Mixed Reviews

I'm grading portfolios from my 8th grade math class. You have to read this:

"The best part of math is learning how to do a new lesson and playing games with the class. I also like when I raise my hand to say an answer and I'm wrong, because then I learn how to do something the right way and that's what I really like about my math class. And I also like that fact that Ms. Louie and other students take their own time to explain how to do something because that also helps me understand my work better."

I love this quote because Olivia is new to our school this year, she's not outspoken in class, and she generally comes across as kind of shy. But here she shows such boldness and such a spirit of learning. This is so exciting!

Of course, one of her peers wrote something about how there is too much "violence" in our class. I have no idea what she means, but I take her at her word that this is how she feels. Not so positive. Requires some investigation, there.

Early voted yesterday. Woohoo! The polling place was busy, too. Only 9 days left!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New News, Old News, No News

The newish news is that we've sent out wedding invitations. Glad to have that taken care of. There are few a still strays needing addresses, and as we get no's, we'll send a few more (maybe), but it's basically done. The RSVP cards make checking the mail a lot more fun. Since people seem to be asking, the registry info is in the invitation: go to mygiftlist.com, and search for Nicole and Patrick. If you don't have internet access, how are you reading this blog?

The no news is regarding Patrick's grants. Still haven't heard. Should find out this month. I started looking into programs abroad, in Argentina especially, that connect travelers with volunteer positions teaching English. I like the idea of tutoring adults. It's still not clear to me what kind of work needs English proficiency, though. Tourism industry? A website I was looking at advertises volunteer positions tutoring single moms. It would be nice to be helpful to a family in need, but I haven't really grasped why single moms in Argentina need to speak English. But maybe I could also help out around the house and learn to speak Argentine Spanish. I really don't want to be a classroom English teacher and be responsible for lesson plans and all that (and not even get paid!). Patrick suggests that in Mexico, I hook up with some of his profs' university connections and learn about Mexican teacher education. Sounds good to me.

The oldish news is that my school put on a Job Fair for the 7th and 8th graders last week. It was great. In a few weeks, we're taking the students to Exchange City, a model city with its own little bank, post office, snack shop, etc. that they'll run for a day. So at the Job Fair, they got dressed up, brought out their resumes and interviewed for jobs. I was representing the Bank (a few of the teachers have such a math phobia that they couldn't do even this), with four positions: Bank President, VP, Account Manager (teller), and Senior Account Manager. I interviewed kids for two hours straight, and it was tiring but also really enjoyable. One girl took the "firm handshake" way too seriously, and pulled her interviewers out of their chairs. It was charming how honest they were, too, and though part of me wanted to say, "You probably shouldn't tell someone that if you want them to give you a job," I was also pleased that they realized that I know them well enough--even those I don't teach--to make it stupid to lie to me. My favorite was the girl interviewing for president: I said, "As Bank President, there will be a lot of times when you have a lot going on around you, so you'll need to be able to prioritize and focus on getting your job done. Do you think that's something you'll be able to do?" She looked right at me and said, "Well, I get a little distracted." I think it was the same girl who, asked why she wanted the job, said, "I've never been the president of anything before, so I thought this could be my chance." Wow. There was a great interview for president, though, from a girl who I've taught all year and who I just love for the way she balances being engaged with the class without being a suck-up. Apparently, she's on the board of a group called Females United for Action or something, and part of her job is to work on their budget and make sure they can afford to do the programs they want to do, and if they can't, fiddling around to make things work. She's 13. I had NO IDEA that she was involved with anything like this. She also had great eye contact. It makes me so happy to find out about this aspect of her life, and to give her this job for a day.

There were a lot of good interview things going on, actually. One that really struck me is that our brainwashing is succeeding. A lot of times, in the classroom, it seems like all the stuff about working well with others and being respectful is just washing over them like a wave of hot air. But in these interviews, I was surprised by how many girls described positive conflict management on the job, saying they would handle conflicts by working together to find good compromises, by calming explaining their feelings to their co-workers, and by accepting the decisions of their superiors even if they didn't agree, "because she's my boss." (I'm imagining the ways I can use this in math class. "Hey, remember how you said you'd listen to the boss? Well that's me. I'm your boss. Where is your pencil.")

