think:lab

Building My "English Learning Lab" From Scratch

Since I had no control over the larger architectural forces that put my school together, I can at least run fence on the overall design of my classroom space (i.e. 'decorating', in traditional teacher-talk), especially since I am re-thinking how the previous English teacher occupant used the same square footage prior to handing the keys to me weeks ago. 

Here's what I am not going to do:

• put chair-desks in neat rows so teacher is the focus of the room
• put up cat posters with "Hang in There" mottos
• put holiday borders around bulletin boards
• put a single apple icon anywhere

Here's what I am going to do:

• lay-out the room the same way I'd do so if it were my home office/studio, 'cept that I'll have dozens upon dozens upon dozens of 'learning' clients coming my way daily
• add several real lamps to off-set the crazy glow of in-ceiling florescents that numb the brain kilowatt hour by kilowatt hour
• give serious thought to painting the CR walls before anyone notices; ask forgiveness the moment that they do
• figure out how this motley crew of furniture previously stored in my garage (joining several loads of furniture/gear already brought to school yesterday) can play a positive role in giving my students a more interesting space to brainstorm/write in when class is not formally in session
• ask if my dog Tucker can come to work with me every day, like this 'learning' organization does

Worst Job Ever Which Prepared You To Teach?

Looking back on your life, what was the "worst job" you ever had that ironically helped prepare you to one day become an educator?

Let's force the good-enough-to-be-a-meme hand. I therefore tag (for starters):

Chris Lehmann John Pederson DK Lucy Gray Dan Meyer Sarah Trabucchi Dean Shareski David Jakes Jeff Lackney Laura Deisley Ewan McIntosh Damian Bariexia Diana Laufenberg Jeremiah Patterson Glenn "Mr" Moses Ben Wilkoff  Marcie Hull Will Richardson Tim Lauer

Mine, hands down, was the multi-day stint I had to play "Binky the Clown" for little kid birthday parties at a Pizza Hut in Blommington, IN while in college...

...before I wised up and became a Jakes nightclub bouncer for the next few years, one of the "greatest jobs" I had that also helped prepare me to teach comfortably in any situation.

When Over-Riding the Grade Book Counts

Over at Dan's joint, he poses an interesting question about the non-negotiables with regards to assessment (i.e. grading). 

For what it's worth, I consider it one of the better posts I've read across the blogosphere as of late.  I also knew immediately that it gave me some think-out-loud processing time with regards to a student of mine who hit the proverbial 1000 foot cliff when she had to face up to a potential grading disaster only a week or so ago.

I left the following comment that was inspired by Dan's 3 rules (which I agree with, even if I'm no kinda numbers guy):

***

While I can’t help but notice the subject you opted to consider in this wild premise of yours (”English composition” — silly business that!), there is something in your post that really hits home for me in just the last few days as the transition from teaching year to summer break has kicked off.

Confession:    

I hate grade books. I hate the #’s that supposedly determine better than my own observations whether a kid has learned and lived up to my expectations or not. And I hate that a short-hand letter grade at semester’s/year’s end will say     something that often has little bearing one what I really know about this kid.

That being said, I do wear big-boy pants when I go to school every day, and I’ve made some peace with the reality that teachers must hit send on their grade calculations at key points throughout the year.

I’m also fortunate enough to work in a school that gets it on a larger level, a level geared towards teachers being given the opportunity to apply their professional discretion at the last minute when it comes to turning grades into the school’s senior grading system at year’s end.

One of the final bits-o-advice our school’s leadership team gave we teacher types 2 weeks ago as we prepared to administer our comprehensive semester exams and to finalize the students GPA was:    

“Always know you can over-ride what the computer’s grade calculation is.

Truly evaluate the student’s overall growth and knowledge; do not just hit ’send’ on the computer’s grading score because that’s what the assignment grades technically added up to.    

Do what is right..”

