So Many Firsts...

 I turned 54 years old this year, and I am still doing and experiencing new things. This should not be surprising, as my parents have led the way in doing new things in the past 20 years, including becoming involved in prison ministry, and many other things that are not my stories to tell.

But this year it has felt like the changes are dogpiling me, and it's going to get even more intense. I can't even get into all of it, but here are a few:

1. New learning management system (LMS). I've been on Google Classroom since Covid hit, with a little experience using Canvas many years before that. I was really leaning into GClass, but my university decided to drop it. So this semester I've been reacquainting myself with Canvas. It's certainly not a major change, but it does mean reconstructing a lot of tools that I had built for GClass.

2. For the past three weeks I have been experimenting with "flipping" my classroom. This will not require an extra-large spatula, or trampolines, and have not been using my middle fingers any more than usual. Instead, I am recording lectures that explain what I want students to do. They watch it as part of their homework, then do some writing to prepare for class. When they come to class, we can almost immediately start conversation exercises. My previous student talking time over two 50-minute periods per week was about 45%. This way I can push it up to around 90%. It's huge, but the prep on the video lecture is a bit rough. This is a fairly big change in mindset for me, and since I'm doing it mid-semester it's a big change for my students. Some of them hopped right on board this train, but some have dug in their heels. I may very well pay a penalty in poor student evaluations at the end of the semester for this move. Stress.

3. Last year I submitted a proposal for a new course which did not get approved. I am revamping it, and trying to make a course that will be acceptable. It's exciting, but it also falls into that "planning ahead" category which vexes me so easily. On it's own, not a big deal. Throw in a weird mental block on my part, and it is a struggle for me to not just give up on the idea and shred it to make confetti to throw at my pity party.

4. I did not max out my overtime this semester, but I'm one class short of doing so. I'm teaching nine classes with a total of about 190 students. For me that is a lot of people to deal with. Not a deal breaker on its own, but with everything else in my life this year, it's a handful of grit in the oil, just keeping track of all of those students and their assignments and their attendance and their excuses for not attending. At heart, teaching is an act of will, and even with cooperative partners, the more people you are teaching, the more willpower is required. And not all of my students are cooperating.

5. I have Mondays off from Kyungsung Universities. In the past, I've used my day off to catch up, plan, sometimes just chill out. But this year I am filling in as English teacher at the Waldorf school from which Maxine graduated and where Quinten is still attending. I teach four classes, 7th through 12th grades. The classes are not huge: the 9th and 10th grades together are my largest class at 15 students. Eleventh and 12th grades have a total of 10 students. Eighth grade has (I think) 10 and 7th grade has eight. So about 42 more students. They are fairly high energy, low ability, but also low fear and better able to focus than many of my university students, for Waldorf reasons.

6. I teach a small group of Waldorf school parents one evening a week, and attend band rehearsal on another. These insure that I am not getting enough sleep early in the week, so that I get to dose up on caffeine via my go-to beverage, the iced Americano. Which feels like it could be my nickname by the end of this year. We spend an hour working on their English, then they spend an hour working on my Korean, and it has made a huge difference for me! My Korean language skills have improved a lot in the past couple of years. 

No. That's not quite correct. I have improved my Korean a lot over the last couple of years. Which leads me to a new experience stemming from points five and six above:

Today was Teachers' Day in Korea, which is kind of a big deal. It's a government holiday, so I stayed home most of the day to get some work done. I could not attend the festivities at the Waldorf School to celebrate yesterday, but there was a local library fundraiser this evening at which I received a few cards. This year I received four cards, one each from a parent of one of the classes I teach. One was a beautiful, water-colored piece of cardstock with meticulous Korean writing on it. No envelope, so I noticed it right away and tried to read it.

Usually I breeze past messages in Korean that are longer than a sentence or two, but this one was directed at me, by a mother who I know, about her daughter, who has been doing very well in my class. I couldn't understand all of it, but I found that I was past a threshold that I did not previously realize existed: I could understand enough of the letter to get feelings from it. She told me that her daughter had been worried about having class with me and fitting in with the other kids (she went to a different school for a couple of years and just returned). The mother told me a little about what her daughter was doing in my class, which was very interesting to read, like hearing your own voice echo back out of a cave reshaped such that it might have been someone else calling out, but still recognizably my own.

I found myself moved to tears. It made me so happy that the student felt cared for, and that she shared it with her mother, who shared it with me. On top of all that, I was reading and understanding it in Korean!

As I said, it's been a stressful year, and it's only May. This letter was so refreshing, a reminder that what I do makes a difference. It's not always easy to see when you're in the trenches, so it's good to have a direct reminder from time to time. And it's the first time that I've ever been moved like this by a text written in Korean! So I am kind of proud of myself for that as well!

And now it is after 1 a.m., guaranteeing that I will not be quite at my best tomorrow. But I got this story written out before sleeping on it, topping off the whole experience with another little sense of accomplishment.

Why I love my job...

 I am very fortunate to love my job. I do not love every part of it, of course. As my Dad always said, "If it was easy, they wouldn't call it work." I am not fond of grading papers and record keeping. I hate assigning grades to students, it feels too much like a judgement on who they are, though it is supposed to be a judgement of what they have done. Sartre says that man is "... nothing else but the sum of his actions," , and he's a pretty clever fellow. I'm not sure that I agree with him. After all, we don't judge a baby by its accomplishments, and we should be quick to forgive people for their mistakes. But I need to move on before I give myself a philosophy headache. I'm not here to talk about the things I don't like about my job, but to share a specific instance of something I do like.

My favorite class is Building Relationships in English, a course of my own design. At the end of the semester, I almost always ask the students to tell me something they have learned in my class, and how it has changed, or will change, their life. Sometimes it's an exam question, sometimes an interview, and sometimes just a course survey.

This year one student submitted an answer that blew me away. In fact, it made me cry the first time I read it. And the second. Be warned, grab a tissue. My student wrote:

I learned everyone needs to be loved. I thought loving is only for people who have enough money and time. I thought being loved is too big thing for me to feel. I was not ready to be loved. So i avoided to be loved by someone who says they like me or even my family.

But everyone needs to be loved because love heals. Now I know that I deserve to be loved. So I will be able to open my mind to people who like me and accept the love. Then I can have people loving around me. I will also give love to people who I love to heal them by loving.

Some Final Exam Bits

During their conversation test, I hear:

"I want to learn Japanese because I want to go to Japan," she answered when asked about learning other languages.

"Why do you want to go to Japan?"

"Because I love anime! My favorite manga from Japan!"

After the test I said to her, "Rey, I understand why you like Japanese animation. Your style is like an animation character!" If someone were to say this to me, it would be a struggle for me to take it as a complement. Not Rey.

"Thank you teacher!" bursts out of her along with the same laugh you hear from the school girls in anime. 

I was not exaggerating: Rey has bright red hair, and lipstick to match. A couple of lip piercings, and a clothing style that is very eccentric compared to my other freshmen. At first I thought she was a bit of a goth, which would also be way out of the norm. But I came to realize that it was mostly the lighting in her room. If we had not been on Zoom all semester, I probably would never have gotten this impression. The complete lack of a tan might have suggested it, but two and a half years of COVID have pushed this nation of sun avoiders to new depths of paleness.

I thanked Rey for always being so cheerful, even when she was sleepy. The class met at 9 a.m. on one day, 2 p.m. the other, and she often had her camera off in the morning. 

As far as English ability goes, she wasn't at the bottom of the class. Her grammar and vocabulary were somewhat lacking, but she made up for it with enthusiasm. And to me, a student like that has the potential to be a better communicator than one who constructs very good sentences with a robotish intensity and lack of feeling. 

Part of me wants to give students a good grade just for being likeable and bringing the energy. I would rather talk with Rey than some students who speak more accurately and quickly. But a proper class cannot be graded according to how much the teacher likes the student. Though frankly speaking, conversational skill does have some correlation with charisma. 

Rey took her test on Zoom, like most of my students. I gave them all the option of coming to my office to test live and in person, strongly implying that their grades would be better for doing so. Three groups took me up on it. Three out of 36.

Seeing those students in person was amazing. It reminded me of why I like this job so much, even though some of them were stressed out and short on sleep because it's final exam season.

Best Class Activity

When I started teaching in university, my final exams were always one-on-one with the students. This gave me a laser sharp focus on each student, so that I could evaluate them to a very detailed level. I liked it in some ways, but on the whole it was exhausting. There were semesters when I had more than 200 students, and that is just too much graded conversation. Answering so many of the same questions over and over was bad enough, but asking questions was just plain brutal.

Eventually I dropped that practice in favor of a more practical test: making students talk to each other. They had to ask each other questions, as well as answering. I only provided the first seed question, from a list that they had previously prepared from. The hardest parts for me became not participating when the conversation was interesting, and staying awake when it wasn't.

