Cuckoo Teacher

I am a cuckoo teacher.

I know this because Alisha told me.

Friday was the last day before break. It was the last day I taught under the Bloomberg regime.

Thursday three administrators and a dean visited the fourth period self contained geometry class.Well the dean actually didn't come inside. He just stood outside the room while two girls yelled at him. I put the poster over the window in the door. We were working on perpendicular lines and slopes. Even I know that two girls cursing out a dean is more interesting than perpendicular lines and slopes, but hey I got the message that we are supposed to teach bell to bell.

Teaching bell to bell means that if you are going to be paid and subsequently evaluated on your teaching than that's all you should be doing in between the bells that signal the start and end of the period. As the break approaches the whole concept can be extended to teaching right up to the moment the last bell of 2013 rings.

Yeah right! Thursday's class went something like this, two girls yelled continously at dean for ten minutes in front of the classroom door. I placed poster chart paper in front of the door window- therefore cutting off the visual if not the audio signal. One administrator came in and told me not to place anything over my window- ostensibly so he can be assured I am actually teaching between the bells I took down poster. Second administrator comes in and asks why I was holding the poster chart paper, which was blank, since I did not choose to write any notes on it while it was hiding the hallway show. Oh- I told her I only used it to block the view of chaos. Oh- she says- if there are problems in the hall I should call the dean and not cover the window. (The problem in the hall was the dean but I hardly saw the point in mentioning that- I was teaching.) She closed the door with the window now completely unblocked. A minute later the principal walked in, I expected another discussion about covering the window. I was wrong. He only wanted to know where our garbage pail is so he could throw out a plastic soda bottle he found in the hallway.

And I'm supposed to teach continuously.

I am tired of slopes and perpendicular lines. We have been working on them for a week. I am still not convinced anyone actually gets the relationship. This is the class that still needs to discuss which axis is the x and which is the y. This is the class that has difficulty placing a ruler between two points and holding it steady to connect the points to create a line. I spoke with the assistant principal for special ed the night before at a holiday celebration and after a couple of glasses of wine confessed that I doubted the concept that enough rigor was enough to make members of this group master the content of high school geometry while I totally ignored the skills and talents that they did possess, (Kindness, humor, tenacity and creativity – all aspects of the class makeup – all not particularly useful in mastering the Common Core college preparatory geometry standards) She said, but if it helped them receive a high school diploma then that would help them in life. She said it with little conviction, she too had had a few drinks. (The conundrum here is that I will pass out passing grades, its easier than writing a justification for large number of failures, which we euphemistically call “scholarship reports”- but it will not help my very needy students to obtain the high school diploma, because there are all sorts of obstacles, mainly the Regents or exit exams in all the subjects that they cannot surmount).

On Friday I pass out coordinate grids with instructions on how to plot a Santa Claus. The paraprofessional works very hard on hers. The rest of us chat.

Alisha tells me I am a cuckoo teacher.

I rise to the bait and ask why?

And Alisha enumerates. I sing, I dance, I hop around (I was hopping around the floor tiles the first day we did slope- this to illustrate the concept of rise and run). I lay on the floor. (Fred was agitated one day, came into the room and said he was going to lay someone out flat, I laid down on the floor and said- oh you mean like this? Fred sat down and started to copy the notes- agitation under control).

When someone says “I'm bored,” I do the The ol' soft shoe (give me the old soft shoe that any girl can do, a one, a two a doodly doodly do) that Ms Bee taught me a half century ago when I took tap lessons. Giovani comes to class twice a week, settles in and immediately says “Miss, I'm bored,” Just to check that it still works.

Maybe Alisha is right.

I am a cuckoo teacher.

I keep trying to teach geometry.

From bell to bell.

Though its tough to compete with the show in the hall.

Discipline or not?

Bernardo came to resource room, a rare occurrence, to tell me he wouldn't be there for a few days since he was probably going to be suspended.

We have a new method this year to deal with behavior issues suspend, suspend, suspend.  If you are wearing a hat you get suspended, if you take your cell phone out you get suspended, if you have  a major or minor fight you get suspended.  If you curse out a teacher you get....

well maybe you get suspended.
Maybe you don't.

Being disrespectful to teachers is not a huge infraction apparently, not like walking around the school with a hat on is.

So Bernardo told me the story.
It was a long story.  They all are.

Mr.  (now I'm having a problem here- I'd like to insert the name of a forest animal, because that would be the teacher's name in translation, but for some reason most of the forest animals I am coming up are real names of teachers in the school- which is condition I find fascinating and when I share that opinion with colleagues I get the kind of looks that makes me think I will never really fit in.)

