Poor Epifanito

It's hard for me to learn Chinese names, and I have to learn a lot of them. They're the largest group in our school's ELL population, and by far. It doesn't matter how long I do this. I'm totally unfamiliar with a whole lot of them and it isn't getting much easier.

As if that weren't enough, the spellings my students use in English often mislead me to mispronounce them. I didn't find out until this year that I was mispronouncing a girl's name all last year. I should've been tipped off by students laughing at me every time I spoke her name.

This year, in my beginning class, I have a lot more Spanish speakers. Almost half the class speaks Spanish. One of my Spanish-speaking girls is upset that the Chinese names are so hard to say, so she named all the Chinese boys. I'm not exactly sure why she didn't name the girls. Every day, for a while, she would rattle off the names as she pointed to each boy.

I told her she didn't have the right to just assign people names. That was the job of their parents, I said, and they had done this years ago when her classmates were born. My student didn't care. Why was I wasting her time with this when the matter was already settled? Another teacher who covers this class told her the same thing. The student had already made her decision, though, it was final, and our words were just a wasteful diversion. She knew who these boys were, and just to make sure she didn't forget, she continued to announce their names at every opportunity.

She'd named one of the boys Julio. I told her Julio wasn't his name and she shouldn't call him that. The boy objected. He said his name was indeed Julio, and that was his English name. I told him Julio wasn't an English name. It was a Spanish name. He didn't care. That was his English name and he was going with it. He told me his teacher in China had given him that name.

This was a little hard for me to take, primarily because I knew it wasn't true. I know that English teachers in China don't always really know English, because I've had hundreds of students who studied English in China for ten years and came here knowing nothing. In China, they don't seem to teach conversational English. In my experience, they're more focused on discrete point tests and long essays that may or may not have meaning. Nonetheless, Chinese teachers from China do not issue Spanish names. This was my very first Chinese Julio.

So here I am defending this guy's identity and he gave it up to the first girl who decided he was someone else. I understand fifteen-year-old boys going with the decisions of fifteen-year-old girls. I once asked a fifteen-year-old boy, "If she jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you jump off the Brooklyn Bridge too?" The boy said, "If she jump, I jump." At that age, I may have jumped too. Fortunately, when I was that age, I was never forced into that particular decision.

Last week, I had one of my students transferred to another level. These things happen in my line of work. This was a pretty quiet boy. If you weren't paying attention, you might not have even known he was there. Now I did, because I have to take attendance. But I was pretty surprised when my young name-giver asked me, "Where's Epifanito?"

"Who's Epifanito?" I asked.

"You know Epifanito," she said. "He's the boy who sits right there."

"His name's not Epifanito," I said.

"Yes it is," she told me. "And where is he?"

"The boy who sat there has transferred to another class," I said.

"Poor Epifanito," she said, shaking her head in sympathy.

The Attendance System Is Dead. Long Live the Attendance System

For the last few months we've been grappling with an online attendance program called CAASS. It's been an interesting journey. Last year we started it, and found there were a lot of redundancies built in that wasted our time. CAASS told us not to worry. They were going to have a glitzy new fault-free program by October or thereabouts.

I can't recall when we started using it. I do recall the hours and days when it didn't work. Admin did not necessarily worry about that. You see, even if I had no record of a student being absent, or present, or whatever, the student could've been marked in other classes. Therefore our general attendance would not go down. That is important somehow, but I'm just a lowly teacher so don't ask me why.

The thing is, if you made a mistake yesterday you couldn't correct it today. It had gone in, it was etched in stone, and that was it. Also, there were no records. So when you call a parent to explain that the student had been frequently absent, you couldn't give the parent dates. More than one parent asked me to provide dates of absence at parent-teacher conferences and I was unable to do so. I felt like an idiot.

Also, I'm very dependent on my laptop when I'm working. I use it for just about everything. So if a kid walks in late and I need to record it, I have to take my computer off the display I'm showing to write it down. Alternatively, I could write it on a piece of paper somewhere and hope to find it again in time to record it.

Last week was pretty interesting. CAASS would work period one, but periods two and three would crap out entirely. Two nights last week I recorded absences while I was at my home. One day I was able to get back in period 5 and do it while I was on the clock. But it was so unreliable I had no idea whether what it showed was true. For example, I spoke to a dad who wanted to know if his kid was in class on a certain date. The kid swore he was. I pulled up CAASS and it said he wasn't. I had to tell dad this meant nothing because I had no idea whether or not the info was accurate.

A lot of teachers told me they were recording attendance on their own and then transferring it to CAASS. That sounded like double work to me, and single work is challenging enough for my taste. I was going to file a paperwork complaint, which looked like a slam dunk to me, at least. Admin seemed to agree, saying that they'd dump it if I complained.

Although almost everyone with whom I spoke hated the system, I wasn't certain everyone felt that way. I decided to put it up for a vote. I printed ballots and made a staff list so people could sign as they voted. At the end of the day, I got a call from the principal's office saying they were dumping it regardless.

Evidently I was not the only one receiving parental complaints. Some made their way from the teachers, to the assistant principal, to the principal. Evidently, some parents want to actually know for sure whether or not their kids are attending classes. I don't blame them.

I'm sure it's possible to take attendance online. I'm sure someone will think of a program that works. Here's the thing--whoever does that needs to thoroughly test it before making it public. Getting online with a buggy program and hoping for the best is just not the way to go about it.

Don't Stop at Red Lights

Week before last was very tough on me. I had two accidents in two days. I asked myself, "Why did this happen?" I thought about all the detective shows I've watched over the years. What would the guys on Law and Order say? What would Colombo do? Of course, they'd look for a commonality. It wasn't hard to find one.

On Wednesday, I was stopped at a red light when a woman hit me from behind. On Thursday, I was stopped at a red light when a man plowed right into me. Well, you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to know that what both accidents had in common was that I was stopped at red lights. So there you have it.

I drive a car I really like. It is the best car ever. It has a great stereo system and it's really fun to drive. Everyone should have one. And if you do, you need to protect it. I know very well, because if you don't, you have to get a rental car. Now here's the thing--they will tell you that you need one right away, but that the insurance won't kick in until the company inspects the damage. I'm almost certain, in fact, that they also told me the company would pay me for the rental, eventually.

Then I got a letter from the insurance company saying if my car was driveable, they wouldn't pay anything. I went right back to the body shop and said hey, why am I driving around in this tiny little car with a crappy music system when I'm not being reimbursed for it? They said they'd told me that. Now they may have. I was pretty nuts after having been hit twice in two days.

Anyway, I gave them back the rental and took my car back. I was very happy. Sadly, later today I have to turn it in again so the insurance company can look at it and work out the repair cost with the body shop. At that point I will once again be relegated to a budget rental that I will likely as not have to push to work. If you see me pushing a rental car to Queens please honk, wave, or offer a tow.

Anyway I've reflected on all this and the only logical conclusion is that it's very dangerous to stop at red lights. So now I just plow right through them and everything's fine. Since I've started doing that, no one's hit my car at all.

I probably won't teach my students this particular lesson. On the other hand, maybe it will be a good way to get them to argue with me. I'll bet when I tell them I no longer stop at red lights there will be some objection.

