Tell Me What To Do

One constantly hears about accountability and what a terrible job teachers are doing within the schools. Of course, in most cases when comparisons are made to other countries, there’s an apples-to-oranges paradigm being in play.

So, aside from accountability, aside from having teachers give more tests and post those tests as a justification for merit pay, tell me what I should do as an educator. What would make me better? How can I work better with my class, with the parents, with the community?

You see, even if we believe that testing and “accountability” is an important measure of how well we are doing as teachers (and I do not concede this), then where is the follow up? Where are the suggestions telling us HOW to do better? Where is the change in curriculum? Where are the scientifically proven changes in pedagogical practices?

You won’t see any, of course. Most of those who push policy are far removed from the rank and file and have little understanding of the process of education. When corporations attempt to control education, then corporate strategies and corporate motives rule. And is that really what we want for our schools? For our children?

First Week Activities and Beyond

Whether you are in the first day or the first couple weeks of school, it helps to think about group process and rapport building with students. I always use ice-breaking activities. This gives me a chance to study relationship dynamics and to start noting who the followers and leaders are, and where possible challenges might exist.
When I do an ice-breaking activity, I never call it this. I usually express it as an experiment. I also tell the students that we process all activities through discussion, but I will never tell them the purpose of an activity. Their interpretation is what is important, not what meaning I impose on the experience.

This being said, here are my top five ice breakers. Yes, you may know some of them, and if you do, consider this a refresher course. Instead of reinventing the wheel, let me instead post links so you can follow them and explore at your leisure. Also, when you follow the links you’ll find yourselves navigating through sites with dozens of other ideas which can be adapted for students of all ages.

One last comment: Never assume your students are too old for a game. I still play “Simon Says” and “Red Light, Green Light” with eighteen and nineteen year olds. The key is always about presentation and engagement.

Personal Trivia Baseball This is an outstanding game, and one in which students may show their competitive streaks. Make sure you glance at all the strips or clues ahead of time to be sure no one has slipped in any inappropriate material.

Giants, Wizards, and Elves This is a version of rock, paper, scissors. There is much one can do to change this around, such as abandoning the Giants, Wizards, and Elves themes and allowing group members to choose their own team poses, and rewarding points for victories. Ultimately, I encourage silliness and creativity.

Bridge Building Tactile learners will thank you. This is a team game which is superb for assessing group dynamics. Shame on the teacher who doesn’t carefully process this event and even have students journal about the experience.

Helium Stick Again, presentation is everything. The teacher needs to ignite in the students a sense of wonder and excitement, and mystery. Like the last activity, this one is a brilliant activity for assessment and for later discussion about who did what, how it was perceived, by whom, and why.

Human Knot This is perhaps one of my favorite activities, but I think it works best as a third or fourth activity and not as a first event. Again, the process and presentation is everything.

Jelly Bean Personality Test I won’t lie, I love jelly beans. However, this is a great activity for initiating a discussion about diversity and stereotypes. And you get to eat jelly beans. Yum.

Okay, those are only a few activities. If you go to the different links and search for others, you can amass a library of a hundred or more things to do through the school year to build rapport and cohesion within your classroom.

Tongue Not In Cheek

As an educator and a student of human nature, I am always trying to understand behavior trends. During the last school year, as I was trying to get together a series of photographs to represent my kids, I couldn’t help but notice that almost every shot of someone’s face had a tongue sticking out sideways. It was either that, or they were puckering their lips in a carp-like fashion.

What? I ask the kids about it and they usually shrug and give me the most succinct answer they can muster:“Dunno.”

An anthropologist would say sticking out one’s tongue is an early form of non-verbal communication. It can also indicate delayed physical development.

I’ve read some responses on the net trying to explain this behavior, all of them unsatisfactory. Usually a teen writing about it tends to use txt-speak, offering numerous emoticons and spellings like “gurl” “cuz” and “sez”. The answers given are just as pithy:  ”Cuz we’re crzy!!!” “It’s kewl.”
Now I figure most of us are fairly bright. I’m interested in you trying your hand at an explanation…for instance: “Overexposure to chemicals is causing a regression to a primal lizard state.” See? I can accept that. Or: “It’s seizure activity.”  Or even: “It’s a new mating ritual designed to discourage procreation.”
Just don’t tell me “It’s all good.”

I know better. I’ve seen enough to know that just ain’t true.

Dress Code Dialog

She stood with strange posture, trying to retract her arms and will her fingers to shorten. Try as she might, the skirt was still short of fingertip length.

“Your mother know you left the house in that, right?” I ask.

“She thinks this is a cute skirt.”

Hmmmm. I give her two choices. She could either get the original outfit she wore from the house, and which was now probably secreted in her locker, or I could call her mother and ask for a more appropriate item of clothing to be brought to school for her to wear. Amazingly, she had a more appropriate item of clothing at the ready and the call wasunnecessary.

Sweet dress codes. It’s a constant battle, and one can either be frustrated or enjoy the fight. Boys’ pants will sag, tops will expose too much, and skirts or shorts ride too high. It’s part of the school experience.