Back to story.
Mr. Forest told him to move his seat,  And the long and short of it was Bernardo didn't.

So I called the dean who said, she had just gotten off the phone with Bernardo's foster mother who shared the fact that Bernardo had stopped taken his medications because he wanted to join the army and you couldn't join the army if you are on meds.

You can't join the army if you can't read, didn't graduate high school or can't move your seat when a superior tells you to- either, but that conversation with Bernardo is still in the future.

If I thought the dean's office was uncaring and inflexible, it was just because I hadn't spoken to that dean.

She explained sadly, that she didn't really want to suspend Bernardo, but a) he would need to be removed from Mr. Forest's class for a week, b) he would need a place to go fifth period and c)someone would have to talk to Mr. Forest about why Bernardo was not going to be suspended.

I went to talk to Mr. Forest.  Mr. Forest attended the high school in the days when the school was populated mostly by second and third generation families of European immigrants who worked in the blue collar trades NYC had no shortage of then. I wouldn't doubt he was the first member of his family to graduate college.  He is a well liked teacher with few discipline problems, but one who looks back wistfully,  to the days when the school was a respected institution instead of building that is persistently on the list of schools in need of improvement.

Mr.  Forest was one of the people who complained loudly about what was perceived as a lax discipline policy last year.  So it was with great trepidation that I approached him.

I told him how Bernardo had been abused by his father and ended up in foster care.

"My father, was everything to me," Mr Forest recalled, "I want to be everything to my son.  Let the dean make whatever plan she thinks is best."

The plan.

Bernardo did not get suspended.  He apologized to Mr Forest and promised to move his seat next time.He had to attend my fifth self-contained math class for the week instead of going to Mr. Forest's general ed one.

On Wednesday afternoon I heard Bernardo reporting to the other kids in the resource room that I had been banging my head against the wall during fifth period.  I can't recall the exact incident, But I do recall banging my head against the wooden closest, (so much more comfortable than the hard plaster walls.-  Fifth period math has been going less than smoothly this week). He is happy to return to Mr. Forest's class next week.

Oh and by the way- Bernardo didn't curse out Mr.  Forest.  That was some students in Teacherkarps class.  They were not suspended. She told me about it on the car ride home Friday.

I will go negotiate with the dean about them  on Monday.

I am an equal opportunity negotiator. (Busybody?)

PS:  We had a discussion on Friday about the new suspension policy.
"Why do they think giving us a week off is a punishment?"  Evan asked.

I pressed the group for what they thought would be an appropriate policy and got no concrete answer.
I think the answer is an engaging curriculum, which is what we have less and less of every year.

But what do I know?  I'm just a  white suburban soccer mom.

A week in and out of hell

Here's a teacher joke.

If NYC schools were arranged geographically - I would say the superintendent told it. But alas under the reign of mayoral control NYC schools are arranged by network or cluster, or clustered network, which unfortunately has nothing to do with chocolate or nuts, which one would hope- anything that has the word cluster in it- would. I was sent out to another high school in our cluster for training.

And they all begin with the two words Children First.  

Wishful thinking.

So here's the joke already.

A teacher dies and goes to  heaven.  St. Peter takes him on a tour.  After showing him the modest sections reserved for lawyers and doctors, since they had lived lavishly on earth, he shows him the elegant section reserved for teachers since they had not had their just rewards on earth.  The teacher is impressed, but wonders why the other sections were filled with gleeful noise, but the teacher's area was strangely silent.

"Oh, " says St. Peter, "It's only quiet today, because its Election Day, professional development day- there all in hell."

It was a shortened version of hell.  They let us out at 12:30 and I walked home, stopping for a short visit at a friend's home, a retired teacher. I listened to the joys of being retired.

The restarted week began Wednesday morning with a note that three new students were being transferring into my self contained class.  Two are much lower functioning than the those already there. They came with a paraprofessional who promptly fell asleep.  Kenneth told her loudly she couldn't sleep in class, she was getting paid to be there.  I told Kenneth it was not his job to tell her that, but wished my filter was as porous as Kenneth's.  Bettina took  my attendance sheet to make sure, they were really transferred in, then told me not to worry, she was just taking attendance for me. (And then for the record, I was unable to find the attendance folders for the rest of the day, since it got stowed with the work folders,)  Owen walked out of the class for most of the period, and when I questioned him upon return, he confided,  he hated looking like he was in the retard class. I had nothing more comforting to say other than he was man enough to take it.