Maybe this is good for something after all.

Alternate Build for a Teacher

I'm a big fan of Curmudgucation, and I've decided to echo its most recent post, How to Build a Teacher. I started teaching in New York City in 1984, and for me it was more of a happy accident than a plan. Like blogger Peter Greene, my undergraduate major was English, not education. Our similarities end there.

I did not plan to be a teacher. I was a working musician, and had a few opportunities to play in Europe, once with the daughter of someone famous(!). When I got back the second time, I couldn't find work anywhere. I had no place to live. The only thing I had was this big old Mercury, and my driver's license had expired. Back then New York City was heavily invested in intergalactic searches for teachers, and I responded to a subway ad I saw on the way back from the DMV in Jamaica.

I went to Court Street and took a writing test. Once they were satisfied I knew a little English, they made me an English teacher. I had no idea what I was doing. On my ninth teaching day, I was observed. My AP wrote that I had no idea what I was doing. I pointed out to her that I'd told her that when she hired me. She then explained to me in great detail about how she made meatballs for her parents.

I transferred to another school, where I taught music for one semester and English for two. At this school, they had broken the English department in two, and I taught in the skills department. This was because no one could seem to get along with my AP, who wore a three-piece tweed suit in any kind of weather, and wrote long, incomprehensible observation reports. A colleague read my first three-page observation and told me the AP liked me. This was because if he didn't like you he tended to write things you could understand.

I enrolled in an MA English program at Queens College, thinking I would do this for a living. But the day I showed up in September I learned I no longer had a job. It was a good thing I'd had the foresight to not yet pay Queens College. I decided I'd had enough of crossing bridges to the Bronx, put on a suit, and walked into every department of every high school in Queens until someone was crazy enough to hire me. The person who did that ran the ESL department in Newtown, and I really loved teaching ESL. Alas, they dropped me at the end of the semester.

I joined the world's worst Irish wedding band. We had an accordion player who played bass on his accordion, and a drummer. They were never exactly in sync somehow. We had a singer who fancied himself Kenny Rogers, popular at the time, and therefore he purchased a $99 white polyester suit at Alexander's and grew a beard to look the part. Alas he couldn't sing in tune. People loved us anyway. He was born in the Bronx, but would show a picture of some home in Mayo and claim to have been born there. He would start a rebel song, "for our boys," turn to the band and say, "Screw 'em all."

This paid my way through an MA in Applied Linguistics. My MA was very good. I learned a whole lot about language structure, language acquisition, and a whole lot of things that the NY Regents, for example, haven't got a clue about. For some reason they didn't offer the last course I needed to complete my MA, and the department head suggested I student teach instead. I said I couldn't because I already had a job by then, but he said that was fine, I could be observed at the job.

My AP was officially my mentor, and won herself a free course at Queens College. The people in my class clued me in that they guy who'd observe us was not, in fact, our teacher. However, it was very important to him that you show a picture, introduce five vocabulary words, and ask three questions. Or something. I did the lesson exactly as requested and the guy thought I was a genius.

One thing that Greene mentioned is key--teaching courses ought to be taught by people who really teach the levels we will. Being a college professor is not the same thing. I recall taking a required education course when I started in the Bronx. The professor suggested we should assemble all our resources and assemble a class library. I didn't have any resources at the time, and I felt lucky to have chalk on the days I did.

She also took me aside and told me that I ought not to teach high school. I'd be better off pursuing a doctorate and teaching college. She wasn't the only professor who told me that either. There's something off-putting about people who train high school teachers but think teaching high school is a dead end. I'd argue we're needed a whole lot more than college professors, and that our jobs are actually more important. We might actually help students make it to college.

I'm really glad to have stumbled onto teaching, and I'm particularly glad I was dropped into ESL. I love teaching students from all over the world. They are really interesting and often have the most amazing stories. I haven't got as many conclusions as Greene did, except to say that this is my story, and I'm sticking to it.

What's your story?

The Making of an Administrator

I was once in an assembly, and there were a couple of kids acting out and causing distractions for the students trying to listen. I asked them a few times to cut it out, and they ignored me. So I called the dean and had them removed. Fifteen minutes later they were back again. The then-principal was sitting near them and complaining about their behavior. He didn't choose to intervene, but rather gave them a few looks, which they ignored.

I went to the dean's office a little bit later. I found the dean who removed them. I asked her why she sent them back. She said she had given them a stern talking-to, or something. I told whatever she had done did not work, and that she had just taught those kids that there was no consequence for their actions. I told her if I'd wanted those kids to stay in the auditorium I would not have had them removed. I told her she'd undermined my authority and I didn't much appreciate it. She didn't have much to say in reply.

I didn't have any dealings with her for a while, as she was in a different department, and I almost never call deans for any reason. For my regular students, I generally figure there's not much deans can do that I can't, and if someone's gonna call mommy and daddy it might as well be me. The next time I saw her, I had just been elected chapter leader.

One of the first things I did when I became chapter leader was assemble an email list. I sorted it by department so I could send emails to the English teachers, or the social studies teachers, or whoever. It was really hard work collecting and recording all these addresses, so I asked people on my committee for help. One person immediately gave me all the non-DOE emails of a very large department, and I was pretty happy to have that.

When I sent out my first staff email, the amazing dean approached me with a pretty serious complaint.

"I feel like I've been raped," she said.

I was pretty shocked. I asked her what happened.

"I never gave you my email, and you sent an email to my private address."

"Oh my gosh I'm so sorry," I said. "Ms. Z. gave me your email. I'll take you off the list right away."

"No, that's okay," she said. "You can leave me on the list."

So what is this? You raped me, it's horrible, but feel free to do it again? I left her on the list. Of course I removed her when she became assistant principal, which happened almost instantly afterward.

The very first grievance I received was against her. She'd failed to give a teacher any classes requested. I met with her. She said there was no way that she could arrange the schedule to make that happen. She showed me classes arranged in a Delaney book. I looked at them for thirty seconds, and said, "Why don't you swap this class for that class?" I had solved the problem. I was a genius.

"Well," she said. "It's not good for the kids to change the teachers this late in the semester."

We were weeks, at most, into the semester. It was ridiculous. For some reason the teacher withdrew the grievance. It came up at another meeting, though. I don't remember why.

"Well, Mr. Goldstein never suggested a solution to that problem."

So there she was, lying to my face. I said something along those lines. Later, she confronted me in the hall about this, or maybe something else. I responded in kind.

A few days later, she called me into her office, closed the door, and started screaming at me. How dare I talk to her like that? I opened the door and walked out while she was still screaming.

I spent years fielding complaints about her from all sorts of people. Evidently she treated many others the same way she treated me. A lot of people seem not to like that. Now she works somewhere else, so my life is just a little easier. Of course I get complaints from the chapter leader at the new school, who blames me for sending her over there.

But it's a small price to pay.  Until she becomes superintendent, of course, when all of us will pay.

As Opposed to Gas Station Sushi

I'm kind of glad we're off tomorrow. If we weren't, I might not have gone in anyway. I'm a mess. I'm constantly sneezing, occasionally coughing and all I really want to do is enjoy a good sulk. Despite this, Toby is constantly demanding I take him our for walks. Even though he's my best bud, he clearly places his needs before mine.

