Today Reminded Me Of Why I Do This

You can't ever really predict how well a lesson will go. You can pretend: you can rehearse in your room, plan to use a timer, plan all your questions and objectives, print your handouts on colored paper, and go over and over your plan in your head thirteen times. But the plain fact of the matter is that sometimes it works and sometimes it just doesn't.

But today? Today, it worked. And really, I'm not even that sure what I did. But it did, because today was awesome. It was a bright spot in an otherwise fairly hellacious week for me (in my personal life, at least) and I really needed it to remind me why I freaking love what I do.

It all started with an article.

See, I was scoping out the New York Times opinion section for some persuasive articles to use for an APEL activity on Tuesday (that also went well, actually) and came across this article. I almost used it for that activity, but ended up using it in Speech and Debate instead. But then I decided to use it for APEL today as a warm up. To be honest, I wasn't really sure how well this article would be received. It's mostly logos-based with some ethos thrown in, which I knew my students would understand and appreciate, but even I was unprepared for the sheer number of nuances ready to be discussed by a room full of inquisitive and opinionated juniors.

We're working on rhetoric and argumentation, so I won't go into everything they had to do with it before we discussed it (hooray for the Toulmin model), but today was without a doubt the best discussion my APEL classes have ever had. Kids that almost never participate were practically falling out of their desks trying to have their voices heard, and though some of what they said was just completely weird (such as suggesting an organ harvesting machine that would allow the inmate to remain alive whilst the organs were extracted ... ick), it was just the best thing ever. I'm sure that for most of the discussion, I just had this huge beaming smile on my face (well, when I wasn't hiding behind my cardigan at some disgusting suggestion) because I love it when they're smart. Well, they're always smart. I love it when they embrace it and let their guard down and really dig deeply into what it means to be human and live in this world with other people. I would have let them keep talking the whole period -- and they would have been able to keep it going -- if I had had the time to spare. They kept coming up with new facets to the conversation -- and I was even able to work in a connection to Antigone. (This blew their minds. At which point, as we moved to the next mind-blowing activity, I told them to cram their minds back into their heads so they could be re-blown.)

But today's discussion -- and the following activity -- reminded me of why I love being a teacher. I love seeing them vulnerable. I love ripping into a moral dilemma through some kind of text and pushing kids to see both sides and hold them up next to each other and see that the answers aren't as clear as we'd like them to be. I love listening to kids think on their feet. I love watching kids' arms wilt as they wait desperately to share a thought that has occurred to them. I love poking their small experiences with the sticks of my not-much-bigger experiences and forcing them out of their comfort zones. I love that I get to teach English, this beastly monster of a subject that also allows me a wide latitude to throw an article in their face, under the guise of looking at how the article is built and what makes it effective (which we also discussed) when ultimately my true purpose is to spark critical thinking. Hold it up. Look at it. Tell me what it is. Tell me what it isn't. Tell me something else. But what about this? Or this?

Teenagers are smarter than we give them credit for in this overly-tested educational life of theirs, and somehow, this article, weird as it is, struck a chord with them and they just absolutely burst into a kind of nuanced thoughtfulness that you can't predict. You can't model. You can't capture. It just happens. And I just feel so blessed and lucky that this was my day today.

Today was magic. Pure, unpredictable, productive magic. And I hope they felt it, too.

And, amazingly enough, my sophomores just added to the magic by embracing the vocabulary story competition activity that worked so well two years ago, but fell completely flat on its face last year (... last year's sophomores ... ::shakes fist:: ). They were so focused (you know an activity is going well when your timer goes off and EVERYONE begs for more time).

Essentially what I did was have them, in groups, write a vocabulary story using as many vocabulary words as they could from their 90 from the semester. They needed to use at least 10, but every extra word added is extra credit. And, to make it more interesting, I told them that I would have someone in my life -- mom, brother, boyfriend (and boyfriend becomes a very distracting word to use in a sophomore classroom. ::facepalm::) -- to read them. This year's kids did what my students two years ago did: they asked GREAT questions about their audience. What does your mom like? Where did your mom go to college? What about your boyfriend? Do they like pirates? Ninjas? Star Wars? It was completely and totally hilarious and awesome. And the stories are priceless. There was even a Charlie Sheen story. Winning!

And then they didn't completely fall apart when we got to Antigone. They're getting it, it seems. They discussed when I asked them to discuss, they answered questions. Overall, really, it was just a really rather awesome day.

And now, it's 8:15 pm and I am completely and totally exhausted but I am just still feeling so completely and totally happy that today was such a career-affirming day.

I really needed it.

March Madness. And Not The Basketball Kind.

So, for those of you not exactly in the "know," March is pretty much the worst month of teaching. We were discussing this notion at lunch today: how every. single. year. we all forget that March is just a giant epic suckfest of awfulness because the kids are restless, we are restless, the yearly state tests loom, Spring Break seems so awfully far away, and there are no holidays, assemblies, or any other breaks in our routines. So, yeech. Which also means that I have the life sucked out of me every day just trying to wrangle all of my students and not actually kick them. Or yell at them. Because that's just too exhausting.

There have been many posts I've been meaning to write. One about Chelsea. That will happen when I'm in a better, less negative headspace. I want that one to be more positive. One about standardized testing. But I'm way, WAY too hopped up on standardized test-driven ire to make that one come out in an articulate, meaningful, and objective way. So I think the direction in which I will head relates to last Monday's Daily Show where Jon Stewart added his voice to the now-politically-correct, new American past time of teacher bashing.

It was pure poetry.

As was this part. (These were just two clips split up, but are part of the longer intro segment.)

