The YMCA School of Swimming, German, and Feisty Sharks

Long ago when we were wee 'uns and enrolled in a Backyard Swim class, my brother told me that at the YMCA, they just threw you in the pool and let you figure out how to stay afloat. Although that's not true (is it?), my student teaching felt a bit like being thrown in the deep end after having merely READ about swimming, with a university supervisor, master teacher, and my own rising panic all screaming, "Swim better!" as I flailed about in a pool with 30 smallish but feisty sharks. Consequently, whenever I have student teachers, I've always tried to make things easier for them.

My current student teacher began the semester boldly independent, sure that he could be an amazing teacher right away, mostly by building rapport with kids, which meant talking about football. Without realizing it, he began pretty much copying my day-to-day lesson style and sometimes whole presentations, using my examples and pauses, borrowing far more from me than he imagined, because lesson planning is time consuming and he was teaching, going to school, and working ten hours a week: "I liked the test you're giving, so I'm going to use a lot of it" meant he was pretty much going to change my joke question to one about the Philadelphia Eagles. I suggested activities, had him spin them his way, let him use my homework, and let him believe that he was mostly original.

So. Student Teacher realizes his 4th period is beginning to turn on him (the worst feeling) with only two more days of school, today and next Monday. Finals are over today. "What do you have planned for Monday?" I ask.

"I don't know."

"You better think of something, because the natives are restless." With no test to dangle over young teens and as a teacher without much life experience and with not much originality, he's in deep water.

He hemmed and hawed and hung about, and said, "I wonder what I could do? I wonder what would keep them involved? Hmmmm."

Yes, he was flailing, hoping I'd rescue him. "The internet is loaded with ideas, M." Suddenly, I was working for the YMCA.

"I know! I'll teach them to count in German!" He looked at me for feedback. (Teach them to count in GERMAN?!? OK, that'll be interesting to about ten of them. But twenty sharks'll kill you just as dead as thirty. "If you were thirteen, would that interest you?" is normally what I would ask, pushing him to fix his lessons until the answer was "yes.")

"What incentive will you use? I think you are going to have to cave and buy candy."

"Yes, that's what I was planning to do." I tell him I'm glad he thought of that, because middle schoolers will do anything for a Jolly Rancher, but I think he told a fib. I hate fibs: my brain thought, "You and your German lesson are on your own. After ninety days of Lola-designed, -modified or -approved lessons, you are going to have to apply what you've learned at Backyard Swim."

I'll be in the room so there will be no blood, but fifty-five minutes feels a lot longer when you see fins.

 

Teaching My Favorite

Loving a book is one thing; teaching it to a class--in late May-- is another. My man Abe Lincoln said you can't please all of the people all of the time, but something in me needs everyone to like, nay, love this book. I first taught To Kill a Mockingbird to the first 9th grade English class I ever had, exactly three days after I'd read it for the first time--I loved it so much I HAD to share it with kids, right away. Trouble is, if a kid doesn't like this book, I am mortally wounded and darkly conclude the child has no soul. Fast forward a billion years and I love the book even more, so am even more crushed and devastated if anyone rejects my favorite.

Mr. B., the math teacher, told me the kids were buzzing about the book, really enjoying it, pursuing conversations about it outside my classroom. YESSSSS! Perhaps it is inevitable--one of my kiddos' middle name is (really and truly) "Atticus."

And imagine my elation when JB., upon entering my bungalow this morning and seeing the weekend's homework was to read three chapters, voiced, "YESSSSS!" with a huge smile on his face.

"JB., you're not mad you have some homework over the weekend?"

"No, Miss M--I LOVE THIS BOOK!"

And yes, he said it in all capital letters; my heart heard his correctly.

Teachers: WE ARE OK

Our school is launching a little aid raiser for the Red Cross in honor of the victims of the Moore, OK tornado. Our goal is to raise $1000, a dollar per student.

