Flying Solo

I'm on day two of my first week completely solo will all five classes. Yesterday wasn't so bad, though. Due to a small error in timing, I'm finishing up some of my CT's units rather than starting my own mini-units with the classes. Right now, I'm finishing Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns with the World Lit class, finishing Hamlet with the morning section of British Lit, starting "North by Northwest" with the Film Studies group, introducing alphabet books to the Children's Lit students, and ending my unit on Much Ado About Nothing with my section of British Lit.

I'm finding that the two classes which are the hardest to teach are World Lit and Film Studies. The World Lit class, I think, may be too "advanced" in maturity for some of these students, particularly the boys. A Thousand Splendid Suns is an incredibly well-written book, but it also deals with very serious issues like spousal abuse, war, and religious rights. The girls all seem to get that these are serious things--perhaps because in the book, it is the female characters who bear the brunt of the abuse and heartache which is perpetrated by the male characters and a male-dominated society. The boys in this class, though, don't seem to get it. Sure, a few do, but there is a group of boys (athletes, specifically) who manage to crack jokes and laugh during class. I've yet to figure out what's funny about women being forced to stay at home and be servants to their abusive husbands.

The Film Studies class is hard for a different reason. This class is full of students who just seem to not care about school--they see Film as an "easy A" their senior year. They goof off on their work, they talk and joke incessantly--even during tests! Several students refuse to give up their cell phones during tests, to the point where they lie and say "I don't have one." Well, they definitely have one when I end up taking it five minutes later because I caught them using it to text their friends during the test. One student is so attached to his phone that he will actually argue with you about why he is special and shouldn't have to give it up. I remember a time when I actually got him to give up the phone (with my CT's help) and he unplugged his headphones, turned the phone off, carefully closed all the flaps on his ultra-heavy-duty Otterbox and told us that if there was "one scratch" on the phone, he would make his parents sue (can you say "spoiled brat"?). Then, he proceeded to throw the phone into the box! After going on and on about how he didn't want it broken and we should take care of it, he goes and throws it rather than placing it gently.

Then, also in Film, there's a pair of boys who will not shut up. I swear, I could give them a test and tell them to take it, but if they were the only two in the room, they'd take a zero on it because they wouldn't get any work done. One of them can't make up his mind on what his name is and comes in with a different one every day--and he won't answer to anything but is nom du jour. He also thinks he's some kind of hot-shot like a cross between Jonah Hill and that kid that plays McLovin'. Except he doesn't realize that he's just obnoxious.

I suppose I'll have to get used to students like them because with the way kids are being raised now, I don't think that mentality is going to change. There's just no respect any more. There's no sense of where the line is between being funny and being absolutely annoying. I think that part of the problem is also that they know I'm an intern, not a fully-paid and licensed teacher so they push the boundaries and think they can get away with all sorts of things they wouldn't be able to get away with if my CT was teaching. So far, they think they've gotten away with it. But I get revenge in the worst way: I assign essays.

A New Quarter, A Fresh Start... Yeah, Right!

I don't know what happened between the end of Quarter One and the start of Quarter Two, but my classroom just hasn't been the same. I went from having 7 average-and-above achieving students and 1 I-know-he's-smarter-than-he-lets-on-but-he-just-won't-do-the-work student to having 3 average-and-above students and 5 failing-because-they-won't-do-the-work students.

I honestly have no idea what happened. The students themselves have told me the work isn't that hard. For example, this quarter, they're writing an 8-10 page research paper. They have the entire quarter before Winter Break to write this paper. At the same time, they're reading Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" since we're in the Renaissance time-wise. They usually read a couple scenes over a three-night period (and these are short scenes. Some of them are only a little over a page or a page and a half long) and then come in and act out those scenes. That's the extent of what I'm pushing them to do with Shakespeare right now. Read and then come in and act it out.

While they do that, they've also got their paper to think about. So far, they've had to come up with a topic (they all did), find me 10 sources that they will use to get information about that topic with at least 3 of those 10 being book sources (they've all done this, though two students took two extra weeks and multiple prompts from me to do it), write an annotated bibliography (basically write me a paragraph for each source and tell me how you're going to use it in your paper) (three students did this and I gave them two weeks [that's less than one paragraph a day]), and finally write me 20 note cards (each card being the equivalent of: 3 bullet points or one long quote from the source) (three [the same three students] did this [and I've told them multiple times that they should be constantly taking notes and that they should have started taking notes on day 1 of the project]).

Is that too much to ask of them? The three students who turned in the work have all said they don't know what the fuss is about because it honestly was pretty easy to do. When I asked the other students why they hadn't done it, I got blank stares and shrugs.

