Ooof

Today was not so much a good day, and for the first time since I started teaching (a scant month ago), I am not so much looking forward to tomorrow.  This morning we started out the day with a lecture about grades, turning in work, and behaviour, given by me.  I was pretty cranky for reasons that don’t bear getting into (hunting down recalcitrant students to force them to do their missing work, and the bathroom break.  Don’t even get me started on the bathroom break!).     After that, they were steadily terrible all day, even in my smaller class, which is usually much quieter and more diligent.  Did I set them on a path to resentful misbehavior by starting out the day negatively?

Worse than the bad behaviour was the feeling that we didn’t learn anything all day.  Science was especially excruciating.  I taught the lesson the way I usually do: having them read from the text book and explaining each new concept as it comes up.  Today I felt more certain than ever that I was mostly talking to myself, and not a single person grasped the concept.  It’s a terrible feeling.  Better science lessons will mean much more planning than I’ve been able to devote and some real soul searching about how to teach these topics.  Science and Social Studies are the two subjects that I most keenly feel the limitations of a bilingual classroom - concepts which fairly complex to understand in your native language become a minefield of opaque vocabulary in a new language.   Some of my kids speak almost no English at all, and I have not been successful so far at arriving at a good balance between slipping into too much Spanish (to make sure everyone understands) and neglecting Spanish altogether (and thus losing a portion of my audience).

I’ve more or less given up on teaching Math in English, but since I have never taken any Math in Spanish myself, I have to stop and look in the kids’ textbooks all the time because I don’t recognize the vocabulary they use.  (Yesterday I was stumped by a word that turned out to be “integer”).   Still, at least in Math we are learning.   (A longer Math post is forthcoming)

All of this is a buildup to what my post is really about, which is Sheer Dread for tomorrow.   The sixth grade is the only grade level that lives entirely out in temporaries.   We traipse in and out of the building several times a day for lunch, Fine Arts, and bathroom breaks.  Other grade levels (in the school building proper) are taking standardized test benchmarks  tomorrow, and in the interest of maintaining a sacrosanct silence, 6th grade is not going in the building tomorrow.  No P.E. (which means no planning period for me), no recess, and lunch will be eaten in our room.  The whole day, we’ll be in the same room.

ooof.

Postcards

In a fit of reckless ambition a few weeks ago, I sent an email to friends far and wide to send my class an email with a fact about the city, state, or country where they live.   I sent the email out after realizing that my kids can only name three states out of fifty US States (they can name almost all the northern Mexican states), and they have almost no concept of any other continent.  We’ve only gotten a handful of cards so far, but it’s been a huge, huge hit in class.  It’s the first thing I’ve done that they’ve shown real interest in.  They ask every day if we’ve got a new one, and they pass them around and pore over them like talmudic texts.   Their Social Studies text book is as boring as dirt, even to me.

All that to say: if you haven’t sent one so far, please do!  I guarantee that they don’t know anything about the place where you live, and they will find any detail exotic and exciting.

The Cunning Man

 I took a train trip down to Austin last weekend, and it afforded me time not only to grade papers but also to finish a Robertson Davies book.If you’ve never read anything of his, skip The Cunning Man and read the Fifth Business, which is the first book of the excellent Deptford Trilogy.  I can’t recommend him highly enough as an author; his prose is meaty and satisfying, and I find myself constantly nodding my head at his insights.With that said, I can’t recommend The Cunning Man very highly if you’re not already a Davies afficionado.  It’s all writing and no book.Will expand more on this soon….

first epiphany

Today was the most successful day academically that we’ve had so far.  Not coincidentally, classroom discipline has improved one millionfold.  Now they are able to keep it together for longer and longer stretches of time each day.   They still have a ways to go in terms of civility and talking out of turn, but we are now a functioning classroom.

It’s a good thing, too, because we don’t have a minute to lose before the end of the school year.  Everybody in the class is functioning drastically below their capability level, and we’ve only got a few months before junior high school.  I especially worry about everyone’s English skills.

I can only help the larger class with English indirectly by grading their papers and explaining common errors on the board.  They’re getting better, but I wish I could devote a whole hour to teaching English the way I do with my bilingual group.  (Again, these designations make me crazy, since the whole class is bilingual and in need of English help, and the “bilingual” appellation really means “speaks only Spanish, or is still eligible to take the standardized test in Spanish”).

I’m still struggling with how exactly to structure the English class, but so far it’s settled into a mini version of my Dartmouth classes.  We start with ten or fifteen minutes of drill, then I introduce a new list of vocabulary of part of speech.  During the last segment of class, they work on an exercise applying what we’ve learned.

Our small group ranges from kids who have been here a few years to one that moved here a month ago.  Today one of the more advanced English speakers had an epiphany about contractions and possessive nouns.  I wanted to do a little happy dance!  It’s the first moment like that I’ve witnessed so far.