But many of the clips of "legitimate" news stations shown were not so much poetry -- well, okay, perhaps poetry, but the kind of lame, sad, acrostic poetry a second grader might make for their dad on Father's Day. THAT kind of poetry.

But there was one moment of that particular clip show that has stuck in our heads and made us angry. That's right. Angry. And that is the notion that teaching is nothing but "a part time job."

::pause for effect::

Um. Really? Part time? ... Really?

Later in this post, I'll do a little math to demonstrate that this is horribly, terribly, awfully, ridiculously, pathetically untrue that is, but first, here's why fighting these kinds of misconceptions can be frustrating and troubling: it can often be really, REALLY hard to combat them when you do actually have to concede to the following two facts:

1. Teachers get summers off.

Well, okay, first of all, that depends a lot on your district, or even your school within your district. We have six high schools in our district and one of them is actually on a modified year-round schedule. Several of my friends are on year-round or modified year-round calendars and do not, in fact, get months and months and months of the summer off. And to add insult to that misconception, many of the teachers that I know that do teach through the summer do so without air conditioning in their classrooms, a luxury that I'm sure is afforded to this so-called political pundits sitting in newsrooms.

However, sure, I must concede to the fact that I have the summer off.

But does anyone ever ask me whether I prefer it that way?

Because honestly, I don't.

Actually, I'd much prefer to be on a year-round calendar, and most teachers I know who are not currently on that system would love desperately to be on a year-round system. Our traditional school calendar, where we start in August/September and end in May/June is just as antiquated, irrelevant, and outdated as a lot of what we still do in education, and I will be the first one to say sure, hey, take away my eight, nine, ten weeks of summer if it means that I might not only be able to have more frequent, regular vacations like the rest of the working world, but also, I might be able to do some awesome teaching that would actually stick because it wouldn't go falling out of students' brains while they sit at home and play Modern Warfare for hours at a time while their parents are working.

Plus, as an additional but no less important last thought, I worked my ass off this summer and didn't get paid for it. I rearranged and reorganized my classroom for two weeks before school started in panicked fear about the forty-plus class sizes I was looking at. And I'm really, REALLY glad I spent that unpaid time in my not-yet-air-conditioned-because-it-was-still-summer classroom because otherwise, I have no idea how I would have survived even the first two weeks of school. I also modified a ton of curriculum, heaved boxes and boxes of books home and revamped quite a bit of stuff to accommodate for increased numbers of kids and the sheer anxiety of having to grade that much. Oh, and there was the 8 hour day Andrea and I spent at my house planning out our APEL year. And we didn't get paid for that, either. Billable hours, what?

2. The school day ends at 2:30.

So, this is what is technically true for me, though I know other schools in our district end at 3:05, 3:35, etc. It just depends on the buses. (Really. The buses dictate everything related to time in the district.)

But yes. The students leave at 2:30.

Except they don't leave.

Ever.

Today I had a line of at least seven students and it took me until almost 3:15 to get through all of them. While neglecting my after-school Speech and Debate class, which I teach Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 2:30 to 3:30. Then sometimes, even they don't leave. They want to stay and chat. Discuss their homework. Their lives. Ask me, the English teacher, for help with physics. (It's true. And I can actually help them. But that's sorta kinda besides the point, except, really, in the grand scheme of things, it's not besides the point, because I'm freaking amazingly well-educated and can ACTUALLY teach things I'm not NCLB certified to teach. Weird, huh? Anyway, I digress...) But they're a chatty, needy, hilarious, annoying, weird, quirkly, lurking bunch. And so though it seems like those claiming I work a part time job assume that all of our students Apparate home at 2:30, it's really not the case. At all.

We also all have email these days, so technically, my work day never ends. I mean, I guess I could be one of those teachers who only checks my school email while physically at school, but that's just not my reality. I'm available to my students via email, Facebook, and, this year, through Google Voice, which allows them to text me with short, simple questions if they're struggling. So, actually, I'm never really off-duty unless I make the mental choice to be. Or unless I leave my cell phone out of audible range.

And then there's the grading. Oooooh the grading. And the lesson planning. And the balancing of a life on top of that. And the grading.

These days, my lesson planning generally amounts to a few scribbled post-its and scrounging around on my various computers for the handouts I know I have so that I can look at them, modify if necessary, and make copies.

But sometimes, I get into a fit of "THIS DIDN'T WORK LAST YEAR I NEED SOMETHING NEW!" and will spend four, five, six hours at a time trying to devise a new lesson, and building a lesson from scratch ain't easy, folks. It requires figuring out objectives. Materials. Rehearsing so that you can figure out timing. Talking to yourself. Deciding how best to deliver the content. Making a Power Point or chart or overhead if necessary.

And heaven forbid you decide you want them in groups and THEN decide you want to pick the groups for them, because then you have to decide whether you want them in heterogenous groups, which usually means the poor, hardworking, good kids are going to have to limp the struggling kids along, even though you'd like to hope against all hope that a heterogeneous group will be what helps the struggling kids become unstruggling kids by listening to and emulating their peers, but let's be honest: this is high school we're talking about here, or in homogeneous groups, which usually means you get to spend a period ignoring the top 75% of your class and hovering over the two or three groups of kids all now piled together looking completely lost and befuddled and trying to explain to them, in small chunks, what you expect of them.

AND THEN, when you make that decision, you've now resigned yourself to at LEAST a half an hour (but usually more) of going through your class lists and trying to arrange the groups to your liking, but really, you're never going to do it right because someone always hates someone else, and someone can't work with someone else because they've gotten in trouble with them, or so and so just broke up with so and so, so they can't be in the same group, and after an hour, you really just want to throw the materials in the middle of the room and let them go at the assignment Lord of the Flies style to see which of the strong will survive.