Right now, my class average is a 64%. I repeat: my class average score is a failing grade.

This is completely unacceptable. I just wish I knew how I could get the kids who aren't doing the work to realize they need to be doing it. Hopefully the fact that their grades are now all completely entered into the online gradebook, their parents will see that they're failing and do something about it. I'm at a loss.

Cultural Insensitivity

I am honestly appalled by the amount of cultural insensitivity that I see as I watch various classes as part of my internship. This is especially present in the World Literature class which my CT teaches. Specifically, there is a pair of boys who seem to take every opportunity to mock the cultures and people they're reading about. While watching a video about the horrible treatment of widows in India, these boys danced in their seats in a caricature of what they think a Hindu dance would be. The did the same while watching a video about how some families in India kill their children if they're girls because of how expensive girls are to raise in their society (this is due to the dowry they pay the husband's family at marriage even though the practice has been outlawed).

It astounded me that these two boys would be in the classroom, laughing and dancing as such horrific practices were explained to the class.

I see the appropriation of culture every day, it seems. The Native American dreamcatcher has become some great symbol of the hipsters. I've seen girls with tattoos of dreamcatchers who couldn't even explain to me what it was. I see bands using battle headdresses on clothing as part of their merchandise lines. It seems that there is very little awareness of the difference between appropriating somebody else's culture and being respectful of it.

What's even sadder is that most of the perpetrators I see are people who could be labeled as "privileged white upper-middle class." These are the same students who think violence is cool and who can't keep their hands off their phones for more than five minutes. One student even outright admitted that she gets anxious if separated from her phone. I'm going to stop here because I could write whole novels on the problem of cell phones in school.

But for now, I just want to remind people that just because you think something is funny because it's not your culture and you're not used to seeing it as normal, doesn't give you the right to mock it.

Culture These Days...

My students had to turn in their final papers for the quarter last night by midnight. I received papers from all but two of my students, but surprisingly I got a paper from the one student who consistently fails to hand in his work. It was a very nice surprise to wake up and have an e-mail from him in my inbox with an assignment attached. We'll ignore the fact that the e-mail looked like this:

I don't know what exactly it is about the "yolo" craze, but it bothers me like almost nothing else. Oh, well. At least I got a paper out of him. The two who failed to hand in work will get stern talking to's when I see them again on Friday.

Time, Time, Time

These last few weeks have been so hectic. I taught the King Arthur unit in my CT's other section of British Lit (the section I don't normally teach) so I was teaching two classes instead of just one, which was a system shocker. That, plus the additional hecticness of Junior standardized testing which has rearranged the entire schedule of classes for the high school has just led to me being a discombobulated mess.

The King Arthur unit went pretty well with the other class. I was slightly disappointed to find so many kids not willing to turn in their work, though. I only usually have one or two (though granted, that's about 1/4 of my class) who fight me when it comes to turning in work. But over half of this other class didn't turn in their paper assignment. I was also a bit put out when, during our debate on media accuracy in portrayal of the Arthurian Legend, most students didn't want to participate. In addition, they struggled much more than my students did in the debate.

I have 8 College Prep level students in the class I teach. In a class of 22 (11 Honors, 11 CP) students, they were unable to come up with the same caliber of argumentative evidence and work as my 8 CP kids. I was very disappointed (especially in the Honors students).

As for what this week holds, I'll be continuing to work with my CP students on their Medieval Romance argumentative compare/contrast essays. I'll also be popping in to guest-teach a class on Alice in Wonderland with my CT's Children's Literature class today. I'm really excited for that because anybody who knows me would be able to easily say that Alice in Wonderland is my favorite story of all-time.

No manner of luck at all...

You know how sometimes you have a week where absolutely nothing seems to be going your way? I'm going on a month of that feeling.

My mom passed away in late August and everything seemed to be going alright immediately after that. I took a day off from my internship before discovering that I was going to go stir crazy if I just sat in my room letting myself be sad the entire time. So I went back to interning and the first week was fine.

Then I started getting sick. At first it was bronchitis. Then it was some sort of cold that manifested into congestion so bad that I couldn't hear because my head was so stuffed up.

Just as I was getting over the sick part, I ended up in the hospital emergency room with extreme stomach pain caused by my accidentally aggravating an ulcer by eating spicy food. I was in enough pain that I thought the problem was my appendix. Turns out, I'm just too stressed. Quelle surprise.

And because that wasn't enough, my boyfriend broke up with me. That I'm getting over rather well thanks to the sagely words of Miranda Lambert. I have simply fixed my make up and moved on.

