Day 4: August 31, 2009

Today was, in its way, an excellent example of top-down educational decision making at its finest. We were supposed to have pre-assessments, which are how teachers (and more importantly, the central office) gauge what the students know at the beginning of a semester. Pre-assessments especially help to measure what has been taught over the course of a school year (i.e., they’re compared to the scores of high-stakes standardized tests such as the HSAs that are administered at the end of the year).

All of this is irrelevant. All of this is irrelevant because the central office sent us the wrong Scantron sheets, so we couldn’t administer it. WTF.

Mrs. Blank did her best at making up for this. She had the class practice procedures for doing group work, which is a surprisingly useful and necessary activity. But what, really, can be done? The students will have to take the pre-assessment tomorrow, and some of them will have to finish it up on Wednesday, which means that we can’t do anything content related because they’ll have forgotten it by then.

An interesting aspect of teaching is this constant level of pressure, of being under the gun. In other work situations, a central-office fuck up like the one that happened today wouldn’t have been a huge deal.

So we do it tomorrow? So what?

Here, there is so little room for negotiation. There is a list of things the students absolutely have to know, and a limited duration in which we can teach them. A strategically placed snow-day can rearrange a whole month of lesson plans. And for the source of this stress to be caused by an administrative oversight rather than nature’s fury is all the more irritating.

Day 3: August 28 2009

Picture, if you will, a 23 year old with a degree in history, no previous experience dealing with high schoolers, wearing the same pair of khakis he has worn for the past 3 days. Now imagine that this dubious individual was placed in charge of 127 14-17 year olds who have no real reason to listen to or pay attention to him. I have a lot to unpack today, so bear with me.

I got up in front of the class, and reminded them that Mrs. Blank wasn't there today. I introduced the substitute, and told them that they would be working on the questions in their unit guide. If they didn't have a book, they could borrow one from someone who did. I told them it was okay if they talked.

The results were shocking. In all six classes, students took out their books and started working. A lot of them had problems finding definitions if they weren't in the glossary (a surprising number didn't know to check the index). The first two periods were kind of chatty, and after that I made sure to specify that they had to stay in their seats. And they listened! Even 8th period, who I often joke is my 'problem class,' did a remarkably good job of sitting down and shutting up. 4th period was completely silent. Completely silent. 6th period was the most talkative class, but it gave me a good picture of the classroom dynamics. As I floated around the classroom, I was able to develop a tentative rapport with some of my students. These links are fragile, and easily sundered. Inevitably they probably mean more to me as a teacher-in-training than to the students as teenagers wrapped up in whatever it is the kids are doing these days. And when I come back in January, I might have to rebuild them from scratch.

Day 2: August 27 2009

Today, Mrs. Blank learned (from a 1 AM  phone call)  that she had to attend a funeral on Friday. That meant that the schedule becomes a lot more cramped. The initial plan for the week was to spend today going over the unit guide (which has definitions and questions they're supposed to know for the HSA/AP tests) and syllabus and spend Friday practicing group work and issuing them their books. Now we had to go over the unit guide and pass out books in a single day; which is a lot more complicated than it might seem. For one, 10th graders don't necessarily know how to read a unit guide. It seemed really easy and clearly laid out to me, and Mrs. Blank patiently went over its contents, and still it took a fair amount of time before it seemed like everyone was pretty much on the same page. The AP classes, generally, didn't take as long to catch on, but their Unit Guide was a lot longer and took more time to go over. The second, and more time consuming problem, was that we needed to keep a record of which student received which book, and so they had to be handed out one-by-one.

How does one crowd-control when doing something boring/time consuming like calling students up one-by-one to get their books? Mrs. Blank was originally planning on doing it while they were doing group work, so that the other students would be occupied. But under a time crunch, we decided to show a movie on the history of the dollar bill. In introducing this movie, she warned that some of the claims made in it are controversial, while others were just out-and-out false. The movie was a sensationalist History Channel production which seriously privileges the theory that the dollar bill was part of a Masonic conspiracy. We told the kids that in order to be critical consumers of media, they had to learn to analyze the way things were presented to them. In discussion afterwards, they were clearly able to tell what claims were crazy and which were credible. Good for them.

Day One: August 26 2009

--First things first: it was utterly terrifying. Completely and totally terrifying. Talking in front of a group of strangers is one thing. Talking in front of a group of strangers who think that you're an adult in a position of authority is another thing altogether. I stumbled through the introduction to the first class, but by 4th period I pretty much had my footing. I mentioned my cat too damn often.

--For future reference, I teach three AP Government classes and three on-level Government classes.

--For the most part, we went over the syllabus and supply list, and everyone introduced themselves and said how they felt about "government." Some students interpreted this to mean government as an institution, while others interpreted it to mean government as a subject in school. Their responses to this question included:

"I think that government is a good thing, as long as leaders base their decisions on facts and science."

"I'm taking this class because I'm Vietnamese and my parents said they would stop feeding me if I didn't take an AP class."

"I normally like the government, but I stopped paying attention because I hate Obama."

[Half the class rolls their eyes]

"What? How come every time I say I don't like Obama it's gotta be a race riot?"

"I'm Will, and I'm unusually gifted at politics."

"I'm taking this class because I have a crush on Mrs. Blank."

--The teenaged son of a well known SMCM professor is in one of my AP classes.

--The perky girl continues her visits, but is constrained to handshakes

--When it was over, it wasn't as scary as it seemed at first. There were no big blowouts, disasters, or fuckups. Everyone seems to accept that I'm supposed to be there; that I'm an adult and that I'm qualified to instruct children. How weird is that?

Back to School Night: Dispatches from the Front Lines

--A substantial percentage of her AP classes apparently were never given the summer assignment. They all have the same terrified look on their faces when they find out about it.

--Every time there was a kid with snakebites or gauges, they were never in one of my classes. Maybe there will be though. Maybe the kids with gauges in my classes were just too badass to bother showing up to back to school night.

--A large ginger bearded fellow, with a brood of ginger children, ambled in. When I extended my hand, he seemed to ignore it at first. Then, with apparent disdain, he took it. Our conversation was lulzworthy on many points, so I will give only a few choice quotes

Man with Undiagnosed Asperger's: So you're being trained to take the most dynamic, interesting topic and suck all of the life out of it?

William Dhalgren: Absolutely, I look forward to it!

MUA: You're not even going to try to make it interesting?

WD: Once you're a member of the teacher's union, you sign a contract promising to make all of your classes as boring as possible.

MUA: [lost interest when I wasn't put off or offended]

MUA: Are you going to teach how our government was founded on free market principles, but over the past half of a year has been creeping toward socialism?

And so on.

--One mildly emo, extremely perky junior promised to come visit our class every day. Our exchange went something like this:

Perky Emo: You're with Mrs. Blank? That means we're going to be best friends!

WD: Yeah, I look forward to it.

PE: Seriously, it'll start with high-fives, but at the end of the year it'll be hugs.

WD: I really doubt that.

PE: It'll happen. You just wait.

WD: I don't like to be touched.

PE: I'll make it happen.

WD: I've gone from joking-uncomfortable to real-uncomfortable.

PE: We've just started.

Then we spent the next 10 minutes talking about our cats.

That's all for back to school night!

Rules

#1. No real names. Not mine, not my students', not my mentor teacher's, not my classmates.

#2. No mention of what schools I'm teaching at. Though there are some hints.

#3. There are no other rules.