CST: The saga continues

(Written Thursday, May 5, 2011) 

We’re in the final days of preparation for the California Standards Test next week.  The four of us who teach the 7^th grade boys developed a plan for addressing the academic and affective aspects of testing.  We’ve all been practicing the type of questions they will get on the tests and also giving out tips for the test such as “Get a good night’s sleep” and “Read the questions first and then the selection.” 

It’s clear that the boys’ attitude is at least as important as these practical tips.  Confidence in your own intellectual capacity and the desire to do well are crucial factors in any testing situation.  Recognizing this I have devoted more time this week to addressing the confidence and desire of the students.

The students have all written an essay on how they will improve their performance on the test.  Then they put this essay into a word document on the laptops.  I have printed them out and will share them with the other teachers on the 7^th grade boys team. 

Each of us will also have students write letters of advice and encouragement to one of their classmates.  These letters will be delivered right before the test.  We will also write brief notes of encouragement to each student in our advisory class.

So what am I thinking about the whole CST thing?  The process of building up to an important challenge for the students has value, of course.  Creating a feeling of teamwork and shared effort is good for emotional and intellectual development. 

On the other hand, the test itself is such a pale shadow of what’s really going on in their emotional and intellectual development that it almost seems anticlimactic after all the buildup. 

Anyway, we’ll see next week how it all goes.  More later.

Teaching to the test--Hooray!!

At school we are in full out CST (California Standards Test) mode—all CST, all the time.  The test is two weeks away and now all we do every day is prepare for the test.  No more writing, no more computers, no more projects—just practice questions, test taking tips, and motivational speeches. 

I don’t know how it will go.  I have such a hard time getting them to focus on a brief set of questions that I have difficulty imagining them sitting and focusing for the four 2-hour sessions coming up.  On the other hand, they claim that when it’s the real test and not a practice test, they will act differently.

Anyway, I guess there’s some value in focusing on a specific event like a test.  The CST measures valuable skills, but it still accounts for only a small fraction of what students should be learning and practicing as they grow up.  These other important milestones of maturing academically and emotionally are less measurable however and thus less valued.  That’s not good.

I haven’t posted for a while.  There’s a lot of new stuff happening, and the job remains fascinating and engaging. I have more things to write about from the couple of months I have not blogged, but I’ll get caught up later. 

 I confess to being a little discouraged by the lack of any feedback.  There are so few comments that I start feeling like no one is reading my brilliant and insightful posts.  Maybe no one is reading them, or maybe they’re not so brilliant or insightful.  Anyway, if you’re reading, could you leave a brief comment?  Thanks.

Seventh grade lives 3

Forget pedagogy, curriculum, lesson plans, learning theory, brain research and all that for a moment.  This teaching business is often just an emotional hurricane from the first bell in the morning to the last in the afternoon.  Take today for example:

Second period:  today was the last day at school for the boy who lost his mother over the weekend.  We spoke briefly of it in the class, and the boys were visibly affected by his misfortune.  I could see them trying to imagine how it would feel if it happened to them.  I continued to feel troubled by what this fragile boy was facing.

Advisory:  Today was the final game of our basketball tournament.  My class was playing Mr. Beach’s.  Emotions ran high at the game.  The other classes were cheering from the stands.  My students constantly wanted only the best players to play while I insisted on playing anyone who wanted to.  Everyone was very excited--it was wonderful!  We lost but the whole event was very positive for the 7th grade boys and for the five of us who have their advisory periods.  (Next up:  spelling bee!)

Sixth period:  The excitement of the game carried over into this period, always my most difficult.  Somehow one boy who is always pretty hyped up and volatile was pushed off the edge by something someone said.   Next thing I knew he was in a violent rage, trying to throw tables and chairs, screaming and sobbing.  I hustled him outside asked him to just stand still for a moment, get hold of himself,  and calm down.  He was shaking and sobbing, but he did slowly calm down.  Later he came back into the room and soon, in typical boy fashion, he was his usual rambunctious self.  But the display of raw emotion was awesome and hard to forget. 

