Examples from "Art Exploration: Masters and Apprentices" after school club, spring 2009

Master: Jackson Pollock

Apprentice: Henry Shugrue, age 7

Materials: tempera paint, marbles

Kids at Play

There are only two more weeks left in my "Art Exploration: Masters and Apprentices" after school club.  I am already scheduled to teach a sports/gym games club on Tuesdays.  I'm calling it "Kids at Play."  I was hoping to reorganize the ages because the second graders' coordination and motor skills are significantly more advanced than the kindergartners and first graders, but the groupings are set. 

I've made a list of games that I remember playing in gym class and have surveyed my son and his friends to include a few of their favorites.  I am also hoping to have hula hoops and jump ropes available for anyone who doesn't want to participate in the scheduled game.  If I learned nothing else from my art club, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley"!

Securing equipment and gym space for the club is going to be an additional challenge, though at least I won't have the tension of sharing a classroom as I did with the art class.  Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to maintain the room--and as a teacher who often "lent" her room to SAT courses and summer school classes, I was inordinately conscientious--she complained on an almost daily basis.  The worst part--she never once mentioned her complaints directly to me.  Instead, she complained to the after school coordinator.  There are few personality traits I find more annoying than this sort puerile passive-aggression.  

It has been such a long time since I posted.  I didn't think that I would continue this blog after I left my teaching position, but I still have my hand in teaching as a volunteer.  

Since my unofficial sabbatical began last June, I have been volunteering in my son's classroom two days a week.  Mostly I just help out where I'm needed during "Reader's Workshop".  I have a regular group of kids that I meet with to discuss aspects of their novels.  Sometimes I facilitate a creative project collaboration.

I have also been serving as Co-chair of the Enrichment Committee in my son's program.  In this role I have organized a number of whole-school assemblies: Tufts Treasure Trunk, David Zucker's Poetry in Motion, Infinities Chamber Ensemble's "Meet the Woodwinds with Peter & the Wolf", and The Roots Music Collective's "Roots of American Music".  In May, the 2-4 grades will attend a production of Charlotte's Web at the Wheelock Theater.  In February, The Amatuer Telescope Makers of Boston helped us host a "Star Party".  These events were an overwhelming success.  I hope I have the opportunity to continue this work next year.

I have also been volunteering after school teaching an art club for k-2 students.  I designed the program to introduce the students to famous artists and their styles and to provide them with an opportunity to explore various media in a safe and creative environment.  We read Peter J. Reynold's wonderful book Ish during the first class.  The kids then had a fun time identifying their Miro inspired line drawings as "flower-ish" or "dinosaur-ish."

Next week, I will teach my first sports club: Kids at Play.  This club combines traditional sports with favorite gym games: dodgeball, capture the flag, nuke 'em, pinball, etc.

Also, two days a week I have been leading a book group of 5/6 students.  We had a rich discussion of metaphor on Tuesday, and we finish the novel, The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich, tomorrow.  I am excited to see the students final assignment: "Design-Your-Own Homework."  A couple of the students are as perspicacious as any grade 9 student I have taught.

Finally, I am starting a book group at a retirement community in Randolph.  I am awating copies of our first read, Jodi Picoult's 19 Minutes.  While I did not like My Sister's Keeper or The Tenth Circle, I am optimistic about this story.

This Monday is a perfect example of the disconnect between what a teacher is expected to do or must do and what the administration provides for support.

Two years ago in the spring, the freshman English teachers were told that they would be implementing a new instruction model, balanced literacy (BLM).  My three main complaints: 1. ) We had neither been invited to participate in the discussion leading up to this decision nor consulted for our input prior to this decision; 2.) We were asked to begin implementing the new curriculum and methodology concurrently with learning about it and how to teach it!    This directive came before my second full year teaching the curriculum.  I was finally comfortable with the material and looked forward to honing the lessons and materials I already had.  But I soon realized that there would be no full nights sleep this year either; and,  3.) The BLM is an elementary and middle school program.  If a BLM is implemented effectively, the students should be entering high school with the skills necessary to achieve the grade level standards as delineated in the Massachusetts. Language Arts Curriculum Frameworks.  In actuality, all we as freshman teachers needed to learn was the terminology used in the elementary and middle schools to ensure clarity and provide continuity during the transition from a standard literacy program to the more sophisticated analytical approach at the high school level.  This information could be conveyed via handout with an estimated cost to the district of $ .05.  

Instead, the district hired a consultant to "teach" the freshmen teachers BLM.  We were pulled repeatedly from our classrooms to discuss the model and watch videos showing its successful implementation in middle school classrooms.  Ironically, when I asked the consultant to what school we should look as evidence of its successful implementation, she responded, "To the middle school," referring to out own districts middle school, which had implemented the program (I imagine with the same lack of collective decision making and preparation as we were  provided). And they were only in the second year of implementation!