And then there's the grading. Oh the humanity. I think if you ask a lot of teachers, especially English teachers, you'll find that many of them had some kind of TA experience as a young kid where they feasted on the power trip that was grading other students' work. We lurved it. It's powerful, dangerous, intoxicating to edit an essay with a red pen or grade a multiple choice test and hack away at the wrong answers like they've personally offended you by getting it wrong.

Except, it's only fun when it's not your grading. Grading your own stuff sucks, because you have to learn from the grading. Grading is not a passive thing. Grading, especially of an essay or dialectical journal or really any student writing, is an active, incredibly cognitively challenging adventure in...

* mind-reading: ("did the kid really mean that? Oh, wait, no, I see where they were going with that, but how did they get there? oh, they were looking at that quote... they must not have seen the rest of it. But ...oh, okay, this paragraph is about that! Oh! ... hmmm. That wasn't a very good topic sentence. Oh, but here's their evidence. Hmmm, I think they're trying to say this, but I think ... oh, okay, I see what they did there..."),

* handwriting deciphering (is that a k or a t? ... What the heck does that say?! Oh... it just says "flock" ... hmmm.),

* and lesson planning ("OMG, NONE of these kids got that answer right! What did I not teach this year? How come no one has discussed that quote we talked about in class? Oh, wow, these kids really don't know how to select effective evidence. I need a new lesson. Wow, and this batch of essays really missed the whole idea of weaving... I need a new way to explain that").

Not to mention that it's disheartening to look at a ginormous stack of essays on the edge of a table and realize that in an hour, you've graded three of them.

Keep in mind, too, that this grading doesn't happen during the school day. Oh no. Sometimes my friend Summer and I like to joke that our work gets in the way of our work -- that being an English teacher wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the pesky teaching part. Then we could spend our days at work at our teacher desks, basking in the glory of the grading. But we can't. We have to teach. Teach our asses off. For a new breed of kid called "technology native." So the grading has to wait.

Seriously, if I only graded during the "free" time I had at school, none of my students would get anything back EVER. First of all, there are too many distractions. Second of all, it doesn't give me the focus I need. And third of all, there's just too much of it to try and eke all of it out in the piddly 57 minutes I have of a prep three days a week. ... and if I graded, when would I photocopy? Do paper work? Meet with administrators? Meet with other teachers? Clean up once in awhile? It is absolutely, unequivocally, completely impossible to get everything I need to get done achieved during my 7:30-2:30 work day. It's as simple as that.

So yes. The bell rings at 2:30. But then my real job begins. And it isn't pretty.

Part time job? In case the grading aspect hasn't convinced you that I don't, in fact, work a part time job, here's a break down of my week last week, in terms of hours:

Monday: Arrived at school at 6:30. (And work begins immediately.) Left school at 3:30. [9 hours]

Tuesday: Arrived at school at 6:30. Left school at 3:45. [9 hours, 15 minutes]

Wednesday: Arrived at school at 6:30. Left school at 6:30. (Yes. That's not a typo. 12 hours. It included regular teaching, Speech and Debate, a fairly-epic department chairs meeting, and then room arranging/cleaning/planning/prepping) [12 hours]

Thursday: Arrived at school at 6:30. Left school at 3:45. [9 hours, 15 minutes]

Friday: Arrive at school at 6:30. At 2:30, dashed to my car to beat the parents out of the parking lot and headed to Carlsbad High School for the Speech and Debate State Qualifying tournament. I was there from about 3:30 until 11:00, actively engaged in helping to run the tournament. I got home around 11:30. By my reckoning, that was a 17 hour day. [17 hours]

Let's see. I might be an English teacher, but my ability to do math tells me that all total, my work week last week was 56 hours and 30 minutes. Oh, and that was just the time I spent "on duty."

You know, at school.

Around people.

Or actively preparing my classroom or self to teach.

And, pretty much every single one of those days, I went home and also did something work-related, whether it was:

* grading 90+ Gatsby quizzes, 80+ Julius Caesar Final Essays, and 90+ Gatsby Dialectical journals,

* planning my Promising Practices presentation for March 19th (my name's not there yet as a presenter, but I am indeed doing my first official county-wide teacher presentation),

* worrying about my Speech and Debaters performing in Poway's Got Talent on Friday night (while I was at Carlsbad with my other Speech and Debater),

* emailing kids and/or parents and/or other teachers when I didn't immediately respond during the day

* editing handouts and revising lessons for upcoming class sessions.

Part time job? ... I might get paid like it's a part time job, but it's not. It is an all-consuming, sometimes soul-sucking, often awesomely-rewarding, passion-driven, exhausting, frustrating, never-ending calling.

At the end of the day, it's not really a job at all.

It's a lifestyle.

And there's no such thing as a part-time lifestyle. It's all or nothing.

No More Pink!

On March 15, 2008, I received my first pink slip.

My principal, list of teachers in hand, crept sheepishly into my classroom, his tired and frustrated face still wearing the stress of the teachers he had already talked to before coming to my classroom. He sat down slightly awkwardly into a student desk and halted over his words, telling me that because I had only been in the district two years, I was being notified that I would possibly not have a teaching position to come back to in the fall. I knew it was coming; I had done the math in my head and figured it would be inescapable. But hearing it, with such official finality from my principal, the principal who had hired me after months of calling me every Monday evening on my way home from UCSD graduate courses to assure me they were waiting for a spot to offer me, the principal who had been my own high school principal for three years, the principal who supported me in my first two years of teaching and who respected me the way that my first principal had not, was awful. I was able to mostly hold back my tears until he was gone, choking on the last few words I said to him as I put on a brave face and shrugged that it was inevitable.

