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March 10, 2010

Quick Hit: EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!

Check this out; a charter school in the Chicago area has managed to get every single member of its (very first) graduating class into a four year college.

Their creed makes me well up:

The Urban Prep Creed

We believe.
We are the young men of Urban Prep.
We are college bound.
We are exceptional-not because we say it, but because we work hard at it.
We will not falter in the face of any obstacle placed before us.
We are dedicated, committed and focused.
We never succumb to mediocrity, uncertainty or fear.
We never fail because we never give up.
We make no excuses.
We choose to live honestly, nonviolently and honorably.
We respect ourselves and, in doing so, respect all people.
We have a future for which we are accountable.
We have a responsibility to our families, community and world.
We are our brothers’ keepers.
We believe in ourselves.
We believe in each other.
We believe in Urban Prep.
WE BELIEVE.

How awesome is that?  I’ve got an email in to them to see if they’re willing to share their best practices, and I’m planning, along with my director, to make our next teacher workshop day about how we’re going to get CHS in this league.

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Filed under I love my job, Teaching, admiration, colleagues, success!, the good ones

March 10, 2010

Grammar Wednesday

Instead of giving you another grammar lesson, I’ve decided that I’m going to use today’s post to download my thinking about how to put together a grammar class.

I was tasked with teaching a grammar class this semester, and I’ve kind of been winging it since the first day of the course.  I mean, really, there’s not much to it; it’s not as though a class like this requires a whole lot of advanced planning (at least, it wouldn’t require it of someone who has a pretty good grasp of the material at the outset).

What I seem to be having trouble with, though, is the organization.  I’ve got a zillion different resources from a zillion different places, and having it all put together in a neat, organized, searchable way is something that I fantasize about.  I’ve been thinking, for the last few days, about putting together a binder that has all the materials I would need to teach this class again, without having to go through all the paper shuffling.  Here’s what I’m thinking:

Let’s imagine a 15 week course where the students meet for an hour a day.  I think the semester will start with the parts of speech and all their component parts:

nouns (singular, plural and possessive; concrete and abstract; proper and common; count, non-count, and collective)

verbs (active and passive, transitive and intransitive, helping/linking)

pronouns and all their cases (and there are a lot of them)

adverbs and adverb phrases

adjectives and adjective phrases

conjunctions

interjections

prepositions

articles (there are only three of these – the, a, and an – so this will be a short lesson)

I’m going to try to find a big old three-ring binder and start stashing my parts of speech resources all in one place…

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Filed under Grammar, Teaching, lesson planning

March 7, 2010

Quick Hit: Vow of Silence

I’ve got this kid who’s taken a vow of silence.

BERJAYA

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No shit.

It seems that she’s decided she needs to ‘find herself” or some such and, in pursuit of that goal, has decided she’s not going to speak (at least, not in class; I have no idea whether or not her voice works during lunch or after school).

My classes are heavy on the participation; the way I assess whether or not kids are getting what we’re doing is in large part through the things that they say during class conversations.  That she’s decided not to speak in class is going to make that work much harder (add to that the fact that she’s not actually done anything in class yet – I’m pretty sure her grade is in the low single numbers) and you can see how this is working out all the way around.

She wrote to me this to me this afternoon:

is there any particular format you want the questions for the questions due monday in?

and also, is there any way i can get around not talking in class, but still getting participation points? it would be very much appreciated.

What I wanted to reply was “Huh?”  I decided that the first order of business tomorrow will be email etiquette.  What I actually wrote back was:

Tammie:

I’m not looking for you to answer the questions one at a time; I gave you those questions more as a launching point for your own thinking.  Compose an essay (to the best of your ability – we’ll be going over the writing process again this week) in which you address as many of the issues I brought up as you can.

As far as the vow of silence goes, I’m pretty conflicted about that.  The way I gauge students’ understanding of the material we’re working with is through class conversations; if you’re unwilling to participate in those discussions, your grade will suffer (and, can we be honest?  You’ve thus far been unwilling to participate in any meaningful way as it is).  I am entertaining the idea of having you write every night to analyze our class discussions, but you’ve not handed in the writing assignments I’ve given up to now, so giving you MORE writing you won’t do seems a waste of both our time.  Let’s agree to get together with Ms. Guidance and Ms. Director tomorrow to see if we can work something out that meets both our needs.

Warmly,

Mrs. Chili

I mean it; I can’t make this shit up…

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Filed under I can't make this shit up..., I've got this kid...., You're kidding...right?, dumbassery, funniness, student chutzpah

March 7, 2010

What is a Feminist?