After a few informational sessions, the consultant began to demonstrate the model.  Oh my.  She claims to have been a middle school teacher in the past, but based on her disorganized and superficial lessons, I can only imagine why she left the classroom to become a consultant.  And I'm sure the money played no small part in her decision.

This woman had zero rapport with the students and failed to do so much of what a good teacher ought to do in any lesson. Her instructions were vague;  her explanations were vague; she failed to activate the necessary prior knowledge; and she failed to synthesize with this new skill the prior knowledge or skill set.  

At first, I was embarrassed for her, but it didn't take long for my empathy to shift to enmity and resentment.  Why is the woman being paid god knows how much to teach us to teach when she cannot teach?

And, now to ultimate complaint.  I am being pulled once again on Monday--this time for her to watch and critique us teaching a  BLM lesson.    So, I need to prepare lessons  for all my classes while I spend the day observing, and because the session runs all day, I will lose all my prep time.  I will neither receive additional prep nor be relieved of duties to make up for the lost time.  Thanks administration for once again not acknowledging, understanding, or respecting the demands of teaching.

I look forward to Monday like the innocent looks forward to incarceration.

As a fifth-year teacher, I have spent many hours lamenting aspects of the teaching profession. Now, however, I think I have reached the edge. Statistically, 27 percent of teachers leave the profession within five years. I would also venture to say that that figure represents the top and bottom of the pool Here's why:

A.) The best teachers are the ones who despite large class sizes, a paucity of resources and prep time, and the inordinate demands of duties and paperwork, make it work. But after a few years of busting rump, these hardworking teachers are disillusioned. Partially because of the bureaucracy; partially because of the lack of respect from students (this is the least of my complaints), parents, and administration (my biggest complaint). And predominantly because the working conditions are truly unhealthy--mentally and physically.

B.) The worst teachers stay because they are as inadequate as the system in which they work (or don't work as the case may be). Bad teachers don't care much. They don't care if they are unprepared; they don't care if their lessons are boring or superficial. Bad teachers don't care if students truly learn. They provide little feedback and little variety. They don't take work home because multiple choice tests are easy to grade and can be graded during a single prep period.

To really make it work, a good teacher must take work home. Of course the standard retort: "Every professional takes work home." Well, most of those professionals know that taking work home and working harder during the day translates to higher earnings. Not so teaching. No matter how hard I work, and no matter how little other teachers may work, we will continue to get paid the same meagre salary. Again, the standard retort: "That's the bed that teacher's union made." Well, in my opinion, the Union wet the bed. I want compensation for my hard work, and I want squatters (I'll describe this type of teacher later) making what they're worth--squat.

Teachers take home hours and hours of work because there isn't sufficient prep time during the day. For every eight day cycle I teach 30 hours. To prepare for these classes: to research and develop lessons and materials, make photocopies, set up equipment or materials, I have 12 hours of prep time. Additionally, 2 of these hours are designated support periods to work with students. (These hours can be filled with additional duties whenever administration deems it necessary.)

And of course, students produce work that must be reviewed and assessed. Am I also expected to review and assess the work for 120 students in this time as well? Consider I have one page papers (though most of the time papers are much longer) from each of my 120 students in a single 8 day cycle. I would have only six minutes to read and provide feedback for each of these papers, and this only if I were to use all my prep time for correcting. So, in reality, I can either prep or assess, but not both, in the time alloted to us contractually. So, when is the work completed? If you don't care about providing quality experiences for your students, you do the correcting at work and do no or minimal provisioning. If you do care about the quality of lessons and materials, you take the work home. For the first three years of teaching, I took home no less than three hours every night. I usually slept 5 hours a night, but at least once every week, and sometimes more often, I slept only three. I was so sleep deprived that I didn't realize that my short-term memory was practically non-functioning. My husband resented me for ignoring him and my own son for the sake of other people's children. My students go the best of me: my energy, my imagination, my patience; my family got what little was left after each exhausting day. On some days I teach 5 out of the 6 hour blocks. On occasion, because the administration has added a community building period once per week called "Community Seminar," I actually teach 6 classes (an additional 25 minutes) and lose 25 minutes of my precious prep time. And I haven't even begun to explain the obstacles that eat away at this precious time every day: non-functioning technology, emails from administration, chatty students and colleagues, etc.

So, the good teachers work their tails off, quite literally, like the Greek Ouroboros. (I would now be eating my own @$$ if it hadn't already been kicked by this school year.) I am utterly exhausted.

