Don't have time for creativity

Time for a Change

2011-04-04T12:37:00.001-07:00

I think we should stop taking the DC-BAS (and/or take it 1 time fairly early in the year), and use all the money we would save to hire literacy, math and science SPECIALISTS who can assist schools and teachers in planning, implementing and tracking data for innovative programs that boost student achievement not just on tests but in LIFE and preparation for college.

Discovery Education is making millions off of DCPS to provide us with less-than-useless information that has had little to discernible and lasting impact on student achievement (and that is on their own scale, which I don't accept in the first place). Where is the data for how well our students have improved in college matriculation and completion rates? As far as I know, the only report I've seen from 2006 gives us an exceptionally low rating (~10% completion in 5 years), and somehow I don't see improvement on these multiple choice tests (which is negligible at best after years of obsessing over it) improving our students' ability to go and succeed in college and future careers which SHOULD be the main goal. I have talked to a lot of teachers, professional developers, instructional coaches, and administrators across the District about this, making it my personal mission to find one teacher who legitimately believes that the DC-BAS gives them useful information that they can use to help improve student achievement and isn't a waste of their time, and have not been able to find one. I know we have to take the DC-CAS to receive our federal funding, but I am also sure we do not have to take the DC-BAS to do so (having seen that other states do not waste their time and focus on tests like this nearly as much as we do, and those states are far more successful than we are). It is time to admit that Discovery Education is not working for us and move on.

The BAS is not aligned to our curriculum or the DC-CAS, it dumbs down education, it stresses out our students and I see it bleeding into larger and larger areas of our school as more and more students are tested and retested sometimes 4 years in a row! Our schedules get disrupted for several days each testing cycle, and as the testing date for the CAS nears, more and more students begin to disappear to drill for the test based on poor information from Discovery Education. And to what end? Not only do the students miss out on the real education opportunities in their classes, the school still doesn't meet AYP. The idea that a private company (whose only interest is in making a profit) gets to write our test, write our textbooks, our workbooks, and dictate our curriculum so that we can fail to jump through the AYP hoop for the 7th+ year in a row outrages me. I get more outraged when the District's administrative answer is to spend more time and money obsessing over this data. Hiring Instructional Coaches who then get sandbagged with dumbing down our education to drill our ever-larger cohort of tested students. Clearly Discovery Education and the BAS are NOT WORKING to improve our scores and meet AYP on the state tests, and they are most certainly not improving our students' chances of success in life outside of school and in college.

The fact that nobody on the administrative level is openly questioning the very validity of this test also outrages me. We tell our kids that we expect the best from them, that we are preparing them for college and then spend elementary, middle and 2 years of high school wasting their time and stressing them out on a lower-level test that most of them do not pass, while the real teaching has to get done on the side-lines. The most successful schools in our region do not obsess over the DC-BAS at the high school level (the top performing private schools don't even touch these toxic tests). But those of us whose students fail to meet "proficiency" "standards" over and over again get the extreme joy of restructuring - which so far I can safely say has NOT worked in the District.

I spend almost all of my free time reading education policy journals, news publications, articles and blogs (it is a bit obsessive some times). There are numerous studies, anecdotal evidence, and books that go against this narrative of 'accountability' and demonstrate the obvious fact that this is just a method for large testing corporations to bilk states for millions of dollars and get us nowhere. Where is the accountability for Discovery Education? Diane Ravitch who used to be a major proponent of these tests has come full circle and is writing and fighting to end this madness and move towards a curriculum that does not try and whittle down everything we do to a performance on a poorly written, graded and unfair set of tests. Others have written about how those who score our tests not only pay barely above minimum wage, but also change the scores if they deviate from the 'predicted' outcome. Making these tests a larger and larger part of teachers' and schools' 'accountability' is dangerous and only damaging our students' chances of success upon leaving these institutions. When our principals get ousted on a regular basis for 'failure to improve test scores' that disrupts our learning environment over and over again. When teachers get fired or told they are performing poorly based on test scores, it demoralizes them and makes it more likely that they'll either leave or begin focusing their curriculum solely on test prep (if they haven't already). It is time for our administrators to show some real leadership instead of following the real status quo which is the group that thinks that we can judge our schools performance almost exclusively on how students perform on a poorly written multiple choice exam.

If we want to seriously talk curriculum and saving money, and if we truly want to light 'fires in the mind' of our students, I say get rid of Discovery Education and stop letting them steal money from the District to give us useless information that we don't need and that dumbs-down our curriculum. Spend the money we would save by giving us real time and more support in the areas that we already know we are not performing well enough in.

Instead of asking kids to pick a 'theme' from a multiple choice test, have teachers actually discuss the themes and support their arguments with evidence from actual books (not just snippets and little poorly written passages) in class. Instead of having us spend countless hours and manpower 'analyzing' data and focusing on 'bubble' students in failed attempts to just pass a test, why not make education authentic and meaningful to their lives and accept that blatant test-prep fails our students on every level that matters? When you look at the best schools in the District and nation, they do not focus on lower-level testing as much as we do. We've been doing it since I arrived in DCPS, we had been doing it before, it is not working. It is time to re-evaluate what is going on here and try to change our mindsets and question the very box we are being put into. If my 10th grade student who can write me a 5 page paper analyzing human rights abuses in Guatemala and putting it into a global historical context turns around and fails the DC-BAS, then what is really going on here?

This is our chance to take some real leadership and make some real changes to what is going on. I know it isn't going to happen, that those in power want to hold on to it and keep their money, but it would be hypocritical of me to sit back and talk 'innovation' while really we are letting the status quo continue on and on and get worse and worse.

Field Trips

2011-02-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

In the past month I have taken 2 different classes on 2 different field trips. The first group were my AP seniors. We got a bus and went to the American History museum to see four of the original freedom riders talk. The 2nd trip was with my 4th period 10th graders. We got a bus and went to the National Geographic Society building to participate in a training conference for Model United Nations. The one thing these two trips had in common: I was super angry at my students on the bus ride back. The anger built up during both trips throughout the day. I could not get over how whiny and disinterested my students were compared to all their peers from other schools (including schools that are supposed to be just like ours). While other students sat up straight and listened, my students slouched, slept or (in the case of my 10th graders only) talked out of turn and inappropriately.

Field trips are supposed to be a chance to expose my students to life outside of our ward and our school; A chance for them to get inspired and it really pisses me off when it doesn't seem to work. And as the field trip continues through the day I get more and more upset at the prospect of another attempt at inspiring my students failing miserably. I don't expect 'life changing movie moments' but I DO hope that I can see a glimmer of hope that my students are taking interest and getting at least something out of the trip.

But my attitude towards this has changed. On the bus ride back from my second field trip I talked with my neighboring teacher who also took his students to train for the MUN. He saw the trip in a different light. While he also was disappointed in some of the students' behaviors he also saw a lot more positive aspects to alight on.

1) They could have been worse. Overall in the scheme of things they were a little loud and boisterous at times, but some of them were really on point, and they weren't so out of hand that they got kicked out or made the organization wish we hadn't come.
2) They were exposed to how other students behave and act, and to activities that were challenging and outside of their comfort zone. While it would have been ideal for them to adjust on the trip itself, it doesn't mean that they didn't take something away from the trip just because they had some instances of poor behavior.
3) We were the only school to bring a large group. While other schools had Model United Nations clubs or selected a small group of their elite upper-classmen, we brought as many of our 10th grade regular students as we could. This means that we aren't going to be exactly like the others because our group is the 'rawest' of them all. We should also be proud of the fact that we are really trying to expose those who rarely get these kind of academic opportunities to a very challenging and enriching arena.
4) We learned which students we will definitely not bring to the real Model United Conference at the State Department in May.

When we got back I was quite a bit calmer. I think I mostly agree with my colleague. While I don't think I need to feel bad about my anger, I've decided that one of the key things is to keep working with my kids and not shut down over it. My anger is legitimate, I want my students to become more engaged because I want their lives to be better and I want something (anything) to work. But they're 10th graders, they have a long way to go and some of them will get better. I can't just get angry at them, instead I have to better express why I'm getting upset to them and how much I want to see their potential get pushed in a more productive direction.

Friday I had a great class with 4 of the students who showed up (attendance is a HUGE problem with this class, but that is a whole other topic). They got into the activities we did and they really seemed to understand the causes of World War I (a topic that I seem to have skill at making interesting). So I guess there may be hope, just have to keep up a positive attitude while also recognizing the weaknesses and continuing to push myself and my students to improve.

Restaurant Week @ the Oval Room

2010-08-18T16:54:00.000-07:00

Just ate at the Oval Room w/Liz. It was amazingly good and I wanted to write about what I had before I forget. I had a hard time deciding what to get because almost every single item on the menu was something I really wanted to eat. But we eventually had to make some choices since Restaurant Week doesn't really work if you order everything :). For those who don't know, Restaurant Week in DC involves a fixed price dinner menu (set at 35.10) where you get an appetizer, entree and dessert. Definitely a great chance to try some of the best restaurants in DC (at least those who participate).

In the end, I got the following:

Appetizer: Pastrami cured salmon, dijon sauce, romaine rib and pumpernickle. It was very beautiful though a little small. It was also quite spicy which made it a bit hard to really enjoy the salmon as much as I wanted to. I almost got a fried blue crab with a buffalo sauce, but it was a $5 upcharge and may have been a bit crazy since I was planning on getting the scallops. Still, very very good. Liz got heirloom tomato salad with a very fancy pepper sauce that was also excellent.
Entree: Sea scallops with a stew of cauliflower, chorizo and apricots. I got three HUGE scallops, cooked perfectly with a very sweet stew (that was more like a sauce really) underneath. Liz got a steak which was amazing and that she loved very much.
Dessert: Maybe the toughest category to choose from. I was really torn between the a 'warm carrot cake, rum raisin puree and cream cheese ice cream' and an 'almond brown butter cake, peach salad and sour cream ice cream' not to mention a 'goat cheese sorbet, berries and cumin short dough cookies.' Lucky for me Liz got the berries w/cumin cookies because she loves cumin in everything and is very kind and avoided the chocolate dessert so I could try it :). I went with the Carrot cake and it was EPIC. SO GOOD. I just wish they'd served like three times as much. Liz and I discussed how the amounts they gave were really quite perfect because you left feeling pleasantly full and not sick... but I wanted to get sick off of that carrot cake, I would eat it until I passed out. YUM.

Definitely keeping the Oval Room on my list of excellent RW deals. Up there with Vidalia and Tosca. Can't wait until winter's Restaurant Week!

Schoolpocalypse

2009-10-02T17:20:00.000-07:00

Today my school imploded.

Lets start at the beginning:

1) For the past few weeks there has been talk about a "Reduction in Force" or RIF. Michelle Rhee and the Mayor have claimed that we are $40 million or so short in funds and therefore need to fire a bunch of people. The Council claims that the District has known about these costs for a long time and it should not be surprising or an 'all of a sudden thing' so it is impossible to really know what is going on. One could be paranoid about Rhee and Fenty (which I'm sorta tending towards) or the Council is full of bull.

2) Students begin to hear all sorts of rumors and statements from politicians, the news, etc. about what is happening and talk about it and worry about it quite a bit for the past week.

3) Students arrive at school this morning and find there are no security guards. They believe (falsely) that this is part of the RIF and decide to 'protest' outside the school and not go to class. [Turns out that the security company that DCPS employs went bankrupt today and so this was just extremely unfortunate timing.]

4) We eventually get the kids to come inside because they really weren't protesting they were just hanging out talking and refusing to go to class. This is about 30 minutes into the day at this point.

5) First period is uneventful and I cover second period due to a teacher being absent. Things go well in that class and I actually get the kids to work through the period which is a miracle.

6) Then the principal announces that the kids will get an extra 20 min. at lunch to protest and let out their pent up energy. It also gets announced that there is a debate meeting at lunch when it is supposed to be after school (I'm the debate coach).

7) Lunch happens. The FBLA has a meeting that I help out a little bit with and then I head downstairs to check and see if any debate kids went to the non-existent lunch meeting and find a few of them and tell them to come to the meeting after-school.

8) A few minutes after I get downstairs, two very large boys barrel into the hallway I'm standing in having a huge fight. There are two police trying to break it up and a huge crowd of yelling and riled up kids. I get run in to by one of the fighting boys as I'm struggling to keep some of the kids away.

9) The police get the boys away and the kids seem to be milling about and I'm trying to get them into the cafeteria again and then all of a sudden there is a STAMPEDE (I mean this literally) towards the doors at the stairs. ALL the kids run full tilt, screaming to get upstairs. My boss had just gotten to me and pushed me to the wall so I wouldn't get flattened and those who stayed behind just stare fabbergasted. I have never seen anything like it.

10) I make it upstairs a few minutes later after assessing the downstairs situation and end up in the atrium. There I end up trying to disperse more students and break up a few more fights and almost fights. It seemed like every time more than 10 kids were in the same place a fight broke out.

11) As that calmed down a girl collapsed and had an asthma attack. We had to call paramedics and once again general insanity ensued.

12) I eventually collected about 1/3 of my students for 3rd period and that went very very calmly. For 4th period I helped a few students on applications and scholarships.

13) Then at 3:10 we get an announcement for teachers to check their emails. As the bell rings students are running around the halls yelling about how they don't have to have certain teachers ever again and how they hope so and so gets fired. And I have no idea what is going on but I tell them to shut up because what they're saying is really mean.

14) Kids tell me I have to check my email so I go back in my room and do so... at this point I am VERY nervous. There are kids standing around me and I open up an email that has the new master schedule. I read it over looking for my name and luckily I find it. All it says is I'm teaching World History II and American History. I don't know what this means and I won't really know until Monday apparently.

15) I have a debate team meeting for 1 hour after school w/about 6 kids (which is a miracle in and of itself so congrats to them for holding it together for debate).

Apparently tomorrow I'm going to the debate competition w/the kids... we'll see how that goes. Hopefully they'll come and have fun.

Craziest. Day. Ever.

In Rio!!

2009-06-20T05:35:00.000-07:00

Janet and I have arrive safely in Rio and have now been here for about 24 hours. We met at the airport, both having long but uneventful flights. Our stuff arrived, and we hopped in a taxi and drove to our hostel in Copa Cabana. The hostel is called Stone of a Beach. It is nice and has good security. Our room is on the second floor and has a private bath and a veranda, which just about doubles the size of the room.

Yesterday we walked towards the beach, went to a buffet for lunch, and walked down Copa´s beach to Ipanema where there was another nice series of beaches. We walked around a rocky point between the two beaches and then headed back to the hostel. The beaches are very scenic (despite all the tall buildings not far off of them) with dramatic rock outcroppings and cliffs surrounding them.

When we got back to the hostel we took it easy for a few hours, planning our route up the Bahia coast and then we went upstairs to the rooftop bar/hot tub/grill area and got yet another buffet (I´m sensing a theme here in Brazil. A tasty theme) - this time it was BBQ. Now one thing I can say beyond a doubt is Brazilians know how to cook meat. The BBQ was great. I had chicken, sausage and a bit of steak (in small quantities). The sides were alright-doesn´t seem to be high on the list of importance, but they focus on what is important.

The weather is slated to be perfect for our stay in Rio. Clear blue skies, in the 70s and (most importantly) not humid. Today we are probably going to go see the huge Jesus Christ statue and maybe a tour of some other sites in Rio. We also want to take a ´favela´ tour - a tour of some of the poorer areas in Rio, and then of course hang out at the beach and relax.

The Cardinal Sin

2009-05-19T12:05:00.000-07:00

I am being very bad in fourth period. While I have assigned a worthwhile project to the students and I intend for them to do a good job on it, I feel that I am basically just having them work on the assignments in class with little instruction. Project Based Learning at its finest. That being said, I am NOT wasting their time with busywork, I just also may not be strictly teaching new skills but having them practice ones they already have. I suppose if I throw in some formative assessment I can work it out.

Last period of the day...

2009-05-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

It is a universal truth that those entering the last class of the day must act completely insane and different from how they have acted the rest of the day.

At this point in my short career I have taught four classes at the final period of the day. Three have been World History II and one has been Entrepreneurship. All have been crazy.

It doesn't matter how big the class is (two classes had 20-25 student and the other two classes were under ten students).

