Before my students left for break, I emailed them, my parents, announced in class, AND posted on the board that there would be no work over break because it's BREAK.
I told them they were welcome to take their independent reading books home if they wanted. No assignment, now work, just read. But that I encouraged them to play, see friends, enjoy family, recharge.
When I was in high school, and later taught at the high school I graduated from, there was a math teacher (and sorry, but it's usually the older math teachers :-( ) who took great delight it seemed in assigning HUGE, MONSTROUS packets of work that not only had to be done over break but which the teacher insisted be MAILED by a certain date in order to be graded. They failed students if they didn't. Ignored tears about family issues.
I never understood one, why they were allowed to do this, and two, why parents and students did not revolt.
I kind of feel the same way about athletic events/conferences scheduled over break. It's a BREAK.
I survey my students at the end of the semester to see what I can do better, get them to reflect a bit, see what they're struggling with. Overwhelmingly this semester my students said they struggled with anxiety and depression and I think educators need to seriously consider how we're contributing to this.
This past semester as I helped struggling students with other classes' work or during Saturday school, I saw math and social studies packets upon packets. One student struggled with a social studies packet. I asked, honestly wanting to know, if doing that helped them learn. They said no, they just looked it up online and filled in the blanks.
Another students had missed a lot of school because of hospitalization. Was given a handful of packets to do for math. Now, I can build furniture, figure out lumber orders, cook, and balance my checkbook, so freshman algebra is about my limit. This student was an English Language Learner, and was struggling with writing out expressions. So I sat down, read them outloud, and we worked through them. Student started to "see" it. We did a whole page, which first of all was like 30 items. And poorly designed, not enough space to work through. I went to get up and the student said, oh no, there's a whole back.
That's ridiculous.
I truly believe that each teacher should be required to answer, for every assignment, "What is the pedagogical reason for assigning this?"
If you can't answer that, you are doing something wrong.
So, what is the purpose of homework? Most teachers will tell you it is for practice. But here's the problem with that. You spend a class period teaching a concept. Then you send the student home with work to practice. But what if they don't get it? How long do they struggle with those 30, 40, 50 problems? What about students who have no help at home? What does that do to the socio-emotional status of our students?
I know some teachers do better. The best practice I've heard for math is that the last 10-15 minutes of class were set aside for the students to start their homework, so if they needed help the teacher was there to help. When the bell rang, the students had to then do 5 more, wherever they were. That was it.
Homework does not replace teaching, instruction, but I think as what teachers have to cover has increased, and time to do it has decreased, homework has become a convenient place to dump "coverage." I've heard teachers point to Common Core State Standards and comment that they can't cover it all. I know math teachers in my school say they spend fall semester reteaching material from pre-algebra, getting further and further behind. And I sympathize with all of these challenges.
But sending work home that students can't do does not help. Homework that depends on technology and resources punishes your poorer students. Homework over breaks, weekends, and requiring hours and hours, hurts your students.
My students have 7 periods on Monday, 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 6th on Tuesday/Thursday, and 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th on Wednesday/Friday.
Let's do our own math. Let's say each class gives 30-60 minutes of homework (and from what the kids tell me, that's less than half of what they have). That's a MINIMUM of 2 hours of homework a night. Not including time spent on the bus. Or watching siblings. Or working.
Ask your students what a typical day looks like for them. Do the homework math.
We're doing active, avoidable, harm to our students.
My students do not have homework. We do all the work in class. The only time they have homework is if they did not finish work in class, and this rarely happens. I design my station rotations to include weeks of class time to work on projects, writing assignments, walk them through the steps, provide the technology, materials, resources.
Because a guiding principle in my class is that if it's important for them to learn it, it's important for them to learn it. Which is why I take make up work, late work, let them retake tests, revise assignments.
Most schools are on winter break, and I'm seeing more and more posts about parents angry, justifiably so, about their children having to complete useless assignments over break. Stressing about getting things done.
Instead of assigning book reports, on the day back, ask students to talk about what they did, read, watched. Share what you did. Start conversations, share. Show interest. Studies have proven that rote work robs students of a love of reading.
Do not assign packets.
Tell and show your students and families that you respect them, their time, their calendars, by not assigning work. Tell them, teach them, that unplugging, respecting family, taking time off is important.
Teachers get new starts twice a year, even if you're like me and teach year long classes.
So January is a new start.
Ask yourself why you give the work, assignments you do. What is the goal? Does the assignment meet that goal? If you're using homework to check a box, is there a better way to do it? There is, trust me.
Have you asked your students what you could do better? What they need? What would help them?
Dr. K. Shimabukuro
Friday, December 28, 2018
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
Failing My Kids Every Day: Questions About Teaching in Albuquerque, New Mexico
I have said again and again on Twitter that this has been my best year teaching, out of 18, in large part because of people of color, educators of color who give so generously of their time. Also groups like #DisruptTexts and #WeNeedDiverseBooks. They carry the lionshare of the water for the rest of us, and I am infinitely grateful for it, my classroom and students are better for it.
As I have done this reading, listened, taken notes, a couple of things have occurred to me, that worry me.
My school is above 1600 students. It may rise to 1700 with the recent redistricting.
85% of my students are Chican@.
7% Indigenous, mostly Navajo, but also Pueblo Indians
2% Black
5% White
The percentage on Asian students is not recorded but we have a fair amount of Thai and Vietnamese students.
95% minority enrollment
7% of our students are proficient in math, below the 21% New Mexico stat.
28 % of our students are proficient in reading, the same as the state state.
We're in the bottom 50% for performance.
Our graduation rate is 67% (which by the way is what it was back in 1972).
70% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch.
The number of teachers we have is down 9% in five years. We have a large teacher turnover.
The majority of our teachers are white.
Last year I looked for resources, articles, readings, that would help me better serve my mostly Chican@ and Indigenous, New Mexican students.
I found two articles:
That was it. Today I found this 1972 study from the United States Commission on Civil Rights on the education of Mexican American students. It covers California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico. Reading through the statistics is sobering, considering that none of the numbers have changed. So in 40 years, we've made no improvements in how we serve our students.
I've also read websites and books about the Indian Boarding School system in New Mexico.
I can find no research that tells me how to best serve my students. What I am missing, lacking, how best to reach them. It's piecemeal of trying to take the lessons I learned from texts aimed at serving the needs of Black and urban students, students in poverty, with the piecemeal, often outdated, tangential works I can find about my type of students.
And PLEASE, if I have somehow missed some crucial book, article, blogger, research, TELL ME.
All of this has brought home just how deeply and how awfully, I am failing my students.
My students come from backgrounds that are deeply different from accepted, typical, Anglo culture. So how can mostly Anglo teachers serve them?
How can we know how they learn best?
How can we privilege their narratives?
Their history?
How can we honor and respect their elders, communities, and bring them into our classrooms?
How do we overcome fear and distrust of Anglo systems and institutions (like public schools) where they feel safe doing this?
How do we need to change how we teach our content AND the content we teach to best serve our students?
I do not have good answers. I can share what I've done, changes I've made to my classroom to try and do better.
I know I am still not doing what is best for my students. I do not speak Spanish. I get someone to make my calls to Spanish families, so they get contact just like my English speaking families do. But it's not the same.
I've tried in the past to reach out to the reservation school to open dialogue, and maybe do some shadowing, but I've not tried as hard as I could. We lose a lot of our reservation kids, they come freshmen year, and the almost hour commute, the culture shock, is often too much and they drop out. I know I am failing these kids.
I feel like I don't know enough about Navajo, Pueblo culture, and how to best serve those kids.
So, I don't have answers. I have questions. Lots and lots of questions. And a soul sadness that we fail these kids again and again. Systematically and individually.
I wish we had more Indigenous, Native, Chican@ and Black teachers for my students to see. I wish they would do this work, and share it. But I also get that white people need to stop asking marginalized groups to do all the work. On the flip side, I also don't think white teachers need to be studying these communities under a microscope divorcing the customs, literature, stories, and beliefs from the actual people and communities. I strongly believe that this type of work needs to be done by native New Mexicans, Chican@, Indigenous teacher scholars.
While my focus here is on my students who aren't being served, I know too that similar posts could be written about communities and schools that serve predominantly Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, other Native populations. How many students are we failing? How many Anglo teachers aren't even self-aware enough to know or care they're actively harming and failing their students, families, communities.
Here are books, recommendations, people, that I have learned from, and I believe contain valuable lessons that can be applied in some ways if not all to the communities we serve:
Addendum: I thought as I encountered them, I'd add articles, resources
As I have done this reading, listened, taken notes, a couple of things have occurred to me, that worry me.
My school is above 1600 students. It may rise to 1700 with the recent redistricting.
85% of my students are Chican@.
7% Indigenous, mostly Navajo, but also Pueblo Indians
2% Black
5% White
The percentage on Asian students is not recorded but we have a fair amount of Thai and Vietnamese students.
95% minority enrollment
7% of our students are proficient in math, below the 21% New Mexico stat.
28 % of our students are proficient in reading, the same as the state state.
We're in the bottom 50% for performance.