Meanwhile the provocateur in this case continued to be the most willful, determined, and successful disruptors in all of my classes.  This boy doesn’t even try to control his acting out, but rather issues a steady stream of mockery, goofiness, and impudence.  Yelling doesn’t have more than a transitory effect, so I began ignoring him.  Unfortunately the rest of the class continued to find him hilarious. 

I ended up addressing myself to them rather than him.  “He just wants an audience,” I said, “and if you are his audience ask yourselves, what will he teach you?  Is it more than I can teach you?  It’s up to you to deny him his audience so we can get on with the job of learning and teaching.”  Maybe they heard that, maybe not.  I intend to repeat this argument at every opportunity.  We’ll see. 

The emotion I feel is anger at this boy for making my job so difficult, even while I keep in mind that he’s only 13 and must be deeply troubled to manifest this behavior.  This is a common dichotomy--they piss me off while they evoke my concern for their futures.  This is a basic teacher issue--we care deeply for them even when they infuriate us.  It's sort of like parents, but with scores of kids and only for school hours.  It's what makes teaching so energizing and so exhausting at the same time.

And so another day in the hurricane of emotions that makes up seventh grade lives.

Seventh grade lives 2

Yesterday I learned that the mother of one of my students died suddenly over the weekend of a brain aneurism.  She died on his birthday.  As a result he and his two older sisters must go live with their father about an hour away.  He will go to a new school. 

I can only imagine how traumatic this is for him.  He’s a shy, awkward, overweight boy, with a sweet personality and a gentle manner.  He has a sadness about him that suggests a difficult life.  He’s also a whiz at Yu-Gi-Oh, a fantasy card game with endless detail.  I asked the class to observe a moment of silence for his mother which they did very respectfully.  He told us a little more about her death (more than he has spoken to the class all year), and some boys asked a few questions. 

Of course this is a painful subject for the boys to think about, and their reaction is not surprisingly to change the subject and the mood abruptly.  My heart is heavy thinking of what this boy will face in the months and years to come.  I wish him the best.

Do I hear harps?

The spring semester began a couple of weeks ago and I was gifted with...girls!!  Yes, my fourth period elective is comprised of 25 sixth grade girls.  I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but it has been a real game changer. 

Now don’t get me wrong.  I like my boys with all their ebullience and insouciance (hey--I am an English teacher after all!).  Their energy and fearlessness is invigorating and inspiring.  But it’s also exhausting.  The girls are different.  They’re still just 12 of course, and they’re lively enough, but they are easier to guide and work with.  They take less energy to direct, and so I can put more energy into the actual instruction. 

Fourth period comes in the middle of my two days without a conference period, and the more relaxed atmosphere with the girls has given these days a new character.  I feel more confident in the boys’ English 7 classes on either side and less drained at the end of the day. 

The elective with the girls includes practice for the CST (California Standards Test) in May and also a project for Women’s History Month.  Our smooth movement into the project has made me think that I should be able to do this with the boys as well, notwithstanding the qualities mentioned above.  Of course I have been told by the teachers on the third floor that other kinds of problems arise with girls that are equally challenging, but so far it’s a welcome change of pace.  I would almost recommend that everyone get to teach one class in the other academy.

I’m still puzzled as to exactly how teaching girls is different.  Certainly the majority of boys are equally cooperative and agreeable.  At most a third or so of the boys fuel most of the resistance to order and progress.  I can also see that there are a few girls who are very lively and might need more managing.  I also see that, as with the boys, many of the girls have a lot of other things on their minds with a higher priority than standardized tests or even women in history. 

I can see right away the reality of one oft-cited distinction between most girls and most boys, namely that the girls move easily and eagerly into a collaborative mode.  In this class they immediately began to work together on their Women in History projects.  The boys have had a harder time working together.  Many groups don’t gel and never get focused. 

At the same time the boys really are more competitive. I’m trying to enlist that quality in their attitude towards their measured reading grade levels.  The intersection of collaboration and competitiveness is, of course, the team, and I’m trying to create that environment in class.

