February 3, 2010

Five Things I Love About Teaching

by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY

It’s that time of year when it’s hella/wicked/crazy/stupid/(insert regional slang here) hard to stay positive. We’ve got like eight weeks till Spring Break. Morning’s are cold and dark. The sun’s gone by six which means two and a half hours at most of schoolless light. Teachers and students alike are looking around the room and thinking, “These guys again?” And the sound of the school bell is enough to make you question the very nature of life itself. (It rings, therefore I am? And so on.)

All those inspiring ideas and lessons you gestated over the summer—gone with your tan. No doubt about it—this is the toughest stretch of the year. Which is why I thought it would do (me) some good to look deep into my cold teacher heart and reaffirm some of the things I love about this cruel, cruel job.

Enter Love stage right, wielding a jagged ray of light stolen from the legendary Unjammable Copy Machine.

Thus defeated, Bitch and Moan, the evil witches of Bellyache, slither offstage.

Sorry ‘bout that weirdness. Sometimes when I write these blogs after a long day of teaching, I don’t know what’s too weird. Anyway, here goes. Five things I love (and that you should consider loving too) about teaching:

1. Getting roasted by the kids. I’m not talking real insults or anything. Being called a “punk ass bitch” isn’t getting roasted—that’s more like a public lashing or having a shoe thrown at you. Some disses aren’t quite so hostile, but they aren’t exactly ha-ha funny either. A teacher friend of mine once caught a student sneaking up behind him with a sticky note that read, “Mr. Shitty Breath.” A little too grimace-worthy to be a legitimate roast. What I’m talking about is when a kid burns you with wit and timing—the real deal, you know? Even though the entire class is laughing at you (some of which laughter is more mean-spirited than you’d prefer), you can’t really be mad at him—it was just too damned funny. Here’s an example, though this particular barb is admittedly short on wit: The other day, while discussing society’s limiting definition of manhood, I asked my class what a person who is not “a player” or who does not “get a lot of girls” is labeled. With zero hesitation, one of my students (knowing damn well that I am the tennis coach) blurted out, “A tennis player!” Bada-bing! Keep reading →

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January 29, 2010

The Schoolyard Foodie: Keepin’ it real in the kitchen with middleschoolers

by GEHRY OATEY

Imagine you are 12 years old.  Your body is starting to do new and fascinating things like grow facial hair, smell, and change its voice.  Your emotions are bouncing off the walls regularly and perhaps there is no other time in your life when what you put into your body is of greater significance.

During your 20 minute lunch break, however, you choose an empty stomach vs. a stomach ache because the vacuum packed food served at your school encourages its own emotional response.  After the 6 or so hours of school, your diet has consisted of a small container of whole milk and an apple that was part of the school lunch.  Today is one of the two days that you take cooking class during the after school program; there is a distinct possibility that you will get to eat!

Today it is Tacos de Asada o Pollo (Chicken or Beef Tacos) served with Pico de gallo, salsa, cilantro, and limon.  Another student’s mom will be visiting the kitchen to show the class how to prepare the Asada. As the cooking and gardening teacher, it is my job to facilitate this beautiful chaos. Thankfully, this all takes place in the after school program, which has a completely different set of norms than the traditional classroom.

Here is a running diary of today’s cooking class:

2:20pm

Students line up at the door while the other classes exit—could easily be the platform of a major train station….

14 students pour into the classroom, bombarding me with their energy and voices:

“What are we going to cook today?”
“Can I cook with Maya?”
“Mr. G.! Mr. G.! Are we making tacos today?”

