As promised, Friday was a good day! I was sent by my principal to observe other teachers in action at the high school where he was resident principal last year. I got a lot of great ideas that I want to try to put into practice.

Having seen each of them in action, I can tell that they are excellent teachers, and I can see why. Each of them had clear control of their classroom. They also had ways of engaging off-task students without eliciting the negative reactions I get so frequently. I also got a lot of insight into “the System” and the city culture from some math teachers that all came up in Baltimore and who are all veteran teachers. They told me about the ebb and flow of public schooling. It was almost kind of funny; all 3 had started off in middle school, which all 3 agreed is generally a mess, city-wide. All 3 lasted less than a year, but eventually came back to the System.

One particularly interesting topic that came up was the major emerging crisis across the district concerning the high-stakes tests for graduation. The students have been taking exit exams for years, but until this year, they have only been required to sit the exams. Now they must pass all 4 exams in order to graduate. The problem isn’t actually that the System is unprepared for the fact that Baltimore City students are not going to pass in high numbers. This is well-known, and the state has contingency plans for that, in the form of alternative tests and projects, and across the city, an enormous amount of resources has been directed toward ensuring that the students have access to all the preparation they need. The problem is that students are still not taking advantage of those resources. It’s becoming increasingly clear that, come graduation time, there’s going to be a catastrophe in the graduation rate, even by Baltimore City standards. As far as I can tell, there’s no concrete plan for what can be done to prevent this, or what happens to the students who don’t pass the test.

The teacher I was speaking to doesn’t blame the System—-after all, this situation is unprecedented, and who knew that even with all hands on deck to get the students up to speed that we’d still be coming up way short. I responded that it still was important that the students know this stuff. After all, the exit exams test only subjects from freshman and sophomore year, albeit pretty rigorously.

She replied, “See I disagree. It used to be we tested the kids on functional math. Can you go to the store and find a discount? You go to work at 7:00 and leave at 3:45, how many hours and minutes is that? Can you do your taxes?

“This algebra I stuff doesn’t mean anything to these kids. They’re not walking around thinking, ‘what’s the mean of that?’ They’re not looking for box patterns. We need to be teaching them stuff they can use.

“When I was in middle school, they taught us how to do taxes. We were filling out the 1040EZ. I didn’t plan on going to college when I was in high school, but when I decided to go, there were placement tests to see what math class I belonged in.

“What if a kid wants to be an artist? What kind of math is he going to take in college? Probably not higher-level math–probably whatever the easiest class that’ll give him that college math credit. He doesn’t need to know this stuff”

She’s got a point, especially since she teaches at a neighborhood school, not a college prep school like mine aspires to be. Rigor is important, that’s for sure, but maybe we’re fighting a losing battle if it’s just rigor for rigor’s sake. Although, the one thing I would say is that nowadays, opportunities for people with a high school education are drying up. So I don’t know what the answer is. I suppose if there were an easy answer, we’d already have figured it all out.

I am frustrated.

My Hopkins adviser came through for what’s become my bi-weekly beatdown. As usual, the theme is that I’m not standing up for myself, I’m letting the kids walk all over me, I’m too nice to them, I’m too tolerant, I’m too patient, I don’t raise my voice enough, and I need to be much more domineering. I think she thinks I’m not getting the point, because today she spent about 20 minutes lecturing me on it. To really hammer it in, while I was out handling something in the hallway, she interviewed my students and when I returned, she reported back to me that their consensus is that I’m too easy on them and that I let the class get side-tracked. The point was even further punctuated by random chaotic events going on outside my room. What’s hard to swallow is that she has a point. She knows it, the kids know it, any visitor to my classroom knows it, and I know it.

I take a lot of criticism for the many things I’m not doing and not doing well, but it really felt like an attack on my persona. I prize my patience and ability not to take things personally. But at that moment I found those very same ability lacking. It really feels as though these aspects of my personality have been a liability for me in the classroom. It’s hard enough doing what I’m doing without having to be someone I dislike.