Today was pretty awful in the morning. It was raining, and Toby does not much care for the rain. Truth be told, I'm not so crazy about it either. The only thing Toby hates more than the rain is the red raincoat I make him wear. He's horrified by the little hood, and constantly shakes it off. When it's really bad, he will absolutely refuse to move. He wills himself to Be a Tree.

That didn't happen today, though, Things were pretty clear outside by three PM, so we were able to do full walks on the Nautical Mile. I'm fascinated by that sign I pass each and every day. Fresh sushi available. To me, that suggests they serve some other kind of sushi unless you specifically request the fresh kind, for which they surely charge a hefty premium. Otherwise, they serve you the gas station sushi they give everyone else.

Are we serving fresh sushi in city schools? Not by a longshot. Forget about the actual food. We're placing kids in classes of 34, though there was actually legislation demanding we reduce them to 25. Man, if that isn't gas station sushi I don't know what is. Why is it hard for teachers to focus? Why is it hard for students to focus? Because we have a two-tier education system in this country. The pols who run it place their own kids in private schools with classes of 20 or fewer, and then they say we can't afford to help anyone else's kids.

Most mornings I walk Toby all the way to the end of the canal. There aren't that many people out there at 5:30 AM. I have to take him at that hour because if I don't get to work an hour early, I will have no chance to do schoolwork. I never know what's going to happen during the day, but if I get in by 6:30 or 7 there are only crazy people like me trying to prepare before 4600 students join us.

Every morning I see a man collecting deposit cans and bottles from the garbage cans. The man looks to be 80 years old and he drives a recent model midsize Japanese car. I wonder why a person who can afford a relatively new car has to spend mornings collecting cans. I mean, it's certainly more efficient here in suburbia to use a car rather than a shopping cart, but it still makes me sad to think of being that old and having to do that.

Nonetheless, the folks who brought Janus envision that as the future for all of us. They want fewer dues-payers and then they'll target collective bargaining. Trump's lunatic Supreme Court will deny working people anything they can. Next they'll go for pensions and we'll all be collecting aluminum cans, because that's how you Make America Great Again.

I remember the first day I woke up and saw that Donald Trump was going to be President of the United States. I thought he'd be the worst President ever, but I also thought that about GW. Trump makes GW look relatively tame, and that's a tough thing to do. But if there was someone worse than GW, there's also someone worse than Trump. It might be Pence, and we might find out after we impeach Trump.

I hope I get better, and I hope the weather gets better. Here's a word to the wise--Don't eat the gas station sushi, and in November, don't vote for it either.

The Last Straw

Mr. Green was excited about how his class was going. He had never taught English Language Learners before, but they were great. The kids were enthusiastic and eager to learn. He was surprised at how much he liked teaching them. Many of them picked things up as quickly if not quicker than the native English speakers he'd been teaching for most of his career.

He co-teacher was young and smart. Not only that, but she knew all the new stuff that he hadn't paid particularly strong attention too. Danielson? Who knows from Danielson? Well she did, and she was always making little suggestions that would get you extra brownie points when the muckety mucks surprised you with a visit.

"Whatever you're doing, when they come in, ask some question and then make them turn and talk. Make sure you do it at least once or twice a week so they know what you're talking about."

Well OK, he thought. That makes sense. It doesn't really, but hey, if it gets a few points and you can easily pull it off, why not?

"Make sure after you ask a question you make the kids hold up those red and green things to say whether or not they understand," she said.

"Do you think they will really tell us?" asked Mr. Green.

"No, of course they won't," she said. "But after the supervisors leave we can walk around, look at their work, and find out whether or not they really understand." 

This didn't make much sense. But she was keyed in and he wasn't.

"Make sure you don't spend more than three minutes on the DO NOW," she instructed. "I'll bring in an egg timer."

This didn't make sense either. If there was good conversation going on, why should he stop it? What if one thing led to another, and something really spontaneous happened? He spoke to his co-teacher about it.

"I'll bring the egg timer tomorrow," she said.

Well, that was that. Three minutes for this, eight minutes for that, and you're a highly effective teacher. At this point, Mr. Green wanted nothing more than to be a highly high teacher. Of course you don't get Danielson brownie points for that. On the other hand, a principal at a school three miles away just got caught snorting meth in his car. Maybe it's OK for principals. Mr. Green decided not to find out how it was for teachers.

The next day, Mr. Green decided to alter the aim.

"Yesterday we covered metaphor. Today we are covering dramatic irony."

"You can't write that," said his co-teacher.

"Why not?" asked Mr. Green.

"Well, we have the Common Core goal on the lesson plan. If you write about what you did yesterday, it doesn't jibe with what we're doing today."

That didn't make any sense to Mr. Green. Why couldn't he remind them of what they did yesterday? Certainly it would come up again in conversation, on a test, in their lives, or in any random combination of above. He decided to go to his supervisor and ask about it.

"She's right," said his supervisor. "If someone were in your classroom and rating you via the Danielson rubric, you could certainly get an adverse rating for that."

Mr. Green still wasn't satisfied. He went to his co-teacher's supervisor. She was pretty smart. She would know for sure.

"Well," she said, "If you really wanted to refer back to yesterday's lesson you could do it orally, and not write it on the board. That way, if someone came in, they wouldn't know you had done it."

That was one way to do it, thought Mr. Green.

That was when Mr. Green decided, on the spot, that this would be his last year teaching. He retired in June. He adopted a dog, joined an acting group, dropped 25 pounds, and never once looked back.

The Christmas Call

Mr. Fisk had a very good class in general. They cooperated and he had a good rapport with them. In fact, they often took him off on tangents that were as interesting, if not more so, than whatever he'd prepared. He figured if he ever got observed at one of those moments he'd be highly effective for sure, but alas his boss was always observing his other classes. They were okay too, but they didn't quite do what this class did. It was the day before Christmas break and he was going to surprise them by giving no homework whatsoever.

So you can imagine his surprise when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, one of his best students started behaving like a 14-year-old. In fairness, the boy may have actually been 14 years old, but he had not really achieved the stereotype until this very day. What precipitates a cry for attention like this? Mr. Fisk tried talking directly to the boy, in a friendly tone, but the boy was simply not having a friendly day.

On this particular day, Mr. Fisk could achieve very little. Though interruptions came largely from this one boy, when they were directed at other students they responded somewhat less diplomatically than the teacher. This caused multiple conflicts, because some of the students who weren't being directly insulted were amused by the show. Now things were coming to a head.

Mr. Fisk didn't want to call a dean or anyone because he never called a dean or anyone. He thought doing that made him appear weak. Still, why were they all gathered in one place if all they were going to do was insult each other? It was getting as though they were all on Twitter and Donald Trump was one of the students.

Mr. Fisk suggested that the student in question might be more comfortable sitting in the department office and cooling off for the day. But the student was not happy with that suggestion.

"Why should I have to leave?" he asked.

Mr. Fisk suggested it was a good idea. He didn't want to call the boy's house the day before vacation.

"Go ahead," said the boy. "My father won't answer the phone."

To underline that he meant business, the boy took out the phone, set it to dial his house, and handed it to Mr. Fisk.