It doesn't matter what grade the students are in (most of the classes have a lot of 10th graders, but are mixed).

It doesn't matter what the students are learning (in the first semester my third and fourth periods are doing the exact same content).

It doesn't even matter how 'high achieving' my students are in other classes (I have had both top honors students and students who barely pass their classes in my fourth periods).

They all become different people when they pass through that classroom door.

Things that seem inconceivable in my other periods become altogether too possible in my last period of the day:

Students talk out of turn at alarming rates.
Students get into physical and verbal fights.
Students yell.
Students run around the room.
Students don't complete a single assignment.
Students physically destroy each others' work.
Students steal the possessions of others.
Students from other classes walk into my room and do whatever they please.
The list could go on and on.

I understand that the day is long, but it doesn't justify the type of insanity I have often experienced in these classes (and the complete lack of control I seem to have over the situation). While it isn't every day, it is far more often than I find even remotely acceptable.

I am still trying to find ways to deal with this situation, because right now I really just try and ride the wave and power through it. But that is very tiring and it isn't good for the students overall (When I give out surveys to the students to assess how the class is going, the only negative comments I ever get come from 4th period, and the big complaint is usually the behavior problems of other students). I need to find ways to positively get the class under control.

I just don't know how to get through to them, to hold on to their attention throughout the day. I know one thing I can do is make the lessons more interactive and as fun and relatable as possible. But even some of (what I believe are) my best lessons have completely bombed in fourth period.

Fourth period requires a whole different way of thinking and interacting with the class. I can barely let them do independent work because it immediately dissolves into chaos. I can't let them talk much or it dissolves into yelling matches. I have to have a seating chart to keep certain students from talking all period and/or killing each other.

One thing that has helped is making them stay quiet but allowing them to violate school policy and listen to their own music on headphones (but that stops working when an administrator comes in and yells at the students - and me by proxy - to put them away).

I may need to institute some type of regular physical stimulus to both keep them interested and release their pent up energy (calisthenics anyone?) but I honestly don't have any experience in that arena and I don't know how I could do that properly without wasting too much time.

Any suggestions for helping students release all that energy in a positive manner on a regular (if not daily) basis?

Empowering the children or Disheartening them?

2009-05-12T07:06:00.001-07:00

I am asking for the advice from my peers (and any who care to give it). Is informing students of the achievement gap and the structural factors that contribute to the achievement gap a worthwhile effort? Will it serve to empower my students or will it just dishearten them?

I am personally of the belief that by showing students the truth about their current situation and help them learn about the social, economic and other structural factors that are standing in their way, that I could empower the students to take charge and work harder to get where they want and need to go. I want them to see their obtaining an education as an act of social justice (and possibly even minor rebellion), something to do both for themselves and society at large.

On the flip side, this may just make them think that everything is hopeless and out of reach. I don't want them coming out of this kind of unit thinking that they are less than, that the cards are impossibly stacked against them, that everything is doomed to repeat itself.

Then there are the implementation questions + my initial thoughts on them:

Which classes would I present this information to? I want to say all of them, I can relate this kind of topic to World History, Economics and all my government classes. But at the same time, that may not be realistic.
When would I teach this to the students? I think that this might be something to do near the beginning of the year. Starting with the personal and working outwards to the global (or national in US Government). Maybe instead of focusing on the schools I would instead focus on the communities at large and talk about the structural arguments towards both the achievement gap and poverty rates. Could I get away with spending a week on this kind of unit? There are many books that students have loved reading in the past (I could get a class set of Our America and also look at books/essays by William Julius Wilson -among others) and begin by showing what social studies can do while working on basic reading and writing skills and issues of social justice that directly pertain to my students.

I may spend some time this summer seeing if I can come up with an excellent and brief introductory week-long unit to the study of history and the social sciences using a topic that is more contemporary and relatable to the students and integrating lessons on the analytic frameworks we will be using in the course with the basic reading, writing and interpretive skills needed for social studies.

All good things...

2009-05-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

...clearly must come to an end here in DCPS and especially at my school.

*Stop reading now if you don't want to hear a long rant about technology and my school, because right now? I'm seriously annoyed.*

I have been experimenting with our laptop lab, having 2 of my classes basically conduct their entire class on the laptops. I believe there are a myriad of benefits from conducting these small classes in this manner including the following:

Students get experience taking notes and completing all their assignments on the computer. This is exactly how colleges conduct their courses now, and it will be even more true by the time these juniors get to college in just under two years. So if they are good at taking notes, completing outlines and drafts of papers and using the internet actively in class (while also dealing with the temptation to just check their emails, etc.) they will be far more prepared for the modern college classroom.
Moving towards an almost paperless classroom. In my first and third periods we have become almost 100% paperless with students submitting assignments via email and me giving them their grades and feedback the same way.
Students have become reinvigorated to complete assignments and then revise them. I have noticed better notetaking; an increase in the level of submitted work for feedback (since we can both have a copy of the work at the same time); and an increase in a few students overall grades. While this is not universal, it is a very promising start.

But now the other teachers are apparently (and I'm actually a little dubious on this front) complaining about the fact that the laptops are located in my classroom since I use them every single day. Now let me be clear I do not use all of them and I always let the other teachers use them when they ask to, and I tell them to sign up in advance and let me know when they want the whole lab and I'll give up the lab entirely because I will plan around them. But do they do that? No. Do they plan what they're doing? No. They generally seem to want them as a filler, like a 'type up your paper' day assignment. (Sorry but these kids can do that on their own time, school time is for instruction.)

And then when I go to the classrooms that are asking for the laptops and I see what they are doing with them? They're having the kids do dopey research projects where I watch the majority of the kids cut and paste wikipedia pages into their 'research reports' and then watch as they get an A. There is no analysis, there is no thought, the kids don't even READ what they wrote! So pardon me if I get a little up-in-arms when they then "demand" that I return the hijacked laptops in their entirety so they can use them. I'm going to have to figure out how to get at least 5 laptops permanently housed in my classroom that have access to the internet.

AND THAT IS ANOTHER THING. The only reason they even HAVE the internet on these laptops is because I paid for a wireless router and it broadcasts from my room. I'm going to have to change that password daily from now on and make sure that only my students sign on each day. I know it is ungracious but I'm getting sick of getting taken advantage of, and frankly this particular wireless internet connection is something that I paid for and have to work my ass off to keep up and running (there has been a lot of troubleshooting on my side plus teachers interrupting my class to come and help them figure out the internet in their room which they only have thanks to me - which they have not once acknowledged).

Not only that, the teachers actually get indignant and complain when the internet isn't working perfectly. They have the audacity to try and make me fix it for their class during my class' time. That and fix every computer glitch they have (This occurs at least once every 2 weeks and some weeks as often as a couple of times per day). There are two problems with this.

I am not very good at troubleshooting problems on Windows computers. Internet issues are easy enough but when it comes to getting the projectors to work I am at a loss.
They ask me when my classes are in session and sometimes when I am at the front of the room actively teaching a lesson. As if my time, and more importantly, my students' time is somehow less important than theirs. If you want to use the technology troubleshoot it in advance and get it set up in advance. I'll help when I can but you're on my schedule. And if you don't like that? Well then tough, go help yourself.

In the end I have pretty mixed feelings. I don't mind sharing resources at all, but when I feel that they're not being used appropriately and at the same time that I am being taken advantage of well then I'm not having it. But the school year is almost done (one half of an advisory left!) so I guess I just have to make it to the end and then readjust for next year. I know I've been living in luxury getting to use these computers for my assignments but you can't just take them away now that all my classes have adjusted to them.

Fire Alarm... Again

2009-04-30T09:27:00.001-07:00

We don't have to leave apparently, but we do have to sit and listen to it go off. It is really high pitched and annoying and LOUD.

Please turn it off soon!!!! We can't actually conduct class in these conditions.

The Meeting

2009-04-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

So I had the meeting with Ms. Rhee and overall it was a positive experience. I was not as coherent and organized and positive as I might like but she seemed receptive to hearing about our problems and of the same mind that a leadership change would vastly improve virtually all of our problems. I gave her an agenda, made the case for the students and that I firmly believe we should have an Academy. I then primarily focused on our entire academy's lack of focus and the lack of effective leadership. Then she asked me some questions, I told her what I thought would help us and then we were done! It was kind of a whirl wind, which is why I'm worried I wasn't as coherent as I could have been. I was pretty nervous but once I got going it wasn't so bad.

She also put me in touch w/another person who was sitting in on our meeting and actually works in our building and is in charge of all the high schools. Basically they said that I could keep in touch w/him and meet regularly to discuss progress. So hopefully increased oversight will happen! So yeah, I should have maybe prepared exactly what I was going to say in what order a bit more (I had my agenda but hadn't necessarily run through it enough and planning exactly how I would phrase everything) but I think that overall it was a positive experience and I got my point across as much as could be expected.

I'm not exactly sure what concrete things will change soon, but she couldn't really make any promises and she said that the school is on her radar and she appreciates hearing about these problems. And frankly I understand her position. We are a very small academy at the moment, and we are relatively unproblematic compared to the larger schools. So I did not expect a team to immediately get sent in to fix things, but because it wouldn't take much to fix them I am going to currently believe that there is a possibility that we will get new leadership and that will make a huge difference.

What I do know for sure:
1) They aren't talking about closing us (at least not yet...)
2) They want us to increase enrollment
3) She said she hopes I stay at the Academy
4) I'm feeling invigorated to continue to fight the good fight and keep closely (hopefully not annoyingly) in touch with the official directly overseeing my director and seeing if some of my ideas can come to pass.

At least I'm trying both inside my classroom and out, that shows initiative and guts I would say and that can't be a bad thing in the long run. All in all this may be a chance for me to both show leadership potential and take on a more significant role in the future (let alone the chance that I could help effect real change - ok I know that is the best case scenario but that is the point right?). Who knows.

Irony:

2009-04-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

When teachers use copious amounts of paper, mass produced posters and other newly bought items (that undoubtedly came wrapped in plastic packaging) promoting 'going green'.

A wee bit incensed

2009-04-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

I don't mind sharing the technology that we have, so when a group of students come from the other social studies class next door to ask to use the laptops I motion them over to do it. But if I'm at the front of the room teaching a lesson, and they keep coming in and out, and then come in to interrupt my class to ask me to fix the internet (which they wouldn't even have access to if it weren't for me) I get a little p.o.'d

I'm not just mad at the students. If that teacher hadn't let them think it was ok to constantly come in and interrupt my classroom then they wouldn't be doing it, but since she doesn't ever actually teach, I don't think she realizes some of us actually do.

Plus they never actually do anything over there so the idea that they would be using the internet for anything other than surfing for private purposes is absurd.

Interesting

2009-04-24T10:29:00.001-07:00

This whole week practically the entire staff seems to be sucking up to me, or acting unusually nice.

Teacher across the hall and I got into a cordial discussion about how crazy some of our boys are and mused on whether they will ever grow out of it. (she generally seems to huffy to talk to me)
Teacher next door has been very nicely asking to use the laptops, returning them in a timely fashion, and then today offered me Chinese food (which I declined since I still harbor a fear that she's attempting to kill me. If her ineptness and lack of knowledge of social studies didn't do it, then maybe she's trying a more direct route)
Young business teacher introduced me to some guy she's working on a project with, then tried to set me up with him. She has also been praising my efforts to help us 'go green' and has all of a sudden become very gung ho about the Going Green competition we're having
Herr direktor has been giving me anything I want and going out of her way to praise me and what I do.
The evil english teachers have been really nice to me and asking me to help them with things.

Perhaps they heard about a certain meeting that I'm having next week?

Too bad. Too little, too late my friends.

YOU SHALL REAP WHAT YOU HATH SOWN (if I have any say in the matter)

Authentic as it gets

2009-04-21T14:40:00.000-07:00

Well today my small Constitutional Law class and I were 20 people away from a life changing experience and were 'forced' to settle for a great experience.

Let me set the scene..

In March I took my students to see oral arguments for a Supreme Court case (Abuelhawa v United States). We didn't get to see the whole case being heard but we did catch the last 20 minutes and it was a lot of fun. The case was about whether or not someone should be charged with a felony for minor possession of a narcotic because they used a cell phone to facilitate it. What I noticed when we left was that even though we had gone through the background of the case, the students had a really hard time understanding what was going on when we were in the courtroom.

Taking this into consideration, and after reading an article in the Washington Post about a school in Virginia that did mock Supreme Court cases, I decided it would be fun to take an upcoming case from the Supreme Court and have the students be the lawyers and do all the leg work. So first I gave students brief summaries of the cases and then we picked one that interested them. The students picked the case Safford Unified School District v. Redding. This case was about a student who was strip searched when students were looking for illicit prescription drugs (in this case 400 mg prescription ibuprofen). The student says her Fourth Amendment rights were violated and she was traumatized by the experience, developed ulcers and had to leave the school. The school district basically says it was protecting their students and they need to maintain the right to do so. Once they had picked the case they were assigned to teams representing the two sides.

The first thing the students had to do was submit legal briefs. They worked together and performed research using only primary sources (the same sources that were used in the case) reading and citing previous legal decisions on the case (local, appellate and en banc), relevant Supreme Court decisions, and the sworn statements used in the case. While the final briefs were far shorter than the real thing, the students used legal terminology and made multiple outlines, drafts, and numerous revisions to come to their final product and gained experience using legal evidence and making strong arguments based solely on the law and interpretation of the law.

The students then had to present 'Oral Arguments'. First the students had to write a persuasive speech representing their side. This forced them to pick only the strongest arguments for their side and work on their persuasive writing and speaking skills. Then they had to present the speech in front of their peers.

The next step was to simulate what it would be like to be in front of the Supreme Court Justices (who get to interrupt you at any time and interrogate you mercilessly). Because our class is too small to have a set of Justices, I decided to arrange it as a debate, where they would get to question each other and force the other side to answer potentially damaging questions.

The culmination of this project was for us to go to the Supreme Court and hear the Oral Arguments for the very case we had been studying ourselves. The students picked a very popular case, and one that has gotten a reasonable amount of press (far more than the other case we attended though certainly not a landmark case). I decided we had to arrive at the Court early because seating is very limited and it is first come, first serve. I figured that if I arrived by 5:30 then my students arrived by 6:30 and we would be fine.

I arrived at the Court around 5:35 and to my dismay saw a huge group of people already waiting. I ended up being about the 70th person in line. My students arrived and were able to join me (with a little bickering behind me) and we patiently waited in the fairly cool/cold weather to see if we were going to get in. I was not very hopeful but my students jokingly 'kept the faith'. After lots of time in line, we received the final 'placeholder' issued by the police at #75. We kept waiting since we only got one for the six of us. At one point we were offered $100 for the placeholder (which in retrospect my students said we should have taken haha) by a supposed friend of one of the attorneys trying the case. Apparently the parents of one of the attorneys trying the case was actually behind us in line as well, clearly no special privileges were given to anyone.

In the end we were about 20 people away from getting a seat for the whole trial (and when there are only about 200 seats total 20 is a lot). I probably would have needed to get there at least an hour earlier and the students would have had to have been there with me to avoid a riot. So we didn't really have a shot since the fifth student arrived around 7 AM.

We then moved directly to the 5 minute rotation line and were the first group to go inside. We went in, put our things in the little lockers, heard 5 minutes of the case, and were then led out. While we only got to hear a tiny portion of the case my students did not come across as very disappointed and were animatedly talking all about the case as we left. I can only imagine what it would've been like for us to hear the whole thing if 5 minutes got them going.

Here are the highlights of what we did get to witness:

Safford Unified School District was presenting and was talking about how the school district had to be able to protect their students from illegally using prescription medications and that there had been a history of students getting sick and abusing these drugs.

One of my students who represented Safford in our class was very excited that she heard the very argument she used in her paper used by the lawyer

Ruth Bater Ginsburg began to pull Safford's case apart

Another student who represented Redding was very excited that the Justices seemed to be very harsh on the Safford lawyer

In the end, while we did not quite get the potentially life changing experience that we wished we could have gotten, I think that we ended successfully.

Case and point: 3 out of 5 students are now saying that they are seriously thinking about law school (when before none of them had any interest).

