I, Who Can't, . .

Map of the World

holbein, originally uploaded by The Earl of Steinway.

Am I a real teacher?

This morning there two girls in my classroom who shouldn't have been there. They weren't starting fights or causing any particular trouble. One of them was putting on the uniform standard dark pants over her jeans (many kids here do this- some don't bother to zip up the fly so they look like they are walking around half-dressed, which, I guess, is more the point than to comply with the dress-code) and chatting with a friend. Unexpected visitors are frequent at the beginning of periods at this school, so I went forward with my lesson- reminded the students to open their notebooks and begin the morning free-write.

As the class, most of them at least, began freely writing, the girl who was putting on her second pair of pants commented, "Whoa, you're like a real teacher! You say something all serious and then you don't talk for a while!"

The class laughed. I hope they were agreeing. I told her to be like a real student and go to class.

After the class completed ten minutes of free-writing we moved on to what I had hope would be a quick review of some major Renaissance personalities, some dates. It took about ten minutes longer than I expected, which left only twenty minutes for a group work activity that I had been planning.

I handed out a copy of Hans Holbein's 1526 map of the world and had the students make observations about this map itself and the differfnece between it and the current map of thwe world. The lesson met with mixed success, mostly because it took about ten minutes for them to adjust their eyes. One girl called out, "I'm not gonna strain my eyes just to do this!" As with everything, it's all in the timing, and I think my timing was off this morning, which is not surprising considering that I am still trying to shed the jet lag incurred during last week's trip abroad.

Obstruction To Justice

Obstruction To Justice, originally uploaded by Runs With Scissors.

    The other day I was on my way to the fourth floor when I came upon a group of people gathered in the hallway, blocking my passage. They were three school security officers, including the supervisor, one of the my school's Deans, and a girl, probably a ninth grader. I didn't recognize her. I could tell from their posture that they had surrounded the girl, and she was extremely tense. Otherwise I didn't know what was going on. The girl said, "I don't know who the fuck he is! Who is he? Who are you! Who the fuck are you?"
        The supervisor, in a uniform bluer than the others, said, "You need to calm down or you are going out of here in cuffs. You understand?"
        "Get the fuck outta here, I'm not going anywhere!" She tried ot push past them, but was pushed back into the hallway, where she struggled briefly with the officers before being dropped to the ground and handcuffed. At that point I moved into the High School's hallway to hold back the crowds of students who had poured out of their classrooms and wanted to see what was happening.
    The girl was brought into a small room where the other kids couldn't see her. When the crowd dispersed I noticed that I had a dusty footprint from her sneaker on my pant leg. I swatted it clean and went back to my classroom. I had been looking for the principal, but she was in the little room with  the officers, the Dean, and the girl.
        The next day there was a long note, almost an entire page in ten point type, placed in everyone's box. I have to say that, although I hadn't seen anything like this arrest in this school, I've seen scores of kids younger and more violent than this girl arrested and handcuffed. If it wasn't for the note tha the principal wrote, I probably wouldn't have thought about her again.
        "I felt helpless; I couldn't do anything to save our student from being manhandled. . . When we were in the (little room) the student was emotional and continued to curse at the officer, (the Dean) and myself. What disturbed me most was when one of the agents cursed back at the student. Of course, I said something to the agent and later during the day I had a meeting with the Staff Sergeant. . . When I called the mother, she asked, "Why are you trying to help mu daughter even though she continues to disrespect you and the officers?"   
    The school where I know work has a particularly humanistic philosophy. The teachers are asked to make a personal connection with each student.  But at the same time, the school is suffering from massive absenteeism, lateness, extreme intellectual torpor in the classes. The Principal's note made me wonder how we should treat our students when they act in an absolutely inappropriate. A lot of misbehavior is tolerated in this school, by many teachers. I do my best to correct student's language and behavior, but I know that many teachers do not. For me, when I hear a student curse or speak aggressively or crudely, I can't help but say something. My skin crawls. Apparently not everyone has this reaction. But when does the personal connection get taken advantage of? When does the humanistic approach become permissive to the point of abrogation of responsibility?
        "When we were waiting for the police to arrive, I wiped the student's tears from her eyes, while she was handcuffed. I tied her shoelaces when they searched her for weapons. (They found a steak knife and a sock filled with lock cylinders. However when they searched her bag, the student told me that she had weapons in her book bag. Her explanation for carrying weapons was that she was being harasses by a 19 year old . . . her mom was aware and allowed her to have these weapons.) Although the student behaved in a disrespectful manner and tried to fight with the officers, cursed at me and (the Dean), I realized that this was just a child."
        What is a child? I know this sounds like a stupid question, but I think it's something that we assume we know the answer to, but don't. What does it mean to say that this High School student who brings a knife and a homemade blackjack to school and then curses out the school's Dean and security guards (none of whom were the 19 year old harassing her) is a "child?"  Does it mean that she is blameless for whatever decisions she makes? In that case, the school must make all the decisions for her, since her ability if suspect at best. Does it mean that she must be allowed to safely explore all behavioral possibilities?  Maybe we should return the lock-cylinder filled sock to her, and the knife. Let her explore.
        It has always been my opinion that personal safety should be the fundamental concern of the school. Before you have meeting about Understanding By Design, before you talk about rubric for bulletin boards- you must have a school that is safe. By safe I mean that students do not feel that they are threatened by each other or anyone. Safe means that when students do things, like fight, act aggressive, bring weapons to school, etc, they are punished effectively. It takes kids a long time to pick on details, like dates, names, and even longer to pick up concepts, but kids are great at figuring out structures, rules, limits, hierarchies. We owe it to them, whether we think they are "just children" or "students" or "kids" or "young adults" or "learners" to give them the environment they need to learn.