We also had our first successful math lesson today (about fractions and decimals).  I knew it was a hit, because I talked ten minutes into their recess time and they didn’t say a word.  It was also the first math lesson that I planned based on their standardized test scores rather than the text book.  Those tests are unpopular and controversial, etc. etc. but the results are enormously helpful.   When I got past the shock of the abysmal (well below failing) class average of the last test score, I spent this weekend going through the results with a fine tooth combed.  The scores are quite detailed, and I saw that the class average for comprehending fractions and decimals was 0%, which sure explains a lot.

So, rather than do the textbook lesson (which assumes they know this kind of stuff already), we stopped and did fractions and decimals.  Lo! and behold, most everyone caught on right away and was terribly excited.

Is it too soon to gush?

(I wrote this post several weeks ago, but I don’t know if it’s possible to backdate) 

After 1.5 weeks as an Official Teacher of Children and Molder of Young Minds, I feel like I have finally found a job that fits just right. Have I found my vocation? It remains to be seen.

I exist in an ambiguous but comfortable space as a co-teacher, meaning that “my” class isn’t really mine, but shared. I co-teach in another teacher’s classroom for half of the day, and for the other half I pull out ten children to the band room (while it’s not occupied by the band) and teach them reading and math in Spanish, and ESL. Every child in the class could use instruction in English, “my” ten are only singled out because they are still allowed to take the state standardized test in Spanish this year, or they are fresh arrivals to this country.

Problems abound: the kids run more or less wild. They talk at the same time and don’t pay attention, when they are paying attention they all call out the answer at the same time rather than raising their hands. They me and each other constantly, and wander around the classroom at will. To say that their Reading and Math skills leave something to be desired is like noting that Massachusetts enjoys a cooler winter than Texas. Last week they had trouble naming which two languages are spoken in Canada.

During all class bathroom breaks, they congregate and conspire in the bathrooms. On my first morning, five girls emerged from the restroom with red sparkle hair. Rough horseplay is endemic, as is petty theft and the inability to admit wrongdoing of any kind, on any level.

And yet, and yet.

With new assigned seats, multiple Serious Conversations and one hissy fit, they are beginning to conform to something resembling order.

Most of them are bright, some are exceptionally smart, and I hold out hope for the quiet ones who haven’t telegraphed their ability so far.

We share a love for Louis Sachar (author of “Holes” and our current read-aloud favorite, “There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom”). Some of them are funny. When a district representative came to speak to them on the Dangers of drugs and alcohol, I could see she was losing them with her talk of alternatives to negative and positive pressure.

“Alternatives are choices” I told them.

“What if I asked J. to come beat up first graders after school with me?” I asked them

J. responded, “that’s bad, Miss C! That’s negative!”

“What would a good alternative activity be, J.? What would be a better choice?” I asked.

J. thought for a bit, “….fifth graders instead?”

You people make me twitch

I’ve been delaying my first post about teaching for so long that I’ve already been teaching for a month, so I’m just going to jump right in.

First, let me say that I’ve never enjoyed any job as much as I’m enjoying this one.

Second, I’m being entirely consumed by it.  Yesterday I didn’t leave school till almost six (school gets out at 3:20), then I spent several hours at a coffee shop grading papers and planning lessons.  Then I dreamed (very realistically) that I was at school teaching a math lesson.

Not surprising then, that when I arrived school I began to notice a slight….disturbance under my right eye as I started my morning (as I do every morning) by breaking up  mayhem in the girl’s bathroom.  It abated for a while, but by the time I caught two boys in my class spitting on chairs to make pools of saliva, it had developed into a full fledged twitch.  One month teaching elementary school, and my little chickens have given me a tic.

Charreada!

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Originally uploaded by plainy

Now that I’m more mobile, I’m finally getting to enjoy the enormous annual Fort Worth Stock Show.  It’s my first year to go!  So far, I’ve seen the inaugural parade down Main Street and last night I organized a family outing to the Best of Mexico show/rodeo.   It prompted some story-telling about my grandmother’s family in rural Jalisco.  Her father had a ranch and all her brothers were jinetes.

It was wonderful to hear ranchera songs in the appropriate context- so many of them are about bulls, bull-riding and horses.   Everything was fun and games until one bull-rider got thrown like a rag doll and hit the dirt facedown and totally still.  For an awful eternity the bull jumped and pawed around his  inert body until the clowns distracted it and the other cowboys rushed out and turned him over.  He was taken away on a stretcher to a local hospital, and later the announcer said he was fine.

sorry for the longish silence

ilya

Originally uploaded by plainy

book reading and writing has taken a back seat to art projects lately. For some reason or another, I’ve been experiencing a creative explosion. I’ll start posting pictures here of stuff that I’ve been working on. It’s mostly cut-paper projects, including and inspired by Mexican papel picado.

Yes, that’s a camel and a Texas windmill

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Originally uploaded by plainy

Texas is very strange.

very, very strange.

New movie trailers are out!

And this one looks like a winner. Who wants to see it with me?

Also, last night I went to a B&N with my dear friend Dr. Mel who is in town for Christmas. She was horrified, horrified, that I had never been in the music section of that store.

I picked up Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. It’ll be the first graphic novel I’ve ever read, and I’m quite excited about it. Have any of y’all read it?