Tag Archives: teaching

Prism

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“Ms. O’Connell, at the beginning of the year, didn’t you say you were a naturalist?”
“Like, someone who studies nature?”
“No! Like, someone who doesn’t shave and stuff”
“I never said I was a naturalist, but it’s been a while since I shaved my legs, I guess.”
-Z and Ms. O in 7th period

This is my world away from the homestead. It's always a wreck.

This is my world away from the homestead. It’s always a wreck.

Yesterday C pushed his luck pretty hard with our Principal.  C is going into his fifth year of high school – his fifth year of ninth grade English – for an array of reasons. One of the big ones is his temper. C is proud. His pride is pretty much all he has to be proud of, so he guards his pride with terrible care. He makes mistakes and he doesn’t have many role models who can keep their pride and still say “sorry,” so he often winds up clashing with authority. That’s kind of an understatement. C is actually the only student I have ever felt physically threatened by. I once thought “this kid is about to slug me.” He didn’t, but he had that look in his eye.

The principal asked C, repeatedly, to remove his hood, and C ignored him. The principal asked to speak to him, and C ignored him. The principal asked for an apology, and C refused. The principal gave him three days of In School Suspension (ISS). C came in from lunch fuming. He’d been given ISS for an offense that he felt was minor. He argued that no other student would have received ISS for wearing a hood. I pointed out that no other student would have escalated the situation the way that he did. He didn’t give the principal any opportunity to not punish him and still save face. We talked about that: how you have to make it easy for people to do what you want. We discussed how he doesn’t let people see the good in him. I see it, but most adults don’t and it’s easy to punish a kid who you think is a jerk. I told him to go talk to our principal like the intelligent, thoughtful, perceptive and sensitive adult that I know as C, and, after taking out some of his nervous energy on cleaning my whiteboards, he did. The principal (as a favor to me – I’m all in for this kid) put his suspension on hold. He told me that C was well-spoken and respectful when he came to argue his case. I’m proud of C. That act represents a huge growth in self-control and maturity. He needs second (thousandth) chances more than anyone I’ve ever known, because if he doesn’t grow up here, he probably won’t grow up anywhere. It’s very reasonable to suppose that he’ll wind up in prison.

A's awesome prism quiz doodle

A’s awesome prism quiz doodle

Our school doesn’t really focus on character development in a meaningful way. We don’t reward excellent character, and when we punish cheating or lying or violence, it’s always with the attitude that a child will learn to avoid the crime to avoid the punishment. I know that nine times out of ten, I don’t catch liars or cheaters. My classroom isn’t a police state, and I expect my students to be kind, honest and hardworking without surveillance. I try to use trust as a motivator, but I’m often disappointed. Cheating and lying have a low risk and a high reward for kids, and unless there’s something more than detention, loss of points, or a paddling hanging over their heads, they will not learn honesty. It’s easy to take your licks and move on. I learned to be honest out of fear of my parents’ and teachers’ disappointment and loss of trust. Guilt burned me up inside. I learned to be considerate by cleaning up after other people when I worked in the dining hall at Warren Wilson: When other people’s thoughtlessness impacted my life, I learned to be thoughtful to save other people discomfort or inconvenience. I can’t speak for others, but in my life, punishment was emotional and largely self-inflicted or relationships-based, and I think I have learned, as a young adult, to be honest and thoughtful to keep my pride and to maintain my relationships. How can we accomplish this in schools?

Note to self: Next Year …

  • Hit PEMDAS hard and early
  • Do an activity where you compare things’ weights: an apple is the same as an orange. Three oranges is a koala. Two snails is an orange. Two cakes make a koala. Make as many unique equations as you can.
  • Open response competitions all the time

 

Hogging Up the Road on my C-C-C-C-Carro

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This is today’s theme song.

This is today’s theme song because, after school today, we rode at a crawling 25 mph to Forrest City from Palestine with our flashers on. Our Nissan is having clutch issues, so we had to start it in second and crawl down to the shop.  We felt like a tractor. This song has already made the cut for Now That’s What Sean and Keely Call Country 2 because of its puns and its perfect accuracy. It is 100% true to life here.

The clutch crapped out at rush hour (7:45) at The Intersection in Palestine, right across the street from the school. Embarrassment! Mortification! Some students pushed me into the parking lot, an undertaking which stopped traffic for a time. EVERYONE knew I was having car trouble. Now, to be fair. having car trouble at school is almost fun. My students aren’t much for academics, but they’re great mechanics. A lot of them take diesel mechanic classes at the community college. Every third dude has a dad who’s got a shop. Over the course of the day, I probably had six or seven kids look at my car, and I learned something new each time. It’s fun for everyone when students get to teach their teacher something.

Once I was safely (late) at school, the network was down, so I had no way of printing my worksheets or of contacting Sean (nobody answered the phone at his school). I started first period with a total blank, but I came up with a kickass flow chart for quadratics and I think I successfully taught the quadratic formula. In any case, my kids were working a pretty advanced open response question like BAMFs (as Simmons might say).

When we got back to school from the shop in Forrest City (owned by C’s dad!), some kids were riding horses on the campus. No joke. I wish I’d snapped a photo. It was a perfect afternoon for it, and they looked so happy, grinning those big grins from way up there.

4-3

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The little porkers are getting friendlier by the day. I managed to pet one while it was snoozling the other day, and they didn’t scamper away when we went into the pen earlier this evening.