Our graduation rate is 67% (which by the way is what it was back in 1972).
70% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch.
The number of teachers we have is down 9% in five years. We have a large teacher turnover.
The majority of our teachers are white.
Last year I looked for resources, articles, readings, that would help me better serve my mostly Chican@ and Indigenous, New Mexican students.
I found two articles:
- "Classroom Management in a Navajo Middle School" from Theory Into Practice by Jane McCarthy and Joe Benally, 2003. It addresses Navajo students in Arizona.
- "Cultural Implications for Navajo Students' Learning Styles and Effective Teaching Methods" from The Journal of Educational Issues of Minority Students by Rangasamy Ramasamy, 1996.
That was it. Today I found this 1972 study from the United States Commission on Civil Rights on the education of Mexican American students. It covers California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico. Reading through the statistics is sobering, considering that none of the numbers have changed. So in 40 years, we've made no improvements in how we serve our students.
I've also read websites and books about the Indian Boarding School system in New Mexico.
Education at the Edge of Empire: Negotiating Pueblo Identity in New Mexico's Indian Boarding Schools (Indigenous Confluences) is good, as is One House, One Voice, One Heart: Native American Education at the Santa Fe Indian School.
New Mexico has a complicated history, defined by class status due to Spanish land grants, Chican@ identity, Pueblo identity, Navajo reservations, mixing of cultures. As my students and I often discuss, there has always been a lot of movement back and forth across the border, and just because NM became a state in 1912 and an imaginary line was drawn in the air doesn't mean hundreds of years of culture and tradition changed.
In addition to this context, we need to add the fact that New Mexico has the largest amount of employees employed by the federal government, including Sandia Labs and Los Alamos. There's a complicated history with the federal government, from the eviction and erasure of Natives off of the Los Alamos plateau for the Manhattan Project, issues with Indigenous students being adopted off reservations by white people, a current distrust of Indigenous families of Children and Family Services.
The stamp of colonialism, the internalized lessons of this, is deeply stamped onto my students and how they view the world.
In addition to all of these complicated issues is the high poverty and urban setting of my school.
So my New Mexican students are not New York Latinx. They are not Los Angeles Chican@s.
I can find no research that tells me how to best serve my students. What I am missing, lacking, how best to reach them. It's piecemeal of trying to take the lessons I learned from texts aimed at serving the needs of Black and urban students, students in poverty, with the piecemeal, often outdated, tangential works I can find about my type of students.
And PLEASE, if I have somehow missed some crucial book, article, blogger, research, TELL ME.
All of this has brought home just how deeply and how awfully, I am failing my students.
My students come from backgrounds that are deeply different from accepted, typical, Anglo culture. So how can mostly Anglo teachers serve them?
How can we know how they learn best?
How can we privilege their narratives?
Their history?
How can we honor and respect their elders, communities, and bring them into our classrooms?
How do we overcome fear and distrust of Anglo systems and institutions (like public schools) where they feel safe doing this?
How do we need to change how we teach our content AND the content we teach to best serve our students?
I do not have good answers. I can share what I've done, changes I've made to my classroom to try and do better.
- I no longer teach folklore. First, folklore is often racist, in its approach and scholarship. Second, while folklore and folk tales is often used to check a diversity box, as Debbie Reese points out, these are not abstract stories, they are the personal, sacred beliefs of people. They are not tropes to "study" in the abstract.
- I made a concerted effort to buy books and comics by Native/Indigenous authors, although it is hard to find Indigenous authors from HERE. I was really excited when Rebecca Roanhorse's Trail of Lightning was released, but as Indigenous folx have noted, it's very problematic.
- I also teach The Milagro Beanfield War, Underdogs, Y No Se Lo Trago La Tierra. Not all of these are by Chican@ authors, or set in New Mexico, but Milagro is about New Mexican land grants, and the students "see" themselves in the story. Underdogs privileges narratives they don't often see, and history they aren't taught. Y No Se Lo Trago La Tierra is set in Texas but students "get" the life is hell metaphor. I teach the Spanish-English edition which also lets a lot of my students show off their skills.
- I also bought a lot of books like The Hate You Give, Ghost Boys, Kwame Alexander's series, Miles Morales, Boondocks, All American Boys, because while my school does not have a lot of Black students, they are still under-served, and not seen. And I want my students to see themselves in what they read as much as possible.
- In the spring, when I teach Romeo and Juliet, I'm going to steal a page out of my friend Thomas Lecaque. When he teaches history, he starts with what that area that their school is on was like- 10,000, 5,000, 1,000 years ago. So when I teach Shakespeare, I'm going to teach it through the context of what New Mexico was like in 1595, both Pueblo and Spanish culture.
- On days like Columbus Day, before Thanksgiving, I teach lessons that ask students to research true history, dismantle myths, and do land acknowledgements, asking them to explicitly think about these things. When I teach American Literature in 11th grade, I start with Native stories, and focus on the tale of the Taino, not Columbus. We talk a lot about institutional racism, colonialism, and how people and their narratives are erased.
- I do not teach the canon anymore. And in our next unit which is novels, the students are researching who is left out of narratives in To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men. Whose story isn't told, or is erased. The issues with privileging white narratives.
- I speak out loudly, and often, in department meetings about decolonizing our texts, not teaching the canon, and how we're harming out students by continuing these practices. These mostly devolve into screaming matches, and nothing changes, but...
- Silly as it sounds, I make sure I wear my #DisruptText, We Need Diverse Books, Decolonize Your Syllabus, Decolonizer, 19 Pueblos of NM, Black Lives Matter, Cite Black Women, I Stand With Standing Rock t-shirts on a regular basis. Not as a replacement for actual action, but a signal to my students.
I know I am still not doing what is best for my students. I do not speak Spanish. I get someone to make my calls to Spanish families, so they get contact just like my English speaking families do. But it's not the same.
I've tried in the past to reach out to the reservation school to open dialogue, and maybe do some shadowing, but I've not tried as hard as I could. We lose a lot of our reservation kids, they come freshmen year, and the almost hour commute, the culture shock, is often too much and they drop out. I know I am failing these kids.
I feel like I don't know enough about Navajo, Pueblo culture, and how to best serve those kids.
So, I don't have answers. I have questions. Lots and lots of questions. And a soul sadness that we fail these kids again and again. Systematically and individually.
I wish we had more Indigenous, Native, Chican@ and Black teachers for my students to see. I wish they would do this work, and share it. But I also get that white people need to stop asking marginalized groups to do all the work. On the flip side, I also don't think white teachers need to be studying these communities under a microscope divorcing the customs, literature, stories, and beliefs from the actual people and communities. I strongly believe that this type of work needs to be done by native New Mexicans, Chican@, Indigenous teacher scholars.
While my focus here is on my students who aren't being served, I know too that similar posts could be written about communities and schools that serve predominantly Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, other Native populations. How many students are we failing? How many Anglo teachers aren't even self-aware enough to know or care they're actively harming and failing their students, families, communities.
Here are books, recommendations, people, that I have learned from, and I believe contain valuable lessons that can be applied in some ways if not all to the communities we serve:
- @ValeriaBrownEdu and her #ClearTheAir work is invaluable
- @juliaerin80
- @Ebonyteach I can't wait to read her new book The Dark Fantastic
- @TheJLV
- @diversebooks and https://diversebooks.org/
- @triciaebarvia and #DisruptTexts
- Teaching Tolerance
- Facing History
- #EduColor
- Rethinking Schools
- @MisterMinor
- @ProjectLITComm
- Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom by Lisa Delpit
- Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School by Carla Shalaby
- Being the Change by Sara K. Ahmed
Certainly not an exhaustive list by any means. By they have deeply informed my teaching, and let me better serve my students.
Addendum: I thought as I encountered them, I'd add articles, resources
Monday, December 24, 2018
The Political Devil Book Progress (almost done)
There is a lot that grad school doesn't teach you. Some programs don't teach you how to teach. Some don't teach you how to publish. How to present. How to write a book proposal. How to turn your dissertation into a book. How to create an index, get image permissions. There are a couple of books that offer some advice, but it's often a gap.
I defended my dissertation in October 2017.
In November I had a book contract.
I graduated in December.
Once I had the book contract I started a notebook for the book project. I divided it into chapters with tabs. For the next several months as I thought of things, revisions, additions, ideas, I would jot them down in the chapter they belonged in.
I did no writing other than this.
The whiteboard was again my guide. I jotted the main ideas for the chapter, then updated with Post-Its about word counts and pages. I knew the manuscript had to be longer than the diss, and while I thought the extra chapter would get me there, I was still a little nervous.
In May once school was out for the summer, I printed out the dissertation, and read through it all. I made copious notes. Which ended up being sort of a useless exercise. Kind of.
I read the whole thing. I did make notes, but this exercise proved to me, exposed to me, how the book would not be the diss. The dissertation also revealed that I knew what was at the heart of my argument all along. The subtitle was: Devilish Leaders, Demonic Parliament, and Diabolical Rebellion. The dissertation worked through chronology but my subtitle made me realize that the trends should go thematically. And that reoriented my entire thinking. I also knew that I was going to explicitly put back the folkloric work the English political devil does even though I'd been told to take it out from the diss.