I was still chewing on that dilemma when I was called down to the office to conference with the parent of a kid who had gotten kicked out of my class the day before. In my haste, I forgot to lock the door. In the meantime, my students for my next class had been released for lunch in my absence, and had began to walk into my room, by the time I arrived, I knew from the shouting coming from the room that something was amiss. As I approached, a bunch of students ran away, and one of my students emerged, bleeding pretty heavily around his eye. And out of a roomful of kids, not one actually saw what happened and who did what, if you can believe that.

During the next class, we had a brief group discussion about what had happened. Most of the kids–who were in the room, mind you–felt really bad for the kid who got beat up. They said it was unfair that he was getting suspended when he was the one who got jumped. Person after person chimed in to say that even though they found him annoying, he really is a cool kid, and is extremely nice. They lamented the fact that he was constantly getting picked on. I told them all that their boo-hoo’s didn’t mean crap when not one of them had the stones to stand up for him. It didn’t have much effect. Apparently guilt doesn’t mean much in a place where “snitches get stitches”. Sad.

I guess it’s not to say the day went by without pleasantness, because there were some small and large victories, and some productive steps taken. So I’m going to go ahead and be upset tonight, but in the long run, I’ve got to find a way to brush the really negative stuff off and constantly celebrate the good stuff. It’s probably the only chance I’ve really got in the long run. No matter what, my next post will be celebratory, I swear.

Although I spent most of my break stressed out about the fact that I would going back into the same quagmire I had left behind, the good news is that I am actually feeling a bit better since return to school than when I left. I guess it would be hard to feel much worse. To be completely honest, I spent a lot of time during break pondering, weighing my options if I decided not to come after the summer, in the event that my life might not improve. Well, I certainly wouldn’t call my first few days back blissful, but for one reason or another, I’m not quite so pessimistic. Maybe it’s the turkey, who knows…

But sadly, the theme of the past few days from my point of view has been the losing battle I am fighting against discipline. It’s only a small comfort to realize lately that although my personal management skills are pretty weak, the problem is much bigger than myself. We are up against some extremely alarming social issues, but I just don’t feel like there’s a systematic plan to manage the insane amount of baggage our students bring into our building.

For instance, I have been cursed out by the same girl for two consecutive days, which is a problem for several reasons. I have made considerable effort to try and mentor this particular girl, despite the fact that she has tremendous distaste for me. She’s one of my most challenging students, and she has the ability to completely destroy a lesson. She’s often extremely volatile, crass, and loud. It’s been a major challenge to socialize her, but we had been making gains lately. The only real strategy to deal with her is to try and contain her by appealing to her very real desire to make something of herself. But when she’s having a bad day, you’re going to have a bad one too.

I probably should have known things were going to go badly when she initiated, at full volume, what was probably one of the most vividly sexually explicit conversations I have ever heard front-and-center in my room. I managed to put an end to it, but the damage was done. From that point on, she wasn’t interested in any directions I had to give. Along with 2 other students, she walked out of my class without permission before being dismissed. When I spoke with her other teacher about holding the 3 of them at the end of the day until I could get them for detention, she informed me that she wasn’t coming to my f***ing detention and that I was a b****-a**. I was shocked, sadly not that those words came out of her mouth, or that I was being cursed at; these are fairly normal things. The shocking part was that she would do something so stupid as to curse me out in front of witnesses, knowing full well what the consequences would be.

Even more shocking was the fact that she back in my classroom the next day. I make an effort not to hold anything against my students, so I talked to her for a couple minutes in the hall to make sure that if she was actually back in school and coming to my class that at least we were on the same page. She clearly wasn’t a big fan of me, but I felt like she understood that she had been out of line the day before, and was ready to change her ways, for the time being at least. Wrong.

During She marched out of my room at some point to go do goodness knows what. When I followed her to get her back into the room, she told me, “Get out my face Mr. Johnson. That’s why you got cussed out yesterday. I’m so f***iing tired of you!”, as if I’m in her way for doing my job by enforcing the rules. This time, I was just disappointed in her. What could possibly have gotten into her to curse me out two days in a row? I wrote her up and had security take her down to the office.