The unspoken caveat at my school is that we always have the opportunity to raise the grade tally if we truly believe the kid has learned beyond what a missed quiz penalty might imply weeks earlier, et al, but we should be hyper-hesitant to drop a grade at the last minute if we hadn’t already dealt with that issue earlier in the year F2F when the kid could have done something about it in real time.

This opportunity hit home for me with one young woman (who hit that 1,000 foot reality cliff you hint at above) just 3 days before the year’s grades were to be locked down forever, in a way that will remain a steady memory and professional signpost for me as long as I teach.

Context:    

The final biggie assignment of the year was the annotated bibliography research paper on Othello. In short, the kids had to spend 4+ weeks ‘living’ with various literary critics, throwing their own 2cents in on one of the great English plays of all time, finally wrapping it up in an extensive document of analytical observations and personal reactions.    

This is not — in other words — one of those assignments you can afford to get less than a “C” on, let alone not do if you want to pass this course. At a college-prep independent school like mine, this is akin to chopping off a limb at the student-view, not some esoteric teachery thing.    

The “this is huge!” and “anything later than 3 days past the due date is going to be a zero, a zero that cannot be recovered in most situations” messages were repeated over and over again, almost as often as the “you’re going to really crush this assignment once you tell Coleridge a thing or two about his feelings on Iago, so don’t be gentle with the old Romantic poet just because he’s published a few things along the way” chant I echoed over and over.

Well, life happens. Kids are kids. And stress does funky things to kids and life.

On turn-back-the-assignment day, I suddenly realized that there was no graded paper for this student. Wondering why it took me this long to figure that out is to be saved for another day, but I was left with major Q’s running through my head that were leaning towards something less than desirable:    

Had I lost it? Left it at Starbucks during a weekend grading frenzy? My own dogs eaten it in an ironic twist?    

Or…[gulp]…had one of my kiddos NOT turned in this epic-mother-of-a-paper in spite of all of the crazy warnings and obvious atomic bomb on the grade book consequences they knew about?

While running up a set of stairs that morning when I saw this student, I asked her:    

“Hey, can you fire me off a copy of your paper by email tonight? I must have misplaced it and know you did it since you did so well on the rough draft, so if you can get me that copy tonight, I’ll grade it and hand it back tomorrow.”

No problemo was her response.

For 4 straight days, no problemo was her answer along with a myriad of odd details to explain why it would be in the ‘next’ day instead.

On the final Friday before grades were to be submitted to my admin team, I called her mother since it had still not been turned in no matter how many friendly nudges I gave the girl over a 4 day period. Said something to the mother along the lines of:    

“Wondering if you and I can team up to help her get this into me so she will get a grade that approximates her efforts even though we seem to have a ’strange’ set of circumstances’ happening here, circumstances that could make a teacher wonder if the paper was actually written at all…which is strange because she received an ‘A’ on her formal rough draft that was turned in 2 weeks prior.”    

Mom said, no problemo.

Fast forward 3 hours.

Scene:    

Student (and her mom) knock on the faculty lounge door, asking to see me. Tears on student’s face. Mother steps back 2 feet, a bit delicate and angry all at once. Add embarrassment, too. Student:     Tears. Tears. Tears. Lip shaking.

“Mr. Long, I lied to you. The paper was never done.”

Me:    

“I know. I actually knew several days ago. I just wanted to see if I was patient enough if you’d come tell me the truth. Today was that day. Guess we have a foundation to start working from now that we have the truth on the table, especially with your mom standing right behind you…”

Student:    

“I never turned it in. I don’t know why I didn’t do that, because it was almost finished and I loved the play and I’ve really grown as a writer this year and you gave us so much time to do this…but I froze or something.

And I hate that I lied to you.”

Me:    

“OK, we have a challenge in front of us, don’t we?

But its a challenge we can pull off, or better yet…you can pull off.    

Grade or no grade — because I am not sure at this moment, to be honest, what I do about an assignment of this magnitude being 2 weeks late, well past the zero/incomplete line that was an option at day 3 – I do know that the only way for you to pass this class and get full credit for the semester is to get it done in the next 2.5 days before I hit send on my grades.    