Mr. Fisk was a little nervous. He wasn't in the practice of calling homes in front of the students whose homes he happened to be calling. But he was up for a challenge. He figured if the boy directly asked him to call, he couldn't effectively complain about how bad he felt when it actually happened.

Mr. Fisk began talking to Dad. The boy's face changed completely. He listened as Mr. Fisk spoke. No, he couldn't send him home right now. No, he was just hoping that Dad could give him some good advice. Well, Dad knew best what to do. Yes of course he could come in for a meeting whenever he liked.

It turned out the boy was from a multi-religious home. Dad was Catholic and Mom was Jewish. They made a big deal out of celebrating both Hanukah and Christmas and Dad had decreed that not only would there be neither for his son this year, but that also the boy was grounded for the entire break.

Mr. Fisk hadn't actually wished anything bad for the boy. But he didn't feel particularly guilty about it either.

Maria Yolanda

Sometimes I struggle all year to pronounce a Chinese name. They have, for example, a "u" sound that I've yet to master. I say the student's name and all his paisanos laugh out loud at my feeble attempts. Sometimes they try to teach me. I try to mimic their pronunciation, but it only provokes more hilarity as I fail over and over again.

Maybe I deserve it. Who knows? I've heard my name mangled by a variety of accents and I may have mimicked them here or there (though not in front of the students). Sometimes, though, I spend seven months trying to pronounce a particularly difficult name only to find that every one of the kid's teachers except me calls him, "John." I ask him if that's his name. He says, yes, that's his American name. I ask why he never told me, and he says I never asked.

It doesn't occur to me to ask whether students have alternate names. I'd be shocked to learn that all the other teachers did, so I wonder how exactly I managed to miss the memo. Did every single teacher other than me question every single student as to whether or not they have multiple names? Are they really all that much more careful than I am?

This brings me to one of my students this year. Since September, I've been calling her Maria. Why? Well, I get these attendance sheets every day, and all of them say her name is Maria. Whenever I call on Maria, she answers. So we had a pretty good thing going in terms of basic fundamental communication. Or at least I thought we did.

A few weeks ago we had a parent-teacher event for ELLs. The first night, when the school paid me big bucks to sit for hours, no one actually showed up. The next day, though, on my actual work hours, I got a few customers. I think there were three. The first was Maria.

Maria actually has two English teachers, me and a colleague who's fluent in Chinese. The majority of my students speak Chinese, so the majority of our parent interviews (most of them occur on the regular parent-teacher conference night) take place in Chinese. I'm always confused by translations. Sometimes the parent speaks for ten minutes, and the translator speaks for 30 seconds. Sometimes it's the reverse. But here was a Spanish speaker, I was gonna be the translator, and my translation was gonna be perfect.

So mom went on for a long time. Yolanda came from here. She did this and she likes that. I always talk to Yolanda about these things and I hope she does those things. Yolanda has a long history of doing this and that, here and there, and here's what I'm worried about...

She went on for a while. Now my student was sitting right there so I was pretty sure that this was her mom. Maybe she has a sister. Who knows? I politely waited for Mom to finish before I asked the question.

"Who's Yolanda?"

Mom looked at me as though I were an idiot. Then Maria said, "I'm Yolanda."

"I thought you were Maria."

"Well I am, but everyone calls me Yolanda."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You never asked."

"Did you know her name was Yolanda?" I asked my colleague.

"Of course I did," she said.

So it's the end of January, the year's half over, and I don't even know my student's name. Not only that, but it wasn't even a difficult name. Had I known it, I could have pronounced it easily. I even know other people who have that name.

The next day I started to ask the students what her name was.

"Yolanda," they all said. Even the Chinese kids knew what her name was.

Last week I gave a quiz. I looked at the papers. One of them said, "Maria" on top of it. Not only that, but she got 100. (Sometimes she crosses herself before handing papers to me. Perhaps it works better than I'd suspected.)

She's a very nice girl, actually. I wouldn't imagine she'd do something like that to taunt me. But if that were her aim, she'd have been doing a great job.

The Tenure Portfolio

I was with a young colleague yesterday and she was showing me all the stuff she had to do for her tenure packet. She had a list of accomplishments that went on for pages. I was kind of in awe. She was on the PD committee at school. I knew that because I'd invited her. I thought it would be good to get the viewpoint of a new teacher.

Watching her work was kind of bothering her because it was 2:50. That's when she and I are officially off the clock. I was very proud of myself because I was actually preparing to leave at the regular time. That's rare for me. I told her we have to leave, we have to leave right now, and that we owed it to ourselves not to wait another moment. Get out of here, she said, she needed to work on her portfolio. Besides, she had to coach the swimming team at five o'clock.

Who coaches a swimming team at five o'clock in a school that doesn't even have a pool? Why isn't this young woman out somewhere having a life? Even worse, in her free time she dances in the school shows, and practices to dance in the school shows. She's actually given PDs for our department, again recruited by me. (I have no idea how I ended up recruiting people to give PD. I myself had never given PD at any time until this very school year.)

I was looking at all her stuff. I'm teaching thirty years longer than she has and I haven't done a fraction of what she has. In fact, when I started teaching I didn't have the remotest notion what I was even doing. On the ninth day I taught, I was observed. The observer, my AP, wrote that I didn't seem to know what I was doing. "Of course I don't know what I'm doing," I said. "I told you I didn't know what I was doing when you hired me."

She didn't take that very well. I used to sit in her office and she would tell me stories about making meatballs. She also told me charming tales about a high school student who she was now living with. She had to be 15 years older than me. Why the hell was she living with a student, and worse, why did she think I needed to know about it? She would tell me how cute I was. It was bizarre. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. I had no interest in my AP beyond someone who could hopefully tell me what I was supposed to be doing, but that never happened either.

The only support I got was some required after-school class for new teachers, taught by a dean. The dean made it very clear that his dean gig was only a stepping stone. He was gonna be an assistant principal. Every Tuesday we'd learn all about what you needed to be an assistant principal, why assistant principals were important, and how the best route toward becoming an assistant principal was via being a dean. I wonder whether he ever became an assistant principal. If he did, he may be making teachers miserable even now.

I had four preps when I started teaching. That was until a few weeks in, when they took away the only prep I had two classes of. Then I had five preps. I would sit for hours after school and write lesson plans, which I really didn't know how to do. Every Friday I had to submit capsule lesson plans on a big grid sheet of the 25 lessons I was going to prepare the following week. It was harrowing. I considered taking a job working for Federal Express that paid slightly more money.

I was an English teacher then. I was friends with another English teacher, a young woman. One day she was subbing and I watched our principal make her cry in front of a class. It was very disturbing.

Soon thereafter, I made a big mistake. I waited for my AP to help me make grades because she told me she would help me make grades. The deadline for grading passed, and I was told to just make the damn grades. So I did. I was then persona non grata, as I learned when I wanted to teach a new book for one of my five classes. Since I had only managed to collect and return 20 copies of Ethan Frome, a book I had not selected (and did not like at all), I could only get 20 copies of Flowers for Algernon, which was the first book I got to choose. (In retrospect, I'm not so crazy about Flowers for Algernon either.)

