Marching

So my coworker Jeff and I took a bunch of our students on the protest march that has been happening. But you know what. The truth is that I'm tired of all these illegal Canadians. Motherfuckers coming and taking jobs from hard working Americans. Fucking Canucks are all up in Hollywood and the music industry. Those jobs belong to Americans Goddammit! Jim Carrey... Canadian. Keanu Reeves... Canadian. Pamela Anderson... Canadian. The list goes on. Sometimes they can blend in cause they look a lot like white Americans. But they have infiltrated our pristine American soil and I'm angry. You have to listen carefully to their accent. They will slip in an "eh" or "hoser". I propose that the Minutemen patrol the Canadian border to stop the influx of these illegal Canadians. I'm disgusted by those people with their ways. They need to go back to where they came from!!!

Worse than grading and scheduling???

I hate grading. It's fucking lame. I recently came upon the realization though that I hate scheduling even more. However, now I know something that I hate even more than grading and scheduling. It's updating student folders. Figuring out their credits and GPA. The shit drives me fucking crazy. Luckily I found a gpa calculator that will also do cumulative gpa. God bless the internet because doing that shit by hand was driving me crazy. Plus if I don't add that shit up right then I can fuck up a student's chances for graduating and all that. No fucking pressure there.

I realized though part of why I hate it so much. It shouldn't be my fucking job. I shouldn't be doing folders and I shouldn't be doing scheduling. I knew what I was signing up for, but oftentimes I feel like it's too much. This shit isn't in the teacher description. This is the job of a counselor. SHIT SHIT SHIT!!! I'm a CTM. Counselor, teacher and mentor. FUCK! I have this strange desire to hate the letter C now. But I can't cause it's for cookie.

Classroom Dynamics

It's really funny how different personalities change classroom dynamics. I'm right now teaching 2 sections of World Cultures 1 and in both I did a simulation exercise where students were trapped on a desert island and had to create a community set of rules.

The first class was very calm and people raised their hands and were very communal oriented. There are a couple of outspoken conscious black girls that were taking the lead in the class and helping figure out things. Things went well and they accomplished everything they were supposed to by the end of the class time.

The second class was hilarious. It was the Lord of the Flies. A student took the lead and proclaimed herself the captain. She was telling people what they were going to do and gave "permission" to people to do things. Then another student wanted to break away and make a boat and legalize drugs. Then another student wanted to know about sex and how that would be handled. It was hilarious. At one point a student said something and I just lost my shit and started laughing. It was totally hilarious. By sitting back and watching I learned a lot about student personalities.

The things classes had in common were also interesting. Both classes said cutting off limbs would be a form of punishment. It was kind of gruesome.They also both divided labor along gender lines. That was a trip. But I guess it's all part of the colonized mindset. But other than the classroom dynamics were totally different.

Interestingly, one student that is on the fast track to dropping out really got sparked by this simulation. The guy was debating and was the person taking the lead on arguing for people to make a boat. It was cool cause most of the time he is just sitting there spaced out and not doing anything. It gave me some fucking hope for him. He's got it rough, cause he's got a learning disability and is pretty immature. Then on top of that he is lazy. My coworker said it best, "he starts off slow and then tapers off!"

1 fucking year!

So yesterday was one fucking year. I'm no longer fresh meat. I'm a sophomore. Looking back at where I was a year ago...fucking shit. I've more or less got my style down. Now it's just about filling it with content. I'm the less well known function following form. I've got classroom persona Dave. Hello children! (now Isaac Hayes gets indignant???)

But I started off all my classes with students doing a journal write describing a time when they planned out an activity. Then I gave points to students that shared. From that I emphasized and drew from them about what it takes to plan out an event. Through that I explained metacognition. My 3rd period had a great example with a student recalling a time when he snuck a whole bunch of people into the ice rink and movies. It was a perfect example of metacognition though not of legality. But it really made the kids get it. I find that teaching this works better putting it in context. And that is my goal. I must put things into context for kids. This is how they learn best. Give them something they can relate to in their everyday lives. They need to draw the connections themselves. This is the beauty and the bane of the pedagogy. You can only point the way and sometimes it don't even matter if you do that. Then I told students the day that we were going to have a test and had them make a metacognitive plan to remember the information. Finally, I had them write exit cards telling me what metacognition meant, what the 3 basic elements were, and a question or two from each of the elements. I didn't expect anyone to get all of them, but I wanted them force them to recall something. This worked waaaay better than the first time I taught this.

CTM is crazy. I got 19 kids to watch over now. A lot of personalities to handle. Every single one of them with their own idiosyncrasies and baggage.

Worse than grades???

I've figured out something in teaching that I hate worse than grades. It's scheduling. At my school we don't have an administration staff that schedules students into classes. It's all on the teacher. So I have to get all the students credits up to date and schedule them for classes. It's a paperwork mess. Then to go through all that shit and have a kid get mad with me cause they don't like the classes they have... it totally sucks shit. We've also had to create independent study programs for students out of the blue. Apparently the state said that we didn't have enough instructional minutes. Independent study gives us some relief from the instructional minutes. But it's just more to plan for. The past two weeks we've had meetings almost everyday. Reefuckingdickulous. I'm on meeting overload. The level of organization and coordination is practically nonexistent. So I can't focus on my main task of teaching because I have to deal with the other tasks of administration. I hate to say it but the staff isn't getting the support from the office in terms of administration. Discipline isn't a problem and that is what holds the school together. The tone is also set by the office. But beyond discipline and tone, the office isn't doing it's job. Don't get me wrong. I love the people that I work with. I think they are a great bunch of people, but I don't think I'm getting the office is fulfilling all of its duties.

Now we've started a new quarter. And tomorrow is officially a year at my school. FUCK YEAH! What a killer crazy first year! But what a learning experience. Darwin said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." I'm adapting the best that I can and feel like I'm starting to float. In the beginning I was sinking. Then I started to bob. Now I feel like I'm floating. Hopefully soon I'll be able to tread water. I'm not even at the point of thinking about swimming yet.

Doing too much

When I get on my students to do things they don't want to do one of the things they like to say is that I'm doing too much. I've taken to heading them off by saying, "I'm told that I do too much." Then I tell them what to do. This usually elicits a smile from them and then they drag their feet and do it. Or I say, "you're not doing enough."

But lately I'm agreeing with them. I feel like I'm doing too much. I let students make up work at the end of the quarter and this ends up with me having to do a ton of work. All last week we had finals schedules and then we did meetings. Meetings to figure out our new independent study schedule. Meetings to shuffle students for scheduling. Time to call parents to set up meetings for this coming week. Figuring out scheduling for all my CTM. There has to be a fucking computer program for this shit. Jeremy and I are making this our summer project.

Start of a new quarter. I'm teaching 2 classes of World Cultures I and one class of World Cultures II. I was supposed to have a prep period but the English guy was cut from staff. He wasn't able to control the students and was constantly getting dissed. I'm happy cause that guy would piss me off all the time. Whenever we'd go out for drinks I'd see how he really was. Alcohol can show the true self sometimes. But the way that he looked down on kids it's no wonder they didn't like him.