Mission Affirmed

2009-04-15T12:49:00.001-07:00

A student randomly came up to me in the hall who hasn't had me as a teacher all this year and told me that she thinks I am one of the best teachers in the school on the grounds that she always sees me standing and walking around the room, that I always seem to be teaching, and that she remembers she learned a lot in my class last year.

While this was a very kind sentiment there is the dark flipside which is: if that is all it takes to be the best teacher in the school, then what aren't the other teachers doing?! I mean after she told me that she basically said "you aren't like those other teachers who always sit behind their desks and give out work in the first 5 minutes" and then pointed at a certain english teacher's classroom.

This just reaffirms the reason I have to talk to Ms. Rhee and try and work something out here. Our teachers are flat out lazy, and it is killing this school and making it a place that students don't want to be in. If I am the 'best' teacher (and while I think I do a good job and try pretty hard there is no way I should be considered a 'best,' especially since she had me last year when I was even worse than this year) that says way more about the other teachers then it does about me. So thank you my dear, you have convinced me that my cause is righteous and I will fight for you until I can't fight any more.

(Now what I have to do is see if I can get some students to fight for themselves. Admittedly it is hard when one does not know how to change people who have such authority.)

Financial Anti-Literacy

2009-04-15T09:01:00.000-07:00

I am just going to be taking some notes while this financial "literacy" "lesson" is going on.

9:15 - Carryout EVERY DAY is apparently a great way to save money. Who knew? Never mind the cost to your own bank account, the environment and your health. Who knew long term costs don't actually affect you (and that doesn't negate the fact that it is also a short term cost)?
9:45 - since when is POPEYE'S a wise financial decision?
10:22 - Keep it legal people. Keep it legal.
10:29 - Glossary = cheating
10:38 - Don't trust the internet. Espeically paying bills and online banking. (Ummm... new era lady)
10:48 - 2nd time we have brought up that you shouldn't bring a baby in when you ask for a loan. I mean ok, but twice? Really it needed saying twice?

wow. 4 hours of precious class time wasted.

Beginning to lose it

2009-04-09T15:42:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness we have a FOUR DAY WEEKEND that starts tomorrow!

Today I managed to wake up at 7:50 AM (2.5 hours later than normal) which already wasn't good since we're supposed to be at work by 8. So I called the director and informed her that I would be on time for class, but not any morning meetings. I got to school by 8:30 (I am that good). Kids were normal.

Then during 3rd period the fire alarm goes off - apparently a kid pulled it and an announcement was made for us to stay in the classrooms. So we sit in the classroom and continue to work, being blasted by this fire alarm for a good 20-30 minutes (or at least that is what it seemed like). It went off for a few minutes and then came back. I was really beginning to lose it when that happened, the sound is just so awful and it just keeps going and there is nothing you can do but sit there and try to survive the high pitched jarring sound.

Then about 15-20 minutes into 4th period the fire alarm goes off again! But this time the announcement tells us to evacuate. When we get outside I have to corral the students onto the basketball court, which is no easy feat, by threatening them with suspensions. I acutally ended up getting 100% of my students to not leave the school grounds. I then met up with some of the other teachers and we proceeded to find out that the banner wishing the 10th graders luck on the DC-CAS on the opposite side of the building from me (where I teach Saturday School) was lit on fire on both sides and there was also an even more severe closet fire somewhere near the gym. So 2 fires. We stayed outside in the sun until 3:15 when the kids were released. Also my fellow teacher (and rockstar) managed to pick up the fire marshal. Oh yeah, she's that good.

Anyways it is very difficult to get anything done when this keeps happening. I can't believe we are returning to this kind of insanity after holding it at bay for so long. Stupid spring, the minute the weather even looks like it is improving the kids go insane. Well actually that isn't quite fair, a few kids go insane and spoil it for the rest of us.

Fire (?!) #2

2009-04-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

Well we may have had a second fire, though we didn't smell anything and were only oustide for 20-30 min or so. It wasn't a drill, that much I do know. Rumors say that something happened in the gym. Fire trucks did come, we got out of the building much faster than normal and actually got the kids onto the basketball court. I forgot my jacket, and froze to death. We were having a debate team meeting... we don't have many left before the competition. We're back folks!!! Yay spring (that was sarcasm fyi)

Update 12:31 PM: Apparently there was a fire, and something looks black and you can smell smoke on the other side. It must have been easy to put out though since we weren't outside nearly as long and there wasn't water all over the floor. We really are back - the fire starters have reemerged after laying dormant for so long.

Guilty as charged

2009-04-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

On Friday afternoon the entire school had a meeting to discuss the shockingly low attendance rate on Friday and why it is occurring.

Our entire school has a definite cycle where on a half-day students don't bother coming to school. This is for a variety of reasons, but the main one is probably because they don't think we will be doing anything of use on the half-day. Now unfortunately they are largely right. Classes don't do much of value on the half-day.

The question is: why aren't teachers doing more on half days? The answer: because students aren't showing up, and if you do too much that day you will probably just have to re-teach it to the class when they show up the next class day. So we have this cycle of low expectations that has to be broken, and the students aren't going to be (and shouldn't have to be) the first ones to break it.

Thinking about this I realized I am guilty of fulfilling this low-expectations of turn-out on the recordkeeping day this year. I planned a survey and work period for projects into my curriculum because I knew many students wouldn't show up. Therefore students still got credit for coming, but we didn't cover any new material.

This compromise is probably too large, and I will do better to make half-days more essential for the class to try and force them to come. But here's the dilemma: If I do that, and then the rest of the classes are a waste of time, then it will really just further reinforce the idea that it is useless to come to school on those days. Therefore we really need to come together as a staff and make this happen.

Now I'm going to go die on the floor laughing at the idea that a bunch of teachers who can barely muster up the energy to show up to work on time will actually teach a real lesson on a half-day. Man this staff is making me pessimistic. Good thing I have a meeting w/Ms. Rhee at the end of this month to try and change them by force. If bottom up won't work, then top-down it is!

The past few days

2009-04-03T07:24:00.001-07:00

Today is a 'record-keeping day' which means students only have a half day of school, which means that barely any of the students show up. The few students who are here are quietly working on their project and need little help from me, which generally makes me extremely bored. Since I have finished all my grading and have already inputted my grades I am going to write about the past few days.

Wednesday - April 1st

I wrote a short email to Michelle Rhee requesting a meeting to discuss the future of the Academy and some of the suggestions I have about how to fix it. And 40 minutes later the meeting was set up. A+ for efficiency. I want to meet with her because I believe the Academy is in major trouble and I think that with a few changes (namely: leadership) and/or a proper focus we could turn it around and give the students what they deserve. I think this will take a lot of effort on the part of our staff (which I am not convinced they are willing to give) and therefore I want to see what options there are in mandatory meetings over the summer (like what other schools do) amongst other things.

The DC Debate League lost the building they were going to use for April's competition and sent out a blanket email asking debate coaches to ask their principals if it would be possible to use our buildings. I asked our principal (without expecting much) and he was very gracious and said that it should be fine. So now it appears our school is hosting our first debate competition! (This would also be the first competition we have ever attended)

I was asked if I had suggested I wanted to join the staff of our host school. I do not believe I had ever expressed that wish to the principal, but I have certainly thought about it. This possibly means that if I have to escape then I have at least 1 fallback option (although it would be very awkward to be in the same building as my current program but not on the staff)

I had a long conversation over email with the woman who runs the Model United Nations program in DC about how I can join that program next year, and she had a lot of good ideas and I intend to implement them next year.

Thursday April 2nd

We had our first fire (see previous post)

Two students decided to act like wannabe gangsters in my 4th period

Here's how that went down:

Student 1 (happens to be the student who instigated me getting hit in the face last year) walks into my 4th period class (which he does not have with me) and begins yelling at Student 2 who is sitting across the room. A female student is trailing him and telling him to back down and leave the classroom (happens to be cousin of student 2). The female student is actually trying to be helpful and diffuse the situation.
Student 2 stands up aggressively and whips out his cell phone
Student 1 yells "I have people too!" and other things about how it wasn't ok that student 2 had threatened to kill him and his family
Student 2 says something along the lines of "I will f***ing kill your mother"
Student 1 yells "don't bring my mother into this!"
During this time I am trying to get student 1 to leave the room and telling student 2 to sit his ass down while standing between them
The students are about 3 feet away from each other
I am about to call the Director to help me deal with them since they are clearly not listening to me in the slightest
She happens to be walking towards the room (not sure if she already knew something was happening or it was just very lucky)
She tells the students to give her their cell phones (they're still both on them calling "their people")
Student 1 yells "hell no I ain't giving you my phone"
Student 2 says nothing but is not giving up his phone
They both end up heading towards the office after the Director as she yells at them about how she was done with them disobeying her
Student 2 ends up back in my classroom at some point, I didn't actually see him come in, but he sits quietly in the back doing nothing and I have nothing to say to him.

I don't really know what to make of this situation. I have been extremely lucky and this is really the first time this year I have almost had a serious fight (as opposed to a joking around kind of fight). I do not like what the students were saying at all, they both seemed very serious. I have no idea where this problem came from. I warned my class that if they were participating in this that I had no sympathy and would have very harsh consequences for anyone caught up in this feud. I'm don't really know what I could do, but they could tell that I basically would have no love for them if they got mixed up in that petty, ego-tripping business.

Today I am giving the students a survey about their perceptions of me and my classroom. So far everything is positive but with these kinds of surveys you have to worry that they're just feeding you what you want to hear and not the truth. I really need them to be honest with me if I ever expect to grow as a teacher. I don't quite know how to communicate that I like hearing what is wrong and what they don't like because then I can make sure to either not do it again or change it in some way to make it better.

Another reason why I am a terrible person

2009-04-03T07:24:00.000-07:00

I can't help but laugh along w/the students after the counselor slowly walks by with her all green, possibly leather suit and she creaks the whole way extremely loudly. I blame it on the lack of sleep.

That's the old Woodson we know and love

2009-04-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

Well today we had our first real fire. And apparently it was a doozie because the whole building smells like smoke, and after the fire department was done (which took almost an hour) there was water all over the floors. The kids being NTB, decided to light a fire on a rainy and cool (if not cold) day. So we had to stand outside, getting drizzled on, in the cold, for over 2 hours. And as fun as that was... Yeah, no. Bad children.

And it's off

2009-04-01T05:04:00.000-07:00

I just sent an email to Michelle Rhee requesting a meeting with her to discuss the future of the Academy.

Wow I am very nervous, but also excited that I am actually trying to be proactive instead of just running from my problems by applying to another school.

While I don't know exactly what she can do, at least I am going to try to fix things before I head for the hills.

UPDATE (8:40 AM): "Sure thing, Angie pls schedule." And with that... we begin.

This can't be healthy

2009-03-30T12:48:00.000-07:00

Things that have to get done:

Debate Team preparations for meetings
Earth Day celebration plans (finalized)
Letter to Ms. Rhee
Class lessons for 3 different classes
Project for AU Assessment Class
Project for AU Foundations Class
AP Syllabus Submition
Junior Class Meeting to discuss change of plans
Readings for classes (yeah... right)
Prepare for Praxis Pedagogy on April 25 (sorta need that to get my license)
Survival?

Apparently it has been a long day...

2009-03-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

The school counselor came in just now to make an announcement and asked "where are all the students? I have been looking around and they're just not in the classrooms. Why is that?" It was 3:35, class had ended 20 minutes prior.

Yeah it was that kind of day...

Poor Leadership

2009-03-21T05:12:00.000-07:00

I am tired of being blamed for things that are a result of poor leadership. I am new to this system, in my second year of teaching, and am being blamed for taking initiative to help students without going through the 'proper' channels. Now I understand following the rules and I am more than willing to. But it is hard to do that when you don't know the rules exist. When I ask my leader a question or inform that leader that I am doing something and they say 'great' and tell me nothing else, then I'm going ahead with what I'm doing. If a student clears something with that leader then tells me about it later then I assume the leader took care of everything which is why they signed off on the endeavor.

This "leader" has already driven away a good science teacher. She's now driving away the math teacher. And she is certainly driving away me. And she wonders why this Academy is in constant danger of being closed.

There is a reason I am sending my resume out to schools with real leaders. I am a beginning teacher, I cannot be expected to run this school, and I need real guidance not just trial by fire (and we'll yell at you when you mess up). When a group of students comes to you and you tell them about a 'free bus' and tell them to 'write this person' and they do that, don't send me a condescending email (that is cc'd to said students) telling me that I should have written to that person about a free bus and that the students didn't do the letter right. Why didn't you tell them to tell me, or better yet tell them what should be in that letter? Why am I all of a sudden the poor, disorganized teacher who has no idea what she's doing (when I didn't even know about this free bus)? I know it makes her feel better to blame me, because then she takes it off of herself. But she's driving away the one teacher who is going above and beyond the call of duty, who has taken 4 days off over 2 years, who comes in over an hour early almost every day and stays late, who runs clubs, is always there for her students and actually teaches (and yes the students and I all know that we have maybe 2 or 3 teachers who do that here). So she is, in her own words, reaping what she sows.

One down, three to go!

2009-03-19T09:01:00.000-07:00

I just sent in my cover letter and resume to Banneker SHS. I applied last year and was not hired, but I was given the impression that I was the 2nd choice, which isn't too bad. I teach Saturday School with a teacher who works there and heard that the person they hired over me was fired halfway through the year and now they have a permanent substitute.

This means that my dream position is going to be back on the market. In an attempt to get it once again, I am applying early and worked really hard on my cover letter and CV. I think my application is a lot stronger this year. I have grown a lot as a teacher and taken on a lot of additional roles here at the Academy. I also am getting much more direct in selling myself to Banneker in particular, making sure they understand that I will be a good fit for the long term and not just some kid who plans to go to law school in a few years (not that there's anything wrong w/that, I'm just not that person).

I have three more schools that I will apply to, just to see if anything comes of them, but really Banneker is my top choice. It has the IB program, a strong set of students from around the district, is not a charter school, has a good number of students and has high standards for everyone involved. I can see myself having a long career there and really growing and learning from my fellow staff members and administration. Especially because, by all accounts, it is a school that actually works.

I do feel a little guilty about leaving my students here, especially because the programs I am setting up aren't necessarily short term. But I deserve the chance to work with people who know what they are doing and actually try. People who don't come to work late every day, people who really teach lessons and don't just use the poorly written textbook, faculty who don't do the bare minimum and people who follow school, state and federal regulations and don't discriminate against those that are different. I know I deserve that, and I'm sorry to the students that I may leave behind if I do get offered another position (because I know I would be leaving you behind with nothing), but at some point I have to do something that is for my own benefit, or I may not make it to that long-term goal I see for myself in the future.

Interesting (read: depressing) Stats

2009-03-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

Today a new report was released by the District talking about the HIV/AIDS rate in DC.

It is approximately 1:33 and disproportionately affects African Americans

Another interesting statistic I just found out: 2 seniors and 1 sophomore are pregnant in the Academy

We have about 96 students

That means approximately 1:32 students are pregnant (having unprotected sex).

Coincidence?

The Grand Experiment

2009-03-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

I know it has been a long long time since I have posted here, and probably nobody is checking it. Things have been hectic this year and I will go back and write a few posts describing some of the big events of this year.

This post is about my newest informal experiment in student communication: Text Messaging.

I was due for a new phone, so I decided to also get an upgrade to my current plan. I have noticed that my students text a lot. Possibly more than they talk. So what I am going to do is communicate with them the way they are most comfortable communicating. The cheapest way to accomplish this was to add unlimited text messaging to my phone and then collect all my students cell numbers (on a volunteer basis). I believe I got about 2/3 of my students to give me their numbers without any incentive, which I would say is pretty good, and for most the only reason I'm not closer to 100% is that the other students are absent.

I have given them my cell number and have told them they can text me with any questions, comments, concerns, etc. that they have.

I will also text them reminding them about big assignments, homework, binder checks, to check their email if I send them an assignment, etc. Some students are also signing on to a "wake up text" where I text them around 7:45 to wake up.

Due to all this potential texting I bought a phone that has a full keyboard so that I can type much faster. I also am able to create 'groups' by class so I can send out classroom texts and other things. If a student goes to the bathroom for too long I can text them telling them to get back to class, etc.