A kid named Frankie, who kind of looked like John Travolta in Grease, told me don't worry Mister I can get you the books. Frankie was an interesting kid. One day, he brought in what looked like a switchblade, and showed it to me while there were very few of us in the classroom. I weighed my possibilities.

"Don't bring your toys to school," I told him.

He opened it to reveal a comb. I was relieved. I hoped not to show it, but who knows? I haven't got what you call a poker face. Frankie, good as his word, produced the extra books and I gave him an extra ten points on his report card. A deal's a deal.

Because I switched licenses, choosing to teach ESL and turning down the first English appointment I was offered, it probably took me six years to get tenure. Back then we didn't have tenure portfolios. If you made it through three years, acquired a real license as opposed to the temporary per-diem I started with, and were still breathing and working, it just kind of happened.

I'm kind of surprised it did, actually. My first semester I must have broken records for miserable attendance. I would take gigs playing guitar with local bands on weeknights and call out the next day. Back then I found playing guitar a lot more fun than teaching. As I said, I had no idea what I was doing.

The next year I got sent to Kennedy, where I taught music and had the first supervisor of my career who was Not Insane. It was amazing having a supervisor who actually supported and encouraged me, who answered questions. The only serious caution he gave me was, "Stay away from those girls." That was fine with me. I didn't take the job to meet girls anyway.

The thing is, if I'd had to make up a tenure portfolio back then, it would probably consist of tales of things I'd survived to get there. I lived through this Principal from Hell. I survived a crazy AP. I listened to a shallow self-serving moron talk about himself while he was being paid to help us. I bargained with students to steal books that were required for my class.

I have to tell you, my young colleague's portfolio looked a whole lot better than mine would have.

That Zany Madcap Danielson Rubric

People send me observation reports all the time. I get notes and scans via email, and I see them in my building. No one likes adverse ratings, of course. Sometimes I see behavior described that merits adverse ratings. Other times I shake my head at the wonder of it all. There are remedies to ridiculous observation reports, prime being an APPR complaint. You may also file a grievance, and a reasonable supervisor will pull an observation that's flawed.

I had that happen once. A supervisor stayed only 13 minutes and the member happened to check his watch and record it. He was about to retire and didn't care one way or another about the observation. But I leaned on him a little, we wrote a grievance, and the supervisor, to her credit, said, "You're right. I wasn't paying close enough attention." She then pulled the observation. In general, though, you could face disappointment if your policy is relying on the reasonable nature of supervisors.

Other times, supervisors tell members that their good observations were all flawed, and that the people who wrote them didn't know what they were doing. Then they present them with their own take on a proper observation report. Why? You have to read and observe. The most curious observation report I've seen lately contained the following language:

Your co-teacher told you to use a certain method, and you failed to do so.

While it's great when you can agree with your co-teacher, you are not subordinate to her. Ideally, you should negotiate and find common ground. Of course, when administrators utilize the traditional "eeny-meenie-miney-moe" methodology to pair co-teachers, it doesn't always work out. But even if, by some streak of luck, they achieved a perfect pairing, teachers are not subordinate to other teachers, not now, and not ever.

You used a method that you admitted wasn't 100% effective.

Call me guilty and lock me up. I use methods that are not 100% effective every day. I think about 80% of my students pass. I haven't actually calculated, but a former principal, who looked at this stuff, let me know that. This implies, I guess, that my methods are only 80% effective. However, if you removed the students who failed, I'm sure I could have hit 100. (Works for charters.)

The real problem with that statement is that no method I've ever heard of is 100% effective. If I knew of one, I'd put it in a can, sell it, and become fabulously wealthy. I'd buy a car that I didn't need to push to work. I'd change all my plumbing to hot, cold, and Bordeaux. I'd be like Danielson, I guess, making all kinds of money from my fabulous ideas. Perhaps, like Danielson, I'd get all holier than thou and criticize the method I took the money for.

You failed to have students hold up right hands when they understood and left when they didn't. Instead, you walked around and looked at the students' work.

This, to me, is a real head-scratcher. We hear a lot of talk about formative assessment. You can't just give them a test. You have to know what they know. (This doesn't apply to principals, of course. The whole progressive discipline thing doesn't apply to them, so they just put a letter in your file if you look at someone sideways.) But I was a 15-year-old boy once, and I distinctly recall the prime focus of my existence being 15-year-old girls. No way would I have raised my hand and admitted in front of those girls that I didn't understand geometry, biology, or indeed anything. I'm not sure when I realized the best thing to do when I made mistakes was to instantly admit it, but it wasn't when I was a teenager.

When you walk around and look at work, it isn't a binary true-false, yes-no process. You can see what each student is doing and cater advice to this particular student at this particular time. Not only that, but if you actually know the kids, you have an idea of how to speak with them effectively as individuals. You can tell them if they have problems with capitalization. You can ask them to explain an idea. You can tell them you can't read their handwriting, and that if they don't correct it they'll grow up to have terrible handwriting like me, their teacher. The number of things you can observe and comments you can offer is, in fact, infinite. It's absurd to compare a binary yes/ no process with one that observes, considers, and focuses on the here and now.

Here's the thing--I'm not at all sure whether or not statements like those, absurd though they are, are grounds for an APPR complaint. I once observed video of a lesson that disproved multiple areas of what the supervisor wrote. In the end, though, that observation was tossed because the rater failed to rate observable areas. Saying that two students raised their hands when the video showed 15 was not argued. Nor was claiming to have seen things that demonstrably did not occur.

If absurd assertions on the part of supervisors are not grievable, that's a flaw in our system. Maybe I'll address that in the 300-member negotiating committee. Fair warning, though--when 293 people vote me down I won't be able to tell you about it. Meetings are Top Secret.

Small School UFT Meeting

Hi, I'm Becky, and I'm the UFT Chapter Leader, The principal said we had to have one, and that I had to be it. So let's get down to it.

First order of business is the lesson plans. Now the principal says she really likes Miss Whitman's lesson plan format. Can we please write lesson plans like that, because I'm the one who's gonna have to talk to the principal about it if we don't. I really don't want anyone to get in trouble, because if you do, then I will have to go with you to the meeting with the principal. She says anytime anyone gets in trouble that I have to go and meet with her and you. Please don't make me spend my free periods at meetings.

I'm telling you right now that if you get in trouble for this, the principal will know that I instructed you to follow that lesson plan format. Let's please try to have them prepared at least one week in advance in case the principal wants to see them, and please keep an extra copy in case she walks in.

Next, let's talk about extra hours. They are strictly voluntary, of course, but when you signed up to work here you knew that they were going to ask us to do these hours. Many of them come with pay, but you know how it is.

The principal doesn't want anyone absent on Mondays or Fridays so please plan accordingly. If you have a family emergency you're just gonna have to make it during the week. Anyone who is absent on a Monday or Friday can expect a meeting with the principal, and possibly a letter in file. Please don't make me sit at the meeting, because you'll just get the letter, and there will be nothing I can do about it. I can't take sides.

The principal was very clear when she gave me this job that she didn't like grievances. If you want to file one go look it up on the website or something. Excuse my French, but I'm not putting my butt on the line just because you want to complain about some thing that happened. You can sit and read the contract and complain about this or that, but that's not how we do it here.