My  III/IV students are reading The Handmaid’s Tale (or, at least, they’re SUPPOSED to be reading it; Goddess only knows if they are).

The novel brings up a lot really interesting (and, depending on the group of kids and how they’re approached, sticky) discussion topics: religion and government, autonomy and freedom, the role of the sexes in society, fertility and who gets to control it.

Several of the critical articles I’ve read in preparation for teaching this book are of the opinion that, like good satire, Handmaid is less a cautionary tale than it is pure fantasy.  My favorite among them opens with a line something like “The English read it and say jolly good yarn.  Canadians read it and ask can it happen here?  Americans read it and say how long have we got?”  That author’s contention is that, despite what some of us may fear coming from the ultra-conservative Christian movement, the establishment of a Gilead-like society in the U.S. is essentially an impossibility.

While that may be so, the novel and the ideas it presents still offer a valuable starting point for a lot of critical inquiry in to our current society, and I have every intention, despite the inherent risks, of engaging my students in some questions that will likely cause them (and perhaps their parents) considerable consternation.

I plan to start off relatively slow.  I’ve already asked them what their impression of “feminism” is, and I got some of the usual answers (though no one ‘fessed up to thinking that feminists are angry, unshaven man-haters who love making a big deal out of nothing and who just need to lighten up and get laid, already): they identified feminists as people (and one boy said that men can be feminists – gender doesn’t matter) who are concerned with certain issues pertaining to equality and fairness.  When I asked them what that means – “equality and fairness” – I was answered with issues like equal pay for equal work and family issues; no one said anything about abortion, gender roles, domestic violence, or rape.

We’ll so get there…

That conversation got me thinking, though: I tend to include feminist as a characterization of myself, but that’s only because my definition of feminism was formulated around the bumper-sticker wisdom that says “feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”

BERJAYA

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I tend to think of myself more as a humanist.  I am concerned with justice and equality for everyone and am not focused exclusively on one group.  I went to look up “feminist issues” as I was considering what kind of writing project I will ask of my students in this unit and discovered, here, that most of the things listed are things I consider human issues, not just feminist ones.

Putting a label on something – calling it a “gay issue” or a “feminist issue” – gives excuses to entire populations of people for not thinking the issue has anything to do with them.  If someone tells you that this or that is a “gay issue” then you, not being gay yourself, might feel that you don’t have to concern yourself with that problem.  Certain men (I suspect a great deal of them, but not many of the ones I associate with) stop listening after something is marked as a “feminist issue.”  Not being a woman – or not considering themselves feminist – gives certain men an excuse for disengaging.

I guess what I’m trying to do is figure a way that I can honor the idea of feminism while, at the same time, promoting the idea that any issue that concerns another human being – ANY other human being -  is worth looking into.  That I, personally, am not directly affected by domestic violence, for example (or by female genital mutilation in Africa, or by prenatal death rates in Afghanistan, or by the “kill the gays” bill in Uganda), doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be concerned with them, that I shouldn’t care enough to learn what I must and to do what I can.

I think of literature as a means for approaching the issues that affect us in our real world.  Taken one step further, I think that literature is a means of expression to others who DON’T share our experiences.  If I can get my kids (and myself) to think beyond our safe, comfortable little lives, I’ll consider myself to have done some good.

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Filed under I love my job, Literature, Teaching, analysis, compassion and cooperation, critical thinking, lesson planning, out in the real world, self-analysis

March 5, 2010

On the Other Side of the Desk

Mrs. Chili is being a student today.  I’m attending a seminar about the history of slavery in pre-Revolutionary War America.  I’ve done the reading (well, most of it; I fell asleep under the last book last night).

I’m taking lots of notes (Kwizgiver!) that I’ll happily share with anyone who asks.

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March 3, 2010

Grammar Wednesday

I promised you pronouns last week, forgetting that last week was our break.  Sorry.

A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun (go here to see the Schoolhouse Rock production of pronouns; it’s a catchy tune).

Subjective pronouns stand in as the subject of a sentence.  They are:

I                     we

you                 you

he/she/it       they

To figure out whether you need a subjective pronoun, try fitting it into this sentence:

have a hard time remembering picky grammar rules. (Note that the verb has to change for the 3nd person form (he/she/it HAS a hard time) but the idea is the same.)

