Missing brain cells and human cloning

I am scheduled for resource room with the self contained ninth grade. Oh the joys of special education reform (as practiced by the DOE). Short version, the self contained group is self contained (or all by themselves with the special ed teacher) for English and math. For social studies and science they become collaborative team teach students (they squeeze in with an inclusion class with two teachers). And for the rest of the day they are just “regular” (as in “regular ed”) ninth graders.

But they don't go to Spanish class.

And after several months of them

a)driving the Spanish teacher crazy,

b) driving everyone else crazy after the Spanish teacher kicked them out of Spanish class

c) following their homeroom teacher around while she tried to eat lunch and go to the bathroom,

d) all off the above

the principal got the idea that they had to go somewhere when the inclusion ninth graders go to Spanish.

So twice a week I get them.

The first couple of weeks went like this:

Me: Take out your books.

Boy: Why are you looking at me?

Me: Sit down and start writing

Girl: I'm so done.

Boy:Why are you looking at me?

Girl: I am sooooo done.

Me: What are you done with? You haven't taken anything out yet?

Girl: You got a bugger up your nose.

Boy: You got an eye problem? What are looking at?

And that was a good day.

You can read more about life in the NYC special ed classroom here.

But their main teacher ate her lunch on the other side of the wall that created two special services classrooms out of one “regular” one and she would come in from time to time to yell at them.

So we got used to each other.

Camden wanted to do his science homework. The biology teacher is the definition of rigorous, high expectations teacher. And they are afraid of her. She had given them an article about a human cloning experiment in South Korea and had given them thoughtful questions to answer about both the ethics and science of the practice.

What followed was a lot of me drawing miotic and meiotic cell division on the board. (as well as some sheep, a diagram of a grossly not drawn to scale sperm and egg uniting and a loose representation of a uterus.)

The light bulbs went on! Someone could use that information to create a “race” of evil doers with that kind of technology, Rex, the ring leader suggested. And now they were shouting over each other to condemn human cloning.

“What if I had a dying a baby?” I asked. “Would it be okay to clone an organism that would provide liver cells? How about spine cells for a paralyzed child?”

Silence.

Then more shouting over each other about those morality issues.

Then me begging them to take their books out and write down some of these very cogent arguments.

The bell rang. And they were off.

The next day I attended a workshop about assistive technology. While looking at some case studies about students with physical disabilities someone raised the question about what medical technologies would become available in the next decade to address their disabilities.

I have always thought about how students with emotional and learning disabilities somehow lose the “oh how sad,” factor on the “understanding” scale. Where a child who drools, walks with crutches and speaks with a slur is considered worthy of our granting that s/he was dealt a lousy hand, those born with fewer brain cells, or mixed up wiring are just our trouble makers or in my principal's case, those who we willingly don't hold to high enough standards.

But if ever there was a group of students who might benefit from a few extra cloned or otherwise brain cells, that self-contained class would be it.  They would find life so much easier with just a little bit more gray matter. But until then.....

I'm done. I'm sooooo done.

Time to remove the bugger from my nose.

Dads

 The dessert at the Chef's Table Dinner on our cruise.   

February 20, was the 90th anniversary of my father's birth.  We were cruising the Caribbean at the time.  It was the perfect way to celebrate my father's life. He would have enjoyed, the balmy air and sunshine, he would have enjoyed the off colored comedy shows, but most of all he would have loved the food.  Not so much the kitschy (but delicious) dessert above.He would have preferred a generous slice of strawberry shortcake- he would have understood that, but the the unending supply of food  available at any hour, in any quantity.

My father was blessed with an appetite that allowed him to tell his family at home, as young soldier in World War II,  that he loved the army.  Army food was abundant and not necessarily kosher, two attributes he had never experienced before.  He had a  metabolism that allowed him to consume large quantities of it, throughout his life, without ever gaining a girth that would have made his army uniform snug.  (Just for the record- I have no such luck- I inherited my metabolism from my mother.)

Friday, I sat at my desk, catching up with paperwork, when Kenya, RC and Edwin were working with the young man who got the Resource Room for upper grades, when it was taken away from me.  The sixth graders were on a trip.

They were reviewing the Civil War.  The subject of dads came up.  RC spends every weekend with his dad, a cable TV installer.  He was talking about it.

"I wish I could talk to my dad."
I wasn't sure if it was RC or Kenya.

I wished I could talk to my dad too, I thought. I wish I could tell him some of the dirty jokes I heard last week.

Edwin said his dad was murdered when he was a baby,  Kenya said he never saw his dad.  Young Resource Room teacher said his dad played college basketball.

And then the discussion went back to the causes of the Civil War.

I marked sixth grade social studies test.

I got to spend forty years with my father.  I shared sunshine and off colored jokes and endless buffets.

And for that I am truly grateful,

What is rigor?

Larry Ferlazzo,  whose fascinating and  prolific blog activity leads me to believe he has found the secret of living life without sleep asks the question "What is rigor?"
This was my response in the comment section:


The principal asked that very question at a faculty meeting and the teacher next to me leaned in and said. “isn’t that what happens to a dead body?”

To me true “rigor” is the level of work just a bit above any student’s comfort level. It cannot be an arbitrary concept. I was in a science class the principal was observing. It was a “do over.” The principal wanted a lesson with more rigor then the original one she observed. The students were to read an article on Archimedes and write a summary. The principal had “encouraged” the teacher to pick a” rigorous” article. The students took highlighters and highlighted a variety of random sentences and copied or paraphrased many of them into their summaries. The principal walked around and encouraged them to write more, “good summaries include a lot of details,” she admonished. And they did. The lesson “looked” rigorous, lots of reading, lots of writing. The principal was happy.