There was a lot of interest in Account Manager. When asked why they were passionate about this job (it was the #1 choice for many of them), a lot of the girls said that their mothers or mothers' friends work at banks. One girl was so articulate, it was heartbreaking: she said, "Well, I could work at the Snack Shop [another very popular job was Popcorn Machine Operator--must be safety conscious!], but to me that's like working at McDonald's, and that's not what I want in my life. Working as an account manager, that's like something I want to do when I grow up."

Now I'll grant that there are many possible explanations behind this sentiment. But here's my pessimistic reading: I imagine boys and girls across America dreaming about becoming President, or of launching into space one day, and realizing around this age, middle school, that they can realistically aspire to be teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, the like. For my students, at this school established to serve girls who have traditionally been underserved and disserved by their, our education system, the realization is that they can become bank tellers. Becoming a doctor is like becoming an astronaut to them. It makes me question my own grounding in reality, and that of my colleagues; we constantly talk to the girls about being scholars, being professional, about all the options that are open to them, but we aren't succeeding in teaching them to test well, to write well, to be competitive in four-year colleges, so who are we fooling? When we talk about change, about equity, who are we fooling?

When I figure out how to fix American education, you'll be among the first to know. Don't worry.

I should add that in other contexts, many of the girls have expressed their desire to become doctors and nurses. Also fashion designers, real estate agents, actresses, models, singers, and beauticians. In sum, maybe they are more "normal" than anything else. I still don't feel like our society is doing them justice, however. Maybe it doesn't do justice to most people and their talents, interests, and passions, but it seems disproportionate for these girls.

And now, the best news of this post: Spring is here!

More or Less Knitting

I finished this sweater a couple of weeks ago (including the sleeves, one of which is in my hand in the photo). The pattern is from this fall's issue of Knitty, designed by Ashley Adams Moncrief. Yarn is from Webs, five balls of Berroco Air, color Geothermal, a bulky wool with a little bit of nylon or something for shine. Hooray for Webs clearance! $15 to make this sweater--and my time, which I happily gave. Which actually leads me to the "less" in this post's title. I just went to a great conference (the Coalition of Essential Schools Fall Forum), and I feel reinvigorated about the work that I am doing. Every once in a while, the thought flashes through my brain that maybe I should do something else ... go to med school, or become a lawyer. I also have moments of keenly feeling the reverse, and the Fall Forum filled me with a sense of ownership, that education is my field and what I am doing is my work. I rarely feel this in the classroom, though being a classroom teacher does bring me many moments of joy and pride in my students. The ownership comes to me more from working with adults, organizing ideas and analyzing them, trying to fit thought to practice. I think I am really a pragmatist about most things, not much of a theorist, and the same is true when it comes to education. So I am excited about the leadership role that I have at Young Women's right now, and I am very hopeful that in this third year there, I can contribute more than I gain (while still gaining a lot) and push the school forward, with the help of my wonderful colleagues--one of whom announced today that she is leaving us. Next week. She found another job. I am wondering how to feel about it, how to acknowledge my feeling that it is unfair to the girls to do this in the middle of the year while recognizing all her contributions to the school over the last seven years and her needs for self-actualization. It doesn't seem right to mask or hide any of my thoughts, nor does it seem likely to be good to just lay everything out there. What do leaders do in these situations?

I am unlikely to be knitting much in the next X weeks. I am going to finish Denali's hat (I have to post pictures of the one I knit for Mali!), and throw myself into work. While maintaining a sense of perspective and humility. Wish me luck.

First Weeks of School

I just finished my first week of classes for the 2007-08 school year. Wow, 2008! Anyway, it's been good. The week before last was Orientation; we took the girls on a "camping" trip. There were lots of outdoor activities, and lots of bugs--but we slept on bunk beds indoors, with mattresses that prompted one girl to write that she was sad to go home since the camp beds were so comfortable. That has to be a first. I wonder what the poor thing normally sleeps on.

I have really enjoyed this last week. My two math classes have their issues, but these girls are so much better at working together than any group I've ever had. Or maybe it's just that it's Week 1 and they aren't tired of each other yet. I have other things to say, but due to a web-use survey that my 7th graders just administered, I'm getting paranoid about being found. By them. I'm not worried that they'll find out about my personal life, more that their feelings will be hurt if they see that I make fun of them to my friends.