And grade or no grade, this is bigger than that.

This is one of those life moments — with your mom and I watching — where you’re gonna have to dig deep and find out what you’re made of as a person, a moment where you’re going to learn a lot about your inner character and willingness to get over the embarrassment of owning up to something really tough like this and just remind yourself that your brain and imagination are capable of amazing things even when you’re up against the wall and feel like it might not be worth doing.    

And ultimately, this isn’t about the grade or your mom/I watching; this is about you, you looking in the mirror in a few days, you turning in this assignment because it was worth reading, because you have the brain and imagination to convince a reader to care about your opinions, because one way or another you’re gonna dig deep and find a completed paper in you…and you’re going to complete it at a level you’re proud of — grade or no grade — and for once this year, you’re not going to have one single thing hanging over your head. The desk will be cleared off. And you’re going to know what you’re really capable of doing.    

Me, I’ll figure out the grading side of things. That’s my responsibility.    

You, however, are the writer. And at this moment, that’s all that matters. I look forward to being your paper’s audience on Monday when you hand it to me. Truly do.”

Fast forward 3 days.    

The paper, completed in all ways I needed it to be written, came to me. Done. 100% done.

A ‘B+’ level, one of her strongest pieces of writing the entire year, actually.    

***    

As for your post, Dan, you’re spot on with what you said:    

“A student’s grade should reflect her current understanding of the course, not last month’s, not her understanding when it was convenient for me to assess her.”

100% agree with you.

Even if hate tallying grades and what they often say, there are times where the only thing we can morally do as teaching professionals is over-ride the computer and give our kids one fighting shot to live up to their greatest potential, even if the clock is ticking down and if it challenges us to re-write out entire grading process on the fly.

Thanks for the chance to chew on this a bit this morning.

The kid was worth it. Period.

Designing A Space In Which to Teach/Imagine

Summer of '03: I took a wild leap of professional/personal faith.

Simultaneously, I convinced my wife to support my desire to:

a) turn down my contract to return to as a member of the ivy-feeding Bryn Mawr School for Girls upper school English dept., one of those places where true love affairs with writing and literature took place on a minute-by-minute level (and true English teachers embraced with all their souls), followed by...

b) ...driving up to Boston, MA to spend the summer creatively slaving away for 16-20+ hour/days, hunched over a studio desk with drafting pens and Xacto blades at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, trying to scrape together enough semi-architectural-talent to convince some firm to perhaps hire me as a fledging 'school design' guy.

Oh, yeah, and I had no job -- teaching or architecture -- to fall back on at summer's end when I put away my drafting tools to return to our apartment in Baltimore, where my wife's patience and confidence in me continued to reign supreme.  Instead, I waited tables at night at some hip urban bistro after working house construction during the days for several long/what-was-I-doing months before I was given the chance to design/run an architecture/design program for high school students at an urban charter school in the Anacostia community of D.C.

One of the most difficult things to convey to anyone was the legitimately painful loss I felt packing up my GSD studio desk (seen above) to return to the 'real' world at summer's end.

• It was more than a desk to me.
• Far more than a place to simply sketch building designs. 
• Something quite beyond a visual hodge-podge of ideas manifested in 2/3-D form thumbtack after thumbtack. 
• Something even beyond a symbol of my professional leap of faith made tangible.

In some ways, packing up that design studio desk was like an intellectual love affair ended, a relationship of ideas shattered, a merger of one's heart and imagination suddenly severed. 

Been thinking a lot about that this past week after learning that I'm going to stop being a nomadic teacher this coming fall, going from room to room depending on the class I was teaching, period after period, with laptop in hand, praying that I have my kids' essays in my messenger bag.  A classroom has finally been found for me.  And I now have 2 months to find a cactus plant to stick in the window and a few posters to slap up on the wall to 'fake' the 'teacher look' until I can properly design a true and catch-you-offguard 'learning lab' for my kids and me.

