Reading histories...

One of my favorite assignments to give at the beginning of the year is a 1-2 page essay on the students' personal reading histories. How did you learn to read? What do you like to read? It serves a couple of purposes. One, I learn more about the students themselves so I get to know them better, and two, I can see where they are in their writing mechanics. (The second part tends to be somewhat depressing. Next to nobody can properly punctuate titles!)

They run the gamut from "I love to read and I read every single chance I get" to "Reading is really hard for me and I don't like it very much" to "I got made fun of by my classmates or my teachers because of my reading" to "I don't get a chance to read anymore because I'm too busy."

Some of them are hysterically funny; others make me want to cry, like the student who locked himself in the bathroom and cried for an hour on the first day of kindergarten because he didn't know the alphabet. His classmates teased him and his teacher thought he was defiant. It's a marvel to me that kids like that don't end up just hating school and giving up.

It reminds me every year of how strong the human element is in teaching. Every person in the room brings something different to the class.

The other beginning-of-the-year assignment is an essay on a summer reading book of the student's choice. I had one student bring hers by during tutorial yesterday so that she could get feedback on it before turning it in on Monday. Mechanically, it was well-written. Content-wise, the student had obviously written what she thought I wanted to hear. I told her that she needed to give herself permission to take a risk and write what she wanted to write, not what she thought I wanted. She squirmed a bit, then said, "I played around for my first couple of years here until I learned how to play the game -- tell the teachers exactly what they want to hear and make the grade."

I told her she had my permission not to do that in my class, but it still disturbed me. How many of the students who graduate from here look at their educational experience as "playing the game" for grades instead of investing in themselves and cultivating curiosity about the world?

And a Deep Thought from a meeting this morning...

"Because we teachers pour so much energy into caring for our students, we frequently neglect to put similar energy into caring for each other."

I love the smell of coffee in the morning...

Coffee. Mmm. Schools are fueled by coffee, I believe. The coffeemaker runs constantly in the faculty lounge, and nobody's drinking decaf except for the people who've already had heart surgery.

There's this great energy in the building that doesn't come from caffeine or sugar. I can't quite define what it is, but it flows from the interaction of teachers and students. I'm participating in a pilot program for teachers this year called peer coaching, where teachers go into other teachers' classrooms and observe all or part of the class. We fill out evaluation sheets with two compliments and two suggestions, then put one copy in the evaluee's mailbox and keep the carbon in our files.

I went and observed my first class today during my planning period: A.P. Biology with a 25-year veteran teacher (actually, the person who suggested the whole peer coaching program in the first place). At first, it felt weird to be commenting on someone else's teaching...almost as weird as it felt to be in a classroom that wasn't mine!

How quickly people get stuck in their little habits. I've been at my school for two years (starting my third), and I've never been in another teacher's room while teaching was going on. I probably know more about what's going on in Europe than I do about what's going on in another classroom down the hall.

I found that I was able, after a few minutes, to observe the instruction objectively. It's so great to see a master teacher at work, especially when you're a younger teacher. It gives one hope that there will come a day when everything starts to flow and you don't feel terrified that somebody's going to ask a question for which you have no answer. I also saw a few things that maybe weren't working so well. One was possibly a function of the classroom setup: students sit at lab tables with large computer screens under hoods at the center of the tables, which makes it possible/easy for students to have side conversations without being noticed by the teacher. The other made me realize how important it is to get information from another perspective: I had trouble hearing from where I was sitting in the back of the classroom because of the level of ambient noise in the room from the computers and projectors, especially when the teacher turned and faced another direction from me.

Maybe I'm deeply sensitive to hearing issues, since both my husband and my dad are hearing-impaired, but as a teacher, that's something I'd want to know that probably only another teacher would notice. I left the class excited to think of the possibilities for the program.

As I walked down the halls, I looked into windows to see classrooms full of students and teachers and learning happening, and it made me happy. I think that you know you've found your vocation when you can walk away at the end of the day with good energy in your heart.

Bikram Literature Classes

On Monday, I got to school early and went to put some things in my classroom. I walked in and nearly fainted from the heat; it was cooler outside than it was inside by several degrees.

Turns out that a fuse blew in the A/C unit over the weekend and there was no air circulation in the building for 48 hours. I spent the whole first hour dripping with sweat, literally.

Other than that, the day went well. I spent time reviewing the syllabus, which is a not-exciting but very necessary part of the term.

The best thing said during the first half-day of school...

Class is dead silent and staring at me like a group of zombies.

Me: Are you tired, or is it something I said?

Student: It's not personal. I just don't want to be here right now.

Me: If we can do anything to help you want to be here, let me know.

Student: I'll make a list and get back to you.

And we're off...

This week has been the Never-Ending Series of Meetings. The beginning of the school year ought to have some time built in for actual planning...but it doesn't. (Although the word on the street is that things will change next year. The frenetic pace of the schedule shocked the new academic dean!)