But as soon as my classroom door clicked closed behind him as he went off to talk to the next teacher on his list, I dissolved into a puddle of teachers, clutching my face at my desk -- the desk I might have to clean out at the end of the year, and, sitting there through the tears, surveying the corners of my classroom, thinking in a flash of all of my classroom teaching possessions boxed up and taken home to rot in my garage. The weight was too much.

Oh, and did I mention that March 15th, 2008 was my 26th birthday? Because it was.

And that was only the first pink slip I would experience in my short career. I was pink slipped on March 15th, 2009 and again on March 15th, 2010.

In 2008, the first one, it actually didn't officially stick. I mean, it wasn't immediately revoked within a few days; I think it took a little less than two months before most of us were notified that though they'd had to notify us for the March 15th deadline (which is one of those weirdly arbitrary California Ed Code dates), things had improved and we would not be issued the next even scarier notice. We even got a lovely little form letter from the district to say that they were happy to inform us we would, in fact, have a position the following year in the district and apologized for the stress. This was nice.

The next year was not so nice. Unlike the year before, where my principal visited each teacher individually, 2009 was the year of the Epic Pink Slipping. I think there were at least thirty teachers in the room, which our principal and district human resources people assembled in a room to bring the axe down once, as gently as they could. It was awful. Lots of English teachers -- almost half of our department. Many math teachers. Lots of elective teachers and a handful of Social Science Teachers. Thirty teachers at that time was almost a third of the staff. It was gut wrenching and awful, and though high school teachers tend towards biting sarcasm and humor to deal with pain and anger, the fear was pretty poorly masked. Some managed to ask some practical questions, mumbling things about unemployment and COBRA and being able to be on a sub list in the district. Things that make me shut down and pretend like I'm in a coffee shop in Paris and NOT being told, for the second year in a row, that because of something completely and totally out of my control -- out of anyone in that room's control -- I may not have a job the following year. And this time around, things were worse. There were meetings -- hundreds of teachers piled into multipurpose rooms being told to search for other jobs and gather letters of recommendation, being reassured that recently laid-off teachers would not only be hired back in the order of seniority, but would be at the top of the substituting food chain. We were issued packets that explained things like unemployment and COBRA and the rehiring procedures. On the May date -- the "For Reals" deadline in the world of layoffs and pink slips -- we received an even fatter packet than we received on March 15 with an even scarier Reduction In Force letter that heralds, in seemingly cold finality, the official loss of your position in the district. The March 15th letter becomes nothing but a friendly preview for the mayhem to come.

It was terrifying.

For days, weeks, months, I had a stomach ache. I carry all of my stress in my stomach anyway, but I ended up being so bad off that I nearly had a nervous breakdown on my mom's couch with a college friend in town, crying so hard I could barely breathe. I was tired of feeling like crap, tired of not sleeping, tired of being stressed out and freaked out all the time, to the point where it was affecting my health, my relationships with family, friends, and my still-fairly-new-at-the-time boyfriend. I suffered through bouts of vertigo. GERD, which presented itself similarly to morning sickness: I woke up every single morning for weeks feeling scared and shaky and nauseous. I ended up at the doctor's several times in a matter of months; more visits than probably the five years prior combined. I started gaining back a lot of the 90 pounds I'd lost in the two years before, despite all of my efforts to stave it off. The stress of the uncertain future acted like a magnet, keeping it all in place and even piling more on.

And through all of this, I went to school every day and taught my ass off. For what might have been nothing.

See, the thing about being pink slipped as a teacher is weird. You don't just get laid off and that's that. There's all this somewhat silly Ed Code protocol to it, where there's a pre-warning, and then an official lay off, and even then, it's not ever really actually a lay off until it is the first day or so of school and you don't have a job. But the pink slip doesn't mean you suddenly just stop teaching. You have to keep teaching that school year regardless of your status for the following year. And though that seems obvious, here's the rub: you start to feel like your attempts to better yourself -- better your craft, better your art, better your passion for teaching -- are completely and utterly useless. Why revise that test? You might not need it next year, and that thought is depressing.

Suddenly every assignment, every essay prompt, every quiz and test that you fleetingly ponder changing becomes a hideous reminder that at some point soon, none of it will matter. All this time you've spent creating material, sitting at Starbucks with your team mates until 8:00 at night and walking home in the dark because the time got away from you, or getting up at some fictitious time in the morning like 5:00 am to meet colleagues in your classroom to plan and create materials because you don't have any other time to meet -- all of these things will essentially have meant nothing to your career. To the kids, sure. And this is why we do this, which I'll get to later. But the visceral terror of being jobless in a profession where getting a job was becoming increasingly impossible keeps bubbling to the surface every time you open a document to double-check and revise.

And every time you spend a little too long looking at all of the stuff in your classroom and suddenly imagining it all in boxes.

And every time a student in third period asks why you've been crying on your second period prep.

And every time the newspaper publishes some hateful "blame the teachers" article lambasting how terrible we are at our jobs.

And every time you have to explain to someone -- a student, a non-teacher friend, a family member, that no, the fact that I'm Department Chair of the English department doesn't matter; no, the fact that you love me doesn't matter; no, the fact that I coach Speech and Debate and Science Olympiad and teach AP and CAHSEE Prep and teach technology to teachers and sit on the AVID Site team doesn't matter. None of this matters. All that matters if the hire date, printed in black ink on white paper in your personnel file. And though through your brave face, you explain to these inquisitive and generally well-meaning people that you'd rather it be that way because then your principal and district people don't have to decide, American Idol-style with Polaroids and some grotesque teacher version of Hollywood week, who stays and who goes based on something completely subjective and arbitrary, in reality, on the inside, you're desperate to scream, "THIS IS SO UNFAIR!" because you know you're working harder than a lot of people, not just in your profession, but in many other professions, too.