This is an experiment to see if this increases communication and assignments being turned in. I know not all students will respond to it, but there are quite a few who have proven very responsive already (or at least very excited about the prospect of communicating via texting).

My plan is to see how it works for this last advisory of the year (which starts right after spring break in 2 weeks) and see if I can find a noticeable difference in work getting turned in and people coming to class on time and prepared.

I will need to see if this will get abused by the students, but I honestly doubt it. They've had my apartment landline number for a long time and hardly any of them call it, so we shall see. The great thing about this plan is its flexibility. If my students don't text me all that much then I can reduce the number of texts I need per month and pay less. If it doesn't work at all I can just cancel the unlimited text messages. So there really aren't that many extra costs. I also can probably write this off my taxes as a business expense (it would have to be proportional to the amount of texts I use for work vs. personal - but that isn't too hard to figure out)

Anyways I am excited to see how things go! I am going to start posting more regularly in the future, both to track my own progress and to keep people more up to date on what is going on over here in DC.

4 MILLION!

2008-11-18T08:27:00.001-08:00

OH MY!!!! This is the most exciting thing ever!

Washington Post Inauguration Watch Article

We are so going to be at the biggest party of the CENTURY!!!!!!

Only one question remains: Parade view or swearing in/speech view?

I'm torn!!!

A ringing endorsement...

2008-11-05T16:29:00.000-08:00

If this doesn't make pay for performance seem like a bad idea... well then I don't know what would:

Voters turn down teacher merit pay measure

Posted by The Oregonian November 04, 2008 20:51PM

Categories: Education, Politics, Statewide Measures

Voters turned down Measure 60, which would have required the state to base teacher pay raises on classroom performance.

Like nearly all of their peers nationwide, Oregon teachers are paid strictly according to their years of experience and their level of college education.

The measure was sponsored by Bill Sizemore, the conservative initiative activist who gathered enough signatures to place five measures on the ballot.

A coalition led by the Oregon Education Association argued that Measure 60 would require students to endure more standardized testing and pit teachers against one another.

---------------------------------

For those who may not know: Bill Sizemore is one of the biggest assholes alive hands down. So if HE wants to do pay for performance... then clearly there are some serious problems.

Paper-mania!

2008-11-05T15:07:00.000-08:00

This morning I was very forward thinking and bought 10 newspapers at Rite Aid and then 2 more at Caribou Coffee before 7 AM.

I got 5 Washington Posts
1-USA Today
1-NY Times
1-Baltimore Sun
1 - New York Post

Plus some others... basically I bought every paper that looked halfway decent.

Tomorrow I'm goin down to the Newseum to take pictures of the other headlines.

Watching the news, looks like almost all the Washington Post papers are gone. Boy am I good :D

Bragging Rights

2008-11-05T08:49:00.000-08:00

Not that I personally did all that much but... LOOK WHAT WE DID!!!!!

Prince William County:

56% Democrat
43% Republican

Manassas

54% Democrat
45% Republican

Manassas Park

60% Democrat
40% Republican

YES WE DID!!!!!!!

We just took a primarily Republican area and MADE IT DEMOCRAT AND WON VIRGINIA!!!

YES WE DID!!!!

2008-11-04T22:44:00.000-08:00

I am about to go to bed, but I will send updates in the near-future.

YES WE DID

YES WE DID

YES WE DID

On that note let me just say the best moments were:

1) When CNN first projected that Pennsylvania was going blue (I cried a lil)
2) When VA was called for Obama RIGHT BEFORE the election was called (literally 10 seconds) and the crowd at the DC for Obama party went INSANE
3) When Joe, Jayna and I went down to the White House where a huge crowd was gathering to celebrate the end of the Bush presidency
4) Running down the street giving high fives, getting people to yell, cheer and honk their horns (they're definitely still honking right near my apt... woooooooohoooooooo)

We have just witnessed history. I can't believe that I got to be a part of this even to the simple extent that I was. The past 48 hours have been beyond fantastic and beyond anything I could have ever hoped for in my life. I hope that this is a sign that politics are back on the upswing for a long and successful time. BRING BACK THE NEW DEAL!!

GOODNIGHT!!!!!!!!

And for once I can say: I'M PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN (temporarily haha)

Election Day Mania!!!

2008-11-04T08:20:00.000-08:00

So last night was... in a word: AMAZING.

The rally had approximate 85,000 people at it (by the estimates I have read in the paper) and here's the best part: JOE, JAYNA AND I WERE SITTING BEHIND OBAMA ON THE BLEACHERS!!! That is like the super special section and was basically filled with volunteers. We were the first group to go in because they ran out of jobs for us volunteers so they let us sit back there since we did show up to help out. So basically we didn't do anything (well I did set up some chairs upon initial arrival) and got to watch the whole rally from an amazing vantage point! (That and we were able to be seen on some of the major TV networks according to Jayna's sisters.)

It was spectacular, just being a part of that energy and happiness and dedication to politics for once! Getting to participate in Virginia has been a real trip and it is exciting to get to be a part of this whole election. I definitely will have strong memories of canvassing in Manassas and then culminating in the rally, election day and then *hopefully* the results/party!!!! What a great opportunity we have, especially here in DC.

I got home by about 1 AM and was able to go right to bed. I then woke up at 5:30 in order to get in line to vote by 6. I was a bit sluggish, but got in line by 6:15. Polls opened at 7, and I was out by 7:25. Not too bad on the whole. When I got out though and saw the line?! wow. The line stretched at least 4 full blocks, multiple people deep. It was truly insane. Now I know the early crowd will bunch up and all but this is crazy.

Tonight I am headed to the DC for Obama party. I was just checking the website and apparently the event is full (I signed up a long time ago), which means 800 people have RSVP'd. Crazy!!!! My plan is to go to the party, and once the election is called (no matter which way) head to the White House. It is going to be insane!!!!

Fired up!
Ready to go!!!!!!!

O(MY GOD)BAMA!!!!!

2008-11-03T06:45:00.000-08:00

In less than 10 minutes I am heading out to be a volunteer at Obama's LAST PRE-ELECTION RALLY in Manassas Virginia!!!!!!!!!

I've been volunteering in Manassas for about a month now (just on weekends), so I took the day off of work and am READY TO GO!!!!!!!

A wee bit ashamed...

2008-08-14T19:57:00.000-07:00

So today I did something that is pretty embarassing: I went to the American Idols concert. Now I did it because of Mr. David Cook, and I knew that I was entering a pretty awful place haha, but I bought the ticket anyways and it was a decent seat. Near the back of the floor in an aisle seat. Probably 80-100 feet away from the stage or something, maybe less. The show itself wasn't too awful (it could have been worse basically). Idols 10-8 each got 3 songs, while David Archuleta got 4 and David Cook got 5. In the end it probably wasn't worth it, but I went and probably would have regretted not going too, so alls well that ends well. The best part was when David Cook covered Hero by the Foo Fighters (who I just saw on Saturday! and who I was wearing the T-shirt for to this concert tee hee). He has a great voice, and when (or if) he tours solo I will definitely be there, because he was clearly happiest playing that song, and if that's the kind of stuff that makes him happy then he is my kind of artist.

Some observations from the concert:

Basically everybody there was white
About 3/4 of the audience was 12 and under
There were a lot of older ladies there (40+)
The girl sitting next to me was a moron, but well meaning and her mother was drunk and wishing she could have been drunker still... they also looked like the stereotypical middle america Jerry Springer watchin go America types. *ugh*
A lot of people were like the ones I just described above
I have never heard such loud piercing screams in all my life (thanks primarily to the tweens)

I'm never ever ever doing that again

Now on to watch the olympics!

V-Fest

2008-08-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to the Virgin Mobile Music Festival outside of Baltimore. It basically was a huge music festival with a wide variety of music playing on two stages (North and South) plus one dance tent.

On Saturday I drove up and arrived at 11 a.m. and wandered around to see the layout and what was there. Basically everything I wanted to see was on the South Stage At noon I saw KT Turnstall who was actually a really good performer, she told funny stories and was just generally cool. She's also British, which I didn't know. After that there wasn't much I wanted to see so I wandered around and ended up at the dance tent where all the cool people seemed to be. I just watched people dancing and then went and got some food. After that I went to the South Stage and caught a band called Lupe Fiasco, who were a pretty cool rap group (or was it just one dude which makes him an artist? I dunno). After that came bloc party and I don't even know what I did during that show... I must have watched it since I wanted to be in position for the next band but I don't remember them at all. Then came the Offspring, a nice blast from the past. They were actually very good, playing a lot of their old hits, and the crowd went NUTS. Lots of crowdsurfing and mosh pit behavior. After that there was the Japanese Beatles, who were... just that. They were awesome and very accurate and full of smiles which was adorable. Then there was Chuck Berry, who was hilarious and wearing a sequin shirt. Then the band that I was there to see: the Foo Fighters. By the time the Foo Fighters came on I was able to position myself about 3rd 'row' center. I basically was on the board that is attached to the railing, which is a good position to be in. I had a lot of fun rocking out and holding on for dear life haha. Foo Fighters were awesome. They played a lot of their hit songs. Dave Grohl ran around like a madman and was generally hilarious and basically it was a great way to end the day. To top it off though I got really lucky. After the show was over there were a lot of leftover guitar picks on the mic stands. So the people tearing them down just tossed them out to the crowd and I managed to pick one up! It is grey and has a little symbol w/an FF! Very cool. A guy asked me to sell it to him because it was 'the only reason [he] came' (which is a really weird thing to say) but that would have been very lame, even though I did feel sorry for him because he seemed awfully upset.

Sunday I arrived at noon preparing to camp out at the north stage w/out moving the whole day (as in no getting food, water or going to the bathroom). To prepare for that I put in my contacts (a rare thing indeed) and brought 2 Liters of water and a bag of chex mix. I also ate a big breakfast of eggs and toast. I got there right before the first band on the North stage started, the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. They had a pretty rabid following (though small) and this lady managed to push in front of me, but I let her because I got the impression she would leave after the first band (and boy was I right). After the show I asked her if she was leaving, she said yes, and then I asked her if I could have her spot, so we traded rather smoothly, no having to fight for a spot (there are often fights and lots of squishing when someone gives up a front row spot on the bar). So after the first band I had my coveted front row and practically dead center spot. I had to watch a host of bands I knew nothing about: Shudder to Think (weird DC band... the singing too weird really, but great music), Paramore (a girl rock band that also inspired quite a lot of crowd surfers but they were all tiny girls so it wasn't too big a deal), Taking Back Sunday was next, which a lot of people were there to see... not quite sure why though the lead singer was cool, they really just weren't that good for me I almost fell asleep haha. But then the show I wanted to see finally began. First there was Iggy and the Stooges. Iggy Pop!!! It is amazing that that man is still alive. His first big hits were in 1969 and he has done so many drugs since then he should be dead. But know he is alive and KICKING a true rock star. It was awesome to see all these people who had no idea who he was rock out to his music (especially the youngins who were there to see the bands that came before Iggy). But nobody could deny that they were AMAZING. Experience really does show. After that came the STONE TEMPLE PILOTS. The show was amazing, though really short (only 1 hour!!! sadness). They played basically all of their hits, they were amazing, Scott Weiland was all over the place and it was just sublime. After that came Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor is just great! They played a very wide range of music, which makes sense given the wide range of stuff from album to album. Some people whined during the 'slower' bits but I just ignored them because they were so wrong, all of it was great. Though admittedly by the end I was in a bit of pain because crowd surfers kept running into me and apparently I'm getting a bit older for this standing for 12 hours straight and getting pummelled and squished and stuff.

The only problem with this festival was that there were too many good bands playing at the exact same time. For example during Stone Temple Pilots (who I would never miss) played at the exact same time as Bob Dylan AND Moby. So while it was an easy choice (especially w/NIN coming afterwards) I did really want to see Bob Dylan and Moby as well. And during Foo Fighters I had to miss Underworld. And during Offspring I had to miss Citizen Cope. So I mean that part was sad. As I said they were easy decisions to make, which is good, but it'd be nicer if they spaced some of these bands out a bit more, or tried to match up bands people would want to see so that it is an easier choice.

Opening Ceremonies

2008-08-08T18:07:00.000-07:00

I am currently watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and all I can say is that Janet was absolutely correct: China has mastered the art of getting thousands of people to move simultaneously with an amazing amount of precision. The ceremonies are unlike anything I remember and much cooler than anything I can recall from previous Olympics, which just seem cheesy and lame in comparison. Can't say I love everything China does but damn can they do an opening ceremony.

Enemy Territory

2008-07-30T20:59:00.000-07:00

For my diversity class at American University we needed to somehow go out and expand our knowledge of diversity, a fairly vague assignment, and then present our experience to the class. I figured that this was a great opportunity to try and get to know my students a bit better by experiencing a Christian religion (since over 90% of my students are some form of Christian). Therefore, in the name of expanding my knowledge of diversity, on Sunday evening I entered a church to see a service for the first time in my life (I attended a baptism once when I was pretty young, and I entered churches in Europe when we were visiting but that has been about it).

Because I know absolutely nothing about Christianity (aside from what I learned from Jesus Christ Superstar –thanks Andrew Lloyd Webber!) I tried to look up a church that might be considered traditionally black. I couldn’t find out whether the churches were specifically black churches, and due to a bit of laziness, I didn’t feel like calling specific churches to find out when their services were, so I only looked at churches that had websites that I could find. The church I found I was hoping would be primarily African American (mainly just because my kids are 99% African American), but I failed miserably on that front – despite the SE location of the church, it turned out to be very white with a small number of Asians and a few black people.

Now the funny part, that clearly highlights my ignorance of all things New Testament, is that I picked a Baptist church to visit. Now I had no idea that Baptists were Evangelicals (a.k.a: the enemy), so I was thoroughly unprepared for what I encountered. I attended an evening ceremony (which I found out was ‘very different’ from the regular 3 hour affair that they have in the mornings). It was very organized: the pastor would say a name of someone in the congregation and they would head to the front of the church to tell everyone about something they wanted the congregation to pray for. The pastor already had the back-story so he often asked pointed questions to get them to say everything they wanted to and then the people would say what they wanted the congregation to pray for. During this the pastor would also say a name of a congregant and say something like “Jonah, would you lead the prayer for Kate?” and they would be in charge at the end of saying the prayer. During this time some people were avidly taking notes, filling entire pages w/their notes on what to pray for for everyone who presented.

Now it was during this time that I began to figure out that this was an Evangelical organization, and by figure out I mean that it was thrown in my face and then bludgeoned me to death. Up until this point there had been a few songs (not very good, but not very crazy either, just a lot of Jesus is lord type stuff) and then a few community announcements, it all seemed very friendly and very normal. Then the stories began…

The first story was about a family who had a newborn baby (3 months or something) and started out by asking the congregation to pray for their wisdom, strength, patience, their child, etc. This seemed pretty normal to me (by super-religious standards of course). But then they began talking about how they had just moved to a neighborhood where people were very nice and open and they had great ‘conversations.’ Then they began talking about one of the neighbors specifically who they had talked to a few times and they wanted everyone to pray for her to ‘open her heart.’ Now this sounds semi-benign, though clearly what was not said explicitly by this family was ‘open her heart to Jesus.’ Then other stories began and they basically got more and more extreme, with many people openly asking people to ‘pray for conversions.’

Some stories of note:

A British man was visiting and he talked about how god had stopped the evil British government from passing a law that would ‘restrict religious freedom under the guise of protecting aberrant lifestyles’ (a.k.a. homosexuality)

A man was at George Washington University to give a 5-6 minute presentation on their religion (amongst other Christian organizations) and he asked them (via email) to pray for ‘mass conversions’

A bunch of trips to Southeast Asia where they had to be ‘vague’ on the details of what cities and what exactly they were doing aside from handing out pamphlets

A man who had organized an ‘interfaith’ luncheon with a Muslim group where apparently the idea was to try and convert the Muslim groups (although it sort of seemed like he may have just meant to increase understanding and tolerance, which would be a good thing – though later it was interpreted very directly as converting them).

A man who has started an American football team in Southeast Asia with the intent of using that team to convert the children to the Baptist faith

Then after quite a while we finally get to the prayer part. Everyone bowed their heads, closed their eyes, and the individuals who had been singled out would get the microphone and say a prayer about the story (meaning I basically had to listen to all the stories twice).