And now, after all the meetings, the kids are coming tomorrow. Thank God, it's only for half a day of chaos. I'm excited...I'm very ready for them to arrive so we can get this show on the road!

Faculty togetherness

This weekend, the school hosted its second annual trip to the Nantahala Outdoor Center for a whitewater rafting excursion. I didn't get to go last year because I was on the Liturgy Team retreat, but as the Liturgy Team has now been disbanded, I got to hit the river with 25 other faculty and staff members.

The trip was great fun. We had a blast being out on the river, and we got to spend time in fun and fellowship in ways we would never otherwise do. Particularly when a storm knocked out all the power in the place at 6 p.m. It didn't come back on till after midnight, and let me tell you...it is DARK up in the North Carolina mountains when you're walking back to the cabins with only a candle to light your path.

Despite the power outage, a good time was had by all. I stayed up talking to my cabinmates till after two in the morning. I've worked with these people for two years and never had a conversation with them that lasted longer than ten minutes. It was so good to have the time and the lack of busyness to be able to meet my coworkers as people.

The comment I heard over and over again was "We need to do more of this." Unfortunately, once the school year starts it's hard to find the time and the atmosphere to spend time with each other that isn't school-oriented.

Today was the official faculty "retreat" at a local church. Part of the day involved breaking up into groups and brainstorming about activities that would promote some community value to be done over the upcoming school year. We did the same exercise a couple of years ago, which is where the whitewater rafting trip originated.

The ideas were great...a faculty talent show, family picnic out at Stone Mountain, doing painting for the Foundation for Hospital Art, beer tasting and movie night, and several others. One of the themes that came up in multiple suggestions was time that included families -- children and spouses both. Another was just getting away from our little school bubble and doing more interaction as people. Everything seemed well-received by the administration.

In teaching, we focus so much energy and attention on our students. That's appropriate and good, but we lose sight of the necessity to spend some of our energies and attentions on each other. Our new academic dean seems to have a good understanding of the need for that time spent being together without being focused on school, so I'm hopeful that this investment in faculty togetherness will continue into the future.

Come on and take a Free Ride...

This morning, I realized that there was a vital piece of photocopying that I had, as yet, forgotten to do: the now-famous Free Rides.

In the tradition of "good writers borrow, great writers steal," the Free Ride concept is completely stolen from my ninth grade honors English teacher, then-Mr. now-Dr. Brooks. At some point in the future, I'll have to write a paean to how Mr. Brooks is more responsible for my teaching style than any other person, including all my college profs. For now, I'll just say that Mr. Brooks' take-no-prisoners, drill-sergeant strict approach to classroom discipline made such an impression on me that I decided to try some of it and see if it worked.

Mr. Brooks told all of his students not to be late (lateness defined as not being in one's desk and seated by the time the bell stopped ringing), not to ask to leave class to go to one's locker or to the bathroom, and to have one's homework every single day. However, he held out these little passes called Free Rides. Everybody got one. The Free Ride was good for a minor homework assignment like a reading quiz, to get out of class to go to lockers or on potty breaks, to excuse lateness or out-of-uniform-ness, et cetera.

There was a catch.

If you hung onto your Free Ride all the way till the end of the semester and turned it in with your final, you got bonus points on the final. Not very many, but it could mean the difference between a B and an A.

Well. Nobody ever had to run to the potty in Mr. Brooks' class.

And now, nobody ever has to run to the potty in my class. My students treat their Free Rides the way that my classmates and I treated ours: like solid gold.

Who knew that one little slip of paper could eliminate so many classroom management issues? Thanks, Mr. Brooks.

Making a bulletin board

After two years teaching, I finally got it together and made a bulletin board. The other teacher who shares the classroom has had the same bulletin board up since I've been there, and it's pretty cool. She has a big poster of Shakespeare up that's had other things stapled to it: "spirit beads" (Mardi Gras beads in the school colors), a button with the school logo on it, a large floppy hat with attached yarn dreadlocks, and a "W: The President" sticker (W for Will Shakespeare, natch.)

The other bulletin board in the room is...well...sad. It had random stuff stapled up to it haphazardly: news articles about college kids dying from binge drinking, a five-year-old tornado exit plan, a card with pictures of Magnificent Mullets (the hairdo, not the fish), and other junk.

Since I'm actually going to be in this room for all four of my classes this term plus at least two classes the other two terms, I decided that I would spruce up the bulletin board.

I asked another teacher where I might find butcher paper appropriate for covering a bulletin board, and she looked at me rather blankly. "I haven't seen butcher paper around here for years."

I remembered the large racks with rolls of colored butcher paper that resided in the offices of my grade schools, high school, and residence life in college with nostalgia and went off in search of paper. I found some in the English department office behind the card table with the electric typewriter. Since it hadn't been touched in the entire time I'd been at the school, I figured it was fair game. I also found a bit of bulletin board edging. Both were bright flame red. Not my first color choice, but hey...it was free to the finder.

