Sunday, March 23, 2014

What is quality? Green bagels, shopping carts and plastic porn stars


Monday was St. Patrick's Day.  I found a green sweater at 
the bottom of my closet and the assistant principal served green bagels.  It was the high point of the week. The rest of the week was the dreaded quality review.  I am not sure that the whole experience  has anything to do with quality or even review for that matter. 

But they think it does  The powers that be, come in and measure our quality- with a rubric.

It has a lot to do with how things look.  So we spent a lot of time putting up bulletin boards with their own rubrics.  When we were finished with the bulletin boards someone suggested we decorate our classroom doors with information from the college we attended.  Upon request, a school aide came around and wrapped the entire door with bulletin board backing  paper in the color of our choice and then we were supposed to make the door both attractive and filled with useful  information.  Not having my own classroom, I was spared. The young resource room teacher who struggles hard to figure out what to teach, filled the door with three dimensional bumble bees (It least it started out 3D, the fan- folded wings, that protruded from the door were plucked from the bodies of the poor bumble bees throughout the week). Apparently bumble bees were the mascot of the California college she attended (one can only imagine how useful that information was to immigrant NYC students who could barely afford living at home and attending the local community college).

I  was being my negative self about the whole door situation to one of the math teachers.  I was pontificating about how smaltzing up the hallways before  the reviewers  came, hardly indicated that there was any quality to be reviewed.

"Sure, he said but didn't we all decorate our houses for the holidays?," he asked.

I never decorate my house for the holiday.  Not my tradition.  And does a decorated door indicate a thriving, happy family behind the colored lights?

It is my tradition to acknowledge the holidays .  The cashier at the supermarket noted that my shopping cart contained the triangular cookies for the Jewish holiday of Purim as well as corn beef and cabbage. I was being negative at the supermarket as well and had complained to the manager that, it was impossible to find a cart in the parking lot but upon finally locating one I filled it with multicultural calories-  which raised my blood sugar.  And I would have forgotten all about the shopping cart hunt, had not some  kid stopped me in the hall on Monday and told me I got him trouble. 

"I don't even know you'" I responded.
"But you told the manager there were no shopping carts left in the parking lot." he said, "and its my job to collect them."


I found a  New York Times piece, The Story of Bridie and Mo on the opinion page., I am still not sure what the writer's opinion was, (I guess I don't meet the Common Core Standards for close reading), but I liked the writing and it certainly was at least as St Patricky as green bagels.

We read through the piece in resource room.  It spoke of the neighborhood in Dublin, what had long been a sooty, rundown port of 19th-century warehouses had become one of the most modern and desirable neighborhoods in Europe — all luxury apartments and upscale hotels bathed in theatrical lighting, a glossy prairie of glass and steel. "It could have been Redhook, in Brooklyn, Donna smiled, she liked shopping there.   The writer goes on to describe the doll house, the six year old gypsy girls were building. Jose  liked the line,a mattress on the ground with a naked Barbie doll lying facedown in the middle of it, like a porn star down on her luck. I liked the word describing the brisk wind, skirling in from the sea.  I don't even know if skirling is a word but if the New York Times printed it....

Perhaps the piece was about the contrast between the have and have nots when Ireland was in boom years, perhaps it was about the loss of those boom years to Ireland.

Perhaps I should figured it all out before I shared it.  But maybe good writing isn't always about making your point in five paragraphs, with a clearly supported claim, three paragraphs of supporting evidence, and convincing succinct summary. Maybe good writing is about made up words and metaphors that link naked plastic toys to porn stars. Maybe quality can't always be measured by a rubric and a checklist.

The week ended.  The reviewers left.  They will deliver a verdict. Will it change our future- who knows?

Friday morning, the Resource Room teacher in the other room was discussing Russia, Ukraine and the Crimea. Evan, wanted to know why they got to discuss the Ukraine and we read articles about Irish Gypsies.  Evan felt like he had skin in the game, he had already enlisted in the army.  

We were only a little bit into the discussion of that whole mess when the bell rang.
I guess I need to find something to read about that part of the world tomorrow.  

Maybe quality isn't always that easy to measure.
Its hard to know what it really is. Its hard to figure out how one really provides a quality education.

Its much easier to just paste the wings back on the bumble bees.











Saturday, March 1, 2014

May I have your attention please?

Vagina.
Do I have your attention?

I had the attention of the second period resource group when I said it.

Two sections of resource students crowd into our little room, second period.  I don't mind.  I kind of like it,  The other resource room teacher is the Dean/basketball coach.  I haven't actually collected hard data, but it certainly seems like his presence has decreased rudeness, disrespect, and general ennui.

It still gets a little noisy.  Friday, the semester was in full swing.  We were in the process of completing a whole week without a major snow event, something that hadn't happened all winter- and looks not to be in the cards for next week.  Everyone had assignments or tests and the level of concern which had been hovering around none at all, was raised.  Jose was trying to study for a math test- I don't know what Jose learned, but I learned the Spanish word for slope- pendiente-, Jennifer was working on a worksheet on intersecting planes, (which involved every cardboard box in the room) and B.J. was revising the beginning of an essay on Dracula.

Not exactly an essay, he had to respond to a piece of literary criticism, that claimed Dracula was a "reflection and rebuke of Victorian society." He had to explain how reading the essay would help understand the novel.
Which B.J. found hard to do, even after looking up what rebuke meant, three times. B.J. was frustrated

The group kicked in.

Evan and Christy had had his English Teacher last semester and assured him she thought she was teaching college.  Nina, who spent the last snow day, learning all about denial of rights, was able to explain satisfactorily what the Women's Suffrage Movement was about, Jennifer happily pushed aside the rectangular prisms, (tissue and shoe boxes) and rephrased the definition of rebuke. Jose took the opportunity to practice reading English aloud, read the beginning paragraph and did something, he hardly ever does; he asked for the meaning of a phrase.

"What is a chastity belt? Miss," 

So I told him, "its what men, usually husbands or fathers, put around women so a man can't get to her vagina."

Now, I've taken lots of courses on effective classroom management.  I've learn to say, "when you hear my voice, clap three times."  I've been told to hold two finger up.  I've read that lowering my voice to a whisper, works better than raising it to a yell.

What no one ever told me was that if you say the word,vagina, once, fairly loudly.  Everyone stops, looks and listens.

I mean everyone, even the students on the dean/basketball coach's side of the room.

I don't know if years of experience gives me the ability to manage a class effectively.  I don't know if all those years give me confidence, I don't even know if it makes me not care about getting in trouble, but I can tell you when a chubby, middle aged women says vagina loudly, people listen.

Now that everyone was focused on B.J., we could get his answer done.  Jennifer, helped him unjangle his thoughts and compose complete sentences.  Evan assured him which catch phrases, high expectations, teacher was looking for,Christy spelled Victorian and Nina helped Jose graph lines with different slopes so I could help B.J.

And then the bell rang, everyone was off to the next class.  We didn't even get real chance to discuss how one urinates wearing a chastity belt- though the question was raised. Its supposed to snow again on Monday, so school will be open or closed but either way there will be no crowds.  I suppose the whole thing will be forgotten by the time we are all together again.

Until the next time I need their attention.

Vagina, vagina, vagina.