A Terrifying Word

This weekend, my film class watched American Beauty. While my students normally start begging me to let them out 30 minutes early, I could barely get them to leave this Saturday. Working in groups, I had them discuss the title of the film and symbolism within the film (being more of a literature expert, I take a similar approach to teaching film). Still used to giving such assignments to my former high school students who would reluctantly talk for a few minutes and then spout out a couple of sentences (often repeating what I had already said), I was so excited to hear them get excited. They discussed the motif of red throughout the movie, pointing out observations even I hadn't made. They talked about typical American families and compared the idea of catching people in their private lives to a previous movie we had watched, Rear Window.

I have a lot of fun when my classes go so well, but it also reminds me just how intelligent many of my students are. Some of them have advanced education in their home countries. Many others have had a world of experience and now find themselves practically forced into my classroom.

This is no typical college experience. While my students seem to enjoy the cinema class and are good sports in my language classes, I don't flatter myself into thinking they're choosing to be there out of pure interest in the subject matter. Our country makes it very hard for immigrants to stay here, and I'm put into the tricky position of ensuring they maintain their full-time student status or else risk deportment. This isn't easy, considering that my students work full-time, often illegally, although of course I'm not supposed to know that. The law requires that they spend a certain amount of time in class each week, but students hope and beg for teacher cooperation in the form of fudging the records. Since I would prefer to keep my job and ensure a future career for myself, I have to be tougher than I want to be with them. My director insists I should just mention the word "deportment" over and over in order to scare them into coming to class. Preferring to take a more sensitive approach, I remind them of the precarious position they put both themselves and the school (and me) in when they don't show up to class.

I'm learning a lot from this experience and can already see immigration rights becoming my new pet cause that I obsess over. It's funny how few people know about the problems and sometimes corruption that goes on behind the scenes...I had no idea about these issues before I took the job.

I also no longer take for granted the fact that I live here free and clear. I don't have to struggle to assimilate to a foreign culture, and I don't have to worry about being "shipped off" if I make a mistake. Even if I did decide to live in another country, I would always have a decent life here if it didn't work out. My students can't necessarily say the same.

Finding My Niche

I haven't been subbing much, which is why I don't have so many crazy/interesting/horrible stories to share here. Instead, I've been offered a position at a language school, where I'll be splitting my time with the small college. It's ESL...strange how a couple of years ago my dream was to teach high school English and as I try out these various teaching experiences, I become more and more drawn to teaching adults from around the world. It seems to fit me. At the high school level, I'm inevitably forced to be part teacher, part disciplinarian. Oh, and part punching bag for those teens with out-of-wack hormones and an affinity for being easily offended. With adults, I get to be all teacher. They want to be there, or even if they don't want to be there, they generally have the maturity level not to show it.

Teaching at this level is not without its surprises though. For instance, at this new language school where I interviewed on Monday, I was simply hoping they'd consider me for a position next semester. After talking herself into believing my experience was sufficient (my year and a half of teaching plus a couple of years of tutoring don't exactly add up to the four-year teaching requirement), she mentioned that they were in dire need of a new teacher for a 12-hour (!) American cinema course. Would I be interested?

Hell, yeah. I love movies! I'd like to spend my life doing nothing but watching movies and then discussing them over wine in mellow dive bars with groups of prententious cinephiles...if only I could. Well, maybe just a couple months doing that. My point is, I love to watch movies, love to think about movies, love to discuss movies. Since I also love to teach, doesn't this seem like the perfect course for me?

Okay, so I've never taken a film course in my life, much less taught one. Plenty of other teachers out there know way more about film than I do. In fact, my competition was a 60-year-old filmmaker with a Ph.D. and loads of teaching experience. So the chances of them hiring me?

Well, who cares what the odds are because they gave me the freaking course!

My one guess is that the filmmaker turned them down, but maybe not. I got the idea that the director really wanted to hire me all along. Maybe she wants to make me her pet?

Sooo...new schedule for this semester. Monday, Wednesday - teach vocabulary and grammar courses at School #1. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday - teach American cinema at school #2. Friday off (unless I fill in for one of the other teachers). Sunday off. No more high school for a while.

Next semester...well, there goes that unpredictability again. Maybe they'll let me teach the American music course!

I love my job. And I'm so happy I can finally say that.

