A World of My Own

I know it's been a while since my last update. I've found that teaching two classes gives me much less time for reflection on my experience because I spend more time reflecting on my lessons, which isn't something I'm very inclined to do on this blog.

That said, right now I'm working on two of my favorite stories. Children's Literature is reading Alice in Wonderland and British Literature is tackling Frankenstein. I love both of these stories deeply.

Anybody who knows me well would be able to tell you that Alice is my favorite story. It's such clever nonsense that the book manages to entertain my again and again. It's absolutely wonderful to see my students experiencing the same enthusiasm (for the most part) for a book that I enjoy. It's been mountains of fun helping them work through the jokes that Carroll weaves into his text. Some definitely went over their heads, but then, I don't know that I expected them to get some of these jokes. A true understanding of about half of Carroll's jokes require an understanding of life in the Victorian era, which these students don't have because we're not a traditional literature class. I've given them some instruction, but for the most part, we've been looking at how Alice is a fantasy story and what makes it appropriate for children. We did have a tea party last Friday, though. I definitely enforced Victorian tea rules (the students weren't very happy about that).

As for Frankenstein, this novel just fascinates me to no end. Not only is it by a female author, but it's one of the first modern novels ever written AND it's science fiction. Mary Shelley adds so much detail to her text describing characters and their motivations. We're reading the novel in conjunction with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" because of the influence that poem had on the creation of the novel. We've also looked into the story of Prometheus in Greek mythology because the subtitled to Frankenstein is The Modern Prometheus. We are just about halfway through the novel right now and a lot of my students are amazed at how much they're liking the story.

I'm still struggling with one of my students. It's like he's just completely given up on doing any work and I really wish I knew how to help him. I know that he's capable of doing the work that I assign--he managed it last semester--but now it's like he's protesting me. Even if I give my class time to do their work in-class, he'll sit there and just stare at the blank page rather than even try. It's very frustrating. And the worst part is, he's not going to pass the class if he keeps this up. He's already failing beyond hope for this quarter (grades close in two and a half weeks) and once I put in the grades for the assignments he's missing and has already told me he's not planning on turning in, it's going to be even worse for him. He chose this course over other junior English classes. He came in talking about how interested in British literature he was. Now, he's just not even making an effort. I don't understand him at all, but I'll keep trying to find ways to encourage him to work.

New Semester, New Class

We've entered a new semester here at the high school. I've picked up a new class to teach: Children's Literature.

So far, I like it. It's much different from my small British Literature class (although, I did just gain a student in that class so I have 9 now!) in more ways than one. First off, it's a much larger class (20 students). Secondly, it's an unleveled class (meaning that it's not "College Prep" or "Advanced" or "General", it just exists as a class anyone can take) so I have students of all abilities. Third, I have to approach it differently; Children's literature is almost as much art and creative writing as it is a study of literature.

Right now, we're easing our way into the semester with picture books. The kids spent the last week looking at Caldecott Medal-winning picture books studying art styles and what makes a picture book a GOOD picture book. We're starting to look at the text of picture books now, too. This means thinking of what kind of vocabulary authors use, how to lay out the text on the page, and even what amount of text belongs on a page.

The students have also just started a project researching an author-illustrator. In singles or pairs, each picked the name of an author-illustrator out of a hat and will be looking at that person's writing style, art style, and doing biographical research. I've given them until the 21st of February to finish the project, which includes a poster and a 1-2 page paper on their person. I think that length of time is more than fair enough to analyze six picture books and write a 2-page maximum paper.

British lit is in full swing right now. As I mentioned, I got another student (plucked him out of the other section of British lit) and he's fitting in much better with my group than he did with the other one. The only downside is that I still have only one girl in my class. I worry that she feels isolated--especially since a few of the boys like to tease her. But she's bright so I think she can handle them.

As far as what we're covering in that class, we've just entered the Restoration--and I don't plan on staying here for long. We read works by Jonathan Swift last week and this week including two parts of Gulliver's Travels and all of "A Modest Proposal" in order to look at satire as an element of literature. The class is working on their own "modest proposals" and should be handing them in tomorrow by midnight. The idea of the "modest" proposal is that it isn't modest at all--Swift's focuses on solving poverty in Ireland by using babies as a food source (ergo bringing in income to the families that sell their children for slaughter, being a food source for families who may otherwise not be able to afford food, etc;). The proposals are all completely satirical; nobody should actually find them to be reasonable solutions, but instead they should point out some injustice in the world and shed light on it in an extreme manner.

After finishing Swift and satire, we'll be looking briefly at Milton before we move into the Romantic era and crack open Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

As for me, I'm re-taking a class I didn't do very well in the first time I took it. The downside is that it's in Manchester so I have to commute there two days a week which is really cutting into the time I have to work on my colloquium and philosophy of education papers--let alone the time I have to plan for the classes I'm teaching.

This is going to be a truly busy semester.

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.

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.