Of course, that test method is for English conversation classes. But one of my classes is not a standard conversation class. It's called "Building Relationships in English," or BRIE for short. I designed it myself, with the intent of helping Korean students to learn strategies for making friends with English speakers, get along in an English speaking workplace, and have a healthy romantic relationship with a non-Korean speaker. I was aiming for a course that focuses on the cultural aspects of those conversations and relationships, rather than just the language, though I had planned to make it about 20% English vocabulary, expressions, and modalities. Ambitious, I know, but I was already teaching a fair amount of that stuff in between the grammar and vocabulary of a standard class.

But then a funny thing happened: the first time I taught the course I had a lot of foreign students enrolled, about a third of the 25. At first this seemed like an enormous obstacle to overcome: adapting the curriculum to accommodate non-Korean students, and to figure out the differences between their cultures and "standard English" culture (which is so amorphous that it is ridiculous to even think of it as one thing). 

Then I realized that what I actually had was a natural laboratory for having students build actual relationships... wait for it... in English! I had them discussing the differences between their cultures with regard to the topics we covered in class, and working on presentations to show how things could go right or wrong in various encounters. It was actually a lot of fun, even though it was hard to teach.

Now I've taught it twice (and I'm in the middle of the third time), all three completely and only on Zoom. I have bumped into one or two of my students randomly on the street, but couldn't get the class together. Last spring (2021) I got very lucky, though. I was taking a bus someplace, and a strange young woman said to me, "Are you professor Robert?" 

She was in my BRIE class, and recognized me even with a mask on. (Granted, a foreign man my size, with glasses, graying hair in a ponytail, and a beard peeking out under their mask is not exactly a common sight.) I would never have recognized her, because I did not require that class to use video, just profile photos. She had changed hair styles and color, and was wearing a mask, but when she talked I recognized her voice.

We talked for about 15 minutes, until she got off the bus, and it was so much fun! She is a foreign student of Korean heritage, and her English is good enough that the conversation was easy and natural. I asked her how she felt about the course, because teaching to a Zoom screen is the worst for getting feedback. She told me that it was great, and it was the only class she had that she did not have to work at to stay awake.

I really needed to hear that. As I may have mentioned, working from my bedroom means that I have been living at work for the past two and a half years. I am hoping that we have live classes in the fall of this year, but I'm not holding my breath. I really enjoy being in the classroom with my students. It is tiring for me, because that is where I put my energy into building them up, and helping them put their fears behind them.

In the next few days I found myself wishing that I could have that experience with everyone in that class: a conversation about their experience in the class, how it has changed their point of view, and just how they are doing in life. Then I came to the realization that I could! I couldn't make all of my students bump into me randomly on a bus, but I could make a 10 or 15 minute conversation mandatory. So I did.

I decided to make it a low stress assignment: I gave the students a few questions, and told them that this was a completion grade: show up on time, get full points. I figured some students might not prepare, but I was wrong. Some prepared more than others, of course, but they were all ready to talk with me. Some of the conversations were boring, some were interesting, and a small handful were reminders of why I love my job.

One question I asked was what was the most interesting or surprising thing you learned. In my experience, the majority of answers to a question like this is a recent lesson: the freshest memory is the most interesting, right? But I had answers that ranged through the semester, and almost every activity got mentioned.

These meetings also gave me a chance to encourage my students in a general way, as well as some specific ways: one student gave up an online business that she had started herself, making jewelry, to focus on being a student. I congratulated her on that decision, and told her that quitting is extremely underrated. I assured her that she could rebuild her online store in the future if she wished, and it would likely be even more successful. She told me that I was the only person who had ever told her that.

Another advantage of these meetings is that they helped me to better understand where my students were coming from. A general favorite for most students has been the section on dating and romance. I do a speed dating activity, and we talk about how to be better at dating and why we do it. Then one student told me that the romantic love section of my class was her least favorite, because she was not interested in having a boyfriend or husband. Now or ever. 

I had not even considered students like that, even though I was aware that some people feel that way. (The only label I have for this is "aromantic," which my spell check is not pleased with. Even my brain has trouble with it, reading it as "aromatic." There's a pretty big gap between smelling good and not wanting to date.) So I decided to incorporate it into future versions of this class (which I will be doing in the next couple of weeks). I also told her that it was okay to be the way she was. And once again, I was the only person who had ever told her that.

Research shows, and everyone knows, that empty praise is not worth the breath you spend on it. Telling someone "Good job!" takes no thought, and does not build anyone up in a significant way. But when you get to know someone, and see something that no one else sees, that is a vulnerable time. That is when a few simple words of encouragement can make all the difference in the world.

That's why I like being a teacher.

Newish Job

This month marks my return to Kyungsung University, where I worked for four years (2003-2006).  Things, myself included, have changed enough that it feels like a completely new job.  This is mostly a good thing.

The most significant change is that class sizes are now limited to 15 students.  I believe that the previous limit was 50, though it may have been 60.  The difference this makes in teaching is similar to the difference between carrying 15 and 50 marbles with nothing but your bare hands.  I now have six classes, with a total of about 80 students.  My first semester at KIT I had a total of 350 students.  Last fall set my record for fewest students at 136 enrolled, and just under 100 regularly attending.  Even then, I did not learn many names.

I am now teaching only 2nd year students, whereas at my previous job I was teaching 1st and 2nd year students.  In keeping with the marble theme, 1st year students are more slippery marbles.  They have just finished high school in Korea, which is a challenge the likes of which most of my readers never have faced, and they are ready to avoid work of any sort.  To them, college is like the steps you take after crossing the finish line in a race, but before you settle down and put your nose to the grindstone at work.  Second year students are more like jagged marbles, easier to hold on to, but sometimes more painful.  They will work if they have to, but are less likely to put up with what they perceive as bad teaching.  The more English teachers they've had, the pickier they get.  I find it especially bad if they have had a very lazy teacher who demanded nothing and let them leave early all the time.

In general, English classes at Kyungsung University (which I will from here on out refer to as KSU, which will no doubt be confusing to my friends who fans of Kansas State University, and thus have difficulty processing change) are better optimized to actually teach students.  Though both KIT and KSU English Conversation Classes are two hours per week, at KIT the classes are all in blocks, so they meet one time during the week for two hours.  KSU has what I think of as a more traditional structure, meeting on two different days for one hour each day.  This offers two main advantages: less time to forget what was learned between lessons, and a lower likelihood of reaching English fatigue during class.

If you have not learned a foreign language, it will be difficult to understand foreign language fatigue.  Speaking and listening to a foreign language takes a lot of mental processing power, the same way walking is harder with small children fastened to your wrists and ankles.  Some people can talk in their native language for hours with no problem, while some of us get tired of it relatively quickly.  In a foreign language, that threshold comes much sooner.  The lower your level, the sooner you burn out.  With apologies to my bilingual friends, this is my empathy attempting to better understand my students:

Imagine that you are in class, listening to trying to listen to the teacher talking, while half a dozen other conversations are playing in one earbud in your left ear.  The teacher is from a country that claims to speak English, and considers your language to be a perversion of the Queen's English.  From time to time the teacher uses words which you simply do not recognize, and every word sounds different from what you are used to, sometimes subtly, sometimes unrecognizably.  In addition, this person has a bizarre sense of humor, making jokes that you do not even recognize as such.  If that doesn't sound so bad, it is because you are not imagining well enough.

So I like the small classes split into two different days, though I do have one class that only meets for two consecutive hours on Friday.

I also like my schedule in general.  It is not vastly superior to the schedules I've had at KIT, but there is one significant difference: no night classes.  I am home every evening to enjoy the company of my children.  I have a total of eight hours of gap in my schedule, but it's in only three chunks.  Some of my coworkers have that much in six or seven chunks: an hour here, an hour there.  I have two three-hour breaks and one two-hour break.  Even two hours is long enough to walk home and have an hour to waste time on Facebook do the dishes.

The biggest positive right off the bat for me is how close KSU is to our home.  I can walk to our office building in 20 minutes without pushing too hard.  Granted, I have to leave home 35-40 minutes before class to either avoid the elevator crush or recover from hiking up the hill plus ten flights of stairs.  Not wimpy apartment flights, but big, extra half-floor flights.

There is room for one of these on every floor!
(Yeah, that's the 7 1/2 floor from "Being John Malkovich")

I don't think there's anything as cool as an extra floor between the regular floors, but between the 5th and 15th floor there is a gym membership worth of free exercise.  All I have to do is come early enough to not be sweaty and panting when I get to class.

So not only am I exercising more, I am hardly ever riding the subway.  I work two days a week at Apple Tree Elementary, where Maxine goes to school.  It's about a 40 minute walk from my office, through pleasant neighborhoods with shops and places to eat, as well as the U.N. Memorial Park.