It's dinner time!

Hello from the Pit

I'm not sure what I mean by that subject line, but I feel obligated to say something.

There never seems to be enough time. Lately, I find myself routinely leaving school at 6 o'clock with very little to show for it; when I get home, all of my personal work--planning for my classes, grading--still has to be done. I guess the job of leading the Middle School Academy is sinking in, although the reality of it hasn't. I guess I didn't do this much for the school or for the MSA last year, but at the same time, I still don't feel like I actually do a lot more than my colleagues on the team, I'm just technically responsible for more, responsible for providing oversight and remembering what we have to do and when, but not for actually doing much more; anyway, I surely don't do 2 more hours of work a day, which is the extra time that I have from 8:30-3:30 (I taught two more classes last year). On the other hand, I guess I must; where else could the time be going??

I definitely prefer this position to the one I had last year, teaching full-time; but on the other hand, it's hard to say, because even the teaching part of this year is a lot better than it was last year, in large part due to the fact that this is my second year and I'm a little more together. Actually I'm not sure why my classroom experience is so qualitatively different, but it is. And it's much better. But anyway, although it was never my goal to be an administrator, I enjoy being an effective administrator, and my colleagues give a lot more recognition than my students do. ;) It is still not a goal of mine to continue in administration except insofar as I am also able to teach, or pursue other academic work (research, I suppose).

So, I come home later, I bring more work home, I have made only a very small dent in the grading that I have to complete by the end of tomorrow. But I am blogging to let you know that I am still alive. :) And not that unhappy, just a little overwhelmed and a little tired. But not unhappy, really.

I can't wait for December and returns to California. I get to visit twice: once at the very beginning of the month, for a math training in Monterey, and once later for Christmas and family reunions. For Thanksgiving, we're heading to Indiana to spend some time at Patrick's paternal grandmother's house with that part of his family (his dad and stepfamily are flying in from Florida) ... I'm sure it will be a good time, but I'll miss the no-mai-fon. Maybe I can get some sticky rice in Chinatown and make my own. But it just won't be the same. Especially since I don't think I could bring myself to buy and cook laap cheung (being vegetarian and all).

Yeh-yeh, I'm sorry I'm missing your birthday. I made you a card and I'm putting it in the mail tomorrow.

As if he reads a) my blog, b) anything on the Internet, c) English. Well, please pass along the message, wonderful family o' mine.

Love ya!

Hello!

Sorry I've been sort of out of touch. School has really picked up! I'm still not sure what my role as co-facilitator of the middle school officially entails, but I am finding plenty of little jobs here and there to keep me plenty busy. In any case, I'm much more satisfied with my job this year than last. I feel much more like an integral part of the school, part of the institution. One of my students asked me a few weeks ago how long I'd been teaching at YWLCS; when I told her that this was only my second year (same as her, since she's in 8th grade), she said, "Really?? It seems like you've been here for a long time!"

The girls have been very excited to hear about my engagement. They've been spreading the news; I'll be call a parent to tell them that their daughter has earned herself a lunch detention, and they'll pick up the phone and say, "Oh, Ms. Louie! Congratulations! Sonia told me you're getting married!" The other day, I was chastising a student for doodling instead of doing her work, and she looked at me with sad puppy-dog eyes and said, "But Ms. Louie, I'm trying to draw you a wedding dress."

Anyway, Patrick and I have been to some neat places over the last few weekends. Pictures and narratives are on his blog. I've also been enjoying reading about his uncle's travels. Uncle Bill is a teacher, and he's taken a year off for international travel. He's making a documentary about math teaching around the world and posting about his travels on his blog. I can't wait to see his footage! In the meantime, you can also read his posts on Mr. Bill.

First Days of School

Well, actually, the first days of school are over. I was back at work on August 9, and the students were back for half-days on August 21. Classes started last Monday.