Objective pronouns serve as an object in a sentence.  They are:

me                  us

you                you

him/her/it    them

Again, use a sentence to make sure you’re doing it right:

When you get home, don’t forget to call   . (Note here that “you” doesn’t work, but it doesn’t change from subjective to objective, either, so it’s not that big a deal.)

When you  have more than one person (or thing)  in a grammatical structure, leave everyone (or everything) but the pronoun out to see if you’ve got it right:

My father gave the present to my two brothers and I. Take out “two brothers’ and you’re left with “my father gave the present to I,” which isn’t grammatical.  “My father gave the present to my two brothers and me“ is correct.

Her and I are the recipients of the latest round of pink slips. Here, you’d need to change the verb to make the sentence work, but the idea is still the same.  We don’t say “Her is the recipient,” so we know that the pronoun needs to be “she.”

There are about a zillion other pronouns , but these are the ones that give people the most trouble.

Happy Wednesday!

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Filed under Grammar

March 1, 2010

Back at It

For as much as I love being on vacation, I really miss being at work.  I’m pleased to be back in the classroom with my kids again.

I started today with a guest lecturer.  I managed to figure out how to get Carson into my junior-senior English classroom via Skype, and it was about three different levels of wonderful.  The kids (well, most of them) were engaged and participatory, they were thoughtful and perceptive, and the technology worked without a glitch – it was great, and I can’t wait to do it again.  Anyone want to help me teach The Handmaid’s Tale?

We’ve started working on sentences and sentence structure in the grammar class.  I can’t wait to get beyond this stuff and move on to actually writing; I can tell the kids are bored, but they’re also not getting the whole “demonstrate to me that you get it” idea, either, so we’ve got to keep doing it until they get it right.

On Friday, I go to a seminar about slavery in pre-Revolutionary War America.  I’ve still got to figure out what my kids are going to do while I’m gone.  While I’ll miss them, I’m really looking forward to the class; I love being a student.

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Filed under Mrs. Chili as Student, Teaching, lesson planning, little bits of nothingness

February 20, 2010

Three Weeks In

So, I thought I’d post a little progress report of sorts on my first day of February break.  We’re three weeks into the new semester, and quite a lot has happened in that short time.

For starters, my juniors and seniors read Native Son.  Well… most of them read it.  Okay… HALF.  The other half of the class was regularly kicked out of the room to read in the principal’s office (I’ve got to talk to her about that; I’m going to do it as a regular thing and I want to make sure she’s on board).

The thing is, I KNOW when you’ve not done the reading, Kids.  There are details in this story – details that stand out in obvious ways – that I expect you to be able to tell me when I ask.  When I go to student A and ask him what happened in the section we read and he says “Bigger got caught,” and I say “Yes, but HOW did he get caught?” and boy replies that he doesn’t remember, I call bullshit.  One doesn’t quickly forget that Bigger was fire hosed off the top of a water tower on the roof of an apartment building in the middle of the night during a blizzard.  Get your book and go find Ms. Director.

The kids who did read really kicked it.  In fact, the first day I sent half the class out of the room, the students who remained had the kind of conversation I used to have in my college classes when I was a student.  Everyone was participating, they questioned each other, they made connections and extended their thinking beyond the book, and I had to do little else but sit back and watch them rock.  When it was all over, one student came to me to ask if I could do that again.  “Do what again?” I asked.  “Kick those kids out.”  No, Sweet; the idea is to bring them along with us…

In that class of 15, 8 students are failing.  One of them has been suspended for the rest of the year, though, so that brings me to 7.  Three of them are going down in spectacular fashion, though; two kids have 12.5 averages, one’s got a 7.5, and one delightful young man (who did this with me last term and swore that this semester would be different) has a straight 0.  Yep, that’s right; Boyfriend has turned in exactly no work.  Awesome.

On the other end of the spectrum, though, I’ve got some kids who are actually competing for the highest grades in the class.  Two of them are dating (it’s pretty funny to watch them in the class – they never sit together and they consistently push each other to more and more complex thinking.  He’s FAR more concerned about the numbers than she is, but it’s pretty clear that she’s not going to just “let him win.”) and two more girls are giving them a run for their money.  Together, the top six kids in the class are pushing ME to make the course rigorous and high-energy, and I’m loving every second of it.

My grammar class is really the same sort of story on another level.  About half the class are bombing while the other half are doing fairly well (with one girl blowing everyone else away.  There was really no need for her to be in the class, but there was nothing else offered that period that she could take, so I got her).  I’ve got a couple of wise-ass kids, one or two chatty ones, and two that just don’t give a shit.  My big concern in this class, though, is a boy I’ll call Mac.