Now on the whole I was very calm and respectful, although I was texting a few friends in order to keep my sanity (my friend Joe accurately said it was good I went by myself, because if I had had a friend there we would’ve been laughing our asses off). But there were 2 times where I lost my respectful demeanor.

The first time was when the woman sitting next to me (luckily there was a small pole between us so we were still a few feet apart) led one of the prayers (the one for the guy speaking at the GW campus). She was one of the more ‘passionate’ prayer leaders to give a prayer that night, and she went off on how she prayed that the other ‘fake’ religions would not be heard, ‘hundreds of converts,’ and then she went off on something about the devil and students. I basically erupted into silent laughter that I simply could not contain. Luckily everyone had their eyes closed and heads bowed, so they didn’t notice (as was proven when she shook my hand at the end of the evening and asked where I was from, etc.). Now the main reason I was laughing is that in some ways she was basically talking about me, or at least what she would think I was, and she was using a wide variety of religious adjectives.

The other prayer I silently laughed at was the one about converting the Muslim group over luncheon. I mean how unrealistic can these people get? Converting religious Muslims who regularly pray? Yeah… very likely

In the end, over 80% of the stories/prayers had to do with converting people, and only a small number had to do with personal lives of the families (like sickness, jobs, troubling times, etc). Now I consider myself to be (as Joe has instructed me to say) someone who has an ‘unlocked mind’ in the sense that I am willing to listen to people but will then use my own judgment to decide what to think (this is instead of an open mind where you blindly accept different things people say and think). I’m generally OK with people believing in whatever religion they want to believe in, BUT I am absolutely not ok in ANY WAY with trying to convert other people. And I’m not OK with religions that so clearly promote intolerance.

My mom made an excellent point afterwards that it is very easy to see how these people and their beliefs so easily translate into the need for Evangelicalism. They believe so fully in Jesus, and heaven (and the rules that get you there), and that these are good things, that it is an incredibly easy leap to needing to try and ‘spread the word’ and educate/convert people so that they too can experience these joys. But the fact that Evangelicalism has long been used as a tool for the Right as a form of social control and power grabbing that I simply cannot accept the outlooks of these religions. I have friends who are in far more liberal churches that do not try and convert everyone they see, who do not promote hate and intolerance as a matter of doctrine, that I think Evangelicalism has to go. It is based in ignorance and blind faith, and this is not something that should be promoted to the world at large. If I were remotely religious in any way I would pray that they fail at everything they attempt to do. And since I’m not, all I can hope for is that as we improve the education system, we get people to question what these churches are telling them and help people open their eyes.

To make matters worse, I had my short presentation on all of this today and was very calm and collected and basically just said that I went and did this, but I left frustrated and disappointed. The teacher then asked why I was disappointed and I said that I wasn't big on the fact that they were praying for conversions. Then someone raised their hand and basically said (I kid you not a TEACHER said) "well what's wrong w/that? They mean it as a good thing" Now I decided to hold my tongue, since this was a fight that clearly nobody was going to 'win' but then another teacher said "it's like being a teacher, you have something you want to teach people" and my brain was like... wait... it is SO NOT THE SAME. There is a difference between preaching a religion and teaching history, I'm sorry. And there is a big problem with people believing other people are going to hell and therefore need to be saved. It is incredibly insulting. Anyways I figure that the guy who said that comment was thinking that I was being flip or rude in my presentation, which I really wasn't trying to do at all, so he was probably being a bit reactionary. At the same time he clearly believed what he was saying.

The moral of the story: I can't hang out with Evangelicals they scare the pants off of me...

P.S.

2008-07-18T01:05:00.000-07:00

I also have the best dog in the world, he lets me know when he has to go and needs access to a proper place to do it, and he's only 3 months old! What a good dog. Now if we could only get him to stop waking up at 6:30 a.m....

On another note, I got an interview at one of the best public schools in D.C. It was very unexpected and very exciting and I will know yes or no by the end of next week *hopefully*. (They'll call me and inform me if yes, and if no they may or may not call me... so we shall see)

HOLY MOTHER OF ALL THINGS HOLY

2008-07-18T01:01:00.000-07:00

Dark Knight is....... AMAZING. So amazing it boggles the mind. The end. I saw it at midnight and it was well well well worth it.

Pan Pictures and Movies!

2008-06-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

I have gotten many requests for more puppy pictures. I have finally taken some more and uploaded the ones I already had and have posted them on my parent's website. You can find them here: Pan Pictures

There are also some videos:

1. Pan attacking Mike

2. Pan playing fetch (for the most part). Careful this film kinda shakes a lot

3. Pan playing w/his favorite toy, a stick, and even a little bark!

A great day to be alive...

2008-06-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

...or not.

It is going to be a high of 97 today (w/a 'feels like' of 102) and humidity is at 20% (or more)

Unfortunately it is MUCH HOTTER in my classroom right now. There is no air (unlike other classrooms in the building), only 2 windows open, and my room faces East so we have been getting sun blasted at us ALL DAY. (in this case East is way worse than West facing windows because we leave so early in the day)

We have 1 fan, which is good because otherwise we would have to evacuate this place, and all the shades are down. But god damn is it awful up here. I wouldn't begrudge the kids if they never return, I wouldn't fucking come if it is like this, this is technically illegal, we are supposed to have A/C or they literally are supposed to close the building. But since some rooms have A/C they probably won't be doing that. Oh well, enough bitching. I've gotten a lot of stuff put away, maybe later I'll bring it out to the car, like during 3rd/4th period.

J.K. Rowling's Commencement Speech @ Harvard

2008-06-07T08:09:00.000-07:00

This speech is really beautiful (and fairly long, so you don't have to read it) I just wanted to post it here more for myself so I can see it from time to time.

"The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination" by J.K. Rowling

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,

The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent

far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.

Copyright of J.K. Rowling, June 2008
2008 Harvard University Commencement, June 5, 2008.

(Pan)demonium

2008-06-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

Pan playing around. My gosh he is so cute! He went on his first walk today (3/4 of a block x 2) and he did a great job! He followed me and barely whined at all. So slowly but surely he is learning. Today was also his first long stint alone 10:30 - 4:30. He did well, when I got back there were no messes and I wasn't able to hear him in the hallway. That being said, I don't think he drank all that much because he was a bit nervous. But when I got home I fed him and gave him more water, so he was OK.

Otherwise class is going well, with only 1.5 weeks left we are seriously winding down, but attendance has not dwindled like the kids promised :D so that is good. Also they are beginning to turn in their assignments! Also good. Only 4th period is having a hard time, and my guess is it is the last period of the day and there aren't that many of them, so sometimes it is hard for them to get up the energy to keep goin.

Oh and Pan is officially a great name. Mike in particular has thought of many other great nicknames:

Pandemonium (Mike)
Pandemic (Mike)
Panty Raid (Mike) and
Panopticon (Mine)

are my favorites

Puppy!

2008-06-01T14:04:00.003-07:00

SO CUTE. And sorta on and off napping right now. He's a bit of a whiner, but otherwise PERFECT :D

Love him so so much

Bro!

2008-05-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

Mike is in DC w/Sarah. They are sleeping in my living room on a blow up mattress. It has made the living room very crowded, but it will work out great. They're staying for over a week (which is exciting). Today they went down to the National Mall while I'm at work, but I have taken Friday and Monday off in order to spend time w/them and.... THE PUPPY!!!!!

I am getting the puppy on Sunday. His name is going to be Pantalaimon (although I will never call him that, he will go by Pan). Janet and I have thought of some great nicknames for him as well such as 'skillet' (Janet) and 'griddle' (me) or just 'bacon' (that one was Janet's haha)... basically any number of kitchen wares. Also Bethany suggested that I could dress him up as Peter Pan for Halloween :) so the name has many different facets which is awesome. Even better is that I doubt it is a very common name for a dog, so he won't be getting confused w/other puppies at the park tee hee.

For those of you who don't know, Pan is a daemon from the Golden Compass. He was the visible 'soul' of the main character, and primarily took the shape of an ermine. He was one of my favorite characters in the book, and I figured a mini dachshund looks kinda similar to an ermine in some ways (body shape at least).

Mike and Sarah will be coming w/me to get the dog and they're going to help me take care of him while I have to work that first week! Which is awesome. Then I'll be spending a lot of time w/the puppy. I am SO EXCITED it is crazy.

My current desktop:

Sounds crazy on paper

2008-05-15T15:25:00.000-07:00

So this week has been a little crazy in terms of what has happened at the school, but as I shall relate, it is relatively boring in the classroom.

So on Monday, Wednesday and now today (Thursday) we have missed 3rd period due to fires throughout the building. Monday's was in the boys locker room on the ground floor (we could smell the smoke in the stairwell); Wednesday's was on the 2nd floor in a stairwell not too far from my room (though I didn't actually notice it); and today's was on the 4th floor. This has meant that 4th period has ceased to exist basically (for me). And we all go outside and stand/sit around for an hour or two and then move into the auditorium and wait for either the next period or school to be over.

On top of all this, today there were several more disruptions. First there was a pre-planned 'health fair day' at Woodson. This involved a play about teen pregnancies (which some of my students were in) and a series of tables set up to talk about different health issues/services. This took up all of 2nd period.

Then during lunch we got this announcement that 'the school was in lockdown.' Now this was the first time we've ever heard that over the PA system, so I assumed it had to do w/kids acting crazy because of the fair and then running loose in the halls during lunch. Then several kids came up and were all like "there's a HUGE fight in the cafeteria and they've got guns!!!" Now I don't take the kids too seriously when they talk like this since rumors spread like wildfire and are almost always ridiculously exaggerated. And this was not an exception. Turns out two things were going on at once. First of all there was a large fight in the cafeteria involving 30+ students which involved several actual arrests due to the level of violence. This led to students who were 'up in the tower' to be blocked from re-entering the cafeteria by police (which led them to believe there were guns, etc.). At the SAME TIME there was apparently some fighting taking place between two neighborhood rival gangs that did involve gun fighting, which caused the school to be on lockdown in order to keep the students in the building and away from the fighting that was taking place somewhere nearby-ish (though I didn't hear anything and my windows were open). This also led to us not being allowed to sit on the bleachers when we left for the fire since we 'didn't want to be targets' for gunfire, so we had to stand under the bleachers.

Anyways, all this led to was one boring day for me. I basically sat around, read the news and didn't really feel like grading (which I suppose I could have done). I talked w/some of my kids about Harry Potter and other great science fiction books though, and that made me feel good to know that a) some kids have great taste and b) some kids still read!!

Tomorrow are parent-teacher conferences. I am banking on a 0% attendance rate for my kids since I have upper-classmen this term. That means yet another day w/no instruction and nothing to do but grade (which I will actually do this time).

What is this job security you speak of?

2008-05-05T12:34:00.001-07:00

So apparently I may be out of a job at this school (though not DCPS since I am guaranteed a job through them). The problem is that our school is moving (due to the destruction of our current building), most of the high schools are being restructured under No Child Left Behind, and now with the creation of the 9th grade academies throughout DCPS we are not supposed to recruit 9th graders (cutting us off from a much needed supply of people). This leaves us filling both the leaving seniors and taking in the same number of 10-12 graders that we would have taken in in 9th graders (if that made any sense). This is unlikely to happen meaning that all the teachers who are doubled up on a subject will go first (due to not having a big enough budget to pay for all of us), and this will probably mean that I will have to go first. Since social studies is not as high up on the importance list as English (due to testing priorities primarily) and there are 2 teachers on Social Studies right now. So basically unless Ms. Scott leaves, I really doubt that I would have a job. So basically I need to secure one somewhere else as far as I am concerned. Lucky for me there is a job fair this Saturday. So back to the old resume! Man I haven't looked at this since last summer... *sigh* needs some updates

A few random musings

2008-05-03T17:47:00.000-07:00

So Friday I went out to a UChicago Alumni fundraising event. It was pretty fun. Then once I got home I stayed up for a bit and around 2 AM my buzzer started... well making the really scary/loud/obnoxious noise that it makes when someone is calling on my apartment. I ignored it, but they kept pressing it, so I pressed talk and said ya know 'hello' but there was no answer. Now I wouldn't think much of it, but then TONIGHT someone buzzed my apartment again around 8 PM and when I went up it was a delivery guy, but I definitely did not order anything. If something happens tomorrow I am going to go crazy haha. I hope it isn't like a student or something, I'm pretty damn sure I never gave out my address and I have no idea how they would have gotten it.

On another note... ok no I totally forgot what I was going to say, so I guess that is it.

Not too bright...

2008-05-02T05:49:00.000-07:00

A student who has failed (or gotten a D at best) in 3/5 of the classes she has taken w/me due to a lack of effort and work ethic has asked me for a recommendation to an internship. This is the same student who comes late every single day and only ever does the bare minimum of effort on any assignment. I told her I would but that I would be honest. Apparently that didn't phase her.

My letter is probably too nice as it stands, but I did say that I have "major reservations" about her and "cannot wholeheartedly recommend her to this program."

There are 2 reasons I didn't say no outright (which in retrospect I probably should have)

She is already a pain in the ass, if I refuse to do this for her she'll probably become even more of one.
She showed up with another student who also asked for a rec and who I will give a good one, so it felt weird to say no to one and yes to the other that publicly.

I should have just said no... *sigh*

*Edit 9 AM* After writing this, I decided that I needed to point out her excessive tardiness and not turning in major assignments, and the only nice thing I said was that maybe this job could help turn her around. Ok this rec is now worthless. I don't really know what to do here. I guess I can just tell her I really didn't have much nice to say and face the consequences in class. Only 1.5 months left anyways!

*Edit 10:26 AM* She hasn't asked for the rec yet, maybe she won't want it or remember.

Title of my blog is seriously true

2008-04-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

So I haven't updated in a long time, but I survived testing week (we had 3 hour 2nd period classes-which was INSANE).

Everything is going along fine, but really busy.

Nothing of note to report.

Oh dear

2008-04-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

When reading this, please do not worry about me. I am doing quite well and am as back to normal as ever.

I had a pretty rough week, which culminated in a negative event on Friday during my lunch period.

Firstly, all week my students were acting pretty crazy. They refused to listen to any directions, they were being ridiculously disrespectful and I was just beginning to lose my cool.

On Friday I had "the talk" about 2 times and both times they listened for about 2 seconds then went back to doing exactly what they were doing before.

Then 'the event' happened. One of my regular lunch participants and student was sitting in his regular spot as normal (We will call him boy 1). I was behind him facing the computers, helping one of my students log on. Then a 2nd boy came in (boy 2) and placed his entire arm around boy 1's head sort of choking him. A few students commented on it and I turned around and told boy 2 to "take his hands off of boy 1" and when he didn't I went over, placed my hand on his shoulder and repeated my directions. He finally did what I asked but then boy 1 (who had his back to us) stood up, turned around and tried to either hit or push boy 2. But instead of hitting boy 2 he hit me (since I was standing right there) right in the face (around the cheek bone). It wasn't very hard and there is absolutely no physical damage, it didn't even hurt. Instead I was simply shocked that this was happening in the first place.

Due to a myriad of factors, I 'lost my cool' to put it lightly and began swearing like a sailor and crying really hard. First I told boy 2 to "get the f*** out of my room" and then went off on how none of the students "f***ing respected me" etc. etc. Now this was clearly not the way to react but basically that event was the big straw that broke the camel's back. I mean the kids think all their shenanigans are really funny, but all they are is draining. I was also crying a lot and couldn't even look at any of my students without bursting into tears again so I just walked out of the room entering a few times to grab my cell phone and my laptop. This lasted about an hour and I talked with several administrators, security, other teachers and my dad.

Everyone was very supportive of me and had nice words of both encouragement and advice, all of which were appreciated. Many of the kids were also quite concerned since they had never seen me act that way and some of them were afraid I was going to leave and never come back (while that thought never even entered my mind, I did consider leaving for the rest of the day if I couldn't pull myself together, though that turned out to be unnecessary since I did manage to get a hold of myself after a while). It is hard not to take what the kids do personally even if I know that is what I have to do. They're kids, they aren't talking to each other to hurt my feelings, they are just talking to each other because that is what they want to do. But when I work so hard and they give me nothing, it just makes me so upset. I don't ask for much and they won't even give me that. I know that I can't change who they are overnight and make them into respectful human beings, but they're just so awful sometimes that it really drives me crazy.