In June I started with the new chapter I knew I needed to write, on the devil in English pamphlets, that would be the ending, culminating, chapter. I wanted to have as much time as possible to do this new work. The first version of the diss had a different version of a chapter about pamphlets.
In July I rewrote Chapter 1: Devilish Leaders. In August Chapter 2: Demonic Parliament which I changed to Fiendish Constructions. In September Chapter 3: Satanic Speech. In October Chapter 4: Diabolical Rebellion. This chapter took longer than I expected, but because I knew I only had the intro and conclusion to revisit in November I knew I had some leeway. Also, my contract said the manuscript was due 31 January, but I really wanted to get it to my editor before I went back to school, 3 January. But if I needed it, I knew I had a cushion.
The first thing I did was outline the whole book. At the beginning of each month I would revisit the outline for the chapter, adding, going through. Then I would draft the chapter. Then add scholarship. Then print out, read through, with the outline to track organization. Then final draft.
When I started drafting I knew I'd be reorganizing the material but still thought I'd be keeping a lot of what I had. I ended up throwing out most of it. Or rewriting so much as to be unrecognizable. I boiled things down to their most important aspect. I cut a lot of the dependence on other scholars' voices. I wrote clearly.
In many ways it was similar to when I wrote the second version of the dissertation. I know this material back and forth. I knew where things needed to go, how it needed to flow, what to cut, what wasn't needed. I knew what pages of what research filled which gaps.
I kept the bibliography at the end of each chapter at first. Once everything was done I transferred the chapters and bibliography to single documents.
I ripped out all the pages in my notebook that were addressed. Instead, I redid chapter tabs and wrote down throughlines, things to connect, include, based on the other chapters.
I took the beginning of December off for a couple of reasons. The first is I knew the last couple of weeks of school were going to be hectic- grades to post, exams to grade, the teacher's classes I was lesson planning and grading for. I also thought that taking a couple of weeks off from the book before reading the whole thing through for last looks would be good distance.
I have two weeks off for break, and I mapped out one chapter per day to read through, reading through all at once, with the table of contents, and throughline notes in front of me. I also have my notebook to make sure I add the notes I had. Once I've read through it all I'll then type up the notes. It was important for me to get into a flow and stay there.
As I read, the Post-Its on my monitor are consistency notes I need to double check with the whole manuscript.
I printed out the bibliography so I can check/add sources if I needed to.
Going through the Introduction took all day Saturday. It took me a while to get back into the groove of the book and frankly fighting the voices in my head that tell me I'm rubbish for thinking I could write a book. I procrasti-cleaned, rearranged furniture. It took all day.
Sunday Chapter One went well. So either it's really good, or I'm delusional. The work went better, and I was done by lunch.
Today Chapter Two is on deck. The chapters get progressively bigger, so the work day may get longer. But I don't have anything to do. I may go see a movie or read a book, but my time is mine, with just this to do.
It seems really weird that something that has taken up so much of my life is coming to an end. I know that once the manuscript is submitted there's still a lot of work to do, I'll start work on the index, start working on image permissions. It'll go out to peer reviewers, then I'll have those notes. Copyediting. But despite all that work, none of that will be equal to writing the book while teaching high school full time.
So I'm excited. This is big. And this book is good. And it does important work.
I defended my dissertation in October 2017.
In November I had a book contract.
I graduated in December.
Once I had the book contract I started a notebook for the book project. I divided it into chapters with tabs. For the next several months as I thought of things, revisions, additions, ideas, I would jot them down in the chapter they belonged in.
I did no writing other than this.
In May once school was out for the summer, I printed out the dissertation, and read through it all. I made copious notes. Which ended up being sort of a useless exercise. Kind of.
I read the whole thing. I did make notes, but this exercise proved to me, exposed to me, how the book would not be the diss. The dissertation also revealed that I knew what was at the heart of my argument all along. The subtitle was: Devilish Leaders, Demonic Parliament, and Diabolical Rebellion. The dissertation worked through chronology but my subtitle made me realize that the trends should go thematically. And that reoriented my entire thinking. I also knew that I was going to explicitly put back the folkloric work the English political devil does even though I'd been told to take it out from the diss.
In June I started with the new chapter I knew I needed to write, on the devil in English pamphlets, that would be the ending, culminating, chapter. I wanted to have as much time as possible to do this new work. The first version of the diss had a different version of a chapter about pamphlets.
In July I rewrote Chapter 1: Devilish Leaders. In August Chapter 2: Demonic Parliament which I changed to Fiendish Constructions. In September Chapter 3: Satanic Speech. In October Chapter 4: Diabolical Rebellion. This chapter took longer than I expected, but because I knew I only had the intro and conclusion to revisit in November I knew I had some leeway. Also, my contract said the manuscript was due 31 January, but I really wanted to get it to my editor before I went back to school, 3 January. But if I needed it, I knew I had a cushion.
The first thing I did was outline the whole book. At the beginning of each month I would revisit the outline for the chapter, adding, going through. Then I would draft the chapter. Then add scholarship. Then print out, read through, with the outline to track organization. Then final draft.
When I started drafting I knew I'd be reorganizing the material but still thought I'd be keeping a lot of what I had. I ended up throwing out most of it. Or rewriting so much as to be unrecognizable. I boiled things down to their most important aspect. I cut a lot of the dependence on other scholars' voices. I wrote clearly.
In many ways it was similar to when I wrote the second version of the dissertation. I know this material back and forth. I knew where things needed to go, how it needed to flow, what to cut, what wasn't needed. I knew what pages of what research filled which gaps.
I kept the bibliography at the end of each chapter at first. Once everything was done I transferred the chapters and bibliography to single documents.
I ripped out all the pages in my notebook that were addressed. Instead, I redid chapter tabs and wrote down throughlines, things to connect, include, based on the other chapters.
I took the beginning of December off for a couple of reasons. The first is I knew the last couple of weeks of school were going to be hectic- grades to post, exams to grade, the teacher's classes I was lesson planning and grading for. I also thought that taking a couple of weeks off from the book before reading the whole thing through for last looks would be good distance.
As I read, the Post-Its on my monitor are consistency notes I need to double check with the whole manuscript.
Sunday Chapter One went well. So either it's really good, or I'm delusional. The work went better, and I was done by lunch.
It seems really weird that something that has taken up so much of my life is coming to an end. I know that once the manuscript is submitted there's still a lot of work to do, I'll start work on the index, start working on image permissions. It'll go out to peer reviewers, then I'll have those notes. Copyediting. But despite all that work, none of that will be equal to writing the book while teaching high school full time.
So I'm excited. This is big. And this book is good. And it does important work.
Friday, December 21, 2018
Redesigning and Reorganizing Big Schools
The first school I taught in was in Brooklyn. It had three floors, and each floor was divided into a school, a response to the large 1500+ students the building, and original school, housed. Enterprise Business Technology, the School for Legal Studies, and Progress. It worked. Each floor had separate staff, principals, students, lunches. We shared the facilities, but did not interact.
For my experience, it was successful. We were a small staff, everyone knew each other. All the English teachers prepped together, shared, we worked with social studies to make interdisciplinary lessons, we knew the science and math teachers, we talked. It was a closeknit group. Don't get me wrong- it was not all laughter and giggles. We weren't all best friends. BUT the structure that was set up made it easy to share and collaborate.
This week, I've been thinking a lot about this model, these experiences.
My current school is over 1600 students. In fact, I think we're over 1700 students with the influx of new students from rezoning.
I've written before about our issues with chronic absenteeism, abysmal graduation rates, below 20% achievement on state reading and math tests. We say we're implementing Tier I interventions. We say we're a Jensen school addressing poverty. In my 3 1/2 years there, I haven't seen anything change.
We re-started a freshman academy this year, and many teachers are expressing frustration that we're paying lip service to stuff, but when we think outside the box, are told no.
So today I sat and mapped out what reorganizing the school would look like.
Divide our campus into three schools. We have three main classroom buildings with roughly the same amount of classrooms, so that seems an easy, natural, division.
Each "house" or academy would have roughly 550 students. We have a principal and three assistant principals. So each one would get a house/academy. We have 5 guidance counselors, a school focus would not mean a reduction in loads for them, but might enable them to work more efficiently with the teachers and principals.
We would still share facilities like the gym, fine arts, performing arts center, etc. But, the schools would have separate lunches.
Our school currently runs on this bell schedule:
We could keep this, but to accommodate the separate lunches, we'd do this:
Monday:
5th: one school goes to lunch at 1130
6th: one at 12 then class. One class, lunch at 1230, then back to class.
Tuesday-Friday
4th/5th: one school goes to lunch at 1130
6th/7th: one at 12 then class. One class, lunch at 1230, then back to class.
I know many schools that break up like this assign the schools themes, topics. They get community sponsors/buy in for support. I think at first, it would be easier to randomly split the schools by numbers, just reorganize, then see if topics/themes come about.