I told the programmer I thought the number on the register was too many for the size of the room.

He essentially responded - with "I'm woman enough to take it."

Wednesday afternoon, the assistant principal wanted to look at the folders from that class, essentially to determine if I am an effective teacher or not.  (I'm not - we've already established that effective teachers don't spend half their day looking for their attendance folder).

Thursday Elisha was working on the problem of the day when she said something that I never expected to hear from a student,  "how do you expect me to do this if I don't have my notes?"

Wow- we're using our notes!

Except of course the assistant principal had her notebook.

But wait- didn't the network maven say something about children first?

So I call up and an aide brings down the notebook - just for the class time- it must be returned immediately. She opens the door and hands it to me. Looks around then says she'll be back to post mission statement. Every classroom now must have a mission statement.

Elisha stands up, climbs over Dominic's desk, pushes Damion out the way, grabs the notebook and returns climbing over Kimberly's desk this time.

Where are those forbidden cell phone cameras when you really need them?  

Our web-based IEP program was revised over the last weekend.  Now a glitch crashes the program if you hit the save button twice.  We were given new laptops.  I'm not used to the keypad quite yet.  I crash the program repeatedly during my lunch hour.  I wonder if I smash the new laptop and retire immediately will they take the $1243 they made me agree was the price of the new laptop , from my final paycheck or will they deduct it from my pension.  But in a moment of clarity I remember they are selling chocolate in the basement.  (Surreptitiously, the mayor is against selling junk food in school).

In the basement I meet a teacher who used to be in our small learning community but opted out for lunch duty.  "Is this really better?"  I ask.  He complains that if they wouldn't keep changing their minds so much who knows maybe it wouldn't be but for the time being, he rather pick up the milk containers from the floor.

"Have I seen the knew mission statement?"  he asks.  I haven't the aide said she'd be back with it tomorrow.  

I have one mission I tell, him, to get some of the knowledge in my head, into the heads of the students.

"Transference,"  he tells me- we could make a one word mission statement.

Or maybe just - Teach

But then what would we talk about in hell on Election Day?

Bad Days

Larry Ferrlazzo posted the question on his blog, "What do you do when you are having a bad day in the classroom?"  My reply included drinking  wine and watching stupid  tv.  That's what I said on Monday, when I read it.

Then I proceeded to have a series of bad days just to make sure my answer was correct.

Monday, I noticed I had eight Individual Education Plans to write.  A long time ago, when the current special education law and I were both very young, I learned that students with disabilities have plans developed by a team based on their specific needs.

I learned quickly, for teachers in our system, that meant, I had to write an IEP and get a parent's signature on before a deadline rolled around.  There has been much informal discussion-in our little office, just how sincere the process should actually be, but let's just say its been my experience that getting the plan filed is the critical part.

For students I see in a the Resource Room or the self-contained program I have at least a glimmer of who that person is, but its much harder for me to get a picture of a student who I only see for 45 minutes a day in math classroom dominated by the general education teacher.

I find Lamont, one of the students I hardly know,  For a half hour after school, I try to  gather enough information to make a stab at assembling his IEP.  I ask Lamont to fill out a survey about his plans for life after high school.  Lamont leaves it largely blank and when I press him, he says, "honestly Miss, I don't see myself as having a future."

Now it is past the end of the school day, I go directly to the phones only to find that not one counselor is still answering, and leave messages with three different ones.

Lamont tells me it doesn't matter, he doesn't matter.  I respond with that of course he matters, he matters to me.  Which probably sounds as completely lame to him as it does to me.  I think, he matters to me so much that if I hadn't be randomly assigned his IEP to write, I wouldn't had even this much of a conversation with him.

I try again, "you could matter to me, we could try to make each other matter."

And then Lamont says the one thing that gives me reason to hope,  he asks, "how?

"How do you make yourself matter?"

Listen, I know the derivation of the distance formula, I can find the area and volume of many figures, I can even explain math to people who truly believe math is put on the face of the earth purely to torture them.

But I really don't know how we make ourselves matter.

On Tuesday I called a series of guidance offices until I finally got a counselor to talk to Lamont.  He spoke to her for an hour, and she told him to come back any time.  She asked me to send him to her office from time to time, but on Wednesday, she said he voluntarily came up during lunch.

The rest of the week wasn't much better, just the problems were more mundane, lost cell phones, reminders from for the random IEP assigner that I needed to file the cases.  Mad disrespect (I caught lip- from one of my favorite Resource Room students- and ended up calling his mother) and the rest of the stuff that will keep me from ever being that  much discussed, effective teacher.