Intellectually, I believe with everything my brain possesses that great teaching does not require the 'anchor' of a classroom, let alone a teacher 'owning' their own classroom fiefdom/territory.

Teachers -- regardless of an era's prevalent technology whether they be single sheets of chalk-covered slate or fluid web-based content management systems -- should be able to rock the learning curve sitting on a hay bale, juggling bulleting board space in a shared teaching space, or maintaining intellectual law-n-order wherever the admins are able to offer them a solid space to hang their book bag for 45 minutes.

That being said, I feel like my design studio desk is being given back to me in a strange little way.  Clearly the visuals will change on some level -- more Yeats and Coleridge and Kerouac, less Pei and Kahn and Corbusier -- but the odd-shaped mental journey made visual will undoubtedly arise again.

Just 2 months of back-of-the-napkin scketching to go. 

Only a cactus and some posters to buy before the real creative design work can officially begin.

Loving the Collision, Not Just Hugs/Content

Dan Meyer asked his readers: define the "inherent qualities" of a teacher. 

I responded with the following:

If you’re fueled — i.e. energized — by the daily ‘collision’ that occurs as ’students’ and ‘content’ merge, then I’d say you have the certain je ne sais quoi that so many of us struggle to define as the ‘art’ of teaching, or the ‘inherent qualities’ you are asking about.

I’m NOT a fan — admittedly so — of teachers who believe that a) loving kids/students or b) loving their content is what makes great teachers. Both can easily be claimed by any other human being on the planet regardless of professional chops. I want my son’s babysitter to love kids, but I do not excuse teachers who think it is enough to rest their laurels in hug-land. Likewise, I want researchers to love their content, but I do not care one carefully crafted iota for the educator who sits atop their own version of an ivory tower in some misdirected belief that this alone will inspire the students around them.

What does matter?

I AM a huge fan of anyone who loves the ‘collision’ that occurs when kids/students and content meet, synthesize, and head off on a hard-to-reverse adventure of sorts. This is messy/dynamic business and you gotta love that unpredictable merger.

You are right, Dan, to keep hammering on the constant search for great content and methods, as well as endless commitment to a practice, practice, practice, prep, prep, prep mindset. Hard to beat someone (or some theory) that is centered on relentless pursuit of knowledge and greatness. The holiday sweater crowd that is comfy in their carefully framed bulletin boards and repeatable worksheets is never going to move pass ‘moderate’ on the talent scale.

That being said, pure knowledge and hard work alone is also not enough.

Your insatiable desire to learn across mediums, your insane seeking of related (yet tangential) material, and the hard-to-train energy level you seem to have in spades — combined with the fact that you gain fuel by being around kids as they learn — does suggest that a few inherent qualities are owned by only a few working teachers (in any educational crowd ) while the majority tread water in some lesser professional kiddie pool for most/all of their careers.

Pic: "Lovely Holiday Sweaters..."

Professors in the 3-Ring Circus of Laptop U.

I'm new to multi-author Pajamas Media blog where I found the "Laptop U: Where No One Looks at the Professor" article/entry, so I can't speak for the entire site (and its contributors). 

That being said, the article/entry caught my attention in a way I would have missed/overlooked before returning to the classroom this past fall.

Cut to the chase for those with little time: 

A college professor wonders aloud how she can compete for her students' attention in a laptop driven classroom/lecture hall world. 

The obvious 'us vs. them' set-up ends up being less the point than the ethical/professional questions that naturally arise. 

A snippet that caught my eye, although I highly recommend reading the entire article:

"The bottom line: in this strange new world of multimedia academia, I’m competing for my students’ attention - and I haven’t even mentioned the distractions of texting on cellphones. With all the distractions, I am essentially forced to shout for attention. The classroom has become a three ring circus, and I’m on the smaller stage off to the right."

Poetically Footloose And Spring Break Free

4:35pm.  Last day of the 3rd quarter.  Very quiet school building in all directions all around me.  About to walk out the door for Spring Break. 

That is, until...