Some choices based on our students would be:
Each house or academy could have a color, an aspect of the school colors- scarlet, blue, gold? Each could have their own name. Our mission statement is Knowledge Today...Success Tomorrow. What if the bilingual academy was Success? Science and Tech was Tomorrow? Humanities was Knowledge?
Some subjects like PE, Science, fine arts, might serve more than one school, but certainly would weigh more one way than the other. So most of the fine arts might be in the humanities school, lower science might be spread evenly, but higher ups like AP and physics, might be in the science and tech. A lot would depend on the teacher, ideally these academies would allow staff to pursue their interests.
I think especially the bilingual/ELL academy would honor our 86% Chican@ population, encourage participation in the bilingual seal program, and better support our ELL students.
Within these schools, there would be roughly 30 faculty, so it'd be easier for them to get to know each other, work together. If it was divided into these schools, then the math, English, history teachers could work to design curriculum, interdisciplinary projects, within those themes/topics, each class supporting and adding to the others.
We'd keep the same mascot, sports teams, clubs, so there'd be that shared set of experiences. Same with dances and such. But the academies could "compete" for spirit things versus grades competing.
The smaller schools, divided on campus, would also mean that we would know all the students in our school. We'd see them in the hall, know their names, be able to intervene, know our families.
Research is a little iffy on this type of division. Some schools who did it say it didn't work, but also couch that by saying that it didn't work because they broke into smaller schools but kept the same structures, so things didn't change. Like freshman or sophomore academies, just breaking down into smaller pieces doesn't fix things. They require perspective shifts and a willingness to do real work. In the schools where the reorganization DID work, graduation rates rose, sometimes as high as 30%. Chronic absenteeism dropped. Test scores rose.
I don't know. I've experienced a LOT where great ideas, easy to execute, were suggested to improve schools, but administration wasn't willing to try them, or tried but didn't support and follow through.
But I am also a worker bee. I am really incapable of sitting by and not trying to help.
Anyone have thoughts- experiences in smaller schools? Successes? Failures? I'd love to hear.
For my experience, it was successful. We were a small staff, everyone knew each other. All the English teachers prepped together, shared, we worked with social studies to make interdisciplinary lessons, we knew the science and math teachers, we talked. It was a closeknit group. Don't get me wrong- it was not all laughter and giggles. We weren't all best friends. BUT the structure that was set up made it easy to share and collaborate.
This week, I've been thinking a lot about this model, these experiences.
My current school is over 1600 students. In fact, I think we're over 1700 students with the influx of new students from rezoning.
I've written before about our issues with chronic absenteeism, abysmal graduation rates, below 20% achievement on state reading and math tests. We say we're implementing Tier I interventions. We say we're a Jensen school addressing poverty. In my 3 1/2 years there, I haven't seen anything change.
We re-started a freshman academy this year, and many teachers are expressing frustration that we're paying lip service to stuff, but when we think outside the box, are told no.
So today I sat and mapped out what reorganizing the school would look like.
Divide our campus into three schools. We have three main classroom buildings with roughly the same amount of classrooms, so that seems an easy, natural, division.
Each "house" or academy would have roughly 550 students. We have a principal and three assistant principals. So each one would get a house/academy. We have 5 guidance counselors, a school focus would not mean a reduction in loads for them, but might enable them to work more efficiently with the teachers and principals.
We would still share facilities like the gym, fine arts, performing arts center, etc. But, the schools would have separate lunches.
Our school currently runs on this bell schedule:
We could keep this, but to accommodate the separate lunches, we'd do this:
Monday:
5th: one school goes to lunch at 1130
6th: one at 12 then class. One class, lunch at 1230, then back to class.
Tuesday-Friday
4th/5th: one school goes to lunch at 1130
6th/7th: one at 12 then class. One class, lunch at 1230, then back to class.
I know many schools that break up like this assign the schools themes, topics. They get community sponsors/buy in for support. I think at first, it would be easier to randomly split the schools by numbers, just reorganize, then see if topics/themes come about.
Some choices based on our students would be:
- A bilingual/ELL school
- Spanish
- ELL
- French
- Bilingual classes
- Science
- Math
- Social studies
- A CTE/Science and Tech
- Autos
- Woods
- Physics (AP)
- ROTC or their ROV/tech focus
- Culinary
- Computers
- Jewelry
- Photography
- Yearbook
- Another would be fine arts/humanities.
- English
- 9-11
- AP
- Film Criticism
- Shakespeare
- Creative Writing
- Psychology
- History
- Sociology
- Music (band/orchestra)
- Theatre
- Fine arts (ceramics, art, drawing)
Each house or academy could have a color, an aspect of the school colors- scarlet, blue, gold? Each could have their own name. Our mission statement is Knowledge Today...Success Tomorrow. What if the bilingual academy was Success? Science and Tech was Tomorrow? Humanities was Knowledge?
Some subjects like PE, Science, fine arts, might serve more than one school, but certainly would weigh more one way than the other. So most of the fine arts might be in the humanities school, lower science might be spread evenly, but higher ups like AP and physics, might be in the science and tech. A lot would depend on the teacher, ideally these academies would allow staff to pursue their interests.
I think especially the bilingual/ELL academy would honor our 86% Chican@ population, encourage participation in the bilingual seal program, and better support our ELL students.
Within these schools, there would be roughly 30 faculty, so it'd be easier for them to get to know each other, work together. If it was divided into these schools, then the math, English, history teachers could work to design curriculum, interdisciplinary projects, within those themes/topics, each class supporting and adding to the others.
We'd keep the same mascot, sports teams, clubs, so there'd be that shared set of experiences. Same with dances and such. But the academies could "compete" for spirit things versus grades competing.
The smaller schools, divided on campus, would also mean that we would know all the students in our school. We'd see them in the hall, know their names, be able to intervene, know our families.
Research is a little iffy on this type of division. Some schools who did it say it didn't work, but also couch that by saying that it didn't work because they broke into smaller schools but kept the same structures, so things didn't change. Like freshman or sophomore academies, just breaking down into smaller pieces doesn't fix things. They require perspective shifts and a willingness to do real work. In the schools where the reorganization DID work, graduation rates rose, sometimes as high as 30%. Chronic absenteeism dropped. Test scores rose.
I don't know. I've experienced a LOT where great ideas, easy to execute, were suggested to improve schools, but administration wasn't willing to try them, or tried but didn't support and follow through.
But I am also a worker bee. I am really incapable of sitting by and not trying to help.
Anyone have thoughts- experiences in smaller schools? Successes? Failures? I'd love to hear.
Thursday, November 22, 2018
It Is Long Past Time to Revamp School Calendars and Thinking
As I approached Thanksgiving Break, there was a lot of talk in my school about how everyone, students and staff, was ready for the break, the time off, and how it seemed perfectly timed.
As I prepped my lesson for the day before break, one that included a Land Acknowledgement, actions students could follow up on, and a serious examination of how they'd celebrate the holiday, the history, and why it was important to teach it and the horrific stereotypes associated with it, I had issues.
It got me thinking about all the ways we signal to our students and our families that they matter or don't in our school communities.
Last Friday, my school held a "Thanksgiving Meal" with an extended lunch period. We have an 87% Chican@ and 7% Native population. There was no context for this, no acknowledgement, nothing that problematized or contextualized this.
Public school calendars are woefully out of date. They are often horrific examples of biased local control.
When I taught in Brooklyn the calendar recognized Muslim, Jewish, and Christian holidays.
When I taught in NC we got Christian holidays off.
Here in New Mexico it is mostly Christian holidays, although we do get a Vernal Holiday in the spring that centers Native celebrations
What does this tell our students?
First, it normalizes Anglo Christianity and privileges it, granting it authority.
This then skews everything else.
It marks everything else, everyone else, as on the margins, not included.
I took a look at a sampling of public school calendars, in places I'd taught, and others. If you look at them below, you'll notice that most of them have the same issues.
Changing school calendars is a fraught issue because they are within local control, and therefore are often seen as personal attacks of the people and their beliefs.
Arguing for change is not new, yet somehow we can't seem to make any progress on this issue.
But I propose that changing school calendars is a single move that could radically reorient how we teach and what we value.
Here's what I think school calendars should include:
As I prepped my lesson for the day before break, one that included a Land Acknowledgement, actions students could follow up on, and a serious examination of how they'd celebrate the holiday, the history, and why it was important to teach it and the horrific stereotypes associated with it, I had issues.
It got me thinking about all the ways we signal to our students and our families that they matter or don't in our school communities.
Last Friday, my school held a "Thanksgiving Meal" with an extended lunch period. We have an 87% Chican@ and 7% Native population. There was no context for this, no acknowledgement, nothing that problematized or contextualized this.
Public school calendars are woefully out of date. They are often horrific examples of biased local control.
When I taught in Brooklyn the calendar recognized Muslim, Jewish, and Christian holidays.
When I taught in NC we got Christian holidays off.
Here in New Mexico it is mostly Christian holidays, although we do get a Vernal Holiday in the spring that centers Native celebrations
What does this tell our students?
First, it normalizes Anglo Christianity and privileges it, granting it authority.
This then skews everything else.