My Classroom, My Stage

One thing I love about teaching: I get to temporarily suspend my everyday persona and "take the stage" in front of my classes as the star in my own production. I've always regretted not taking theater classes as an undergrad because I think it would have helped my nerves a lot. I still get butterflies right before a class starts. Knowing that I have to be "on" for, well four hours straight with my current teaching schedule (no breaks in between for me) is intimidating, especially for a daydreamer like me. As a student, I drift in and out of class. As a teacher, I have to be non-stop intriguing, aware of what's going on in the class, and prepared to answer any and all questions.

To do this effectively, it helps to play a role. My role is the teacher who's "so crazy and confident, she just doesn't care." This means I have to be okay with the knowledge that my students will probably make fun of me outside of class...and they might imitate me. I've accepted that (I think). I'm not trying to be best friends with my students, so why not? It's fun to just not care....it means I can be a complete goof with no repercussions.

After all, I have other teacher friends to commiserate with me. And they do crazier things than I do. I'm known to act out the vocabulary words I teach to my ESL students, but that's not as outlandish as the teacher I knew who would walk around on the classroom tables while doing her lectures to keep the students' attention. Then, there's the elementary teacher I know who's lowkey around her colleagues, but turns into a singing/dancing maniac in front of her kids.

You know, teaching may be just the thing for all those people who have given up on their dreams of being on the stage. Stand in front of a classroom, and you can be whomever you want to be. If you're talented and excellent at improv, you'll have the captive audience you've always wanted.

Disorientation

I started my new college teaching job yesterday!

Well...I didn't actually teach anything. It was orientation day for 80+ ESL students, and I got to stand around for a few hours pretending I knew what was happening. I apparently did an okay job standing out as an employee of the school (must have been my clipboard) because I got approached by a dozen or so students who thought I could answer their scheduling and registration questions. I fudged my way through answers as if it weren't my first day on the job.

Man, I'm glad I'm not an ESL student. These people have to go through so much. It doesn't matter that they may have been lawyers or chemists or whatever else in their home countries. They come here, and they're suddenly lucky if they get a nanny job. Then they have to take all these expensive English classes just to retain their F1 status.*

For anyone who's ever said about newcomers to this country, "if they live here, they should speak our language," I challenge you to go to a foreign country with a completely different language. Not Spanish-speaking or even French - some place with a whole different alphabet system. Then, see how easy it is to learn and speak this new language with fluency. See how comfortable you feel communicating with native speakers.

If this isn't an option, I suggest you volunteer to tutor an ESL student (or ELL - the terms are always changing). There are thousands of opportunities like this available, and I'm sure it sounds so easy. You know English. Therefore, you know how to teach English. Well, not necessarily. Try explaining why "could" and "wood" rhyme or why "bought" has a "g" or why the plural of "moose" is "moose." That's just the beginning. When you start getting into parts of speech, the thousands of rules and thousands of exceptions to rules, past preterite, subjunctive, etc., etc., you'll begin to wonder how you ever managed to learn such a non-sensical language.

Okay, scrambling off my soapbox now. Despite the chaos and confusion that resulted from sticking dozens of students from many different countries into one small classroom to listen to a PowerPoint presentation, I think I'm going to enjoy this job. I start officially teaching tomorrow, so stay tuned....

*F1 status is given to students who can demonstrate that they plan to engage in full-time study in the new country. International students have to take a certain number of class hours to retain this status and stay here.

Welcome Back, Class

Bet you thought I was never coming back. Well....I had a long interval of non-teaching over the summer and simply was not feeling inspired to write. I could have blogged about my seemingly endless job search for the perfect teaching job - okay, any teaching job - but I didn't want to depress you.

Let me tell you what I'm doing this fall.

Tomorrow, I start teaching adults. That's right....adults, college students, people who have chosen to take the classes that I'm teaching. What's better is that they're international students learning English. That presents a new set of challenges, but more than counteracts the sarcasm and indifference innate to high school students.

Don't worry though. I haven't escaped teenagers altogether. Until they decide to hire me full-time at this small college or until I go completely loco, I will supplement my income by substitute teaching in Chicago's lovely public school system. Ah yes...let me tell you about how exciting that is.