Of course, all of these walks are easily converted into much shorter bike rides, which I want to do.  That will free me up to take longer rides during the week, maybe even during those long breaks.  I am also hoping to bike with Maxine to and from Apple Tree three times per week.  She got a new, grown-up sized bike for a late Christmas present.

I like the old school lines and colors.

It's a bit heavy, but she manages.

I think the basket was what sold her on it.

My biggest problem will be sweat and stink as the weather gets warmer.

Wait, my sweat and stink won't be my problem, they will be my students' problem!  I'll just offer them extra credit to not notice my stench.

A few other details make KSU a better fit for me:  though both jobs have shared office space, at KSU I share with only about 12 instead of all 25, and the office is on the same floor of the same building as all of my classes!  At KIT I would go days, sometimes weeks, without visiting the office because it was far from my classes.  Now I have to be careful to be productive during my office time, because there are a bunch of fun guys in there most of the time.

I like my new coworkers, I miss my old coworkers.  In that respect, this change is a wash.  But almost everything else is an improvement.  It's taking me a while to get into it, and I am considering a big shift in my teaching style, hence my lack of posting recently.  It may get worse before it gets better.

Oh, and one more huge advantage: at the bottom of the hill is a movie theater, and I have time to go!  I saw two movies last week ("Imitation Game" and "Welcome to Yesterday".  Science/History and Time Travel/Teen), and plan to go once a week this semester.  It will not necessarily improve my writing, but it will be fun!  $6 for a morning ticket, which I can easily swing on Wednesdays and Fridays, sometimes even on Mondays!  If I can just resist the popcorn and cola, I think I will be all right!

I am excited about 2015!  Sure, my jacket doesn't talk and dry itself, and there are no hoverboards or flying cars, but I am already enjoying my job, my parents are coming to visit in November, and I get to resume my movie habit!  If I can just get my kids to be nice to each other, this will be an awesome year!

Good Friday

This isn't really about the Christian events of Good Friday, but about how this Friday was a Good Friday for me.

My last class of the week is a night class on Friday night, meets from 8:40 until 10:20.  The students are English Tourism majors, and you can tell this is a frighteningly popular time for class, because I usually have five out of the six students enrolled.  The class is supposed to be an extra conversation class, in addition to their regular conversation class, so these students have two-hour classes twice a week, with a different foreign teacher each time.

The third week of class I had a student show up for the first time.  This is not at all unusual for my university, though this class was regular enough that we had gotten into a rhythm, in which the students were comfortable with my speaking speed, and I felt like they were understanding a reasonable amount of what I was saying.

But this new student, I will use her initials: EK, was working at a different level.  A much lower level.  Much.  Lower.

She was the kind of low that required translation.  I couldn't speak English slowly, simply or clearly enough for her to understand it.  And if you've never met me, please believe that I can do slow and simple, though the jury is still out on clear.

She was literally afraid of me; she said so.  (In Korean, of course.)  I tried to gear the class down to her level, but it was like hitting the interstate in 1st gear, including the loud whining sound and the smell of burning oil.  (That smell may have been in my imagination.)

I did find out about her situation: like the other students, she is in her sophomore year.  However, she was a freshman six years ago, so it's safe to say she didn't remember much from her previous English classes.  Frankly, I wonder how she passed back then.  Probably a combination of cuteness and persistence.  Currently she is not working, just taking some night classes to finish her degree.

I told her the painful truth: I'm a pretty decent teacher, but my class and one other two-hour class per week just aren't going to boost her (or anyone else's) English level significantly.  Not without some significant participation from the student, anyway.  I suggested that she should enroll in an English conversation institute (hagwon) that has classes every day for an hour, maybe even two.  I guaranteed that if she did so the improvements would be quick and noticeable.

She has been in class since then, but I've mostly left her to her own devices, occasionally startling her with a "Boo!" because how awesome is it that someone in the world is actually afraid of me?

This past week was my midterm.  One other student was absent, but EK showed up.  I was feeling pretty pessimistic, and so was she.  She finished last, and I tried to reassure her that just glancing over it, it seemed very likely that she passed.  I offered to grade it on the spot, and she stayed.

She got an 89, which surprised the heck out of me.  And her!  (It turns out she had the lowest grade in the class, though the absent student may give her some competition in that respect.  I believe the others scored 93, 96, 99 and 100.  But there is no student I am more proud of this semester than EK.)

She told me she had taken my advice, and was attending a 3-month course at a popular English conversation institute. (Jeong-Cheol, if you are interested.)  She had also spent the past week preparing for my exam.  So far it is working.

This made me (perhaps) unreasonably happy.  Seeing someone improve at my direction, even if I am not the main tool to evoke that change made me happy, almost giddy.

When she left, I stayed to grade the rest of the papers.  After she closed the door behind her I heard her footsteps as she ran down the hall.  I imagine she was proud, perhaps still a bit nervous, and maybe as giddy as I was.

That was my Good Friday.  I got one of those rare moments in teaching: evidence that I am effective.

Happy Easter to you all.  American culture has it all wrong: Christmas is not really about giving, it's about hope.  The biggest gift ever was given on the cross, and Christians are called to give of their own lives, (though seldom in as dramatically) as Jesus did.  I could have encouraged EK to go home, settle for a C.  I could have even promised her a B if I never had to see her again, and believe me, the thought did cross my mind.  Instead, I went past the easy way out, the cruel and simple option of telling her to give up.  I gave her my attention.  I gave her the best advice I could.  I gave her encouragement whenever she came to class.  So even though this story came to fruition on Good Friday, it's appropriate that I am posting it on Easter, a day of new life and some serious giving.

An Odd Occurance

One time when I was putting together final grades I rode my bike home at 5 a.m., only to find the electricity was off in our building. After carrying my bike up 19 flights, I couldn't take a shower because the water tank on the roof was empty because there was no electricity.

Another time I couldn't get out of the building. Every door was chained closed. It was stupid o'clock a.m., and it took me ten minutes of wandering around to realize that if it had been locked from the inside, then someone must still be inside who could let me out.

Those are the highlights of grading stories for me.

Today we had to have grades submitted for progress reports. In our jr. highs, they get progress reports midway through each quarter, so 8 grades per year. These grades are due, will be due, at midnight tonight. I found myself in the very odd position of being done at six o'clock this evening, fully six hours early.

I didn't quite know what to do. I'm still kind of reeling. Just waiting for something to happen. An urgent phone call telling me that I've screwed up.

Instead I'll probably get ten or fifteen urgent phone calls next week from parents telling me that I've screwed up.

My first real assignment for Baker is due Sunday night at midnight. I should be working on that, but instead I am going to go to bed. It is a reasonable hour, and I am working a volleyball game tomorrow for some extra bucks.

One positive thing I heard today. Edith, my mentor teacher, told me that one positive thing she's heard about me from many people is that I am good at forging a rapport with the kids. Granted, that is not sufficient to be a good teacher, but it is an important aspect. One which some teachers never quite get.

For one week I got to change classes. I had been working as a para with Edith, but another teacher, Charlotte, had kids who needed help in her learning strategies class. So I got permission then switched. I helped some kids in there to get over some tricky ideas, and they actually told other teachers that I had been helpful. Word gets around.

I suppose I should throw in a word or two about learning strategies class. It was formed for kids that have trouble learning (obviously), especially in the language arts. They don't have documented learning disabilities,

I like this job, but it is a lot of work. The first year of teaching always is. Learning the system, the curriculum, how to deal with the kids, it all takes more time than I have. I hate to say it, but it's so much easier with Horyon and Maxine out of the house. I miss them so much that I can't put words to it, but if they were here I would be even more tired than I already am.

We talk on the phone. Sometimes on Video Skype. Maxine doesn't really have the focus for prolonged video conversation. She actually does much better on the telephone. She's picked up all kinds of fun mannerisms that I hadn't noticed until now. She says, "I'll talk to you later, okay?" much more clearly than any almost-three-year-old should.

I finished the last of their laundry with a load of mine last night. Maxine's clothes are cute and small. And they don't have her inside them. I want to pick her up and spin her around. Horyon says Maxine is gaining a lot of weight in Korea. The diet must agree with her. I don't care. I'll still pick her up and swing her around.

That's enough whining for tonight. I've got a busy day tomorrow and Sunday, so I should get to bed.

Peace,

Rob

First Full Two Weeks Complete

How long until summer vacation again?

Never mind.

This was a good week, though tiring. I need this three-day weekend. Mom and Dad are coming to take us to dinner tonight, which will be fun. On Monday, I will take Maxine to the lake, leaving Horyon at home to rest. She needs to get over her morning sickness soon, because Thursday she leaves for Korea for a whole month. It's a long enough plane ride when you're in good health and dragging Maxine with you, but with constant urges to revisit your previous meal it would be downright miserable.

At this point I can't say for sure that being a Jr. High teacher is what I want to do for the rest of my life, or even for this next chunk of my working life, but I am not ready to quit, either.