Bearing my found treasures, I headed upstairs and started creating my bulletin board. One of the reasons I wanted to be a resident advisor in college was the ability to make bulletin boards, and I made some really cool ones. I had a Breast Cancer Awareness board that had little pink ribbons made out of tiny strips of pink paper all over it, a Welcome to 2 Annex board that had calligraphed names of all the residents and lollipop bouquets, a Stop Conflict Diamonds board with big fake rhinestones everywhere...I had too much time on my hands, really.

This wasn't one of those cool boards. However, it does have smooth, neatly stapled bright red paper on it and red corrugated bulletin board edging on the top and bottom. It also has the words "British Literature" floating in Quill font in the upper left-hand corner.

Other than that, the only thing on it is a sign that reads "Friends don't let friends go to Barnes and Noble" followed by a list of local independent bookstores. It also has a small sign with the website for the Fair Tax (okay political action because it's nonpartisan).

But now I've got a problem...about six square feet of smooth shiny bright red paper that is absolutely blank!

SparkNotes = Tool of the Antichrist

I'll admit it: I hate the very idea of SparkNotes. I'm not fond of anything that promises great results with minimal effort...weight-loss pills, most items sold on infomercials, and so-called "educational" products that are really flashy marketing tools. If you're going to spend the time it takes to read the SparkNotes, why not just read the actual text again and see if it makes more sense the second or third or fifth time you read it?

Because that takes effort. And school, evidently, is not supposed to require more effort than it takes to produce the desired grade, or so some of my students want to believe.

My biggest problem with SparkNotes, besides the fact that they encourage lazy academic habits, is their lack of quality. The writing style is atrocious, the content shoddy, and the analysis superficial at best. If they just provided summaries, that would be one thing, but their summaries include analytical (and I use the term very loosely) commentary.

Not that I can convince my students of this, by the way. They refuse to believe that scholars won't put their work out on the free internet. They refuse to believe that SparkNotes is a marketing tool (how they can ignore the multiple ads from companies like TMobile that take up half a page is beyond me) and think it's a happy little service provided by nice helpful people. Riiiiiiiiiight.

I went and checked out their offerings on Henry V today because I'm teaching the play in a few months. It was predictably crappy. I'm just waiting to see how much of SparkNotes' "analysis" shows up on the final exams in November.

I've written my own synopses of each act of the play that I'll put up on my website in handy-dandy .pdf files. I wonder how many of my students will pick me over Spark!

One week and counting...

I feel so official...I got my class rosters and schedule yesterday. Yet again, I have a seventh-period study hall to proctor. Seventh-period study hall and I don't have a good relationship.

The first year I taught, I had a seventh-period study hall first term. At the time, there was no cap on the number of students that could be assigned to a given study hall period. I was new to this gig, so I didn't know that it was abnormal to have more than twenty students in a study hall. Twenty-five students is about the limit that the classroom will hold.

I walked into a room with sixty-two students.

The registrar altered some schedules so I ended up with only forty-four in the room. Of course, the forty-four included almost all of the sophomore football players, who begged and pleaded and whined to be let out of class early on Fridays so they could beat the traffic out of the parking lot to go eat their pre-game meal.

There was great rejoicing when that term ended!

This year, I've got twenty in the study hall. Study halls are now capped at twenty-five, and I have the dubious distinction of having the largest study hall in school history!

I'm pretty happy with the schedule overall. More than half of the students I taught in the one freshman English class I had my first year are now back for Round II, and since they were a fabulous group, I'm looking forward to seeing them again.

Off to school to create a bulletin board...for the first time EVER, I'll be in the same classroom for all four of my classes! Seniority rocks!

Inspiration after lunch

I've been taking a technology class at school for the past couple of days. With all the money and effort the school puts into technology stuff, it seems a shame that generally teachers don't know what's available both in terms of software and hardware.

It isn't (in most cases) that people don't want to know about it but more a lack of time and initiative. Kudos to the tech department for putting these little courses together -- they've really been helpful!

Today we learned about a program called Inspiration. Basically, it's an electronic version of brainstorming -- users can create graphic organizers and outlines. Users can also take a graphic organizer and turn it into an outline, which is a great teaching tool for the younger students who don't really understand how one generates an outline. Although it wouldn't be a bad tool for my juniors, who tend to be less proficient at writing and its attendant tasks than they'd like to believe themselves to be.

I played around with creating a graphic organizer for my second term units of study, which made me realize two things. One, I haven't touched anything for that term yet, and two, there's far more that I want to present than I'll be able to accomplish. I think that's the beauty and the beast of teaching survey courses: one gets to pick and choose from a wide variety of material, but there are just too many good choices out there!