There's no such thing as a minimum passing rate, but the principal would like to see as many students passing as possible. That means at least 80%. So make sure, whatever you do, that you have 80% passing. Anyone who doesn't will be meeting with the principal, and again, I'd have to go with you. I don't want to do that so please let's make sure it doesn't happen. If I were you I'd try to pass 85 to 90% just to be safe. If too many students fail the principal will have to do extra observations to see what's wrong, and I won't represent you when you discuss observation reports.

Now just remember, some people will get into trouble, unfortunately, and there's nothing I can do about it. I will go with you to the meetings, because the principal says I have to, but please remember I cannot take sides. You can certainly explain your side if you think it's a good idea, but it probably isn't. The best way is to just do whatever the principal says.

Any questions? No? OK. Hope the rest of the year goes OK. If it doesn't, it's not my fault.

Dear NYC Educator:

I'm a nursing mom and I work as a dean. It's a tough job, sometimes, because I'm always moving. I get really, really thirsty. My doctor says I have to stay hydrated at all times. So I carry this big water bottle everywhere I go. I drink water almost constantly.

My principal has become very upset that I carry the water bottle. I got called into his office, got a lecture on how deans should not be drinking (water) on the job, and a counseling memo warning me to cease and desist. I was told that if I wanted to drink water, I'd have to conceal the bottle as I walked.

What I did was buy a bag that the bottle would fit into. It's a really good size--a perfect fit. The spout comes right out of the top of the bag. Whenever I need water, I just open the cap and there it is. I don't really understand why my drinking water needs to be such a deep dark secret, but it seemed a pretty good solution. For a few weeks I was happy.

But then I started to get The Looks. Mostly I get them from kids, but sometimes I see adults pointing at me too. At first I didn't understand it at all. I'm drinking water. Where's the controversy in that? So last week, when two boys pointed at me, I walked over to them. I told them I needed to ask a question. They took their hats off. That was kind of cool, but it wasn't the question I wanted to ask.

I asked why so many people were pointing at me, and they cracked up laughing.

"Miss, you really don't know?" asked one.

"No I really do not. Please tell me."

The kid asked me what I was drinking. I told him it was water. He asked why I was hiding it and I told him the principal told me to.

"Get OUT!" said the kid. I just looked at him.

He told me I looked like a drunk, like a wino or something. He said people who drink out of bags do it because they're hiding something. They don't want the cops or other people to know they're drinking on the street.

So now I'm a wino, even though I don't drink at all (except water). This is not really the image I want to project. I mean, it won't change my life or anything, but I hate it that kids think I'm drinking on the job. It's the kind of thing that makes me want to drink on the job. I won't, but you know what I mean.

Is there anything in the contract, or in any agreement stating that deans are not allowed to drink water unless they do so surreptitiously? Because this doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Why Are You Here?

What do you say when a student asks you that question? I mean, they pay you to come here. That's one reason. You might also speak of your zeal and dedication. You are here to help. You're on a mission. There is no place else you'd rather be. That can get a little flowery, and kids might not buy it.

Now if you want to be really difficult, you could say this--Let me answer that question in two parts:

As to the first part of your question--Why? Everyone asks why. For years, man has looked up to the heavens, and asked why. Some of the wisest people in our history have puzzled over this issue. There are those guys in India who sit cross legged and meditate. They say OMMMMM... until it ends, and no one knows exactly when that is.

Me, I'm just an English teacher. I can't tell you why.

As for the second part of your question, am I here? Well yes I am.

As it happens, yesterday I was supposed to give an exam. It was a midterm exam, or a midyear exam, or perhaps a final exam. I don't know, really. But it was definitely an exam. My department's exam day was yesterday. But I had a meeting, and I didn't want to leave it with a sub. My kids are mostly good, but I have no idea how they will act with a sub. (With me, they'll act like they do with me.)

The thing was, yesterday I had a meeting scheduled during class time. So I told them on Friday the exam was moved from Tuesday to Wednesday. They asked me why. Now I miss a lot of classes because I'm the chapter leader. I tried, one year, to tell my beginning ELLs that I was the chapter leader. They looked at me as though I'd just fallen from the sky.

The following year, and every year after that, I told them I have two jobs. First, I teach you English. Second, I go to stupid meetings. They asked why. I said because the principal asks me to, and he's, you know, the principal. They nodded their heads, and it seemed everything was fine. Except it wasn't.

My former principal liked to constantly walk the halls. He also liked to check the trailers. On this particular day, it was raining. I heard a knock, and opened the door. There, outside, was the principal, in his suit, with rain dripping from his hair. He walked in the classroom and looked around. A girl raised her hand.

"Mr. Principal?"

"Yes?"

"Why do you make Mr. Goldstein go to stupid meetings?"

He looked at her for a moment.

"I thought they were IMPORTANT meetings!" he said. He then turned around, walked back into the pouring rain, and let the trailer door slam behind him.

Yesterday, a kid walked in five minutes late. That's unusual in my class.

"Why are you late?" I asked.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"You told us you were going to a stupid meeting," said another student.

"So you're late because you thought I wouldn't be here?" I asked the boy.

"Of course," he said.

"Sorry, but the meeting was canceled so I'm here."

Yesterday I actually gave out the work I'd left for the sub. I figured it wouldn't be fair to give the test I had ready, since I'd told them it would be today. The sub stuff was pretty good review for the test, but was a little more boring than what I'd have picked for myself. You always wonder, when you leave sub stuff. Will the sub get it? If the sub gets it, will the sub do it? Will the kids tell the sub they did it already? Will the sub believe them?

I don't know the answers to any of those questions. But I thought the kid had a pretty fair excuse for his lateness. I count myself lucky he was the only one. 

What Makes You Nervous?

For me, it's new things. For the longest time I was locked away in the trailer, and I watched people work on PowerPoint presentations. I thought how lucky I was to be in the trailer with no technology and no need to worry about it. I also thought it was odd I felt that way because I'm drawn to computers pretty much all the time.

Three or four years ago I got a classroom, but the tech was broken. But I made it a point to hang my jacket on the broken smartboard. Whenever I got observed I would insist on getting credit for my innovative use of technology. Wouldn't you know my AP didn't see it that way? Not only that, but the following year, some diabolical force came in and put a functional computer and screen in the room.

So I sat with a young Chinese teacher and asked what she used in her class. She showed me PowerPoint presentations she made and I was impressed. I thought, "What if I do the same thing, except in ENGLISH?" Sometimes I'm brilliant like that. So I started using it a lot, particularly to introduce vocabulary. It turns out that the pictures I used to draw are really awful, and that the photos, cartoons, and GIFs on Google images are a whole lot better.

I started using Apple's Keynote and converting files to PowerPoint. Now I mostly use my own laptop and write everything in Keynote. I know a Spanish teacher who does incredible things with PowerPoint. Sadly, when she explains how she does them I have no idea what she's talking about. Also, all the advanced effects she does on PowerPoint seem unavailable on the Mac version.

The new thing I'm doing now is giving PD. I was trained last summer at UFT to offer CTLE PD. Two women from AFT came and we sat seven days in a row, eight hours a day, doing all sorts of things. One thing we did was eat lunch, so yes I'm a partial recipient of the 100K UFT spent on pizza and bagels last year. (Maybe over at the Post they all put on dark glasses and tin cups and beg for table scraps at lunch time. I'd love to see Rupert Murdoch doing that.)