Substitute teaching in CPS is obviously such a privilege that only the most die-hard self-torturers can get through the application process. Let me just give you a brief rundown of what I had to do to become an official CPS sub. You'd think, already being certified as a type 09 teacher and having a master's degree and having already student taught in CPS, that all I'd have to do is fill out a little extra paperwork. You'd think wrong.

Instead, after realizing that they'd never answer their phone or e-mail, I finally physically went down to the CPS downtown headquarters to get my questions answered. Once there, they gave me an application packet despite the fact that I already had two of them, made a copy of my driver's license, made me something called a "sub letter," and then told me to go out to the meat-packing district to get my fingerprints done? Huh? They can't do fingerprints at this location?

Nope. CPS Human Resources has its own building hidden among factories and butchers and auto repair places in the far west loop, nowhere remotely close to the main CPS building. That would just be too easy - CPS prides itself on its chaos. After wandering around for, oh, 30 minutes or so after getting off the train, I finally found the building. Once inside, I got to stand in line for another 30 minutes while the guy behind the desk kept yelling at everyone not to park in the parking lot. Apparently, that lot outside the building is not actually for CPS but for some other mysterious business nearby. That figures. It's street-parking for CPS employees.

So the finger-printing process was a nightmare that I won't horrify you with, but the next step was to return to HR a week later with my application pack, copy of my birth certificate, a physical and TB test, transcripts, and teaching certificate. After scrambling to get these items together over the course of a week, I presented my finished packet, which they looked over (not so easily - it took over an hour of waiting) and sent me off to the main CPS offices again to finish the process. Oh, did I mention they gave me a free "welcome to CPS" tote bag - that makes up for it all!!

At the main offices, I filled out more paperwork (what's the meaning of it all?!!) and then went downstairs across from Subway (?) to get my photo ID. Naturally, the photo ID people don't currently have any of the official IDs available so I have to get a temporary ID and wait six weeks for the real one to arrive in the mail.

I'm a sub now. I've gone through the process, and now I get the joy of waking up at 5:30 every morning that I'm available to wait for a call that may or may not come from sub services, asking me to baby-sit a bunch of teenagers. The good news - as a certified teacher, I get a buttload of money for this 6.25 hour gig, and during prep periods, I can do the lesson planning for my college classes. Woo!

Now I just have to await the crazy adventures that are sure to befall me this year, so I can continue to make you all crazy jealous in this blog. I'm excited, and I'm scared.

I Shall Post Again

I'm in a blogging lull, and trying to get out. I'm in a teaching lull as well, so it makes sense that I haven't been inspired to write here lately. My school year's over, and my destiny for the fall still unknown. I'm sure, in short time, I'll regain my passion, and the words will flow. As for now, I'm on summer break. Sort of.

I Will Crush Your Senioritis

It's the end of a school year, and for those graduating high school seniors, the start of a bright new journey. I'm sending my senior students off into the world with the joyous, optimistic words of...Tolstoy? I didn't plan it this way, but somehow, The Death of Ivan Ilyich got pushed back to the last two weeks of class, and so now my students' last memories of senior English will be the classic story of dying and depression. If you're not familiar, Ivan Ilyich tells the painful story of a middle-aged man's thoughts as he slowly and uncomprehendingly dies of a vague illness. A group of thoughtful adults might find the short novel powerful. Perhaps a book club would choose to read it in the depths of winter after finishing a lighter read like Jane Austen. But no, I prefer the irony of exuberant youth reading it as the first blooms of the season begin to show their colors, and the world suddenly seems alive.

My guilt gets the better of me. Maybe if I hand out inspiring quotes on the last day, it'll counteract the damage, preventing them from walking away cynical old souls who know what it's like to lie sick day after day in a dark Russian home, with only a cheerful young servant to pity them. Or maybe I'm overestimating the role of literature (and myself) in their lives.

Farewell, young seniors. May your lives be more enriching than that of Ivan Ilyich.

Game Season

I need a new teaching job. You'd think living in an urban setting, surrounded by hundreds of high schools, that wouldn't be such a challenge. You'd think having a master's degree, professional experience, a teaching certificate and a second teaching certificate on its way would at least get me into the door of a decent school, and that they'd be begging for me at the "underprivileged" schools. Well...maybe if I taught math.