The year is looking good. My role at YWLCS has changed, and now I'm teaching two math classes instead of four (and still advising a dozen girls and teaching reading in the morning). I am officially one of two Middle School Academy co-facilitators. This means I do a little bit extra beyond what everyone on my fantastic team does to make things run smoothly: planning for our meetings, mostly. Starting probably next week, I will also have more of a presence in my colleagues' classrooms, making observations that may be useful to them and, if needed, helping out with discipline.

My own classroom management (which is the fluffy term we use these days; "discipline" sounds too disciplinary. Too much like locking kids in closets and beating them with scary paddles--which I think every teacher has, at some point, wished for) has grown so much since last year. I feel much more in charge of my classroom. It's not that I didn't have a sense of authority last year, but I was much more willing to negotiate and much less willing to give direct commands which I refuse to compromise. One thing that's really helping is lunch detention, which the middle school has started. It's the perfect consequence; they can't refuse to do it because they have to catch some bus (the problem we had with afterschool detentions), and it really sucks for them to miss having lunch with their friends. Each teacher is in charge of lunch detention for one day a week, with a partner, so the work is shared, whereas last year, if you assigned a detention, you had to host it yourself. That made it a lot harder to manage, so it was a lot less likely to be assigned, and a lot less effective with students.

The highlight of last week was probably the POW Song. We have math Problems of the Week, which are complex problems that require long write-ups describing what the problem is, what your solution is, and how you went about solving it. I had my groups each write a verse relating to some section of the POW write-up, and they're eating it up. They beg to sing the song every day, and they did a great job of coming up with creative lyrics to the Concentration, the letter A rhythm. It's really catchy.

Anyway ... I'm really looking forward to this year of teaching.

Patrick and I spent Labor Day Weekend in Iowa. It's a nice state, and I guess I wouldn't mind living there for a few years if that's where he got his first job, or something. It made us both kind of homesick (him for Iowa and me for Cali), but it was great to see his mom, and she gave us a ton of food!

Hope you're all well. Love you.

The Y-Dub Update

My school has been featured on a Chicago Public Radio series on education. The particular segment is ten minutes long and deals with private funding in public education in Chicago. You can hear it here; scroll down to the bottom of the April 25th show. In spite of all my complaints, I am proud of the school. The vast majority of students care, all the staff do, and, like our cheesy bulletin board says, "Something good is happening here," even if it's happening more noisily and more chaotically than I would like. The weather is slowly getting warmer, and I feel like I've made it past a wintertime slump. I'm beginning to genuinely look forward to returning to YWLCS next fall.

Blooper of the week: in a book report, one of the girls spelled Destiny (the name of an important character) as "Density." But everyone seems to comprehend the concept of surface area (for rectangular prisms, at least). Oh and you'll like this: one of my sneaky tricks to get students involved is to use their names in word problems (everyone does this these days), and to mix it up a little bit, I started using the names of their favorite rappers and singers. It's so brilliant that it's stupid!! All I have to do is put the name Chris Brown in my problem about selling hot dogs and corn dogs, and they're falling all over themselves to read it. On a page full of problems featuring Makita, Keyanna, and Alexa, everyone wanted to do the one with Bow Wow in it first. They were fighting about who was going to get to present it to the class (but then, they always fight over presentations. They love to give them, which is great; if only they were more competent at listening to other people's!)

In other news, I got a really sweet letter from one of my advisees, saying basically that she appreciates having me around, and I shouldn't let it get me down when nobody listens to me.

Only twenty-something days of instruction left!

Oops, I accidently pasted a link to the Department of the Treasury where my Chris Brown image was supposed to be. It's fixed now, but did you know, the national debt changes daily, and its current amount is easily accessed by the public? (Click on "current amount.") It's a pretty scary number.

Take me to your leader

In Humanities, the 7th graders are starting a unit on China. In this unit, they will learn that Chinese women had bound feet. I know because the 8th graders told me about it at the beginning of the year. They wanted to know if that ever happened to anyone in my family.

This year's 7th graders began yesterday by making a big chart on the board, listing things they already knew and things they wanted to learn. (This strategy is called KWL, and they will come back at the end of the unit and list what they have learned.) On the "already know" list:
1) Different decorations
2) They trade with the U.S.
3) Great Wall of China
4) China wanted boys instead of girls
5) Major cities have a Chinatown
6) Do carate
7) Eat very different food
8) Worship Buda
9) Known for wearing robes
10) Different calendar
11) Tounge cut off if you lie.

