Diary of a Snow Day

Friday, 12:50 am: It's way past my bed time, but I went to an improv show at Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and the snow made the trip home longer than usual. Practically the whole cab ride home we discussed the likelihood of a snow day considering the travel conditions. Still, without the go ahead from the Chancellor I have to go to bed.

6:15 am: 10 minutes before my alarm is set to go off (typical) I get up and go straight to my phone. There are multiple text messages from fellow teachers: "SNOW DAY!!!" I look outside my window to see for myself, turn off my alarm and go back to sleep with a huge smile on my face.

9:10 am: I wake up, unusually well-rested, and figure out what's next. I flip on last night's Daily Show and treat myself to a leisurely bowl of cereal. This is nice. I could get used to this. After The Daily Show I scroll through the DVR and find last week's Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates. It's an awesome series about immigration and heritage featuring celebrities like Eva Longoria (!), Meryl Streep (!!) and Stephen Colbert (!!!). I guess it's a sign I'm getting old, but damn I do love me some PBS (as a counterargument to my growing maturity, I will probably check later if there are any episodes of VH1's so-bad-it's-kinda-good-but-really-it's-just-awful Frank The Entertainer in a Basement Affair onDemand).

10:32 am: I start to realize I kinda had important things to do today. I need to kick off our persuasive writing unit, we were supposed to take our Unit 5 Progress Check for math and my thank you package is due to DonorsChoose early next week and the kids haven't written their thank you notes yet. Damn. I contemplate starting my planning for Monday or checking what's onDemand.

11:34 am: I procrastinate by "cleaning" my desk. This consists mainly of recycling/throwing out about 15% of what's there and consolidating the rest into one or two manageable looking piles. Afterward, I'm hit with a sudden impulse of productivity and create a rubric for our travel brochure writing pieces.

12:45 pm: I hit up the Y for a rare workout. Not sure whether to count this as productivity or not since it doesn't impact my classroom at all, but it's a far better use of my time than anything VH1 has to offer.

2:15 pm: There would be about 20 minutes left in our school day, which means I should probably try to do one more thing that's productive before I let my weekend officially start.

2:57 pm: I mapped out my weekly plan (lesson objectives for each day) so I can congratulate myself and start my weekend. Think I might watch some mind-numbing reality TV so I can wonder in the advances of modern plastic surgery and silently hate myself.

A Good Teacher is Hard to Find, a Bad Teacher is Hard to Fire

A recent article by the NY Times (http://s.nyt.com/u/zKS) describes the city's efforts to remove incompetent teachers from the classroom. The article largely portrays the process as unnecessarily and frustratingly slow. The fact that only three teachers have actually been removed for incompetence (different from misconduct) and roughly 13 more have resigned or retires illustrates the city's uphill battle on this front. But while I have certainly seen incompetent teachers and remarked privately that they don't belong in the classroom, I don't entirely sympathize with the Teacher Performance Unit (the ominous sounding entity created by Bloomberg to spearhead removal of bad teachers).

A main reason their job is so difficult is because most of these teachers have tenure (93% of third year teachers received tenure last year according to the article). But another major reason it is so hard to get rid of these incompetent teachers is because schools have to demonstrate they made continued, consistent effort to help incompetent teachers become competent. From personal experience I don't think many schools make a sincere effort on this front, and since removing a bad teacher without evidence of this effort is near impossible, the easiest route for administrators is turning a blind eye. With both issues - tenure and support - the onus is on school administrators. Just as i am accountable for my students they must be accountable for their teachers.

The first (and most important) step then in improving teacher quality isn't firing bad teachers, but providing more support and meaningful professional development opportunities early on. Then and only then, if a teacher fails to improve (within a reasonable amount of time, say 6 months to a year) should a teacher be labeled incompetent and removed from the classroom.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Help Bring the World Into Our Classroom

Very little time or energy to expound fully, so instead, a bit of shameless promotion for my DonorsChoose proposal. Please give it a look, donate if you can, and pass it along to friends and family. This one's for geography materials - a talking globe, 2 maps, posters and geography skills books.

My students

Help me create citizens of the world! There's a big world out there and I want to connect my students to it through a love and understanding of world geography and cultures.

I teach 19 students in a high-need community. All but two of my students qualify for free lunch. My students are energetic and enthusiastic learners, constantly curious about the world around them. Most are designated as English Language Learners, and all of them speak Spanish at home.

