A Teacher's Day

Dorothy Tillman--She's Baaaack

2007-06-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

I just thought this would be a good blog in and of itself--just to let the world know what a coward is. This is the second time--I'm pretty sure that Anonymous wrote this and previous comments like it on the Tillman blogs--and, of course, Anonymous could not state their name. Sad. What a coward. So Anonymous, I posted your comments exactly as you wrote them. (I didn't edit a thing.)You can find them in the blog itself. I also created this blog just for you. Perhaps I'll let my audience respond to your noise.

At least I have the guts to list my name--Michael H. Brownstein.

Your turn.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Dorothy Tillman and How We Change History":

No one commented because no one reads this crappy page. The kids in his class don't listen to him so he spends his free time venting online. Like columnist Mark Brown of the Sun-Times says he "Just another white man who Tillman sends into a "tizzy". I only found his sight because I was goggling Tillman. She is a very important women in our Modern History. This author will never be famous or do anything worth while or historic. Good Bless Ms. Tillman and I know there is much more in store for her. She was much much bigger than the office of Alderman. Her contribution to American is great and her contributions to the Black community is even greater. No one can argue that!47th Street is magnificant and it wouldn't have happen without her.

Second comment from Anonymous:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Dorothy Tillman and How We Change History":

I see you have to approve this. I bet you won't publish.

Guess you're wrong. I published it.

Do you have the guts to repond to me--with your name?

SUMMER VACATION

2007-06-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

Summer vacation is already a few days old. I’m running again—trying to get up to two miles (my wife thinks I’m moving too fast). I used to walk four miles to and from school—mostly to—so I don’t know what the commotion is about. What’s a mile or two of running between friends?

The chemistry class has some really interesting experiments. We attached copper to aluminum last night during the lab and changed a liquid with copper in it to a lot of copper. I’m going to try that with my class next year.

I’m writing a bit too—poems mostly. Nothing great yet—still have to do revisions and that sort of thing.

Not thinking much about school. It’s like a break in my head. One of the grants I write is due downtown this Friday. Hope it gets into the right place on time. Guess I'll have to make time to make sure it gets to the right place. (Hope I don't have to take it myself.)

Nothing much to report.

It’s summer and I’m not really thinking too hard on anything at all—except for chemistry.

My Son's Second Graduation

2007-06-19T16:32:00.000-07:00

The graduation in Missouri was really nice. The children were well behaved and acted intelligently. The parents were equally together--no shouting or yelling, just a lot of polite applause. The university actually had a few seats in the front row just for parents to get close-up photographs of their children when they received their diploma. At one point they even stopped because one of the parents needed help to get the camera to work correctly. At the end, no hats went into the air--instead the new grads stood, faced us and just moved the stringy thing--the tassel--from one side to the other.

Even the commencement speaker were refreshing. I almost wanted to join his class.

At the end we had refreshments and we mingled and everything went really well.

Thanks for a nice afternoon.

THE VERY LAST DAY OF SCHOOL

2007-06-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

The last day of school. My students were here for one hour—9 to 10 mostly just to get their report cards. I finished all of my records yesterday and only had a few things to straighten out: putting their new room numbers on all of their records, reviewing report cards one more time, and dividing the piles of records into three groups—two groups move to 8th grade and one child is going on to high school.

At 8:15, I was in the playground—all by myself—and had to do an emergency clean-up. Someone had broken a bottle last night and there was glass all over the playground ramps and slides. There is always glass on the ground, but why the slide and other stuff children are going to play on?

School started on time and ended quickly. One of my students is being moved because the consensus—and I fought against the decision—is that he will cause the soft spoken eighth grade teacher a hard time. I feel he would be perfect for her—soft spoken is something he does not know much about.

Anyway, we did have a fight the last full day of school and a little later a gang of girls wanted to fight a third grade girl over some he says/she says garbage, but that ended with a few stern looks. No fights this day. Perhaps it was because there were two uniformed police officers in front of the school. New idea? Were police in front of every school?

I’m taking a chemistry class this summer, so my hands will be full. I’ve got to do some work in Jeff City, Missouri a bit later on. I’ll be writing and getting a poetry book together for publication. (If you’re reading this and can help, please do.) I’m also going to work on my Mr. Thorn novel (the year the school was altogether out of control as seen through the eyes of a student) and a few other ideas—nonfiction and fiction work—and get these two ready for publication, too. (See parenthesis above.)

That’s it. I’m sitting at my table, the last item not removed from my room for comprehensive cleaning, amid paper and a large fan—‘cause it’s really hot in here—and I’m waiting on my records from the sixth grade teachers.

At noon I’m out of here. Too many errands—and another paycheck short too many hours. The board now owes me at least two weeks pay. Nothing like working as hard as you can without getting compensated for it.

And let us not forget the Board still owes me for after school work—eight hours at least—and all of my work for the Least Restricted Environment—at least five hours there.

Any ideas?

I’d say have a nice summer, but I’ll be writing this blog every now and then—probably more now than then, so I don’t want to say see you in the fall.

School’s over for this year!
Yayyyyyyyy!!!!!!

The Annual Seymour Brownstein Most Improved Student Awards

2007-06-13T05:58:00.000-07:00

I came to work Tuesday only to find out the winner of the Seymour Brownstein Most Improved Student Award would not be participating in the graduation. His standardized test scores and report card grades were not good enough. He’d have to go to summer school and then move on to high school. Nonetheless, he was at school to support his classmates. An altogether brave young man.

A few others would also not be graduating including one student whose brother was shot in the face a few days ago murdered only a block away from the school. He did not come to school to support his classmates—and he had a very good reason not to. Life is hard too many times in the neighborhood where I teach.

I did have a runner up ready to take my winners place. When the time came for me to speak, the office called me downstairs, had me place my classroom of students next door or in the art room, and I took my place on the extremely hot stage.

Here’s how it went:

The MC stood up after the eighth graders finished singing one of their songs and introduced me: “We are honored to introduce to you one of our seventh grade teachers who has a very special award.”

How special? When the principal found out how much money I was giving the most improved student, she said that’s more than we’re giving our valedictorian. And I said, “Well, that’s how it is.”

Then the MC said my name and a very nice thing happened. The audience went wild with clapping and cheers and I, of course, felt really good about everything.

“There are two perfect young ladies,” I began, “in the class of 2007—a class by the way I taught last year and I just want to say they were the best seventh graders I have ever taught. These two young ladies, if I decided to have any more children, I would want two daughters exactly like them.” And the audience let out a loud sigh—just like the kind you hear on talk shows when everything is finally perfect. “My father who passed away over ten years ago always honored people who tried. He gave them one chance or two—sometimes even fifteen. All of us are worth that many chances and more. He taught me this. Anyway I chose these two girls because perfect as they were, they became even more perfect in eighth grade.”

Then I called them to the stage by name and they came and took their checks (twenty-five dollars each) and we shook hands and we took a photo.

Then I said, “It was very hard to pick a winner this year. We had a follower who has now begun to show leadership qualities and we had a student I wanted to pick but things went wrong. To him, when you have a lemon, turn it into lots of lemonade and when summer school is over your check will be waiting for you. The winner of the Seymour Brownstein Most Improved Student Award goes to a young man I taught after he was sent to my room last year in the middle of the year. He was well behaved and he did all of his work and he made major changes, but he could not allow negative peer pressure to be ignored. So he began to move in negative directions more and more. Well, this year he has not only not fought the entire year, but he has broken up fights with words and conflict resolution. He has not been sent to the office once for a negative incident.” And I heard “amen’s” all around me. “He has grown and become a leader and I hold in my hand not one check, but two.”

When I called his name everyone on the stage stood and gave him a standing ovation and he was so happy, he hugged everyone, told me, “Thank you, Mr. Brownstein,” (he is only the second person to thank me for the award) and beamed through more than one photograph. Then he took the two envelopes—each holding a check for thirty-five dollars for a total of seventy—and proudly went back to his seat.

When I left the stage a few minutes later, I remembered my father and how he always tried to do the right thing and how he always put into us the conviction and strength necessary to help to make this world a better place. So I paused on the stairs for a moment and thanked him again.

Then I collected my students and went back to my classroom where my class and I cleaned up—it being the last full day of school and all.

LAST FULL DAY OF SCHOOL

2007-06-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

OK--here's a fairly simple grant for those of you looking for character education help--or have a problem with bullies: Channing-Bete Violence Prevention. Click on the Channing-Bete and it should take you directly to the guidelines.

Today is the last full day of school here in Chicago. I was not here on Friday—attending my son’s second high school graduation (at the University of Missouri Distance Learning High School Program), got into a car accident near Jefferson city, MO after it ended (it took place in Columbia), and everyone is OK—thanks for asking—but we couldn’t get a car out of there until Monday morning. So I missed school on Monday too.

The graduation was very well done. Everything went perfectly from the commencement speech to the refreshments afterwards to the polite and excited intelligent applause for each graduate. (I’ll write more on this later.) I want to thank Alicia Bixby for everything she has done for Korey. She is truly a wonderful instructor and counselor.

What more is there to say? My grades are in, my reading results from standardized testing in reading are way up, my files are ready, and all that is left are my records. We’ll continue with the 209/211 tournament in double Dutch jump roping, two hand touch football, and half court basketball this morning. The eighth graders graduate at around 10 AM—and I get to give the Seymour Brownstein Most Improved Student Award. (Can’t wait.) So I guess my morning is taken up with items to make the last day ride smoothly. (I’ll give more details on the Seymour Brownstein Most Improved Student Award later.)

I had a T-shirt made for Mary Hilker, my eighth grade colleague. It says: “You can teach an old dog new tricks award winner.” I’m going to give it to her today. Second year teacher and she taught me a lot near the end of my career. Glad to have her at this school.

That’s it. Last full day. Let’s cross our fingers and…

Stem Cell Research

2007-06-06T05:39:00.001-07:00

Awhile back, my class began work on stem cell research. (I wrote about it briefly in a previous blog. We used the article by Jon Entine and Sally Satel, "Race Belongs in the Stem Cell Debate," Washington Post.) Below are essays my students wrote about stem cells, what they are, what they are good for, etc. One fallout of the unit was my classes’ feelings about the present laws and stem cell lines allowed by these laws. In discussion, they used the laws and President Bush's veto of any changes in the laws to show--or prove, if you lean that way--that the Bush administration is racist. (Except for one girl--I placed her brief essay in this space because she is the same girl with the cursing problem. This might give you some insight into who she is. I'm calling her ABC.)Because I cannot put full names of students on this blog, I've removed their names except for the girl I mentioned above.

By the way, I have tried my hardest to corret all of the misconceptions in these essays and others. (I mean, blaming the Statee of Iowa for the stem cell law is a little over the line--and I don't even know where he learned this.)

Room 211

Stem Cells

By doing this project, I learned new and interesting facts about stem cells. I learned that the future of stem cells will be able to develop many new treatments and cures for cancer. I also learned that stem cells come from umbilical cords and fetuses. There are only sixty-four stem cell lines that can be studied by scientists. Forty-nine are for a specific group of white people. The other fifteen are for Asians. These are the only lines scientists can study because President Bush did not approve the study of anymore than those sixty-four lines. I also learned that if I ever needed help and stem cells would be able to help me, I would not be able to get any kind of help because there are no lines being studied at this time for African-Americans.

Room 211

Stem Cells

What I learned from the stem cell project is that stem cell lines are being used at the present time to benefit whites and Asians. The law about stem cells is that politics get involved in science. Stem cell research is right now involved with white people from a small area in Washington DC and Asians from India and China.

What else I learned about the stem cells is that the people of the United States are trying to pass a law to make stem cells open for everyone. Stem cells can be used to repair injured or dying cells in your body. Because groups of people are different, stem cell lines have got to be made for each group, not just the white people in Iowa.

Stem cells can repair damaged cells like nerve cells or brain cells. Stem cells may be able to help cure types of cancer and even heart disease. Stem cell lines should be developed for everyone in every race.

Room 209
ABC
Stem Cells--Is the Present Stem Cell Law Fair?

Stem cell laws are fair because white people are better than African-Americans. White people have money to pay for the stem cell transplants. Stem cell laws are fair ands I agree with the law a hundred percent. The law is fair because what do you see on TV mostly is white people so they deserve more than African-Americans.

Room 209

Stem Cells

Stem Cells are special cells can change into another cell and heal it. For example, damaged nerve cells will heal when a stem cell line is introduced to it. Stem cells come from fetuses or umbilical cords. They are clones. I learned that in the human body muscles, nerves, skin, blood, and bones are all composed of special types of cells. The blood cells, for example, are adapted to absorbing nutrients and great amounts of oxygen from the lungs and stomach. Stem cells can heal damaged blood cells when they are introduced into the cell system. Stem cells can heal nerve damage, brain cell damage, and other cells that specialize,

Room 209

Stem Cells--Is the Present Stem Cell Law Fair?

I think stem cells are used for healing damaged cells. I already know that stem cells can create entire new cells that are healthy, but stem cells cannot be given to African-Americans because each race has a different number of stem cell lines and our country does not include every race in the stem cell research. Stem cells can create new lines that can reproduce babies. The use of stem cells on certain people is illegal. Stem cells can be used to clone yourself, but this is illegal, too. I like the fact that you can heal damaged cells like cells in your ear that make you deaf.

Room 209

Stem Cells--Are the Stem Cell Laws Fair?

In my opinion, the stem cell is a special cell that can change into other kinds of cells. It can change an injured cell and heal it. For example, a damaged nerve cell will heal when a stem cell line is introduced into it, the stem cell will become the nerve cell and make the nerve cell healthy.

Stem cells come from fetuses or umbilical cords. They are a kind of clones.

Stem cell lines go with different groups. Whites have twenty lines, blacks have a hundred thirty, Hispanics have one hundred fifty, and Asians have fifty.

In my opinion, the stem cell law is not fair because only white people and some Asian people are allowed to use stem cell lines. No stem cell lines are developed for black people.

Room 209

Stem Cells

Things that I learned about the stem cells are that stem cells are special cells. They can change into another cell and heal the damaged cells. For example, a damaged cell can become healthier if a stem cell is introduced to it because the stem cell takes over the injured cell and become like that cell. A nerve cell is a special cell and a stem cell can turn into a nerve cell.

Stem cells come from fetuses--babies who were not born--and umbilical cords. The stem cell lines are cloned.

Stem cell lines come in different values. Whites have about seventy stem cell lines, blacks have about one hundred fifty, Hispanics have about one hundred fifty, and Asians have fifty stem cell lines.

The last thing I learned about stem cells is that stem cells can make your life better because if someone is handicapped or sick, then a stem cell can be injected into the injured specialized cell that is not working really well and it can heal the injured cell and make you better.

Room 209

Race Belongs to Stem Cell Debate

The article, Race Belongs to Stem Cell Debate" by Jon Entine and Sally Satel in the Washington Post, is about stem cell diversity. They say the problem lies in the lack of genetic and "racial" diversity of the sixty-four lines allowed to be used for research. The stem cell lines scientists can study do not include any lines for African-Americans. Of the sixty-four stem cell lines, forty-nine are from white people and the other fifteen are from Asians. These lines were harvested from a rich suburb of white people from Washington D.C. or from Singapore and India. Even if humans are ninety-nine percent the same, there is enough of a difference so that every race has its own special stem cell lines. It isn't fair that African-Americans are left out of the stem cell research. Many scientists are afraid to discuss the race issue in the stem cell debate. African-Americans and Hispanics lose out. After reading the article, I feel the stem cell law is not fair.

CURSE WORDS AND FAILURE

2007-06-04T12:42:00.000-07:00

The last quarter of the school year is almost on us and I have a few students who are failing. One boy got his head turned by one of the girls, but that has ended so now he’s on track, trying harder, and he’ll pass. Another told me it matters to him that he does well in school. His mother doesn’t care—has, in fact, never asked him about homework or school or anything school related. He’s missing today’s field trip to make up missed work so he can pass. One of my girls is in the same boat. She received a field trip slip, but she will not be able to go because she, too, will be staying back to makew up missed assignments.

Three girls in my class have just given up. I don’t even know why. One is so angry she went on a cursing temper tantrum that brought my class to total silence for a long time the other day. She called me so many names, you would have thought I was in a classroom with a few drunken trash talking trash peddling nowhere people. (And you thought I was going to use the word “sailor.”)

In her tirade, she talked about my color, my mother, and too many bodily functions. I, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) know too much about her. I know her mother has gone missing for these last half dozen years. I know she lives with her sister—and doesn’t like her. I know she is fed up with her life because she has told me this a few times. I know her phone is cut off. I know she is ashamed of where she lives.

I used to ask for help from certain teachers, but they have their hands so full of problems right now—and they are way too busy with end of the year tasks—and one of them actually told me she no longer wants to be bothered with this young lady.

During library, I gave my student conference time so I could assist her in improving her grades. She is in striking distance of a D in every subject—just two to four points away.

Her response to my extra credit work: “If you’re going to fail me, just do it.”

My response to her: “I don’t want to fail you. For some reason you want to fail yourself. Take this opportunity to pass. Do the extra credit I’m giving you.”

Her response back: “Whatever. I don’t care if I fail or not.”

My question to you, my readers, is: What’s my next move? About two weeks left of school and I want her to pass.

Help.

Random Thoughts

2007-06-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

I know I’m not like many people. I never watched American Idol, and I never plan to. I don’t understand the noise about it and why it’s so popular. I don’t understand this need for a cell phone. If it’s really an emergency, don’t call me. Call 911. If the car breaks down, likewise. Call the motor club. And why is it so important to call home when you’re shopping for food at the grocery store—and you have a list in your hand already. And people who need to monitor their emails every five minutes. I’m scared of them.

Oh, for the days when someone talking in the street by themselves was just a “crazy.” Now I can’t always tell.

And, God knows, in the neighborhood I work in it would be a goods thing to know if it’s a crazy or someone on their cell phone.

And reality shows? Whose reality is it? I mean since when is a survivor someone from Survivors and not someone who really survived—the war in the Middle East, the concentration camps, the many Holocausts.

I heard a story about a Holocaust survivor being put down by a reality show survivor. It’s time for a reality check.

At least that’s what I think.

So what does this have to do with teaching in the inner city? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

“I might not be able to go on the field trip,” one of my students told me, “cause I might have to stay home and watch someone else’s child.”

Priorities.

That’s what this is about.

Priorities.

MY SON'S CHOICE FOR TEACHER OF THE YEAR

2007-06-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

My son who just graduated from high school has talked a lot about one of his teachers. So much so that after awhile I had to meet her—and I did—during parent conferences. Her name is Ms. Stacey Gibson-Turner, though I only know her as Ms. Gibson.

So here it is, the end of the year coming quickly, and I just thought I’d put in a few words about her impact on my son.

She did a wonderful job.

Korey feels more confident, more able to stand up to obstacles in his way and totally engrossed in his own mission to always learn.