Needless to say some new rules are being imposed for 2nd period and lunch time. I can only do so much, it is true, but I have to try to change things around because it is getting ridiculous and it has to stop if we are going to function until the end of the school year.

But as I said before I am perfectly fine now, I got a lot of the emotions out of my system and I am back on track for dealing with the students. What happened was an accident, and while the students will be getting in serious trouble for fighting, I am not going to add any additional burdens because I was physically involved.

I greatly respect and care about my students, I just wish that sometimes they could give me a little respect back.

OFFICIALLY ANGRY

2008-04-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

THIS ENTRY IS GOING TO BE IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE I AM FUCKING PISSED OFF.

Ok maybe not, but now you get my point.

Just 45 minutes ago at the end of lunch I got into my perpetual argument about why students shouldn't use words like gay as a slur and the argument devolved into a discussion on evolution. Lunch was over and students were heading to their classrooms and I was in the hallway. The teacher next door (Ms. Scott - the world's possibly dumbest social studies teacher) came out and asked what we were talking about. We told her, and she said that I SHOULD NOT be giving my opinion on religious matters. RELIGIOUS MATTERS?!?!?!!?!? And she tried to quote the Constitution at me. ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS. This woman wouldn't know the Constitution if it hit her in the face. Repeatedly, which was what I was thinking of doing. HOW MANY TIMES have they talked about JESUS and GODS WORD to the students. HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES. And how often have I openly complained to their faces?! what is that? Never? WHY YES. NEVER. NOT ONE FUCKING TIME. Even though I am WELL within my rights to do that.

And what exactly was I doing?! Oh that's right... TALKING ABOUT EVOLUTION. A SCIENTIFIC FACT YOU OBTUSE NON-QUESTIONING PEOPLE.

Believe in religion all you want. That's your choice. But DON'T YOU DARE tell me I can't talk about evolution to the kids because I might "unduly influence their decisions because I'm in a position of authority" DON'T YOU DARE. The whole POINT of these kids getting an education is so they don't blindly accept what they are told. THAT IS THE POINT. I'm not telling them to drop all their beliefs and side w/me. And the kids know that. Hell they even stood up to Ms. Scott trying to say I couldn't talk about this. I'm asking them to question their reality, not force them to accept mine (although that'd be a killer side effect hehe).

But if she even tries that again I will come down so hard that she won't KNOW what hit her. I'm officially making evolution part of my courses. I'll just have to teach social darwinism in all my classes in order to justify it. hehe. (In world history that's a no-brainer, I'll have to think about how to do it with economics. haha)

But all I know is these kids HAVE to question what they're told, and right now the teachers are just treating them like sheep and not teaching them to be CRITICAL THINKERS as in THINK and QUESTION what they are told, be it by me, another teacher, the news, or the KING JAMES BIBLE. I mean am I telling them it is all lies (whether or not I believe that is a different story)? NO. What I am telling them is they have to listen to what is out there, they need to have open minds and then they make their choice. Not just blindly accepting something because it is in the bible, I mean COME ON that's how we get things like the crusades and hate groups.

HATE IS WRONG PEOPLE!!! YOU KIDS SHOULD KNOW THIS FIRST HAND AND YET YOU TURN AROUND AND DISH IT OUT TO THE OTHER PEOPLE. DON'T LET THOSE AT THE TOP KEEP YOU DOWN! RISE UP AND CLAIM WHAT IS YOURS!!!!!

Ok now I'm getting loopy in this post, but I am just soooooo full of emotion that I need to let it out in crazy ways. I'm sure I'll come back to this post and be like "woah woman, calm down"

Ok... all done.

on a different note, BSG TOMORROW!!!!!!!! And I have a place to watch it live w/out paying for cable for a few months :D

The Wire

2008-03-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

Classic.

Two of the street-level cops are at the movies with their girlfriends and when they walk out they run into a couple of the street-level drug dealers that they try and arrest every so often. AWKWARD!!! And awesome. I mean what the hell would you do if the cop and the person they have tried to arrest run into each other in a public space? Weird.

The Wire is one of the best shows ever. It is extremely (possibly exceedingly) realistic as far as I can tell. It is super detail oriented and moves forward very slowly and incorporates as many different perspectives as possible. I love how politics plays into the crime-solving. I also like how realistic the solutions are. They don't resort to some crazy technology that doesn't exist.

The show though is almost too realistic because it is hard as shit to follow sometimes. There are a ton of people, a ton of interests, and it can get very confusing if you miss the smallest detail. So there is relatively little multitasking I can do while watching the show, and instead I have to watch it really closely.

An official 'hearing'

2008-03-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

I got to attend my first official (tape recorded) hearing. An outside person came in and had to receive 'official statements' in regards to an incident that took place between two of my students (though the incident occurred in another teacher's class). The student (Ricardo) had received 10 days suspension and the family was challenging that decision.

The situation: In math class two female students were arguing over a chair while a math test was being passed out. When Ricardo received his test he turned to them and asked them to be quiet (unsure what the tone or actual words used were). The girl (a student who is also in my 4th period class and who has a history of really not getting along w/Ricardo) got really angry and began yelling at him to stay out of her business, and she eventually walked over to him continuing to yell and began poking him and sticking her finger in his face. He eventually stood up and they began yelling at each other, without stopping/listening to the teacher. The director then walked in and broke up the fight telling the students to walk to her office. Ricardo turned and began walked to the front of the room, and at this point TaVon balled up her fists and began attempting to attack Ricardo rather wildly. The director stepped in between and got hit by TaVon, and Ricardo left the room and headed to the office. Both students received 10 days suspension.

Background: Both students have a history of 'being in each other's business' and it has been very hard to get them to stop. While it has not come to physical blows in my room, TaVon has thrown Ricardo's backpack across the room, and there is a general craziness between them that can be very very annoying. Now Ricardo is very smart and levelheaded and he uses these two abilities for 'evil' sometimes by pushing people's buttons who he knows are going to explode and possibly get in trouble while he won't. That being said, nothing he has ever done or said in my presence has warranted the outbursts that TaVon has had. She also has a history of completely unacceptable behavior and the director does not give her a harsh enough punishment. If a boy had done what TaVon had done in the incident above they probably would have been expelled. And the fact that they both got 10 days seems ridiculous to me.

The Hearing: Because the sentence was so harsh for Ricardo and right at the end of the advisory (which would probably affect his grades), his mom called for an official hearing to have the decision reviewed. Ms. Riley walked into my room that morning and asked if I would come in and be a witness, although I had not seen what had officially happened. She wanted me to be there to explain their history of bad relations. But the fact was that I disagreed w/the decision so I wasn't really sure what to do/say, because I didn't want to not back my boss, but I also did not agree w/what she did at all. So the arbiter came in and began asking everyone questions, and I basically didn't say anything because they had never actually fought in my room and that was all he wanted to know. In the end, Ricardo's sentence was brought down to 3 days. It seemed like there was a lot of animosity and stuff between the social worker who was there and Ms. Riley, though it was really the social worker's tone that was kind of uncalled for. But in the end I think Ms. Riley made a bad call, and that TaVon should potentially be expelled if her behavior doesn't change, because her behavior has gotten out of control and she needs to be somewhere else.

Anyways it was an interesting experience to be in an actual 'hearing.' Ricardo is one of my favorite students because he is very bright and someone who seems to love to learn for the sake of learning (to some extent) and is also an extremely motivated person who knows his goals are only attainable through hard work on many different fronts and is willing to put in that work. He is also very smart, scoring advanced on his many standardized tests. I want to help him w/the SATs, because I believe that if he gets a good score on a national scale, that he can go wherever he wants for college (combined w/his continued excellence in school and football). He also seems amenable to that help, so I will have to figure out how I can help him, maybe find a SAT prep course that he can take if he is willing with someone who actually knows what they are talking about.

First 'sick day'

2008-03-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

So today I decided to call in and use one of my sick days. This is officially the first day that I have missed (although I had to go to 2 social studies meetings making me miss my 4th period class, and once I left at like 1:30 the day before Winter Break when I didn't have any kids and I needed to pack/leave). Admittedly I am not sick. But I was really really tired, and yesterday did not go well.

The classes themselves actually went fine. No better or worse than any other class, but for the first 2 period they were pretty laid back, so no real problems. The day started out on a sour note though because apparently on Wednesday afternoon (after I had left to go to the social studies department chair meeting) things got out of hand in the auditorium (where the kids had been moved due to the flood) and the teachers didn't do shit to stop the students from acting like wild animals. So Ms. Riley sat us all down and gave us a 'talk' which I think was a good idea but she misinterpreted what people were up to. She said that people clearly didn't support her, but I think teachers were just being lazy and didn't want to take on extra responsibilities during the 'crisis situation.' As I've seen before, the teachers here are all about doing 'just what I have to.' And I know that that is partly because they have been here for a long time, but good lord I can't stand the teachers on this staff (minus Ms. Guo, the math teacher - I like her a lot). And that's the reason I can't stay in the long run (although it sounds like a lot of them might leave at the end of this year... so maybe I should stay in the hopes that I can help out in the hiring process and get some more youngins up in here to help me out).

Now of course the teachers were getting very defensive instead of just listening to Ms. Riley, so that made people mad. They acted just like the students, I mean seriously. So that wasn't good.

The next bad thing was Jonathan, the student I am trying to help get his act together, who was the main wild student who was not controlled. So that was very disappointing.

As I said, my first two periods went fine. And it wasn't until lunch and my free third period that things began to unravel. During lunch, there were a TON of students in my room. And once again they were acting like little asses. Especially Jonathan. Every 3rd word out of his mouth was a swear word (and I have NEVER heard things like that from him before, he is usually fairly respectful even if he is more on the playful side). And Antonio, the biggest 9th grade hoodlum ever, was the one behind it. His very presence makes other boys act crazy. We have been trying to get rid of him (usually I'm against that, but good lord the boy HAS to go), but so far no good. So during lunch I was just getting angrier and angrier.

Then during my planning period I had to watch someone else's class because the teacher had to go pick up her daughter. That part wasn't so bad, but it was the 9th graders and they were acting crazy and at that point I didn't want to deal with them so I just planned for my 4th period and let them sit and talk. I mean it wasn't like I had been warned that I would have to do that so I didn't feel obligated to try and make them do work. They always tell me 'we don't have work' anyways and I simply didn't feel like arguing. Some of the kids did do work, and it wasn't too bad having them there.

What was actually the most frustrating thing was that I wanted to make copies of my powerpoint presentation and the bookwork that the students were going to do. I went to the copier and it jammed up 5 times in a row. So I got 2 full copies out of that. Then I tried to just print them with my printer in my room, but that printer is awful, it printed one page and stopped. Then I tried printing it out on the laser printer in the formerly flooded room, and that one didn't work. Then I tried room 201, but there was a meeting in there so I couldn't use that printer. Once the meeting was over I tried, but it also wasn't working. So then I asked Ms. Riley if I could use her printer and so finally after 5 minutes I got my work printed JUST as the bell rang for 3rd period to get out. (During that time the 3rd period teacher came back and collected her students.)

So that was super frustrating, I was going to bust some copy machines and printers after that. Like literally take them out Office Space style. So I was starting to lose it. 4th period was ok, Ricardo can be very draining, but he is a good kid and very smart. He is always asking for attention and information and for me to do this and do that, and a lot of times I will because it isn't that much, but it adds up. So when the bell rang, it took me 10 minutes to get out of there today. Which is probably the earliest I have left in a loooooong time. I mean I usually stay at least 30 minutes if not much longer.

So last night I thought about it for a while and concluded that I really didn't want to go to work today, I wanted to rest and get some grading done, and that's what I am going to do. I think based on how I am feeling this was a very good decision. Yay sick days!

First fires... then floods. What's next?

2008-03-05T14:38:00.000-08:00

*Ok so now I'm knocking on wood... A LOT.*

So we had a flood on the 2nd floor today. Took up one of the hallways completely and two rooms. The steam pipes had burst and the 2nd floor was incredibly hot and stinky. We were unable to have our classes on the floor so we had to have class in the cafeteria, which was a little nuts. (Gives open spaces a whole new meaning...). Then we couldn't even hold classes up there after lunch when all the water had been vacuumed up because of air quality problems (oh mold... how the heck do you grow so freakin fast?). Hopefully we can have our rooms back tomorrow... but who knows?

Luckily my room wasn't touched, but the water was getting close (about 5 feet away), so that is NOT GOOD. No keeping electronics near the walls or on the floors.

It is good they are knocking down the building, but we still don't know what is going to happen next. Apparently the comprehensive regular school is going to Fletcher Johnson, (a school that was closed because the building sucked...) until they build the new school. That could take YEARS! I could be done teaching by the time the new school is built. I don't know if I can wait. A lot of teachers (and I mean a LOT) want to transfer... but where to? If we are all transferring then the likelihood of me finding another school that isn't a charter in DC becomes a lot lower. And while I don't hate all charters... I can't conceive of working for one. Mainly because I have to believe in the public system (despite it's myriad of problems) and I don't believe charter schools are the answer, so I can't give up on my principles and start working for one.

Anyways... good riddance to the building, but hello uncertainty for next year!

Thank you J.K. Rowling, Thank you.

2008-03-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

This is a Harry Potter love-fest. You do not have to read it if you have no interest in Harry Potter.

So I just finished the audiobook version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which will make it only the 2nd time I have read/heard the book all the way through). It was AMAZING. I think I cried about 7 or 8 times while listening to it, which was difficult because sometimes I was listening in public (like in my car on the way to work, or at the gym). The book was so fantastic to hear that now I am tempted to get the other 6 and listen to them all. This will be quite a project though since book 7 (the 2nd longest book) clocked in at about 21 hours listening time. But WOW. That woman is amazing. What would I ever have done w/out her? W/out Harry Potter? I don't know. I would have been missing something my whole life and never known what it was. But now it is over again! What a startling sense of loss. Today actually on Steven Leavitt's blog (the economist who co-wrote Freakonomics) he posted about the same thing: what do you do w/yourself now that Harry Potter is over? How does life keep going on? It sounds dramatic, but Harry Potter really filled my life with something special. And it is shocking that it is over, it was shocking in August, and it is shocking again. I have all 7 books with me in DC... but I can't just keep re-reading them forever. (well yes I can actually and I'm sure this is not the last time I'll read all the Harry Potter books, especially with the movies coming out - THANK GOD!)

Anyways I just want to reiterate my thanks to Mrs. J.K. Rowling, the wonderful wonderful woman who has given such a big gift to me and all other readers of Harry Potter. I cannot recommend it enough to the few who haven't read it, both young and old. The books are amazing, there is no way around it.

I am excited to see what she will write next, I hope she continues to create fantastic worlds for us to enter and explore.

Ok I can't stop gushing... one more story:
When I bought the 7th Harry Potter book I was the 4th in line at Barnes and Nobles in Georgetown. This meant I was in the first wave to get the book, since there were approximately 6 cashiers. I had paid an large amount in the parking lot across the street to be able to park there so I could get home in minutes. It is amazing how fast I drove (15 minutes with intense post-midnight traffic from Georgetown to Columbia Heights including walking time and parking.... so much for traffic laws...). And the whole time I could not stop myself from touching the book (petting it like a dog or something) and even kissing it. It was a compulsion. I also called my great friend and co-HP lover Danit to tell her how happy I was to have the book and how it had a power over me. She said I was nuts, but when she got the book a few days later she said she completely understood! There was something truly magical about this book and hearing the story for the second time (at a more measured pace instead of the 12 hours that I completed in one sitting (12:15 AM to 12:15 PM exactly) - no bathroom breaks, who can break for HP. I mean seriously!). And it's just so amazing.

Ok I could keep going for another hour but I will finally cut this post off.