Coming back to school from break has been challenging. Waking up before sunrise every morning doesn’t feel sensible anymore, and spending all day inside feels like madness when the weather is perfect. The mosquitoes aren’t out in force yet, and I spent an hour this evening reading on the lawn in the purple shade, soaking up the bike-riding light, the t-shirt temperatures, the silence of butterflies on the purple flowers in the grass and the smell of yesterday’s rain. The redbuds are blooming like confetti in the understory, and the sassafras tree by our steps has these peculiar firework flowers. Trees are poised to leaf out at a moment’s notice, hazel alder catkins are dripping from branches everywhere, and the quince in the side yard is electric pink. I don’t know how to describe the smell of the wind, but it feels like a warm washcloth on your forehead.

Seeing my kids again has made me happy. I missed their ingenuousness and their contrasting self-consciousness. I missed their jokes and their smiles and the ways they express their frustration. I love teenagers, especially my teenagers. I’m feeling inspired this week, which is a pleasant change from the frustrated apathy I’ve been feeling toward my job recently. Geometry has been awesome and conceptual. I wouldn’t say they’re all grasping the material, but I can confidently say that several of them are grasping it at a high level, and most of them are grasping it adequately. Algebra has been okay. My 7th period is a train wreck right now, but my first and fourth are doing impressive work with quadratics. I have a few students who have made incredible strides this year, and I know that if I hit PEMDAS and writing expressions hard next year (hard = ton of bricks vs. tower of eggs) I’ll see some real magic happen.

When I got home tonight, the piggies had snurfled dirt up over the lowest electric wire of the fence and joined the chickens in the chicken yard. Bad Pork! I chased them back in and collected eggs, noticing the carpenter bees bumbling around the eaves for the first time this year. Freckles is still on her eggs, fluffing up to approximately a cubic foot and gurgling every time someone enters the chicken house. We expect her eggs to hatch within the next ten days.IMG_1695
Look at all those eggs! These birds are out of control!
You can see our automatic chicken door in the background, which has been an absolute life saver and, along with the solar fence charger, one of most useful technological advances in farming since the dibbler.

We had dinner yesterday at Pizza Hut in Helena to help a friend fundraise to bring some of her Spanish students to Costa Rica. You can help her out by making a donation here. On the ride home, Sean and I almost finished listening to Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. We couldn’t stop, so we finished up while we washed dishes together. The book was beautifully written (another win for Gary D. Schmidt, who has a gift for motifs that astonishes me every time) and told a story about my home state that I had never heard before. Mainer or not, you should check out the book, but if you’re a Mainer, you should make a point to learn about Malaga Island.

Look what was raiding the critter-food bin! The flash scared it off… for now.  Dang things have those cute little hands and they always figure out how to get into our feed. Sean is going to put something heavy (like our fat cats?) onto the food bin to thwart the varmints.
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I’d turn his trucks into just one truck

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Ms. O: What would you do if you knew you wouldn’t get caught?
E: probably burn down the school
C: yeah, that. Or actually, get in here with a bulldozer and a fork lift. Actually, maybe just mess up some people’s vehicles.
E: I’d get us a new superintendent, actually…
C: I was thinking of him. I’d smash his two trucks together so he had just one. Smashed up.
E: Did you ever see that movie where they make all illegal things legal for one night every year? The Purge?
C: I might murder someone.

I kind of like it when they says things like that, because I can laugh and tell them that they never would, and let them know I think they’re wonderful.
Our conversation changed direction a few minutes later.

C: I think we actually could feed the world, but the economy is all messed up. We can’t distribute the food right.
Ms. O: you might be right. We grow all kinds of crops around here, but most of that goes to feeding cows and stuff. I know some people who are vegetarians because they think there’ll be more food for people that way.
E: I heard this one: A vegetarian says to a meat-eater, “Cow farts are dissolving the ozone! I’m a vegetarian. What are you doing about it?” and the meat eater says “Eating the cow”
C: Ms. O, this might sound weird, but since we’re kinda close in age, do you ever think about, like, having kids? I’m kinda scared to. What kind of world will they have?
Ms O: All the time. It’s scary!
E: I kinda wonder why we, like, kids, don’t get to vote. The president makes decisions that effect our future too.
Ms. O: I think maybe it’s because, even though you’re smart and informed, you aren’t living in the real world yet
C: that kinda makes sense. Like, we don’t really understand how complicated some things are. We don’t work or pay bills or anything. I think people should have food stamps though, but only if you can’t work. There are a lot of people in Forrest city who could work but they don’t. They just get that check.
Ms. O: But where are they supposed to work? There’s no jobs and they don’t have a great education or skills. Their whole family is here. Where are they supposed to go?
C: it sucks that there’s no businesses here. It’s, like, the tire shop and Love’s are the only things that bring money to Palestine, and the rest of the community don’t see it, ’cause the guy at the tire shop don’t have any place to spend it.
Ms. O: what kind of business do you think could succeed here? Like, a restaurant?
E: I heard that this guy my parents know wanted to open a Red Lobster, but the company said a town the size of Forrest City couldn’t sustain one.
Ms. O: what about, like, an ice cream shop in the summer? The only thing around here is Baskin Robbins at the gas station.

We all agreed that Baskin Robbins sucks.