Thank you, Ms. Gibson.

Though you were tough at times and controversial, I believe it’s great that you were able to open his mind and get him to rise up to higher and higher levels. He is on his way to college next year (he wants to be a botanist) and you set him on a pathway that will take him beyond the sciences (his first love) into the fields of literature and writing and…who knows.

So, again, thank you, Ms. Gibson for the great job you did in helping develop my son into a full-fledged scholar.

YESTERDAY MY SON GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL

2007-05-31T12:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I did not go to my teaching job because I attended my son’s high school graduation. It was both interesting and confusing, but I’m proud of him and I’m glad he’s my son.

He worked really hard—was actually number one in his class a few times his senior year—and he has his future mapped out.

I had a few concerns before we entered the great room. He had been totally neglected by his yearbook—not mentioned anywhere. Calls to his teachers so I could make a videotape honoring him were returned when I was at work. His principal, a Mr. Freeman, promised me he would have him come down to his office for a talk—he had heard so many good things about my son. He did not keep his promise. My son’s graduation outfit was listed to someone named Karen. His name is Korey.

But it all worked out. He was in the program, we took pictures, and everything went well—though I still have issues with some of the parents who were really rude. At one point, when the President of the School Board was speaking, a great booing erupted in the stands all around me. They were booing because security confiscated a beach ball that suddenly began to bounce from row to row of graduates. He stopped, looked around, thought they were booing him, and then realized they were not. Later a teacher had to harshly speak to a row of parents behind me because they had purchased more balloons and they wanted them in the air.

Nothing like not hearing a speech—no matter how boring—because a row of adults is yelling, “Hit it. Lift it up. Come on. Keep it going. Hit it. Don’t let them get it.”

My son was given flowers by his sister and he promptly passed them out to girls he knew. The smiles on their face were well worth the money I spent on the roses.

That’s how I spent my day yesterday.

Today I gave my students a chance to catch up on missing work—and that went very, very well.

Except for the boy who does nothing. “Why can’t I go on the field trip?” he shouted at me, as if that would change my mind.

I just said, “You’re failing. This will give you an entire day to catch up on everything you missed.”

He let out a curse, and I moved away. (This was after school when we were dismissing the children, and it began to rain.)

Only two weeks left.

Memorial Day and Teaching School

2007-05-29T05:36:00.000-07:00

"In a Web diary posted to the liberal online community Daily Kos on Monday, (Cindy)Sheehan said she was exhausted by the personal, financial and emotional toll of the past two years.

She wrote that she is disillusioned by the failure of Democratic politicians to bring the unpopular war to an end and tired of a peace movement she said "often puts personal egos above peace and human life."

Casey Sheehan, a 24-year-old Army specialist, was killed in an April 2004 battle in Baghdad . His death prompted his mother to found Gold Star Families for Peace.

But in Monday's 1,200-word letter, titled, "Good Riddance Attention Whore," Sheehan announced that her son "did indeed die for nothing."

"I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful," she wrote. "Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives."--May 29, 2007

WHY I TEACH

I never went to war. Korea ended a year before I was born and we lost the war in Viet Nam the year I began college. I never had the hard comfortable friendships true battle inspires and I never had comrades passionate enough to link into that all purpose male code—one man laying his life down for another. No, not me. I never had that.

But fake wars? That’s another story. The war on drugs, for instance. I was on the frontlines, a war that threw so much money at itself, it imploded filling prisons and creating cottage industries for curriculum products for every school and community in the nation. It never ends. Just one more victim and one more prisoner and one more person I know who was in the wrong place at the wrong time sending their lives into a spiral downwards so quickly the very system that wants to help has tied them into so many knots, it cannot.

I fought in the war against poverty—still do, in fact—and know this war too can never be won. We need poverty for the jobs it gives to us and for the cheap labor and for every gooey Hallmark Christmas story.

There have been other fake wars in my lifetime. Some were firecracker fads, some burnt themselves out under their own weight, and others were so ignored they just vanished and no one remembers.

The good in fake wars is your nightmares are never bloody. You don’t wake suddenly in a cold sweat. You never scream out in the middle of the night. At no time do you suddenly slip into a foxhole and find yourself crawling over bodies and pieces of bodies to get away. The participants of fake wars come and go as their interest dictates, not like soldiers who are stationed there waiting for the boredom to become one huge siege of adrenaline and leave with enough material for nightmares for life. No, most fake warriors are never made to stay. Some are in it for a week, some a month, some a year or two. Others make it their life—but they are rare. They become emergency room doctors. Inner city cops. Undercover narcotic operatives.

I became a teacher.

I am not talking about a two-year teacher either—two years in, a best selling book, author signings, TV talk shows. Nor am I talking about teachers who become teachers because this is all they felt they could do. Teaching for a paycheck, in other words. Then there are those who start in the classroom because all they really want is the most direct way to a desk in the board offices. They should have applied there to begin with. Teaching is not about money. It is about passion. I became a teacher because teaching is what I needed to do. The fact that they pay me to do it makes it all that much greater. Not too many people can say they get paid for their hobby.

I can.

So I wish you luck, Cindy Sheenan. It's a hard road, and it gets harder, and I hope you find your way back to it.

A SUNSHINY DAY

2007-05-24T05:14:00.000-07:00

Thursday and the sun is shining, a cool breeze comes across the playground and today is going to be a great day.

How can it not be?

A few field trips (so I’ll probably be holding a half dozen not nice children), a few teachers away on smaller field trips (and their class gets to stay behind) and a few irate parents (because children shouldn’t go on incentive field trips if they are failing).

Oh, well.

Another day, another fifteen cents.

But everything has been quiet, learning has been going on, students are actively trying to get hundreds, and the stem cell research project is on course and doing well. Our study of graphic novels ends today, and I believe my students really enjoyed reading them. I purchased a few sharks for dissection, and we may try to work on them this afternoon. No fights after school or before—just a lot of kids being kids and playing well together.

Someone stole the basketball hoop from our playground, so football and baseball have taken over. This is a good thing—playing other sports, not the stolen basketball hoop. My reading scores came back and everyone improved. This, too, is a good thing. A teacher nominated me for the DRIVE Award. I guess things are looking up.

It’s going to be a nice, sunshiny day.

AND IT CONTINUES

2007-05-22T06:03:00.000-07:00

Monday, and my class began to work on graphic novels. Five weeks more of school, it's time for a break.

When two boys start to think to fight--and my students never fight (at least not in my room)--I did the only thing possible. (You can only ask for them to sit down and separate three times. If they can't listen, well...)

I knocked the garbage can down. The noise startled them into sanity. They sat then.

And the rest of the day--peace and quiet and quiet and peace--with the exception of one student who so badly wanted to fight one of his classmates so I kept the child with me even though neither one belonged to my room and that just shut off the valve for more craziness.

And then we did something fun and enjoyable and the kids really enjoyed themselves:

We dissected a sheep's eyeball with new dissection tools.

202nd Blog--and it continues and continues and continues

2007-05-22T05:41:00.000-07:00

Friday came in with a wallop and stayed there like a headache in need of something really strong. Darvon perhaps.

So many teachers out and so few substitutes. By 1:50 the entire class (well, not everyone—five remained in the classroom) next door was in my room. The substitute started sending children to me at 9:15. When I heard the door slam so hard it raised everyone’s headache a decibel or two forty five minutes later, I walked out to see who he was sending to me now and—

Something’s are better left alone, but you have to do what you have to do cause some time’s that’s the only option you have.

The biggest boy in the next door room was already running for his life down the hallway. The biggest bully—and you read about her here a number of times—was chasing him with a scissors. Yelling at the top of her lungs, the scissors held high, I could not believe how fast she could run.

The security guard jumped from her seat and vanished. Unbelievable. When the boy reached me, the scissor wielding girl only a few yards away, I grabbed him hard at the shoulder and threw him into my classroom, slamming the door and turning just in time to be smashed by the girl as she slammed into me and the door, The scissors made contact with the wood missing my hand by mere inches.

She stepped back, the scissors in her hand held so tight blood was changing the color of her fingernails, and told me in no uncertain terms I had better open the door or—and all I could think to do was stand there and block her as the boy stood behind the wooden door. (At least he didn’t go near the window. I’m positive she would have shattered it.) I called out to anyone—as I was the only one outside in the hallway—to press the button and call for security. I yelled it again and again. Surprisingly, as I watched this girl prance and dance and scream before me, the scissors in a dangerous death hold, her face ferocious with anger and pain, I actually was able to keep count of how many times I called for help before I finally saw a teacher rise up and press the intercom for help.

The security guard? I don’t know where she went.

The sub? He was behind a closed door blocking it.

Help arrived a few minutes later (at least eight individuals) and the girl released the scissors. It wasn’t easy and I never once left my position at the door even when she tried to get through one more time.

In the end, I asked one of my students to wet a few paper napkins so the boy could stop the blood flowing from scratches at his neck. Then his uncle picked him up and her grandmother picked her up and—

By 1:50 I had my class and everyone in the room next door but five students and a student from a class down the hall and a few other children.

And that was my day…

201st Blog--Part 2

2007-05-18T04:57:00.001-07:00

It took the security officer and me maybe a minute or so to break up this fight. Security threw the offending child over his shoulder and dragged him downstairs. The other boy—my student—shook it off and walked to the library (the opposite direction) with the help of an aide.

The police were called.

The offender was handcuffed when they arrived and the rest of my day was spent in the office where I was asked if I wanted to press charges, but never given the opportunity.

When the offender’s mother showed up, she was hysterical—or at least that’s how it appeared. She was shaking and crying and she had to be supported by two other adults.

When the police decided not to arrest her son—two hours later, and I was not allowed into this conversation—suddenly she was a new woman. Smiling. No more tears, no shaking, a light flip in her step.

Yeah, right.

I’ve seen acting before and I guess I will again.

This is how it goes.

Before the day was over, I found myself between three more incidents. Students kept on coming to the office sent by their teachers from 1:30 until the end of the day.

“I’m here cause I don’t want to fight.”

“I’ll kill her. Let me loose.”

“OK, so I cursed out the sub. What’s the big deal?”

Etc. Etc. Etc.

In the end, the offender in my fight earned a three day suspension. One of my students had a tantrum in front of the assistant principal and she earned herself a day. Another student from another class would not stop—she earned herself five days.

A seventh grader who thought he could get in a sub’s face ended up with a parent conference.

Grand Central Station at the office.

I was asked to go to 106 and help with the dismissal because they were so out of control—and they were, but they left the building without any real problems.
OK. Now it’s time to go home and I’m geared and ready with both security officers for a flurry of fights—but, just as the classes begin to dismiss, a baby in her mother’s arms reaches out to the fire alarm and—yes, you guessed it—pulls it bringing in three fire trucks.

No problem at dismissal. Every teacher is outside.

And then it began to drizzle.

Tomorrow—or Monday: Part 3.

Maybe.

200th Blog

2007-05-17T05:47:00.000-07:00

My last posting—May 10th—was my 199th blog. I really wanted very badly to have a positive blog for the two-hundredth posting. So I waited. And waited. And waited.

I couldn’t do it. I wanted the 200th blog to be full of great things. Not a few paragraphs. No, I was thirsting for many paragraphs.

Sorry.

Tuesday, May 15th, and three teachers are absent on the second floor and one on the first. No substitute came for 211 so I went outside during my prep period and assisted the gym teacher with my class and 211.

A sub showed up at 9:40 and I took both classes upstairs to our rooms. No problem there either.

Noon.

All hell broke out.

206 emptied into the hallway as a fight went from the room to the hall and I went to help the sub while another teacher went to contain the students. The fight continued all the way to the lunchroom before it was broken up. If the eighth grade teacher had not shown up to assist with room 206…

And then it got worst.

After lunch, I again brought 211 and 209 upstairs and found myself alone in the hallway getting all of the students into their classrooms. This included students from 203, 204, and 206.

Two of my boys went to the drinking fountain even though I did not give them permission. How can you take care of your room when so many other unsupervised students are running the hallways?

The fight began in the hallway egged on by girls from other classrooms. I stopped it. I sent everyone on their way. But the fight was not over. The boy ran from his classroom into my classroom to continue the fight. I removed him again and he came in again. When I removed him the third time, I called security.

You get the picture.

Meanwhile, 204, 206 and most of 211 were in the hallway to see what all of the commotion was about. My student was having one of his every other day temper tantrums which I have learned to ignore. Unfortunately the boy from the other classroom could not ignore it. He rushed into my room a fourth time and got by me and got in the first solid blow.

(I am reminded of a time a teacher went off and I was all alone trying my hardest to stop him from seriously hurting a student. Perhaps I’ll tell this story. Perhaps not.)

Security arrived and pulled the offender off. He carried him into the hall. He carried him to the office.

Peace?

Of course not.

The student broke loose after he was placed in the office and ran back into my room as my class settled—finally—into their work and jumped five feet tackling my student, knocking down chairs and tables and emptying out 211, 204 and 206.

(I’m proud to say my classroom moved out of the way and did not join the other classrooms.)

This is not the way I wanted my 200th blog to go.

So what’s in store for my 201st blog? The tale above continues…

THE GRANT TO GET YOUR CLASSROOM LIBRARIES

2007-05-10T05:50:00.000-07:00

Another successful grant.

Hope this helps.

RIF in Chicago Grant Application

Contact information goes here.

Principal: ____________
Contact person: Michael Brownstein

1. How will being a RIF Distribution Site be helpful to your organization at this point in time?

Both the vision and mission statement of the _______ Elementary School promotes the life long learning of its entire educational community. Reading is a fundamental (no pun intended) part—if not the primary part—of life long learning. Our standardized test scores have been increasing, but we still have a long way to go. Introducing books and reading at the school level helps us to meet our main objective; however, getting books into the students’ homes greatly assists us as educators. We can force feed students to read at school and a program that brings books into the home empowers our students and engages them more because they will participate in more reading for pleasure. Research stresses the more a child reads, the more proficient that child becomes. Because the child selects and owns their book, they will want to read more. Furthermore, parental involvement in the program (the child reads at home) will reinforce the positive model for the successful cognitive development of the child. Our students will become our vision and mission statement: life long learners.

2. Would your site be able to raise enough money to run the proposed RIF program without funding from RIF in Chicago?

The quick response is no only because the school’s budget is stretched in so many directions. Our present budget projections show that we may have to layoff a few teachers or utilize our discretionary funds to purchase them back.

On the other hand, it is possible to raise fifteen hundred dollars over time through fund raising and other activities. This takes a lot of time and we probably would not be able to pay out the money in a timely fashion. We would not want to lose our opportunity to work with RIF during the 2007-2008 school year because of time and budget constraints.

3. If RIF in Chicago funding were made available, what percentage could your site raise?

This is a hard question because once again our budget is stretched to the limit and the projected budget for next year shows a drop of almost thirty thousand dollars. In order to maintain what we have, we will have to reach deep into our discretionary funds and these funds—at present—are being utilized to insure each student has their own textbooks, desks and other necessary materials to insure the success of our educational programs. In addition, teachers are purchasing more and more of the supplies needed for their classes—copier paper, for example.

4. Please describe your children and families in terms of their risk for school failure, special needs, home environments, and other applicable information.

_______ Elementary School is one-hundred percent African-American. Ninety-eight percent of our students qualify for the federal free lunch and breakfast program. The vast majority of our students live in apartments headed by a single parent, in most cases female. Even though the neighborhood is going through gentrification, it is still racked with high crime, prostitution and illicit drug trade. Our school has made strides in reading on standardized testing; however, the majority of the third and sixth grade still had to attend summer school in order to pass due to poor scores and/or poor grades. We have a small homeless population (about five percent of our enrollment) and another twenty percent of our students live with relatives.

5. Please describe your local population, employment rats, local industry, and any other applicable information.

The greater ________ educational community is made up of apartments and brand new condominiums. There are a few single family homes spread throughout the neighborhood. The area remains prominently African-American. Many of the households are run by a female. Furthermore, many of the rentals qualify for the federally funded Section 8 housing program. There are many vacant lots; however, there is also a lot of rehabilitation of property. The neighborhood is gentrifying. There is industry to the west of 44th and King Dr. (where the school is located) and the area is served by the Chicago Transit Authority’s Green Line. Downtown is five miles north. Ninety-eight percent of our students qualify for the federal free lunch program.

6. What challenges within the community prevent your site from raising enough money to operate RIF in Chicago without a scholarship?

Due to budget constraints, the entire budget of the school is set up to maintain at the present status quo and “bare nail” basic educational for our students. Nonetheless, in the upcoming school year, art will be removed from our curriculum because of a lack of money to compensate an art teacher. We will also lose our reading specialist: not enough money in the budget to maintain that project. We will also not be able to continue with the Joffrey Ballet Program or the University of Chicago Internet Project.

Fundraising will be utilized to pay for basic necessities (copier paper, for example).

7. What is your responsibility at your site?

I am the science chair for the upper grades. I teach reading and science to seventh graders. I am also the Teachers’ Union delegate, the chair of the Least Restricted Environment Project, and one of the two teacher representatives on the Local School Council. With the funding of this scholarship, I will also chair the RIF in Chicago committee.

STEM CELL RESEARCH PROJECT

2007-05-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

We started our research project for the spring—stem cell lines across racial boundaries.

I’m excited about it and the groups for the most part are working hard on their questions: moral questions, racial questions, that sort of thing.

It appears only a few lines have been approved by the Bush administration and even though he declares he’s not a racist, it appears his actions show he indeed is. Why else would the sixty-four stem cell lines he approves be only for whites of European ancestry.

We’ll see if my classes can crack this puzzle. After all, cloning a stem cell line is the same as cloning an embryo. You can’t have it both ways.

Coca Cola, Albertsons and Reading Is Fundalmental

2007-05-08T05:45:00.000-07:00

Evan Georgi, the executive director of Reading is Fundamental, dropped by my school about a week ago. If you don’t know RIF, you should.

Many years ago—before many of you were born—RIF gave me a library for a learning center I ran for a little bit of time behind Mason School in the field house on Chicago’s westside. It was a great opportunity because many of the children didn’t have even one book in their house, let alone a personal library. With the help of RIF all those many years ago, a lot of students got their first books.

So you know I was happy to find out RIF was doing well in Chicago—so happy in fact I invited Evan to my school.

We spoke for a bit about RIF, another teacher sat in and asked a lot of good questions, I went on duty, and before everything was over, I had a contract for RIF for my school next year and a grant application (which I will share later this week).

Evan told me she would come out on Literacy Night and do a presentation. She only had a week to plan this and I thought that wasn’t really enough time, but when literacy night came, so did Julie Lawrenz, the program coordinator for RIF. And Julie brought with her around four hundred brand new books—enough for many of the families visiting the school on Literacy Night to begin libraries for their children at home.