But, I teach English, and the number of over-educated English teachers swarming around this city is massive. Everybody and their dogs want to teach English. The competition is cutthroat for the chance to be underpaid and overworked in an oppressive school system. It makes no sense why we put ourselves through this. For the prestige? Ha!

It's hiring time for schools. It starts around March and can go until the minute before school begins in late August. It's obviously preferable to secure a position early, which is why teachers drag themselves out in droves to attend the public school job fairs, commonly known among educators as "cattle drives." The fairs attract hundreds (thousands?), necessitating the use of large sports stadiums and enormous conference centers. Teachers line up neatly outside before the fairs start, each clutching an innocent stack of resumes and often a hard-earned portfolio. The line stretches, oh, a quarter of a mile or so outside the facility.

Once inside, teachers quickly form new lines at each of the tables, shorter lines, 10 or 12 deep at the less popular schools, 20 or so at top-notch ones. The teachers are all ages and all races, newly certified and highly experienced. Newbies bubble with excitement and motivation. Old-timers joke cynically about the whole surreal process. When teachers finally gets a chance to talk to a school rep, they step up to the plate (appropriate analogy considering the location), sell themselves in two minutes or less, drop off their resumes, and then move on to the next 30-minute line. If they get tired, no problem. The stadium location allows for lots of seating. Or teachers can take advantage of the convenient resume drop boxes located at each school's station. You know, just in case none of the people who waited in line are viable candidates and someone actually takes a minute to sort through a hundred resumes.

We're real troopers in this field.

Oh Yeah - This is Why I'm Here

Years ago, while sitting in a cubicle staring at a spreadsheet, I would daydream about working in a creative environment. I'd envision opening great books and digging up their seeds, getting my hands dirty as I stimulated my mind, and other minds while I was at it. I'd hear voices in my head asking me questions such as, "how would you teach high school students to write three-dimensional characters?" And I would answer (in my head), conjuring up a thousand possible lesson plans on how I could teach any single aspect of literature and writing.

So recently, I was considering ideas for my new creative writing class. The topic of the month is "combining writing with other forms of art," starting with visual. The chances of getting my class to an art museum are slim, and I don't know that I want to fight bureaucracy to get it done, but they need to work with art. Of course, if the classroom could serve as its own museum or gallery, that would be great.

Oh wait...I can actually do that! It amazes me that I can actually come up with an idea like that, and then just do it - for my job!

Last Thursday, I hung up pictures and posters of famous and not-so-famous works of art. The students brought in some of their own, including photos. We taped them all around the classroom, and then we entered our very own gallery, notebooks in hand, and started writing.

This is why I wanted to teach. It's so easy to forget, with all the staff development, progress reports, lesson plans to department head two weeks ahead of time, participation points, attendance, signing out to go to the bathroom, picking up food wrappers from the floor, gossipy teachers' lounge, blah blah blah. All that stuff I don't caaaaaare about.

But then I have these moments. I had one a few months ago when we were reading 12 Angry Men, and I realized that my students needed to emulate a jury trial. Thus was born "The Murder Trial of Cornelius Augustus," my totally made-up story of a jealous trust-funder who may or may not have lost his mind when his oldest enemy was accepted into Harvard Law (the jury was hung on that one).

I had one of these moments last year when my students couldn't come to a conclusive decision about whether the Greeks and Trojans had a right to blame Helen of Troy for starting the Trojan War. So....they had a debate! Okay, it turned into a bit of a screaming match, but it started out well, and as a student teacher at the time, I rarely experienced my students excited about a piece of literature.

I'm constantly hearing teachers discuss the love/hate relationships they have with their chosen profession. Your student throws a chair -hate it. Your student grasps a poem - love it. I love the creativity. I love watching them grow. I love discussion and excitement. I love it when they want to share their insights. I want those loves to overpower all the hates so that I can do this indefinitely.

Dream Schools

It seems like every newish, passionate teacher I know wants to start a charter school. I don't blame them, of course. I daydream about the perfect school environment as well. My dream school is, in part, inspired by what I know of Buddhist monasteries and how they educate young monks. Rather than learning to the test or to get into college, they learn to become wise, knowledgeable people. They absorb book after book, spending long days reading. Learning for the sake of learning sounds fabulous to me.