One teacher ordered "We are OK" wristbands online to give to donors.
Two are manning the collection table during their lunch.
One is housing the funds during our drive.
One wrote the bulletin announcement.
One is doing an "all call" to the parents.
One will manage the transfer of funds to the organization.

I kind of wish students were driving this drive.

(As I was sharing our drive with an advisory class, a student asked, "When did this happen?" Hmmm.)

And as this school year zooms toward its end, I reflect on the two real lock downs our neighborhood schools had--the teachers were champions. I reflect on the teachers at Sandy Hook and Plaza Towers and Briarwood--the teachers were heroes. I reflect on Q, tutored after school by my student teacher, who is going to pass now--my student teacher is a champion. I reflect on the teachers' hearts prompting this drive--they want to help the hurting so badly. 

Hmmmmm.............................maybe teacher-bashing can end for a season, m'kay?

The Gettysburg Address, R. Kelly, and the Custodian

It's that memorize-the-Gettysburg-Address-and-get-two-points-of-extra-credit-for-every-line time of year!

Two students came by after class to make the attempt, one a Gettysburger (memorizing the full speech) and the other nailing down four lines before being stumped by, "It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this," despite the imaginative visual clues given by the Gettysburger and me (in a failed attempt to prompt the word "altogether," we even grabbed hands and sang, "Kumbaya.").

They stayed awhile, chatting about my offer to skip the final if they earned 103% in the course. One asked, "Do you think I can?" And I launched into my loud and horrific take on R.Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly." Fortunately I only know four lines so their ears weren't bleeding yet.

The night custodian, J, popped in to empty trash.

"Can you sing?" I asked.

 "A little," said J.

"Sing 'I Believe I Can Fly,'" I challenged.

And he did. The three of us stood there, stunned, chins on the floor, ears all happy and tingly as J's voice easily hit all the actual notes of the song which I had merely approximated. Our custodian can SANG. He happens to have been born with just one hand, so it's even cooler to say, "Our one-handed custodian can SANG." Anyway, just another day at the office.

I love my job.

Can You Sing?

I ask a question--
our chins drop as you sing out
an affirmative

Must Be Nice

Courtesy shuttle--driver, passenger, myself.

P: You're going home, not to work?

M: It's spring break! I'm a teacher at DPMS.

P: Must be nice.

D: My sister went there! Did you have J.I.?

M: I did for a while, then she transferred to Mr F.

She's a junior now, right?

P: You must have a great memory to remember each student. How many kids in a class?

M: About 34.

P: YOU TEACH 150 KIDS A DAY?

M: It used to be worse--around 180. 

P: How do you know what they don't know?

M: I grade their papers, but you're right, it's hard.

P: You can't grade all their papers--you have TAs for that.

M: I wish. I grade it all. There are no TAs for that. Look, here are some papers right here. (shows bag full of work to be graded) That's what I'm doing when I get dropped off. Look, some studies say class size doesn't much affect student learning, but no one ever studies how it affects the teachers.

P (sympathetic): How could it not? My kid's elementary class has eleven students.

M: Must be nice.

P: What do you teach?

M: History.

P: Excuse me for asking this, but can't they just ask their smart phones for what they need to know? For when stuff happened?

This is where normally I would bridle and get out the soapbox and quote George Santayana and preach for twenty minutes and totally school him. But you know what? My head didn't explode and I didn't melt his face off. I tell myself I must be nice: he simply demonstrates once again that the study of the past is both undervalued and misunderstood. Unless it is taught poorly (and this is why there were no explosions or melting, because it so often is poorly taught), it is about WHY stuff happens, HOW it happens--much more than just WHAT happened. 

Although it would be nice if people knew WHAT happened, too.

Cruel to Be Kind

Last post wasn't very cheery, was it?
But it was real.

A large part of my angst was training a novice teacher. All kinds of ego and fear were in the picture, because he wanted to design his own lessons and he was going to take over two classes full of my giant thirteen year old babies.