My Project

The resources I am requesting will create new connections to geography and world cultures for my students. For many of my students, continents and countries, cultures and faraway places are abstract ideas. In addition, we lack some basic resources including a current globe and maps of the world and our country. Through the electronic globe, posters, maps, and books I hope to make these concepts real and meaningful for my students.

The world is growing more and more interconnected. It is vital that tomorrow's citizens understand their place as part of a global community. That work begins with teaching students about the places and people from around the world. With your help, I will make my students into the global citizens of the future!

Thanks for your support!

Constants and Variables

One thing I've learned as a teacher is that kids don't do well with change. The central issue with my classroom management as a first year teacher was a lack of consistency. The behavior of my students was a reaction to the instability of the classroom environment I created. But even once you've learned to create a stable classroom structured around rules, routines and procedures, there are always x-factors that can throw off your students.

Sometimes it can be something as simple as the weather. A thunder storm or snow can produce plenty of excitement. A change in the day's schedule - a substitute in the classroom in place of an absent gym teacher - can get kids pretty worked up too. One of my students had a complete meltdown when this happened my first year. Then there's major disappointments like today, when we learned that tomorrow's field trip was postponed.

We had all been looking forward to our trip to the Bronx Botanical Gardens for months. But apparently nobody booked a bus... So, the trip had to be postponed a month. An adult in this case can weigh the actual disappointment of postponement against theoretical disappointment of cancellation and recover pretty easily. A third grader however? Telling a third grader to wait a month you might as well tell to wait a year.

Sudden changes and unexpected adjustments are difficult for all kids, but I think they're especially difficult for children of poverty. So many variables in these kids' lives are uncertain. Will they be celebrating their birthday? Will they moving to a new apartment or shelter? Will they see their dad this month? Will they have dinner? For many of these kids school represents a rare constant in their lives. It's not surprising then that they react so extremely when this constant changes.

Playing to Learn

Susan Engel, a senior lecturer in psychology and director of the teaching program at Williams College outlines a plan to improve education via curriculum in a guest op-ed for the NY Times: . The gist? If Obama really wants to make kids "college and career ready", curriculum should be built on meaningful experiences centered on a few broader goals, rather than a "laundry list" of standards or performance indicators.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Teacher Becomes the Student

I have a student I've nicknamed Eeyore who loses everything. He loses the pencil out of his hand. He forgets the jacket that is lying at his feet. His absentmindedness is epic and drives me nuts. There's only one problem with my frustration: I have my own issues with forgetfulness.

I have lost articles of clothing in countries around the world. I am constantly asking my students, "Did you see where I set my pen down?" or "Where did I put those papers...?" So, it was with a little bit of embarrassment the other day when I realized I had misplaced my jacket...right after Eeyore realized he couldn't find his at the end of the day.

"I know I brought it upstairs!" I insisted. A couple of students even vouched for that fact. But sure enough, when we went down to the cafeteria to look for Eeyore's jacket (he found it lying on the floor beneath the table), we found my coat hanging on a hook next to that same table. So maybe I'm not ready to lecture my students on keeping track of their belongings...but I'll still try to model other worthwhile habits while I work on my own problems with forgetfulness.

Parent Communication 2.0

The mom of a former student of mine became started following me on Twitter today. It was a surprise and presents a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, up to this point I've mainly used Twitter to share inane updates (Quest for a Niners bar has finally come to an end.) and funny/interesting headlines (RT@TheOnion Friendship Between Caterpillar, Horse Exploited for Cheap Children's Book http:/onion.com/5iCtj4) with friends. At the same time, it's become increasingly clear that Twitter is not the place for privacy.

Still, while I've worked to maintain an appropriate public image on Twitter, I still hoped to keep it a personal space. Connecting with parents (and eventually students presumably) ends that, and blurs the space between my professional and personal realms. To paraphrase George Constanza, "My worlds are colliding!"

It seems simple enough to block this woman and any other professional contacts from following me. I just worry about her taking offense since she's already started following me. Maybe someone with a better knowledge of Twitter can tell me whether she will have any way of noticing she's not getting my Tweets?

Regardless of how I solve the problem, it's definitely a new problem characteristic of the new era teaching is entering. Beyond all the political changes teaching is undergoing, it is also transforming at a rapid pace as technology evolves. I've found technology can provide exciting new opportunities such as the class web site I've used to post nightly homework, encourage parent-teacher communication and post video lessons. But it can also be unsettling, as in the case where a former student, only in the 5th grade, messages me on Facebook.

It's not exactly groundbreaking news, but it is clear the internet is breaking down barriers between public and private identities. It will be interesting to see how that affects the "dual" identities that are common among teachers.