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Integral

Posted on March 8, 2010
Filed Under Ray Bradbury, Teaching | Leave a Comment

We were going over this week’s academic words pretest today, and when we got to the word integral, I was searching for a way to differentiate it from inherent, which is another word this week.

“Inherent is sort of like ‘built-in,’ part of the …being of something. Like…you were all born inherently good, unless there was something wrong with your wiring…”

“Like me!” A chorus. Sigh.

“Anyway. Integral is more like ‘part of the structure’ of something. Without that integral thing, it doesn’t work. Like…without your skeleton, you’re just a big blob of Jell-O goo…”

“Eewwww.” (Check out the Ray Bradbury story “Skeleton.” Talk about ewww.)

“What. Ever. Your skeleton is integral to your body. Without it, you don’t really have a body. Integral is also where the word integrity comes from. That ShmartBoard might nice but, it isn’t integral to this class. We could still have an effective class without it.”

“So what is integral for you in this class?”

“Excellent question, that. Let’s see. Back in the day, when I started here, I didn’t have a computer…Wait, my wife had that old Mac SE over there… 10 inch greyscale screen, Microsoft Word 2.0, and a printer…I think she paid $2700.”

Collective gasp.

“It still works, and it still boots faster than any machine in the school. Anyway, it wasn’t in my classroom, and I mostly used it to type, so…  I didn’t have clickers, obviously, or an LCD projector, or even a whiteboard.”

“Wha?”

“I tried to get them to save my chalkboards when we moved out of the portables, but they didn’t listen to me. I used to love doing the old fingernails thing…”

I’ll spare you the next five minutes of sharing about the varying levels of (in)tolerance for said sound and stories recounting said (in)tolerance.

“So what’s left? You?”

“Nicely done. Actually, me and my overhead. If they took everything away except that, we’d be just fine.”

“But it wouldn’t be as fun…”"

“You’d be surprised. We’ll do a ‘wood bat week’ with no electronics sometime, and you’ll see what’s integral.”

“Noooooooo!”

This all leads nicely into a NY Times Magazine article, about what makes a better teacher. As many of us realized years ago, good schools aren’t built with good “programs” and tougher standards and standardizing the curriculum. Good schools are built with good teachers. They are the integral part. From the article:

“William Sanders, a statistician studying Tennessee teachers with a colleague, found that a student with a weak teacher for three straight years would score, on average, 50 percentile points behind a similar student with a strong teacher for those years.”

The problem is…how do you tell who’s good? Can people be trained to be good teachers, or do you have to be a “born teacher”? Does better pay equal better teachers? And so on…

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?pagewanted=1

Very interesting article.

(Here’s an audio version of the Ray Bradbury story:

Ray Bradbury – Ray Bradbury – Skeleton .mp3
Found at bee mp3 search engine

Staff Development for the Passive Aggressive

Posted on March 4, 2010
Filed Under Professional Development | Leave a Comment

(Warning: Lots of scare quotes ahead.)

I hate being out of my classroom for “in-services,” “trainings,” “workshops,” or “classes,” especially the district mandated/sponsored ones. You know the kind, where they read powerpoint slides to you, you do “jigsaw” activities (gawd, I hate those), share with your 3 o’clock partner, and get a bunch of handouts that end up doodled all over and chucked onto the giant pile next to your desk to be forgotten for two months, when you’re supposed to have done something with those papers for a “follow-up session.”  And not a lick of it makes it into the classroom or helps your teaching.

This is not to say that I haven’t been to a few effective workshops. But usually these end up being useful not for the “activities” we did, but for the ideas and examples of the presenter. Kate Kinsella comes to mind. If she’s giving the workshop on teaching writing, go to it. I’ve stolen all sorts of stuff from her.

However, my experience with the standard, district-issued workshops is that the cost/benefit analysis usually doesn’t come out in favor of  attending. The ones they’ve been pushing lately, about EL techniques and such, have seemed especially forced; since our district is out of compliance with our EL test scores (they haven’t been improving), the solution is to give workshops! I think it might be one of the measures that take hold when you’re on this kind of list. District admin, since August (!?), has been “offering” EL workshops to English and social studies teachers, district wide. Since I already found it silly that their CTEL workshops were taught by people who hadn’t taken the test, and I just finished with the book and the test about all this shtuff, I took a pass.

Well, it turns out it wasn’t an offer. It was an order. After I skipped the one in August, I got an e-mail saying I was supposed to attend the second session in September.  At that point, we were just beginning The Outsiders, I was at a critical point in what we were doing, and I just, well, didn’t go.