Too often, as the poet Andrew Hudgins explains, “I learned early that reading, which I saw as pure pleasure, was seen by my parents as work.” This is why I was so glad Julie and Evan could give my students the opportunity to select their own books and start their own libraries.

We—Julie and I—even let a few children get greedy. We let them select more than one book and since two and four are not numbers I really like (four, in fact, the unlucky number in China), some children went away with three or five books. (I added poetry books which were donated to me a few months ago.)

Anyway, we can’t wait to start our RIF program and September 2007 seems so far away. Nonetheless, we did get quite a few books and we did pass out quite a few books and this morning as I write this teachers kindergarten through fourth are selecting books for their classroom library. What a change to see teachers actually happy this early in the morning.

By the way, I have to thank Albertsons, the Coca-Cola Company and RIF for getting these books to my school where they are really needed.

And I have to thank Evan again for granting my school the gift of reading. Isn’t it so much better to give a book as a gift? Can you not see the possibilities? Trick or treating can become trick or reading. Christmas can be a festival of reading clubs. The tooth fairy could leave a book. Birthdays would be better than a trip to the library.

How cool would that be?

A nation of readers who read for pleasure and learning because they discovered all of its joys—and with joy even work is satisfying.

Yeah, that would be too cool.

PAYROLL--OR A LACK OF IT

2007-05-07T05:45:00.000-07:00

Do you know how you can tell teachers are not valued at all in the realm of the world—or at least here in the United States?

First off, we know teachers are very badly underpaid. But until now (well, not for the first time in my Chicago teaching career), not only are we underpaid, but sometimes we don’t get paid at all.

Huh?

Oh, you must be working for a major corporation. I’m a teacher. Remember that. Not a doctor. Not a lawyer. Definitely not an elected official. God forbid their paycheck comes up incorrectly.

For the last two pay cycles my check has been off by a lot. The first one did not pay me for any of my extra service that I do—chair of the Least Restricted Environment and coordinator for the After School All Stars. Nor did the second one.

I didn’t even get paid for all of the work I do during my regular time. One day was missing off the check last pay period and this pay period, an entire week.

Teachers have bills, too. And I don’t feel like I need to hear excuses. We do the work, we work hard, and we should get paid on time and correctly.

(A few years back the Board messed up the budget so badly we had to go on strike to get paid. Another time we were told to go directly from work to the bank to cash our paycheck because they did not know if there would be enough funds to cover all of them.)

I’m not now a happy camper. In a few minutes I will go outside and supervise the playground—maybe by myself because I don’t always receive help the entire time. Then I’ll teach reading—we’re on science fiction now—and science—theoretical physics—and then I’ll go outside again and supervise dismissal and my day is not over yet. Tonight is literacy night and I’ll be here past seven o’clock. (Did I tell you I removed the negative graffiti from the playground myself at my expense—well, I wrote a grant for the supplies—because no one else would do it?)

So pay us.

A MIX AND MATCH KIND OF WEEK

2007-05-05T05:53:00.000-07:00

Another week done. Thirty days to go.

We read a few of the Cantos by poet Ezra Pound and we discussed and wrote about them. Everything went very well. Then we discussed if his anti-American activities after 1925 were reason to censor him. The students wrote great essays and a few of them even brought out today’s arguments that have brought down a few individuals for saying the wrong thing. The final vote: His poetry outweighs his anti-Semitism. A great week in reading.

There was a sub next door on Thursday who had no idea what to do and he hung in there, and I spent about fifteen minutes out of every hour in his room. Finally, the assistant principal assigned one of the security people to sit in the room with him. My last hour was much more peaceful—even though my preparation period was cancelled.

We studied theoretical science in the afternoons. I divided the class up into small think tank clusters and the students had to come up with the benefits of going into the past to change something in their life—and what obstacles might be in the way of doing this successfully. We did four problems—all physics related (including if an object becomes light when it reaches the speed of light—and I have to tell you, the classes did very well.

Nike came back to the school for Nike Day—the reason for my lost prep. A lot of big shots came to the school. Only primary students—second and third graders—were allowed to participate. I did get to meet someone famous—though I have no idea who he is because all I told him was a he was holding up dismissal and could he please get into his limo so we could dismiss the students. I’m not a celebrity fan obviously. All of these grown people were gushing around him. I had to practically lead him into the limo. So Nike Day came and went and all I got was a t-shirt.

We went on a field trip Friday. Great time. Physics on a skating rink. I can skate so you know I had to pick on the basketball players who whipped our behinds by thirty points during the teacher/student game. Only two of them could skate. And, of course, I had to lap the star player four times just to rub it in.

At the end of the trip the rink organized a dancing contest and I went out and danced too. Unfortunately I ended up challenging two eighth graders to a footwork contest and the entire second floor of my school—the entire floor was on the trip—surrounded me while I danced around them. In the third round, one boy backed down and the other just vanished. The truth is I dance as badly as I play basketball. But I can skate.

I wrote three grants this week—and already I have been notified they have been funded.

So I guess everything is fine and well in my corner of the world.

AN ENRICHMENT GRANT

2007-05-02T05:43:00.000-07:00

We received over twenty-five thousand dollars over time with this grant—an after school enrichment project.

1.) Please provide a brief overview of your enrichment program?

Currently ______ has a partnership with the Joffrey Ballet; a fulltime fine arts and computer lab program; a choir; and an after school sports recreational program with units on tennis, basketball, track, and baseball. In the past we have had extensive dance classes, violin lessons, an African drum ensemble and a band. The Joffrey Ballet grant expires at the end of this year, but we will try to renew it.
Our enrichment program has been designed with the help of student and professional staff surveys. With this enrichment grant, we will expand on our existing dance programs, add an after school computer club and a cultural arts project (African drums, band, and violin lessons and a fine arts club). The dance class will have a full curriculum beyond ballet and will include modern, African, and tap dance. Our music instruction will be multicultural and include a band, violin ensembles, an African drum group and an after school choir. (Our present choir meets one day a week during school.) The after school fine arts program will be an intensive exploration of the world of art crossing the entire horizons of culture and time. Students will study archeology, the various media of the artist, the disciplines of the fine arts and a number of artists. We will offer our students a number of opportunities to explore the world of cultural arts. In addition, we will offer a technology component—The Computer Club where students will learn a number of objectives including how to design web pages and repair computers.
These clubs will meet Monday through Thursday after school. Each class will serve fifteen students in order to meet the individual needs of all of the students. Parents will be encouraged to enroll in the various activities as mentors and tutors.

2.) How does this program support your regular school day?

Research has shown that well-rounded children become lifelong learners. The _______ vision and mission statement both incorporate lifelong learning as one of our primary goals. Furthermore, brain research shows that children learn through a variety of instructional methods. Not all children are auditory learners, for example. Some students are kinesthetic and tactile learners. Others utilize visual and/or mobility. The _______ after school program will incorporate all of the learning modalities needed to instruct the whole child.
Reading is the primary objective for all of our students. Without reading, they cannot achieve and they cannot become lifetime learners. Our after school enrichment project will help our students to become better readers because of the high interest and diversity of the programs. Learning to play a musical instrument institutes many of the same skills needed to read. A successful technology club also insures successful readers. The fine and cultural arts, according to brain and learning research, help children see ideas in traditional as well as alternative ways. All of these enrichment projects combined will offer our students higher order thinking skills and successful strategies to become better readers, scholars, and lifelong learners.
Lastly, the ________ enrichment program will raise our attendance levels. Students who are bored, disinterested or hesitant about school will attend everyday because they want to participate. The more a student attends school, the better learner that a student becomes. The famous axiom—the more you read the better you read—is also true with our enrichment program. We will immerse our students into enrichment and they will be enriched. With a number of engaged active learning environments within the confines of the program, students will begin to flourish academically, psychologically and emotionally. The variety of enrichment activities will enhance our student’s educational career and begin the upward spiral that will make a positive transformation in their overall performance. After all, this is what _________ and all schooling should be about—creating individuals who have a lifetime thirst for learning.

3.) What are the projected outcomes of the program?

With this program participating students will show a fifty percent decrease in negative referrals to the office, a two percent increase in attendance, a five percent increase in all standardized testing in both reading and mathematics, and a twenty percent increase in the ISAT for the section on fine arts. Students will make a technology and cultural arts portfolio. Furthermore, they will meet or exceed all of the following objectives for technology including: how to demonstrate basic operations and concepts; understand social, ethical, and human issues; and have a comprehensive understanding on how to use technology productivity, communication, problem-solving and decision-making tools. Students will meet or exceed the fine arts goals as listed in the Illinois Learning Standards: State Goal 25—students will know the language of art; State Goal 26—through creating and performing, students will understand how works of art are produced; and state Goal 27—students will understand the role of the arts in civilization, past and present.
Because the enrichment program is high interest and excites our students, we expect to see a ripple effect that helps change the focus of the entire school body thereby strengthening existing academic programs, creating more viable solutions to discipline and conflict and changing the mindset of students who act out, are not interested in academics, and/or are just plain bored. The overall effect will be the creation of a learning institution where children not only feel good about learning, but also want to learn more.

4.) Please explain briefly how you plan to evaluate the effectiveness of your program.

The _________ enrichment project will have both formal and informal evaluations. Informal evaluations will be on going. These will include numerous gallery showings within the hallways and main corridors of ______ with displayed artwork. This will also include a gallery showing of artwork at the High Risk Art Gallery located on Chicago’s north side. The various music groups—the band, violin, choir and African drum programs—will perform at all assemblies and they will record a professional CD with Q Studios. The technology club will display their work in a variety of technology shows developed for individual classrooms, assemblies and hallway exhibits. Teacher made performance quizzes and tests will also be utilized as evaluative tools.
Formal evaluations will include data on negative referrals to the office, a two percent increase in attendance, a five percent gain in all standardized testing in reading and math and a twenty percent increase in the fine arts segment of the ISAT.
Participating students will be given journals for notes and comments on the program. Each activity will include time for students to reflect on what they have learned. These journals will be collected from time to time and utilized as another form of evaluation. Teacher observation and a change in the climate of the school will also be documented through interviews, observation, and other anecdotal records from the ______ School professional staff, adults from the greater ______ learning community, and other interested stakeholders.
All of these evaluations—formal and informal—will be incorporated into an administrative portfolio. An administrative team made up of administrators, teachers, ESPs and interested adults from the greater _______ learning community will evaluate the portfolio and other results on a bi-weekly basis to insure all targeted objective, outcomes and formal evaluations are being met. The team will make periodic reports to the LSC and to the entire professional staff during scheduled in-service days.
Members of the Office of After School and Community School Programs will be invited to assemblies, field trips, and exhibits.

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT--THE APPLESEED FOUNDATION

2007-05-01T06:18:00.000-07:00

I’m working on a few grants at the moment—one to get libraries in each classroom, another to get books into our student’s homes and one more to develop a more viable plan to get parents involved in the school as volunteers.

Everything I read on the subjects of classroom libraries, reading at home and parental involvement comes to the same conclusion: successful schools have a successful parent component—parents volunteer and volunteering parents model reading.

So it was a great thing when I met Amanda Grant from the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice during the February NCLB Conference. She offered free assistance with developing a parent volunteer program—something my school sorely lacks. (As far as I can tell, we only have one dedicated parent volunteer.)

Last night two members of the Appleseed Foundation came to our meeting about how to get more parents involved and let me tell you, you have to wish you could have been there—especially if you are a teacher teaching in the inner city and have few to no parent volunteers in your school.

Jose Melendez and Kim Conte were fantastic facilitators. They got the teachers involved in the discussion and offered viable and easy to do suggestions. Already we’re planning on using a few of them—bragging about our school with displays located in community based programs that service our students.

We have the sixth grade champion in the district science fair, for example. Why can’t I brag?

If you would like to see the notes from the meeting, I can get them to you. Just let me know by going to the comment section.

In the meantime, I just want you to know their presentation was great, their information easy to digest, and best of all, we are now planning a long term relationship with them.

How great is that.

We are going to post their four steps on posters—

In order to succeed—
build relationships
link to learning
address differences
support advocacy
share the power

That’s just one of the ideas they helped us explore.

The teachers left excited, I’m obviously excited, and now, Tuesday morning, I am looking forward to a new day, the sun is out, the sky is blue, and it looks like everything is going to go the right way.

THE THIRD ANNUAL STUDENT/TEACHER BASKETBALL GAME--IF YOU COULD CALL IT THAT

2007-04-28T05:11:00.000-07:00

OK. First, here comes Stanley who purchased the shorts for the game—and he gives me extra large. (I didn’t think I was over weight, but I’m starting my diet tomorrow—or probably sometime next week.) I purchased new shoes a week ago just for the game. Sox came courtesy of Nike—a company that suddenly remembered us (see previous blog about Nike).

So I changed in my classroom and made my entrance three minutes into the first quarter, my shirt tucked into the shorts. Nothing like walking into a game and not warming up.

(I pulled my t-shirt out a few minutes later. Why didn’t any teacher tell me they were supposed to be worn outside of the shorts?)

And I made my grand entrance. Every student lined up against the wall threw out his/her hand and we did that thing you always see with Jay Leno—I must have smacked fifty hands before I made it to where my team was seated.

I played for one minute in the first quarter, or rather I should say, I ran up and down the field wide open the entire time for one minute. Good exercise.

Second quarter came and I played for two minutes. Didn’t even get close to the ball, but I think—though I’m not sure—that I was able to stay on my man—an eighth grader who was much quicker and better than me. Anyway, he only got one shot off and, of course, it went in.

Third quarter I got a chance to handle the ball. Finally. It went out of bounds and I was the one who passed it back in. Again, wide open, students and parents started yelling, “Brownstein’s open! Brownstein’s open!”—but all I did was run back and forth—and, of course, look good.

Meanwhile the eighth grade teacher was hot. She was shooting from all angles, hitting the basket sixty percent of the time, racking up the points and the security guy was going “Bam! Bam!” every time he took a shot ‘cause he was our star.

We were losing so they let me in for the last five minutes of the game. (They knew to save the best for last.)

Meanwhile the eighth grade teacher grabbed one of her students by the collar and dragged him a few feet across the floor (and she’s not even five foot five—but she’s strong!) and the security guy began to play punch one of the tall seventh graders when the ref wasn’t looking and the seventh grader hit him back (all in play) when the ref was looking so we got a few points through free throw penalties.

I did get the ball again, and I was open and I turned to shoot when this eighteen foot student jumped all over me before I could even think to raise my arms so I passed it to the eighth grade teacher and she took a shot and made it. I got the ball a second time and this time I did get off a shot which at least hit the rim—but guess what?—I got the rebound and was able to pass it to one of my teammates who at least had a clue.

Great game.

We lost 82-52.

I keep saying this: Basketball’s not my game. I’m not sure of baseball. Why can’t we have a field hockey game? OK. OK. I’m the only one who can play that. But everyone can run.

Track and field anyone?

AFTER SCHOOL GRANT

2007-04-28T04:31:00.000-07:00

The All Stars Activity Grant came from a much larger grant my district won. We received fifteen hundred dollars for supplies.

How will money from this grant benefit after school academic activities?

The ________ After School Program contains the following cognitive clubs: science, peer tutoring, creative arts, homework, reading and board games (chess, checker, Monopoly, etc.). With this grant we will purchase high interest and engaging materials, books and other supplies to enable our students to pursue interests and academic activities independently or in small and large groups.

List your rationale for the materials you will utilize with this grant.

We will create small group lab activities for the science club. These will include the exploration of a number of science concepts including evolution (fossil study, fruit flies, etc.), rocks and minerals, magnetism, and anatomy (fetal pigs, sheep dissection material, etc.) we have created these labs with the assistance of Fisher Scientific.

Our creative arts program will utilize disposable cameras for writing and photo journalism. We will utilize paint, chalk, and other media to allow our students the freedom to explore various art forms on a number of materials including newsprint, canvas and other types of paper. We will create music and dance videos of original student work with African instruments. (Instruments have been purchased through another grant).

The reading club will utilize books from the Coach series. We picked this series because the same title comes in two reading levels—one for at risk readers and another for those who are proficient.) We will not read aloud, but instead discuss the book in a reading club discussion forum where the teacher will be the coach and discussion moderator.

The Game Club will use chess and checkers to develop higher level thinking skills, Monopoly to develop strategies for success, and other games that further the vision and mission of the school—to create a well rounded and life long learner.

How will you evaluate the success of your program?

_____ School will see a two percent gain in attendance on club activity days, a fifty percent drop in negative referrals to the office, and a five percent gain on standardized testing including the Chicago Learning First.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE HIDEOUS

2007-04-27T06:01:00.000-07:00

So were studying the biographies of a few famous poets and then critiquing one or more poems to see if we can trace influences from their life to their poetry and so far it’s going really well. Many of my students wrote how Wallace Steven’s life of loneliness seemed to have a major impact on his poem, “Disillusionment at Ten O’clock.” Almost every student saw the tragedies in Robert Frost’s family life as a very important theme in his poem, “Out Out.” I liked the way they were able to correlate the idea of life goes on after a child dies in an accident. And my students discovered in William Carlos Williams someone they might want to be right at this moment. Each day my students’ essays have been better and better.

Today we do Allen Ginsberg—I’ll read the first few lines of “Howl”—and Rita Dove. Can’t wait.

Science was harder. We were trying to discover the difference between a scientist and a technologist. Perhaps the hand-out was too vague. Don’t know. Nonetheless, working in cooperative groups, eighty percent of the class did well. I’ll try again today.

So where does the hideous and the bad come in. We had an alleged gang incident after school Wednesday and I met with one of the parents after school Thursday so we can rein it in before it escalates. I didn’t appreciate overhearing a few of the upper grade students plans to jump parents and children after school because of the incident. Didn’t have to worry though. It started raining right at dismissal so there were no incidents at all.

I also learned to ignore the temper tantrum of one of my seventh graders. (He transferred to my class from another room a few weeks ago.) Well, not exactly learned. I just decided not to give him any attention for negative behavior and after fifteen minutes he realized no one really cared—except for my bully who cannot stand for another bully to bully her. So he raised his voice and added some interesting words, looked my way, and saw that I was into something else and he sat down and did all of his work.

Victory? No. But I’m trying.

Anyway today is the teacher/student basketball game and I’m in it. So wish me luck cause I can’t play basketball even a little bit. Now field hockey? That’s an entirely different matter.

A TALK WITH ANOTHER TEACHER

2007-04-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

We’re at my college class for teachers seeking a science endorsement and here comes one of the teachers.

“What a day. I suspended eight kids from my class.” He takes his seat and looks around the room. “Two girls wanted to fight. They’re the hardest to break up. You can’t just grab them anywhere.”

He pauses.

“My school is just a lawsuit getting ready to happen,” he continues to no one in particular though all of us were listening.

He pauses again.

“At least the boys are easier. You have at least three minutes lead time before you have to get between them. They got to bump chests and get into each other’s face. Girls? Now that’s another story all together.”