Good job, kids.

Want to know:
1) How long was the Wall of China around?
2) What gods do they worship?
3) Do they have a town for U.S.?
4) Why do Chinese people love cats?
5) Do they have responsibilities?
6) How do you make fortune cookies?
7) What's the aconamy?
8) Who is their king?
9) Was China made befor Asia?

I'm not sure what some of those questions mean.

Their other big idea is that since I got my hair cut, I look like Mulan. You be the judge.

We just planned Spirit Week (and I got the fun job of being faculty chair of the Spirit Committee. No, I'm not joking, it really is fun). Proposals for themes for each day included Jersey Day (but they tried that last year, and not enough people owned jerseys so it sucked), Pink and Purple Day (but not everyone likes pink and purple--thankfully), Backwards Day (rejected because "What if we have to go to the bathroom??"), Bum/Hobo Day (they had some other word, I forget what it was, but anyway I said no), and Favorite Rap Star Day (Brie came through, reminding everyone that they might "wear really big jeans and they might fall down and show our panties" or, alternatively, they might dress like a female pop star, which would be inappropriately hoochie for school, though I don't think she actually said hoochie). We ended up choosing Twin Day, International Day, Cartoon Character Day, and School Colors/Rally Day. I hope it turns out good ...

Building Community

Accompanied Patrick to a talk given by a gentleman named Laclau at a cafe called No Exit this evening. Laclau is an Argentinian now at an English university, and he has just written a book about populism. He made some cutting remarks about Slavoj Zizek and said an awful lot that I couldn't make heads or tails of. But one of the questions that an audience member asked was, "Is it possible to separate the content of Hugo Chavez' message, his populism, from his unappealing style?" Laclau replied that while it might be theoretically conceivable in some imaginary world, it is not possible now in Venezuela.

I took a course in my last year as an undergrad called "Building Community." I'm so used to seeing people organize around common grievances that I wondered, "Is it possible to create a sense of community that exists in a positive sense, that does not rely on opposition?" I never felt that the class addressed that question at all, but now I realize that the work I did during the class proved that yes, it is possible. I was part-time at the Community School of Music and Arts, and everyone there was tremendously committed to the very positive goal of the school: promoting and providing art education for locals of all ages. Everyone put in more hours than they were paid for, and there were many small crises of all kinds. But although people got tired, they were never angry in quite the same frustrated, fed-up way that the teachers at my school are.

I just checked my email and a funny thing has come up. Being such a small school, the scheduling is easier if each class is split in two sections. So there are two 7th grade sections, 7A and 7B, and the girls stay with the same group all day. Lately, one of the sections has started bullying the other section. "We're better than you." "Your section is full of lames." (The part that reminds me of Iraq is where the teachers say to the disgruntled "lames," "Stay cool. Whatever you do, don't retaliate, we are going to resolve this," but amongst ourselves, we're all wondering what the heck to do.)

So anyway, a section of 7th graders has decided to rally around the arbitrary fact that they belong to one section and not another, and the strong point is their opposition to the other section.

How can we harness people's desire to belong and channel it in a more positive way? School spirit? A more responsible stewardship of our school environment? Does it have to be so stupid and counter-productive?

I picked up a note today that made me really happy. Usually I hate finding these things, because they're just full of incriminating crap. "So-and-so is a b----. I can't stand her. Why do you talk to her?" The other day, I confiscated a fortune teller (a folded-paper toy that's easy to make; in elementary school, my friends and I would fill them with fortunes like, "Your favorite color is blue," or "You're going to marry Ryan"). This one included fortunes like, "There's sh-t in your panties." Boy was that fun. Anyway, today's happy note basically said: "I'm so worried. I'm failing math and I don't want to do bad in school. I hope I can make up this Not Yet but I'm really afraid that I can't do it." The recipient wrote, "Don't worry, I got UR back. You'll be OK." The original writer tied up the exchange: "Thanks for being my best friend." Aw.