And every time you spend six hours at the local Starbucks, or the library, or the park, or the zoo, or wherever you've managed to find a quiet, shady spot to grade, grading essays and realize that though this is one of the most wretched part of your job, the alternative is so much scarier.

2009 was bad. I didn't really know for sure until midway through the summer that I would, in fact, be able to return to Poway High. And this was after being the one who has to build the English schedule, plugging in "Teacher X" for my own course load, hoping with crossed fingers and "K. McMillan" would replace "Teacher X" by the end of the year. It took longer than that, but it happened eventually.

2010 sucked, too, though this year, only a handful of seasoned pink slipped veterans huddled in our principal's office, being told for the third year in a row that we might not have jobs. And though you'd think the third time around, it would be easier to hear. Easier to swallow. Easier to brush off and power through.

But it's not.

It's harder.

At least it was for me. Because at some point, you know you can't get lucky that many times in a row. At some point, the pink slip is going to stick. What else can a district do to cut expenses? And they haven't hired anyone in English in the district since the whole pink slipping adventure started, and teachers I worked with and loved and still miss dearly did suffer as a result and had to find jobs elsewhere -- I figured at SOME point, I'd be next. So that third year was probably the hardest. Plus, given that this year, there were maybe only eight of us holding pink slips, the rest of campus seemed not to care; they seemed mostly oblivious to the fact that this year, there were still teachers with jobs in peril, so it became increasingly annoying and frustrating and sad to walk into the staff workroom and overhear comments about salary reductions and union/district/school site leadership -- comments from colleagues whose jobs were safe, and had been for all three of those years. I would walk out of the staff lounge wanting to scream. Or kick. Or punch. But I would just go back to my classroom, pull my door shut a little too hard and sink down into my desk chair and stare at the computer screen.

And that third year, again, I wasn't entirely sure I'd have a job until midway through the summer. All in all, I think I've lived a collective total of 12 months with job uncertainty hanging over my head -- that's a year, people. One year out of the last three worrying I may lose my job.

Now, granted, I didn't lose it. I'm still teaching. I have tenure, which I've actually had since about midway through my second year of teaching. But all those naysayers who are anti-tenure? It doesn't really guarantee me any kind of job security; in a Reduction in Force time, it doesn't matter. Not even a teeny, tiny little bit.

But here's the thing about teaching. It's a calling. Cliche though that may be, it really and truly is. I've known since I was in elementary school that somehow, some way, in some capacity or another, that I would end up in a classroom teaching students of some kind. In my younger and more naive years, I imagined teaching science, as I had always planned on being an aerospace engineering major. But really and truly, I've had teaching in mind as a career path since about the fifth grade. I love it. I breathe it. When I'm with Summer, it's almost all we talk about, and though we have our share of rant sessions, we both love almost every second of what we do.

Because we've been called to it. We can't not do it. Even if we weren't teaching, we'd be teaching. We'd be teaching significant others to cook something; we'd be teaching young children how to swing on a park swing; we'd be teaching parents how to use a semi-colon properly; or we'd be teaching anyone who will listen about why teachers deserve so much more respect than they get these days.

Why else would teachers put up with so little pay? Why else would teachers put up with sometimes abysmal working conditions? Why else would teachers sit up at night grading essays or marking exams or falling asleep on quizzes (like I did last night at about 11:30 pm)? Why else would teachers chaperone Prom every year, or take students on Speech and Debate tournament field trips, or spend hundred of dollars of their own money to make sure that they have pens and pencils for students to use and colored paper for long-term assignments? Why else would teachers deal with parents who don't understand that their kid is one of more than 200 they deal with a day? Why else would teachers come to work sick because they don't trust a sub with their class?

Because we can't help ourselves. We were born to teach; born with some kind of innate ability to impart learning to the youth of our country; born with a genuine, natural, inexplicable desire to spend a day in a 18x18 room full of 42 student desks, two big tables, a teacher desk, four book shelves, 41 students, 1 TA, and three plants... and ultimately enjoy the heck out of it.

We do this for the kids. We love them. They're weird and quirky and stupid and funny and brilliant and annoying and awesome and motivated and human and real. It is amazing to watch them progress over the course of the year; it is amazing to watch them work in groups and have a true moment of realization about a new concept or piece of text; it is amazing to see them all dolled up at Prom or dolled down at the end of a long week of AP testing. It is always a kick when they develop a class inside joke -- one that sticks the whole year, that they bond over and use as a little in-group bonding. I know a lot of people are terrified of what I do: I teach high school. Teenagers aren't cute like elementary school kids; they really do look like young adults, which makes it so much easier to fear them and easier to want to kick them because often they're bigger than you. But I LOVE teaching teenagers. LOVE it. They're a weird paradoxical ball of youth and adulthood, innocence and jadedness, intelligence and stupidity, thoughtfulness and idiocy, and it's absolutely an indescribable feeling to actually watch them grow up and gain consciousness about the world as a result of something you created: an assignment, an essay, a discussion, a group project. Watching consciousness-raising happen on the face of a 16 year old is both awe-inspiring and hilarious. The students are why I do this. I love them. I work my butt off for them. I try to mentor them, try to be a role model for them, try to teach them and mold them and discipline them and love them, and sometimes that last one is really, really hard.