I have learned a few things talking to my fellow teachers and dealing with students, though. I know that many of you reading this are teachers, but for those of you who aren't, I may have to fill you in on President Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy: In a nutshell, students are tested regularly, a couple of times a year. Overall scores for the entire school are compared year to year, and each school is expected to make a certain amount of progress each year. If that progress is not made, federal funding for the school is cut. The basic idea behind this is that teachers who do well are rewarded for doing well, and teachers who don't do well can be canned.

There are some problems with this idea, but it is revolutionary in a couple of respects: First of all, teachers are actually being held responsible for all students that come through their classroom. Responsible in the sense that our jobs are on the line if our kids don't improve as they work their way from first grade through high school graduation. This is such a common sense thing that you may have assumed it was true all along, not taking into account the idea of having tenure. NCLB pretty much trashes the idea of tenure, though it may be a challenge to deal with older teachers who have been "grandfathered" in.

The other revolutionary aspect is found in one word I used in the previous aspect: ALL. As in ALL students are tested. This means that there is now a big disadvantage to sending a kid out of the classroom, whether to time out for a period or two, or ISS/OSS (In and Out of School Suspension). If our salaries are hinged on the grades of all of our students, then we have to keep the trouble-makers in our classrooms, otherwise their grades go down.

If you are my age, or even a little younger, you knew kids who got through school spending a huge amount of time out of the classroom, dealing with the principal. And what can I say? My first inclination is to let a kid fail if he (or she) wants to. That's how I did it when I taught college kids in Korea. But NCLB has made mandatory what many teachers did naturally: it requires us to give students motivation to do well when that motivation is not being supplied elsewhere.

Sound familiar? It should. That's very likely what your parents did. It was no surprise to me that there are parents who don't teach their kids that school is important, but it did surprise me how that manifests. Example: a kid was called to the office this past week. His mother was here to pick him up. He came back before class was finished. With a haircut. It was shocking enough to make me include it as a sentence fragment right here in the Roblog. This was Ashley's class, in which I am a para, so we got to "What the hell?" about it without having to tell the story.

My guess? Mother works evenings, kid has football practice, the weekends are too inconvenient. So pull him out of math class for a haircut. What message does the kid receive? Being in class is less important than getting a haircut.

So now on to the problems with NCLB. First of all, is cutting funding really the best way to get results? Remember, we're trying to steer an awfully large ship that has been heading in one direction for a very long time. There is not much flexibility built in. It seems to me that if teachers were to use this method on their students we would spend a lot of time holding their heads under water. And that is my minor gripe.

My next gripe is one of statistics: What are the chances that each class in a school (all 7th graders, or all 9th graders for example) is exactly the same in ability as the same class from the previous year? I hate to ask a question to which I don't know the answer, but the anecdotal answer seems to be "Not likely." I'm sure that if you have a large enough student population they start to become indistinguishable, one from the other. That would not be the situation at any Jr. High School I've ever been in. Some years you have a large handful of bright students that pull the average up, and some years you have a couple of classes made up of kids who have learning disabilities and/or serious behavioral problems. However much progress you make with problem classes, they just aren't going to look as good next to the clever classes, and it isn't anybody's fault. Unless you are NCLB, in which case you judge that the teachers are responsible because they haven't worked hard enough, so you threaten to take away funding the next year. If you are the school being threatened you have no choice but to hope and pray that the next year's class will balance out your round of bad luck.

Here's the real downside to this aspect of NCLB: If your school has a reputation for working well with problem kids, and getting results from them, more of them will go to your school! Naturally! Guess what that does to your chances of having a class with a higher percentage of at-risk and low-performing kids? Never mind the simple effects of geography. We don't like to admit that there are some neighborhoods that have more money than others, and that some neighborhoods are more likely to have parents who are not as supportive as others, but it is true. Think that doesn't have an effect on test scores? Think again. NCLB paints every school with the same brush, not taking into account the different populations by geography and time.

Here's my big gripe: NCLB puts pressure on one third of the parties responsible for the education of children, the teachers.

The first neglected group is the administration. Administration at the building level are pretty much in the loop. Their jobs are on the line because NCLB targets individual buildings, not entire districts. The superintendent of schools makes seven or eight times as much as a first-year teacher (in Lawrence, anyway). Guess what penalties are leveled against him and the school board by NCLB when schools fail? None. It is up to the cities to deal with these problems, which makes it a political matter. The ones who are better at passing the blame come out clean, and keep their jobs. Their higher-paying jobs. Their jobs that directly impact education without having to deal with the messiness of being in a classroom.

This manifests in some subtle, but telling ways. Our 7th grade math book is a lovely piece of work, with units focusing on practical application. It's an incredibly real-world approach that would be fun to teach, and might give kids a sense of how math is used in a variety of careers. The problem with it is that it flies boldly into the face of NCLB. And like a bird flying boldly into the face of a brick wall, it comes out bloody and unable to fly. Here on the ground, we teachers have to make up for it by redesigning the curriculum as we go, skipping around in the book, pulling resources from elsewhere, and spending TIME that could be spent focusing on students. I am fortunate that my coworker, Edith, does spend time on it. We also have a list of topics and chapter references from a group of math teachers in another building to draw upon. Nevertheless, anything that draws a teacher's attention away from their students is a waste of time. The purpose of administration is to minimize wastes of time. My understanding is that the administration for Lawrence Public Schools is better than many at this, but my point is that they are not held accountable by NCLB. Not here, nor anywhere else in the United States.

Teachers are the first in line to help students climb the ladder of success. (Sorry. If I think of something less cliche I'll throw it in later.) Administration need to be in there doing their part. The third column supporting our students is, of course, parents. Most students are in my classroom for about 50 minutes per day, five days a week, only when school is on (and they are not out getting a haircut). And this for one school year only. Compare to how much time they spend, and have spent, with their parents.

Unfortunately for some of our students, they spend more time with me than with either parent. I accept that reality. Still, most of our students spend time with their parents, and their parents pass on their attitudes about education, studying, and working. So why does NCLB ignore this reality?

I could go on and on about how most of President Bush's policies ignore reality, even to the extent of publicly claiming that they create their own reality, but my focus here is on NCLB and how to fix it.

What is the one surefire, guaranteed way to make parents take an interest in the education of their children? Before you go on to the next paragraph, try actually thinking of an answer, and let's see if we can agree on this. Go ahead. Think. What gets everyone's attention?

Yeah. I was thinking "money" too. Remember those tests that students have to take, and upon which school funding is based? What motivation do students have to do well on that test? They can be grouped like this:

The "good" students: Will always do their best on a test, even if it is not attached to the grade they get in class.

The "pleaser" students: Will do well on this test if their teacher asks it like a personal favor.

The "screw-you" students: Don't care. About their grade, what their teacher wants, what anyone wants. In fact, if the "screw-you" student discovers that scoring poorly on this test will have a real, negative impact on the school, they may intentionally score poorly. Hey! Power trip!

So how do I as a teacher motivate an s.y. student? I have to earn their trust. I have to catch them up on skills that they may have skipped over in previous years, because an s.y. student is not created in one year. I have to make them believe that they can do well. That's all. If you are imagining me sitting down and having a one-on-one with a scruffy kid, making a connection that is the beginning of trust, thank you for your faith; but don't forget to imagine the other 15 kids in the classroom going nuts, talking about boys, ignoring the assignment they've been given, and doing their best to listen in on my conversation, making the scruffy kid feel uncomfortably un-cool. So much for making a connection.

Right now the government gives people a tax credit for having dependents. All you have to do is have children. What if the amount of that tax credit were performance dependant? Imagine this: After test time, the parents get a notification of their child's test score, and with it a check. The amount the check is for depends on their child's score. Cap it at, say, $500, maybe an even grand, perhaps making that a sliding amount dependent on family income. After all, the kids from rich families will probably get this check passed on to them completely, while the poor families will need that money to pay bills. Let the percentage of that $500 be equal to the score the kid made on the test, adjusted for officially documented learning disabilities.

Do you think it would change parents' attitude towards their children's education? The beauty of it is that you could pull it right out of that tax credit for any children of school age. It would require some serious public education, but if this is a priority then it needs to be addressed.

So there's my first two full weeks of school. I know. Not much about the classes. I'm just now starting to feel like I know my students well enough to write about them. They'll be up here soon, as anonymous as ever. I'll have to keep track of the names I make up for them so I don't get confused. That will be the least of my organizational issues, I'm sure.

Horyon and Maxine head for Korea on Thursday. I will miss them, but it will be nice to sleep without interuption, come home and not have to feed, shower and put Maxine to bed. These are duties that Horyon and I usually share, but the morning sickness has severely limited what Horyon can do. She barely gets through a shower by herself without spitting up, and Maxine makes it more difficult. I have been putting Maxine in bed, praying with her, then leaving the room for the last couple of nights. I poke my head back in if she is hollering something, but mostly let her cry. I'm finding that she actually gets to sleep faster that way than when I lie down on the floor by her bed. Of course, when she gets back from Korea I'll have to go through it all again, but I'm already planning to speed up the program. Hopefully it will register with Maxine that staying at Grandpa and Grandma's house is just different, and there's no point in crying about it.