It marks everything else, everyone else, as on the margins, not included.
I took a look at a sampling of public school calendars, in places I'd taught, and others. If you look at them below, you'll notice that most of them have the same issues.
Changing school calendars is a fraught issue because they are within local control, and therefore are often seen as personal attacks of the people and their beliefs.
Arguing for change is not new, yet somehow we can't seem to make any progress on this issue.
But I propose that changing school calendars is a single move that could radically reorient how we teach and what we value.
Here's what I think school calendars should include:
- All religious holidays off. This not only decenters Anglo Christianity as the norm, but it opens up the school to teaching about WHY we have those days off, exposing students to different cultures and religions, which studies have shown have impacts on how students then construct marginalized groups and impacts racism.
- Invite community leaders in during these times, increase community engagement, teach your students to expand their horizons by presenting the opportunities to.
- Schools will not longer schedule their "Winter" and "Spring" breaks around Christmas and Easter. Yes, given Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter Monday off (see above) but that's it. No more scheduling week long breaks around them. Schools that need "Winter" breaks do not need them in December, most bad winter weather that results in school cultures occur during January or February, so schedule accordingly.
- Schools should be year round, with appropriate breaks. There is no logical reason to give students three months off, it disproportionately affects lower and working class families who then struggle for child-care. Schools should have a summer break of a couple of weeks, a long fall and spring breaks, winter breaks, but the schools should also partner with their communities to off busing and on-sight enrichment/school activities to help working parents.
- While tangential to the calendar issue, schools should change their operating times. Elementary schools should align more with working parents' schedules, 8a-4p, then like the above, offer enrichment until parents are off work. Middle schoolers could follow the same. High schoolers should start later, as studies show they need it. Most of you would probably be horrified to learn that it is high school athletic schedules that set high school schedules. Students need to be out by a certain time for practices and games. This should absolutely not be what determines learning.
These are not big changes. But the perspective shift, the culture shift that would occur would be radical, and have large, lasting consequences.
The Cultural and Economic Impacts of “Grad Schooling While Poor”
22 November: I submitted this for inclusion in an edited collection about grad school. It was accepted, then as things sometimes do, when I emailed the editors to check in was told that the reviewers "went another way" and they'd no longer be including it.
I've sat on in, because I've been busy, and had the book to work on, so it fell to the back burner.
Rather than try and find someplace to place it, because it's rather specific, I've decided to put it here.
About me: I am a 41-year-old
graduate student, in the final revisions of my dissertation. I have a Masters
in English literature, a Masters in Secondary Education: English, and a B.F.A
in technical theatre. I started working at 13-14, after school, weekends, and
summers, but I helped Mom out at her various jobs well before that. I was
raised by a single mom, who while cultured, was always lower working class,
with a high school education, and some, random college classes, usually working
two jobs to make ends meet. I paid for undergrad with student loans, grants, and
work study. After graduating with my undergraduate degree, I first worked in
theatre in North Carolina, Georgia, and New York then as a high school teacher.
When I taught high school in Brooklyn I commuted twice a week, three hours
round trip to Staten Island from Brooklyn, for three years to earn my first
Masters, paid for by New York City Teaching Fellows. I completed my second Masters during summers
off while teaching high school, this time at a rural North Carolina high
school.
I am not exactly sure when I became
aware of the fact that my social class and background was not the same as my
classmates. It was not when I received my Master of Science in Education from
the City University of New York: College of Staten Island. The program was part
of New York City Teaching Fellows/AmeriCorps, and most us were united in our
current situation as New York City schoolteachers more than anything else,
although we came from a variety of backgrounds. While our Masters were paid
for, we were all working full time, and commuting evenings to complete our
coursework. Our current workload, focus, and school placement united us. I
think I was most jarred by the social disparity when I started to work on my
MA. I had inklings my first summer, that my educational background and pedigree
was not just less than, but lacking. My program catered to teachers, renting
space on various campuses in Alaska, New Mexico, Asheville, Oxford, and the
home campus of Vermont. It was a semester of graduate school in six weeks. I
spent three summers in Santa Fe, and then because we were required, one summer
at the home campus. The population was mostly middle and high school teachers,
but these were not the teachers I knew from my time teaching in Brooklyn, or
from teaching in rural North Carolina. Almost all of them had their tuition,
books, and expenses paid for by their schools, which were mostly private. They
attended schools like Phillips Exeter Academy and Deerfield Academy and now
worked there. They seemed insulted when I asked where they were from, and then
did not understand the impact or importance when they answered with the above
academies (I had to look both academies up later). They had gone to Ivy League
schools, or Ivy League adjacent. They drove BMWs and Jettas. Their vacations
involved skiing, travel, passports. I went to a state school. I did not get a
car until I was 21 and it was a bronze Buick Skylark. I had never really been
on vacation. I qualified for work study my first couple of summers, working in
the computer lab, lessening what I had to take out in student loans but that
only worked my first two summers. After that the IRS changed how work study
functioned so instead of getting a flat check of say $5000, I got what was more
like a paycheck with taxes taken out, which was a lot less help and increased
the amount of student loans I had to take out. In fact, I took the summer of
2009 off because I did not receive aid, and was not willing to take out the
whole summer’s tuition in loans.
Those summers were also where I first
remember encountering intellectual snobbery. The professors were amazing, but
this was the big league. They taught at and/or had attended Yale, Princeton,
and Harvard. The students were mostly private school teachers from the
Northeast, and there was a cultural knowledge they had that I lacked. This
knowledge ran the gamut--- from wealthy backgrounds that included ski trips and
European vacations, to having no debt because parents paid for everything, and
never worrying about money, to innately knowing how to navigate graduate school
because of the backgrounds of their parents. These people knew Derrida, Lacan,
Freud, and Foucault, like they were old friends, strange names I did not
recognize, and somehow knew I was stupider for not knowing.
It was not just that they knew
things I did not, it was that there was an implied judgement in the fact that I
did not know. There was also a divide in how they and I worked. The
recommendation, since the program was only a six-week graduate course, was
always to do all the reading before you got there. We generally took two or
three classes a summer, and each course had roughly ten books. So, I always
read them before I got there, because I did not know how to grad school and
they did, so I did what I was told. This meant that my reading was done before
I got there, I had notes about potential paper topics, I made notes for
possible class discussion, things I wanted to say. I arrived ready to work. But
this did not endear me to classmates. I later got the feeling that it did not
endear me to faculty either. It was a communal program, we lived together,
socialized together, ate together, took classes together. When I read X-Men
comics outside where people could see me, there was a judgment. Snotty
comments. Sneers. Not just for the popular culture “trash” I was wasting time
on, but for the lack of busyness. I was supposed to be overwhelmed,
over-worked, and looking busy. I was supposed to be reading higher level works.
Not sitting in the sun reading “fluff.”
I was not just different; I was less
than. This judgement was not just against me but my lack of education, the gaps
in my knowledge, what I did not know led to serious issues. Because we had
moved a lot I often missed key lessons, in math, but also grammar, and writing.
I write like I talk but I always read a lot, so that was also reflected in my
writing. There are gaps though from foundational lessons that I never got. I
took AP English in high school, so I tested out of college English. My first
Masters was in education, so the papers were different. I was unprepared for
the length, and scope, of what my M.A program expected. I liked the program---
one person called it summer camp for book nerds, the idea that I had six weeks
just to read and write, but I did not have the skills many of my peers had, I
lacked the preparation. One professor told me I probably did not belong because
my writing was so atrocious. They told me to buy a writing guide (which I did,
shamefaced and then I did not understand it and felt even stupider for not even
being able to understand the how-to book that was supposed to make me better).
When professors have written passim, or
comma splice, on my papers I have had to look up what those things are before I
could address them. I never asked them, because I had learned early on not to
display my ignorance. In part, the disconnect I felt reflects current debates
in academia. Many programs historically privilege scholarship over teaching, so
many professors while experts in their field do not necessarily know how to
teach their students. This can have huge impacts on struggling, poor, first
generation students who may need help preparing and may not be aware of
resources, expectations, or how to navigate. As a result, I was often made to
feel stupid, less than, and the implication was that I simply was not trying
hard enough.
I only ever had one professor
(unsurprisingly a Rhet/Comp guy, and a different program/institution) who never
made me feel bad about my background, perhaps because he came from a similar
one. I shared, embarrassedly, my thought that I wanted to get a PhD but was
afraid I would not measure up, and told him what other professors had said
about my work, that I had good ideas and was a hard worker but the quality of
my work just did not (read: would not ever) measure up. He said that many writers
benefitted from a good editor and that there was nothing wrong with that. These
experiences have influenced how I in turn deal with student work. While I may
point out that they might want to use a writing tutor, or revise one more time,
I tend to evaluate their ideas, their argument, not evaluate grammar or word
choice unless it affects comprehension. I also can tell the difference between
grammar errors and typos, and give feedback accordingly (I on the other hand
have been called sloppy and a poor scholar when a professor has caught what is
clearly a typo). I try not to comment on their work in a way that makes them
feel stupid, or less than, because I know what It is like to have a professor’s
comment of “I am dumbfounded you’d write this” make me feel like an idiot, an
imposter, a fraud, like I do not belong in grad school. This is not to say that they turn in poor
work or do not work hard. Rather, my experiences allow me to better teach,
serve, and understand them.