We go over the plan for cooking.  This plan is little more than a rough outline because when you take 15 middle school kids into the kitchen, every class is like a giant art project—you can’t be sure what you’re going get.  Mix the sheer excitement of doing something that is going to feed the body with whatever emotions have been stirred up during the day and the kitchen takes on a life of its own.  Sadly, it is not unusual to hear that most of my students have eaten very little that day.  Or sometimes they don’t have to tell me; when kids are hungry, their behavior changes. Keep reading →

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January 24, 2010

The Workshop Model: Finding My Way to Their Independence

by GABRIELLE LENSCH PLASTRIK

In her groundbreaking work, In the Middle, Nancy Atwell proposes a workshop model of running the English Language Arts classroom.  She suggests that giving students control over the reading and writing that they are doing allows them to do more real and meaningful work.

Ever since first reading her book, I have agreed with the philosophy behind it.  Nevertheless, I have never been able to fully convert my classroom.  Almost weekly I ask myself why.  My methods teacher at Northwestern University’s MSEd program, Dr. Dagny Bloland, would say that teachers feel compelled to do the things in the classroom that were done to them, and that it is frequently easier to put oneself inside of a cage and swallow the key than it is to try something new and maybe uncomfortable.  For many people, these things are probably true.  A lot of teachers cling to the “sage on the stage” model of teaching, but anybody who has ever been in my classroom would tell you that that is not how it is.

For me, it has more to do with feeling pulled in hundreds of directions.  My students read independently for 35 minutes in class each week.  They work on independent writing projects for a 40 minutes a week.  We have a spelling and vocabulary quiz every other week.  I teach grammar lessons every week.  I plan drama activities every two or three weeks.  On top of all of this, I teach United States’ and European literature (2 different classes).  I feel compelled to switch to a workshop model, at least for reading, but I would lose the content that comes with teaching a planned curriculum.  By content, I do not mean skills, but the type of content that comes from following literature through time in a particular geographical region.

My students study US and European history in a course that parallels mine.  If I switched gears, would enough be gained to merit losing the parallel?  Is there a hybrid system that would work better than the one I have?  This is what I spend a good amount of my reflective time thinking about.  How can I possibly get everything done to everyone’s satisfaction when the students have so much freedom? Keep reading →

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January 18, 2010

How a girls group fell from the sky like a divine lightning bolt or a UFO and landed in my classroom

by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY

A few months ago, Tameeka Kelly, the Programs Director of the non-profit, Engage Her, “a national organization dedicated to educating and activating multicultural women,” contacted me in hopes of starting a girls group at my school. Would this work? Is there a need? Will you put together a group? I was floored. It was the teacher equivalent of an immaculate conception. I hadn’t exerted so much as one ounce of energy in this direction, and now here I was heavy with child. A miracle.

Her vision was to create a space for the girls to talk about the kinds of things they don’t feel comfortable talking about around their Young Weezy worshipping, muscle car coveting male counterparts (a generalization of the state of masculinity in my classroom, but you get the point). Once or twice a month they would meet to talk about pertinent issues, and then, with her and my help, they would write a blog about one of those issues, from a personal or policy perspective.

Even more miraculously, some of those blogs would be published on the Engage Her website—an organization, by the way, which pulls speakers such as Dolores Huerta and Gloria Steinem at their annual leadership conference. The experience (and, therefore, pressure) of being published is a tough one to simulate in the classroom. Class websites/blogs are great, but who really reads those, you know? This was for real.

It’s too early in this partnership to speak to its success(es). All I know so far is the girls love it, my barometer of that fact being the amount of times they ask, Mr. B., when’s the next meeting? It’s a girls group, so I don’t sit in on the actual meetings, but they tell me there has been a substantial amount of story sharing and group hugging thus far. If that were all that happened, it would already be a boon for these young women’s lives.

And they’re writing too. I should add that I’m not giving them a grade for these blog posts. Which means they’re doing it on their own, with no carrot or external motivation beyond the approval of myself (not so important) and Tameeka (very important—she’s essentially the responsible and sophisticated older sister they never had, who, in addition, is from the community, in fact, graduated from this very school ten years ago).