New Snow

We went for a nice walk earlier today to Promontory Point to enjoy the sunshine and the fresh snow. It's hard to communicate what it really looks and feels like, but here are some pictures anyway. The walk to the Point is noisy; the streets are busy, and the snow crunches underfoot. But when you get to the lake, the sounds of the water crashing on the rocks drown out the city, and it's peaceful. We saw lots of skinny squirrels and some goldeneyes, diving ducks with beautiful black, white, and red-brown plumage.

A lot of the snow has already melted, but you can see where it has frozen on the shady side of the trees.


For some reason, these structures supporting the man-made lake edge fascinate me. I wonder how old they are. Parts of it look much newer: you can't see any bolts at all, just smooth concrete. The City wants to re-do the whole thing like that, but I hope they don't.


Patrick is doing very well. He loves his research, and is actually disappointed that it's Saturday because it means the archives are closed! I, on the other hand, am grateful for the respite. I worry that I will fail to find the academic/professional satisfaction that Patrick is enjoying. When we browse at the book store, I am struck by my lack of knowledge and expertise in every area, and it seems impossible to find somewhere to begin. I did find an interesting article on ethnic minorities in China; it was in a book that was mostly about Pakistan. What I came away wondering, though, is how is an ethnicity defined? What makes 93% of China's population Han, and what separates the rest? According to the essay, there was no way to say "ethnic minority" in Chinese until the early 20th century. With the Communists came campaigns of assimilation ...

I feel like my interest in education is waning. I have fewer questions now than I did at the beginning, I suppose because I'm currently preoccupied with being frustrated. I am putting less care into my 8th grade class, and it's showing; my lessons are less well-organized, and though I feel this should be an engaging unit with very accessible work, things are just not coming together. On the other hand, I should say that they are; though students' listening skills are no better, they have stayed more on-task lately. It's just a particular project that I assigned too early, and they aren't quite ready for it. And then I think there are wonderful things happening with the 7th graders, but only in one section. The other section can't stop complaining long enough to have a discussion and actually learn something. We discussed this habit itself last Thursday, and I still get worked up thinking about some of the things they said. Two of the girls said that the class was boring, and we just do stuff they learned in 3rd grade--and of course, when I looked at their work afterward, it was sloppy and incomplete, far from demonstrating the mastery they claimed. It made me even more infuriated with them to hear the brave words of another student who responded to them by saying that she was struggling with the work, and she knew she wasn't the only one, and that it wasn't fair of them to keep interrupting instruction because she was trying to learn. Her remarks were inspiring, and in a way, I can't wait for Monday because I am going to kick out half the class if I have to. I will send student after student to the office until it is quiet enough for us to really think together, and maybe then we will be able to come to some of the awesome discoveries that the other class has made.

The odd thing about it is that this all comes at the same time that I feel I have had two important realizations about my work. 1) I may see very little progress, especially socially, but that doesn't mean that the efforts I am making are not having an effect. It's simply that any effect will take years to manifest itself in an observable way. 2) I am actually very lucky to have the students and parents that I do. Even if many of them don't behave as I would like them to, almost everyone really cares about their academic success, and even about what their teachers think of them. These are such great assets.

So much is strange. I've been watching the 7 Up series on DVD; in it, a selection of British children are filmed at 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, and most recently, at 42. The basic question is how much one stage of life reflects on future stages, I guess. At the end of every episode, the narrator says, "Give me a child of 7, and I will show you the man," or something like that. Anyway, I just saw 28, and one of the most striking things is how the people I worried about or disliked when they were 7 have turned out OK. They have healthy relationships, jobs ... it isn't true across the board, I suppose, but overwhelmingly, people are resilient and decent and what more can you ask for. So part of me questions whether my work really makes a difference.

I am feeling very selfish, and I would just like to find something that might or might not make any difference to The World or Society but that would make me happy to do. That would make me excited about getting out of bed in the morning, and keep me up late at night without begrudging my wakefulness. It's only the very, very lucky who find work like that, eh? Maybe teaching will become that for me once I've figured some more things out. I don't know.

Healthy Sex

This is a class that is mandatory for all students at YWLCS. I think most of them only have it one day a week, and they might not have it every trimester, it's hard to keep their schedules straight. Anyway, I love having time off; I can finally catch up on my blog. I found this assignment on the floor in my classroom a while ago, and it cracked me up.