So even though working through the possibility of not returning to the campus that has nurtured you as a teacher and helped you create this unbreakable bond between you and a few hundred students is heinous and awful, it's the kids that make it bearable. They're good at cheering you up and making you laugh and for that I am every day grateful that I have the wonderfully good fortune to spend 8 hours of my day surrounded by 15-17 year olds. Scary? Not to me. Exhilarating.

And why have I just spilled this much electronic ink waxing poetic about pink slips and teaching?

Because today, February 22, 2011, we received word from the district that they would be issuing no layoff notices this year. So for the first year in three years, I won't have to worry about not just losing my livelihood, but also losing what is nearest and dearest to me: my career that defines every fiber of my being. I am my job and my job is me; they're inextricable from each other, and the thought of losing my job as a teacher is essentially to be confronted with the possibility of losing a part of myself. And this year, I don't have to worry.

I might sleep through the night and not wake up tomorrow morning with a stomach ache for the first time since March 2008.

And, as I turn 29 in a few weeks, I will get to ACTUALLY enjoy my birthday without the fresh looming threat of unemployment.

And of course, my mom, ever so supportive, wondered what on Earth we were going to use as a theme for my birthday party this year, since "PINK SLIPS" have been the obvious fan favorite the last three years.

I'm sure we'll think of something.

Because the Cool Kids Are Doing It

And because I want to be a cool kid like Summer and Bonnie and Bethany and Sarah, I HAVE to do it. Obviously.

But also, as an English teacher, it's a hard thing to express to students sometimes how awesome and weird and cool and stupid and irritating and amazing and wonderful language is, especially the English language. I'm in the midst of shepherding my sophomores through the mire that is Julius Caesar, and they don't really love it. But I wish I could make my love of the sound of language contagious.

So here's my vlog. I may not do this ever again, though I have recorded things with my voice for my students. Is it weird that I don't mind my voice, but it's watching my mouth move that bugs me? (I think I just heard my dad laughing at me after I typed that one.)

Anywho, here's the video:

Word list:
Aunt, Route, Wash, Oil, Theater, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Probably, Spitting image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pajamas, Caught

Questions:
What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
What is the bug that when you touch it, it curls into a ball?
What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you change the TV channel with?

PS: Yes, that is a leopard print Snuggie on the couch behind me. Don't judge.

PPS: I went to the gym today and I look like crap. Lo siento.

Oh for the love of Wednesdays.

It is currently 6:55 pm. I have been in my house for approximately 40 minutes. I didn't leave school until about 5:45 pm. And 5:30 pm was about the first time today since around 7:00 am that I was alone. Like, alone alone.

You see, as I have covered in this blog before, Wednesdays are my long days with no prep period. And today was the additional element of the TLC class I'm teaching to other teachers. And that is just long. Just long!

There were some moments of win, though. My AP kids, for some reason, on this essay they're writing right now, they're being less needy and are begging for my help a bit less. This is certainly progress, but I do allow them some leeway in terms of question-asking about this essay because I have to keep reminding myself that we didn't do some of the assignments we did last year that set them up better for research. Thus I think I need to do a little backfilling in how to research. (... it is so wrong that I'm about to admit this, but I miss teaching the junior paper because I miss teaching research in such a meaningful and in-depth way. ::sigh::)

Also, my third period is emerging as my ... cerebral? ... class. Somehow, they just ask these great questions or bring up these great points. I'm lovin' it.

And then there were my fifth period sophomores. I was a bit upset with them because they SUCKED their homework big time last night, BUT their vocabulary stories and poems were really, really, really good for sophomores. I even offered extra credit for writing a rhyming poem (I mean, we're doing Shakespeare, after all!) and some of them just wrote these hilariously weird poems (they didn't have a whole heck of a lot to work with -- their vocab list consists of words like "aggrandize" and "execrable" and "quotidian." LOL. OH SAT words, how you create some hilarious poetry.) One of the poems was about ninjas. Always win. Another about a dictator, based on one of the students in the class. Also win. Then I read them my modernized rendition of Caesar. LOL. It was pretty funny. Then, to explain the difference between the modernized recitation and oral interpretation, I did the Valley Girl interpretation of Hamlet's "To Be or Not To Be." (You know, because I have the first half memorized from AP Lit my senior year. Like you do.) (This freaks the kids out excessively. Nobody MEMORIZES things any more! Good golly!) And then we proceeded on with Shakespeare -- Julius Caesar Act II. Wheeeee.

Also, I found this article today on CNN during my few brief moments of transition time (my kids take FOR-EV-ER to pack up their stuff!) and am very amused by it, to be very honest. Obviously, this is a dramatically bad idea. I mean, at least, in the practical sense: teachers don't go home with the students, therefore how can they really assess the parenting that is going on there? Plus, wow, way to open up teachers to a whole new layer of attack by parents. As if I don't get enough emails already! Now, granted, the idea is for elementary school teachers to grade parents... I can't even IMAGINE the havoc this would wreak if it were to implemented in a high school. Specifically, at my school.

But. Let's say for grins and giggles that this idea were to move forward into a production phase at my school and I got to have input. My oh my would my criteria look vasty different. These are teenagers we're talking about. Firstly, my grade for a parent would be affected by the quantity and tone of their emails. I have no problem with parents emailing me, especially about concerns they have about their students and I have no problem sharing observations. Email is a fabulous tool, but it can also become a weapon. I have problems with parents email me to ask questions that either their student should know the answer to, or to spare their student the hurt, heartbreak, frustration, or whatever they think their kid is going to have to feel by asking me a question they might not like the answer to. (No never mind that it says very clearly on the syllabus that parents sign that I only discuss grades with students and NOT parents.)