He stands, removes his coat. It’s spring in Chicago and it’s raining and it’s cold. Outside it already looks like dusk.

“My mother teaches in the inner city of Philadelphia. She called me last night to tell me yesterday was the worst day of teaching in her career. It’s not getting better.”

Then class starts and he doesn’t speak for a long time. When he does, it is a question about stem cells. After that he opens up a bit more, but you can tell the melancholy of the day—of his second year as a teacher—weighs itself down on him heavier than stone.

DISMISSAL AT 2:45

2007-04-24T05:42:00.000-07:00

We were busy—the small Local School Council group—working on the principal’s evaluation and in no time at all we were finished and it was time to dismiss all the students.

I went outside like I always do. A beautiful afternoon, blue skies (even though the weathermen predicted all day storms), nice breezes, warm enough to remove the jackets. We had heard there might be a problem between an 8th grader and a 6th grader, so we were ready.

It’s great when the school comes together to stop a problem before it begins. The 6th grade girl’s mother was notified and she came to school before dismissal to pick her up. The 8th grader was asked to stay in the office until the 6th grader was gone.

Everything went smoothly. It was great. Within minutes all of the children were on their way. Another perfect dismissal.

The 8th grader was still a bit scared, though, so security walked her to the center where she goes after school.

And I went home.

Everyday should be this good.

WHEN THINGS TURN UGLY

2007-04-20T05:44:00.000-07:00

The Virginia Tech violence was a real scary thing—too scary in fact. The violence did not have to happen, but it did, and it was isolated, and it was probably something that could not have been stopped because it is very hard to stop this kind of thing.

Then again—we have to learn from this.

Teachers have come forward to tell how they pass students because they are afraid of the negative reactions they will receive. Teachers have stated that they are threatened by certain individuals and they react in the wrong way when confronted by them.

Bullying is a societal problem—we want are students to be assertive and we want them to be strong and we want them to have high self esteem even when we know what we are saying to them is not true—and this might be the first stages of creating our own class of bullies.

Yes, it’s much easier to tell a parent her/his child is not working up to his/her potential even though we know—as teachers—the child is, in fact, doing the best they can. A “C” is not a bad grade when the child can only perform average work.

And what’s wrong with that? Most of us are average. If everyone was an “A” person, we’d all want to be leaders and we’d all be disgruntled and we’d all—you get my point.

There are leaders and then there are many, many followers.

This is how it is.

They bullied the Virginia Tech killer during high school—at one time telling him to go back to China. I don’t know the reaction of the teacher. I don’t know if there were any consequences. I just don’t know.

We as teachers have to take a step back—now—and reconfigure this self esteem thing. Yes, it’s a good thing for a student to feel good about themselves, but at least let them feel good about something they really are good doing.

I don’t tell all of my parents that their child can do better because their child is smart. No, that’s wrong. Some children are going to be the best sanitary workers in the nation. Others are going to be the best bus driver or postal worker or nurse’s aid.

Sorry—we all cannot be doctors and teachers—though we probably can be lawyers if we just hang in there long enough and start to enjoy reading.

Jokes aside, we teachers need to know more about our students and we need to know how to reach out to the bully and the victim, how to become change agents of the mind, how to stop a future Virginia Tech.

Yesterday, on my way from the train to my school, I walked behind two parents and a child. The child goes to my school. The two parents have children in my school. Here is the conversation I overheard verbatim:

“Listen,” one parent said to the child, “I’m going to give you two dollars tomorrow after you beat up ____”

“OK.”

“I’ll give you a few bucks too. You hear,” said the other.

“OK.”

I asked who the boy was they wanted him to beat up. They told me they weren’t talking to me. I told them that it concerned me because I work at that school. They told me it wasn’t my business and then they walked quickly away.

The boy is in second grade. The parents have children in his class. I reported the conversation. My school made arrangements. I still do security outside. We were alert to any problems.

But here’s the real problem: parents bribing a child to beat up another child. Already we are in the stages of developing another Virginia Tech killer.

This behavior has got to stop.

And, teachers, we have to realize stopping that behavior starts with us.

Let’s start networking now. Let’s begin a group that relays messages from teacher to teacher so none of us will be so scared we can’t stop what might happen. We have to stop it and to do that, we have to hang together across states and schools and economic boundaries and become one united front.

AFTER SCHOOL ALLSTARS

2007-04-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

Spring has finally—and hopefully—come to Chicago and even though broken glass was on the playground and garbage was wind thrown against one corner of the fence—the after school students went outside for recreation—and I have to tell you, it was just great.

We have had an on-going problem with basketball this and basketball that and we only play basketball for so long now, I’ve wanted to tear out my hair at times.

Not last evening.

Last evening we played baseball and t-ball and football and 4 squares and every other game except for—(well, not exactly cause three boys did play basketball).

And everything went so smooth it was great. There’s not even a but here. Everything was so good, when the students left at the end of the day and walked past all of the TV cameras—yes, TV cameras—because my school is the polling place where Dorothy Tillman got her start and where she actually votes (and she lost!!!), they were polite and inquisitive and even allowed to hold the mic and the camera and talk to the reporters.

Some days everything comes together so well, everything is, well, well.

Dorothy Tillman and How We Change History

2007-04-17T07:17:00.000-07:00

First published in November, 2006

Please check out the comments at the bottom of the page.

I’m not a big fan of Dorothy Tillman, the alderman of the third ward, the ward where my school is located. It’s hard for me to want to meet someone who reconstructs her history depending on her audience. We celebrated Nike Day at my school last Friday, a grand celebration. We had over a hundred volunteers from all over the Midwest come to our school to assist us in so many projects, I can’t name them all. They helped plant the garden, repainted our playground and removed some really nasty graffiti. They tutored, reorganized the library, and cleaned out our infamous bookroom.

It was great day.

So why am I writing about Dorothy Tillman? Simple. At the end of the day we had an assembly where Nike presented us with a check and a pledge of five hundred volunteer man-hours. She showed up for that. And she made a speech.

Over the years I have heard her say she marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when she was as young as sixteen. In her bio, she states he asked her to come to Chicago to assist in changing things. Her speech on Friday did not state any of this. I wish it had. More than once I’ve heard her speak changing crucial timelines—sixteen became twenty-one, for example. I’m not even sure she ever met Dr. King.

During her brief speech on Friday she said, “If it hadn’t been for M_____, I might never have been known. Almost everything I have is due to my work at M_____.”

I always thought Dr. King was her ticket to everything good that happened in her life.

Yes, she became famous because of my school. She went against the white principal when the school offered enrichment classes and one of her children was not allowed to enroll. She began a one-woman protest—which is her right—and soon others began to join her. Was it really about her child not getting into enrichment classes or was it instead her wish to show how she could control the school. (One of the main instigators of the major fight last week is on our school’s Local School Council—a position that can fire a principal. Enough said.)

In the end, the principal, Dorothy Stevens, lost her job, even though she won in court. My school—though I wasn’t teaching there yet—fell into turmoil and great confusion becoming one of the lowest performing and most dangerous schools on the Southside of Chicago. A number of principals tried to change the school. Andrea Kerr, the woman who hired me, was the first to succeed, but because of her success, the Board bumped her upstairs.

We are still trying to change everything. Our scores are higher. Things are better. My seventh grade classes scored over 97% on the science portion of the Illinois standardized test—but I probably mentioned this a few times too many.

I’ve had more than a few run-ins with Dorothy Tillman, almost every one of them negative. (During the big fight last week, for example, as the police interviewed me, she came into the gym and interrupted. "Let the parents speak," she demanded, but the police officer told her to be quiet so she could finish taking my testimony.) I’ve worked with one of her sons and I taught another. It always interested me that she would take a major grant and spend it on revamping King Dr. when the neighborhood needed—and still needs—serious help, but perhaps it’s because now her alleged real estate holdings can appreciate—condos are everywhere on King Dr.—and her office at the corner of 47th and King (even though police are needed to keep a 24 hour watch on it because someone keeps breaking out her window) has retail shops paying rent to—can it be?—Dorothy Tillman herself.

I don’t know.

Anyways, I have made a link to the actual ruling on the case that made Dorothy Tillman famous.
posted by A Teacher's Log | 5:47 AM
3 Comments:
Donor said...
A classic example of scum rising to the top. I read the transcript from the court and it appears to me that there was race bias involved in the instruction of the judge. These people let a mob make decisions, a mob to take over and beleive they can do it again by the issuance of this unjust verdict. Now the courts and police have a dangerous, lunatic, mob ruler on their hands, a tiger by the tail. They, the courts, created her and will have to deal with her. Hopefully one day true justice will prevail.
3:59 PM
Anonymous said...
Just like Micheal Brown said in Nov. 30th Chicago Sun-Times."Just seeing the name Dorothy Tillman send some white men into a tizzy" Tsk..Tsk..talk about white male entitlement syndrome. Your blog is full of lies. I doubt if you print this.
10:11 AM
A Teacher's Log said...
This is for anonymous--Guess you were wrong. I did print it. Please read the transcript of the court papers. Please know also when you state something is full of lies, you should be able to document where the lies are. Is this one blog full of lies or the entire blog? If it is only this one blog that is full of lies, then where is your proof? I linked to the court papers. Please send me evidence and I'll print that too.

Dorothy Tillman sending me into a tizzy. No. But then you don't know me. But then I don't know you either. I mean you didn't even have the guts to sign your name, but my name is prominently displayed on my blog.

Your turn.

Michael H. Brownstein

RAGE AND SCHOOL

2007-04-17T05:43:00.000-07:00

One of my friends called me last night after the killings at Virginia Tech and asked me why this doesn't happen in the inner city schools.

I gave him the wrong answer.

It does happen--one killing at a time.

But why not at the same rate as the one in Virginia or Texas or...?

There is great anger in the inner city--an anger so full of hate and despair it is hard for me to comprehend. Almost every night I find myself calming an adult who has this incredible need to curse someone out. A lot of the time it is over very little.

On the way home I hear this rage and on the way to school I see the broken glass and the broken windows and the broken cars.

When failure becomes the norm, when parents bribing their children to do things they are supposed to do, when the very fabric of our nation is a violent movie or video, when cursing is acceptable and parenting is not, we have reached a crisis.

And I don't have a cure. I don't.

Could the Virginia Tech massacre have been stopped? I don't think so. It wasn't a sane person doing the killing. And how do you know insanity when you see it?

I'm sorry, but too often the only solution I come up against where I teach is the solution of violence.

And too often--like the incident yesterday--it goes way too far and too many people get hurt or killed.

In my world the words "I don't care" and "so" injure me in too many ways. I know my students care and I know they do not mean to be so rude with a so. But they are. And I come down hard on them. As hard as I do when I cancel a field trip because of a fight anywhere around the school (thankfully there has not been a fight in my room) or when a child decides he has to curse his anger out--even when it's over nothing at all.

And I seldom do parent conferences anymore. Or home visits. There is too much pain in this neighborhood and it bleeds through me like a knife wound.

So to answer my friend: I can't explain why a Virginia Tech has not happened in the inner city. I just pray it never does.

And I pray for the parents and I pray for the children and I pray for America.

ISAT INVALIDITY

2007-04-16T05:29:00.000-07:00

The ISAT test is the standardized test for Illinois. It’s the reason I began this blog over a year ago. It comes too soon in the school year—we still have three months to go if you count this one—and many students feel the school year has ended. I thought I would chronicle the events that occurred in my school after testing. I got carried away and I’m still at it.

The ISAT test is over for the 2006-2007 school year. I just thought this item would be of interest.

One question on the ISAT science test went as follows (I’m paraphrasing):

Which list shows the correct order of a food chain?

A. grass, snake, rat, cricket
B. snake, grass, rat, cricket
C. rat, snake, cricket, grass
D. snake, cricket, grass, rat

There is no answer.

One of my students raised his hand. “There is no answer,” he said and showed me.

I’m thinking maybe the comma between grass and snake is a mistake and the choice is really grass snake, rat, cricket.

“What should I do?” he asked.

And I didn’t know how to answer him. The mistake is so gross and so wrong, he had to wonder about the rest of the test.

I did report this wrong answer to the administration of my school. I understand more than a dozen other mistakes were found. Last year my class scored an incredible 97.5% on the science portion of the ISAT in seventh grade.

Could it be because there were so many mistakes on the test they just had to give them more points?

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR POETRY SPONSOR

2007-04-13T06:14:00.000-07:00

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS
http://www.wwwezine.blogspot.com/

Please enjoy this issue and thank you for your continued support.

Sincerey,

Marylin Houle, editor.

A Visit To The Zoo

I nurture the wrong people,
gangrene girls with color scars,
small breasts like the the yellow cusps of dandelion.

I have broken so many fights
the count is beyond fingers,
beyond toes.

We walk the stone paths of the zookery.
Ivy, oat, barley. Great frogs, green shade,
wood ducks, a rock ledge.
water lilies like thick fish, spotted fish,
striped fish turning delicate hoops.

We eat lunch on stone benches jutting out over water,
a breeze ghosting through spiked grass.

Swifts move through the air like Chinese fighting kites
and there by the fallen tree, an egret,
wings stronger than hunger,
wings stronger than selfishness.

My girls do not see the wood duck, the swift.
They do not see the fish, the large frog.
My girls complain about the walking,
this was a trip to the zoo,
we came to see animals

not Lake Michigan,
not the break wall,
not a rumble of rock blocking waves,
the water green gray blue,
not shells, not algae,
not sand thick with alewives.

I nurture caged girls,
meat-eating girls,
and when the rock dove lands by thrown bread,

I nurture girls who glory in the herring gull's attack,
a rock dove retreating quickly,
wild wings sparking like fields of lasers.

Michael H. Brownstein

AND STILL MORE POETRY

2007-04-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

nature's love affair with my daughter

She found the forest to be just the right fragrance, the leaves just the right green, the softness of seed, a tree frog, the quicksilver of fox fur and light.

Someone said once my daughter could hear the breath of birds, the heartbeat of deer, the hushed pedaling of wolves across the thin grass and tangled vines.

I never asked her if this was true. Instead I let her teach the children about the clouds, the blue twilight of day, the hushed whisper of one reed leaning into another.

And I would walk with her, her long hair thick and black, wonderful and wavy; her dimpled smile the perfect moon; her voice the wind and earth and everything inbetween,

Words: Michael H. Brownstein

AND MORE POETRY

2007-04-13T06:06:00.000-07:00

The Beast and the Girl

He had the longest hair and a fist the size of two hands,

She was copper smooth with the brightest smile.

You can never tell with love. A simple smell. Eye contact across a room. The taste of rum and coke falling over a glass of ice. The sudden change in tempo. The way a voice can carry.

He worked in the coal mines. Thick dust and sweaty. Fingernails old with the darknesss of underground labor.

She worked uptown as a model.

They met and that was that. A party at the Hyatt, Christmastime, the line of men asking her to dance too long for him to even try, and he watched and waited and he heard her say no over and over. He thought not to try, but try he did, and she said, “Yes,” surprising him.

Their first dance was five songs long. He did not know how to listen to music and she found his movements charming. He was soon red and out of breath. This too she found amusing.

“We’ve danced long enough,” she said.

“The song isn’t over,” he answered.

And she pulled him off the dance floor, explained about the music and the five songs and that was the beginning.

Words: Michael H. Brownstein

Moon Pulse

His fingers hold the weight of the moon and all of its fullness, all of the madness in the world, every counter to sanity every thirty days,

Blood rising through the werewolf, the wolfman, the dragon tamer, the killer of lizards, the lovers of osmosis.

Yet he cannot let go. Moonlight knows nothing of the sun’s heat, nothing of a snow burn, nothing of the scars binding one enemy to another.

But he can hear its frantic heartbeat faster, faster, faster until--

Dawn wakes the blue sky with a whisper and the full moon slips away into the shadows.

Words: Michael H. Brownstein
Music and video: Two Feathers aka Korey Brownstein

SOMETIMES IT'S BEST TO JUST BE A POET

2007-04-13T05:56:00.000-07:00

Opera of the Wood

The silence of the forest is not the silence of the empty classroom, the teacher bent over his desk grading papers, a book open to page 202, a soft breeze blowing through a crack in the window. It is not the city at 3 AM, a residential street, everyone asleep, the cat leaning into the grass to nap. The forest is the love song of the loon, the call of the killdeer, an easy sigh through the leaves, the first fish surprised by a development of legs pushing itself out of the water into the tall grass where the crickets tell the temperature and the grasshoppers charm each other. The opera of the trees is just that grand, the wind that perfect, the harmony of the birds exactly right.

Words: Michael H. Brownstein

Bolivian Love Song

Voices fill the air. Somewhere a man has given himself to his god and stands at the bridge of a cliff looking over the white nipples of water cresting over sand and stone. He is a serious man given over to laughter and happiness as all serious men are. He understands the value of self, the need to comprehend the color of clouds and light reflected onto the sea, the way the sun ducks in and out like a goldfish among shells.

The man can stand still and listen a long time. He can taste the music. He can feel it bite his skin, smooth his hair, move through his legs.

He has known love and he lingers over it, smiles, laughs loud enough to disturb the herring gulls near his feet, and when he turns away, the wind tugs at his shirt, grass sweeps across his feet, and a single leaf crowns his head.
Have you ever heard an angel sigh? He has, but he cannot find the words to describe how it sounds.

Words: Michael H. Brownstein

Rush Hour Crawl

Even with the air conditioning on full blast and the radio humming along,
Even with the slanders of work.
Even with the haze from the factories near the highway.
Even with a settting sun and a lack of trees.
Even with a creek of cars and every dam in the exact wrong place.
Even with a silence when you turn, finally, off the road and enter the side streeets to your house.
Even with the rain.

Words: Michael H. Brownstein

A GREAT DAY TO BE A TEACHER

2007-04-10T05:30:00.000-07:00

The day after spring vacation and there was a bit of the old confusion, but my class was kick butt strong.

During science my seventh graders and I began to explore the standard deviation equation and they were on top of it. I gave them a number of repetitions, we worked out each variable, they worked by themselves and together cooperatively, and a lesson I thought would be troublesome and last for more than an hour took us thirty minutes and almost everyone had it down.

The best part: two students who are afraid to participate because they do not want others to think they are slow gave me the right answers aloud over and over—and I didn’t even have to call on them.

They volunteered it.

OK. OK. I didn’t do the entire equation. I dissected it and taught the students variable by variable. When they had this down, I introduced them to the concepts inside of the square root sign.

They understood data, mean, and the summation of the problem. Wednesday we go for broke.

Today I teach the other class the same subject and I’m rip roaring ready to go.

And did I tell you there were no problems whatsoever outside on duty before school and after. Only one student was sent to my room for discipline and he was fine. Everything smooth sailing and easy going times.

I hope everyone reading this has an excellent day out there, too.

A NEW GRANT AND WHY IT FAILED

2007-04-09T05:43:00.000-07:00

Spring vacation ended too soon as usual. Thought it might be of interest to learn why a grant does not get funded. Please join with me as we learn from my mistakes.

