Ruth’s Neighborhood

Evaluating My Performance During the Year:

1. Select a "learning goal" where the students were successful.  Tell why:

Participles.  By the end of the year most of them could identify participles and participial phrases.  Why?  Because I labored with it; I spent hours and days and weeks on participles, incorporating them into a thousand different lessons in a thousand different ways.  Eventually the repetition effectuated some learning.

2. Select a "learning goal" where the students were not successful.  Tell why:

My students were not any good at higher-order thinking skills.  Why not?  Because I have not found a good way to teach those sorts of things; in order to effectively teach skills like this, one of two things has to occur.  You either have to:

                                   1. have a school that encourages outside-the-box thinking

                                    or

                                   2. know what the hell you're doing as a teacher.

Neither one is true in my case, so teaching integration and analysis is still not easy.  I guess it's all about repetition, the same way it is with participles.

3. Give a general overview of your year in order to make sure you don't get a bad grade.  Tell why:

By the end of the year I was teaching things;  It took a while to establish my classroom in such a way to allow me to do my paid job.  At the end, I was teaching "Romeo and Juliet", and I was (no small accomplishment) teaching it.  Everything you need to know about the English language (and about interaction between people) is found in Shakespeare.   To (semi-)effectively teach a real masterwork gave me the feeling that I was inching towards being a real teacher and not just another jackass sitting in a classroom to serve some ulterior motives.

Now, with my freshmen, I didn't get anywhere close to teaching Shakespeare.  We were still remediating during the 4th 9 weeks: phrases and clauses?  plot and setting elements?  having students say, "We didn't know there was more than nouns and verbs"?

I don't really know what else to say.  I've already had to write another "end-of-year" evaluation blog.  I'm sort of tired of talking about my last year.  I'd like just to teach another.

There was an interesting editorial in the New York Times a few days ago about ACT test preparation in Chicago. A study came to the conclusion that test prep was taking away from class time, and NYTimes editors concluded that this was disasterous. This is a topic of great interest to me as I was given a course last year described by the counselors as "just an ACT class".

An even more interesting read is the reader response to the issue. Personally, I am in favor of test prep to a certain extent, particularly in underprivileged communities. You cannot "test prep" someone to a perfect score. I think that intelligence is still the major factor when it comes to testing well. Some might worry that too much time is spent on test prep, but if it means the difference between college or no college, graduation or no graduation, I think there should be no question. I understand the fear, but it's worth it to give everyone a (more) even playing field....

1. Describe Yourself as an Instructional Coach

As a coach,  I like to look for little mistakes that may escape detection but will become important later on.  For instance: when teachers do not verbally specify their plans for the day or their expectations of the students.  That is something I think is important, and I try to reinforce it in my coaching.  The students must always be told exactly what is expected of them, and what they need to do.

2. What aspect of coaching has been most difficult?

The physical exertion.  Honestly, I have no idea. I can't say that coaching has flummoxed me.  Perhaps what's difficult is that I don't know if i'm giving good or bad advice.

3. Describe how your coaching techniques have developed.

Um, I've only been "coaching" for 2 weeks.  That's not a lot of developmental time.  If anything, I've learned to be harsher with Parks than with Hayley and Jen.  Parks needs to hear how bad he is; Hayley and Jen are awesome teachers.

4. How has coaching impacted my own teaching?

Well, the things I "coach" are the things I've found myself emphasizing in my lessons: clear delineation of plans and expectations, firm discipline, confident command of the classroom.  I don't know if it's coming across, but I'm trying at any rate to emphasize them.

One of the reasons I find this blog hard to write is that I didn't do a very good job setting 'learning goals' for my students. I was so preoccupied with keeping my head above water all year, that I had a hard time trying to think ahead  - and create those big goals. This year I've got big aspirations; not only am I going to spend July unit planning, but I am going to create units with tangible goals -- and measure them. I'll have my freshmen take a practice SATP the first week, and then work the four competencies as rotating units in my curriculum. I plan to see some improvement in their post-test, and I'll have the data to show me what learning goals were met, and which weren't, come December.

But I didn't do that this year,  and as a result, I am a little less sure of what kinds of tangible progress my students really made. But I will take my best shot:

Most Successful
I think the learning goal where my students were the most successful, in all my classes, was definitely in the general area of reading skills. They were more comfortable readers, faster readers, and closer readers when they left my classroom. The number one reason, I believe, is that I am passionate about reading. My grammar lessons are about as fun as cement, but when I teach reading, I am bounding, cheering, pulling the students along in my excitement of the story. The days where they all laugh at me and look at one another shaking their heads, "She crazy. You crazy Ms. M". They roll their eyes, but they are enjoying it. I can't make grammar fun, I rarely make writing fun, and I often don't even make reading fun -- but I do show them how much it means to me, and how important I believe it is for them to read -- and that passion really makes a difference.
 