Oh yeah, and there’s that publishing thing. Keep reading →

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January 13, 2010

The Schoolyard Foodie: 2012 — The beginning or the end?

by GEHRY OATEY

A Mayan elder told me recently to forget all the BS about 2012 (he didn’t quite use those words). No, the world is not coming to an end, despite all evidence to the contrary from Hollywood. According to this wise elder and farmer, 2012 is the end of another cycle; we are leaving a 100 year period of war and violence and entering into 100 year cycle of wisdom.  My Buddhist leanings aside… from what I see happening around food and middle school kids, I think he may be right.

I see it every Tuesday and Friday: ceviche, tomatadas, how about some homemade pizza with organically grown produce, sushi, eggrolls (heck yes—fried), sweet potato pancake caramelized and served with some fresh greens from the market… I’m not talking about what I eat at home. And I’m not talking about any of Julia Child’s 524 recipes that I wrote about in a previous blog either.

I’m talking about Middle School Kids.  Hells yeah.  Not only do they cook and prepare the food mentioned above, they run the weekly produce stand as well! That’s right—the kids are so “over” the food they are being served in the cafeteria, they will work for 3 hours outside of school unpaid in order to take home some fresh produce. They will even put on an apron and plastic gloves. Sure, it is a gigantic mess, but the crazy thing is they actually clean it up! How many 13 year olds do you know who clean up after themselves? For those of you who are down with middle school kids, you are nodding your head right now with a smile.

Keep reading →

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January 11, 2010

Thank you, A Better Oakland

We recently got a nice shout-out from the popular Oakland blog, A Better Oakland. They said, “(Teacher, Revised’s) reflections on their classroom experiences and the education system are sometimes maddening, frequently heartwarming, and always a refreshing reminder of what wonderful, caring people we have out there trying to take care of Oakland’s kids.”

Always good to know we’ve got a few friends out there on the oh so cold and lonesome information superhighway.

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January 6, 2010

Welcome back, Teach! We still hate you! (Not really.)

by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY

The end of a long break always goes something like this: The night before, I’m a wreck. Even though I’m not physically required to be at school for another twelve hours, I might as well just go in and sharpen pencils or something (now isn’t that a creepy image—the insomniac teacher alone at school in the wee hours of the morning, methodically sharpening number twos). ‘Cause that’s where my head is. But I don’t. Instead, I mope around the house, unable to sit still long enough to read or book or give the cat a semi-satisfying scratch. It’s over. All those beautiful empty days. Gone.

“Are you okay?” my girlfriend asks.

“Sure, whatever,” I mutter.

At this point, I’m officially pacing. I know I should plan the week’s lessons, grade some papers, find my school keys, anything at all to kick-start the teacher part of my brain. But I can’t. Which would be okay if I could enjoy doing nothing for one last glorious evening, maybe sit outside and listen to Oakland’s night sounds, play a little guitar. Why should fourteen days of relative relaxation end in such turmoil? All good and well to think these thoughts, but the before school anxiety continues to swell inside me like some kind of unpoppable psychological zit.

Oh, sweet beer, if only you could plan my lessons too.

Then arises a most shameful inspiration: Maybe I should get drunk. Yeah, I know it sounds bad, but let’s be honest, teachers, you’ve been there. Right? And I’m pretty sure there’s a six-pack of Tecate left over in the fridge from New Year’s Eve…

Wisely, this time, I don’t turn to the bottle. I play guitar. It helps. A little. Nothing like belting out a little Johnny Cash (hey, The Man in Black, kind of fitting for a funeral, don’t you think?) to make you feel like you don’t have to wake up at six in the morning to face a roomful of groggy, slightly pissed off teenagers—which room, by the way, will be veritably buzzing with the sound of incoming text messages being received on shiny new iPhones still ripe with the stink of Santa. (Did that sound bitter? Bear with me for a moment.)