When my principal asked me to write this grant, I knew she did not do all of her research. The narrative was not the problem (except in one important place). Other things were. I have marked the problems with the grant in boldface.

Did your school attend a REAL Informational Session?

Yes, the principal represented the school. In order to get the grant, the funder wanted more representation than one individual.

Have you held a preliminary vote with your staff on whether to implement the REAL Program and the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP)?

The administration has held informal conversations with a number of the professional staff. The feedback has been very positive, but, no, we did not hold a formal vote. The funder required a vote, though they did make a few exceptions.

What percentage of staff in your school voted to proceed based on this preliminary vote?

We did not take a preliminary vote. Because there was no vote taken, we lost major points.

Please explain why REAL and the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) will fit into the school’s current strategy for improving student outcomes.

The culture of the Mollison Elementary School is very important to the learning and social environment of the school. Both of these programs will bring increased cohesion to our professional staff and added conversation thereby implementing more positive change agent programming into our school. Teaching is not a job, though many see it just that way. Teaching is a passion, and almost every teacher at Mollison is passionate about teaching. With the additional resources and incentives REAL and TAP will bring to the school, we will be able to more fully implement our vision and mission statements—Mollison, a community of lifetime learners.

Furthermore, this program will offer the professional staff more opportunities for professional development, cognitive engaging activities and additional time to observe through successful modeling a variety of positive social and academic learning strategies. In addition, the school will be able to pilot—when Mollison receives this grant—a number of character education projects due to the fact that the teachers will be empowered to raise their own personal professional bar. Research shows whenever one segment of a community explodes in a positive direction (in this case the professional staff through new learning, professional development, etc.), other segments of that community (students, parents and guardians, community members, other stakeholders, etc.) also become enthusiastic advocates thereby transforming learning and social behavior into an even higher realm of excellence.

Which aspect or element(s) of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) will be most challenging for the school?

Time constraints are always the most challenging issue in a successful school. Presently we meet in grade level meetings once a week before school. The Least Restricted Environment committee is developing plans for full inclusion. This would mean more meeting time. (The general education teacher would be mandated to meet with the special needs staff on a weekly basis and in one on one consultation throughout the week.) This paragraph makes it sound as if the school rejects extra meeting time. Key words not to use next time: This would mean more meeting time. The general education teachers would be mandated (in this case mandated has negative connotations)with the special education staff.

A second issue is the placement of chronic discipline problem students. Once again, plans are in development to work with these individual students on a number of levels—with assistance from their family and from professional staff within the Mollison greater learning community. We are in the planning phase to discover why one teacher’s discipline problem is another teacher’s prize student. Once again time constraints may impede this process because of limited time during the course of the school day for teachers to meet to discuss students who are chronic discipline problems.

The third problem we presently have is time for teachers to access our excellent professional library. This problem, though, will be solved through the use of a teacher aide who can staff the resource classroom after school from 2:45 to 3:30 giving professional staff adequate time to browse and take out resources for their classrooms

_____________________________________________________________

SPRING VACATION IS ALMOST OVER

2007-04-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

And time is starting to drag.

Did I just write that?

And just when you want to get back to work you remember the school on Chicago's far Southside where you had to go into the girl's bathroom before you let any of your girls use it to make sure no man was hiding inside.

You remember crossing the street to ask the teenagers to stop putting their hands in one of your student's pants.

You remember the teacher next door who lost it and started throwing furniture out of the second floor window.

You remember the teacher who slammed a child's face against a desk so hard, the boy's nose broke.

You remember parents coming to get their children early because of rumors of a major gang fight.

You remember that fight.

You remember trying to get your students away from that fight.

You remember.

Hey, it's Thursday. Four more days before school starts up again.

I think I'll take a nap,

SPRING VACATION

2007-04-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

Springtime

with apologies to George Gershwin

Springtime
And the living is easy
Schools are quiet
Treea are budding
Your teacher's sleeping
Your principal's watching a movie
I said hush little child
Dont you sigh

One of these days
You're going to jump up reading
Then you'll spread your arms
And take on the sky
But til that day
Nothings going to harm you
Your teacher's standing by.

Oh, wait, it's just spring vacation.But it’s only for a week. Oh, if it could only be summer—

And the good news: Six substitute teachers on Friday and not one problem at all. Oh, someone pulled the fire alarm on the first floor and then someone did the same thing on the second floor—but that was the only problem—and at dismissal only one parent went off—OK, so there were problems, but my day ran as smooth as melting ice on a hockey rink.

No discipline problems and great discussions.

Now spring vacation starts.

And guess what? I already miss my students.

Crazy.

ANOTHER GOOD DAY AND THEN...ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE

2007-03-29T15:48:00.000-07:00

We did our poetry projects today by groups—and it went fairly well (and the same child from yesterday’s blog who is one of the worst discipline problems in the school actually did the entire project for his group).

Book reports came in, poetry research went out (students checked out over twenty books from my personal library and if I don’t get them back, yayyyy!!! cause I would love to have more books in the homes of my students), and the children wrote really nice critiques at the completion of our novel study, LOVE THAT DOG. (Oh, and if you read this blog, you can donate books to my library and to my student-take-home-and-never-bring-back library by emailing me first with the comment button so I can make arrangements for the books to be delivered. Thanks ahead for your time.)

So the day went well.

Then I went outside for my usual after school duty and everything was going oh, so well, when I started seeing students congregating towards the lawn of the abandoned church’s yard.

So I went there, too.

And just in time.

I grabbed one sixth grade boy and moved him quickly out of the way and then went after the girl who was bleeding very badly from her nose and mouth. I handed her to another adult—oh, they came running when they saw me in the middle of everything—and I gave the boy to one of the security guards.

But it wasn’t over. The girl’s brother went ballistic—he wanted to hurt the boy who punched his sister in the face—and it took me and another security guard everything we had to calm him down.

And it gets better.

The administration delegated me to walk the boy home (truthfully, they gave me a choice in the matter) because the brother/sister team threatened to kill the fighting boy. I didn’t know they were next door neighbors, but I walked the three blocks past the drug dealers and the gang bangers and I got him home safely and found out they were neighbors when they threatened to kill him by screaming threats through the broken screen on their window.

I talked to his father and let him know what happened and told him to keep an eye on his son. Maybe he shouldn’t even let him go outside.

Then I went next door and found that the sister/brother team was home alone, but I did get to talk to their mother over the phone and she promised me she would keep them inside even though she was at work.
Both adults promised they would have a cordial meeting later that afternoon and solve the problem peacefully.

I hope so.

It was time for me to go home.

GOOD NEWS AND GOOD THINGS

2007-03-29T05:36:00.001-07:00

During science today, everyone in both of my classes—well, not everyone (one students earned an 80%)—earned a hundred percent on their anatomy science quiz. I gave a bonus question and one of the boys—one of the biggest discipline problems in the school—knew the answer and wrote it down so well, I just had to let him tell the class the answer.

Then I said, Make sure you thank him in your answer.

I didn’t know this boy could smile.

First, a girl who has wanted to fight him for a number of days now, pushed him rudely as she entered the classroom and he said, Excuse me, and he went to his seat and ignored her.

Then he went into the computer lab for our poetry project and found numerous commentaries on the poem he is doing for his poetry study.

In the classroom, he handed in his first finished essay of the entire school year.

I already told you about his bonus answer excellence.

So I bragged about him to the class and to his homeroom teacher and do you know what he did?

On the way to art class, he saw a student giving a teacher a hard time. He stepped out of line and said, I’ve been there. Let me help you out. AND THEN HE HELPED OUT. He took the screaming student back to the correct classroom.

And that’s how my day went. One good thing after another.

How cool is that?

COW HEARTS AND SHEEP TAILS

2007-03-27T05:12:00.000-07:00

We’re reading LOVE THAT DOG as part of our poetry unit. It went well—even the reading of complicated poems later on. Today we’re going to add a technology section to the poetry—if I can get into the computer lab. (It stays locked.)

In the afternoon we studied the heart of a cow and the tail of a sheep. A very smelly unit. I purchased both the cow heart and the sheep tail at my neighborhood grocery store for a grand total of $2.14. Together we opened up the heart and the tail and made a study of what we saw.

After the oohs and ahhs and the screams from the squeamish boys and one squeamish girl, everything went really well.

After a period of after school fights, isn’t it a pleasure to have a perfect day where everything goes exactly the way it was planned?

Do people actually eat this stuff? (Yes.) Is our heart really this dark? You’re right, (gosh, a teacher being right!) there is a lot of blood on this thing. (It is a heart.) Check out the fat on this thing. Is this cholesterol?

What stinks? This tail is really gross. (This from three boys.) Why does it feel so slimy?
Where is the wool? Why is it so thick? Check out this bone. It this cartilage?

Seventy degrees outside in Chicago in March—a sunshiny day—and we enjoyed ourselves.

THE ISAT IS OVER AND TOO MUCH IS ALREADY HAPPENING

2007-03-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

The ISAT test ended on Friday. That’s the day we held our make up tests. I’ve been writing incidents in second person, but I know those of you who read this—and I’m not sure anyone does—know the second person narrator was me. I don’t think I really liked second person that much so I’m going to go back to first.

It’s been a year now since I started this blog and I don’t know how many people read it. I guess here’s where I ask for feedback. You can use the comment button and I’ll definitely read it. (I even published the strange rant from a Dorothy Tillman supporter, though I’m fairly positive she will not win in the run off even if Obama endorsed her—and that can be a very powerful reason for me to reconsider how I feel about his candidacy.)

Anyway it’s Friday after school and it’s dismissal time and everything is going smoothly until a group of students congregate near the corner and I hear them so I walk up to them. There’s a security guard with me and I’m not even the least bit concerned.

“We’ll fight across the street. It’s out of bounds for the school. Nobody can do anything to us,” one of the students who wants to fight says.

“They’re getting ready to fight,” I tell the security guard and she nods her head and tells me not to worry. They’re taking it across the street. It’s not our problem anymore.

Twenty students cross the street with one of the boys, giving him support, egging him on. His opponent also has his fair share of supporters. They, too, are talking loud, offering help, acting big and bad.

I, of course, cross the street with them.

The bigger boy removes his coat. “I’m ready,” he says and then he sees me. “Why are you here?”

“I want to see the fight.”

“But you can’t suspend us. We’re off the school’s property.”

“No,” I answer. “Wherever I stand, the school’s boundary goes all around me.”

“We’ll fight someplace else then.”

So I follow them. Of course, by this time you know I’m following them by myself. We go down the street, we go down an alley, and we go by the park.

“You know,” I say, “I’m still not understanding why you need to fight?”

“He got me suspended.”

So I tell him we’ll just go back to the school to see about it and with those few words the fight is over. Oh, a squad car with siren blazing nears me after we leave the alley. Students are yelling police, police, police. Students are running. I just tell the officer to take a drive through the alley and everything should be OK.

The boy did not get out of his suspension. Seems he did so many things that day and was sent to the office so many times there was no way around it. Isn't it curious how the last thing you think you did not do is the only reason why some kind of bad consequence happens to you?

As for the other security guard and other men outside during dismissal? You have to let us know, they said. We didn’t know what was going on until the police showed up.

I thought the first security guard might have told somebody. Guess not.

Happy birthday to this blog even if I’m about a week late.

ABORTION

2007-03-23T05:19:00.000-07:00

Some days it is impossible to be a teacher. The ISAT testing ended for my school on Thursday—but Wednesday a few of the students, well, went too far—

It’s dismissal time and the students are beginning there trek homeward or to the bus, but you’ve taught so long, you can smell it—that extra smell that tells you, yes, something’s brewing and you had better stay alert—and then—

It happens, just as you hoped it would not. A crowd is running to the action and you’re the only adult out there—not counting parents picking up their children. So you run too, and you get there just as three girls burst from the wall of onlookers with one very irate boy chasing after them. The girls turn in the middle of the street. This is funny to two of them. They are giggles and small shakes. The third girl knows they went too far. This boy is angry and his face is contorted and his mouth is full of ugly words and dangerous threats.

You grab at him, but he’s too fast, and he hits the third girl twice—once in the face and once in the chest. Then you get between them. You push her back—and you know she’s probably stronger than you. You find yourself holding onto him with all of your strength. It’s too hard. You’re by yourself.

Somehow you manage to contain the fight. Somehow you manage to get the boy against the fence in front of the school. Somehow you are able to move everything off the street. Security comes—finally—and helps by removing the girl who breaks loose again.

Some other students are helping you restrain the boy—and he’s strong and he wants to break out and he wants to do more. A hit to the face and chest is not enough. No.

Other adults from the school come running and you ease up just a bit—and then it happens. You’re still restraining him when the others helping you hold him begin to attack him—two boys and three girls: a hard punch to the face, a flurry of punches to the body, hard kicks into his legs.

It never ends.

You’ve had enough.

And then the next day comes and the ISAT ends and you’ve been writing this blog for a year now (I believe this might be its anniversary) and you want to write positive things, but you’re outside again and a pregnant girl gets out of the car with her friend and her mother in order to pick up the daughter who goes to my school and suddenly there it is again—the loud yelps of violence—but you’re not alone this time. You have all of the security with you.

You rush the scene and hold the same girl back from yesterday. You try to calm her. She is a curse word, suddenly, not even human anymore. Just a curse word like a wild river spewing from her mouth. You don’t know how it began and you don’t care. Not this moment.

You rush up to the mother when the other girl is restrained and tell her, Please, take her pregnant daughter into the school.

No, the mother yells at you. We’re going to finish this. She practically pushes her daughter onto the sidewalk.

There’s nothing else you can think to do but help to restrain the other girl—big and strong, but all of the time you’re thinking, Your daughter’s pregnant and skinny and sickly, too. If she fights, she will lose and she will lose badly. If you wanted her to have an abortion, why didn’t you just set it up in the clinic? Why would you want her to lose the baby right here, right now, on the street?

When calm is restored, it comes out. The pregnant girl—a student who does not even go to the school (with coaxing from her mother)—and her friend—came to start this fight. No motive. Nothing.

So you ask yourself again: If you wanted your fifteen year old daughter to have an abortion, why didn’t you just do it the right way? Was it an issue of money? Was it a moral dilemma that this fight would resolve?

Why would any grown mother send her pregnant daughter out into a fight she knew her daughter could not possibly win?

And when do fighters ever really win?

By the way, there’s a postscript to this blog, the boy is now officially transferred to my room. Effective noon, Thursday. And in the playground when we are offered a chance for recess this is what I overhear: Yeah, he tells the students around him, I beat the mess out of them. I got in so many licks—and then he looks my way and he knows he’s making this up and he turns and runs to play basketball as if nothing had ever happened.

A New Grant--After School Programs--Part 2

2007-03-22T05:26:00.000-07:00

4.) What are the projected outcomes of the ASAS program?

We will evaluate the program with the following data:

A one percent increase in daily attendance; a fifty percent drop in negative referrals to the office from students participating in the program; a ten percent gain in standardized testing in science, math and reading; and individual student portfolio and performance tests. All of these evaluations will be done by the facilitator of the program with assistance from the administration.

Students will also demonstrate their skills through an annual exhibit and show of artwork, poetry and creative writing, dance, music and technology. Other items will also be showcased: demonstrations in science and math (including algebra) and an awards ceremony honoring the students who volunteered for tutoring, homework assistance and community service.

5.) Outline how you plan to use your $1500 Equipment and Supply Stipend you will receive in addition to your award amount.

We will divide the money into three parts—one thirds for sports and recreation, one third for material for the arts and crafts program and one third for materials for the science and algebra programs.

In this way, we will be able to supply our students with the needed supplies for a successful arts and crafts program. We will be able to add additional resources to our sports and recreational programs. Lastly, students in the math, science and algebra sections of the program will have the needed supplies to accomplish hands-on activities and science experiments.

6.) Describe your service learning program and how the project will serve the needs of the students and the community.

Students will be active participants in the tutoring and homework assistance components of the project. We will have a leadership/mentoring training for interested students. These same students will also tutor students within their peer group and/or students in other classrooms. Furthermore, they will act as mentors and character education leaders to resolve problems through a conflict resolution program developed by the professional staff of ______ through an in-kind grant from Channing-Bete.

In addition, the students of the All Star program will participate in two or more field trips to nursing homes, anti-littering campaigns, and gardening.

All of these activities link to academic and learning goals. (Gardening, for example, links to science.) The students will decide which activities they want to participate in and work together to plan them. Across age tutoring and mentoring will benefit the entire ________ educational community. All students will be active in the community learning service component of the program.

7.) An end of the year celebration will encompass all of the successes of the _______ After-School All Star program. In addition, students will evaluate with a reflective essay how they felt about the project and fill out an evaluation.

8.) Budget--MATERIALS

equipment for sports activities—softballs, 600
basketballs, soccer balls, nets, goals,
field hockey equipment

academics—library for program for reading/ 600
peer tutoring/cross the grade assistance

art supplies (for art class) 150

science equipment (for the science club) 150

total: 1500

9.) Budget—personnel

five teachers at $30 per hour 7000
five teacher assistants at $30 an hour 7000
administrative expenses 1000

total: 15000

STUDENTS IN DENIAL

2007-03-20T05:36:00.000-07:00

In the culture of poverty, words have a lasting value. Oftentimes, a great value. With words, you can show off, be tough, show how big and bad you are.

Interestingly enough, a few of my students have begun to do just that very thing. They’re using words, intonation of voice and other verbal theatrics and choreography to show just how big and bad they are.

Unfortunately, a few of them are classroom leaders. You know the kind. The leaders who head the class into the realm of negativity.

No problem, though.

“I’m not doing any work and you can’t make me,” seems to be an anthem I’m hearing from a few teachers more and more.

But here’s the “cool” part. These students are talking the stuff, but they’re not following it up with their actions.

Yesterday we did the ISAT test for math. My class takes the test after the other seventh grade room. We went to the student lunchroom and read poetry. They wanted to go to the gym. A few of them made their views clear—with words.

Gym or not, all of the I’m-not-doing-any-work-and-you-can’t-make-me noise was just that. Every student did all of their work. The one’s who professed to be the loudest and angriest did the best.

Interesting.

Use words to get points with your peers and then use actions to get points with your teacher.

I guess hypocrisy is now being taught at a very early age.

And that’s my vocabulary word for the day: hypocrisy.

Actions speak louder than words—middle class value. Words speak louder than actions—hypocrisy.

How do you like them apples?

A New Grant--After School Programs

2007-03-19T05:41:00.000-07:00

We're starting our second week of the ISAT. So far so good.

Here's a grant for those of you who want to start after school programs. Questions 1-3. I'll post the rest later this week.

1.) Please provide a brief overview of your After-School All-Stars program.