Toward the end, we all had to give 20-minute presentations. It was pretty nerve racking. I had never, ever given a formal PD before. Even more nerve racking was expanding it to an hour and giving it in front of my staff in September. Actually, though, the only reason I went for the training was so I'd be able to offer the CTLE credit so many of my younger colleagues will desperately need.

Today, after school, I'm going to offer a two-hour version of this PD. It was kind of a long-term assignment to create a two hour version, and everyone in my summer group is supposed to complete writing it sometime around now. I'm always a little nervous when I try new things, but this seems to me the most nervous I've ever been. From years of masters-level classes and PDs, I can tell you that teachers are the toughest audience there is. I know well because I'm one of them.

Now the woman who runs it is asking me if I'll do it again. Maybe, but I'll have to see how it goes the first time.

Wish me luck, please. I'll surely need it.

Day One

It's always jarring coming back after a break. Everyone says, "Happy New Year," and asks, "How was your break?" I want to tell them, "You know, it was pretty good, but I woke up this morning and it was over." I'm always shocked when that happens. I don't feel too bad about going to work, but it's an adjustment thing.

The first thing I found when I got in was a broken elevator. My first classroom is on the third floor. This is because I am so extraordinarily classy administration has determined I need to be placed in the penthouse. It also has something to do with my morning class being so small it fits handily in one of the special ed. classrooms, but if I choose to delude myself with the former, who are you to stop me?

My morning kids were pretty good. Aside from one who wandered in late, they were all there. Not only that, but they were kind of awake and alert. One girl wandered in with so many layers she looked a little like a penguin, but after she waddled out of them she had the look of a normal human being. It's too bad we can't manage giving these kids lockers somehow. I'm sure there are reasons for that, but I feel bad for that girl dragging all those layers around with her all day.

I was lucky yesterday morning. For reasons I can't fathom, all the rooms on the east side of the hallway were freezing. My classroom, on the west side of the hallway, was toasty warm. It's a big change from the trailers, where it's somehow (and no, I cannot explain this) colder on the inside than it is on the outside. I think it's one of those quirks of reality, like Dr. Who's Tardis or something. You can't conceive of exactly how crappy a trailer is until you work in one for, oh, twelve years or so.

I have four periods free between my morning and PM classes, and they disappear in a blur. There are always union issues. I can't help everyone, but I can usually help someone, at least. Alas, I can't reveal private stuff here, unless it's about me. The problem is I didn't really do anything interesting enough all about me to record here. I'll work on that.

I'm working on translating my Gotham Gazette article about Part 154 into Spanish. I can speak and write in Spanish, but not nearly as precisely as English. My nephew is a lot better than me, and he translated the text over the week off. I sat with my friend, a Spanish teacher from Colombia, and he said he'd iron out the kinks for me.

For some reason, instead of quietly giving it to me at some private locale, he decided to walk into my classroom and hand it to me. This caught the attention of at least two Spanish speaking girls, who looked at the paper with all the corrections. They found it hilarious to see someone doing to me what I always do to them. There was poetic justice in seeing someone hand the teacher a paper with red marks all over it. Though it didn't carry a grade, they deemed it had too many mistakes and gave me a C minus. You know, when you're the teacher, and you have a big ego and stuff, and you're always lording it all over everyone how smart you fancy yourself, that's a tough break. I somehow managed to take it in stride nonetheless.

I continued my adventures of writing zeroes on pieces of paper and handing them out for no good reason. It took on a new dimension yesterday as every zero became a collaborative art project. One became some sort of space alien, another an insect of some sort, and the last one was kind of indescribable, for me at least. I should have taken pictures but I had to bring the class back to, you know, English and stuff. They pay me money to teach English and stuff. I try my best to maximize the English and minimize the stuff, but hey, stuff happens.

I hope some good stuff is happening to you. Anyone doing this job deserves nothing less.

The Littlest Pilgrim

This guy, the one on the left, somehow survived Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Animal Lighthouse Rescue found him there, on the street, and brought him to New York. There are a whole lot of strays in Puerto Rico these days, They call them satos and it's estimated there are over 250,000 of them. Many of their stories don't end well.

I'm very happy to be part of one that's going a little better, that of this guy here. ALR had named him Mario, but my wife didn't love that name. Before picking him up, I had only this photo. I sat and brainstormed after work with two girls who happened to be sitting in my department office. One wanted to call him Oreo. I can see how that fits, but I didn't think it was appropriate to name a dog after a cookie.

We were able to agree on Toby, both in school and at home, and
that's what he's called now. He was only Mario for a few weeks, so I think he's unlikely to have an identity crisis any time soon.

You can see he looks just a little different than he did when they found him. Sometimes a bath and a makeover can work wonders.

I'm really grateful for the rescue organizations around. At first, I was frustrated going through all sorts of applications and things, but once something works, it works.

We had another dog, but he moved out with my daughter back in June. (Fortunately, we have visitation rights.) When we got him, a friend of mine (who I later learned actually runs a rescue) screamed at me for not going to a rescue. I hadn't even thought about it. My daughter had been bothering us for a dog for years. I could've gone either way. But when my wife said yes, my daughter began haunting pet stores until she found one. I gave them money, and they gave us the dog. It was as simple as that.

To adopt a rescue is a little more difficult. I had to give references, people came to check out our home, and I gave a few people FaceTime tours. I'm not sure I'd ever even used FaceTime before that. (I usually figure I look like Toby before his haircut and don't bother with FaceTime.)

It was pretty tough for me to find a good pet. My daughter, who visits regularly, is allergic to many animals but tolerates dogs who don't shed. My wife is not allergic but very much appreciates dogs who don't shed. If you're curious, some breeds that don't shed are Maltese, Yorkie, Shih Tzu, Schnauzer, Havanese, and Poodle, or mixes of above. We know Toby is Shih Tzu and we think he might be mixed with Poodle. Although he looks like a Shih Tzu, he kind of acts like a Poodle.

It's possible, of course, that he's a Shih Tzu who thinks he's a Poodle. In my experience, Shih Tzus are more passive and Poodles are more active. Of course, I have very little experience and could be completely off base. In any case, I hope he isn't fooling himself, They tell me the cost of doggie psychiatrists is prohibitive, and my insurance surely doesn't cover it.

Toby is bilingual, of course. I knew this because he ignored commands not only in English, but also in Spanish. By now I've gotten him to do a pretty passable "sit," and I'm working on "stay." As a professional teacher, this is a point of pride with me. Naturally I've put him in school, and I have to admit that he's the first person in my family to attend private school. Beginning January 13th he'll be attending weekly classes at Petco in Baldwin. The trainer tells me there's another Puerto Rican dog in the group, so I'm happy Toby will finally be able to chill with one of his paisanos.

It really boggles my mind that he was a stray. He loves toys. He loves soft toys, hard toys, chew toys, and pretty much any toys he can get his paws on. He will play fetch forever, and love every minute of it. Fortunately, he doesn't care whether it's outdoors or indoors. While you were off vacationing in Hawaii, watching hula girls and drinking coconut milk, I was walking Toby and his sweater through the frigid cold and throwing a tennis ball back and forth in

my living room. (Believe it or don't, I was just as happy as you were.)