It's called "A Small Party," and the situation is, "You've been going out with someone for six months and care for this person very much. There's going to be a small party at a good friend's house and the two of you can be alone. Your partner asks you to get some protection before the party. You're not ready to have sex. Your partner says ..." What follows is a dialogue where Partner 1's part is given, and one of my girls wrote in the responses for Partner 2 ...

Partner 1: I guess you don't really care about me.
Partner 2: Y wouldnt i care 4 u, If i been with you 4 6 months dont u think I care cause we both no If I didnt care i wouldnt wasted my time

Partner 1: I feel like a fool asking you. I never thought you'd act like this.
Partner 2: If we been 2gethe all this time And you'n no how I act what do u no

Partner 1: Are you starting to see someone else?
Partner 2: No, ARE U

Partner 1: Well, I thought you'd really want to do it.
Partner 2: Yeah I do but Not Now, not here + maybe Not with U

Partner 1: What if I got the protection?
Partner 2: OK so um um um

Partner 1: This takes the fun out of going to the party.
Partner 2:

Partner 1: I guess it's not so important, right now.
Partner 2: That what i was tryin 2 tell you when you first start talkin!

Keep scrolling down to see my pretty pictures, please.

Boxes

are what my apartment is full of. Mom, Dad, Auntie Nancy and Uncle John came up last weekend, and it's a good thing they didn't wait any longer. The bookshelves are gone now, and there are piles of books on the floor, on the table, and in boxes all along the walls. It looks bare, but at the same time very cluttered. I really should tidy up, but everything in a transitional sort of phase; nothing can really be put away, because there's nothing to put it away in (furniture keeps getting up and leaving), but it's too soon to pack a lot of stuff. Boo.

Summer school is swimming along. I'm doing a lot of pressing for explanations, yet I don't feel like I'm really pressing for deep conceptual understanding--and we're just doing proportions, which aren't that difficult to grasp. Part of it is the timing; I think our pacing is right in terms of the number of days we've actually spent, but we have three and a half hours of class every day, so maybe we should be going faster through the material. But it takes time to absorb concepts, and more hours per day doesn't really speed that process ... at least, it doesn't seem to. Plus, things don't go totally smoothly. Students are still getting used to working in groups and stuff like that. For the most part, I think they're doing a good job--but not everyone shares that opinion. In their journals, the students seem reasonably happy with their groups, and in conversations I've had, they do say that they're learning things, which is confirmed by my informal assessments of their classwork. But a parent volunteer stepped into class today to announce a missing wallet, and when I saw her after school in the copy room, she said, "So, you have all the freshmen? ... um, is it always that disruptive?" Apparently, she is used to seeing the rigidity of her daughter's current school (which is Catholic). It was pretty noisy, though. It's hard to manage a class of 30+ students. I could be doing more to make my expectations clearer, though. Targeted retaining during the break and after school, for example. I should be doing a lot more of that. Did some today at break, and it was very productive. It's a weird situation, though; two more days, and I'm out of there! So I'm investing all this energy in setting up expectations just so I can leave. Well, not true, it will help the next teacher, I hope, and it will help the students while I have them. But it's so easy to be selfish and just let things slide for two more days. In any case, I'm learning a lot about classroom management. I'm starting to understand some of the things Deborah told me last year.

I'm starting to develop relationships with a bunch of the students. I feel goofy about this, too, since I'll be leaving so soon. One of them reminds me strongly of a girl in my class last year. Exuberant, popular, such potential for leadership--combined with a desire to be cool, to be accepted and adored. Sometimes a great leader, sometimes a horrible distraction. Troubled in her personal life, too. One of her friends just died in a car crash.

I think that's all I have to say for now.

Race and Percents

My Classroom

Lately, I've been working on percents with my 7th graders. What is a percent, how are percents and fractions related, how can figure out what 10% of a number is, etc. The way my team has been teaching this unit has been mathematically interesting, trying to get students to make a lot of connections between pictures and symbols and different methods, but I've been looking for other ways to make it engaging for students who don't really care about math. One thing I really wanted to do was get into some demographic statistics, so I've been putting together some activities along the way to do this. One day last week, we looked at global wealth distribution: What does it mean that the richest 5th of the world's people has 83% of the world's wealth, and what percent would each 5th have if the wealth were distributed evenly? Yesterday, we looked at the student body of our school by race and calculated how many teachers out of 50 would be Latino, white, Asian, African American, Pacific Islander, and "other" if the faculty was racially the same as the student body.