Okay, I'm going to stop the comparison to the monasteries before I get it completely wrong. I have a million ideas for the "perfect" school, and that's the pain of being an idealistic teacher in the established school system. We're intuitive enough to know how great it could be, but the system's crushing. It's soul-sucking. It takes amazing, motivated, intelligent, caring, creative teachers and slowly stomps them into the ground until it's almost too much for them to drag themselves to school each morning so that they can, once again, be told that they're just not doing their jobs well enough.

I haven't had my soul sucked yet, and I would do almost anything to avoid that, but how? I've seen it over and over. Half of the people I went through my certificate program with have already either quit or are seriously considering quitting after their first year. I've met older teachers who have multiple master's degrees and two or three certificates who have resorted to handing out worksheets every day out of sheer hopelessness. I know they weren't like that in the beginning. I know they didn't get into teaching for summer vacations.

Many city schools are in disarray. They have the appearance of schools as we know them - rows of desks, a principal's office, even a few (outdated, falling-apart) textbooks. An outsider might even be fooled into thinking vast amounts of learning are going on inside these buildings. It's easy to just ignore the fact that half the school doesn't show up for first period, that the administration pressures teachers to cook the grades so a certain number of students pass (hello funding), that seniors read at fifth-grade levels, that students cuss and scream and fight in the hallways, that the students may not have books to take home, that the cops wait outside the schools every afternoon, that teachers may have to pay for their own copies (not to mention spend a quarter of their tiny salaries on other materials that might give their students an inkling of a chance to learn something meaningful), that most students have no idea that they're as smart and capable as students in any number of highly funded suburban or private schools.

Anyone involved in education knows that the solution to these problems is hugely complex. We have racial and socioeconomic issues, apathetic parents, standardized tests, a whole system to unravel and recreate. The best thing I can think to do at this point is tell people. Schools go to great lengths to hide their weaknesses, and it can't be that hard. I think most people only have a passing interest in the school system. They want their children to get the best education possible. They want justice for all students, in theory. But it's not the issue of the moment. It's not global warming. It's not health care. It's not something most of the population is confronted with daily. I think it should be. These kids are the future. Everybody should be able to see them.

I wish I didn't have to daydream about my future charter school. I wish the communities already cared, that the government didn't judge success from statistics, that those of us who cared had the power and freedom to do something about it in the free and public school system.

A Creative Short

I was offered a new class this morning. My department head called to inform me that the creative writing teacher was suddenly leaving in the middle of the school year, and they needed a last-minute replacement. I eagerly took it. I love creative writing. This is a class I can teach. My biggest concern is deciding among the endless number of lesson plan options I have available to me. I have so many options and only two and a half months. But then, of course, I need to know what they've already done so I'm not repeating.

Oh, and of course, there's the resentment the kids may or may not feel toward me for walking into their classroom at the end of March expecting them to now do things my way. Not that I'll be that egotistic about it, but I'm obviously not going to be exactly like their other teacher.

Teachers get bored too!

We're still doing Jekyll and Hyde. We should have finished it a couple of weeks ago, but we've had so many distractions lately (read previous post for elaboration) that we just can't get to the end. It's such a short book, and it's intensive. It's not meant to be read over the course of several weeks. They were almost on the edge of their seats at the beginning. Well, they were semi-interested anyway. Everybody knows the mystery behind that book before they read it, so it's no great surprise. Jekyll and Hyde are one person - woo-hoo.

Now, things have dragged on too long, and even I'm getting bored with it. I re-read the book in two days before I started teaching it, and was thrilled with the possibilities. Addiction! Obsession! Multiple personalities! The dark side of human nature! So many ways to go with the story. Now, I'm way past it. I've exhausted it. They have too. They're so over it, but we still have the skit/presentation, the paper, the list of questions and the quiz. Not to mention the last chapter (because I'm pretending they all read the other chapters) and the movie version. I can cut the quiz, maybe. I can't cut the paper because they're entering them in a nationwide contest. They've already started the questions and presentations. Did I mention that they also made a list of the top quotes from each chapter, and we have yet to go over those? I over-did it in the planning, and now I'm stuck.

I just wish they could hurry up and finish, so we could move on to something more exciting. I'm sure they're thinking the same thing about me, only they don't hide it as well as I do. The homework blackout (previous post again) prevents anything from getting accomplished quickly.