But just because the universe can't leave well enough alone, I was just informed (late yesterday evening) that I have to re-take a course that is required for my teaching certification because I had to pass with a B- or better. I'd like you to note that my professor gave me a C+. On top of that course, I was told this morning that I must also retake ANOTHER course where my final grade was not satisfactory for certification. Of course, nobody at UNH bothered to mention this requirement to me while I was an undergraduate.

Ah, well. C'est la vie, non?

As far as my class is concerned, things are going well. We've finished with King Arthur (but boy, I could spend AGES on that topic) and are moving on to The Canterbury Tales. I'm mixing up this unit in that I'll also be providing essay-writing instruction because they've finally been assigned an actual essay to write. I plan on modeling Penny Kittle's conference techniques because, having seen those in the past, I think that with the group I've got (two very high performing students, two low performing students, and four average students) this method would be the most beneficial.

I gave them a handout on MLA style and one with advice on how to make an essay truly readable. I got both from the UNH Connors Writing Center for free off their website. Definitely an awesome resource for any teacher who may be trying to teach the dreaded formal essay to their students. I've got rough drafts from most of them right now that I'm going to look over and see what I can use to teach a few mini-lessons on grammar and style. Today, I'll be putting all of the drafts up on the projector screen (with names missing, of course) to do a group conference and critique.

Now, that critique shouldn't take our entire class period (today is an odd block day so the kids have all their odd period classes for 100 minutes instead of the standard 50 and tomorrow they'll have only their even period classes). Toward the end of the class, I'm going to introduce them to The Canterbury Tales via "The Prologue" and give them each their assigned character. Each student will have one character from the tales and, in addition to the class readings of "The Prologue" and "The Wife of Bath's Tale", will have to read their character's tale. After they've done this, they'll do a short project (it should only take a couple of days) where they'll create a "Fakebook" profile of the character they've been assigned using information they've gathered through the readings.

I'm slightly worried about assigning the essay (a long-term project) and the profile (much shorter term) at the same time, but I think they can handle it.

PM

Here's a few of my favorite students...

I've met quite a few students who are... well... interesting. Nearly all of them just serve to make me smile and liven up a class that might otherwise struggle to be interesting. I've changed the names of students because I obviously can't tell you who they actually are.

Anna-Maria. She's the ultimate Celebrity Buzz/Gawker/TMZ/Perez-style girl. The class she's in is writing Anglo-Saxon boasts using a celebrity (or a teacher) as a subject. She's writing from Kanye West's perspective and her effort is turning out to be rather hilarious, if a bit tacky. In a discussion today about death, she announced that she wanted to be buried with all of her money--actual physical bills and coins--like a "true G". She wants her family and friends to cry at the "pure swag" she'll be a display of in her casket. Particularly, she wants to be holding a bouquet made of $20. And, to top it all off, she wants her kids to dig her up after she's been buried in order to claim their inheritance.

Marilyn. She dresses like a pop-goth 1950s pin-up and wants to be a housewife. Tattoos, piercings, and a love of children's stories. She's a character and she makes every class interesting.

Seth. He reminds me a little bit of a wanna-be Jonah Hill/Michael Cera combo. He tries too hard to get the girls to like him and to get the boys to think he's an OK guy. He's constantly inviting the kids in his class to movie parties complete with "bacon tacos". I don't know if these are actually tacos with bacon on them or if it's something else entirely, but the rest of the class seems to love them. He had to have his picture taken the other day for the vo-tech school IDs and came into his class back here at the regular school wearing nothing but his jeans, shoes, a red vest, and a polka-dot bow tie. One of the girls he's always trying to impress asked him what prompted the outfit and he explained that it was for the picture he had to take. She asked him why he chose the outfit he did and his answer was--direct quote--"because literally yolo".

Liz. She's in the same class as Seth and she LOVES Charlie Chaplin. She's a pretty big film enthusiast and she's always popping into the conversation to offer a comment on the films they're discussing in class. She doesn't do much that's really out of the ordinary, but her enthusiasm for movies reminds me so much of a good friend I had in high school who is studying film production in college now. They've even got similar hair cuts.

I've got two kids in my class that always make me smile when they start talking with each other. Thomas and Tom. An anglophile and a jock. They should have nothing in common, but they have some great conversations and debates in class. Not always on topic, but they're amusing and tangentially related to what they're supposed to be talking about. The class wouldn't be the same without one or the other.

In other news, the sun just came out. I haven't seen it in a couple of days so this is really nice. I had to wade through the street to get from my boyfriend's dorm to my own last night.