Teaching and Learning

I won't be going out on a limb to say that teaching is 90% learning. Today, I'd bump that up to 100%. The day began well, my tenth graders trickled in over the course of the first period (8-9 am). At 8 there were a handful, by 9 maybe two handfuls. We had a short discussion about the Regents exam and college. I told them that student loans are terrible but necessary, and that there are loads of scholarships available. One kid declared, "You get money for being black!"

Then we transitioned into a current events activity. I have yet to find a better newspaper for use in schools than the free daily METRO handed out at most subway stations in Manhattan and many in the boroughs. (Few, in the Bronx, by the way.) The students looked for articles that related back to some of the themes they will be asked to work with on the Regents exam, themes like "Movement," (a girl found a photo of a 6 year old Afghan refugee with a cigarette dangling from his lip) "Conflict" (easy- Iraq, etc.) "Economy," etc. They got it, they did it, almost all had a completed paper and a clipped article to hand me at the end of the period.

I saw this same class two hours later, and they had somehow transformed. After a brief review of the period we are now studying, Middle Ages in Europe, I handed out Pope Urban II's speech, the famous, "God Wills It!" speech. I predicted that they would have some trouble with this text, so I provided some very specific questions, and gave them an introduction to the text. Half of the class refused to read it. "This is too difficult! It hurts my head!" cried one kid, who had yet to turn the first page. "I can't understand any of this!" As the kikds gave up, they began conversing, and that led to other kids complaining that they couldn't read. Eventually the loudest girl in the class began arguing with the boy sitting next to her, and by the end of the class those students who had attempted to answer the questions had still not comprehended the speech. I'll make another pass at it tomorrow, but I may have to chalk it up to a readiness to give up withour trying (preemptive failure) on their part and a failure to judge the difficulty of the text on my part. So, in the end I learned more than they did.

3 Floors, 3 Doors

3 Floors, 3 Doors, originally uploaded by The Earl of Steinway.

What is there to say about this photo? It's a house in Lawrenceville, the Pittsburgh nabe where my friend Ben lives. I imagine that at one time there were two porches attached to the front of this house, although there is little evidence, especially on the second story. It seems like that door on the second floor used to be a window. And the third story is a later addition. Why did they choose to build that third door? And then just imagine being inside this house, the constant temptation. . .
This house also reminded me of something I saw in Hyderababd, Pakistan recently- cheap additions, like bad taste, is indeed, universal.

The Architecture of Additions

P1020505.JPG, originally uploaded by The Earl of Steinway.

I promise . . .

I promise this will be the last thing I write about Erin Gruwell. Actually, I won't write anything, I'll just direct you all to something someone else, far away on the left coast where they speak funny even when they're making fun of speaking funny, wrote. Reading this, watching the videos by the same guy who made the George Washington video I linked to below, and reading the Onion today I had that early nineties feeling that the popular media has drifted far from the populace. If so many people can be regularly funny, why is it possible to watch two hours of sitcoms and end up not only not laughing but actually sad? Speaking of sad, my coworkers asked me if I'd help out on the fieldtrip tomorrow. They're bringing the tenth grade to see Freedom Writers. To sell them on it, the preview was shown this morning. During the scene in which a teenager brandishes a gun, and the high school breaks into riots and running and brawls, one of my students said, "I wish there'd be a shooting here, I'm bored."

Probably a good thing I teach Global

If I were teaching American History I would have to try really, really hard not to play this video to my class.