YAAAAAAY HARRY POTTER!!!!!! (and yay Snape! my other favorite character from the beginning, and YES YALL I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG, NEVER WAVERED AND NEVER DOUBTED LETS JUST KEEP THAT VERY CLEAR)

3 Fires... 7 days

2008-02-26T17:25:00.000-08:00

Yeah I think that says it all. We had a fire last week, a fire Monday and a fire today. This has basically meant 2nd and 4th period haven't done work in like a week. To add to that they had predicted a huge storm on Friday and there was ice everywhere BUT DC, but nonetheless about 1/2 the kids were out if not more.

So yeah my US Govt. class has been moving forward in 1st period but everyone else is stagnant.

On top of that, on this coming Friday we have parent teacher conferences, which aren't a waste of time but are being held from 12-7 so no class once again. And I mean tops I have had 12 parents come in, and now that I have fewer students I doubt that I'll get as many. But I am calling several parents each day leading up to it in order to maybe get them to show.

Fire!

2008-02-13T19:46:00.000-08:00

There was a pretty big fire on the 6th floor of the building today in the janitors closet, they actually used the sprinklers up there apparently. I didn't see or smell anything so I have no idea what happened. But apparently the teacher who found the fire said that he could tell from behind the door that he could feel the heat, but the door was still locked. So either a kid pushed something under the door to light the fire (i.e, firecrackers) or chemicals just caught on their own somehow behind a locked door.

The teacher who pulled the fire alarm noticed that nothing happened when he did. So basically the fire alarms in our building were no longer working. (They are hopefully working now... since it would be illegal I'm pretty sure to have students in a building with no working fire alarm. I heard about the fire first from students who ran around yelling "there's a fire there's a fire!" Then finally on the PA system they announced that we should go down to the ground floor.

After that they told us to all go outside, and it was pouring rain and freakishly cold so me and Liz and Ms. Sanchez sat in my car to at least keep out of the rain. We were there for like 40 minutes or so I think, not sure. About 3/4+ of the students left during this time.

Afterwards, when they let the remaining few students back in we went into the auditorium and were eventually given an announcement that all the students were to go to the cafeteria to finish lunch (since that is when the fire started). Then they were eventually brought back to the auditorium at 1:30. After that we just had to sit in the auditorium until 3:15. Nothing happened, nothing was going on, we just sat in the auditorium and nobody could leave. Big fucking waste of time.

Apparently there were legal reasons for not just excusing the students and going home ourselves, but I have a hard time imagining what they could be for students who are 15 and up.

Anyways at least only 1 of my periods was wasted and not two.

Rant

2008-02-13T05:54:00.000-08:00

First off 10 minutes have passed and I have 3 students out of 15. Not making me happy.

Secondly, we will never have a productive meeting with these teachers. Apparently I do need to go to a school where people think more like I do about what fucking RIGOR is. And maybe the fact that we need to try and standardize it a bit so we can know what it is, because this staff clearly doesn't know much about it. FUCK THEM I can't work here forever, a few years and only if we get a new staff who are young and/or progressive and/or open minded along the way.

In other sad news I cast my ballot for a candidate who got creamed here in DC. I guess I knew that would happen, but DAMN IT PEOPLE VOTE HILLARY! She's the one I tell you. The more I think about it the more I support her. Barack will be fine if he wins... but I think Hillary will be stronger. And Barack better start talking about more than just hope soon and really talk about his positions on the issues or I am going to lose my mind.

Ok time to go... I'm in a bad mood already. Stupid Wednesday.

My day today

2008-02-07T13:03:00.001-08:00

On a random note, a mom yelled at me today over the phone. She said she was coming here to talk to me, but maybe she won't. She's mad at me for failing her child for the 2nd advisory (though I let her pass the class overall) w/out apparently informing her of the fact that her child was failing. This is probably true, so I decided to just back down since I had no real proof that I had told her her daughter was failing. THAT BEING SAID he daughter failed 3 out of 4 classes (the 4th being PE) that advisory so maybe instead of yelling at me she should yell at her damn daughter. But what I learned is that I need to update parents regularly and not necessarily by phone (which is really hard and ridiculously time consuming). Other teachers sent out regular notices by mail (which doesn't cost anything since the school pays for postage). So I'm going to come up w/a template and then I can just make copies and send it out to the children's parents when they're failing. That should work.

Otherwise 4th period went really well today. We are working on creating thesis statements for history papers (which can be really really hard depending on the topic) and coming up w/the whole "so what" issue. The kids are doing good jobs for the first attempt and tomorrow we will work on writing the rest of the essay. They'll do rough drafts over the weekend and have to have edited it once themselves then we'll edit it again in class and then they'll write their final drafts as homework! yipeeeee things are looking good in one class at least. Also I had to implement the 'point system' in my 11th grade class starting tomorrow. I hate the point system it is so childish, but it works, there is no doubt about that. So they'll get the point system. If that doesn't stop them the next step is a seating chart. After that, notices will be sent home with alarming regularity, and the worst offenders parents will be called. In my 12th grade class we worked on writing outlines, it is surprising how few of them they've ever done, half the kids didn't really know how to write one at all, and only knew some bizarre format for English that wasn't really an outline but more like 'things every english paper needs to cover.' Anyways, that seems to have helped them a bit I hope (as long as they actually USE the outlines of course). Here's hopin...

Benefits and Drawbacks to being a "small learning community"

2008-02-06T13:16:00.001-08:00

Now in general small learning communities are a truly great idea. That being said there are some things that can get really annoying about them, so I'm going to list some of the pros and cons as I see them.

Pros

Students and teachers really get to know each other

Aside from the obvious benefits this can also lead to greater overall control of the student body because everyone knows everyone (pretty much).

This means students are less likely to slip through the cracks
It is really easy to catch students skipping, etc.

Collaboration becomes far easier in the core subjects because students can be grouped together allowing classes to be coordinated
Classes tend to be smaller
Students get more personalized attention
I am the (un)official chair of the Social Studies department*(see note)

Cons

A lot of times fewer classes can be offered (the solution here is to have several small learning communities in a larger school building together so that there can be cross pollination when it comes to electives)
Teachers have to teach multiple classes (What I mean here is that I teach 3 different classes across 3 different periods, unlike my friend who only had to teach one class three different times last semester)
I have to be on multiple committees (I am on the recruitment and awards committees - I was assigned them)
Less able to have sports teams and clubs (this can also be solved by having multiple small learning communities grouped together into larger groups overall)

*Note: I went to a social studies committee chair meeting yesterday afternoon and it was actually pretty cool because it wasn't actually professional development. Instead we were talking to the head of social studies in DC and he was asking questions about how we should test students, how to get kids from middle school to high school, and other interesting stuff like that. A lot of the department chairs were really cool and it is a meeting that I would like to go to again if possible and something that I would like to participate more in if possible. This might be the way to get my whole wanting to be involved with policy thing out while still being in the classroom. Maybe I want to try and become a department chair at a larger high school or something (though I'm sure that would have plenty of drawbacks)

Trip to see Sweeney Todd

2008-02-03T11:05:00.000-08:00

So I drove up to Pittsburgh yesterday for my (semi-psychotic) trip to see the 2005 traveling Broadway version of Sweeny Todd. I am very glad that I went because the show itself was fantastic and I had a great seat. I stayed at a hotel about 3 blocks away making it easy walking distance. I didn't really do anything aside from drive up to Pittsburgh (approx. 4 hours), find the place the show was playing, pick up my ticket, find a hotel, get settled and change for the show, and then go to the show.

I listened to the 7th book of Harry Potter on tape for my drive (which was fantastic! I now have about 13 hours left... ok that's a lot haha - the whole thing is about 21 hours long!). Listening to the tape is great because you can really really picture what is going on, it is almost like watching an epic movie. The narrator is wonderful, I had heard great things, but now I have seen (or heard I suppose is a better word) the light.

The show was great. I already knew what to expect in terms of the production. The 2005 revival is special because all the characters play the orchestral instruments on stage (meaning none of them leave the stage and there is no orchestra or chorus since the characters sing that as well). I think all in all there were about 9 people... Fogg being the only one who only had a tiny speaking role and spent the rest of the time playing the stand up base. Anthony and Johanna played the Cello, Tobi played the violin, Pirelli (played by a woman) played the acordian, The Beadle played the piano (primarily), The Judge played the trumpet, the beggar woman played the clarinet (primarily), Mrs. Lovett played the bells and the tuba, and Sweeney played the trumpet and the bells. This means that the sound is not nearly as loud and bombastic as the original staging (which is a little disappointing since I do love the spectacle) and on the whole the production is mostly about the music and the songs (there were no set changes, very few props, and perhaps the only slightly disappointing part, no chute/oven). But all in all the show was great, and the cast was truly excellent. I would adore to see the original version of the show as well someday, with the huge chorus, full production and gigantic orchestra, since in the end that is more my style. But on the whole it was a really good show. Some of the people in the traveling cast were from the 2005 revival, and the woman who played Mrs. Lovett had actually done it on Broadway opposite the original Sweeney! Needless to say, she was most excellent and had a fantastic voice for the part. They kind of skipped over doing the accents, but I don't really care about that. The only thing close to a complaint I might have had was that it wasn't louder... I've grown accustomed to Sweeney blasting out my ears... but I think that's really just an extremely minor thing haha, since it wasn't like they were doing anything wrong. It was really a top notch production.

Pittsburgh on the other hand is an absolutely horrible place. I can't imagine living there, it seems awful. I'm sure there are good parts outside of where I was (downtown) but it certainly didn't seem like there was much. Thank goodness I didn't end up teaching in a city like that, it would be unbearable. Even the people seemed a little strange and backwards. Gross gross city.

Ok now I have to get to grading, I promised all of my students full progress reports, and some of them really need to see them in order to be shocked into doing more work by seeing how bad their grades are already.

Insight

2008-01-31T08:37:00.001-08:00

Over the past week I've been spending more time with friends and meeting their friends. One of the things that this has prompted is me having to answer the question "what are your plans?" and "do you want to teach as your career?" This has forced me to think a bit about that answer. It used to be that I was dead set on going to law school in order to go into education policy. But the more time I spend in the classroom the more it seems to be the place I belong. I'm comfortable there, I feel most at ease and in my element. Going into policy or law school might not be completely out of my element, but I tend to get nervous and get things like performance anxiety. Teaching has forced a lot of that out of me. I rarely get nervous public speaking now, and even today I played the piano with other people in the room (it was not a performance, but I didn't used to be able to even play with other people around). That is beginning to change. And I feel like it is changing because this is what I'm supposed to be doing. What if policy doesn't really change anything? I hate working in offices and doing research papers without feeling like I am actually changing things. Maybe I'm supposed to be in the classroom, maybe that's my role.

I'm going to articulate this better later, now I have to start showing Blood Diamond for the kiddies.

Reason to close the building #1,267

2008-01-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

The "Tower of Power" (or the Tower of Terror as I like to call it) is going to be demolished. Possibly even as early as this summer. It will be knocked down so that a new school can be built for Ward 7 (Woodson is the only HS in Ward 7, unlike Anacostia which has 2).

Now aside from the lack of ability to control the tower (too many staircases for kids to run and hide in, needing a security guard on each of the 7 floors at all times -and usually needing 2 per floor to keep it actually monitored - which of course has never and will never happen), having kids walk up 7 flights of stairs to class in 4 minutes or less after lunch, the obvious fact that it is hideous, the whole building only having a few exits to escape from a fire, etc. etc. we have YET another reason to close the building.

Over the weekend the pipes burst on the 4th floor. Now apparently this is a common occurrence. Last year the school was forced to relocate for 2 weeks to another school due to massive amounts of flooding (although apparently the school they used before is now being used by a charter so there isn't anywhere for Woodson to go if we need to be moved). You can imagine how moving to another building affects attendance (the students are even less likely to show). Luckily for me, my room did not sustain any damage (although rooms around the corner from me did. The 2nd and 3rd floor (B&F basically) were hit the hardest. So now I will have to be very careful in where I put things in the room in case a pipe bursts above or (heaven forbid) in my room. 4 classrooms had to be closed for the day, since there is too much standing water, materials were obviously destroyed in some rooms - including a few computers, but the 2nd floor was pretty much cleaned up when I arrived (apparently it took over 14 hours to do that). So there ya go, yet another reason why this crappy building needs to be torn down and a new one put in its place.

Of course that does leave the question that everyone has been asking... where do we go while they build the new building?...

OH MY GOD!

2008-01-21T16:17:00.000-08:00

God bless Apple Computers. I just bought a mac mini and hooked it up to my new HD TV with an HDMI cord (so the resolution is really great). But here's the real kicker. I can use that computer FROM MY LAPTOP w/remote screen from Apple. I hate to sound like a commercial but HOLY CRAP. I can do it from anywhere apparently (so I may just try doing it from work tomorrow, just to see if it works) and I can like access the computer and get it to do what I want. Anyways it is amazing so far.

On another note I got 5 gold fish. I decided on goldfish because they are hardy and they get big, and I want bigger fish for some reason. Anyways they're really cute. I have one classic golden one, a googly eyed one, two spotted gold fish, and a white one w/an orange spot on it just like spot and then I got 1 algae eater. Anyways they're cute and swimming around like crazy.

Ok I think it is time to start working on lesson plans. Whoop de doo... It would be nice to know how many kids are in each of my classes. *sigh*

WOW! Honestly I don't think I would have predicted this...

2008-01-21T07:57:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to my FRESHMAN CLASS (If you have heard any of my stories... then you know this is quite something...)!!

They pulled off a MAJOR COUP by turning in some of the best finals I have received to date. They really did it, they wrote amazing fictional news articles recounting their "experiences" in the Belgian Congo which we had been studying from an excerpt from King Leopold's Ghost over the past week and a half. Honestly I have to say I did not remotely expect such high quality in these articles. Not only did they have accurate information, they were clearly organized, with well constructed sentences, and very few grammatical errors! They also went above and beyond the call of duty many times, adding extra anecdotes and stories to their articles. I can't believe it! They did this in one class period, and this is the kind of quality work that I wouldn't have been able to expect even if they had had a week to complete it just one month earlier. I have no idea how much credit I get to legitimately claim for this transformation... but SHA BAM!!!!!! I'm so pumped. They have put me in quite the good mood today. I had 4 students get 100% and one person even got a 125 for writing a really really good and really really detailed article. But in the end 15 people got LEGITIMATE A's. 15!!!!! This is the class that had 20 people failing for turning in such crappy work (or turning nothing in at all). And nobody who was present for the exam got below a C- (of which there were only 2). Honestly I am SO PROUD of them. At this point I think I will only have 9-10 failing, instead of 20. Congrats kids! You stepped up at the last minute and showed some incredible growth. Now if you had only done this 2 months ago......

Oh Grace... Man I love dogs

2008-01-20T16:09:00.001-08:00

I just uploaded my photos from this summer and I found a picture of little Gracie. Look at this adorable dog. This is Grace. She belongs to my old roommate Allison. Allison bought Grace while I was living with her over the summer. Grace is an awesome dog, I visit her and her big sister Sophie sometimes. But look how cute she is! She's barely grown over the past 6 months, maybe she'll be one of those rare dogs that stays a puppy forever!

On that note, I've been planning to get a dog (and possibly even 2). The idea is to get one this June and train it over the summer when I have a lot of time on my hands. I really really want a dog even though I like the cats that I am taking care of right now (they're going back to their owner in a week or two). But in the end, I really am a dog person. I need an animal that will love me at all times and let me pick it up and hug it, and not just when it feels like it haha. I also really like taking dogs for walks, and in DC it seems like dogs tend to be a great way to get to know other people! (Everyone seems to have a little dog they take on walkies around the neighborhood.)

I'm looking at several different breeds (I know this might surprise some people who would assume that I would just buy a dachshund... and yes, they are most definitely on the list!)

So here are my thoughts so far (in no particular order):

Daschunds
Cairn Terriers
West Highland Terriers
Welsh Terriers (Or maybe Lakeland Terriers... unsure which one I like better)
Yorkshire Terrier
Pomeranian
And maybe even a Wishbone dog (though apparently they are hyper as all get out, and that might be bad for the apartment haha)

I'm beginning to think I may even get 2 if possible because I want them to have a friend when I do start working again in the fall. I have to keep it small because the apartment is not that big and I don't want a dog that will be sad because it is cooped up during the day. I have looked into getting a rescued dog or a dog from the pound, but finding a small dog in that category seems hard. I will have to research breeds and breeders this spring and then look at "reserving" a dog around then so that I can buy it and then actually take it home in June when it is a few months old. How exciting!