...one of my 10th grade kids walked into my little office (note: in lieu of a real classroom, I have a desk in the math dept storage room) with a worn copy of a poem in hand.  I look at the clock.  It reads something past 3pm.  I look at him.  I look at his poem.  I realize he's serious.  (I smile)

A poem?  To do more work?  On the last Friday afternoon before Spring Break? When he could be outside playing ball?  Was he mad?  Better yet:  was I?

Yup.

One of my 10th grade students walks slowly my way.  Wearing his varsity baseball uniform with a game only 30 minutes away.  He's actually biting his lip.  Says, "Can I start now?"  I nod in the affirmative. 

And so he begins his last 2 or 3 attempts at the quarter-long "Ozymandias" poem memorization project (I wrote about not too long ago) that stops being valid at the end of today when the quarter ends.  As in no-more-chances, becomes-a-zero end of today.  Nothing like waiting 9 weeks to prove the power of 10th grade procrastination.  Dem wacky kids.  Wonders never cease.

The challenge for my kids starts like this: 

"I met a traveler from an antique land / Who said..." - Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias"

In a sentence, here's what they gotta do:

'Recite' the poem on paper perfectly, word for word, comma for comma, perfect, no mistakes, no excuses, none, done, fininto. 

9 weeks to try.  Try as many times as needed. 

But when its over, its either an A+/100 or an F/0.  No other options.  And it counts as much as a major essay.  No apologies.

As I said in the previous post, another teacher I ran into at a conference this winter said,'

"No way you'll get all your kids to do this.  Just not possible.  Not all kids can memorize.  At least I couldn't."

I forgave her her lack of optimism, her reluctance to be audacious, her lack of willingness to realize that kids will do anything for a teacher who truly believes in them and makes it non-negotiable based on a belief in their abilities,...all because she pointed to the elephant in the corner of the room. 

If we don't think we can, then how can our kids?

But the crazy thing is that when this student walked into my 'office' today, he was the last one to get this done.  The very last one.  My assumption of perfection was on the line, as I told him (a little extra pressure I knew he could handle!). 

Every one of my students -- from ESL kids to Ivy-League-bound kids -- pulled it off successfully. Every. One. Of. Them!  Period.

This was on my mind a lot today since I had been surprised by an invitation from Oregon Public Radio to be on-air today during a show called "Think Out Loud" that was focusing on the act of 'memorization' in the learning process.  Somehow -- Google? -- one of their producers discovered that post I wrote about this poem memorization project and called me. All the way from Oregon.  Want to be on our show in Oregon?  Sure.  Happy to join in.

While I was flattered to be asked to be on the show today and share a bit about my students and the work they did this quarter, I was even more impressed by the other students on the show who were performing in the national Poetry Out Loud competition.  My lil'ol' project had nothing on what these kids were doing.  Not. A. Thing.

As I said, eventually my baseball playing 10th grader with a bit of the procrastination blues on the verge of Spring Break, managed to pull off the memorization project after 5 tries this afternoon alone.  With him, 100% of my students -- the entire 10th grade -- proved that earlier teacher's assumption wrong.  Quite wrong.  We got 100%.  No problemo!

So, I walked out the door today to kick start vacation.

A brilliant spring day in the 80's.  Sun.  Blue sky.  Spring Break officially under way.  A gradebook full of A+/100 point scores for a major assignment for all of my kids.  All of them.   And an appreciation that someone I've never met stumbled upon my blog and asked me to be on Oregon Public Radio to talk about "memorization" of all things.

Funny.  If there is anything I thought I'd ever be asked to talk about on the radio, memorization is the furthest possibility in the education spectrum.

But then again, wonders never cease when it comes to the teaching life.

Seeking Humilty in Classroom Management

I think Dan Meyer is onto YAGT (yet-another-great-thing) over at his blog. 

Along with creating math movies even an English teacher type loves to watch, a design & presentation centric mindset, and enough sharp on his rhetorical blade to wake folks up when professional laziness sets in, he's now angling towards a deep exploration of CM (classroom management) that is already getting a mad flurry of comment responses. 