They're staying for a month. In September I plan to focus on my teaching and on the class that I will be taking. Nothing else. The first month will undoubtedly be the hardest, and by the time my girls come home, I will have a routine that works. I will adjust it to make time for them every day. It will be tough, because I can no longer work at night. Waking up at 6 a.m. for me requires going to bed by 10 p.m. on a fairly regular basis. Planning for my classes is going faster than it used to, but it still takes time. By October it should be even smoother.

Can you hear the panic in my voice yet? Wish me luck.

Peace,

Rob

The Private Roblog

Hi everyone.

Feels weird knowing that the only people reading this are doing so by invitation.

I just wanted to point out that I am only allowed 100 readers. I sent out about 150 invites. Because I wasn't sure of which address to use, some of you may have received more than one invite. If you got two, please don't create two accounts! And if you can share with someone easily, please do so.

Once I've been at Central for a couple of years, I may open Roblog back up again. I think that once I have an established reputation, I will be somewhat shmear proof. We'll see.

The first full week has been rough. I'm tired all the time. I've been staying at school until past five o'clock most night, sometimes as late as seven, and once until nine. Teaching well is a difficult job, and the first year is always the worst. I've had a few first years, and this one tops all of 'em. Doesn't help any that we're dealing with morning sickness and Maxine, but the actual teaching and adjusting to dealing with large groups of adolescents has also been a serious challenge.

I had my first self-designed successful class today. It was my most difficult class, the Algebra kids. I'm trying not to celebrate too much, as I had an observer in the class, but it felt good for the class to go smoothly. Whereas before the flow of class has been constantly interrupted, today it felt more like interaction.

And today was a block day! On Thursdays we have only four classes, at about 90 minutes each. Granted, this class had lunch to break it up, but it's still a long time for kids to stay focused, and they did well.

Honestly, it's the first time since I started teaching (just a week ago!) that I've really felt that I could be a successful jr. high math teacher. I've always believed it, almost to the point of knowing it, but today I felt it. That is so important, because you can only push on with your will for so long, and so hard. At some point you have to have your heart invested in it. And now mine is.

All that said, I am completely unprepared for tomorrow, and I have to wake up in seven hours. So I will do a little work, then go to bed.

Peace,

Rob

Still Waiting

I've gotten my first rejection letter. South Jr. High sent me a very kind letter about how hard it was to make their decision, but they have. And I'm not it this time. But I've interviewed at West Jr. High, and I will interview at Central Jr. High next Monday, as well as Lawrence High School and Free State High School. Free State was actually a screening interview, so I will probably be back there at some point for another interview.

I still feel confident that I will get a job, it just seems that God is sort of smacking down my pride about it.

I love Pearls Before Swine. Cute little characters being so very obnoxious. Someday I will be that algebra teacher.

I had my final exam today at 7:30 a.m. I bicycled up to campus, figuring that the exercise would wake me up for the test. It worked. Partly because on the way there I looked down at my rear tire and started to veer off the sidewalk. I wobbled a lot, got back in control, and didn't fall, but my body had already started pumping adrenaline. I was very much awake. And the professor was kind enough to have some bread, cream cheese, and apple juice there for us to munch on. I got there around 7:15, had some food, and got started. It was a difficult test, but not unreasonably so. Took me an hour and half. Not bad considering the cold I am fighting. Some students finished within 45 minutes

Geometry for teachers was an interesting class. A lot more intense than when I studied geometry back in Jr. High. At this point, however, I am happy to be finished with it for one reason, and one reason alone: I will not have to go out on Wednesdays and Thursdays and do homework Wednesday nights.

Happy Rob!

On the work front, my Saturday hours are changing from 1-10 to 10-7. I'm pretty happy about this. It means I will be able to do stuff Saturday nights if we can get a babysitter. It means I won't be going to bed so late, and thus able to wake up more easily on Sunday mornings. It means getting off work before sunset! Huzzah!

Time to pack it in for the night. I need to get some sleep to be ready for tomorrow.

Job Interviews (plural)

So Tuesday night I went to bed with a cough. Wednesday morning it was worse. We took Maxine to the dentist at 8:00 (no problems, just a discolored tooth we need to keep an eye on), then I went home and skipped class to sleep.

I slept for three or four hours, then went to the interview. I thought it went well. The principal, Will Fernandez, even told me that it went well. We spent 10 or 15 minutes with the head of the math department, with her asking a few questions and follow-ups to his. I thought I handled the questions well. I haven't taught math since Nepal, and that was pretty basic stuff in a foreign language, but I have been taking math classes since last summer, and I've been thinking about how to teach it since early this year.

As for the questions about classroom management and teaching strategies, relating to students, and other stuff that all teachers do, I think I gave answers reflecting the fact that I've been a teacher for twelve years, followed by this past year of subbing and working at Wal-Mart. In other words, I think I did OK.

Will has given a good impression every time I have met him, and Wednesday (yesterday!) was no exception. I had a few questions for him about his role as principal, the ways the school involves parents, and how teacher collaboration is encouraged. He answered those questions well, making me excited about the prospect of teaching at his school.

So at the end of the interview, he told me that I had interviewed well, and that there were three other candidates for the job. I hope it didn't show that my heart sort of skipped a beat, though it may be more accurate to say that it skipped, shuffle, step-2-3-4ed a beat. They are going to let me know one way or the other by tomorrow. (Well, it's today now, but somehow I doubt that they'll be calling me at 12:34 a.m. to let me know.)

I was tired. On the way home I thought of two or three things that I should have brought up but didn't. Cough. Cough. Ack. I went home, then out to pick up Maxine and Sofia from their daycare. We ate dinner at Cici's pizza, because we were both to beat to cook.

This morning I went to class. I've got a take-home final for math history to write by Wednesday noon, and the geometry for teachers final to take Friday morning at (gasp) 7:30. Yeah, that's gonna be fun. And I have tons of prep to do for both. I figure the take-home as a two hour job, hopefully less. And I need all the study and practice I can get.

So this afternoon I interviewed at West Jr. High. I went to school at West Jr. High in Leavenworth. Perhaps that is a good sign. Or perhaps every town in America has a West Jr. High and it's a flip of the coin whether you went to East or West. Lawrence needs to consider some renaming, because West Jr. High is almost at the center of a map of the city, and Central Jr. High services the Northeast part of town. They don't have any North or East Jr. Highs. It's like the restaurants that have medium and large drinks, but no small sizes.

Anyway, that interview went well, too. The principal, Myron Melton, was very personable. Our interview felt much more conversational; he asked quite a few questions about my experiences overseas without seeming to tie them as strongly to the job at hand. But once he got down to it, I heard many of the same questions as I had heard from Will, and some similar answers to my questions. Very similar on the runnings of the school, as it seems there is some district-wide pressure towards the Professional Learning Community approach. (I don't expect you to investigate much into that link unless you have a personal stake in education, but it is an exciting set of ideas that could potentially be the biggest transformation in education since making schools accessible to everyone.)

The biggest difference I saw was in the way they see their own roles in the school. Will sees himself as a coach, very much a leadership position, training his teachers and guiding them towards being better educators. Myron sees himself more as a facilitator, connecting people and bringing problems to everyone's attention to help find solutions. I think that either would be good to work for. Still, I feel a pull towards South. I prefer Will's style. Not that I think it is necessarily more effective in general, but that I think it will be more effective with me.

It's almost one a.m., and I was thinking about not posting this until I have an offer, but I know that some of you want to know. As soon as I have news I will post it here. Well, right after I call Mom and Dad anyway. In the mean time, pray for me.

Sub 26

Turned out to be a fairly busy day. Yes, I had a two hour lunch break, but the rest of the day was busy.

I sat in on a regular 7th grade math class, which was cool. The teacher did a lesson on probability. She had students roll a pair of dice 18 times, record both numbers and the difference between the two. She then had them play a one-on-one game in which noticing the correlation between those numbers could help you to win. They talked a bit about how their numbers compared with the expected numbers, and why they were different. I later suggested that if she were to compile the numbers from the whole class, and then from every class doing that activity, that they might get a better idea of how a larger sample brings you closer to the expected results, and she seemed kind of excited about it. Told me she might give it a try.

I also got to help a kid with his math homework, hopefully contributing to his understanding of probability. (At least one out of two of us understood the homework.) I talked with some of the teachers and paras about some education concepts, and one teacher lent me a book on learning communities. I arranged to sub for a math lab teacher (I think this is like remedial math, only they don't call it that anymore) this coming Monday. I felt like a teacher. It felt good.