Imagine my surprise to see her back in my classroom, unescorted, 10 minutes later. I would find out later that she was sent up to collect her belongings, but she arrived with no documentation or apparent purposed. Needless to say, this sent the wrong message to the rest of my students, who promptly went ballistic–mind you, this class is composed of our most academically struggling students, and naturally, some of our most challenging to manage.

This time, surely, if this girl wasn’t suspended, I’d at least be seeing her parent for a conference before she returned to my class. Wrong, again. She was back in my classroom again today. We managed to pass the day without any serious behavior issues (well, besides her cursing out her boyfriend in the middle of a quiz). And honestly, I was just happy to see her working hard. Still, what message does this send to the other students, that she can curse me out 2 days in a row without major apparent consequence?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming anyone. The way I can’t even handle my own business, I’m hardly in a position to do so. I’m sure the situation was handled, I’m just not sure exactly how. After all, the girl did come back (this time) at the very least ready coexist with me and get her work done. I’ll take what I can get. I just don’t like where this slippery slope leads.

Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the behavior I’ve been dealing with, just since the beginning of the month. But it’s not really the kids I’m struggling with, it’s the street culture that’s twisted their worldview and the results of years of bad schooling that have left them unprepared for formal education. Sometimes I wonder, even if I did manage to pump these kids full of math, which is far-fetched to begin with, how are some of these children going to survive in the world outside this brutal urban culture, where just one incident, like the ones they witness everyday, could be the end of their shot at better life opportunities? Unless we can achieve some major social changes, only the very cream of the crop–the brightest, shrewdest, and most adaptable–are going to make it. And that scares the heck out of me.

I, like most Baltimore City teachers, especially ones from our corps, have been hanging on for dear life these past couple weeks, holding out for Thanksgiving break, as if it were going to be my salvation. I’m pretty much living on the edge right now, and the fact that it’s not just me, but most everybody, is a sad commentary on the state of this profession. For me, I’m not totally sure what’s gone wrong, but I feel as though much of what I’m trying to improve has really skidded backwards lately.

This gloom was the backdrop for our first Student vs. Staff basketball game.

The students have been fired up about it for weeks. I’ve had kids I don’t even teach run up to me in the halls to ask if I was playing, if I was any good, and what position I play. And the basketball team itself has been out for blood. Many of our basketball players are also our most challenging students, and they were definitely looking to embarrass us on the court. One player has been telling me every day for the past week about how they were going to hang 100 points on us.

I stayed coy about bragging back. Although I knew I could hold my own, up until the day before the game, I had no idea who we’d even be able to get to play for the staff side. It was my duty to put the team together, but that, like many far more important things, fell to the wayside until the last minute. And even if I had known who we’d be able to field, we’d still be a disorganized, unconditioned team playing against a team that’s been practicing together most of the days of the week for the better part of 2 months.

We took the court in front of a raucous crowd of students from our three grades. The FAST cheerleaders showed off their routines on one side of the gym, while the teachers jumped and cheered under the other hoop. The basketball team threw everything they had at us the whole first half, but we hung in there. We didn’t make a lot of baskets at first and I came out cold. I had just eaten lunch and it wasn’t sitting well. But we stuck to the game plan and things started to gel as we found the holes in their defense. It’s not an advantage we’ll have for long, as our upper grades start filling in, but that day, we had a size and strength advantage, which let us win the battle for rebounds. After going down by as much as 8, we went on a run before half time and closed the gap a bit.

Coach Burley sat their whole starting side at the beginning of the 3rd quarter, and we took full advantage. We sat our Principal, who was our most effective player, but my game finally settled in, and we shut them down on defense, while running up the points. I had spent an hour after school working on my mid-range jump shot, and without their best defenders on the court, I buried several. By the end of the 3rd quarter, the staff were up by 3.