______’s after-school program will include a variety of elements including dance, music, arts and crafts, creative writing, sports, recreational board games, a computer lab, a math and science club, an algebra workshop, a homework club, a tutorial program—peer tutoring and small group tutoring, and a community service/student mentoring/character education leadership component. (Research shows we too often remediate at risk learners rather than enrich them. The leadership training component of the All Stars—tutoring, community service and mentoring—will offer at risk learners positive leadership practice.)

Classes will meet for two hours two days a week. Students will sign up for two classes per week. The first thirty minutes of each class will be utilized for peer tutoring, small group tutoring and/or homework assistance. The students will then begin their activity classes.

2.) How will students not served by the SES be included in the program?

All students in the program will be served in the academics portion of the program. Tutoring and homework assistance will be offered for the first thirty minutes of each two hour session. (More time can be supplied as needed.) In addition, students can select academic programs such as the math and science club, the algebra workshop, creative writing, the computer lab and the homework club.

3.) How does this program support your regular day?

Attendance is a priority goal of _______’s. Research has demonstrated again and again if students have engaging activities to participate in, they will attend school so they can participate in these programs. For example, if a student signs up for arts and crafts and creative writing, they will attend school in order to participate in the after-school activities.

Because the After-School All Stars has a variety of activities meeting the cognitive and learning needs of all of the students, the program also allows students to discover new ways of learning, integrate new strategies for cognitive and intellectual development into their vitae of educational resources and develop new methodologies to become better students. The focus of ______ is to create a community of lifelong; learners. All of the _______ programs aim to make this statement true.

Lastly, the _______ scores on standardized testing remains at the second to the bottom quartile. With additional supports, resources, and review, the students will be able to negotiate the path of successful academia thereby gaining more confidence in their academic ability. With this rise of self-esteem, students will show positive gains on standardized tests. After all, the more one practices a skill, the better they are able to succeed at that skill.

ISAT DAY 3 AND OTHER THINGS INCLUDING WHY TEACHERS ARE STRONG

2007-03-15T05:25:00.000-07:00

We’re on day three of the ISAT standardized tests. Yesterday we did the extended response and I felt fairly good about how well my class is doing so far. The test seems quite easy and the writing prompt was not difficult at all.

Nonetheless, there are still issues in the building. Student attitudes that bubble over and cause chaos, angry teachers, and other little things.

So you’re standing at the south exit of the school because you heard through the rumor mill there was going to be a fight and sure enough, the fighters come out because they really want to fight. But first they have to gain some courage and have some spectators—cause there’s never a need to fight when you’re not truly evil unless you have an audience.

You break it up when it’s obvious the crowd is filling in to make sure there is a fight. You step in—because you are the only one pout there at this door (even though two security personnel and three teacher aides are outside too)—and you put an end to it.

Or you think you ended it.

The next thing you know one of the boys is peeling off his uniform shirt and his sport’s jersey—it’s expensive, you know (the sport’s jersey, I mean)—and he’s half naked. There’s going to be some kind of problem here so you step in again and you restrain him, and it’s not easy because you’re a teacher, not an athlete, and it becomes even harder when another boy steps up to bat and tries to get you to take your hands off the boy you are restraining.

Then one security man comes in and it’s not too long after that that the entire affair is put to rest. It’s just that you can’t forgive the boy who put his hands on you to try to stop the fight. But his mother’s picking him up right now. A hundred-fifty yards away. He’s getting in the car. You can do this. You’re a teacher. And you run to the car and you’re not even out of breath and the mother looks at her son and you can tell she is no longer just angry—she’s past anger.

One hundred-fifty yards. Not bad. That’s why teachers are strong.

My class—integrating mathematics with science—ended yesterday. I did my final presentation. Final grade: 595 points out of 600, but who’s bragging.

ISAT TESTS BEGIN AND HERE'S ANOTHER GRANT

2007-03-14T07:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a grant I wrote for another teacher. It received funding from the Chicago Foundation for Education.

Rational:

Increase math literacy and proficiency through the utilization of literature in my classroom.

Students Impact:

Based on Learning First Standardized Test data, all of my students scored in the first and second quartiles, well below the third or meets quartile needed to meet the requirements for mathematics at their grade level. With the assistance of skilled based workbooks, texts and other trade books, I have discovered remediation and review only carries the class so far. My project will enrich their mathematical skills through the use of literature. Many of my students are frightened by math and because of their fears, they are often overwhelmed by the various concepts and ideas mathematics presents to them. Utilizing a library of literature to teach them math (and I will be the classroom coach—not the classroom teacher—during this activity), will give them another strategy to understand mathematics. Furthermore, literature will invite my classroom to explore the world of mathematics through a different worldview—literature as a mathematical model.

Students will read various books in small grouped literature circles analyzing the mathematical content through the use of exposition, characterization, plot, etc. (For example, Shel Silverstein has a number of poems with math themes that are both engaging and full of mathematical concepts.) My students will then create their own versions of the literature to further reinforce what they have learned. In addition, their completed books will be self published by the classroom and displayed prominently in the classroom library for other students to check out and read. Students will also participate in read-alouds to both their peers and to students in the primary grades. Finally students will take the reading circle books and their own self published books home to share with family and family friends.

All of these activities will increase my students’ fluency; comprehension; word knowledge; number sense; measurement skills; and give them a comprehensive understanding of algebraic concepts, geometry, data analysis, statistics and probability.

I will evaluate the success of this project utilizing the following data: a ten percent increase in math and reading skills in the second and third Reading First test; an increase of ten percent in both math and reading on the Illinois standardized test, the ISAT; and a decrease by fifty percent negative referrals to the office. I also expect a hundred percent increase in library participation and check out from our classroom library.

Standards:

(I asked the teacher to paste the reading standards here)

Budget:

Classroom library of mathematics through literature:$400
Suppliers:

Scholastic
BookSource
Barnes and Nobles

Book making materials:$100
Supplier:

Lakeshore Learning

Total:$500

If this grant is funded, additional resources include assistance from SouthStreet Journal, a local newspaper, and Student Treasures Publishing, a corporation that has committed to publishing one hardback book for each participating child’s original work.

Thunderstorm Lesson for my Classes

2007-03-12T06:48:00.000-07:00

I'm back in school--getting my science endorsement--and this is one of the things I thought I read about (and so I tried it with my classes) when our professor asked us to do some reading:

A letter to the professor:

We didn’t cover this in class, but I missed the first meeting and I thought we needed to read a lot of the stuff left on the eboard. One of them was computing how far away the storm was. So the next day—and sometimes nature is on our side (a rare thing for teachers where the Peter Principle rules) we watched for a flash of lightning and then timed how long before we heard the thunder. (Guess I jinxed us, cause after that winter really came on strong.)

So if the speed of sound is given at 331.4 meters per second, we can figure out how far away the storm is. I told them a few examples from my life when I beat the rain by calculating the distance. Then we did some problems and nature helped out a few times. Thank you, nature.

You’re walking home in your best Sunday clothes when suddenly it starts to get seriously cloudy and then you see the first flash of lightning. You count how long it takes for the thunder: one Mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi four Mississippi. Then you start to run. Why?

We discussed the answer first: I multiplied four by the speed of sound and I got the distance. Or: I added the distance the speed of sound travels in four seconds and then I knew when the storm would hit. Or: I’m lost. Or: How did you get four? Or: We were talking about something else. Can you go over it again?

Three examples later, the entire class could solve the problem.

So I made it harder. I brought in the fact that the speed of sound travels at a different rate of speed depending on the temperature.

And we did the entire process again. And this time they paid attention. For the most part.

I'M BACK IN SCHOOL

2007-03-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

For the last so many weeks now I've been taking a course on the integration of math with science. I didn't want to take the course. I've been teaching for a long, long time and it's not that I don't like learning anymore--it's just that I want to be able to pick what I learn.

Anyway, I wrote this grant and my school got funded for it so the next thing I know, I'm part of the grant (and I never meant that to happen). So I'm in Loyola University on Chicago’s northside taking a class.

Part of the class is to teach me methods I can use with my own students. So I thought I'd write this blog about the process. I thought at first I’d just bring a few of my students to the class and let them show the class what I learned, but the logistics were just too great. (Taking students from 43rd twenty miles north, feeding them, having them sit in the class—though I’m sure the students I selected would be great sitters—and then having to drive all the way back to their homes seemed to be an issue. Also: the Dan Ryan is under construction again—you know, Chicago’s other season.)

Then I thought I’d create a power point, but that didn’t work out because I have no idea how to create a power point. (I’m a firm believer everyone over fifty should be allowed to pass when they are asked to do something with modern technology.)

So in the end I just had all of my classes do all of the work I did in class. All of my students. I want you to understand this. Every one of them.

WHY TEACHERS ARE STRONG

2007-03-12T05:30:00.000-07:00

You hear the commotion in the sixth grade classroom five doors from your room. Your class is hard at work dissecting a poem for its inner meaning, but the noise is too sudden and way too loud.

You run to the room of the sixty-five year old woman sixth grade teacher. She has one of her girls backed up in the corner. The girl is strong and trying to break loose, but the teacher is stronger. Teaching in the inner city makes you strong.

You move to the teacher and past her and to the girl and you hug her as hard as you can. She is a skinny girl, tall and awkward, and she is crying angry tears and she is very mad. You hug her harder and her hands sail into the air uselessly. They do not know what to do.

In the hall you offer her a place in your classroom. This is what you do. You always take in the troubled youngsters. You don’t let go. You hold her wrist now, you turn her towards you, and you offer again.

She wants to finish what someone else has started. You cannot allow this to happen. The sixty-five year old sixth grade woman teacher is not even out of breath, but you, younger, are feeling the first beads of sweat.

Soon others are on the scene and they take the girl from you. She is no longer crying. She is just angry now, full of madness and wants to curse, but holds her words still, in her mouth, like the pit of a peach. This is OK. You flex you’re arms and shake off the strain of your muscles. Teaching makes you strong.

WE HAVE A CLOCK

2007-03-09T05:38:00.000-08:00

The ISAT is next week and guess what?

Yep, you guessed it, we have a clock. (The title of this blog didn't give that away, did it?)

You need a clock for testing, the principal said, and the engineer said, get a clock for Brownstein's room.

I didn't even know we had a clock until one of my students told the class we have a new clock.

Now we just need a battery to make it work.

THE WEEK BEFORE ISAT

2007-03-08T06:33:00.000-08:00

With extreme apologies to Clement C. Moore and his poem, "The Night Before Christmas"

‘Twas the week before ISAT
And all through the school
Not a student was noisy,
I guess that’s the rule.

The children were quiet working at their desks
With visions of pencils, paper and tests.
Everywhere teachers looked unconcerned;
Even the class clown did not use her jests.

When out in the playground there arose such a clatter
Everyone looked outside to see what was the matter.
Away to the playground a few of us ran
And there we discovered the test in a tatter.

Our scores did go up I know this to be true
The newspapers said so so it has to be true.
We no longer take the IOWA, you know,
Where we could not be proctors for our classroom too.

The ISAT’s no IOWA. We stay in our rooms,
We walk the long aisles and watch our student’s test,
We know that we belong here
Cause we can see them giving their best.

And the test is so different—
We have ten minutes longer,
More pictures and an answer sheet simpler,
All of us feel stronger.

So listen, students, before you take the ISAT test,
Your teacher will be proctors in the room with you
There’s no reason to lose your head.
Our scores have gone up—the paper says this is true.

CASIMIR PULASKI DAY AND WHY IT'S A MEANINGLESS HOLIDAY

2007-03-04T07:50:00.000-08:00

So Monday is Casimir Pulaski Day, the day all of the Chicago schools get to take the day off because of some guy named Pulaski who never stepped on Illinois soil and died in his second battle during the Revolutionary War (after losing his first one).

Some people want to call him the Father of the Modern Day Calvary, so I guess Hannibal is the Father of the Modern Elephant Brigade. (Both equally silly.)

Men have been using horses forever in battle. Don’t give more to a man than he deserves. A deserter in Prussia, a man with a death sentence over his head from another European country, a man forced into exile, he came here to rectify everything and lived long enough only to—well, to get a street named after himself in Chicago (Is it named after him? We do have more Poles living here than anywhere else except for Warsaw.)

Let’s cut to the bone. When Governor Thompson a few years back was in a tight race for governor, he decided if he had the Polish vote, he would win the election. What better way to do it than to have a holiday honoring a Pole—Casimir Pulaski —for his work during the Revolutionary War?

Think about this for a moment. George Washington, the founder of our country, no longer has a holiday. (It’s President’s Day now.) So why should a has been have a holiday named after him?

Two weeks before the Illinois ISAT testing program, we’re getting a day off to celebrate a man who—who—who—I don’t know what to say.

But people tell me it’s a day off. Be grateful.

Sorry, I believe that even Martin Luther King, Jr. would want us in school learning about how one individual can make a difference rather than getting a day off. King deserves a day. So does Washington and he doesn’t get one. So why would we ever think to give one to Pulaski?

Who?

PS. Thompson got almost the entire Polish vote and won the election.

A CHRONOLOGY OF A WEEK

2007-03-02T05:15:00.000-08:00

Going backwards: Thursday started off rough—I would not let one of my classrooms go to gym until they finished their assignment—but once the class settled down everyone but two students received a perfect score. When the incredible book fight happened at the end of the day—you know someone yells food fight and all hell breaks loose, but this time someone yelled book fight and hell could not compare—I was in the office, told to run upstairs and handle it, and three other teachers came to help me out. So it stopped immediately. The good news is my class was on a break with another teacher and everyone stayed in their seat and continued doing their work. No one jumped up and ran to the door to see what all of the excitement was about. Hurrah!

Thursday: Over forty students, eight assignments, three-hundred-five perfect papers.

Wednesday: The African-American assembly. Three of my students performed in the ballet sponsored by the Joffrey Ballet Company here in Chicago. (Just a moment to brag on myself: I wrote the grant that got the ballet here in the first place.) During the eighth grade portion, two of my students were asked to go on stage to dance—and they were sensational. When it was our turn, one of my students did an excellent recitation of a speech by Sojourner Truth while the boys put together their African drum ensemble. (Yep, I wrote the grant that purchased the authentic African drums.) They did three original beats and they, too, were fantastic.

Tuesday: A great field trip. You can read about it by pressing this link.

Monday: That was a long time ago. Can’t remember.

Other highlights:

When the misbehaving children were put in my classroom this week, they behaved.

Students began—and this happened at least five times—to stop conflicts before they got started.

One of the worst sixth graders—who is now a seventh grader and in my room—received major accolades for improvement in everything. (And I got the credit for it. How silly is that.)

Until next time. Thanks for reading.

THE FOOTBALL FIELD TRIP

2007-02-28T05:35:00.000-08:00

After I spent too much time collecting field trip slips, after I worked out problems with a few teachers who have been sick and came to school the day of the trip, after the confusion of lining up a hundred students from a half dozen classrooms, after trying to get one adult for every ten children, after all of this we headed out to the Sears Center to see the Chicago Storm play an indoor soccer game. (They call it football.)

If you read this blog, you will remember one of my students explained to me in the after school program why the upper grade students will not do anything else in gym except play basketball: “We’re African-American. We only play basketball.”

So I turned his statement into research. We had a flurry of sports related projects, met with Nicole Long from the Chicago Storm, and then we settled into the long bus ride to Hoffman Estates to watch the “Chicago” Storm take on the Rockford team.

We arrived right on time—after the introductions and the singing of the national anthem. We had a blast.

The game was as exciting as Nicole had told us it would be. At one time I took a group of about twenty students to empty front row right next to the action—the ball shooting past us with nose breaking speed, men knocked incredibly hard into the sides of the playing field, the sweat and struggle to win painted on every feature of their faces.

Before we left the school a great number of students were going on the trip because, well, because it was a trip. After the first quarter, one of my students was whooping it up and she was contagious. Students were dancing and cheering and yelling and having a great time. They were learning about a new game and they liked what they saw. Some of them even asked the gym teacher who was on the trip too if they could play indoor soccer when they got back to the school.

Even when we took a break from the game and walked around the Sears Center—and here I have to tell you more than three quarters of the hundred students who went have never seen the inside of any kind of stadium before—the students had a grand experience. At one table outside our seating area, my students lined up to participate in arts and crafts. They pulled out cell phones (even though they’re not allowed in school) to take pictures of themselves with Striker, the Storm mascot. They rushed to where the players were to get autographs. They even took a seat in the club.

The half time show introduced my students to a great number of animals—including a python the trainer draped over the cheerleaders. They walked the python close enough to where we were sitting, we could see into its eyes.

How cool is that!

The game was a part of the school day show so we had to listen to a few make-a-goal-and-keep-it speeches, and overall everything went smooth as ice cream. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.

By the way—one of the school’s biggest discipline problems came on the trip, too, and she was one of the best behaved students there. This is why I try to take all of my students on a trip—though this particular student isn’t one of mine. Oftentimes you can learn a whole lot about somebody when you observe them in an entirely different environment. And, yes, she had a great time, too.

Thanks for inviting us.

Oh, and by the way, the Chicago Storm won 21 to 10 and when I entered my classroom, the first thing I saw on the blackboard this morning was a great big heart. Inside of it someone had written, "Mr. Brownstein's 7th grade classroom. Thanks."

THE CURSING CARNIVAL

2007-02-26T18:49:00.000-08:00

The morning went smoothly, but I could not finish my science lesson. My homeroom was next door and I had my other class. We were studying a handout about the migration of the wildebeest, but I was not able to continue.

We have a few teachers who have taken a few days off due to illness and I have been the lucky one to take the problem children. Lucky? No, I think unlucky is the better word. The substitutes can’t handle them so they come to me. Again and again and again.

I guess I’m tired. It’s time I learned to say no.

It’s hard to watch a twelve year old meet up with an older boy—a high school teenager—and then walk down the street with their arms around each other. One of my students changes whenever she loses her boyfriend. But she doesn’t know what it is to have a boyfriend. Sex is not a boyfriend. I’m sorry. It’s not. My students are too young, but they don’t know this.

So why is this blog called the cursing carnival?

Because I had a lot planned, but suddenly the girl placed in my room from another class could not—would not—be quiet, the boy placed in my room from another class could not sit still, the girl I worry about because she’s not old enough to do what she is doing could not stop whispering and then the cursing boy began to curse and curse and curse.

I stopped teaching. I called his mother. She asked me why I had lied to her. I didn’t understand.

Why did you tell me he does all of his work? she asked, but I never told her this. I told her he only does his work when he is in the room supervised closely by another adult.

What time do you get to school? she asked and I told her seven AM.

She said she would be at my school at seven. Great. I tell her he curses up a storm and all she can tell me is I am a liar.

That’s not the question. Her son has been cursing for days and days and no punishment seems to work. I mean what is a suspension really but a few days off to play video games and watch television?

I usually go to the home of my irate and misbehaving students, but I’m tired.

Yes, that’s it. (But I’m up for suggestions on how to stop these problems.)