After school I came home, rested a bit, ate some dinner. Not much time, so not much to do. Then I went to work at Wal-Mart.

And that dragged me right down. It wasn't a bad or difficult day, it just wasn't my thing. I was definitely tired, and it didn't help any to be working a five hour shift after a day of subbing. Still, I can work tired, but it's another matter to work when your heart isn't in it.

So there you have it. Get a job you like, because if you are doing something that isn't YOU, it will wear you down.

Subs 25 and 26

Sub 25 was ok. In one class I had time to bring up my experiences, as suggested by a teacher during my 24th substituting job. There were only a dozen students, and even if they weren't totally absorbed in my account of being a Peace Corps Volunteer, at least they didn't ignore me and talk to each other the whole time. Well, except for the two girls in front who were too cool to be interested in something that didn't revolve around themselves. And they might have been listening and just pretending to be bored. That's what I tell myself, anyway. The other class took a test, so I just stood over them, freaking out every time someone talked. At least that's how they probably perceived it.

Today I am at Southwest Jr. High. In some ways, this would be an ideal building in which to work: it's a new facility that feels very spacious and open. The classrooms have internet computers and projectors built in. It's starting to have that lived-in look without being worn-down. And it's a ten or 15 minute walk from my house. I didn't walk today, as it was supposed to rain. And it did rain. But now it's sunny.

So today I'm subbing for an inter-related studies teacher. Once again, this is special-ed in the day and age in which everyone is special so we need another name for the students who used to be special. I graduated from high school 20 years ago (I heard they're planning our 20-year reunion. A couple of my class-mates own a bar, so they're reserving it for the LHS Class of 88 for a weekend. Whoopee.), when mainstreaming was something you only did on the fringes. The special ed kids joined the rest of us for P.E., sort of. They were there at the same time as the rest of us, anyway, using the same locker room for the most embarrassing part of the day--changing clothes and taking a shower. And that was it. For the most part, kids with learning disabilities were kept separate. Whether that was done "for their own good" or to avoid distracting everyone else is unclear to me from this perspective. And maybe it was more integrated than I remember. God knows my point of view has changed in a big way in the last 20 years.

Now things are a bit different. More kids are identified with problems, but there is a much stronger push to have them engaged with other kids their age. They are placed in regular classrooms as often as possible. Usually this involves a modified curriculum, and it sometimes involves having an assistant (either a para or a teacher) stay with the student to help them maintain focus.

For the most part, that's the usual job of the teacher I'm subbing for. Today it's a bit different. For the first two hours he usually goes to an English classroom. The regular teacher in there is out on maternity leave, so there is a long-term sub in her room. But today the long-term sub called in sick, so there is a sub for the long-term sub. Double-sub. I went over to the classroom (with the teacher I am subbing for, who is still in the building, which is another story) to check in, and we found that the kids were doing silent reading all hour, both hours. And that is why I can sit down and write on the Roblog before the day has even gotten started.

The regular teacher I'm subbing for is in the building. He's helping out with the sixth graders who are visiting to tour the school for Transition Day. I vaguely remember doing that when I was on the verges of jr. high and high school. I'm sure I considered it a day off, perhaps a peek into my own future. To the teachers who have to escort students around, it's a boring day.

So today I will be working one-on-one with problem students, when I am actually working. I have two plan periods in a row at lunch time, so I will be getting out of here and getting some grub. For now, I kind of need to get ready, make sure I know when the bell will ring and where I should be when it does. So I'm going to post this, and come back with a new post if there's anything to report.

Peace,

Rob

Sub 24 (and 25?)

Today I'm subbing for a half day in a vocation/agricultural classroom. The teacher is at a meeting, first hour is a planning period, and second hour is taking an exam. It looks like I'll actually have to do something 3rd hour, and then I'll be finished. As to what I do, she has left some plans. I'll let you know how those go later.

For now, I need to tell you about Friday's subbing, number 24.

It was a low day for me. Block classes of 90 minutes each, teaching French and Poetry. I guess I should be grateful it wasn't French Poetry, but I'm not. Instead I am grateful for the intervention of a fellow teacher. Not that she intervened in a class, but... I'm getting ahead of myself.

It was clear from the start that the students in this classroom didn't like their regular teacher and that they considered me a holiday. Very clear. As in, they told me that they didn't like their teacher and they considered me a holiday. With the first class I started by asking about why they were taking French, and this came out. With the other classes, it just sort of came up.

I made the French class work. Our opening conversation got us off to a good start, they did their work as usual, then I offered to let them play a language game like I would do in Korea. They had fun with it, and I think were sad to see me go.

The English classes were tougher. She left a full lesson on poetry, and I tried really hard to lead them through it. I encouraged answers, I read the poems for the lesson. I had them write answers to the questions. All in the plan. It seemed to me that if the teacher leaves a full plan, it is my responsibility to try to follow it.

At the end of the day I was writing a letter to the teacher about how lousy the day had gone, how disrespectful the kids were, how the French students were not satisfied with their learning experience, and how annoying the day had been. And that was before I had discovered that I had locked my keys in the car that morning. I had filled a page and was working on the back when a teacher popped her head in the door and asked what I was doing. I told her, and she suggested that it probably wouldn't do any good.

She had worked in this district as a sub for three years, she said, and at some point had decided to recast herself in a better role than "Substitute Teacher." And she told me that if I wanted to enjoy what I was doing, I should do the same.

"You," she told me, "are a field trip that they wouldn't be able to take if the teacher was here. I'm sure you have all sorts of colorful experiences. Promise the kids something else, then get through those lesson plans as fast as you can. Then take them on a trip. You'll be surprised at how quickly they will be hypnotized, and the questions they will ask. But if you insist on following the lesson plan to the letter, you will often be an obstacle that they will do their best to overcome."

Wow.

She continued: "Don't worry about the forms and paperwork, yours or the teacher's. Nobody looks at that stuff. The district and teachers don't want to alienate any subs. Teachers will take your notes too seriously, passing on a multiplying the stress you've had. They don't really care if you finish or follow the plans they leave, as long as the room isn't a mess and no one gets hurt.

"So take some time and tell them a story. Or two. And let them ask questions. You will have a good day, they will have a good day, and on the evaluation form you just write 'good day, happy to come back'."

And so, today when I get to 3rd hour, I'm going to try to implement this philosophy. The teacher was here when I came in, and left specific plans: a practice quiz (real thing on Monday) and designing flyers (my spell checker is not happy with that. Fliers? Help!) for an event almost a month away. And that's it, for an entire hour. I'm definitely telling some Peace Corps stories.

Wish me luck.

Sub 23 and music

I got to be a Jr. High band teacher on Friday. Lots of fun. I was surprised at how good a program they had at South Jr. High. And band is something I know well enough to run a smooth rehearsal, even if I'm not familiar with the pieces being played.

The 9th graders were first. They have a concert in a week and contest after that, so they wanted to work. It took a bit of sweat on my part to get the 7th graders to work, but when they did, they actually sounded good.


I then travelled to two different elementary schools to assist with the band programs there. I was given flash cards to use with the trumpets for some one-on-one fingering practice. Fortunately, I used to play the trumpet, so I could actually tell them if they were right or wrong. I also spent five minutes or so with a euphonium player who was not hitting the right notes. He had the fingerings right, but just couldn't make his lips do what they needed to do, so I took him out and we worked on it a bit. I played his horn a bit (after cleaning off the mouthpiece, of course) to demonstrate, and found that he could actually do it with the right coaching. He just needed some individual attention.


It made me want to get my horn out and play. It's been sitting in the closet pretty much since we moved in. I've played it a couple of times to amuse Maxine, even got her to blow an actual note on it, but not anything like regular. I would love to play in church, or with a local ensemble or band. It's one of those things that is hard to explain to someone who doesn't do it. Horyon and I both enjoy the bell choir at church, and that's hard to explain to other people too. There is a satisfaction that comes from spending time practicing and building up to a performance that is unlike anything else. I'm sure that it's partly because I enjoy being in front of people, but it's more than that. It just feels good to make music happen.



I also enjoy listening to music. At last count my CD collection was approaching 1000. I haven't had them all in one place since I left for the Peace Corps, and right now there are still many in my parents' basement, many in my garage, and quite a few scattered through my house. One Korean man I knew owned his own building. The first three floors were his clothing shop, the fourth and fifth floors were rental apartments, and he and his family lived on the sixth and seventh floor. He had helped design (or maybe remodel) his residence, and it was one of the coolest homes I've seen in Korea. I won't go into the architecture except for this: he had built in CD shelves, which he seriously needed. Thousands of CDs. And built in CD shelves are definitely the classiest way to keep your CDs. He also had a most impressive sound system. All imported. Speakers that were not only tall, but beautiful. His CD player was two pieces, the reader, in which you put the CD itself, and the digital decoder. He claimed it made a difference. And the amplifiers used tubes, like the radio your grandparents listened to. Only in this case, the tubes are all mounted where you can see them. The components sat on plate glass shelves, a very graceful presentation. And when he played music it sounded like you were there in the room with the musicians. Piano, orchestra, jazz, drum sets, singers, they all sounded like they were right there.