Quarter 4 was intense. Coach put all their starters back on the court. They came out flat though, making poor decisions and losing discipline on defense. The game stayed close until the end though, partly due to the machinations of Coach Burley, who was also the ref, haha. We couldn’t get a call, but he managed not to see one of their players travel two plays in a row, and it seemed like every time they shot the ball a foul was called. They had a chance to win when, down by 1, their best player was sent to the line but missed both foul shots. We hung on to the lead for the remaining minute, and time was called.

It was sooo sweet. One of their players mixed up the numbers on the scoreboard, as if that would change the outcome, but we fixed it and took our victory picture. It was probably unsportsmanlike of us, but we spent a solid 5 minutes reveling instead of lining up to shake hands. I tried to organize a line, but the basketball team had already mostly started filing back to the locker room to get chewed out by Coach Burley. He must have read them the riot act, because most of them were completely dejected as they left the school.

It was interesting to see how conflicted the student body was. Some of our students cheered the whole time for us and came up to shake our hands before and after the game. Some of them were all for a faculty embarrassment, and had already thought up excuses seconds after the final buzzer. But most were there, just enjoy the show, cheering for whatever player did something flashy.

I hope the game was symbolic. The students are always talking about how they “run this school”, which isn’t far from the truth. We teachers are, after all, only human. But just like in the game, we fight absolutely relentlessly, undermanned and underequipped, to get by on the slimmest of margins. On the other hand, unlike the game, the real life battle continues on Monday.

One of my students was proposed for expulsion on Friday, and I have very mixed feelings about it. The kid is extremely troubled. His parents don’t know what to do with him, and neither did we. He just couldn’t stay out of trouble. If he wasn’t supervised constantly, he would be out of his seat, breaking something. He was a constant disruption in the classroom. At the same time, I know he’s not a bad person. He never argued with me, and he always came to detention. I’d make him clean my whole classroom, and it was like he was almost glad to be punished. It wasn’t that he enjoyed it, but I could tell that it meant something to him to be held accountable for the damage he caused. The problem was he just couldn’t help getting into serious trouble continuously. We didn’t have the resources to help him, but I’m really afraid for what’s going to happen to him now.

That’s the constant frustration. I’ve got at least a dozen other kids who have extremely serious psychological issues. They ruin classrooms, but they’re really screaming for help. I don’t know what to do to help them, and furthermore, their disruptions make it so I can’t do my actual job–teaching algebra. Even counting out that 10% of my students who are completely out of pocket, I’d say another 40% are in moderate crisis. The reality of it is that the math lesson I spend so much time preparing is just the backdrop to me trying to navigate the psychology of 100 extremely needy adolescents. It’s really more like triage than anything else.

There’s much more to write, but I’m scatterbrained right now–this topic is just one of many things on my mind right now. I’m hoping that the process of figuring out how to get it all on paper will help me get my act together. But for now, I’m going to try to get some rest.

The past week has been filled with the usual ups and downs. Monday was one of those days when I actually felt like I was teaching. One of my least comprehensible students caught me off-guard, showing up early to proudly present to me his homework and his signed monitoring sheet. I barely knew what to say, so I told him “good job!” as enthusiastically as I could. In general, everyone was easier to deal with, and my lessons went over with little difficulty. During the dreaded intervention period, I somehow ended up with 30 kids in my class room, and amazingly enough, I kept them under my thumb and at least somewhat on-task. I was practically waiting for the whole thing to blow up in my face, but it never did.

My bliss wouldn’t last though. Yesterday, my morning started off rough because my most manageable class was chaotic. Then all hell broke loose in the afternoon. One of our security officers literally pile drove at lunch in front of the whole 9th grade, which was a showstopper. If that wasn’t enough, I had to break up my first serious fight in the hallway minutes later during the transition. When my class entered the room for the next period, math obviously wasn’t on their minds. I couldn’t refocus them, and most of the period went to waste.

