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 They have the appearance of schools as we know them - rows of desks, a principal's office, even a few (outdated, falling-apart) textbooks.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.