Back then, and even now to be
honest, I had no sphere of reference for people whose school was paid for, who
never wanted for anything, who always had a safety net. The closest reference I
had was the couple of months I spent at Wooster School in Connecticut. Mom had
received some money that she used for my education, so I spent little less than
a semester at the Wooster School. I did not understand it---students LIKED
classes. There were sports I had never heard of, like rugby and field hockey.
There were half days on Wednesday for community service. Students worked in the
kitchen, and helped dust the school. Kids took Latin. It was as though I had
gotten a small sliver of a look at what education could look like, what
people’s lives could be, but it was a confusing glimpse as we moved back to
North Carolina at the end of the year and I never again experienced that type
of education. This is not to say I grew up uncultured. When we lived with my grandmother,
the most affluent years of our upbringing, she took us to museums in New York
City, the Met, Rockefeller Center. She taught us to play piano, and eat on
Wedgewood China, and use the right fork. These were like Depression era
holdovers. They were artifacts, remnants from her previous, better, life, as
the wife of an Army chaplain, but they were shadows. We had to wealth to back
any of it up. We lived with my grandmother because Mom could not make it on her
own, it was charity. Mom worked full time and we did not see her often. My
sister got most of the cultural lessons, as I was more inclined to play in the
dirt than wear crinoline skirts. I spent
most of my time exploring the 15 acres of land and the neighbor’s 200 that surrounded
us, climbing trees and reading books.
For me, my experiences during my M.A
encapsulate the two main issues I have encountered trying to navigate graduate
school life as someone who identifies most easily as poor trash---the cultural
and economic divides. To me, the lack of cultural capital hurt as much as the
lack of actual capital. Just as I have had to work hard to hide or overcome my
poverty, both past and present, in grad school, I have had to do the same for
all the things I do not know, trying to hide or make up for my lack of
knowledge. I grew up, with the exception of a couple of years of prosperity
provided by a crazy grandmother, poor. My mother was a single mother, raising
two kids on her own, not always successfully. She was smart, but easily bored,
and often changed jobs. She was a secretary, a retail store manager, a
restaurant hostess. She often juggled more than one job. Her job situation
meant many things for us. It meant we moved, often, sometimes to different
states, but just as often around town as she was unable to make rent and we had
to find a new place. Being a latchkey kid meant I had to take the bus home from
school (often an hour ride) which mean after school tutoring, clubs, and sports
were not an option. This impacted scholarships and applications for
undergraduate. It meant Mom had no idea how college worked, so I applied to a
couple, but went to state school because it is what I could afford and it was
close to home. I still remember reporting to campus, and both of us being
confused about how it all worked. Instability was the watchword of my
childhood. Mom did her best, but most things were uncertain growing up. I
remember one Christmas, I guess times were tough, because Mom led us outside to
the garage to get out presents. When I asked why Santa delivered to the garage
instead of leaving our presents under the tree like he normally did, there was
no good answer. I found out later it was a charity group that worked to make
sure kids got Christmas, and that was the easiest way for them to deliver. We
lived in trailers when I was 4 and 5, government housing in D.C freshman year
of high school, my mom, my sister, and I with my godmother and her daughter in
a 2-bedroom apartment. Throughout middle school we moved often, bouncing from
off-season tourist housing October to March, then having to find something
else. We often lived with others, on couches and sharing rooms, when we had
nothing else. When I was little, super little, we lived in a commune house, so
I do not know what I ever thought the way we lived was odd, I think it was
middle school before I realized other people had real homes, permanent homes,
where they lived, their parents had lived. I was on free and reduced lunch
through most of school and I remember some mean lunch ladies during those
years, but I suppose because of how Mom raised us, I did not notice the
economic and cultural differences until they were pointed out to me, and even
then, I do not think they impacted me until deep into grad school. I wanted the
toys, the Cabbage Patch dolls, the computers, I saw other people have, but
other than passing jealousies, I do not remember thinking of it much. If there
was one connecting thread it was that culturally and economically I never fit
anywhere. I was poor, and I had no background, no family roots, no extended
family, no history. I was defined by my lack, there was nothing to ground me or
connect me to anything.
Cultural Divides
When I was finishing my M.A. I had
to take a course in literary theory. I am pretty sure I sat in class during a
discussion on Lacan and said “I do not buy it.” A lot. My marginal notes are
full of incredulity and question marks. In part I think I lacked the language,
the background to grasp the abstractness of it all. In fact, I believe part of
the reason in my PhD work I gravitated towards psychoanalysis, feminism, and
Marxism is because I easily understood, grasped, and could apply these more
concrete approaches. Later, as I sat in classes for my PhD, it was not just the
abstract nature of literary theory that confused me, it was how students in
seminars seemed to use it, or not use it. I would sit in classes and listen to
students, mostly men, go on, and on, about Derrida, Foucault, Hegel, and I
would look around class, at other people’s faces, nodding yes. To me, the entire
talk was indecipherable. Incomprehensible. Literally. I did not understand
anything they were saying. I was confused by this ten, or twenty-minute rant
that, to me at least, seemed pretentious. And unnecessary. It seemed like the
point could have been said more concisely, more clearly, and certainly using
less words. Yet as I sat in more classes, I learned this was not the exception
but the norm and I seemed to be the only one sitting in class who had this
reaction. Everyone else just nodded and agreed. This was just one of the many
clues that I lacked the cultural capital to navigate my program. Not only did I
not get the references, but to me, it seemed like an “Emperor’s New Clothes”
sketch- while others nodded, and clapped, I wanted to yell, “BUT HE DID NOT SAY
ANYTHING!”
In my PhD program in your first
semester you take an intro to the field class. It is meant to introduce you to
graduate work, literary theory, and professionalization. The class differs
wildly depending on who teaches it, and the professor changes every year. I liked
the professor who taught me but I hated the books we read for the most part.
One in particular sticks out, Zadie Smith’s 2005 On Beauty which encapsulated a lot of what I did not get about grad
school. In the novel, a privileged, professor, Howard Belsey, at a made-up,
small, liberal arts college in Wellington, Massachusetts is an art scholar, who
is a despicable human being, but no one seems to mind that. He does not really
teach, or produce scholarship. He is petty, and awful, and elitist. I did not
understand anything about the book. I read it. But I did not get it. I did not
get why I should care about this man, this class, this world. There was nothing
in it I recognized. I certainly did not see myself, as a student, or scholar,
in it. So, I was not sure what I was supposed to get out of it. Was this
supposed to be a role model for me? Was I supposed to aspire to this? My
classmates all seemed to read it as an inside joke, or loved it, gushed about
it in class. But I did not get it. I did not understand the text; I did not
understand the lesson. My professor seemed amused the day we opened discussion
on it and I am pretty sure I remember speaking first and saying I did not get
it, I hated it, and threw it across the room a couple of times. Here was a book
that seemed to encapsulate every inside joke, every cultural reference I had
never understood in grad school. The lesson of On Beauty for me the first year of my PhD program was that there
was a very narrow definition of what a scholar looked like, and I did not even
come close to fitting it.
Another cultural divide I faced in
my PhD program centered around my teaching. I was a high school teacher, first
in Brooklyn (my first week of teaching I watched the Twin Towers fall from our
English lounge), then in rural North Carolina. For me, teaching is core to my
personality. I am very transparent to my students about my upbringing and use
it to inform my teaching. The last couple of years I have taught Shakespeare
online for my university and our population for online classes is very
different than our face to face students. Most work full time, they may be
hours from campus, many have children, or aging parents they care for. They
carry 18-21 credits. Online classes provide them flexibility, but also, many
have a lot of things other than school that they are juggling. It is a
demographic I understand, so I think I serve it better than some. So, I suggest
$5 Dover editions, and point them to online resources. I explain what they can
prioritize if strapped for time and what they cannot. I try to adapt my course
policies, and expectations to understand, to believe, to side with them, and to
help them. I try to teach them the way I wish I had been taught, and that idea,
that concept, has become part a guiding practice for me.
Yet one thing I have been told
repeatedly though in my program (and heard from other scholars and grad
students) is “teaching is not why you are here.” Teaching is characterized as
something Rhet/Comp people do. It is a waste of time for literary scholars. It
gets in the way of “real” scholarship. I have been advised to spend as little
time as possible on it, and not invest in it. This is not a unique position.
Many programs de-emphasize teaching and It is not just described as unimportant
but many scholars see it as just a thing their job requires that gets in the
way of their “real” work. I have lost respect for scholars on Twitter when they
have made fun of their students, make fun of teaching, how stupid their
students are, and their misunderstandings, their failures, their shortcomings.
I have received comments from professors who are scholars but clearly are not
teachers who tell me my work is sloppy, or crap, but they cannot teach me how
to fix it. Like the scholars in On
Beauty, these are not the type of scholars I want to be. I love being a
teacher. I love teaching. I love the idea that I am uniquely qualified, both as
a high school teacher, and someone who grew up poor, to serve my students best.
