Success

Might as well make it two in 24 hours, no? It's raining, it's pouring, soon the old man will be snoring?

I've been thinking a lot about success. What does it mean for me to succeed as a teacher? What does it mean for my students to succeed in the classroom? in MY classroom?

I've got nothing so far. I mean, what am I supposed to trying to accomplish with my 17 year old freshman? I'm not so idealistic to think that I will instill these individuals with either a profound love of reading or analytic thought. I would even be hard pressed to convince myself that I can really instill the habits and corresponding frame of mind that would orient these students toward life as life-long learners.

So what then am I trying to do? How can I best serve these students?

So far, the most common response has been that I'm trying to expose these individuals to something like middle-class values. I'm supposed to show them what it means to exist in a structured environment with varying degrees of democratic involvement.

This answer is unsatisfactory. For me, the disturbing cultural disconnect between me and my students undermines this idea of civic schooling. More often than not, I find that my students and I cannot actually resolve dialogue in any meaningful fashion because we don't really have a language in which we can understand each others' point of view. For many of my more challenging students, it seems that they can only understand authority that asserts itself through violence, be it verbal or physical. Where I might try to express the same message through a demerit or a writing assignment or even a warning, someone who speaks in and through the culture that my students seem to share would not yell per se, but attack that student verbally. I am neither able nor willing to engage in this violence. How then can I engage in a meaningful lesson on civic values if the very means by which I feel it necessary to express that message is unintelligible to those with whom I wish to speak? What if I am unable to speak a language that they can understand?

To return to my original line of questioning (of myself, of my job, of my goals, of my daily life), how can I best serve my students? I wish I knew how to teach them to read, but unfortunately I've known how to for as long as I can remember. I need to learn how to learn how to read (so, hopefully, my commander-in-chief will get around to the third copy of the two-month old requisition to go to Nashville to learn just that). If I could start to teach them how to really read, I'd feel like that was a start. But even that isn't particularly tangible. Would success be students who are trying to read? reading? wanting to read? In math, would it be students who are problem solving? wanting to problem solve? thinking about the possibility of problem solving?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm discourage because I feel like so much of an outsider that I don't know up from down in terms of goals and success. So much so, that I can't even evaluate my own daily actions let alone the work and attitude of my students. In addition to that, I feel like most of my communication with these students is lost in a translation neither I not most of my students can understand.

A Story and Two Anecdotes

ToC:
1) Story
2) Anecdote
3) Anecdote

1) My reading class is often unfortunately straightforward. We sit in rows reading a poorly written, 400 page book of pedantic prose to each other while the students in the room answer eight simple comprehension questions for each chapter. Most days I have them write a journal describing the plot of the chapter and their favorite part. Other times, I pick a particular scene I want them to respond to. Very rarely we might venture into the dark and gloomy land of class discussion; however, that decision usually ends poorly.

Some of my students (well, sometimes many of them depending on which period of the day) have taken to various levels of protest over the obviously unfair and vindictively boring structure of my class. Some stoically refuse to open the book or answer any questions; some decide to try to talk over and under anyone's attempts to read aloud; some have, on rare occasion, resorted to some more drastic measures.

****
At this point, I should include a little side anecdote. About a month ago at our weekly staff meeting our commander-in-chief asked who in the room didn't yet have a key to their room. My hand joined a few other weary hands. Strophe: "No, Mr. Weimer, I gave you your key." Antistrophe: "Um, nope. I definitely don't have a key." Strophe: "Oh, well, I'll come try some more keys right away." Antistrophe: "Alright. I appreciate that."
****

As I mentioned, some of my students apparently really hate this book (Homecoming, by Cynthia Voigt); in fact, they may hate it even more than I do although I doubt it. The first physical demonstration of this hatred came almost a month and a half ago now. As always, I returned from the increasingly demeaning task of escorting my 16-18 year old Algebra II students to lunch. As I walked in my room I noticed that the 16 copies of everyone's favorite young adult novel were glaring missing from their perch on my long lab table (yes, I teach in a room with lab tables). As you'll remember, my door does not lock and my room sits unguarded for the small window of opportunity I had thus far been inclined to call lunch. My eyes suddenly became about one-and-a-half times their normal size as I scurried about the room rummaging for the missing books. Luckily, the offending parties were only vindictive enough to move the books across the room and to try to hide them in one of my large blue cabinets. From there, the day continued as planned.

At the end of the day, I wrote a short letter to the commander-in-chief. He immediately promised to personally lock my door everyday. All I had to do was send someone to the office before I left for lunch so he could come down and lock the door. As well-intentioned, his solution was laughable for several reasons. First, finding our commander-in-chief during the day is about as easy as juggling eggs while doing the chicken noodle soup. Second, the risk of actually finding our commander-in-chief but not being able to find him to unlock the door is frighteningly high. I'm getting goose bumps just thinking about holding 18 ninth-graders in the hall while trying to find our commander-in-chief who has the only key in the New World that opens my door. Third, okay, I lied, it's only laughable for a couple of reasons. Needless to say, the kind-hearted offer to lock my door never really blossomed into a working compromise.