I hoped to recapture some of Monday’s glory today. Not so much. I had an awful morning class. It was reminiscent of the beginning of the year–me being so overwhelmed with managing misbehavior that I’d completely forget what I was doing during the brief moments of attention. Not to mention I was being observed by my IST and my principal’s coach during this whole mess. My afternoon class was equally unmanageable.

There were a couple bright spots though. I have a couple students that have really improved. One kid, who was a nightmare at the beginning of the year, brought me leftover homemade pizza this morning. Although, while serving detention at lunch, he told me he thought I’d probably just throw it away, like his old teacher. It almost made we want to videotape myself snacking on it after school to prove my appreciation. Also, I think that part of my dissatisfaction is that as I have good lessons, or even good days, I ratchet up my expectations. It’s tough to vividly remember what exactly my first couple weeks of class really felt like (other than being like drowning), so it’s probably hard for me to perceive the incremental improvements. The ups and downs are pretty rough. In the 3 school days we’ve had so far, I’ve bounced between the extremes of really feeling like I can do this teaching thing to wanting to run for the hills.

I’m still working hard to both establish authority and relationships, and I’m still not past the contradictions. I think it’s starting to work a little better though. I’ve made a point of greeting every student I see with a smile, especially before criticizing them for breaking rules, haha. It’s also tough balancing the necessity of asserting authority with the cost in time and credibility it takes to demonstrate it. Specifically, I’ve heard said before that there’s really no way to win in a power struggle with a student. On the other hand, it’s absolutely important to make it known to everybody that disrespect and misbehavior are not tolerated. It’s just so complicated navigating all the nuance on the fly…

Well, the countdown to Thanksgiving is on. Just gotta power through.

Yesterday, I had the duty of distributing honor roll brunch invitations to students in one of my classes. I probably didn’t make as big a deal of it as I should have. During class, I made a small announcement and handed out 2 of the 3 invitations to little fanfare. The third student was at a rehearsal and wasn’t present to receive hers.

I ran into that missing student in the hallway after school, and it crossed my mind just as the conversation was ending that I still had her invitation. I went back to my room and grabbed it, and said to her, in probably an almost off-hand manner, “Oh, and here’s your honor roll invitation”.

I almost jumped out of fright when she, out of nowhere, shrieked and tore off, running zig-zag down the hallway.

“I made the honor roll!!! I made the honor roll!!!”

She ran up behind a random kid in the hallway and shook the heck out of him, while screaming at him that she was on the honor roll.

Tears of joy streaming down her face when she came back and told me, “Mr. Johnson, I’ve never made the honor roll before! My sisters are on the honor roll every semester, but me, I’ve never been on the honor roll before. I’m an honor student!”

Granted, this particular girl is super emotional all the time, but I was still taken off-guard by how excited and surprised she was. I guess I kind of assumed she already knew how she had really gotten her act together, and how much butt she was kicking in class.

I guess looking back, she has made an absolutely incredible turnaround. This girl was a handful at the beginning of the year. I don’t think I can take much credit for it; she’s been kind of a team project. And I know she’s put in extraordinary effort, all on her own. Still, in the daily grind and chaos, it’s easy to miss out on some of the great things that happen.

And I think the lesson for me is to make big deals out of the good things, because you never know how much a little recognition might mean to someone.

Right now, the least of my worries is my own judgment day, my formal observation on Thursday. Unit 2 testing starts tomorrow, and excepting my all-star class tomorrow morning, I don’t have much reason to be optimistic. I gave a quiz last week on the concepts that are at the heart of the unit, and the results were abysmal. There’s not much reason to expect a major change. Even so, the show must go on. We’re way behind and we have to move on to new material. Plus, I don’t think rehashing the same old material would solve the problem.

I’m practically begging for kids to come in for the help they need, but almost no one is taking the initiative. For some kids, I honestly don’t know what they’re thinking is going to happen when the end of the year comes and they don’t pass this class or the state exam. The saddest thing is that some of these kids are so bright, but they’re pissing their potential away. I’m hoping that since it’s report card week, I’ll get the chance to issue some wake-up calls to kids and parents. It’s too bad most of them won’t receive them before they take this test.