I'm not saying I want to spend thousands of dollars on a stereo system, but... it sure would be nice to spend thousands of dollars on a stereo system.



Anyway, it's a bit late in my life, but now I can picture myself being a band teacher! There are some annoying things about it, for sure, but they do have fun. And they get to be there at the beginning of a lot of musical careers.

Sub 22

Friday I subbed at West Junior High in Lawrence. As it happens, I went to West Junior High in Leavenworth. It was one of those days where it seemed like perhaps the regular teacher just took a personal day because she knew it was going to be a crappy day to be at work. And let's face it, the odds were against me:

1. Beautiful weather--sunny and mild, still a novelty after these many miserable months.
2. Friday--a killer day for subs everywhere.
3. K.U. in the Final Four. Maybe not a factor in other towns, but in Lawrence EVERYONE gets in on the excitement.
4. Substitute teacher=license to be an idiot.

It was one of those days that made me oxymoronic: I wanted to help these immature people become human beings that other human beings wouldn't want to instantly throttle, while simultaneously wanting to throttle them.

One positive side of the day was that I didn't have to be there until 9. Pretty late for school. And my first class didn't actually start until 9:40. If I had known how the day was going to go, I would have spent those precious minutes pulling my hair out to save time later.

One thing I didn't like was the schedule. Many schools in this district us block scheduling, in which students spend 90 minutes in one subject. They have four subjects one day, and four different subjects the next. I know that 90 minutes opens up many options that are difficult, if not impossible to pull off in 50. In ELS, way back at the turn of the century, I taught mostly classes that lasted 50 minutes, but some that were 100 with a ten minute break. I loved those classes, because I could do activities that took time to play out. I rarely found myself cramming the last ten minutes of the lesson into the time between the bell sounding and everyone leaving. We not only had time to do an activity, but to talk about it.

On Friday the students did worksheets. About an hour's worth of worksheets. If you are good at math, you will quickly see that this left 30 minutes with no plan. See if you can guess which activity was most popular for students who had finished their work:

a) Complete work for other classes
b) Get a head start on the weekend's homework
c) Meditate
d) Participate in a discussion with the sub about how water's unique properties make life possible on Earth
e) Goof off.

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you the answer to this one.

The lesson learned here is this: always have more than enough material for any given class period. It's tough at 90 minutes, but when you don't have a choice you have to just knuckle down and do it.

In hindsight, it would have been a good idea to cut them off at an hour and make them turn in whatever they had finished. Then I could have possibly led some kind of discussion on why the properties of water are key in the existence of life as we know it. Or maybe there were too many factors against me to pull it off. At the very least, I could have given them a short written assignment that stretched a bit beyond what they had just worked on: "How would the world be different if water ice were denser than liquid water, like most solids and liquids?" Sure it's more for the teacher to grade, but 1) she wouldn't have had to make it a big part of their grade or spend more than a couple of minutes on each assignment, and 2) not my problem. When a teacher pitches a sub a problem, they should be prepared to have a line drive problem beamed back at them.

Part of the problem was that everyone didn't finish at the same time. The students who finished first settled into some other work for the most part. But as more and more of them finished, there were more social personalities added to the mix, and the noise level slowly grew. By the time I realized it was a problem, it was no longer a small problem. And with no other assignment to focus them on, there was not much I could do.

And of course, in the first class I didn't realize that the work was only sufficient for 2/3 of the class time. I should have suspected it in the 2nd class, but it looked like more work, so I thought I was safe. And by the 3rd class, end of the day on Friday, it just about didn't matter. We were all tired of being there. In the last class I had to spend most of their working time walking around making sure they were actually working. You might be able to imagine how much fun this is if you have some sort of infection.

Still, I have had some good experiences in Jr. Highs here in town. A day like Friday may bring me down a bit, but it leaves me wondering how I can make it better. And hopefully the next time I will.

I didn't get called today, so I've had time to wrap this up. And April 15th is fast approaching. It looks like I'm going to have to file for extensions, because Horyon's business is not going to be fun or easy to file for. Her investments in sewing machines, remodeling, cloth and thread far outweigh the money she made in 2007 (about $900, not bad for starting in the summer!), but we have no evidence of how much she spent in Korea. Wish me luck. I haven't even decided whether she will be the sole proprietor or whether we are partners. Depends on how much hassle doing her taxes is and how she plans to repay me.

Peace,

Rob

Sub 21

I finally hit 21 without going over. I guess I win.

Today I was a "Behavioral Disorder" teacher. They normally have two to five kids in a classroom with almost as many paras. Today a couple were absent. I read a book off of the teacher's shelf most of the day, though I did spend some time with a boy working on his reading. We were working on Paul Bunyan, and Sam was answering some questions from the reading. I found out some surprising things:

1. Paul Bunyan's deeds included squishing people.
2. Lumberjacks cut down trees and try to avoid being squished.
3. Babe, the giant blue ox, was particularly good at squishing people.
4. Without trees, we would die from lack of oxygen and Paul Bunyan cut down trees, therefore Paul Bunyan was bad.

This last one in particular seemed like a very modern take on a traditional story. However, while all tall tales have their own particular embellishments, I can't recall ever reading a version of Paul Bunyan in which people got squished. I think it's time for a new version.

The book I read was book 10 of Lemony Snickett's "A Series of Unfortunate Events," The Slippery Slope. It was amusing, to be sure, but I'm not sure if I could sit through all ten of them, even if they do go quickly. I am sure that I'm not willing to pay for all ten. I do enjoy his style though, and have a quote to offer:

"Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like."

If a book chock full of sentences like this (click on "Search Inside" and read some bits) and plotlines to match appeals to you, you should pick one up. If, like me, you grew up reading stories of precocious children saving the day and having happy endings, you might enjoy this for a change. It has no happy endings. Briefly hopeful middles, but the horrible things keep coming. Fun stuff.

Anyway, the subbing was very low key. I guess I don't mind having a day like that from time to time, especially the Monday after a holiday. But I really prefer doing some teaching. It was a good opportunity to watch teachers deal with problem kids. Ultimately it's all about offering them a clear choice with consequences and rewards, also clearly laid out. Of course, they have to be followed up honestly and fairly. It seemed to me that if these kids had been getting the same thing at home, they wouldn't necessarily be in a behavioral disorder classroom.

Shock of the day: A fourth grade boy telling me with glee about a movie he had seen in which one guy cut off another guy's hand, and the blood went all over and it was cool.

Well, I need to get to bed. It is likely that I will get called at six a.m. tomorrow to sub some more. After no subbing last week, I really need to get more in.

Classes Canceled

Classes at KU were canceled today because of snow. I spent more than an hour shoveling while Maxine and Horyon went to a friend's house to play in the snow.

I'm worried that I'm getting sick. I slept nine hours or so last night, which should have been enough. But I was tired all morning, and took a two hour nap while they were gone. And I'm tired now, even though it's only a quarter till nine.

(Okay, now it's 11:09. I got sidetracked by homework, reading a couple of bedtime stories, and a little snack.)

But I thought I'd let you know how classes are going before I go to bed.

I am taking two classes, with the same professor, and you have to enroll in one if you enroll in the other, so it's effectively one class. Math 409 is "Geometry for Teachers" and Math 410 is "The History of Math."

The geometry class is sort of a rehash of 8th grade math. Or maybe it was 7th grade? Anyway, it was in the neighborhood of 25 years ago, and I found that was enough time for certain gears in my head to get a bit rusty. On the first homework I got a three out of five, which isn't as bad as it sounds, especially considering that I cut and pasted the wrong example diagram to one problem. (I received a "5" on the second homework, so I'm thinking the gears are cranking again.)

She uses a sort of gestalt system of grading. She checks the entire homework, then assigns a grade from one to five, based not on counting mistakes or correct procedures, but just a general feeling of how "right" it was. A "5" is basically 100%, "4" is 90%, "3" is 80%, and so on. She told us that research shows that this style of grading is more consistent across different teachers grading the same assignment than counting mistakes. That may be so, but it takes a huge amount of confidence to grade this way. In Korea, my test grading was as objective as I could make it. So much so that my assistants could actually do some of the marking. One reason I could do it that was was that I taught English in a very structured manner, giving students patterns that they could use to build unique sentences.

It seems a bit ironic to move from an objective style of grading conversation to a more subjective style of grading math, when I consider conversation to be an extremely subjective thing. How do you define a "great" conversation? You can list things that make it so, but they all break down to "I really liked it." Whereas math is pretty much the opposite: statements are either correct or incorrect. There is some murkiness involved in "skipping steps", but for the most part it's really subjective.

And so her grading style is giving me as much to think about as the course content itself. Fun.