That passion also influences me to work harder at reading skills in general - I think about worksheet formatting, variety and pacing of worksheet questions, individual silent reading vs. reading groups, lessons on close reading and inferences, what types of texts, how much reflection, etc and so forth all the time- an amount of analyzation I would never engage in for a subject I dislike or even feel ambivalent about.

The other major reason my students' reading skills improved was the sheer volume of reading done in my class. We read a sizeable amount almost every single day. In addition to poems and short stories in all classes, my learning strategies classes read 2.5 books and a play (the .5 was their own book at the end of the year- to be finished on their own time in the summer), my English 4 kids read a long epic poem, a play and a longish novel, and my English 3 kids read a looong novel (250ish pages), and a play. It may not seem like much, but three months is not a very long time for all this, in addition to the other English skills. And I think, at a certain threshold, pure time invested makes a big difference.

Least Successful
The least successful learning goal in my room this year was probably my students' writing style. My students could spit out a 5-paragraph essay with good topic sentences and supporting details and the whole drill. No problem. But the actual sentences they were writing were, at best, bland, and at worst, horrible. Even though most of my seniors had subject-verb agreement down fairly well, and their spelling/mechanics were decent -- their sentences were canned, short, and boring. And the worst part is, I know exactly why. Without a state test looming over my head, I barely touched grammar and sentence structure except for the necessary basics. Also, I was just overwhelmed by the sheer logistics of improving so many different levels of ability for such an individualized skill. I have trouble differentiating among three big basic divisions (the talented, the mediocre, and the struggling) in my room, let alone 20 different kids with 20 different writing abilities/styles/issues. So I took the easy way out and let it slide.

This year I am going to spend more time on sentence construction - especially since I have ninth graders. We are going to practice all different "types" of sentence, making the kids construct lots and lots of them until they feel comfortable, perhaps, using a sentence that flows with multiple clauses in a paper, without prompting.

I am also going to work on that grammar thing.

TMAO writes an incredible blog: a letter to a first-year, Teach-for-America-type teacher, describing in detail how life is about to change.
 I am practically speechless at the perfect way he has captured so many of my own thoughts and feelings - I laughed out loud at moments, felt guilt twinges at others, and genuinely agreed with everything he has to say. I hope someday I might be able to write the the same clarity and insight about something so difficult to describe.

This year I gave only my own self-made tests.  I do not like multiple-choice English tests: I do not see English's primary purpose--to teach one to analyze, interpret, and express oneself competently--well served by having students choose among some pre-made responses.  I also love teaching grammar, and enjoy having students explain spatially the way sentence parts interact: this sort of testing is impossible with multiple-choice.  I can have students identify the correct of four sentences with M-C, but they cannot draw arrows from modifiers to nouns/verbs, cordon off unnecessary phrases, and trace the causation of verbs in a multiple choice format.

I should make tests that look like the SATP since I will be teaching English II next year; I should make a greater effort to ask questions on a higher DOK level; I should probably focus more on commonly-accepted aspects of English than those that I believe are the most interesting or enlightening. 

Example: I think poetic meter--and the notation of it--is what makes poetry fascinating, but the State of MS. shovels meter under the ambiguous term "Rhythm", and places no emphasis on being able to notate the flux of iambs and anapests and trochees.  Perhaps I shouldn't test that skill.

At some point it's about my kids and not about me, so I'll grudgingly change the way I test--sometimes.  Their tests may have an SATP multiple-choice section, but they will not be able to totally escape my goading them into expansive and nuanced written responses.

“My friend John Eubanks was a great American.  He always said, ‘Give everything a sporting chance.  When you go coon huntin’, either take a cross cut saw with you so that you can cut down the tree the coon is in, or climb up the tree and punch him out and make him jump in among the dogs.  Give him a sporting chance.’  Many times my brother Sonny and I would make a coon jump in amongst twenty or thirty dogs.  But at least that coon had the option of whuppin’ all them dogs and walkin’ off if he wanted to.”
-Jerry Clower

It’s funny; my principal is a big coon hunter.  The teachers tell me that every year he shows up to school one day with a new pickup truck because he stuck his old one in an impossible bog the previous night trying to chase a coon down.  When the year began, I sympathized like never before with the coon in Jerry Clower’s story.  Somehow I’d gotten myself up in a tree and here came my principal to punch me out.  The year’s start was rough: many a time I jumped out of the tree and was torn up by those hounds.  Eventually, though, I realized that I had the option of whoopin’ the dogs, and even later on in the year I learned how to.  Granted, the odds are always against the coon—and I’m not by any means a prodigiously successful teacher—but every now and then the coon steals one.