Mac is a GOOD kid; he was in one of my courses last term and it was patently clear to me that he really has it in him to do well.  The problem is that he can THINK, but he can’t really WRITE (and I mean that; his writing resembles that of a second-grader).  He’s in the group of kids who are failing, and he’s trying SO hard to grasp the basics of grammar – he really is – but the wise-ass, chatty, and just-don’t-give-a-shit kids are a distraction that’s making it hard for him to focus.

I made the announcement yesterday – our last class before break – that the atmosphere of the class is going to change when we get back.  I invited them to revisit the syllabus and the expectations set forth within and I told them, on no uncertain terms, that I WOULD kick them out of class for being disruptive or disrespectful.  I’m pretty sure that most of them don’t buy that, but the kids who’ve had me before know I’m not bluffing.  If you’re not here to learn and to take advantage of what your school and your teachers have to offer you, then you have no business being here and I WILL throw you out.  Go dick around somewhere else; we’re trying to get something done here, and we have no time to entertain your dumbassery.  (I should note here that I didn’t actually use those words, but that was absolutely my message.)

Let’s see how many I have to toss before they figure out I’m not kidding.

All in all, though, I’m absolutely DELIGHTED by how the semester is going.  I’ve got a lot of really great kids (the truth is that they’re ALL great kids, it’s just that some of them don’t know it yet), I’m doing a lot of good work, and I’m having a blast.

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Filed under I love my boss, I love my job, Learning, Literature, Teaching, Yikes!, You're kidding...right?, analysis, critical thinking, dumbassery, failure, frustrations, fun, self-analysis, student chutzpah, success!, the good ones

February 17, 2010

Grammar Wednesday

Verbs!

BERJAYA

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VERBS are words that describe action, being, or state of being; they describe what a noun is or is doing.

regular verbs change to past tense with an “ed’ -  walk/walked, type/typed live/lived, jump/jumped, talk/talked
irregular verbs take an alternate form in past tense – see/saw, eat/ate, sweep/swept, choose/chose, cry/cried

transitive verbs require an object to complete the thought.  She threw (threw what? An object – the orange; a tantrum – would complete the thought).
intransitive verbs do not require an object. She sings. We might like to know what she sings, but the fact that she sings is sufficient information to complete a thought.

SIMPLE tenses:
present = [VERB] + s/es in third person expresses an unchanging, repeated, or reoccurring action or situation that exists only now. It can also represent a widespread truth.  The mountains are tall.  Every year, we go on vacation.  She believes in God.  AU is the symbol for gold.
past =  [VERB+ed or irregular form] expresses an action or situation that was started and finished in the past.  I went to college.  The Berlin Wall  fell in 1990.  She’s done with her work.
future – expresses an action or situation that will occur in the future.  We make the future tense in a number of ways:
1.  using will/shall with the simple form of the verb: I will meet you there.
2.  using a present tense form of the verb with a word that describes a time in the future: The director meets the new students tomorrow afternoon.
3.  using am/is/are with the progressive (-ing) form of the verb: I am going to attend the meeting.

PROGRESSIVE (continuous) tenses:
present = [am/is/are + present participle] describes an ongoing action that is happening at the same time the statement is written.  The teacher is grading papers.
past = [was/were + present participle] describes a past action which was happening when another action occurred.  The teacher was grading papers when the fire alarm went off.
future = [will be + present participle] describes an ongoing or continuous action that will take place in the future.  The teacher will be grading papers next period.
Note that these tenses use the -ing form of the verb; it’s the helping verbs that change how we understand the time the sentence is describing.

PERFECT tenses:
present = [has/have + past participle] describes action which began in the past but which continues into the present or the effect of which still continues.  She has taught for 12 years.  (She is still teaching now.)
past = [had + past participle] describes action action completed in the past before another action. She had taught 12 years by the time her daughter was born.
future = [will have + past participle] describes action that will have been completed at a specified time in the future.  By next year, she will have taught for 13 years.

Next week; pronouns!

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February 16, 2010

Quick Hit: This Sucks

School was canceled today on the threat of snow.

It’s 8:30, and there’s not a flake in the air.

I’m having to teach my two classes online this morning, and I hate that.  I mean, I love that we won’t have to make this day up in the summertime, but I really don’t feel skilled enough at manipulating the online platform to make my classes anything even approaching satisfying.

Blah.

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