Email also allows parents (well, anyone really, but obviously it is the nature of the profession) to say things that they wouldn't (or, at least, I'd like to think they wouldn't) say to your face or in a room full of people who have been pulled together to talk about a student. And this is problematic because it isn't productive. So, certainly, my Parent Grading Criteria would include items about quantity of emails, the tone of the emails, and the relative cooperation parents show in emails.

But also, the main elements of my criteria would involve grading parents on how willing they are to hold their students accountable to their work, their ethics, their behavior, and their learning. I am so, so, so tired of students never, EVER being allowed to feel frustration. Or hurt. Or failure. Especially failure. Because too often, parents swoop in and fix it before they can feel it. It's no wonder so many of our students are self-medicating and essentially anesthetizing themselves with Oxy and marijuana and alcohol: no one has helped provide them with the emotional tools they need to feel. Stop bringing them their lunches. Stop running interference with their teachers and their coaches. Stop trying to get them out of a school punishment. Or a home punishment. And stop asking teachers to meet with you when the student earns (yes, that's right, earns) a B on a paper. Or in the class. Or on a dinky quiz. Quite frankly, a B kid isn't on my radar. F kids. D kids. C--- kids. These kids are on my radar. (And by "on my radar," I mean hand-wriging about and talking to the kid about and trying to create assignments and assessments that might FINALLY tap into something in that student that will ignite a spark. A and B kids, in my mind, already have that spark ignited.) A- kids? B+ kids? These are kids who are fine. They are learning. They are thriving based on my assessments. They're good. Chillax. So emailing teachers about those things would definitely equate to demerits in the parent gradebook.

But really, it's a bad idea. A really bad idea. Do I think that placing all of the blame on teachers for the failures of the schools is fair? Not by a longshot. Do I think that parents need to be held more accountable for their children's success? Maybe. Do I think the students need to be held more accountable for their own success? Absofrigginlutely. But do I think that opening this kind of can of worms is going to work? No. It's arbitrary at best, and potentially incendiary at worst. We (and by we, there are many, many moving parts at play here) keep trying to address symptoms, but really, we're not addressing the root problem, which I am starting to think more and more is the cultural shift in parenting where, at some point, everyone collectively decided that kids should never have to feel hurt or upset ever. But there are different types of hurt and different types of upset; kids should never be bullied. Kids should never be mistreated intentionally. Kids should feel safe in their homes, classrooms, and in public. But kids should be hurt by failure. They should be allowed to feel upset when a teacher calls them out for inappropriate classroom behavior, and learn that sometimes, teachers get annoyed, and sometimes, you do have to be criticized for something you are doing that is unacceptable in the context of your circumstances. They should be allowed to feel upset when they get frustrated by an assignment or a quiz, and should be made to sit with that frustration until they can figure out a way to move through it, past it, or address it and fix it.

So that's that. I think it's time to go to bed. Oh. Wait. It's only 7:20. Maybe bed isn't quite in the cards yet. ::grumble::

As a final thought, one of my colleagues did have this to say about grading parents: "I mean, hey, they think they can assess and criticize us with no official training. I think turnabout is fair play." Heh.

The Things I Do For Sophomores. Or, Sorry, Billy Shakespeare...

In my sophomore class, we're just tiptoeing into Julius Caesar, and one of their final assessments for this unit is going to be an oral assessment of some kind. The kids have six options, ranging from just memorizing something like a sonnet, to doing a puppet show. But one of their options is a rewriting -- they can take Shakespeare's original and change the language to make it more modern, with the additional suggestion that they select some kind of stereotype and/or particular vernacular to imitate. When I first rolled it out, we didn't have a whole ton of time to discuss the particulars, so I need to do that tomorrow.

And to help them grasp the concept of what I'd like to see, I wrote my own model. Based on Julius Caesar. It's either brilliance or absolute garbage, but hey, it took me all of about ten minutes (maybe less than that) to throw it together, and though I think it's probably not that authentic, I bet my kids won't really know the difference. I was aiming for Jersey Shore, but I think I landed somewhere between the Valley (a la Cher in Clueless, whose voice I can't NOT hear!), New Jersey (I stole "Ant'ny" from Jerseylicious. I won't lie.), and Harlem (damn ethnic studies class where we studied the grammar of AAVE -- I had to try really hard not to include more "he be fightin" "he be trippin'" etc.)... but I think they'll still get the point, especially when I perform it for them with gestures and an accent. HA.

Here's the original, from Act I, scene ii:

CASCA

You pull'd me by the cloak; would you speak with me?

BRUTUS

Ay, Casca; tell us what hath chanced to-day,

That Caesar looks so sad.

CASCA

Why, you were with him, were you not?

BRUTUS

I should not then ask Casca what had chanced.

CASCA

Why, there was a crown offered him: and being

offered him, he put it by with the back of his hand,

thus; and then the people fell a-shouting.

BRUTUS

What was the second noise for?

CASCA

Why, for that too.

CASSIUS

They shouted thrice: what was the last cry for?

CASCA

Why, for that too.

BRUTUS

Was the crown offered him thrice?

CASCA

Ay, marry, was't, and he put it by thrice, every

time gentler than other, and at every putting-by

mine honest neighbours shouted.

CASSIUS

Who offered him the crown?

CASCA

Why, Antony.

BRUTUS

Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

CASCA

I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it:

it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark

Antony offer him a crown;--yet 'twas not a crown

neither, 'twas one of these coronets;--and, as I told

you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my

thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he

offered it to him again; then he put it by again:

but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his

fingers off it. And then he offered it the third

time; he put it the third time by: and still as he

refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their

chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps

and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because

Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked

Caesar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and

for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of

opening my lips and receiving the bad air.

And here's my adaptation:

Act I, Scene II

CASCA: Yo, what gives, bro? Why you be pullin’ on my threads?