As the coon jumps, one of two thoughts can cross his mind:

1.    it’s really not fair that I got punched out.  I should be able to stay in this tree and live my life the way I want to.  AND, even if the hunter had to punch me out, he could have given me a stick or a knife or SOMETHING to fight off these dogs with.  And why are the dogs so mean anyways?  Are they bred for this sort of thing?  They’re certainly ill-bred, I know that much.  The daddy hound probably left home when they were a little litter of pups.

2.    These dogs don’t know what’s about to hit them.  They’d better be in their seats and working on the bellringer when I hit the ground or I’m gonna whup ‘em all.

My first year has been a lesson in stoical responsibility.  My dad used to say of me that I had a “justice problem” because I’d get myself in trouble whenever I perceived some unfair treatment of me (and of other people too, but to a lesser extent.  It can’t be unusual that many of the most selfish people are also the most concerned about “fair” treatment).  Throughout high school and college I was—well, to be honest—monumentally irresponsible, and always ready to solipsize away any criticism of it.

The Teacher Corps certainly hasn’t entirely cured me: far too often I leave assignments ungraded; I fall asleep at 5pm after a tough day; I eat at Sonic, unhealthily and expensively; I exercise about never; hardly ever do I return phone messages and emails; and I don’t push my students as hard or as far as they should be pushed.

Nevertheless, while my first year may have been a failure on many fronts (can you only have a Maginot Line if you also have some well-guarded borders?  Or can your defenses be a series of Maginot Lines?), I am proud to have finally given up on the idea of faulting the whole world for my problems.

Certainly our students could be better parented, they could be more interested in school, the administration could be more supportive, the bell schedule could be regular, the secretaries could speak proper English, etc. etc. etc.

Ultimately, I am responsible for how my class is conducted.  If the class is derailed, I did not take appropriate preventative action.  If I’m going to teach my kids anything, I’m going to have to fight them and outsmart them and win them over WHILE holding them to a high standard.  I’m going to have to whup ‘em all, one way or another.

What I’ve mentioned isn’t what I’ve accomplished, but thinking any other way—or blaming anyone else—is more destructive.  I overheard another teacher defend his disciplinary stance towards his kids (they were overrunning him) by saying, “When they get bad, I say to myself ‘The meek shall inherit the earth,’ and then I just don’t bother with them.’”  I didn’t say anything at the time (I also developed a shrewd politicism this year), but I cannot imagine a more malignant, a more cankerous attitude than this.  Is this the role of a teacher, to feel uniquely persecuted and to withdraw in a monastic non-resistance?  You certainly have to ENDURE, almost endlessly, as a teacher, but your justification comes not in a pious acceptance of an unbridled fate, but comes instead through wrestling oppositely-running horses into harnesses and cracking the whip.

Or it comes from whuppin’ all them dogs and walkin’ off.

Editorial Note:  I realize the danger that comes with comparing students to dogs.  I love my kids to death and was merely working out a metaphor.  And maybe 15 of them will take Latin with me next year, which is something ANY dog is incapable of.

My first classroom management plan was nonsense.  It had little association with how my class would (or could) actually be taught.  In the powerpoint detailing my first discipline plan can be found a solicitation of student recommendations for authors; a one-day-then-no-tolerance policy for late work; a delusional attitude toward parent contact ("letters will be sent home before every nine weeks' exam"); and generally misguided bathroom, cleanliness, and entrance/exit policies. 

The classroom rules themselves are inconsequential: Pete already mentioned that our principal passed down from Sinai a set of rules we all were to use, so the ones mentioned in my plan were still-born.  Pete made another good point, that he came to rely heavily on his procedures.  As did I, so they were in constant flux as I searched for a way to integrate (DOK 4) a well-ordered classroom with my innate listing toward laziness, irresponsibility, and poor filing-and-recording procedures.

My bathroom policy stands as a metaphor for my classroom management in general.  In my small attempt to discredit the welfare-mentality, nothing in my class is free of charge (not tissue paper, not pens, not paper, not the bathroom, not nothin') but must be paid for with tickets.  Prices inflate as the year progresses.  During my first year, the easy part of my bathroom policy was the price--I could afford to be inflexible on that.  The tough part was assigning a once-per-nine-weeks pass.  At the beginning I gave everyone one, but did a poor job keeping track.  Then I got angry at the idiots who seemingly had neither kidneys nor bladder, so my policy morphed into a "females only, and only for female problems" policy.  That was unfair, and totally unable to be adequately regulated and verified.  A "no-pass" policy briefly appeared, but exited just as quickly.  By second semester's end, I was back to the one-pass for all rule, with all the problems from year's start as concurrent baggage.