I had a glass of wine every night this week.
I ended the reply to Larry Ferrlazzo's post that after the wine I had to forgive and forget because that's the only way I could get up and do it again tomorrow.

Maybe that's the answer to Lamont's question- how do I make myself matter.

I get up and do it all again.
Even after a string of bad days.


PS: I bet I matter to the owner of the wine shop.

Who's Afraid?

 Simon needed  to throw something out.   That should not be hard except the Resource Room is its own separate obstacle course.  By the time Simon reached the door which separates the second half of our half of a standard -sized classroom, from the first, he was focused on finding the garbage can on the other side of the partition so I  needed to point out that he actually had his toe pushed into the one on our  side.

"That's a garbage can,"   I pointed out, "tomorrow I will teach you what a desk is,"
and  then I remember that the new evaluation says that only ineffective teachers use sarcasm.

So I explain that I should not say that since there is this new way to rate teachers.
Of course this is interpreted as a new way to rape  teachers.

Which allows Simon to give his opinion on how he would rate teachers, which had nothing to do with   Danielson's Framework for effective teaching.

Whoa!!!  "Just throw out the paper Simon!"

Which might actually have happened, except that at that moment the assistant principal got on the system announcing a soft lockdown.

I have no idea what makes it soft, but it means that now the teacher from the other Resource Room squeezes in with us and we try to find a place which  is not near any windows or doors.  (Now there's a mathematical question for you - in a 10 foot by 6 foot room with one wall of super big windows and the opposite one a glass partition, where do ten people find a sheltered spot?)

So for the next ten minutes  we huddle  (okay- we squish)  together and discuss what makes a good teacher,   Simon and Bernardo likes the math teacher who is very strict- but everyone learns math, Francesca likes the ESL social studies teacher who is very kind, but you learn a lot anyway.  The other teacher worries that we deal with a lot of kids with a lot of issues who may rate us badly, because negativity is just their thing.

Me --  I am not afraid of negativity, big plate glass windows in the middle of an emergency, maybe, but negative students- I'll take my chances.

And then the soft lock down is over.   We go back to the table to work.

Later the assistant principal reminds me that during soft lock downs, we are supposed to remain silent.

Oops - another way I'm ineffective.

Its a good thing I'm immune to negativity.

Early Bird or Worm

Teacherkarp and I were driving to school. The sky was not even tinged with orange. A good half hour remained before the sun would peak over the horizon.  Never one to miss the opportunity to use a cliche I said:

"The early bird catches the worm."

(Or in our case the best parking space.)

But Teacherkarp pointed out that was reason enough for any self-preserving worm, to pull the fallen-leaf covers back over her head and wait for the early bird to be sated with those creatures foolish enough to be early risers.

Everything in life is perspective.  Our school day starts at 8:00 am.  There was discussion about making the start time 9:00 am but that would bring the ending time  close to 4:00 pm, a time when teachers who commute back to the suburbs would be caught in lots of rush hour traffic.

So we complain loudly, that our students don't make it to first period on time. (We are the early birds- they are the cautious worms)

I survived another open school night (my sixtieth by my count - two a year for thirty years).  My Facebook page and blog roll are filled with stories of touching moments, I consider any night no one cries (especially me) a victory.

The night before, Mr. Teacherfish and I had dinner at a local diner. Mr. Teacherfish reported having worked that day at a sight which allowed him to watch planes pass so close that he could see clearly the names of the airlines - Air Emirates, Swiss Air, Air Afrique.  As I watched the world of our insignificant neighborhood from the glass plate windows of the diner, I thought of the passengers on those planes and wondered how little our mutual lives intersected as they flew over on the way to the International Airport.

I thought how much less true  this is during open school night, I am told of  homes lost in the hurricane, anxiety attacks, lead poisoning and family deaths.  I take it all in and the next day I'm teaching the distance formula and the relationship between angles again, just the same as before. That's what they tell us to do.  Teach content-rigorously.

And yet like parallel lines and a transversal, our lives do intersect.  My friends on Facebook and other blogs prove we do matter. (My personal impact this year involved time and energy spent in the programming and placement office trying hard to untangle bureaucratic messes- hardly the grist for moving Facebook posts)

The day after open school night I find myself back in yet another classroom before the sun rises.  I quickly stow my personal belongings under the desk, lock the door and run to make copies.
And when I return to the classroom the belongings are gone.  The panic rises, no keys to open my house door, no wallet or money to take a bus home.  And then my co-teacher asks me why he saw my coming out of our next door neighbor's classroom.  I go next door.  There is my stuff- hidden under his desk.