I read the summaries- not one person mentioned the principal of displacement. No one could explain the relationship between displacement and mass. The article was above both their reading and science independence level, in my opinion.

So I am afraid that rigor is just a word, a trick, a distraction from the real work of education meeting students where they are and moving them up on the learning curve in a thoughtful, planful way.

Lost Souls and Accountability

Here's the thing about accountability-
It makes people accountable
And maybe that's not always a good thing..

If someone would give parent a score for parenting  Angelica's and Tom's parents would not be anywhere near the top of the list.

Angelica came to us  six years ago in ninth grade.  She and her two friends steadfastly refused to wear the school uniform to the great consternation of the assistant principal- earning them the nick name "Three the Hard Way."   One straightened out, one dropped out and Angelica kept drifting along, attending too many days to be discharged and not enough to make progress towards graduation. This year Angelica, with no help from the folks at home, decided she would take control and works things out herself.  She decided to transfer to a transfer school (hey- I don't make the names up).  I guess you can say a transfer school is a life boat for screw ups who want to turn it around and graduate. You can earn more credits and exit faster because - you earn credits faster.  (If it sounds like I don't get it- that's because I don't really). So Angelica transferred and then she got kicked out- because someone counted heads and figured out they didn't actually have a space for her.  So they made her a deal.  She should come back to our school, attend regularly and then in March she could transfer back to the transfer school since they would have room then.
Now that's the sticking point- Angelica doesn't attend regularly. She comes in from time to time and asks me to call Maury (another detail about transfer schools -they're on a first name basis) at the transfer school to see what's up.

So a few weeks ago I called and Maury said Angelica had to attend regularly if she was to be accepted. So she's come all the days we were open in February and today she made me call Maury again. I sold her- I told Maury she really needed to move on, she really needed the transfer school, she really is a sweet young woman.

And Maury's response.
Sweet was one thing but if she wasn't going to attend regularly, she wouldn't graduate and therefore ruin their graduation statistics. He needed proof she would attend regularly.


And then Tom came by.
Tom appeared last year in May.  He had left a school in Maryland in December, been assigned a school that didn't want him- oops- I mean didn't have appropriate services in February and actually showed up on our register in May.  He doesn't read very well, math is a mystery but somehow he passed history after attending for 17 school days.  (Again- I don't pretend to understand these things).

But he came to summer school. Where we worked on telling time on a analog clock, he showed me a picture of his hot Russian girlfriend, and one day confided that he was actually not really living anywhere.  I told the principal and she said something to the effect that we didn't have a social worker or guidance counselor in the summer program and we would deal with it in the fall.

He came in the fall for a few days and then moved to another relative's house in Brooklyn and disappeared again.

Then yesterday the principal called me in her office.  She had a transfer paper on her desk for Tom. "We can't take him back," she said.  He's nineteen, he has very few credits, we'll never be able to graduate him.

Yeah, we probably wouldn't be able to graduate him.  But maybe I could get him into the vocational training program like Louis.

Maybe there would be a place that actually wanted him.

But then there is our graduation statistic to worry about.

Accountability
It gives us all something to worry about.

Why teach?

So this was my day:
First period, ninth grade team teach algebra in the the algebra room.
Second period,sixth grade team team teach social studies in the science room.
Third period, lunch, in the Resource Room, and Elena came for help with her project.
Fourth period, resource room (really babysitting) with the self contained students who don't go to Spanish in the self contained classroom.
Fifth period another sixth grade social studies in the algebra room this time.
Sixth and seventh period science with the eighth grade in the science lab.
Eighth period I went to the bathroom- by myself.

Elena asked me if she could come for help during lunch. I knew it was going to be a hell day. But the algebra class had a project due on working wages and graphing and Elena got confused. Elena looked up the hourly wage of a kindergarten teacher and then graphed how much one would make as a teacher after working various number of hours. She needed just a bit of help figuring out the slope of the line. Elena is kind, and cooperative and enthusiastic. And grateful.

She reminds why I wanted to be a teacher.

According to Monster.com, kindergarten teachers make $19 an hour.
Elena wants to be a kindergarten teacher.

Crazy day followed by a heated union meeting.
So many attacks on teachers, so much frustration. So much yelling.

Why would anyone still want to be a teacher?
I'm glad Elena still wants to be one.

Highs and Lows

So while I dived the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean, the Teacher Data Reports were released.

Okay so I promised not to make this a whiny, complaining blog, enough of those to go around, but still I couldn't let this one just slip by.

First of all I do not have a TDR. Although more than 80% of my career I worked in grades that were "reported," the three years the reports are based on - I did not.

Second of all, I read clips from a variety of sources and here is my summation of how the data reports are made. The city makes a prediction of how well the students in your class should do on their one day only, state tests. If the your students do better then they predicted you get a high score, if your students do worse you get a low score.

I resisted the urge to look at anyone's report- until I didn't.
I didn't find much interesting.
My husband came home and looked over my shoulder.
He noted that margin of error was 50%.

The news media made a big deal about them.
I thought it was pretty complicated to get through all the blather to the actual reports.
Will it make any difference in the end?

I don't know.
Why is it open season on teachers?

Teacher evaluations

Why We live in Fear of Having Our Evaluations Based on Standardized Tests;
From the sixth grade predictive- that's test speak for test that comes before the test.

What are the possible outcomes if you roll a fair six sided die?

Sixth graders answer: Heads or Tails.