At eleven, I get ready for bed, terrified of what the night holds. I never sleep worse than the night before going back to school. For one thing, my average bedtime for the last two weeks has been between one and two in the morning. And now I’m trying to be all responsible and go to bed at a normal adult hour. The body is not so easily fooled. Keep reading →

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December 28, 2009

On Gifts

by GABRIELLE LENSCH PLASTRIK

It is the time of year when most of us are thinking about gifts: what to get our family members, friends, and neighbors for whichever winter time holiday we celebrate.  It is also the time of year when many parents and students seek out gifts for teachers.

In my four years of teaching, there was only one year when I did not receive anything for the holidays, and that was the year that I taught in a large, public, rural high school.  It was not part of the culture at the school or in the community to give gifts to teachers.  At the time, I was saddened.  When I was a student, I spent a lot of time coming up with ideas for creative gifts for my teachers with my mom.  (The best, in my opinion, was a teacher mug filled with Smarties—something that I would not really want now that I am a teacher myself.)  I spent more time with my teachers than with a lot of my family.  I felt that it was crucial that I give them a gift to show them how important they were.  Not receiving anything at the holidays made me feel like an unimportant part of my students’ lives.

This year, as the country struggles with economic hardship, I have spent a lot of time thinking about gifts and discussing students’ gifts with colleagues.  This has been a year for chocolate.  We have so many boxes of fancy chocolates at home, that I am actually running out of space to put them in our teeny 1920s kitchen.  I am utterly and completely grateful that my students and their parents thought of me this holiday season, and I do not want to sound otherwise, but as I have thought about this more, I have come to realize how much more I value the card than the candy.

The best gift that I have ever received from a student is a hastily written note on an unlined note card.  (I should say that it was an impromptu, non-holiday gift when I happened to be ill.) It reads: “I hope you feel better. You really made me feel special today when you told me that I was smart.” I have read that note almost every day since he gave it to me—through my best and worst moments, it has helped remind me what my job truly is and what it can truly mean to someone else. Keep reading →

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December 24, 2009

How We Become Better Teachers: We Revise

by JESSE SCACCIA

Teaching is not a profession where one can assume their proficiency grows along a similar upward trend to years in the field.

Yes, you’ll pick up tricks along the way. If you’re smart after a few years you’ll also have a pile of lesson plans high enough to reach your shoulders.

Just because you look like this fella doesn't mean you're a great teacher.But you lose things too. You might lose passion. With that age you’ve hopefully gained wisdom, yes, but you’ve also gained a social and cultural dissonance between yourself and your students. As the line from Dazed and Confused goes, you keep getting older, but they all stay the same age.

What you gain might be a loss if what you have added is bitterness. Or cynicism. Or a foot out the door.

The point is, just because you’ve been teaching longer doesn’t say a damn about whether or not you are actually teaching better. That is why we must always be reflecting. If we are to be the generation of revolutionary teachers we believe we can become, we must eternally and perpetually be teachers, revised.

Which leads to the question: How do you know what to change?

If the kids like you better than when you were younger it could be because you’ve gone soft. If they like you worse it could be because you’ve gotten better, and they haven’t learned how to face challenges with the amount of grace they display when handed back papers with big juicy A’s on top.

Here’s what I do: I ask the kids directly.

Keep reading →

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December 17, 2009

When Our Students Become Our Teachers

by JESSE SCACCIA

It’s the end of the term, and things are crazy busy for us all, so this will be a shorter post.

I’ve been going through a rough time lately, both personally and with my writing. One of my former students who I keep in touch with–who is now also a teacher–caught wind of this, and sent me this note that helped get me back on track. The last few sentences are like a poem. Great stuff. Here goes:

The important part of writing is not about the words you use. Almost as if to say it is about the meaning behind those words you use. Good writing is coming from the heart.

Isn’t that what you taught me to do? Coming from the heart? In one of your lectures?

I guess sometimes we (you and I) forget what we’ve learned…
So, we need to teach people what we know.
So, they will remind us someday when we are lost and don’t remember it.

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