I don't know what image floats through your mind when you hear the phrase, "boys with toys," but the one I see is just to the right.  I'm really proud to have played some small part in helping this little guy. It's a win-win, because his happiness is mine too.

On another note, our winter break has come to a close. I'm sorry you have to go back to work today. I assure you that I do too. There are those times when a person has to make the supreme sacrifice and go to work.  Remember that you're there for the kids, and not for the crazy administrators demanding pointless redundant paperwork for no reason. I'm usually happy when I focus on the kids.

And by the way, if you're suffering from empty next syndrome, or if you need a kid to focus on when you're at home, consider adopting one. Works for me, at least.

I wish all readers of this blog a very happy and healthy 2018. Please stop saying this nation has gone to the dogs, because that's an insult to dogs. If dogs ran the country, we'd almost certainly be better off. They're smarter than you think.

The Ever-Expanding Zero

I've been having a rough year. My PM class contained a lot of off-level students, including a few officially named SIFE kids and others I thought were SIFE even if their records didn't say so. It made for tough planning. Do I aim low and help the SIFE kids? (In case that term's unfamiliar to you, it means students with interrupted formal education. These kids may not be literate in their first languages.) Do I aim high and hit the more advanced ones?

Actually I varied my aim and didn't really catch anyone the way I wanted. This went on for a few months. Last week, though, my supervisor moved all the lower-performing kids to the morning and the higher performing kids to the PM. This was a very good move, though it's certainly a lot more work for me.

The students, all in all, are happier. My PM class has become a little goofier. I can't tell if that's good or bad. They have this unexpected tendency to applaud at odd times, sometimes for no reason. I'm not sure whether or not it comes from me. I have this thing about zeroes. Whenever I hear teachers say, "You do this and you get a zero," I want to laugh. So I never gave zeroes until a few years ago. I started writing zeroes on pieces of paper and quasi-randomly giving them to students, slamming them down on their desks and shouting, "ZERO!"

Actually the shout wasn't my idea. One year a girl decided that my job was too important to dispense zeroes, so she took it upon herself. Her shouts were spectacular and mine are just a pale echo. Still, they tend to surprise kids who don't expect it. Now some kids you can't do that to. For example, I have a rather shy girl in my PM class who didn't talk enough. In fact, sometimes she speaks Chinese in English class when I want her to speak English. But I told her how things were. "If you speak Chinese in English class, I'm giving him a zero." I point to a boy in back of the classroom.

The boy objects. "Why do I get a zero if she speaks Chinese?"

"She's not supposed to speak Chinese," I tell him. "There have to be consequences for her actions."

The girl finds this hilarious. I see her smiling a lot lately, something I almost never saw before. The guy is a little confused, but he found a way to avenge himself yesterday. After I gave him a zero, he walked right up to me and slapped the zero on my desk. "ZERO!" he shouted, and the class erupted in applause. This went on for a while. I know they're trying to put off doing classwork but it's so funny I can't stop them.

I like to see goofy behavior in my class. I like to see happy kids in my classes. I can see more happiness all around now that I'm teaching at appropriate levels. I can't promise you that these kids will excel on some standardized test, but I can assure you that kids who are happy in English class are likely to learn more English more easily. There's a line somewhere at which the goofiness becomes too much, and you have to really look carefully to make sure you don't cross it.

But I can live with that.

Like everyone, I fret over the evaluation system. If I hit the magical E, I'm happy. My supervisor actually gives me ideas that are worth following, and could likely do that without all this Danielson nonsense, probably more effectively. I still remember the best feedback I ever got from anyone. It was from my former principal, who swore year after year he was gonna write up an observation but never did. He watched me teach a class. When he walked out, he said, "Those kids love you."

On this astral plane, if you ask me, there's no higher praise.

A Conversation

Me, in hall with student: Are you OK?

Student: I don't feel good.

Me: Go to the nurse.

Student: No. I don't want to go to the nurse.

Me. Then you have to do the work.

Student: I don't want to do the work.

Me: Here are your choices: You can do the work or go to the nurse.

Student: No.

Me: OK. You can do the work, you can go to the nurse, or I can call your house.

Student: I'll do the work.

The Sitting Dead

Some days there's just nothing you can do. I mean, they are there. You can see them. But where are their minds?

I understand, of course. I can't remember how many days I spent, in high school, surreptitiously staring at the girl next to me and wondering whether she liked me. I wasn't really sure what to do beyond that.

The thing is, though, that my teachers weren't required to elicit participation. I had a bio teacher who had one of those things, an opaque projector I think, and every day he'd project notes on the board. He would stand there in his white lab coat, stroke his beard, and ask, "Is everyone finished copying?" When he determined we were done, he'd place a new page up and begin again. (If I had the notes, I could've taught that class, knowing nothing about the subject.)

I was sitting next to Donna Coe. She was gorgeous. She had long brown hair and seemed to dislike the class as much as I did. But she paid better attention than I did and passed all the tests. I did not. I remember the last two weeks of school I walked around with a red Barrron's review book, learning all I would ever know about biology. I retained it long enough to get a 68 on the Regents. At that time, in that high school, if you passed the Regents, you passed for the year. Donna Coe found a boyfriend who went to college and shattered all my dreams. But at least (and I don't generally go around boasting about this)  I graduated high school. Otherwise I'd probably have to teach in a charter school.

When you teach language, it isn't enough to place notes on the board and have students copy. In fact, I'd argue it's never enough to have students copy. As I heard a college student once say to another who questioned the value of an in-class assignment, "It's a class. You have to do something." I subscribe to that philosophy.

As a teacher of English as a second language, I do get students who are reluctant to learn. There are a lot of reasons that could happen. One is being dragged here against your will. It's nothing short of traumatic to leave your friends and extended family behind. It's pretty hard to be in a place with a strange language you don't understand. One way to deal could be to cling to people who speak your first language, make no friends who don't, and hope your parents will come to their senses and move back, like now.

Another issue is that, in some places, going to school is optional, or at least somehow difficult. Thus we have some Students with Interrupted Formal Education, or SIFE students. Sometimes the school system has labeled them thus, and sometimes not. I notice that more of them are boys than girls, and wonder whether their parents put them to work rather than sent them to school. I had one student whose father told me that, in his country, if you didn't sign the kid up by a certain date, he couldn't go to school. I understood that, but I thought if it happened to me it would happen once. It happened to this parent at least five times in a row.

Usually I will have one or two such students in a classroom. This year I have a class with a more significant number. If I aim toward them, I will lose half the class. Of course if I don't, the other half will almost certainly fail. So it's kind of a tough spot. I was thinking about splitting the class and offering two distinct curriculums, with different tests for students in each group. I've never done that before and I don't know whether it will work. Yesterday a few of them surprised me and did better on a test, so I think I'll hold off on that for a while.

In any case, for me, the Sitting Dead is never a good option. Doubtless Charlotte Danielson would have them dancing in the aisles, even the kids who haven't been educated in their first languages. Alas I, a mere mortal, cannot pull that off every day.