One girl stood looking at me with a blank expression. She was dressed in a black t-shirt and baggy jeans with cargo pockets. She had black make-up. I stared at her for some time, trying to understand why a teacher had sent her to me. I couldn’t see anything inappropriate. Finally, she turned around and showed me the long raccoon tail sewed to the back of her pants.

“A tail?”

“I’m a furry,” she explained. “I’m a raccoon. I also have ears and a nose if you want to see them, but I don’t wear them to school.”

Thank God.

“So your teacher sent you out of class for having a tail?” I asked.

She nodded, and stood her ground, hands on her hips in defiant posture. While I could understand the teacher being a bit upset over the lack of conventionality, I didn’t think a tail would incite rebellion in the class, at least not after the three or four minutes of novelty wore off.

I asked her more about being a furry, and she spend the next several minutes educating me about a subculture , rising from the world of Japanese anime’ , which I would probably never purposely encounter.

Sometimes a Dress Code is a line in the sand, and sometimes its an opportunity for discussion and understanding the need of students to express themselves. It seemed to me a tail wasn’t such a big deal.

Now, as for the kid with the upside down American flag drawn on his forehead and the “#!!%2 You!” T-shirt…

Teacher of the Year? Yeah……no.

My friend Robert was named “Teacher of the Year” a few years back. Apparently there are many different kinds of “Teacher of the Year”. Go figure. For instance, there’s the National Teacher of the Year; which must be said with tremendous reverence and only when one is facing D.C.. Of course, each state has one. Different school districts award that title to some deserving schmoe or schmoette. I suspect that in some future eon, someone will allocate money to build a tremendous moving wall to all the past Teachers-of-the-Year who somehow found ways to motivate children (I’m keeping my eye on nanobot technology) or who have contributed to an understanding of pedagogy in a meaningful way and remained sober while doing so.

Me? I’ll never be Teacher-of-the-Year. I’ll never even be Teacher-of-the-Year-Runner-Up-Fifth-Degree-Jewish-Division.

Sure, it used to depress me. Everyone wants to receive recognition. A pin at the end of the year for distinguished terms of service is nice, but a little something more is often hoped for. One of my students asked what was wrong.

“I want to be teacher of the year,” I replied.

“Well, I want to be Eminem. Get over it.”

Isn’t life all about perspective?

Memo: Adopting A Corporate Model

Dear Principal,

With the success of charter schools in attracting financial resources, we are beginning a system of changes to the district to better enable us to compete. These changes will be implemented over time. While they may at first seem dramatic and counter-intuitive to conventional educational philosophy, you may be assured that they are tested business models.

At the core of the change is a rethinking how we view students, or as we will call them, our “physical resource.” The goal of education, after all, is to achieve high test scores, and we do so by cultivating our physical resource. We must abandon the misguided emphasis on pedagogy too often preached by educators and instead focus on a new paradigm, figuring the best means of developing a business plan that will bring our shareholders the greatest returns.

We’ll be contacting you with further information to implement the above plan. Please begin working with your staff to help them accept these changes.
Thank You,

Management

Eighteen

I’ve been asked to share more anecdotes from my experience as an alternative education teacher.  I do so with a smile. It’s been a long strange road.

At eighteen one thinks freedom is a mastadon that trumps everything else. Every parent, every teacher has heard the number as a primary defense.

“What? I can do what I want. I’m eighteen!”

One student announced he was going to leave my room and go to McDonalds. He was hungry, after all. And above all else, he was —eighteen. I shook my head and calmly explained that he must still follow the rules and if he elected to leave the classroom, he would not be allowed back into school for the remainder of the day.

With this consequence clearly delivered, he did the only thing he could do. He stood and left the room. Thirty minutes later, he sat in class with a McDonald’s bag, pulling out fries and munching on a cheeseburger. Occasionally, he would draw a sip from a pop.

“You’re going to have to leave,” I explained.

He shook his head and studied me with great sympathy for my lack of understanding. “I’m eighteen,” he proclaimed. Ah.

“If you don’t leave, I’ll be forced to call the police to remove you.”

“Go right ahead,” he instructed. I’m sure he felt sorry for my ignorance.

I don’t bluff in my classroom. I pressed the speed-dial on my cell-phone (imagine an alternative education teacher having the police on speed-dial!) and he shook his head, amused at my lack of common sense.

The police came. I explained simply: “I want him out of my classroom. He has been told to leave and refuses.”

“I shouldn’t have to leave,” he said. “I’m a student. I haven’t done anything. I’m eighteen. I can leave campus when I want.”

Having made this compelling argument, he was non-plussed the police didn’t slap him on the back. He became positively indignant that they would enforce my misguided request. He was, after all, eighteen.

He appeared so surprised when the police officers began hustling him out the door. As I watched him being helped into the back of the police car, I thought to myself — eighteen, and charged as an adult.

Trip To The Museum

Occasionally I become soft-headed.

I think: “Why not take the alternative education kids to the museum?”

At the moment that thought entered my head the little squirrels joined hands and danced around in circles, the bluebirds sang sweet songs, and the flowers bloomed. I almost went barefoot.