When I apply for higher ed jobs I will do so with this in mind. I am looking
for places where they value teaching, where the students are diverse, first
generation, where I can make the most difference. These thoughts though, these
beliefs, are not something grad programs generally support. Where I have found
this support though is online, through social media.
Twitter and content specific groups
on Facebook been a great resource for me in navigating grad school and in
figuring out what kind of scholar I do want to be. On social media, I have
found a supportive group always willing to answer questions about navigating
grad school and the maze of an academic profession. In addition, the scholars I
have found, specifically on Twitter, are role models for the type of scholar I
want to be. They are engaged. They care deeply about issues of accessibility,
race, class, and how these issues affect our students. They focus on producing
scholarship and model how we can share our scholarship with all sorts of people
and connect our scholarship to the world around us. They are for the most part
kind, understanding, and supportive. I have found them to be invaluable not
just for validating the type of scholar I want to be, but for filling the gaps
of support I have. A side effect of being the first in your family to go to
college, then grad school, then get your PhD is that no one will understand
what you are doing. In many ways, the working poor work ethic is in direct
opposition to academia. You have to write articles to get a job, but you do not
get paid? You just sit there and think? Understanding the ideas of reading for
work, invisible labor, working all the time but producing little, will come
hard to your family. My stepfather listens to me, but does not understand what
I do. My godmother empathizes with my job hunt, but does not get how it works.
They want to help, but they are no better equipped to navigate academia than I
am. So, my Twitter network has become invaluable for answering my questions,
providing role models, and showing me how it can be done.
Economic and Practical Issues
One of the
reasons my Twitter support network has been so important to me is because many
of them come from similar backgrounds or understand how the economics of my
situation impact me because of their teaching experiences. I wish I had known
about this support network when applying to graduate schools. Those students I did
not understand in my Master’s program had cultural capital about more than just
English literature. They knew how graduate school worked. They understood that
you should choose schools by reputation, by the scholars you would work with.
The ways that these choices will impact your studies and the success of your
job hunt. They were invited, courted, to attend programs and could afford to go
visit to try the schools on to see if they fit. I applied to four schools.
Because that was how many applications I could afford. I chose them because
they had either medieval programs I had heard of (University of Washington,
Duke) or an intersection of popular culture and Milton (Middle Tennessee State
University) or a medieval program in a state I knew I liked to live in with a
professor I knew from MA program who I thought would be a mentor for me (the
University of New Mexico). I was rejected from the first two, accepted to the
third but without funding, and waitlisted from the last. Ultimately I was moved
off the waitlist and offered funding at the University of New Mexico so that is
where I went. For me it was not a decision based on the scholars in the
department (although there are good people here) or the reputation of the
university (the name is not going to get me job). I came here because it meant
a TA ship, which meant that while I would have to take out student loans, they
would only have to supplement my life, not cover all of it.
This practicality is familiar to
many students, but not to faculty. In fact, not only will many of your
professors not understand these situations, they will not want to hear about
them. They will not be able to grasp how not having any money will affect how
you finish coursework, or what texts you can and cannot purchase. There was a
recent conversation on Twitter about how most department’s approach
reimbursement for funding assumes the student has the money to pay up front.
This is not an isolated instance. Most department and university policies seem
to assume you have parental, or spousal support to cover what your TAship does not.
Working to supplement your TAship will be looked down on.[2]
There will be judgement. You should choose your scholarship. You should privilege
your academic life over your actual life. If you do not, faculty, peers,
mentors, will not understand. They may not understand the practicalities of
student debt. They may not understand having to live just off your TAship (mine
was just $14,400 a year). They may not understand that you cannot afford $200
in books for each class. I remember speaking with a faculty member about
wanting to finish as soon as possible because I could not afford to take on
another year of student loan debt. They literally did not understand. As I
neared finishing and started to apply for high school teaching jobs to pay the
bills as a safety net against the higher ed job market, my classmates and
faculty seemed by confused by my decision. I know others who have worked full
time, or picked up second jobs while dissertating to lessen debt, or pay rent,
or live a slightly better life than we did growing up. I did it because I do
not have a husband or rich mom and dad who can cover my bills while I try and
perhaps fail at getting a college job. I have no safety net other than what I
devise. This decision though has widened the gap between me and my university,
my program. I am disconnected from that community. I cannot attend talks, take
advantage of on-campus events during the day. Scheduling office visits are now
more complicated.
Despite all of this, I do believe
that people who have grown up poor, who are first generation, or other
marginalized groups who lack resources, pedigree, or background, can do well in
graduate school. I have never been the smartest person in any of my classes or
seminars. I do not have an academic pedigree. I did not come from a social
network that would open doors for me. I only have what I have worked for, what
I have built. I have worked all the time, because that is the only way I know.
I work seven days a week, because I do not know how to do anything else. I work
until there is no more work to do. I am not glamorizing working all the time.
Scholars like Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega have written about the “glorification of
academic busyness” and I agree with the issues he and others have brought up
with it. It is often presented as a way for scholars to lord their
accomplishments over others, it represents the privilege so many scholars and
professors have that they CAN work all the time, not worrying about paying
bills or money. It also creates a false narrative that ignores the invisible
forces of anxiety, depression, exhaustion, lack of a support network, and the
impact these things have on what we produce, how we produce, and when we can
produce it. Throughout my PhD program I have suffered from anxiety, depression,
and have had issues with suicide. These are not issues addressed openly or
enough in grad school. In part this goes back to culture. Neither the
privileged culture or grad school nor the culture of poor, or working poor, are
good about acknowledging these issues. They are also not good about providing
support for them, and these are all areas where grad programs can improve. For
good or ill though, I worked through these issues. I am not saying I have done
it in the best way, or the healthiest way, or the easiest way. I have cried on
the floor of my home office. I have slammed my fists into walls. I have made
rash decisions. But I have always, eventually, picked myself up and continued
to work. I do not ignore those of us who have not been able to. I do not
discount those of us whose anxiety, or depression, or suicidal thoughts and
actions, prove to be too much. These are issues I can only acknowledge, while
also acknowledging they are beyond what I talk through here. I, perhaps
cowardly, leave that work to others. I can only speak for myself. And for me, a
lifetime of working my ass off, with little reward, with no help, with no
choice, a lifetime of these work habits has given me the tools to keep going.
My mother juggling two jobs, raising two kids on her own, through awful
situations, a culture that looked down on her, is a role model I cling to, even
though she died before I started my PhD. A lifetime of internalizing I was not
smart enough, good enough, to do what others did, this lower-class chip on my
shoulder, this desire to prove people wrong? These have all served me well. I
often think of, and share with others, the movie quote that encapsulates my PhD
experience. In the movie Gattaca, Ethan
Hawke’s character, who was born defective, less than, when explaining to his
genetically blessed brother HOW he gamed the system, HOW he got so far simply
says this; “You wanna know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton. I never
saved anything for the swim back.”
For me, not acknowledging my
limitations, not accepting the pigeon holes other people wanted to put me in,
not giving up, has served me well. I have taken advantage of social media platforms
like Twitter and Blogger to brand myself, share my work, network with scholars I
would never know otherwise. This has enabled me to make connections, get
invitations to conferences, write book chapters, get published. I have blogged
about my dissertation process, my ideas about teaching, how to bridge high
school and college divides, and social activism. These are all tools that can
help even the playing field. Two of my chapters in edited collections are
because other people had to drop out and the editor needed quick turnarounds
and posted these needs on social media. Like most of the working poor, working
class people I know, we are used to working all the time, and juggling more
than one job, so I have found it is easier for us to juggle the many hats of
grad school. We can be students, and teachers, and scholars. We can budget our
time. We can meet deadlines. We can handle the workload. These lifetime habits
serve us well and can become advantages. They are advantages as students,
because while I may not be the smartest person in the room, I have a
well-visited blog, senior scholars in my field know me and my work, and I have
(as of May 2017) three articles published in good journals and three chapters
in edited collections, not including a wide range of editorials, short essays,
and reviews that demonstrate and showcase my interests in folklore, popular
culture, and Marxist and feminist studies. My work output does not just show
the range of my interest but shows that I can produce. As a future faculty
member, I am a good bet. I consistently produce. Also, as more and more higher
education institutions move away from just hiring scholars, as they realize
they need TEACHER-scholars, I think my experiences, and my approaches will be a
selling point.
But lifetime habits can also hurt
us. A lifetime of poor eating habits, poor workout habits, no support for
anxiety or depression, not being able to talk about these things, or know how
to ask for help can prove to be a great disadvantage. These things will impact
how we live, learn, and teach and we may not have to tools to navigate. Grad
school can amplify the effects of poverty, depression, trauma, so I think It is
important to try and relearn how to eat right, work out, take a break. As I
said, in many ways academic life is in direct opposition to a working poor
life, so I have found it hard to relearn and learn these things. But I also
believe that they are vital to doing well. Especially if you do not have a face
to face support network, you have to learn how to be your own.