Anyway, it’s too soon to draw sweeping conclusions, and I don't want to over-generalize.  I’m sure I’ll comment more in the months to come. 

Until then, is that harps I hear fourth period?

Another pastoral interlude

I went birding again today in MacArthur Park with students and parents of Leo Politi Elementary School in Pico Union.  The principal and one of the teachers joined about 30 students and as many parents in a lively perambulation around the lake.  As it was the time before, this was a wonderful outing, a perfect teaching experience that linked school and neighborhood, parent and child, nature and city, learning and life.  We saw over 30 species of birds, and many of the parents were just as amazed at what there was to see in their familiar and very urban park.

From the ubiquitous pigeon to the red-tailed hawk perched up on the "Westlake Theatre" sign to the visiting Ross' Goose, American Wigeons, and Ring Necked Ducks we all enjoyed a couple of hours with our avian family.  To see these students (who might be in my class at YOKA in a couple of years!) soaking up knowledge--checking in the book, looking at the birds, asking questions--provided a clear template of what learning should be like, whether it's in the classroom or out of it.  A big congratulations to principal Rumble for leading his students on this little adventure and to my friend Judith, a veteran birder, for initiating this series of walks.

(And what does this have to do with the "sturm und drang" of my previous post?  Beats me....it's so confusing!)

Teaching as struggle

Each period, each day I feel like I am locked in a fast-paced wrestling match with my students. I like them, and we chat amiably before and after class, but when the bell rings we all spring into action. I grab onto them and try mightily to push them into a learning place; they resist and try to escape into their own world of disorder and play. We race around the room, wrestling back and forth, up and down. I prevail briefly as they write an assignment or listen to my directions, but then they come charging back, raucous and impudent. I don’t give up--I hurl threats and rewards at them, ominous intimations of inchoate disaster, until they fall back, feigning retreat, only to slip around a corner and run off in a different direction.

Periodically we both take a momentary respite to catch our breaths. During these moments we laugh good-naturedly, as if at our shared situation, but then the contest resumes with renewed vigor. And so it goes for an hour, or an hour and 45 minutes in the block period, until the bell rings and I let them leave. Then it feels like I have passed into the eye of a hurricane--where there was fury and tumult there is now an uneasy calm.

But my next opponents are already gathering outside my door, lining up as is our custom at YOKA. Again I go outside and chat amiably with them before ushering them into the room. Then...the match is on again!

I was thinking of my job in these terms the other day. It had been a reasonably successful day. I got through my lesson, but only by wrestling them inch by inch towards the learning goal. So of course I’m exhausted, but then I realized that anything this difficult and challenging--and worthwhile--will exhaust a person. Some people thrive on intense, grueling contests that leave them exhausted--in play and work--and I guess I’m one of them! 

This job is so much harder than my previous couple of positions, but I’m exhilarated by it even as it exhausts me. I get better at it day by day, albeit with setbacks from time to time, but I should not be deluded into thinking that it will ever be “easy” because it really can’t be any other way if you think about it. After all, our job it to take children--with all their love of chaotic free play who at 12 are on the verge of that rebellion against authority that will eventually make them into independent adults--and make them write and read and follow directions and sit still and be quiet.

How could it possibly be easy to bend their will to mine--especially when they outnumber me 30-1? To be sure, about a third of the students are very cooperative and easy to manage. This doesn’t mean they’re learning what I want them too, but it means I can work with them to help them learn. If they made up the whole class, teaching would be much easier. But they aren’t and never will be the whole class, and they too must learn to operate in an environment of disorder and discord.

Simply put, this is what teaching children is--intense, combative, unceasing. If I accept that reality and stop expecting that it will get easy, then I can also enjoy the considerable pleasures of teaching. These pleasures include the camaraderie that comes from shared struggle, the learning moments that occur every hour of every day, the awesome sight of children growing up, and the satisfaction of playing a small role in that process.

So that’s where I am now, approaching the midpoint of this school year that marks my return to the arena I left 20 years ago. Grades are due next week--fire up the midnight oil!