The kids went. It was a chance to get out of the classroom, and some of them felt it might even be interesting. Some of them went reluctantly.

“Boring,” said one kid.

He scratched his shaved head. I found myself wondering if the bio-hazard tattoo was painful to have done. I also found myself nodding and thinking: and of course, I am sure you will want to put a list of all your tats and piercings on your resume. Especially the Kill Em All tat. 

He should have been a Congressional Page.

We walked into an area housing relics from the turn of the century.

“Try and relax for once. Sometimes it’s good to stop and consider where we all come from,” I was saying to him.

I was going to pontificate more, considering how much he was enjoying what was already flying from my lips, but I stopped to gape at the kid about to touch the original device  Thomas Edison first used to record the human voice.

I hastened across the room and whispered: “no-no-no-no-no.”

He shrugged.

“I just wanted to see if it still worked.” 

Another teen walked by with something sticking out of his pocket.

I stopped him.

“What you got there?”

He pulled a piece of candy and I relaxed. I had images of him pulling out Franklin Roosevelt’s pen, or one of the WWI bayonettes someone stupidly put within reach of sticky fingers.

My spider-sense went off about then.

I turned and looked toward the windows. My kids were rapping on the glass and shouting things. I strolled over and looked down at what had arrested their attention.

A SWAT team had gathered at the house across the street. The police were positioning themselves for a bust, some of them had rifles out, others were crouched near the bushes with handguns.

My kids? They were trying to get the attention of the people in the house to warn them of the impending raid. They succeeded in getting the attention of the police. One of the cops looked up and raised his eyebrows. I am sure he was considering raising his gun as well.

I whispered: “You have three seconds to stand away from those windows. One-two-three.”

My students hear me raise my voice a good deal.

When I am soft-spoken they become uneasy. I smiled at spoke almost inaudibly:

“Now, follow me quietly down the stairs and to the parking lot.”

The smile terrified them.

I nodded to the other teacher and instructed her to get the other students, who were no doubt somewhere getting ready to draw moustaches on important works of art. I then went downstairs and the students followed me in silence.

Before stepping outside, the spider-sense went off one more time.

A student of mine was squatting beside a Tibetan Buddhist Sand Mandala that had taken a visiting group of monks at least a week to set down. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking: What if I touch it? That’s when the rays coming from my eyeballs hit him. He stood, zombielike, and followed us out. Good thing, too…another two seconds and the lethal rays would have evaporated him.

I know. I know you’ve all seen “Dangerous Minds” and that made you gooey inside. I get gooey inside when I see films like that too. They make me want to throw up. I think the only film about teaching that gave me the warm fuzzies was the one with the teacher who ran around menacing people with a baseball bat.

Trusting The Children

Recently the Texas Board of Education made some controversial decisions regarding curriculum. Members of the board freely admitted their acts were guided by ideology. One board member, David Bradley, was quoted as saying that this was the result of a political power shift.  ”We took our licks, we got outvoted. Now, it’s 10-5 in the other direction. We’re an elected body and this is a political process.”

Maybe one might ask the Texas board, who are so worried about the “left” leaning books they’ve been using, how it is that there are any conservatives left in Texas? How is it that with their previous curriculum, that any Republicans managed to get themselves voted in at all?

Determining curriculum according to ideology is cause for concern to many, but let’s pause and ask what the actual effect will be for the student. True, several students will internalize that information ( or disinformation, depending on one’s political compass). But surely, evidence has shown that children follow their parents’ belief systems. Republican children in Texas will continue to be Republican. The children of Democrats or liberals, even when exposed to different curriculum, will continue to be Democrats or liberals.

Furthermore, as children develop the ability to be more critical of what is learned and to seek information from sources outside the immediate school room, surely they will develop a more balanced view on history and the world around them.

Me? I trust the children. If we give them the tools to learn, they’ll arrive at their own relevant world views.

Thoughts About Motivation Near Semester’s End

I have always felt one of the most important elements in improving student motivation is increasing a sense of ownership in the classroom. This is an easy concept to talk about, but one which is not so simple in execution, partly because of the educational process, but also because teachers, with the daily demands of their profession, often forget to actively work toward this goal.

Below are three things I try and do on a regular basis to encourage this:

1) chore activity — all students are responsible for cleaning and maintaining the classroom, including making sure the trash is emptied when necessary, the floor picked up, the desks wiped down, and the books checked for graffitti or damage. They are also responsible for creating and maintaining posterboards and decorative touches about the room. Since I started doing this, vandalism has dropped to zero and the kids have excelled in demonstrating creativity.

2) Student Test Involvement— All tests are made up by the students. During the review period, they write possible essay questions as well as fill-in-the blanks and multiple choice. Note: At the beginning of the unit they are given a pre-test by me. The pre-test is actually a test created by a former class.

3) Motivational Checks— Students are not clients who suddenly show up at the door to help churn out product, they are people who are part of a process. They have private lives. Once a week, I like to spend some time processing with student how class and school has been going, giving them time to problem-solve issues and to make suggestions.