Check it out for yourself.  Really.  Go. There.  Now. 

Or plan to stay after school and have me call your parents.

I left the following comment (which I gotta believe Dan is very close to erasing for sheer length alone) in response, which is cross-posted for your I-got-nothing-better-to-do convenience below:

***

Your post brought me back to a moment one month into my 2nd student teaching assignment. Everything I accidentally learned in one 5-minute moment — while lying on my back underneath a fallen chair-desk as my students looked on — continues to be the center of my classroom management style today, more than 15 years later.

For those who lack interest in reading the rest, suffice it to say that it comes down to the following very impressive and much-researched formula I’m trying to copyright and cash-in:

TMEM&LLF + DS + TLA + SSLA + H (nP, nGMAStSF) = RBH(nP), which in turn leads to ECM

TMEM&LLF: Teacher makes an epic mistake, looks like a fool, in front of his/her students

DS:  Deep silence across the classroom (although you can feel the snickers beginning to grow strength)

TLA: Teacher laughs aloud (at self — the crux)

SSLA: Stunned students finally laugh aloud (strangely following TIF teacher’s lead…)

H (nP, nGMAStSF): Teacher demonstrates ‘humility’ (not ‘power’) — modeling what most of the kids feel internally themselves most days — and chooses not to get mad at students to save face as the ‘adult’/expert in room

RBH(nP): A strange layer of ‘respect’ based on humility (not perfection)suddenly enters the room as teacher manages to both laugh-at-oneself while simultaneously acknowledging the students as having a legit reason to laugh, as teacher manages to continue teaching as if this was the ‘most normal thing in the world to happen to him/her’…

ECM: Effective Classroom Management

***

My story (that continues to fuel my CM style even today):

Class:

‘$egular’ 9th grade English, Midwest public school, low/mid socio-economic scale, early 90’s. While there were some real 9th graders in my class (the nervous ones, even more nervous than I was), most were in their 2nd or 3rd go on this class…and waiting until they could legally drop out of school and get a ‘real’ job with their hands.

Topic:

Greek mythology. Something not-so ground-zero to their real lives. We were color-mapping Ulysses’ sailing adventures as a way to break out of the text a bit. Most of these kids had never seen a sailboat; most never would. Greece was a movie to them, maybe; certainly not a place they’d ever visit. Ulysses’ trip was as vital as the chemical composition of the lunchroom tray they carried their tater tots on when they didn’t leap the fence at lunchtime.

Me:

At 23, I was filled with just enough swagger, nerves, coffee (and cigarettes, since I still smoked to balance out those 3 elements back then) to ‘fake’ my way through most days when my lead teacher left the room (for 2+ months at one point). I knew very little about teaching or the subject, to be honest, but I wasn’t gonna let any of my kiddos know that.

The Moment:

Feeling as if my students and I were actually ‘connecting’ for a change, I sat on the edge of one of the empty classroom chair-desks to get ‘closer’ to my audience and to make a final point about the Sirens or Medusa or some dog the main character left at home before his journey began 10 years earlier. Lots of eye contact. 15 minutes to go before the class ended. Feeling good.

…

Then suddenly I was up in the air, landing on my back, upside down looking at the ceiling, that very chair-desk now laying on top of me. Apparently physics decided to add a little humility to my day.

The room was silent. Dead silent. All eyes looking my way, most likely on the verge of throwing me off the cliff for the rest of the year, or at least under a bus…

I looked up. Caught the eye of one of my wrestlers who hated the class (and probably me). I smiled. Said to him (loud enough for everyone else in the class to hear), “Josh, If I had been you watching that, I’d be laughing my ass off at this moment.” And I began laughing.

His eyes got wide. Real wide. Then he laughed. A legit you-and-me kind of laugh. The other kids followed. I continued laughing. As did they.