Then I get a little letter in my box (so old school) saying that I was supposed tag along with the social studies teachers for their version on such and such date. No dice.

Finally a week or two ago I, along with two other recalcitrant scofflaws, got an e-mail reminding me that I should have already booked a sub for the last makeup session, scheduled just for us.  D’oh. I had been trying to forget that.

The day before the appointed time, my VP comes into my last period of the day, and wants to chat with me for a moment. The head of curriculum and instruction had just called him.

“Well it looks like the other two people who were supposed to go to the workshop can’t make it, so it’s down to you. She says you have two choices: you can come on up and she’ll do the workshop one on one…”

“Ummm, no…” (How could we jigsaw?)

“The other choice is that she’ll come down tomorrow and observe you for the afternoon, and then you could chat after for about 15 minutes.”

“I’ll take door number two.”

“You can cancel your sub for tomorrow then.”

“I wasn’t planning on going; I hadn’t called for one.”

Luckily he laughed. I wasn’t joking.

The next day sure enough, there she was. She observed and took notes and “shadowed” the few EL kids I have, recording what they did and how they participated. She stayed for two full periods.

Then we sat and chatted about what she saw and activities and strategies I could pretty easily incorporate in order to better help those EL kids we’re trying to focus on.  In short, it actually pretty useful. I got waaaay more out of it than I would have at some half-day workshop grudgingly attended. And I didn’t have to leave my classroom. Nice.

By being sort of passive-aggressive about this whole thing, I got special treatment. Seventh grader with a badge once again.

So I had this idea. What if all our workshops worked this way? You are much more likely to use new techniques if you’re learning about them in context. You’re obviously much more likely to attend if you don’t have to leave your classroom. They get to see that you actually know a bit about what you’re doing. And you don’t have to do “pair-share.”

The response to my suggestion was surprisingly receptive, “That may be a viable option.”

OMG. More soon. This one’s already gone long.

No, You’re Not.

Posted on March 1, 2010
Filed Under Seventh Grade Behavior | 3 Comments

Whereas the kids tend to have their stock three-word phrases, I have more of a four-word phrase arsenal. Here’s a sampling off the top the head.

“No doubt, rainbow trout.” (Yes. Or “Indubitably” as the Lollys say it.)
“No dice, cheese slice.”  (No.)
“Let the King decide.” (When I want to give them the illusion of choice.)
“Glad I’m not you.” (A Nelson Muntz stylie ha ha.)
“Then you woke up.” (A NO! that should be obvious.)
“Don’t penetrate the bubble.”  (“Don’t stand so close to me.”)
“Spit out the gum.” (“How can you spot that so well?” “I just look for the ones that look like cows.”)
“Show me the KBARR.” (Or vocabulary or book or warmup or…)
“Read, Trackword, doodle, nap.” (What they can do if they’re done with the test early.)
“Please pay the Popple.” ( For dropping a clicker or forgetting a book or renting a pencil.)
“Join me at break.” (Detention.)
“Why’re you still talking?” (Ummmm. Shut up. Now.)
“This isn’t a democracy.” (Duh. This one is especially appropriate lately, with us reading Charlotte Doyle. I think Jaggery even uses that line, or words to that effect.)
“While we are young.” (Too late for some of us.)
“You are killing me.” (I think this one speaks for itself.)

But lately, I’ve been busting out a three-word phrase much more often.

“No, you’re not.”

It’s always been a bit of a seventh grade thing to say “I’m sorry” as sort of a reflex reaction. You call them on something, and they blurt, “I’m sorry.”

“Quiet you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Would you PLEASE just stop?”

“Sorry.”

It’s like when the doctor hits your knee, and it jumps. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first time or the 100th time, if he hits your knee with the little rubber hammer, it will jump. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first time or the 100th time, if you call a kid on jabbering in class or being a pain in the heinie, he will say,

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“What? Yes I am.”

“No, you’re not.” (This is kind of fun.)

“Bbbbut…”

“Prove it.”

“What?”

“Prove you are sorry by changing the behavior.”

D’oh. That’s a whole ‘nother matter. They seem to think the phrase is some sort of  ”get out of jail free card,” sort of like “I was absent.” (Another classic seventh grade three-word phrase.)

I am slowly exterminating the reflexive sorry. Now that the shock of me calling BS on their pat excuse has worn off, I’ve been playing with other responses.

“Now you’re lying. I see how it is. I thought we had a relationship.”

“Bbbbut…”

Some of them are even starting to realize how often they do it without thinking.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re right.”

“Well then…”

The next step is SBD for the insincere sorry.

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