And then after school suddenly too many girls are yelling and cursing and threatening each other. I am the only adult from the school outside. I already had to hear the parent tell her six year old son to kick the girl’s --- if she messed with him again and I had to deal with the mother who was angry because a boy wanted to punch her daughter—and what could I do about it—and…and…

No, I’m tired.

But I do have a great field trip planned for tomorrow. There’s always something.

A SUCCESSFUL SCIENCE GRANT

2007-02-26T05:55:00.000-08:00

Seeking funds from a science grant from a larger grant given to the Chicago Board of Education: Part A school information—address, phone, etc.

B. Eighty percent of upper grade students will show a ten percent gain on the standardized test’s mathematics section.
Students will be able to demonstrate graphing techniques (functions, x y coordinates, scientific graphs for use in science fair projects, etc.) utilizing a variety of technologies.
Students will be able to demonstrate effective extended responses with oral and written reports utilizing a variety of software and technology.
The professional staff will utilize professional development in mathematics through technology to engage their students and develop strategies to ensure every child succeeds.

C. Presently _____ has a severe deficit in mathematics at the upper grade level according to standardized testing. Engaged activities utilizing a variety of technologies will enhance our curriculum and empower our students to develop a more comprehensive understanding of mathematical concepts. This grant will also offer our students independent exploration discovery time and allow them to research a variety of problems in mathematics. Furthermore, the teacher as coach model will offer our students opportunities in problem solving, critical thinking and communication skills. The extensive staff development component of this grant will provide our teachers opportunities to expand their repertoire of strategies to reach every child successfully. Brain research demonstrates that everyone has a different learning modality. Through staff development and frequent meetings with all of the involved teachers, all of the upper grade students at ___ will be able to develop, explore and integrate into their learning style the best methods to expand their mathematical learning stream.
_____ will also commit the following resources to enhance and ensure the continuation of this project: staff time for collaborative planning; in house staff development to pass the information learned at the staff developments to the entire staff; time to offer peer tutoring (teacher to teacher); and the development of a core group of students and staff to further develop goals, strategies and objectives. ______’s vision is to create a community of lifelong learners. This grant will offer the entire educational community of _____ this opportunity.

THE LAST FEW DAZE

2007-02-22T05:31:00.000-08:00

It’s been an interesting week to say the least. On Friday of last week, I set a new personal best—most fights broken up in a two hour period: 8. (Fortunately none from my room—and this includes two after school when I was the only staff member outside to assist during dismissal.)

If I were to start to give A’s for cursing, a bunch of students surrounding me—and some in my own class—would get an A each quarter.

The bully problem persists in a few classrooms, and the girl who has been victimized in the past in my classroom has now become the biggest bully of all. (But she made everything easy for me by yelling and cursing out the assistant principal. Bullying the assistant principal? Not a good thing.)

In the last five days—starting back with last Friday—I have had between three and six students from other classrooms housed in my room because either their teacher or a sub could not control them. And let’s not leave out Tuesday—the day I spent an equal amount of time between my room and another room because…well…because…(At one point a student hit the teacher and then started dancing around the room.)

So yes, the last few days have been a daze.

But there is good news too.

Jim Burnette, a rep I met at the No Child Left Behind convention (sponsored by the Illinois Resource Center), dropped by the school yesterday morning at 7:30 for our Least Restricted Environment (LRE) meeting. He brought by a lot of resources to assist us. (I’m trying to spend a few thousand dollars and he wanted to help me spend it and I would like to spend it with him and his publishers.) It was a great meeting. We were able to look at a number of great projects and ideas.

But here’s the best part. The superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools was going to drop by sometime during the day and Jim offered to help me clean up the LRE Resource Room. (This is a room we set up to assist teachers who are having inclusion problems.)

Jim reps for Heinemann and others. I’d give you his contact info, but first I’d better get his permission. I’m hoping to spend the money with him to purchase a number of much needed material so our school can become a full inclusion setting. (Unfortunately, the LRE grant is contingent on a lawyer’s approval.)

Thanks for the help, Jim.

Oh, by the way, the principal’s meeting (which is why the superintendent showed up) went very well. When people from the meeting made their walk through and came into my class, they saw my students mixing chemicals to create mixtures and solutions. And everything worked. The chemicals went from clear to white to yellow and back to white. In the end, every group of chemists had a cup of chemicals layered with different colors. (And did I tell you at one point the chemicals fizzed and began to boil?)

Finally a day that was not a daze.

ADVICE TO PRINCIPALS EVERYWHERE

2007-02-17T07:01:00.000-08:00

The Superintendent of the Chicago Schools is coming to my school sometime during the week of the President's Day Holiday.

So, of course, we suddenly have to make the school perfect and everyone in the world knows no school anywhere is perfect. We are not going to be teachers; we are going to be actors.

Principals, please listen: A school is a school. Almost every teacher I know is passionate about teaching and they are trying as hard as they can.

If the superintendent is coming because he wants to close our school down, no matter how good we look, he will see only reasons to close us down. If he is coming because he is proud of us, no matter how bad we look, he will see only the good.

Once in my life--back in the day when Chicago schools went on strike every year--I ran a school for neighborhood students during the strikes. One teacher, a friend of mine, could not control his students in his classroom and he could not control them in the school I created temporarily. Nonetheless, when the Chicago Tribune showed up to write an article about us, I did not take over his spot teaching the high school students algebra. They were loud, everyone talking, he was at the board chalk on his suit and face, paper all over the table and chairs--not a perfect situation. The Tribune reporter came in with her photographer only minutes after I had let out the elementary school classroom. The place was a mess.

The next day on page 3 of the metro section there was a great and very positive article written about us covering half the page. Instead of noisy students, the reporter used the words "overzealous learners". Throughout the article were the words "engaged," "exciting," "wonderful." Even the mess became a compliment: "a real learning environment." The article was so complimentary, if we had been Catholic, someone would have nominated us for sainthood.

The photo was great too.

Principals, you don't have to put on an act. Your teachers care about the school, too. Let them do their job. The visitors come to the school with a ready made agenda. No matter how we do, they will make the situation fit that agenda. Sorry, but that's the truth.

We're teachers teaching in sometimes very terrible and demanding conditions. We're not actors who put on a show for one day. We're teachers who teach everyday.

Enough said.

THE NCLB CONFERENCE

2007-02-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

What can I say? The NCLB Conference sponsored by the Illinois Resource Center (www.thecenterweb.org) I attended this year was great. My presentation was at 10:00 on Thursday morning (Everything Should Be Absolutely Free to Teachers--A Grant Writer's Workshop: Do you have a literacy project you want to fund? This session will introduce you to all of the steps needed to successfully write a grant to get your ideas funded. Michael H. Brownstein has written more than three hundred funded grants over the last three years.)

Every year I receive a great number of samples for my school and a few curriculum aids are very helpful. My presentation on grant writing didn't flow as well as I hoped, but maybe I'm being a bit too self critical. (On the spot I created for my audience two grants--one for classroom libraries and one to counter the negative impact of bullies.) Everyone who spoke to me only had compliments and a few of the vendors told me all of the good things they heard. I've been doing this convention for years and I have never seen any real feedback in writing, so I'm open to it. If you want to comment on how I did, feel free to use the comment button on this blog.

I am the chair for inclusion in my school so I attended the inclusion workshop--excellent job ladies. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know how I have a difficult time with workshops, but in this one I learned a thing or five.

I will every now and then publish a successful grant on this site. If you want to read it, it will always have the word "grant" in its title. So I guess you'll have to check in every now and then.

Anyway, the conference was very good, I would like to thank Positive Action, Project Reality, Frog Press, Coach and others--including the Illinois Resource Center (thanks for inviting me)--and others for their assistance. Unfortunately, I had to get back to school to run the recreational part of the after school program, break up a few fights at dismissal, cross the children after the after school program ended, and break up another fight.

SNOW DAY

2007-02-14T05:38:00.000-08:00

We didn’t have a snow day. My high school children did. Not us. Chicago schools were open and the snow kept falling and the wind kept blowing and only one front door—the one near the office—opened easily without having to push against the piles of snow.

We had a field trip planned when the rest of the area was having a snow day—so it was cancelled. Child after child came to me with trip slips and I had to tell them it was cancelled. On the first floor, three teachers did not make it in—the storm was that bad. Others came in late or took the subway and were late.

My classes were angry they did not have a trip to go on. They had lunches and extra money and they were ready. The weather was not. We didn’t have a snow day like my children’s school and we didn’t have a field trip either.

Only a few students were absent on the second floor and somehow all of the teachers made it in who teach on the second floor. I could not finish my lesson on THE SKELETON MAN, the novel we are reading with one of my classes. I did not get to make the chemical reaction with one of my classes. I did not get to go over the research with my students because some of them were angry.

No snow day. No field trip. You mean we have to do work?

OK—we aren’t having a snow day today either. The front door of the school is blocked in by snow so we have to enter in from the back. The snow blower is hard at work removing the snow and I think the sidewalks will be clear by 8:00. The roads in Chicago are clear. The highways are awake and well, thank you. The trains I take to work are all on time and on schedule and I made every connection.

North of the city, my children have a late start day. Ten inches of snow fell where I live. No snow day for them today. They go to school after 10.

It’s actually hot in my classroom. We’re directly over the ancient boilers and they are running fulltime now. Tonight it’s supposed to go to zero. Too much heat can’t be a bad thing.

As I stood in the thick snow after school—the after school programs were cancelled— sending children on their way home—myself and one other security officer—one of the parents told me, “We won’t be in school tomorrow. This weather is ridiculous.”

I came from the northside to the southside to get here. Is it so hard to walk two blocks?

BATHROOM TIME

2007-02-11T05:27:00.000-08:00

How mundane.

Bathroom time.

When I first arrived at the school where I presently teach, I was pleasantly surprised to see doors on the bathroom stalls, Before then, every inner city school where I taught or visited did not have doors on the stalls.

Why?

A bunch of excuses were always offered. Fighting. Vandalism. Flooding the bathroom floor.

OK.

In my school, no one is allowed in the halls until our ninety minute reading block has ended. At 10:30 I know exactly which three boys and one girl will have to go to the bathroom. One by one I offer them the pass.

Last week I let two boys go to the bathroom together. One of them--a very quiet student who has an incredible wish to belong--poured a chemical on the floor and another chemical on his shoes and started a fire.

He thought the chemical on his shoes would stop the flames from burning them. It did not happen. Fortunately, an adult was nearby and the fire was put out quickly before anyone could be hurt. Only the shoes were messed up.

I hate taking older children to the bathroom. The girls use it as gossip time--and we do have a brief free time after lunch in my classroom--and the boys, well, it depends on their moods. Why is it I have to stand in the boy's bathroom and a woman teacher has to monitor the girls?

But now we're into peer pressure. That's a million word blog by itself.

Later.

AND EVEN MORE TIRED

2007-02-09T05:40:00.000-08:00

We have had three really nice things happen during the last two weeks. A rep came by from a science book company and I received a commitment from her for additional material when we place our order.

Derrick Robinson, a doctor from the ER at the University of Chicago Hospitals, came into the room and read to us as part of the Real Men Read Program. He was great. He read a story about foster children and then told us about his life and trials.

Nicole Long from the Chicago Storm, a professional soccer team, dropped off soccer curriculums and a hundred tickets to attend a game from the Kids-4-Soccer Foundation. She hung around and fielded questions from the students in one of my classes. She even made a bet with one of the boys: “If the game is not physical enough for you,” she said, “I’ll give you a soccer ball autographed by the team.” She was great.

So why am I tired?

Long ago I learned people really do want the public schools to succeed. They come to the schools and hope to leave with a satisfying experience. The children are engaged, they’re good listeners, they obviously care. No one wants to leave a school thinking what’s wrong with that class? Why are they so rude? Did I hear someone curse?

I go to my students homes for good news and bad. I made two home visits two evenings ago. Good news and bad. I made another last night.

Every good thing that happened in my classroom—the science lady, Derrick Robinson from Real Men Read (sponsored by Concordia), and Nicole Long from the Chicago Storm bringing us good news from the Kids-4-Soccer Foundation—was interrupted by one student. She couldn’t stop talking or giggling or eating. During these visits she went totally into another zone—so loud I had to remove her from her place and sit her with me—and I knew, I just knew, my visitor was not thinking kindly of the class I call “the best in the school”. Furthermore, it was never her fault. Never.

I thought she would apologize and quiet down when I walked her and her little sister home. But, no. She ranted and raged and raved and then raged some more until I left her and went to her house by myself.

This is why I am tired. If you are looking for money for your class or a special project (mentors, for example), inviting the individuals into your classroom makes a lot of difference. I’ve raised thousands of dollars without even writing a word. A phone call, an invitation to my classroom, an acceptance to visit, and usually everything flows. My class understands, problems are resolved ahead of time, students are engaged active listeners and even if they don’t care, they look like they do.

No one wants to punish an entire class over a disruptive student. It just happens that one bad apple does ruin the bushel; one moldy piece of paper destroys the paper behind it; one person yawns, others yawn too.
You get the point.

I’m tired.

TIRED

2007-02-07T19:02:00.000-08:00

Wednesday and I don't have any real breaks. All day my classes come at me one after the other, until lunch and then I only have fifteen minutes--not enough time.

No matter.

We begin the morning with vocabulary. Our bell ringer. The students find the definition of a word using context clues. Then we get into our research. The students answer questions from encyclopedias. For the most part though, we're reading THE SKELETON MAN and most of the class is into it. Nice story, THE SKELETON MAN. Nice legends, nice realistic fiction. Can it be based on truth? So, yes, we're studying nonfiction, too.

After lunch the entire seventh grade has been coming into my room. We're interpreting data and making all kinds of graphs--stem and leaf, histograms, etc., etc., etc. And they're catching on.

There's problems too. A few students still want to play the bully card. It's an uphill battle, but I'm winning.

Oh, by the way, I spent a few minutes on the phone with representatives from the Chicsgo Storm, a professional soccer team. I won a grant from them for two hundred students to become part of a mentoring program. Worth about 8000 dollars.

Not bad for a day's work.

SUPERBOWL BLUES--NOPE, NOT ME

2007-02-05T05:28:00.000-08:00

OK, so I’m lying. I don’t have the Superbowl blues. Chicago lost, the hysteria is over, now we can get back on to the important issues of the day. Grossman being beat up by the sport’s columnists is not one of them.

I have to admit I had an interest in the Bears not winning. Every school I have worked has had break ins and vandalism when a Chicago team wins—except for the White Sox, and I really can’t explain that one.

It seems in Chicago celebrating a victory means destroying a community. Schools get wrecked, stores get looted and the famous Yellow taxi cab gets turned over onto its back. Someone has to pay for all of this—and seldom does anyone get punished. So, no, I’m not all broke up by the fact that the Bears lost.

Homework for my classes over this weekend was to do research on the most popular sports in the world. Football—American football—did not make the top five list. Rugby or cricket came in second. In Thailand kite flying is the most popular sport.

So there you have it.

But do you know what I would like to see as the most popular sport in the world?

Yep, you guessed it: education—where a perfect A report card gets all of the acclaim.

SUPERBOWL SUNDAY

2007-02-04T08:09:00.000-08:00

It's really cold outside. I mean really cold. This is a good thing. The last year Chicago won a championship--not counting the White Sox (cause no one really seemed to care)--schools all over the city were vandalized. A school where I used to work was hit hard--almost every room had some kind of destruction.

The news reported more Chicago and state police will be out tonight. My school has an ADT system and I hope that's enough. But the cold may be the best thing of all. This kind of cold will keep people inside for sure.

I hope so. This year we already went through a number of windows. Bullets. Rocks. Other things. Oftentimes a squad car hangs out behind the school in the small hours of the night. I hope they're there again tonight.

A few rooms have been vandalized this school year, a few cars scratched and windows broken, a few teachers hit in action (and one bit in the arm until she was bleeding).

So we're in the Superbowl. I hope the schools survive.

CELL PHONES AND A NEED TO ONLY PLAY BASKETBALL

2007-02-02T05:40:00.000-08:00

We have had a policy in my school for awhile now prohibiting cell phones. I’m sorry, I just don’t seem to see this great urgency to have one. I don’t know why I would need to talk to someone all of the time everywhere I am no matter what. It puzzles me—people on the train, in the shopping center, on a date—all of them, talking, talking, talking on a cell phone. Obviously I’m one of the last people in America with a phone connected to a wall in my kitchen.

One of my students asked, “What if there’s an emergency?”

That’s why we have a front office. Nothing like getting a call on your cell phone telling you your mother—God forbid—has just been shot thirteen times in the chest and—then you lose your signal.

I’d much rather have the call come to the office where we can handle it quietly and much more compassionately. Once a mother entered my classroom to tell me she had to take her son home and then she fell to the floor and became hysterical. (Someone tried to burn down her apartment and shot her father a number of times.) I needed help right then. A person’s help. Not a cell phone.

(OK. OK. I’ll give you one emergency. Your car stops in the middle of nowhere and it’s freezing outside and you don’t know what to do. A cell phone might be handy right then.) But not in school.

Which brings me to my story of a cell phone ringing in my classroom of seventh graders and one fifth grader so out of control, they placed him in my room because—so they think—I can control him until he is ready to go back to his own class. (Another story altogether.) The boy with the cell phone denies he has a cell phone, but not a minute later he is under his desk, the cell phone to his ear, returning the call. Unbelievable.

“What cell phone?” he asks. “I don’t have a cell phone.”

He has it against his head. Everyone can see it. So he’s busted. But what does he do? Does he apologize? Does he put it away? No. He keeps on talking only now he’s no longer under his desk. So I ask for the cell phone because that is the policy of the school. We are mandated to confiscate the cell phones. And he does a most amazing thing. He starts to curse out the girl across from him. And won’t stop. And he is still on his cell phone.

I remove him from the room. His homeroom teacher takes him aside for a bit of a discussion. Security confiscates the cell phone. He gets time out at home.

End of story.

But what about the basketball game in the heading of this blog? Nothing. After school in the After School All Stars, the boys tell the gym teacher and me that they want to play basketball.

Not an option, I explain. We play all kinds of sports. Not just basketball. When you signed up for the gym program, you knew this.

But we’re black. Basketball is what black people play.

Sorry, I answer. That’s not true. Soccer is what is played all over the world. Not basketball. Soccer. And it’s played in every country in Africa and in every country in the Caribbean.

The students don’t like this response. So I ask them to sit on the stage.

Basketball. We want basketball. We never play—

We have a situation. The gym teacher has the volleyball net set up. He wants to teach volleyball—which is a fairly fun game if given a chance—but, no, they want basketball.

They don’t get basketball. They didn’t get a lot of other things either. I’m the coordinator of the program. In the gym, they finally play kickball. And next week?