And then I kept on teaching, right there while laying on my back, the chair-desk still laying across my stomach/legs, as if it was part of my master plan all along. In a minute or so, after I got back onto my 2 feet, I noticed that most of the class was actually taking notes. Crazy, that…

…because looking back, I had maybe 30 seconds to create or destroy my future teaching career….and there was zero middle ground to choose from and my audience wasn’t gonna throw me a bone if I selected poorly.

…

I figured out 2 key things at that moment that I’ve never forgotten:

1. Most teachers spend too much time trying to validate their authority or expertise, when both already are givens the moment they walk in the door. What they fail to do is validate their students in the process.

2. Kids see teachers fail every day. Rarely, however, do they see teachers take failure in stride and turn it into something healthy in the process. Sadly, many teachers feel such embarrassment when they do fail in front of their kids that they actually take it out on the kids instead. Silly, that. Most of our students feel failure every second of their school life — that nature of the game for kids both in and out of the classroom as their identity/ego is in constant flux — and what they need around them are more adults/teachers that seem to handle their own ‘human’ experiences with a bit of humor and and humility.

Otherwise, how will they learn how to do it themselves?

***

So there you have it:  my CM. 

I fell of a chair-desk as a student teacher. I laughed at myself. In front of the kids. And allowed them to laugh at me, too…while subtly taking back control of the classroom in the process. It still works today. 15 years later. When I’m still making mistakes constantly, but never taking that out on my kids to save face.

Oh…

…and the fact that I can steamroll each and every one of them in a battle-of-words when they get uppety.

  (he smiles)

Image of chair-desk.

"Chalk" Talk (2nd Time Around)

The film came to Dallas to a cool little independent film theater last spring, but only for two short weeks.  Failed to see "Chalk" on the big screen that time. 

Silly, that.

At some point, I wrote an initial blog post as a "must see" item that was supposed to be a kick in my butt to check out the film.  Oops.  A bit of time passed since that moment.

Changed careers (or re-discovered one from my past).  A summer passed. And a fall.  Semester exams came.  Hit the glorious "2nd half of the year" landmark.  A prom gear brochure passed around.  And already hearing hints of "summer vacation" comments popping up at random moments in faculty conversations (and its only mid-Jan).  Ah, the classic nodes of the teacher year in full effect.

Until last night while roaming Blockbuster's aisles, I had managed to somehow forget that this underground, film-festival-centric, teacher-focused film even existed.  Guess I didn't need to see it until after putting a bit of time back "in the trenches" once again.  Earning dem blackboard stripes once again.

If you haven't seen the film, I can't recommend it enough.  Especially if you've ever been a 1st or 2nd year teacher.  Public or private (although the film will definitely strike a chord with the public -- esp. the urban public -- teachers out there). 

If you have the time, definitely watch the Director's Commentary at the end of the film.  Especially to be reminded that the film's creators (and one of the 4 principal actors) had been teachers themselves.  Check out one of their "character" MySpace pages -- this one for "Mr. Stroope" -- especially when noting that some of their real past students left real comments.  Nice to know that they wrote/produced the film as a tribute to the profession.  Especially with the reminder at the beginning of the film that 50% of teachers leave the profession within a few years.  And especially with that special wink-wink insight/humor that only "in the trenches" educators will fully appreciate.

Me? 

I loved the image of the teacher carrying the Sitting Bull poster out of the classroom at the end of the film.  Not to mention the tweak on the classic spelling bee (pitting teacher against teacher in an urban slang-off), the "Out of Order" copier scene, and the employment of students in a "favorite" teacher's bid to win Teacher of the Year honors.  To name but a few.

You?

Teddy's Words in Late Afternoon Light

The first day back is nearly complete.  My mind wanders slightly as if on a river as the evening beckons me home. 

A breeze of wonder about tomorrow's lessons and the days ahead leans lightly against me.  Questions slide through a few crooked branches of missed opportunities, trampled on in the rush to get it 'all in' before the bell rung.  Kids' lives seem nearly in focus, but they are still only unpublished pages floating around in my imagination.  Trying like mad, I am, to freeze each moment I experienced today, like snow tracks for later reflection as time passes...