I took a mental sick day yesterday and I physical sick day today. I brought my son to school and picked him up both days, something I have only done a handful of times in two years. I loved it. He often complains that he hates school--first grade! No one is supposed to hate school in the first grade! But he has said more than once how great the past two days were because i was there. I helped the students journal and practice for a puppet show; I ate lunch in the cafeteria with Harry and his friends; I went to a class breakfast this morning and spoke to other parents, kids, and his teacher. It seems absurd when I think about it, but I have spent more time at my students' sporting events and dances than I have at my own son's school plays and such.

I am angry at myself, of course. But I am also angry at the system that has made me have to choose between a job that I love and my own family. Between grading papers and sleeping.

I think I am finished. I have too much self-respect, too much love for my family, too little tolerance for the inefficiencies, inequities, and incompetencies to continue.

finally resurfacing

Okay. It is now February and I have finally figured out a way to post to this blog. While my creative writing students “warm up,” I will compose my entries.

There are too many things wrong about the teaching profession for me to rant about them here, but I will take Anne LaMotte’s father’s sage advice and take it “bird by bird.”

I teach five classes. For three years I taught grade 9 English. First three separate levels, then two. This year I have only two honors classes because I am teaching two new classes: grade 11 English (American Literature) and Creative Writing. If you are also a teacher, it is needless to say that I spent my summer reading American literature: Huck Finn, the Crucible, Great Gatsby, Ethan Frome, The Scarlet Letter, Grapes of Wrath. For most of these texts it was a second or third read, but of course, one reads a text differently when she is preparing to “teach” it. So, if you are one of those people who dismiss teacher complaints of low pay because we “get summers off,” please edit yourself next time you are tempted to regurgitate this inanity.

Although I race to develop lessons every night for my new American Lit course, I am thrilled to be teaching juniors. After years of having to alert my freshmen students to the jokes I make, now, not only do the students recognize my humor, more importantly, they aren’t afraid to laugh. We are having a great time together and I anticipate an exciting and rich year of literary exploration.

The necessity of selective memory

As I attempt to recuperate from a three-day week that seems like a school year in itself, I am reminded of the challenges that teachers face every day. I survived this week on the smiles of my former students and the laughs and thank yous from my new ones; but the work takes its toll almost immediately.

Having taken on the challenge of teaching two new courses this year, I expected that I would have to work much more than the contracted workweek. Now, this, of course, is nothing new for teachers--and English teachers especially--but having taught the same courses for three years, I had reached a level of competence and confidence that allowed me to limit the work I took home. This past spring semester I also eliminated homework (more on that later).

We are not paid an extra day to close our classrooms at the end of the school year. The list of responsibilities is long: clean boards, clean desks, inventory, take down posters/student work, etc. Bear in mind, of course, we are grading final exams, collecting, storing, and inventorying textbooks, calculating and inputting grades. Oh, and lest I forget, completing and submitting IEP forms for the upcoming year.

When the school year begins again, we are contracted two days before the students return. Within this time, a teacher must attend district, school wide, and faculty meetings, set up the classroom, unpack and label new texts, prepare lessons for the upcoming week, and provision for the first days of classes (photocopying handouts, preparing for group activities, etc). In addition to these tasks that all teachers must perform, I had the added responsibility of planning an entire year’s curriculum for not one, but two new classes. Now I could have spent my summer vacation developing these units, unpaid of course, but I was reading or rereading the myriad texts for my junior American Literature course. So when does this planning take place? Clearly not in the two days before classes begin. And not on day 1 of the eight day cycle when I teach all five of my classes and have only one 59 minute period and one 22 minute lunch break free for provisioning, visiting the toilet, checking email, speaking with and assisting students, reading high school and department emails, speaking with new and old students, and if I have time, eating (lunch brought from home, of course, because the teacher’s cafeteria has been closed since last spring, though even if it were open, the predominantly beige food angers more than it nourishes--but more on that later). Keep in mind that I am performing all these tasks in the sweltering heat of my cramped and muggy classroom.

I might have an opportunity to work on the curricula the following day, when I have only three classes scheduled, but because of contractual obligations, I am assigned duties that pull me away from my classroom to monitor the cafeteria. Other periods I am luckier because I am assigned a study hall that allows me to remain inside my classroom. I can get quite a bit of work accomplished during this time because I have maintained a strict level of decorum in my study halls. For this reason, students who do not want to study, choose to go to another teacher’s class or the library where they can socialize, talk on cell phones, chew gum, etc. However, study halls can become labor intensive when students skip class. Then, I am required, despite the expensive new attendance/gradebook software, to check two email lists for students who have signed into the library or METCO office and the myriad passes I receive from students who have chosen to switch into another teacher’s study, before taking attendance and completing yellow forms documenting a student’s absence. Three days later a majority of these tedious slips are returned with the passes students failed to bring me on the day of the study or a note saying that the student is no longer assigned to my study but guidance had never removed the name from my roster. So I fume about the inefficiency of the system and the clear lack of respect for my time.