think that there is too much pressure to “teach to the test” find this time of year to be infuriating. Schools typically cease to focus on their regular curriculum and begin to prepare their students for these venerated exams.
Some schools stop all social studies and science classes, as well as gym, art and enrichment activities, so they can spend all day on test prep in Math and English. This overhaul of the curriculum is extreme, but not unique. Unfortunately, for the students, it sends a larger signal that learning for the year is just about done.
At the middle school where I teach, we prepare by taking practice tests, timing them, going over the answers and familiarizing students with scoring methods. We teach strategies — how to restate the question on short answer questions, how to organize their essays and make sure that they answer completely.
The tests are theoretically designed to measure how much students have learned in the classroom throughout the year. But the reality is that educating students on how to take a test can determine success nearly as much as learning the content.
Is this a terrible thing? Sometimes. But sometimes not. It really depends on how you answer the question: Is it valuable to learn how to take tests?
The truth is that we do use standardized tests to measure achievement — not only in middle school, but in high school, college and after. Some people “test well” and others do not. It’s not a perfect measure of achievement or knowledge, but it is the one that we use, and our students are well served when they are taught how to demonstrate their knowledge in this way.
Some of my brightest kids have terrible time management skills, and consistently find themselves having finished only half the test with only minutes remaining. Others have a habit of flying through the test, racing the clock, and giving up on all questions that seem vaguely unfamiliar. They have to be taught to take their time and to write something even if they aren’t sure.
All of them have to be taught to write down their thought processes, even when it seems painfully obvious, so that the person scoring their test can give them credit.
The reading passages are excruciatingly boring, and my students groan audibly as they read them. They get caught on challenging words, such as “folly,” the focal point of the listening section of a test several years ago. They also get stuck on passages that seem easier but are related to issues to which they have not been exposed, like farming or rural life.
As a teacher, I spend two or three weeks teaching to the test. During these weeks, I show my students scoring rubrics, we talk about how long they should spend on each question, they identify reading strategies that are most helpful. And we practice, practice and practice.
Two or three weeks out of the year doesn’t feel like much, and I don’t mind doing it, because I do know the importance of these exams. But the real problem, perhaps, is that I spend seven months teaching for the test.
In some schools, passing the state exam is a given; students don’t think about the exams because it’s not a challenge that they strive to overcome. In my school, where most kids think of grades as passing or failing, rather than nitpicking over percentages, the state exam is a hurdle to leap. It’s a goal that they understand, because everyone knows someone who has had to go to summer school or been left back because they failed one of their exams.
And so, unfortunately, I and my fellow teachers find ourselves using “The Test” to motivate them far more often than we use loftier goals that they can argue with. “You’ll need this in high school,” doesn’t pack the same punch as, “this may be on your state exam.”
My school does shut down, as all schools must, during the tests. And we do teach strategies that are specific to this test rather than to a lifetime of literacy. But that’s not our main failing, because in a system whose success is measured by those test scores, we would be foolish to do anything else.
Our failure is that we struggle to inspire them beyond the test. Every year, I think that I will overcome this, and I try to push them to achieve for reasons other than the test. And every year, after the test, when I load up my PowerPoint and write the daily objective on the board, I hear groans and shocked sounds.
“Why are we learning?!” they ask in a panic, “We finished the tests!” They look at me as though I missed the memo.
And every year we have to recommit them to learning, reestablish the reasons that they need to be in their seats for the sunny months of May and June, when they struggle to comprehend why they can’t just be outside.
“You know, no one is going to come to school after the test,” one of my strongest students informs me.
“Well, you can fail for attendance, even if you pass the test,” I counter.
“Oh. But we won’t have to be doing too much work, right? We can go on trips and stuff? What’s the point of working after the test?” Her grades are high. She is generally well above average in terms of motivation and effort, but she gives voice to the average sentiment of the students.
We always find something new to motivate them — the need to have a pristine, packed portfolio, or the final report card grades that are forwarded to their high school. And it is always something external, though it seems that the desire for knowledge, the ability to read and write on their grade level, the need to feel smart, should be what drives them.
I tell myself that they are young — that 8th graders are always motivated more by the external than the internal. But it seems like the biggest failing of the test — on top of the countless ones that we usually discuss — is that it gives kids a false barometer of success.
How sad to feel that the measure of your worth and the only reason to strive is contained in the number that you earn on that one day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)