Oh and I posted some pictures on my dad's .mac page if you would like to see them (they're also posted on facebook I think.) Here's the link: http://web.mac.com/charlesfuchs/iWeb/Site/DC%20Website%20Photos.html

End of First Semester! A jumbled recap

2008-01-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

I have officially finished teaching my first semester. The students have taken their finals, *hopefully* turned in their projects, and now all there is to do is grade the huge stack of work that I have left to grade by the end of next week. While I do not think that I was wildly successful, transforming their lives beyond recognition and making them perfect little angels, I do think that I was a good enough teacher for my first attempt.

I am disappointed in myself on a few counts though. It was sometimes very hard for me to get work done at home, and I preferred to surf the net, read, watch a movie or a TV show, cook, and go to the gym instead. While none of these things were particularly bad things to do (except maybe all the TV show watching), I was spending way too long on them to purposefully avoid doing work.

This was especially true with the lesson planning. There were too many days where I did not plan out a long unit, and instead went with the day-to-day planning instead. In fact I would say I did this the majority of the time. This clearly made my lessons not as good as they could have been, and while I think that none of my lessons were disastrous, there were certainly days where I resorted to actually using the text book *shudder,* or having non-activity/project based lessons. I really need to get with the program on this front and start really making good unit plans that really have a specific purpose that unifies them and makes them interesting. I also need to come up with creative activities that promote interactive learning and higher-order thinking.

While these are difficult things to do, and I do not expect to be able to do them all in my first year, I know that I could have done better had I just applied myself a bit more and really put more hours into creating the lesson plans.

So I still have a long way to go. But this makes me excited for next year and getting to teach my world history courses again. I intend to become more involved in getting my students registered in the right courses so that I don’t have so many problems as before, and I am going to basically try and cut out world history I and make world history II a two year course. The awesome thing is that since they are not tested on world history content, and are instead tested on reading and writing skills by the district, I can basically do whatever I want without any higher-up consequences. And I will be adhering to the standards, just the ones that I find important, and frankly the ones that I can do justice too. I do think the World History I standards are important, but I just don’t know enough to really teach them, and I can do so much more with these world history II standards.

My students have overall been really great. Even the crazy (and crazy huge) freshman class has improved beyond belief. I mean when I first got them I could barely get a sentence out before they were all talking and it was total chaos. I had to give them “a serious talk” every day about their behavior and their grades. And towards the end I very rarely had to do that, and they were policing themselves. Not little angels by any means, but they began to realize what they could and could not do if they wanted to do well in my class. And I think I got through to a lot of them. I certainly wasn’t the only one, but considering how wild they were, I was very impressed with the overall improvement, I think I did a good job with them, all things considered.

The 10th graders were overall very strong. The only students in danger of failing really are the ones who had too many absences and then did not put in the effort to make up the work. This is something I also need to get on top of, because I need to be a little more organized overall so that I can effectively deal with these situations and make it a bit easier for them to get back on track. That being said, their missing class isn’t my fault, and they have to be willing to pay the consequences for their actions. I mean today one of my students asked if she could take the final during 2nd period because she had to “do something” with her mother during the afternoon. And she would be missing her science final all together. I obviously said no, and what did she honestly expect me to say? You can’t miss the last day of class if your class is having their final exam, unless a) you have an excellent excuse or b) you don’t mind getting a ‘0’. The fact that her mother was going to allow her to miss class is ridiculous; somebody needs to get their priorities in order.

In terms of content, I am practically convinced that there is no other class I would rather teach than 20th century world history. While US Government sounded like a great course, there is too much that they don’t know, so I have to seriously rethink how to teach that class. But since I’m teaching it again this coming semester, I should hopefully be able to figure things out more, and damn but this is a great year to be teaching this course, and next year will be even better, so maybe I will try and keep it instead of giving to Ms. Scott would just mess it up even more anyways... I wonder which teachers will still be at B&F next year (apparently people leave in droves from time to time). If some of them leave, maybe I can get in on hiring some young teachers like myself for the core program and making this a staff that I could imagine staying with for longer and actually propelling us into a new era.

But hell we don't know anything about what is going on with this school next year, we don't know what building we'll be in (they're tearing Woodson down apparently), we don't know if we'll be with Woodson anymore, we don't know what our enrollment is going to look like, hell we don't know if we'll even be an autonomous school anymore. So I have no idea what to expect. I'll just have to ride out the storm and do my best to be a good teacher, and hopefully a much much much better teacher, in the coming years. I mean as far as I know I can only get better now right?

Wasting Time

2008-01-15T12:26:00.000-08:00

[When this post was written, I was sitting in an all school assembly run by my Director]

I am currently sitting in an auditorium for a B&F assembly. This is supposed to last from 2:00 – 2:30. We shall see if that holds. Now this assembly is just another example of how we here at B&F have forgotten the #1 principles of economics: efficiency. Apparently I, as the most anti-capitalist in the program, am also the most efficient with my time (minus the science teacher Ms. Young – I am sure she is better with her time than I am). I don’t stand for wasted time. It drives me crazy. So here are some examples of how we waste time.

Morning “Collaborative” Meetings: Every morning we have a “collaborative” meeting from 8:10 – 8:45+ . Teachers are supposed to arrive at school by 8:10 every morning. So each morning we should have all the teachers in the meeting. But do we? Hell no. Ms. Young the science teacher, Ms. Quo the math teacher, Ms. Lopez the Spanish teacher, and me. We are the teachers that arrive on time every day. And if we really go for every single day, then it is just me. Now every morning, Ms. Riley basically tells us a few announcements and then we discuss random things and never come to any conclusions or rational decisions. Basically it is time that I could be spending preparing my classroom and preparing lessons but instead I have to just sit and listen to Ms. Riley tell me things that have never once been helpful. She uses tons of jargon and offers no helpful tips for running the classroom. The few times I have tried to make things happen I get blank stares and/or they get mad at me. And if I ask questions or question one of the rules they make up, or question how they say they want us to run the classroom (heaven forbid) then I basically get treated like I am stupid and know nothing. And you’ll just have to take my word for it, I am not condescending when I bring up these suggestions, I sincerely ask the questions and put in my two cents. But nobody understands me except for maybe Ms. Young, they act like I am from outer space.

Random assemblies and programs: We have had the occasional assembly, or grade level meeting, or presentation. All of them have basically been a waste of time. The director goes through random rules, she makes speeches, she berates the students, and it just goes on and on. I understand that we have problems w/rules being broken and generally bad behavior, but there must be a better way to go about getting these rules to happen. These large assemblies just don’t help anybody, and they waste what little precious class time we have. Not only that, the students tend to resent them because there is no real positive message being passed on, and it is so repetitive that the kids are sick of hearing it. They know what they are supposed to do, the question is how do we convince them that it is a good thing for them to do, that it is in their best interests. These kids don’t care about the Academy in terms of what makes the academy look good, so when Ms. Riley just tells them to do this or do that for the academy it doesn’t do anything. We need to really show them why these things are important, and I know I have had a hard time getting through, but we have to keep trying.

School Plays: We had this weird play/variety show that involved like 50+ kids (although only maybe 4 did anything and the rest just “danced” on stage). But basically the week before winter break several of my students were missing class on a regular basis to be in this show, and when I saw the show the only thing they did was stand around on stage. And they missed 3 classes, which is the equivalent of 1 week in regular schedule days. Now a play is all well and good, but the rehearsals should be AFTER SCHOOL. Not on class time.

Then there is the wasted time that I see occurring in several of the other teacher’s classrooms. Now I walk in, or walk by some classrooms and they’re just sitting and talking. I have had students take REFUGE in my classroom during 2nd period because they aren’t doing ANYTHING in their class. They’re just sitting. And this is partially because some teachers simply check out and think that the semester is over. Right before winter break students were complaining because apparently I was the ONLY teacher who was carrying on as if we were continuing to have class. I don’t have nearly enough time to cover everything I need to cover, and I’m sure many of the other teachers are in the same position. So how can they NOT be teaching? We need to expect that EVERY DAY counts if we want the students to think the same thing. I mean it was no wonder that none of my 10th graders came on the last day of class before break, because the teachers hadn’t planned anything for them to do, and basically told them it was OK to not come.

If we disrespect the student’s time with such obvious wastes, then how are we supposed to expect them to respect our time? And if the Business and Finance Academy really wants to be a top school, then we really need to get our act together and stop wasting all this time.

Well I think I really do have a candidate to support...

2008-01-09T09:55:00.000-08:00

So I decided that I needed to really learn more about the candidate's actual platforms as much as possible so I can finally decide who I support based on issues alone. I went to the Edwards, Clinton and Obama websites, and I looked at comparative websites. While most of these comparison websites are just based on what the candidates say they will do if they become president, that's all anyone can really go off of. I figure the closer to my own opinions the better, accepting the fact that they would probably all be quite similar in what they do once (I suppose I should say if... but that feels so defeatist! hehe) elected into office.

So the candidate I have decided that I support is.........

Ms. Hillary Clinton

When looking through everything she comes the closest to my points of view on just about every issue. None of the candidates will be far left enough for my taste, but when looking at what she claims she will do to combat international poverty I was finally sold, because there was a clear difference in what she said and what the other two candidates said. She was far clearer on numbers (in terms of what $ amounts she will provide to what kinds of programs), and she said she would relieve all debt for "poor" countries, which none of the others said as far as I can see.

If she doesn't get the nomination I won't be devastated. I think all the candidates are pretty strong this year all things considered. So I guess we'll just see what happens. It's just nice knowing that I actually have reached a decision on who I support. Though I suppose I could be convinced to support someone else if someone had some really good hard facts and not just "hope."

Anyways... Go Hillary! Way to win New Hampshire.

Why block scheduling should be abolished

2008-01-07T15:08:00.001-08:00

I am currently waiting for the cats I agreed to babysit to arrive (now 40 minutes late...), so I am going to update/rant.

So as I may have mentioned the semester ends next Friday (the 18th). This will end "1 years worth" of class for my 10th graders and 1 semester for my 9th. Unfortunately, this is a load of horse manure, they have received far less than that. For one, if they miss one day of class then they have basically missed 2 days because they miss one block class. Therefore it is a lot easier for students to fail a single class, just missing a week and a half is enough because you end up missing a lot of class time and fall very far behind.

Apparently there are "studies" that prove that block scheduling is more effective than regular scheduling. But I would like to see these so called studies. The only things I can think of are that you get more class time per class (80 minutes every day of the week) and the kids have fewer classes to juggle at a time.

But what if you want to read a book or two in your history class? You basically have half the time to do it outside of class than you would regularly because you have 20 weeks to complete a full 40 weeks of material. So that severely cuts down on the amount of homework you can give. You have to do fewer projects as well, doing a lot of the work in class.

The biggest problem though is continuity. When my kids leave after next week I won't get them back until the following year to continue from where we left off. Now how much history will they remember going in to the next year? Even if I did my job, the answer will be very little. And frankly, who can blame them? I have trouble keeping information in my head, let alone stuff that I may not be enthralled with. But it isn't as big a deal in history as it is in say MATH and science. I mean who can keep math equations in their head 6-8 months and then be expected to just move forward? It is ridiculous! Students can't reasonably be expected to practice for 4 months what they should be doing year round. Basically it provides a very incongruous experience for the kids and I honestly think it just doesn't work.

Now I do like having 80 minute classes, since that's how I've been taught. And I would have to learn how to create a 50 minute lessons if we changed. BUT I think there is a way to maintain a combination of year round schooling and block scheduling. This is what I had in high school and I think it worked rather well. Basically you have a "modified" block schedule. This can be done in a number of ways but the way my high school did it was to have regular 55 minute periods Mon, Tues, and Fri. Then on Wed. and Thurs. you would have 90 minute periods. So on Wed. you would go to period 1, 3 and 5 and on Thurs. you would go to 2, 4, and 6. This worked rather well, and I think you could modify it even more to accommodate the 8 period schedule. This way science classes can still have labs, you can have longer periods once a week, but not every day. Thus having year round classes.

In the end I don't know if I could teach long term in block scheduling, but its fine for now. I just seriously think if DC wants to improve its test scores and long term viability it will have to ditch this block program. Block may work in other areas, but it doesn't work in DC, not at all.

Chicago!

2008-01-06T11:06:00.000-08:00

I am currently in Chicago sitting on Leah's couch. Chicago has been nice, though I wish I had come a day or two earlier to get some more time here. I went to a movie with Ian and Brian then out to dinner w/Leah and Will, and then we went to Jon Williams' B-Day party in Hyde Park. I always feel awkward going back to a place that I feel I am done w/, and going back to HP was no different. I felt like I shouldn't be there at first. But in the end, college is very different from high school, so I got used to being back in that area and realized there isn't the same stigma attached to returning to your college as there is w/high school.

Today my flight leaves at 4:50, and then it is back to DC and back to school. I'm not as prepared as I would like for school on Monday, so I will probably try and work on that in the airport and then once I get home as well. Only two weeks left to the semester! I have final essay prompts to write and a final exam to plan! Time is going to be so crammed, whoever thought that a block schedule was a good idea needs to have their head examined, and then removed (ok maybe I have watched too much Sweeney Todd...)

In World History I we are going to be covering early colonialism (in 2 weeks?! *sob*) so I'll probably just give them a final essay on that. And in World History II I have to figure out how to cover major human rights abuses of the Cold War in 2 weeks. Which ones to pick?! I have no idea... they are going to do short presentations for their papers so that will help, but goodness knows I have to do a lot of this if I want it done in a more complete and comprehensible manner. And then there is test review, and apparently MLK day is going to knock out a day... man do we waste a lot of time up in this joint.

Leah is going to California today to see her sister. It was nice that we just kind of fell into old rhythms even though we hadn't seen each other for 6 months. But we do keep in touch reasonably well (thank you internets), so it isn't all that surprising that we could just pick up where we left off. That being said I agree w/Leah that we should be able to teleport, because that would make seeing each other so much easier!!! Come on Star Trek, why haven't you come true yet?

So goodbye Chicago, it was a nice short visit. Hopefully I'll be able to come back again soon, otherwise Chicago people will just have to come down to DC! (See a few monuments... visit a few museums... sleep on my couch... come on you know you want to)

Don't know how to start... wow this is random

2008-01-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

Well I'm just going to have to start writing here if that is what I want to do. Today I am going to get new glasses because I currently only have 1 non broken pair. Yesterday one of my pairs lost a nose piece while snowboarding and I couldn't find it (it had been superglued in several times already so it wasn't surprising) and my old pair of sunglasses got run over by a car (poor things).

I am planning to watch the caucuses on the news this evening if possible. I'm not sure who I like, but since I have no say I figure I will just wait and see who other people pick.

I think I'm an Edwards fan, although I think this is because he can say things more freely due to the possibility that he won't win the nomination.
But I also like Hilary, I think she plays to the middle which is disappointing, but I think that she's a pretty major liberal underneath and she actually talks about Universal Pre-K!!!! Which is the one policy/plan that I hope to see put into practice before I die, if nothing else.
I think that Obama is more conservative than he allows, although I guess that's just because he talks to Republicans... something which I believe is overrated. If we have to talk to them to get things done fine (like if they have a majority somewhere) if not... then fuck the bastards

On another note, I'm getting way into scrabulous on facebook. It's bad, and I'm bad at it (really bad if you don't count the help of the computer). But I think I'm getting better.

Break has been good, I've seen the people I needed to see; I went snowboarding a few times; and I have taken a break from children. Unfortunately it has been a bit too big of a break because I have done almost no work whatsoever. Although I did grade all of period 1's work, and now only 16 of them are failing (5 pulled D's out of their asses!). I gave them a major project that if they do well on will possibly raise their grade by 1 full letter. But they have to be awesome. We'll see if any of them do it. Some of them have emailed me about it, so that is a good sign. But one of them already has like a B... so the project wasn't really designed to save her grade.

My plan for this thing is to start writing more about the classroom. What day to day teaching is like, what my students are like, lesson plans, etc. Sort of like a chronicle of my teaching experiences. That way when I look back I can reflect on how things change (or don't).