Theft-wise my life had been going pretty well since the aforementioned incident (talk about an ominous opening sentence). This past Monday, however, I returned from lunch happy for hoe the morning went but dreading the 150 minutes of ninth-graders with attitudes the size of alaskan glaciers before the onset of global warming. Like in any good dramatic scene, at first, nothing seemed out of place. But. Wait. The stack of books that can only live on the lab tables because of the sickeningly overbearing messages of teenage rebellion and clear-cut moral values would eat through any normal wood surface had either been eaten by the roaches or had once again been stolen.

I quickly searched every hiding place in my room. Nothing. Luckily, since whoever ordered the "class-set" of this rotten trash only ordered 16 copies, I have about 7 photocopies of several chapters on hand at all times. So, for the rest of the day I dealt with the wonderful classroom management situation of sharing.

Unsure of what to do, I asked my veteran housemates how they would handle this situation. The beautifully vindictive solution that my housemates and school-hallway-mate devised was to make all my classes do writing assignments until the books were returned or I got information leading to their return. (As you may notice, whereas my attitude is about the size of that easily dust-off-able speck of dirt on Jay-Z's shoulder, my housemate's attitude can rival Gaston in size.) My classes hated this. In addition, as per her suggestion, I also assigned demerits every time some foolish hormone driven adolescent felt the need to express his or her deepest inner longings in highly coded audible utterances. Let's just say, by the end of that Tuesday, after 15 people skipped detention and I had written out all my referrals for talking, I had written up fewer people than Nights in Arabia but more people than there are days in this month.

What of this books, you say? As I had guessed, they were stashed in someone's locker very close to my classroom. I had looked in many of these lockers but had not looked in the proper one until that afternoon. I was standing outside my door for hall duty when I was graced with the following interaction.

Weimdogg: Afternoon.
Student, whom I do not teach, arriving at her locker right next to my door: (grunt)
W: ...
S: Hey, what are all these books here for?!
W: Books? (peeking into locker) Um, I'll take those. Thanks.

The next day, I finally installed a latch and lock on a cabinet like my housemate advised me to do in August.

In other news, I liked to share the following two unrelated anecdotes:

2) One day a student was asking me to use the bathroom so incessantly during 7th period that I had to warn her that she was on the verge of getting written up. The following scene ensued:

Players: Beleaguered Comic Hero (BCH), Mouthy Student (MS), Very Very Country Student (VVCS)

MS: I know why you won't let me go to the bathroom. You're racist.
BCH: Yeah, that's it. I'm racist. I moved to Mississippi to teach because I'm racist. Good observation.
VVCS: You know, he's right. He wouldn't have moved here from Massachusetts if he was (sic) racist.
MS: Whatever.

3) Scene Two:

Players: Teacher Trying to Stall So One Section of Reading Doesn't Get Too Far Ahead (TTSSOSRDGTFA), Quiet Mostly Unasuming Student (QMUS), Good Student (GS)

TTSSOSRDGTFA: So, they just ate oatmeal. Who here likes oatmeal?
GS: I do!
TTSSOSRDGTFA: Raise your hand if you like grits more than oatmeal?
Everyone: (The swoosh of hands being raised).
GS: I went to Massachusetts once with my uncle. I order grits for breakfast and the waitress didn't know what I was talking about!
QMUS: They were out of grits?!?!?!
GS: No, No, there aren't any grits in Massachusetts!
TTSSOSRDGTFA: Yeah, I've never had grits.
QMUS: But what do you eat for breakfast?

Intelligence Survey

To be frank, I was not particularly surprised by the data I got from my Multiple Intelligences survey. At the same time, I'm not exactly sure how I am supposed to use this data (how's that for a thesis statement! huzzah).

Since each student is reflecting on his or her own abilities, how can the students know which way they learn best? For example, many of my students say they learn best when I give them direct, deductive notes; however, although they may be able to repeat the skill at hand, I would argue that it is much harder to gain a deep understanding with only this sort of direct lecture. Are the students still correct that they learn best this way?

Looking at the data, I see that my students are visual learners. No surprise there. I knew from their initial clamoring for notes and visuals that this was the case. I had also been forewarned of this by many a teacher corps teacher. On the other hand, they rated their interpersonal intelligence as rather low. That is, they do not think that they learn well from other people. I noticed this particularly in my ninth graders who were and are incredibly averse to group work. Does this mean that I should use group work less or more? Should I be trying to encourage development in the areas where these students feel the weakest or just play to their strengths?

I guess, I just take the data as a reflection of he comfort zone of my students and not much else. It's too small a sample size to make big generalizations, so I think of it more as a way of knowing how and when I can push my students. It gives me a better sense of when my students might feel either comfortable or uncomfortable in the classroom. Therefore, I can use the data to mix and match the comfortable with the uncomfortable and hopefully get a good medium of learning without shutting down.