It helps that these classes are actually intended for teachers, unlike the other two math classes I've taken recently. Those classes were intended for suckers students who will use the math for other stuff.

So far, it seems that the main intent of geometry is to reinforce the idea that math is a system of ideas that builds on itself, with one step always following logically from another. Steps we covered yesterday can be abbreviated today, but the rationale must be there.

So in class we do a few things:

We follow the prof. doing proofs.
We work in groups to do proofs and constructions.
We... I guess that's pretty much it.

In the Math History class she talks more about the background, and how the ancients did what they did with such limited resources. It's not just that they didn't have calculators or computers, Pythagoras didn't even have algebra! He figured out his right triangle theorem, the one with a squared plus b squared equals c squared, without being able to use "a", "b" and "c"! I think the word "genius" is not too extreme for this guy.

We are also talking about math in different parts of the world. Our "textbook" is a CDrom with a ton of articles, showing parallels between different countries as they developed similar concepts and procedures.

And of course, she does proofs.

Enough. It's almost midnight, and I need my sleep, otherwise I may not be able to survive class tomorrow.

Oh, I almost forgot one bit of trivia: This professor is the same professor I had for a math class back when I was a student at KU the first time! I'm not sure which class, but I do remember one thing she told me, regarding getting my work done. She said, "You know what to do, and how to do it. You just need to actually do it!" A lesson with which I still wrestle today.

Peace,

Rob

Subbing 15

Today when the phone rang at 6:15 in the morning after staying up past one working on homework, I was just not too thrilled to hear it. And when I had put in my I.D. number and PIN, the job it offered me was teaching kindergarten all day long. I groaned. Pictured Arnold Schwarteneger getting his butt kicked by a bunch of them, giggled, tried to imagine myself doing any better, stopped giggling, continued thinking for maybe another six and half seconds, then hit the button for turning down the job being offered. I just didn't have the energy to face a room full of energy like that.

I got out of bed and went over to the computer to see if there were any other offers on the website. Before I could get logged on, the phone rang again. High School! English! Jackpot! Because even if the teacher leaves substandard plans, I can always give them a writing assignment to keep them quiet! Yahoo!


I got to school about ten minutes before the first class started. The lesson plans were simple and clear. When I told them the assignment, they didn't complain or anything, they just got busy. The second and third classes were in the computer lab. They wanted to chat with each other, but not much. I squelched it anyway, made 'em slave away. It was awesome. Fourth period was her planning period, so no students. And it is the lunch hour, so I had an hour and a half for lunch! I drove home and ate a turkey leg! It was mucho deliciouso, thanks for asking!

The afternoon was even more relaxing: newspaper for one class, yearbook for the other. In both, a student took over, guiding the class or individuals through the day's work. There was some casual conversation, but mostly they worked. I think that Lawrence High School has a good journalism teacher, because those kids were excited about what they were doing.

I spent most of the day reading a book or working on my own homework. I finished up what I had started the night before, and now I only need to get it typed up and looking neater. My lesson for the day is this: make kids work hard all the time, and they will just do it.

No, that's not the lesson. The lesson is: Working two jobs kinda sucks.

No no, that's not it either. Maybe it really was the first one. I seriously had absolutely no problems today. One very important lesson may be this: GET A JOB IN A HIGH SCHOOL, ROB!!!!!!! And only spend time with kindergarteners when it's not your job to make them do school work.

After school I went to El Mezcal, a local Mexican food restaurant, to top off the tank before heading to Wal-Mart for a five hour shift. Good food. Happy Rob.

So yeah, I was out all day making money. It's just after midnight, making it early Tuesday morning, and I haven't really seen Maxine since Sunday night after work. If I had to do this every day, I'm not sure how long I could maintain my sanity, but this is really only typical of my Mondays and Fridays, and only until summer vacation starts. Which, judging by the weather forecast, is a long way off.

Believe it or not, there are things on my mind other than subbing. Wal-Mart generates lots of interesting ideas, many of which I am reluctant to post on the Roblog. At least, not until I'm ready to quit. Maxine is continuously doing new stuff, picking up new behaviors, causing new problems, bringing a serious amount of joy into our lives. Horyon's seamstress work is developing nicely, if a little slowly during the past month. Our Christmas tree is still set up, and Horyon has suggested leaving it up until next Christmas. Yikes. All of these things are banging at the doors of my mind to be let out in detail, but the landlord of my head keeps pulling down my eyelids and telling those noisy ideas to go stir up their ruckus in front of someone else's brain.

And so, Goodnight.

Rob

Subbing 13 and 14

Okay. Here's the deal:

I subbed last Friday. I'm sure of it. But I'm sitting here a week later, and have absolutely no idea of what grade, what school, or anything else about it.

So for those of you keeping score at home, 13 is the number of times it takes for me to sub before it all starts to run together.

To job my memory, I just went to the district website to look at my previous assignments. Suddenly it all came back:

I subbed for a 6th grade teacher who was going to a funeral in Wichita (about a 2.5 hour drive from Lawrence). There were a few other teachers, as well as some of the office staff also going, as the funeral was for the father of a long-time teacher there at Woodlawn Elementary. The upside for me was that the teacher was there in the morning, putting together her lesson plans for me, and giving me a heads-up on what to expect.

She painted a very positive picture of the class, which held up fine until about the last hour of the day. You see, her picture didn't take into account a few things: #1 The kids had not been outside for recess all week due to meat-locker temperatures, and #2 It was Friday, and #3 a teacher who normally took more than half of the students out of the room for the last hour or so was also absent. And so I ended up with a bit of a circus on my hands.

Of course, part of the problem is that I didn't take the whole Friday thing into account. I've been working weekends for so long that I have kind of forgotten what that Friday-afternoon-anticipation-of-the-weekend feeling is like. I need to get over it, because the only days I can sub are Mondays and Fridays, so I'm going to have to deal with it again. And again. And again.

Eventually, with the help of the other 6th grade teacher from next door, managed to calm the class down, and got them doing "educational" activities. A few of them probably managed to do things that didn't really involve using their brains, but they didn't make noise, so I let it go.

There was another odd thing that came my way last Friday. One girl, Traylor [oh yeah, I definitely made up that name], had gotten in trouble the previous day for, get this, flirting too much with a boy. And last Friday she came into the classroom while the regular teacher was there and got in trouble again. This time for wearing perfume. The teacher made her go wash it off, and kept her in the other 6th grade teacher's room for most of the day. Maybe a good idea, maybe not. I'm not sure. When she did end up in my room, she had some serious attitude. I had to seat her apart from the other students to get any work out of her. She was one of those 12-going-on-21 girls. She had charm as well as attitude, but she is obviously considering some very self-destructive paths. She won't realize it until it's too late and she has joined the ranks of kids having kids.

I hope I'm wrong.

On to #14. I didn't sub this past Monday. Too much. I needed to get a full night's sleep and get some other stuff done, too. So today I just had to take the first call that came last night. Today I got to be the choir director at Kennedy Elementary.

It was fun. My biggest complaint was that they didn't do enough singing. Only one class practiced singing songs, and that was the most fun class. They did some songs from the old School House Rocks series, including "Interjections", "Preamble (to the Constitution)", "Interplanetary Janet" and "Three is a Magic Number". I just played the CD and they sang along. And they sounded pretty good, especially considering that their performance is not for another month or so. I had to send one kid to the office for not singing, not listening to my instructions, and not behaving. I kind of hate to do that, but it sure makes the rest of the class behave well.

The other classes watched videos. Bobby McFerrin's "Try This at Home" was for the 4th and 6th grade classes. They had trouble enjoying it. Too self-conscious, I think. But I loved it. Made me laugh out loud in places, and shiver in others. Bobby McFerrin (different link here) has The Voice. This video is a concert he gave in an intimate little hall. Couldn't have been more than 200 people. He wanders through the audience barefooted, talking and singing with the people, and striding up over the backs of the seats, to get to some of them. He gets people to sing. Even the camera men. And even though he seems to be making most of it up on the spot, it sounds excellent. Even after watching it twice. I may buy it for my parents or Maxine, because I wouldn't mind having it play on our t.v. over and over.

The other video, which I watched with the 5th graders, was Pulse: a Stomp Odyssey. Completely different from the McFerrin concert, but also one I wouldn't mind hearing a few times. If you're not familiar with Stomp (look out, this one wanted to open a pop-up on me), they are a group of percussionists. Don't worry, they're not the guys who played drums in your high school, they're a bunch of people who are fascinated with the sounds made when different objects are struck and the sounds people make with their mouths that aren't quite singing. This particular video captures sounds from around the world, from Native American dances and New York street performers to Africa, South America, and Asia. It is a high-energy, high-volume, get-up-and-dance kind of video. I'm putting it on my wish list. Once I get it, I will subject it to anyone who comes to our house.

That's it for now. Time for bed.