Today, we moved the desks out of their usual formation (5 groups of 4 desks each) and into a big circle. My central question was: Is it important to you to have teachers of your own race? Of different races? Why?

I brought in a rain stick to be our "talking stick" ("If you don't have it, don't talk"), and we passed it around the circle. I was really happy that the mere fact of having to hold the stick to pass it seemed to get a higher percentage of students talking than the typical "raise your hand if you wanna say something." The participation was still uneven, though, and I had moments where I was like, "Oh dear, the white girls and the black kids are dominating again, and Maria is looking at me like she would rather die than be here." I have no idea how I could have brought Maria, a frequently withdrawn Latina student, in. It didn't help that her two close friends were both absent today; she must have felt really isolated. In her letter at the end of the discussion, she wrote: "Today I learned 0%," and something to the effect of, "I don't think it's important what race teachers are as long as they teach GOOD here." (I had instructed students to write one paragraph starting with "Today I learned ..." using percents, and another paragraph starting with "I think it's (un)important ...")

Anyway, most of the students participated and were really engaged in the conversation. I was somewhat surprised by the uniformity of their responses: almost everyone said that they thought it was important to have teachers from different races so that they could learn from their different backgrounds, and then when I refocused on the question of whether it would be important to have teachers from their same race, everyone said, in different ways, that they did think it was important. Reasons? -Shared languages other than English for help on academic work and communicating with family, shared holidays, and shared background experiences that might make it easier to talk about personal stuff. One girl (white) also mentioned that it would be important to have teachers of your own race because they wouldn't be racist toward you. (No one mentioned having educational role models)

So then we looked at the actual racial characteristics of the faculty. Everyone seemed to interpret the data basically correctly. We passed the stick around again, and people commented on what they thought should be different. The basic consensus was that the faculty should reflect the diversity of the student body much better than it does. A few students wanted to know why there were so many white teachers (85% of faculty vs. 36% of students), but we didn't discuss it.

To wrap up, I gave students the option of writing a letter (Maria's is described above) to me or to the assistant principal, who has a bit of power in the hiring process. Most of them seemed really into it. We didn't get to finish; hopefully, it will still be fresh enough after the long weekend for them to keep going on Tuesday. I'm thinking that it would be neat to have the assistant principal come in and talk to the class, to show his appreciation of their letters and to address the question of why there aren't more teachers of color. It would great if he would also encourage the students to become teachers so that students like themselves in the future would get to learn from a more diverse faculty. I think he would do it. I have to talk to him about the whole thing.

Anyway, it was a good activity. The class stayed calm and the atmosphere stayed pretty respectful and safe, which I was worried about and which might not always be ideal (we learn from controversy and conflict, etc.) but which was really important for this first discussion. I was really impressed by students' ideas and how they expressed them, and I'm glad they got that chance to think about this issue, say what they thought, and hear what others were thinking. Deborah (my cooperating teacher) also suggested that it might have been nice for students of color to hear white students saying that they valued diversity.

I haven't enjoyed a discussion with my class this much in a while. Getting this kind of stimulation from students is why I'm in teaching to begin with, and sometimes it happens with math ... but it's so important to me to get beyond the numbers and into the world.

Lizzie's Bats

Aren't they beautiful?

I remember doing a tessellation project in 6th grade (at good old PMS). It didn't really turn out that well. And I don't remember what I learned from it.

Julian Cortella, one of my STEP friends, had his 9th grade geometry students do their final project for the course on tessellations, and wow! They made some beautiful designs, and their projects were very mathematical, involving all kinds of transformations and some analysis in the coordinate plane (I think). Julian, Ankur Dalal, and I are going to be making a presentation on the project on Friday, June 10, at the Center for Educational Research at Stanford. Let me know if you're interested in coming. :) 9:15 AM.

Adam's Alligators

Brett's Octopi