"You do realize that teaching is three huge jobs at once--presenting, planning, and class management, any one of which can be really challenging..." I really thought it might be best to use my already designed standards-based lessons, not because I thought they were good (which I do), but because I wondered about his ability to do the other two. Truth be told, he is physically a bit awkward and his enunciation is mushy; when he shared that he'd 1) been bullied in high school 2) overcome a speech impediment and 3) had had an IEP, I believed him. Colleagues would ask me, "How's he doing?" with the small, knowing smile of one who already knows the answer; they thought he'd be lunch meat.

Here's the surprise: he generally connected well with the kids. He was able early on to think on his feet, to persevere, to press on--wow, stuff that you can't teach--impressive. Granted, he was blessed with the best behaved kids I have ever taught IN MY CAREER, and they were already trained when he took them. But their awesomeness built his confidence on the management front.  Presentation-wise, he was pretty good, sometimes even funny, and his mushy diction didn't seem to pose problems for anyone but me. His incessant football references helped him with some students (although they seemed to alienate others, truthfully).

His lessons? Hmm. That was another story. I worried about how he never. ever. wrote anything down. He shared with me that he responded well to encouragement. Uh, oh. I feel weird about high five-ing grown ups, and in the beginning I wasn't sure I should even be encouraging. I was (and remain) freaked out by the atrociousness of his spelling and grammar ("mils" for "mills," for example). I was concerned about his lack of, or over simplified reflections about how the class had gone. His class management? The typical problems of wanting to win the approval of "the cool kids," of needing them to like him, of passing over the quiet children.

Real conversation snippet: Me: "So what went well today?" Him: "It was AWESOME!"

Sigh. 

So last Friday after something bad happened because he didn't write it down, I sort of turned into the calm, icy surgeon and let the scalpel fly a bit. "You don't read much, do you? You don't like to read. [I had tons of evidence]. It shows in your lessons. You don't want to admit to the kids you don't know something,  I understand, but you can't just make things up. You can't get up there and teach something you don't know about. You need to research the time period you are teaching, dig deeper than the text--read a ton!!-- make sure what you are teaching helps them understand, look at your presentation through the eyes of a thirteen year old. You need to rehearse your lessons, anticipate what they won't get, how they'll respond, blah blah blah...." It wasn't a monologue. But it sure wasn't the "Good for you! You are trying so hard" lines that tone-deaf grandmas give their American Idol wannabe offspring.

And I thought, "He hates me and thinks I'm mean." I'm not really used to being hated, and I'm not mean.

Funny thing is, he TOTALLY brought it this week! His lessons had depth, and so did his understanding. When kids asked questions, he fielded them with soft hands himself, or he said, "Hm, I'm not sure, Miss M do you know?" and let me either field them or shrug my shoulders with him. While teaching them about Sequoya, he even googled how to say "Hello" in Cherokee* and had a mini language lesson.

I gave him a high five after class. He earned it.

And then after school I began speaking in football terms: "I would think you'd want to review your performance--don't coaches watch films of games in order to improve and anticipate, to praise and refine? When I ask you how something goes--" He smiled and interrupted, totally understanding what this elderly lady twice his age was doing, but actually and finally COMPREHENDING the urgency, the importance of what I expected him to do to improve: "You don't want to know the score, you wanted to know the big plays," he said. "No, I want to go even deeper than that: I want to know why you called those big plays, how you were able to execute them, and why you went to no-huddle when the players were obviously lost and there was no audible..." 

Anyway, that seemed to change the air, clear it, charge it. Why can people take constructive criticism from coaches but not others? Coaches can literally YELL at kids and it's no big deal, and kids get out there and work for the coaches' curt nod of approval. I would gently say, "Can you think of another way to get S. to participate?" to a grown man and he'd cross his arms and look injured and depressed.

At any rate, I am finally relaxing. He will not mess up my giant babies. He will be a better teacher over time, he is doing quite well for how early on in the semester, he is grading 40% of the papers, and I will be able to do much of my grading at school, thus freeing up my weekends. Win-win. Or as he would put it, "AWESOME!"















*oh-see-YOH