Too many classrooms for this old teacherfish,  Perhaps I need to be the cautious earthworm and crawl back to safety until the early birds have all flown away and I can remember in which room  I actually teach first period.

My students wouldn't mind.  They'd love a few more hours of sleep.

Highly Effective Teaching and the Circus

Our small learning community group was discussing the Danielson Framework.  What a surprise. That's all we ever do.  The facilitator (or teacher leader as it says on our table of organization)  was making a pitch for having an honest, worthwhile discussion, not an easy thing to accomplish in any situation but a when the members feel bamboozled into being there....

 Last year joining our small learning community group had no loopholes, so there were about thirty members.  This year there are all sorts of loopholes, including the one that says those who have to do Special Education paperwork don't have to join one- unless of course -you're me.

I have lots of special education paperwork, but I am a teacher leader so somehow I have to be in one. (If that sounds impressive, just remember that the only result  I notice is I lose the period I am supposed to have to do all that paperwork- I don't lose having to do the paperwork I am still responsible for it.)

And I get to make stupid pleas for having honest, worthwhile discussions.

One member (whose real name is so appropriate for symbolic use as a substitute metaphor- that I cannot come up with a better replacement) suggested it was not fair that some people got to do hall and lunch duty while we have to sit around and discuss our teaching practice.

I have a student in the hospital awaiting a liver transplant.  She is sixteen years old.
Is that fair?
Life is not fair.
I do not say that.

I press on.

We examine the examples of highly effective classrooms in regard to behavior practices.
Classroom interactions between the teacher and students are highly respectful, relfecting genuine warmth, caring and sesitivity to the students as individuals.  Students exhibit respect for the teacher and contribute to high levels of civility among all members of the class - Danielson 

I got to thinking if I ever got there in a thirty year career.

Once long ago in a place far away I taught a grade school class. The students were all children of recent immigrants with serious enough learning disabilities to be placed in a self contained special education program. (Currently standards have changed and students with similar profiles probably would be in an inclusion program- but whether or not that's a good thing is story for another day.)

There was a chemistry to that class that made it special. I got assigned jury duty and met a man who sponsored the program that gave free tickets for the circus to handicapped children. I had never been able to obtain those tickets before- my students just didn't appear “sad” enough- but there was a benefit from sitting -unselected- in the jury pool for three days.

Our school bus got stuck in a Manhattan traffic jam on 34^th Street and 5^th Avenue. Julian leaned forward and explained to me that we could walk to Madison Square Garden in a few minutes. Julian was ten, how he knew that- I didn't I want to know but I am not above taking advice from ten year olds. We arranged our pickup and walked west. I stood on Seventh Avenue and 33^rd Street directly across from the Garden and asked a cop how to enter. I had a complicated set of directions that explicitly explained where we should line up – but we saw no lines on Seventh Avenue.

The cop asked me if I had arrived from Iowa just that day (along with ten -ten year olds with the variation of skin tones only a class made up of recent world-wide immigrants could possess). The entrance to the Garden was directly across. We held hands, crossed the avenue, rode the elevator up and were suddenly ringside. Madison Square Garden was empty. The circus people took the kids on elephant rides around the ring.

The arena filled slowly throughout the next two hours. I found out later, that the intricately detailed instructions- the cop had me ignore- created long lines along Eighth Avenue and Madison Square Garden was filled at the rate one would expect it would take to process ten thousand “handicapped” children- one school bus at a time.

What kind of teacher takes ten special education kids off a school bus in the middle of a Manhattan traffic jam(on the advice of a ten year old)?

Maybe one who thinks the classroom interactions between the teacher and students are highly respectful, reflecting genuine warmth, caring and sensitivity to the students as individuals..

Or maybe one who is just crazy.

For at least one moment in my life I really trusted the class community relationship. And it paid off- in elephant rides.

Will I ever have that again? There are moments I think it is possible- like Thursday morning when I was teaching the distance formula to some students with less than stellar reputations for academic and social performance. All hell was breaking out in the hallway, screaming, cursing, security whistles, but we continued to work even as the crashing against the wall shook the green board we precariously perch on a desk, to use as a projector screen. Nobody would have video-taped that moment to post on the practices of highly effective teachers website. But I count it as a victory.

I asked our skeptical small learning community how often they felt they reached the point where the atmosphere of their classes reflect the one described in the framework.

Almost all, claimed to be at that point currently.

Me- I wish I was always there, but I can only know I reached that level once, a long time ago when I sat ring-side watching the elephants trot my students around the circus ring.