It's almost spring, and things need to be revived soon before senioritis kicks in for them. I hope The Metamorphosis will do the trick. I've never heard anyone say Kafka brought their students back to life, so maybe I'll be the first.

The Play's the Thing

I'm not allowed to give homework for the next three weeks. Can someone tell me how I can get anything done in my classroom when I can't ask the students to read their assignments at home? I have to give them class time to work on their essays, but then they can't get them done because it's too distracting with all of the noise in the hallways.

It's the play. The students, no, the school is obsessed with this play. They start planning it at the beginning of the year and now it's crunch time. Their nights, and often their afternoons are filled with play practice. The next two Fridays are play days, meaning I'm not teaching those days. Two other days, the students get out early. I see the value of the whole theater and creative experience for these kids, so call me selfish when I say I don't like teaching like this. English class is a joke right now. Their lives are the play, and the school encourages this. Even my most ingenious, stimulating activities can't compete for their attention. And as they're all at at practice until late every night, they don't have the energy for them anyway.

Why even go through the motions of having regular classes? They should just cancel all classes for a couple of weeks and let the kids work on the play all day, every day. Why make the teachers pretend to conduct meaningful classes when we're forbidden to compromise the students' focus on the the play in any way?

Yesterday, in celebration of the play I'm assuming, the students had an all-night party at the school. They decorated the classrooms like a shopping mall. My room, which doubles as a science classroom, was The Discovery Store. Most of the desks were strewn with "sale items" such as microscopes and goggles. The next day in class, the kids were exhausted and slap-happy. Having no place for them to sit and considering that most of them were either sleeping or singing loudly, I didn't even attempt to teach them anything. I took pictures instead, since they all happened to have their cameras with them.

I'm glad they had fun, but I wish I didn't have to play the role of chaperone. I want to teach them. That's why I'm there. I didn't start this gig because I enjoy hanging out with teenagers. Does any adult enjoy that? I got it because I'm passionate about literature and I want to watch them grow into strong writers and readers and thinkers. This reminds me of the day when I was student teaching last year that I had to postpone my whole lesson on The Aeneid and the pieces my creative writing students were working on. Why? Because some genius decided it would be more valuable for them to sit through a seminar about identity theft put on by a local bank. Yes, these students who can barely read and write and barely have any money to their names, who are lucky if they even make it to graduation, really should make it top priority to worry about someone stealing the credit cards that they don't even have.

I don't get it, as usual.

Bribes and Bellringers

I'm bribing my students now. I've become that kind of teacher. On Monday, I couldn't get them to shut up. I mean, they were singing and talking and absolutely had no interest in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Can I blame them? Okay, no. But we have two freaking chapters left to go. On Friday, I had myself convinced that I was a teacher they could respect. They seem to like me, on occasion, for a minute or two at a time. But, if I'm a teacher they respect, why do they think it's okay to have conversations about their hair when I'm trying to talk about Dr. Jekyll's drug addiction? Sometimes, I get on my soapbox and preach to them about being mature adults. "You're better than this. You're being disrespectful to me, to your classmates and to yourself blah blah blah." I throw the word respect around about 20 times a week, and it doesn't have the impact I feel like it should. If someone told me I was being disrespectful, I'd hang my head in shame. Or would I? Maybe I would roll my eyes?

So Tuesday, I bribed them. They get points for being good, points for staying in their seats, points for doing their work, points for pretending to be interested. And it worked. They did it. On Wednesday, I only bribed them a little bit. I did a bellringer* because I'm now the type of teacher who does bellringers along with the bribing. I offered them five points simply for participating in the bellringer. What is that? They should do it without the points. I would do it without the points.

I'm also bribing them to finish Jekyll and Hyde quickly, because we can watch the film version if they finish quickly. But only if they read it. They love film...such cinephiles I have in my classroom. They were drooling over Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet - all 72 hours of it. They begged to watch Twelve Angry Men. Is there a film version of The Metamorphosis? That's what we're reading next. Why even bother with the books?

So my latest teaching goal is this: get them to do things sans bribery. Hmmm...tough one.


*Bell-ringers are lovely little activities teachers have their students do immediately after the bell rings. Usually about five minutes long, the idea is to set the students to work immediately so that they're calm for the rest of the period. Also, I hate them.