BRUTUS: Dude, bro, what went down up in there? Why’z Caesar lookin’ so to’ up?

CASCA: Pssh. C’mon, dawg, you was out dere, righ’?

BRUTUS: Dang, man, why do you think I’d ask if I’da been dere?

CASCA: Yo, check it – here’s the haps. Caesar got offered that, you know, weird-lookin’ crown thing they got out there, but yo, like, I guess it didn’t jive with his look or somethin’, cuz he be wavin’ it off like it was a fly or something. And then the crowd, they was was like so excited – it was off the HOOK in the square.

BRUTUS: Then what was the second noise?

CASCA: Aw, dude, same thing, man!

CASSIUS: Yo, yo, yo, they be shoutin’ three times – why’d they yell the last time?

CASCA: Awwww boy! For the same thang!

BRUTUS: Hold up! They offered him the dang thing three flippin’ times?

CASCA: Believe it, son! And he turned it down like every time, but no, like, seriously, though, the crowd was so stoked – they was like fist pumping and crap, they was so excited.

CASSIUS: What butt-kissin’ meat head be offerin’ him some stupid golden hats n crap?

CASCA: Ant’ny.

BRUTUS: Aww, what? Naw, really? Dude, what the hell?

CASCA: Naw, for reals, though, I ain’t got no idea why they’s all about him. It was kah-razy. I saw that Mark Ant’ny creep hold out the friggin’ thing – it was like, sorta a crown, but more, I dunno, bro, it didn’t look right – and, yo, like I already told you, he like rejected it, but yo, check it – I totally think the old dude like really wanted it, like bad. Then Ant’ny like, tried again, and, like, dude, for reals, C-dog wanted a piece of it – didn’t wanna let that stuff go – and then Ant’ny be tryin’ a third time and, man, dude, seriously, that third time, you’da thought the crowd done lost they friggin’ MINDS, cuz they was so excited! All these land mines and grenades and their men be fist pumping and throwin’ their hats up in the air and yellin’ so much that their breath just stank somethin’ fierce, bro – Caesar, man, he like, couldn’t handle it, and he like, fell or somethin’ -- like, for reals, fell down, but like, man, it was so friggin’ funny, but I wasn’t laughin’ cuz, dang, man, I was tryin’ to keep that stink out my mouth.

Oh the things I do for them.

Sorry, dearest Bard. Sometimes, you just aren't that relevant. But with my help, I guess you can be? (Actually, as much as I hate teaching Julius Caesar, it probably has the most relatability potential, given that the whole play is really just Mean Girls in togas... seriously. I'm packing that movie for tomorrow, too. Too many of them seem to have NOT seen it, so my explanations are falling a bit flat.)

GTL in peace, Will.

Huzzah! Friday!

This has really felt like the longest week ever. Between the starting of a new semester and the fact that, unlike normal weeks, we saw our kids every day this week, it just felt tedious and long. Plus, my room is a D-I-ZASTER. It's getting better, slowly but surely: I purged some old assignments today that my students seemed unwilling to claim, I reorganized my front table some, and I was making some progress before I left today, but dang, man. There are stacks of paper EVERYWHERE and it is so frustrating to try to operate on a daily basis not being able to find anything.

Also, starting any semester is challenging for reasons that I always forget. Your class lists keep changing for days after the semester starts, so none of your attendance lists are correct. And trying to make a grade book to keep up with the work you assign? Forget about it. I got overly ambitious and made my gradebook because I have already given two quizzes, assigned vocabulary homework and notes homework, and collected a work packet. But now, those gradebooks are wrong. New kids added, original kids gone ... so everything is incorrect. Bah. So those will need to be redone. I've already learned the new names, which is good, but the biggest wrench in the gears so far is that I have one student in APEL who was gone three of the four days this week, and two students in my sophomore class who missed all week. Which means they're already a week behind. Now, the APEL kid will be fine. But these other two kids? They aren't exactly kids that can afford to miss one day, let alone four days. And four days of a brand new semester. ::facepalm:: Poor kids.

The good news is, though, that my class sizes are down to 39. Woo! 39! So that means that the 42 desks that I have are too many, so I might be able to jettison two of them to the outer realms of campus. (Note: I will only be sending two adrift, as having 39 desks rather than 40 would make my OCD-like tendencies kick into overdrive.) Two desks won't really gain me back a whole ton of space, but it's a start. And you better believe that the two desks that I jettison will be the stupid "small desks" that my kids insist on swapping around the classroom, even though I tell them repeatedly that I keep the small desks on the corners on purpose, so that I can easily maneuver around them, but noooo. They keep swapping. And it drives me absolutely batty.

I didn't leave campus today until about 5:30. ::sigh:: I wish I could say that it was productive time spent, but it wasn't really. I mean, I cleaned off my front table, cleaned off some desks, did some organizing of files on my computer, screened the rest of The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged DVD, and rewrote my agendas for Monday. But other than that, I was distracted by colleagues wanting keys and then returning said keys and then staying to chat. I don't think I'll need to go to school this weekend, but the thought it tempting if only to get some copying done for the week as I move into actually teaching Julius Caesar. But I think I'm going to stick to trying to clean up the mess that is my house. I have some chunks of time this coming week where I'll be able to focus on cleaning up my classroom, so I really do think I can focus on my house. But the overall mess that are the spaces I live in every day is really starting to drive me to distraction in every aspect of my life.

So now I'm home, feet up, watching Gilmore girls and blogging. I thought maybe I might have plans with my mom, but I haven't heard from her yet, so I might set about either cleaning or crocheting. Or a bath. Or just plain ol' bed.