There are a lot of issues associated
with grad schooling with poor that I have not addressed here. LGBTQ+ students,
people of color, people with disabilities, international students, single
parents, these are all stories that need to be told. There need to be more
resources, more help, more mentors for underserved or unserved populations.
Faculty and mentors need to not just be informed about how the class,
backgrounds, and struggles of their students affect them but they also need to
actively work to improve conditions, bridge the gap. Books like this, websites
like my wiki “How to Prep for Grad School While Poor” (https://howtoprepforgradschoolwhilepoor.wikispaces.com/ which has since moved to https://howtogradschoolwhilepoor.blogspot.com/), podcasts like Graduates Anonymous
(https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/graduates-anonymous/id1224791435), and You Tube Channels like
Academic Vigilante (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUDR0egPaLM), as well as current sociological
work on poverty, trauma, and ACEs (Adverse Childhood Events), all seek to
inform a general populace and provide a sense of community to students. But we
need to do more. Many of these cultural and economic divides are institutional
and therefore changes to it have to be made by people in power, senior
scholars, not poor graduate students. I continue to be encouraged by the number
of graduate students who are not waiting for tenure track jobs, stability, and
institutional power before they speak out, and actively work to improve things.
There are a lot of us who blog about our class, our poverty, and how it informs
our social activism and teaching. We tweet stories to expose and inform people
about the parts of the academy senior scholars do not know about and we carry
this knowledge, and these commitments to helping others into our scholarship
and teaching. If and when those of us who are current graduate students can get
into the academy, the ivory tower, I have high hopes that we can work for real,
widespread, institutional change. Until then, I hope that students will read
resources like this and realize that it can be done and they are not alone. I
hope too that faculty members will read this and realize the situations their
students are in and work with them to help them overcome the cultural and
economic issues they face and help them succeed.
[2]
Please be sure to check your TA
contract before seeking outside employment. Your contract may forbid, or limit,
seeking work outside of your TAship. It may have income caps. Some universities
may have a sort-of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy as long as it does not
interfere with your university responsibilities. However, you need to know this
before you accept an offer. If you’re planning on supplementing your income,
and find out you cannot, it will have a big impact.
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Changing on the Fly
When I submitted my portfolio for my National Boards renewal this past spring, one of the things I stressed was how my advanced degrees benefited my students was my flexibility. My advanced knowledge of my content and pedagogy meant that if a student was not getting something in class, I was able to instantly pivot and explain in a different way, offer a different example, change things.
I think that the benefit of having an expert or master teacher is too often overlooked, or dismissed.
I circled back around to this idea this week.
It is the time in the semester where teachers are tired. While I have issues with public schools celebrating Thanksgiving (and other holidays, I'm working on a calendar post) I have to admit, it's a well timed break. By this point, we're tired. Our students are tired AND tired of us. The culmination of 13 weeks of work, and practices, and homework, is wearing on them. Students who are drowning and behind don't see a way out, a way through. And it's dark early.
I have found myself especially feeling worn out and exhausted. At first I thought it was the election, and I'm sure some was, but those ended, and last week I could barely find any energy to do anything.
So I started to try and think. I think I got it.
I'm doing pretty much everything new this year.
So I am estactic.
But I also get now why I'm tired. Because this is hard work. And a lot more of it, and nothing got taken off my plate, despite me backing out of a lot of things.
Doing the work with the students means doing every assignment. I've always kept a notebook (interactive notebook/daybook/writer's notebook) to serve as a model for students, but I've rarely if ever modeled the assignments. I put my notes and organizers in there for reference, but annotating all the texts, doing the work, nope.
Now I do them, with them. On Mondays we see all classes for 50 minutes. On Tuesday/Thursday I see 2nd and 6th period, on Wednesday/Fridays I see 5th period for 110 minutes, and these are the days we do station rotations. Which means on most of these days I do the assignments with each class.
Some days, I organize the station rotations so I do not work with a specific station but instead walk around monitoring, guiding, getting them started, asking questions.
I like both types of days.
But these days are harder, and require more energy that my classes used to.
I was never a give instructions, sit at my desk teacher. We did workshops, and readings, and projects, and crafts. It was very student centered. But what I'm learning this year is that student centered is not always personalized, and the second requires a lot more work.
I always rough out my calendar for the next year before I leave in May. Then over the summer, as I see resources, ideas, web links, I add them.
This year, my rough plan for the freshmen was to spend the first marking period focused on them, their voices and choices, using youth culture as a focus. Then spend one marking period on each genre: non-fiction, short stories, novel, drama, epic/poetry.
We're supposed to teach Romeo and Juliet but I'm going to teach it through film analysis AND by centering the historical context on what New Mexico was like in the early modern period, a trick I stole from my friend Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.
Most 9th grade teachers teach The Odyssey. And I have Circe and Emily Wilson's new translation to show them, and we'll talk about how perspective changes content. But we're also going to read Rick Riordan Presents series, myths and stories from non-white voices.
But what I've noticed with these first few units is that as I get to know my kids, I know what they like, don't, need help with, struggle deeply with. So that day I rewrite a station rotation for that class, or the next. I throw out that week's work to go back, rewind, revisit. I throw out an entire marking period on novels because I realize my kids can use their independent reading books as novels and we don't need to read a class novel.
I am proud of this work. It is serving my kids better than ever before.
But it is a lot.
Finding time, taking time, reflecting, stepping back, taking blame.
And this is in addition to my role in our freshman academy, job mentor program, Saturday school, department work.
So, I guess I just want to share that it's okay to be exhausted. It's okay to just focus on small moves. It's okay to fail, have lessons go off the rails, blow up.
Just keep going, keep learning, keep listening.
I think that the benefit of having an expert or master teacher is too often overlooked, or dismissed.
I circled back around to this idea this week.
It is the time in the semester where teachers are tired. While I have issues with public schools celebrating Thanksgiving (and other holidays, I'm working on a calendar post) I have to admit, it's a well timed break. By this point, we're tired. Our students are tired AND tired of us. The culmination of 13 weeks of work, and practices, and homework, is wearing on them. Students who are drowning and behind don't see a way out, a way through. And it's dark early.
I have found myself especially feeling worn out and exhausted. At first I thought it was the election, and I'm sure some was, but those ended, and last week I could barely find any energy to do anything.
So I started to try and think. I think I got it.
I'm doing pretty much everything new this year.
- My students and I start every class reading in our independent reading books for 25 minutes. No reading logs. No accountability. No prompts. Not assigned. Reading for the sheet joy of reading.
- I 100% committed to station rotations this year.
- I decided to do the work with my students, provide models, and use the station rotation time for feedback, discussions, and less "work" or at least less graded work
So I am estactic.
But I also get now why I'm tired. Because this is hard work. And a lot more of it, and nothing got taken off my plate, despite me backing out of a lot of things.
Doing the work with the students means doing every assignment. I've always kept a notebook (interactive notebook/daybook/writer's notebook) to serve as a model for students, but I've rarely if ever modeled the assignments. I put my notes and organizers in there for reference, but annotating all the texts, doing the work, nope.
Now I do them, with them. On Mondays we see all classes for 50 minutes. On Tuesday/Thursday I see 2nd and 6th period, on Wednesday/Fridays I see 5th period for 110 minutes, and these are the days we do station rotations. Which means on most of these days I do the assignments with each class.
Some days, I organize the station rotations so I do not work with a specific station but instead walk around monitoring, guiding, getting them started, asking questions.
I like both types of days.
But these days are harder, and require more energy that my classes used to.
I was never a give instructions, sit at my desk teacher. We did workshops, and readings, and projects, and crafts. It was very student centered. But what I'm learning this year is that student centered is not always personalized, and the second requires a lot more work.
I always rough out my calendar for the next year before I leave in May. Then over the summer, as I see resources, ideas, web links, I add them.
This year, my rough plan for the freshmen was to spend the first marking period focused on them, their voices and choices, using youth culture as a focus. Then spend one marking period on each genre: non-fiction, short stories, novel, drama, epic/poetry.
We're supposed to teach Romeo and Juliet but I'm going to teach it through film analysis AND by centering the historical context on what New Mexico was like in the early modern period, a trick I stole from my friend Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.
Most 9th grade teachers teach The Odyssey. And I have Circe and Emily Wilson's new translation to show them, and we'll talk about how perspective changes content. But we're also going to read Rick Riordan Presents series, myths and stories from non-white voices.
But what I've noticed with these first few units is that as I get to know my kids, I know what they like, don't, need help with, struggle deeply with. So that day I rewrite a station rotation for that class, or the next. I throw out that week's work to go back, rewind, revisit. I throw out an entire marking period on novels because I realize my kids can use their independent reading books as novels and we don't need to read a class novel.
I am proud of this work. It is serving my kids better than ever before.
But it is a lot.
Finding time, taking time, reflecting, stepping back, taking blame.
And this is in addition to my role in our freshman academy, job mentor program, Saturday school, department work.
So, I guess I just want to share that it's okay to be exhausted. It's okay to just focus on small moves. It's okay to fail, have lessons go off the rails, blow up.
Just keep going, keep learning, keep listening.
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