Oh well, I’d just as soon shelve this material for now and come back to it later. I’ve got a few test days and a long weekend to think about how I’m going to make Unit 3 far more effective than my first two have been. I just pray that for those who don’t do well, this test comes as a reality check, not a knock down.

I am so stressed. Thankfully, we had election day “off”, but I spent the entire day working on my massive backlog of unfinished business, and it feels like I haven’t made a dent. I must say, it’s pretty demoralizing that I can work really hard most of the time, and occasionally, work literally non-stop, and yet still never be on schedule. No lie, I could probably take a full week off teaching and still not be caught up. It’s like swimming upstream.

In other news, it’s time to rethink my approach to misbehavior. I originally thought the root of my problem was my approach to misbehaving students. But now, I think I’ve reached a point where I am fairly consistent and assertive in confronting misbehavior in my classroom, and still I have classes that get out of control. It’s time to bring in the big guns. I haven’t been proactive enough in calling parents and issuing referrals. The disrespect I put up with is pretty ridiculous, and up until now, I’ve taken it too lightly and taken too much of the enforcement aspect on myself. The fact is, I simply don’t have the time and resources to keep up with numerous detentions and phone calls each day. Once I’ve exhausted the consequences I can issue in class, parents need to regulate their children, and if they can’t/won’t/don’t, then it’s up to the administration. Because ultimately, I need to be able to teach class, and in a couple of my classes, it’s just not happening and it’s hurting all students. The bad part is that now, some of my more compliant students have really started following the example set by my defiant students and have started testing the boundaries. It’s really gotten out of hand. Partly because of behavior, I’m more than 3 weeks behind schedule, and I’m still pushing things back.

I feel stressed and occasionally pessimistic, but for the first time in a while, I think I’m actually ahead of the general mood in the corps, and that’s probably not a good thing overall. Things are pretty bleak. Although my administration can be somewhat oppressive, what with their unrealistic expectations of me, they are highly effective, and I’m blessed for that. Not everyone is so lucky. And I don’t mean to dog anyone, it’s just that being an administrator–let alone an effective one–in this environment is an extraordinary task, and there just aren’t enough superhumans for every school to get their own set.

My toughest class today was a bit of a high-wire act. As I’ve become accustomed to, I randomly had 3 observers. This could be very stressful, but today, this turned out to be a positive thing. A lady from North Ave. (our district headquarters) really laid down the law, which helped put down the rebellions that so often derail my class. Things were nearly out of control, but at least most of the kids were engaged, for a change, even if it was to unite against my instruction. It also helped that my observers really got their hands dirty and helped tutor students during practice time. And on top of it all, I got some uplifting feedback and a lot of ideas. Through it all, I learned a lot.

One thing that has really dawned on me is that a lot of the management and investment problems I’m faced with are as a result of motivation. I’ve been perplexed so much of the time as to why my students won’t do their work. For a while, I concluded that they simply didn’t care, or think it was important. But I’ve seen even my toughest kids do work this week. I used to think that my kids didn’t care about failing, but the truth is that they want to succeed, but they would rather not try at all than try and fail. And they’d rather appear to be a behavior problem than appear stupid.

So my new imperative is to design lessons that let each kid succeed every day. The problem is how I can design lessons that allow each of my kids, who are scattered across about 8 years of math ability, to succeed. One of the key takeaways is that this means most lecture is out. I’ll only be able to lecture on the most basic concepts, because extended explanations will either bore the advanced kids or frustrate the remedial kids. But one thing that can help is getting the kids to help one another.

I’m hoping that if I can carefully build confidence in my class, engagement and motivation will increase, which will allow me to really push, like I’ve been trying to. And maybe my disciplinary issues will start to diminish as well. Now, for the new quarter I just have to find a way that I can shorten the cycle of grading and plan 3 times as many activities with the same amount of time! And hopefully, I can find ways to stop annoying my administration so much, while I’m at it. Oh well, at least now I’ve got ideas to work with that I’m feeling confident about.