My solution for the coming year: take the work out of my hands and put it in the students'.  At the beginning of each semester, they will design an artistic bathroom pass, replete with all and sundry references to whatever they want.  When they want to use it, I mark nothing down, I only tear up their pass and throw it away.  The cut of the paper will have uncopiable irregularities to prevent forgery.

Same with all the rest.  Students will take attendance and absences.  Students will be responsible for taking a spare copy of the overhead notes and filing them in a missed-work binder.  Ditto homework collection.  Ditto room cleanliness.  Most of my kids can't tie their shoes and would steal mine if given the chance, but a few are worth their weight in shoelaces.  I gave this idea a dry-run in my homeroom halfway through the year, and I can say that since January I can count on one hand the number of times I had to take attendance or write my objectives on the board.

Granted, sometimes the attendance was wrong and the objectives indecipherable, but I wouldn't feel right in SHS with a perfect system.  I'd be out of place, like heraldry on a mule.

 One with a limp and with mange.

I really enjoy the role of "instructional coach". It seems to perfectly bring together two things that I love: helping people, and analyzing situations to come up with solutions. This is something I could certainly see myself doing more of in the future...

As an instructional coach, I generally tend to get a bit too excited about my advice - which I think is both a positive and negative. It is obvious to a potential mentee that I am doing my best to help them. And, I think, it's clear that I care. Unfortunately, I think I sometimes go way overboard, and probably overwhelm them with information. My observations and ideas are often minute and trivial, but I just can't hold back when I think something that just might strike a key. I guess prefer to err on the side of too much advice, than to let things go that might really help. But I do worry about discouraging first-years with a mountain of things they need to work on - when in reality, they are all doing just fine (way to go English III/IV first years!).

It's funny, during my informal observations last week, I started thinking about all the things that I personally need to work on in the classroom. I found myself starting all kinds of sentences with, "Well, to be honest, if you watch me teach, I am really not a great example of this, but...." or "You'll see that I will often make that same mistake..." or "I tend to XYZ, too." I repeatedly saw myself reflected in the first-years' various missteps and rough edges. When I got up to teach on Friday (having mulled this over much of the week), I was acutely aware of everything I was doing --consciously monitoring and modifying those things I had pointed out to the first-years. .....And I taught the best lesson on Outlining an Essay I'd ever led (a topic which I have had perennial difficulties "teaching" well to my students from both the fall and spring semesters). I finished that lesson feeling fantastic.  Here's to instructional coaching!

After realizing that I didn't give much in the way of tangible advice, (and, getting inspired by Karl's advice) I am adding one last piece of advice for new teachers:

Use rewards.

First semester I refused to give rewards. I thought it was childish. I thought that by showing these high schoolers respect, and challenging them daily, that they, in turn, would rise to that challenge. Well, I was wrong, and Wong, Dr. Monroe, Ben Guest, and the Reluctant Disciplinarian were right. My transformation came sometime at the end of November. I was at my wit's end with a certain class -- they had gotten into a pattern of lazy, chit-chatting groupwork. They weren't getting much of anything done. A heroic third-year teacher (to this day, I am in debt to RK) suggested that I quietly set small pieces of candy on the desks of a hardworking group.

Within 48 hours of that advice, the entire classroom environment had changed. When I said, "Go ahead and move into your groups" kids would rush to get their desks together, hurry their partners, and immediately start reading and discussing their books aloud. They asked eachother questions (I often dropped a piece of candy down for questioning a group member) and began to actually get into the book. It was amazing.  Of course, I was spending an arm and a leg on mini-Snickers, and mini-Reeses, but it was worth it.

With this revolution in mind, I re-vamped my classroom management plan in January. I began using a ticket system  -- something I had hitherto chalked up as childish, time-consuming, and annoying. I never have a moment where no one raises their hands -- students race to get their hand in the air for a chance to get a ticket each day. Now I still think this is childish, but my students love it so much that I just don't mind anymore. On my end of the year evaluation sheets, a large number of students wrote some derivative of "More candy, more movies, more fun stuff" (note answer #1 and #2 can be earned with tickets) so things can't be going all that badly....

Perhaps someday, if I end up teaching in an environment where learning itself is a reward and an excitement, I will stop using tickets and rewards. But in this environment, the kids are not intrinsically motivated by the material - so, in my opinion, something else must do.