Next week we’ll be in the classrooms doing academic enrichment and community service projects. No basketball. Sorry. It’s time to learn American sports, football for example, is only popular in America. Real football—which we call soccer—is the most popular game in the world. And basketball, well basketball is basketball--just another American game.

Cricket anyone?

Court

2007-01-31T20:10:00.000-08:00

Remember the fight during the science fair? I had to go to court yesterday because of it. Not really all that bad. I brought enough personal business for three to four hours. Didn't even have to take a sick or personal day. Court--school business.

The girl in mind went for the plea bargain--a year supervision, anger management, conflict resolution classes, mandatory school attendance, community service.

OK. Mandatory school attendance. This on a girl who ditches school, fights, curses, SPITS IN A COPS FACE, hits another girl in the jaw when she's being restrained by another cop, etc. etc. etc.

But I was back at my desk in two hours.

So today we passed out report cards. Another interesting moment. Children all over glad to get a C.

In my household an A is absolutely excellent, B is beautiful, C means confused, D is a dummy and an F--a failing fool.

I'm confused myself. Court cases. Children happy to get C's. (One seventh grader was so jubilant, he hugged me.) Parents waiting at the door for conferences. (I go to school on Wednesdays, but they have my phone number.)

Another day tomorrow.

Oh, and by the way, the court girl was in school today--doing her work. Quietly. All day long.

She's really quite bright, you know, so we're not giving up on her. But how do you stop someone from giving up on them self?

CAN THIS BE WHY MEN DO NOT BECOME TEACHERS?

2007-01-29T06:20:00.000-08:00

The science fair is over. We have one winner, but my job is done. She just has to show up with her invited guests and have a nice time.

So what does this have to do with why men aren’t jumping into the teaching profession as quickly as women? Well, the science fair is just another example of how things get messed up because one sex does the thing that sex does and the other wants it to be done another way.

Let me explain: Men are not the best communicators (except when they’re using their secret cell phone to cheat in a relationship). Men don’t even like to talk on the phone that much. When a man sends an email, it’s to the point. Very short and very direct. The last email I sent was one word: OK. Men can listen though. They have learned to do that as we become more and more a service economy. And we can take criticism. Constructive criticism.

You know what we cannot take? People who talk behind our backs to supervisors and act “catty” (a word my wife loves to use when she’s describing jealous girlfriends) when they need to let you know something, but can never say it to your face. I can’t remember a man friend of mine being jealous (or “catty, for that matter)—though I’m sure this has happened sometime in my life.

Anyway at the science fair, one of my students made an error in her research report—the hypothesis and the conclusion did not correspond. And, yes, I’ll take the blame for this one. She is my students after all. No matter. I helped type her paper and I should have caught the error. She did have a week to read it over and she should have caught the error also. When she did realize she had made a mistake, it was too late to rectify—so she did the next best thing: she corrected it on her poster.

So why would one of the women assisting in the science fair make a point of telling the administrators at my school: “How could he be so stupid to let that happen? Doesn’t he read their papers?”

Of course, I do. But then again, I’m only who I am. I make mistakes. I apologize for them. I move on.

“What does she have against you?” another administrator asked.

I don’t really know. Once she was asked by the district to observe me and she fell asleep at my desk. Could that be it?

I will not make excuses for my mistake in proofreading, but I do feel if a teacher cannot talk to another teacher and let them know when they make a mistake, man to man, can this be one reason more men don’t go into the profession.

And another thing. Working around…well that another tale altogether.

THE STUDENT WE ALL WANT TO HAVE

2007-01-26T08:48:00.000-08:00

After my eighth grade science fair students took home the excellent—and not the superior which gets you a spot in the city competition—she apologized to me and explained that she was “stretched too thin.”

Stretched too thin?

In eighth grade?

And isn’t it just too cool she understands exactly what being “stretched too thin” means?

And, yes, she is stretched too thin. She represented the school in the science fair, the spelling bee, the oratory contest and the week of the science fair she participated in the essay contest. This on top of all of her homework, after school All Star activities, etc. etc. etc.

Did I tell you she’s a published poet? Did I tell you she always scores in the ninety percentile on standardized tests?

I had her last year, but this year I teach seventh grade. Nonetheless, she’s a frequent visitor to my class and beginning next week, I will be starting my test preparation classes—she will, of course, be a member. In her case, though, we’ll be learning how to evaluate data with a serious scientific calculator.

My school has a few students who are super—she, of course, is one of them.

There are times teachers make a difference in a life and there are times students make a difference in a life. This is one of those times.

Corporate world workers—envy me. I have worked with the best and I’m seldom bored.

REGION SCIENCE FAIR

2007-01-24T20:21:00.000-08:00

So the science fair is finally over. We took a first place in the sixth grade competition (she goes to a special program during the city competition) and two excellents (they brought home trophies).

All in all a very nice day.

So how did the day really go?

I arrived at school before seven to make sure everything was ready. My students showed up between 7:30 and 8:00. We left for the fair at 8:20. Every year I train the judges (it gives me something to do during the fair), but this year mid sentence, I was told to go back to the fair. No explanation. That's life I guess.

The fair went on until almost 2:00. It seemed none of the men were given any responsibility so we made work for ourselves--except for the two men smart enough to bring things to do. One graded papers and the other read the paper. Nonetheless, I did the job of the safety judge, helped students get their poster presentations in order, and did a lot of this and a little of that. (One good thing--this is the first year I actually made it to the lunchroom for lunch.)

Back at school, we celebrated our wins and then I went to help with security. Really I was the security. Me and one other individual. No problems there. We had two basketball games, but I go to school now on Wednesdays for my endorsement. Spectators were limited to the girl's team and seventh/eighth grade boy's team.

We had six subs in the school today and they complained about the cursing. I'm not sure how to solve that problem. Too often all I hear outside is parents cursing, cursing, cursing.

My school went well. I arrived at Loyola thirty minutes early. I'm working with a scientific calculator and studying data analysis. The professor, Lauri Braga, makes it very simple. I'll be teaching a few of the concepts to my students later this week.

Arrived home after 8:00 and spent a few more hours with my own high school kids.

Time to go to sleep now.

I'll write when I get a chance. Thanks.

Police Impact

2007-01-23T05:26:00.000-08:00

I received a subpoena. The man knocked on my door, no one was home, and he left it at the mailbox. The next day he called my school and I called him back.

Did I receive the subpoena? he wondered.

Of course, I did. One of the students in my school spit in a police officers face after causing a major fight in the hallway. Between her cursing and carrying on, between her throwing things at people when she has one of her frequent temper tantrums, between her walking out of everyone’s classroom—and lets not forget the day she cursed out the principal in front of the entire seventh grade class—between all of this, you know I’ll be there in court.

But I do have a few problems with all of this. The research I have done on failure with male students of color has shown negative police contact is one of the greatest indicators to future incarceration. Our juvenile facilities do not seem to send reformed individuals back into society. Instead we receive students who are even angrier.

I’ll never forget the time I went to visit an acquaintance of mine who was sentenced to a few months in Cook County jail for drunk driving. He asked if I could come visit him and so I went, one cold Saturday, and much to my surprise, too many people knew me. And I’m not talking about the guards.

On the walk to the entrance I met a few families going to visit former students. In the waiting room, I waved hello to a dozen more former students. On the way out, I ran into a family who remembered me as their son’s teacher.

Teaching in the inner city is not always the easiest. It’s hard to know where to draw the line. It’s hard to know when to become the parent because the real parent is not parenting. It’s hard period.

So when a student throws an encyclopedia and hits another student in the eye because, well, because the other students accidentally hit him with his notebook—and apologized…

So when a student stands off a group of angry girls with a scissor, and yes, I ask for the weapon and then I escort her home….

So when a thirteen year old starts having sex and then the man—it’s hardly ever anyone her own age—dumps her and she begins going into regular cursing depressions and she wants to fight everyone no matter what and hurt people and kick them when they are on the ground.

Where do we draw the line? At what point do we have to decide the parent won’t handle it, but the police will?

Today the principal is observing me. This is part of her job description. I’m ready, of course. Then again, I’m not.

There comes a time, I guess, where you have to decide if you are making a difference anymore or if you are just spinning your wheels in a snow storm and your car gets even more stuck.

A QUIET DAY

2007-01-22T19:55:00.000-08:00

8:15 and there is hardly anyone in line for breakfast. It snowed last night and it's cold outside, but the children are coming to breakfast in slow turns--sort of like marathon runners out of shape.

Down the hall the kindergarten kids color and over there, the older boys are playing basketball in the gym. Near the lunchroom, the girls are full of quiet gossip.

It's an easy day and my class comes in and settles quietly into their day's work. We research a question first, then start our unit on fables, and I do small group activities in the front with The House on Mango Street. Nothing complicated.

The day goes on. A few incidents in stupidity, but overall nothing of any real concern. In science we study the effects of vibration and echo, study charts and read about DNA. We're all over the place and that's fine.

And when it's time to go home, we go home. Today everything was that quiet.

THE BEARS WIN--ONTO THE SUPERBOWL

2007-01-22T05:47:00.000-08:00

A few decades ago when Michael Jordan was out there teaching the world how to play basketball, Chicago won a few championships. It was great for the Bulls, of course, (they earned extra money), it was great for the mayor (he won his bet with the opposing team’s mayor), it was great for the vendors hawking t shirts and hats and everything else (obviously) and it was great for the city—our tax on hotels and rented cars is 18 percent.

It wasn’t great for a number of schools. All over celebrants decided shooting guns into the air and whooping and hollering and hugging everyone nearby was just not enough. They had to break into local schools and vandalize everything in their sight, too.

This happened when I was working at Farren. Farren has been closed by the board because of a number of issues—perhaps the fact that its enrollment was so far down because the city ordered the destruction of the housing projects that supplied Farren with its students is one of the reasons. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the night the Bulls won the championship, the night the Bears won the Superbowl, the night the White Sox (oops—no one seemed to really care about the White Sox victory), Farren along with a number of other schools was broken into and many classrooms were thrown into total disarray.

Much to my happiness—and another teacher named Mr. Dynis—our two rooms were the only rooms untouched. To this day I can’t really tell you why. But back then as Dynis and I helped everyone else put the pieces back together, it sure did feel good not having anyone damage our rooms.

Yesterday the Bears won their division and I entered my school just a little bit worried. Guess what? Nothing was amiss. Nothing. And so I thought to myself, this might just be the beginning of another great week at a school full of learners and my classroom—a classroom of learners. But we still have the bullying problem. Couldn’t solve it on Friday because the main suspects had to go out of the school to get their eyes checked for free glasses. (I sent five though really ten of my students could benefit from a new pair of glasses.)

So today we stop the bullying. Today we get on with the important work. Today my class will get back on the road they exited a little while ago and become the best and the brightest in the school.

Again.

TAKING BACK A CLASSROOM

2007-01-19T05:36:00.000-08:00

(Rap talk)

Rough neck,
Rough neck

(Students drum on their desk)

Rough neck.
Rough neck.

(begin singing)

To the neck, to the neck,
Proactive packed in a box
To the neck, to the neck,
Get out the cream
And don’t you scream.
To the neck, to the neck.

This is the song a few of the boys in my class made up about one of my students. My classroom is my family. I’ve taught for over thirty years and no one has stolen anything of value from me. (Books from the school library and pencils, pens and paper don’t count.) One year when a Chicago team won a championship, people from the neighborhood broke into the school and destroyed almost every room—except for mine and the computer lab. No one has ever insulted me to the point of quitting (thought they have come close). I never realized until I began teaching in the inner city how important it is to immediately stop negative talk about someone’s mother. (These are serious fighting words.) I’ve seen serious bullying, extreme violence, and quite a few other things during my time as a teacher. (Once I had to go into a bathroom where a student was holding four other students at knife point to talk him out of hurting anyone. When he came back from his suspension, he was placed in my class.)

I’m nearing the end of my career as a teacher. I always thought I might make a difference. I always thought my students were like family. This class this year is one of my best. They’re bright, witty, charming, and each one of them contributes something great to the whole. Yet now I have to change my rules and become more explicit. No talking also means no cursing. I have to put on the rule board we cannot bully. I have to add sentences to my expectations. I have to let them know field trips will be cancelled for cursing and bullying incidents.

And now the girl in my class who handed me the above song is bullied to the point of tears. And the boys find this funny.

Fortunately, a few girls are proactive—not the same as the Proactive cream in the above song which is, unfortunately a strong medicine—and they are working to put a stop to this confusion.

I promise you it will stop today.

I always keep my promises.

Stay tuned.

Science Fair Getting Ready for the District Week

2007-01-18T14:52:00.000-08:00

But first a word from our sponsor:

dear michael, you are not an idiot, but a goddam fucking moron. that is my whole point. the world does not have time for this bullshit. don't lie to them. i read your candy-coated blog and was perplexed. a mother curses her child's teacher in public? don't apologize for the ignorant people, mourn for them' as for the rest, i don't know. do what you think is best. peace

---The Man from Viet Nam--unedited

And now--everything except for the posters are ready for the district science fair. We proved the temperature goes down after a major volcanic eruption, learned too much about light sticks, discovered Pop Secret is the best microwave popcorn and learned way more than I ever needed to know about the chemical acetone and its impact on organic material.

During our experimental trials, one of the light sticks sprung a hole and actually exploded through the Styrofoam cup of water containing it. Green chemicals and water went everywhere. When we did the photos of the acetone working with organic material, the entire room stunk of every dead thing you could imagine. Fifteen degrees outside and we had every window open. Much to my terror, after we popped the pop corn for the final trial, the scientist in charge threw everything away. I was looking so much forward for a pop corn party.

We also learned my class has its full of bullies. It’s very hard to teach a class when all of your attention is on the class, but it’s almost impossible to teach a class and assist with the district science fair preparation at the same time. Unfortunately, the bully syndrome came out big time while I was assisting the student scientists. Finally, the administration sent me an adult to supervise my class and when I went outside of the room to duplicate materials, one of my girls who has an illness you can see ran out of the room crying. It seems a few of the boys made up a very negative song about her illness. No one ever cries in my classroom. During the after school program, I asked her to tell me what happened. She wrote down the words of the song and a number of girls joined together to help her. We now have an official anti-bully club. First meeting tomorrow. Feedback anyone?

The other frustration I ran into was the sudden poor quality of work while I was trying to do too many things at once. One student answered the essay question on his opinion about the Obama run for presidency with the following answer: Cortney Cox. (Keep in mind, this was supposed to be an essay.)

More--lots more--tomorrow. I was the teacher, the counselor, the disciplinarian, the after school security guard, the after school coordinator, the science fair supervisor, etc., etc., etc.. Now I have to be the crossing guard.

Later.

Another Great Day in the Chicago Public Schools

2007-01-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

First I have to tell you about John A. Fulton from the Dunne Chicago Public School. I had to go to a workshop for the after school program--I'm the coordinator--and much to my surprise, it was actually fairly beneficial. And one of the biggest surprises was a gym teacher named John A. Fulton who runs the after school program at Dunne.

He gives his teachers extra preps as a thank you for doing extra work--volunteering to take a group after school to the computer lab, for example, or conducting a small group seminar before school. He has his own posse, too, students who need time out, nurturing or enrichment and extra thanks for jobs well done. He shared his successes, how he modified things to create more success, and how he takes photos of everything.

"Walk in my class and I’ll take your picture. Walk out, I'll take another one."

After John's talk, I went to his place at the table and viewed some of the photos. They were great. Pictures of happy children, smiling children, and children actively engaged in any number of activities.

We had other sessions, too, and I learned something in each one.

At school, my class and I created a number of posters, fixed up the Least Restricted Environment room--I'm in charge of that, too—and worked a bit on the upcoming district science fair which—you guessed correctly—I’m in charge of too.

Then it was time for the after school program. We had our free socializing time in the gym waiting for our time to eat, ate with few disturbances, and then we had our homework period--and it went well. Quite well, in fact. Those who did not have homework received a packet from me--and for the most part, everyone did something.

Dismissal went quickly, the day ended easy, and I can't wait till tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm going to put on my roller skates again and see how many of my students can recall what we learned about potential and kinetic energy a few days earlier.

Can't wait.

PS: John Fulton, if you’re reading this, we surely can use some of your photos to liven up this page. Just click on comments.

PS 2: Anyone else reading this--we still don't have a clock in our room. Hint. Hint. Hint.

SECOND DAY BACK AFTER OUR TWO WEEK VACATION

2007-01-10T06:02:00.000-08:00

So I put on my skates again to demonstrate physics concepts to my other science class and guess what? It went great. Really great. If I could figure out how to do fonts on this new blogger, I’d make the greats GREATER!

I skated more, taught the same concepts as yesterday, but this class was an hour longer, so when we went to math—because they did not finish their math during their math class next door—there was a bit of disgruntlement. Disgruntlement. Hmmmm. Thought I had made up a new word, but spell check didn’t underline it.

Anyway, the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s who have been at war in our school for a few months left. Yep, they’re gone. And guess what? Dismissal went so smoothly after school and after the after school programs, I was amazed.

Second evening and absolutely no problems at all.

How cool is that?

(But how do you make the fonts different sizes?)

Then I went home, logged onto my personal email, and I’m invited to an invitation only poetry festival. As a reader and writer.

OK—today will be even better.

The man from Viet Nam, Frank Christensen, must have sprinkled magic stuff when he came through last year.

ROLLER SKATING AND PHYSICS

2007-01-09T05:20:00.000-08:00

First day back and I had a blast. Roller skating and physics. They go together like peanut butter and bananas or hot dogs and grilled peppers.

I put the skates on after lunch. Huh, what’s going on? What’s Mr. Brownstein up to now? What’s he doin’? Mr. Brownstein, the mad scientist. The buzz alone was worthwhile by itself. Why the skates? my students asked.

Physics, I answered.

And we had a physics lesson and I had a workout.

How do you show the laws of motion? Skate quickly to the door, have someone open it before you run into it—and this wasn’t planned—and keep right on going into the hallway and across the hall and into the door opposite my room that was, thankfully, closed. (An object will continue on a straight line until it hits an obstacle.)

By the way, did I explain I don’t know how to stop in these things—brakes or not?

So I taught gravity (falling) and by showing the weight of gravity in a contest between me and a few of my students. (We lifted our legs up—I still had on these heavy, heavy, heavy skates—and we watched to see who would drop their legs first due to the weight of gravity. They won, but I let them, I think.)

Potential energy and kinetic energy? A snap when you’re skating around the room. I firmly believe everyone of my students can tell you what those two terms mean after my demonstration of an object at rest (me on skates) and an object in motion (me moving on skates).

Of course, we had a chance to study friction, too. No problem. My students worked cooperatively to teach me how to use the brakes. And I got it. I still can’t stop on a dime. I probably can’t stop on a silver dollar or ten one dollar bills lined up ten long, but I did learn to stop.

OK—I get to do this lesson again with my other science class this afternoon. Can’t wait.

And I should tell you every other lesson on the first day back in this new year went just as smooth.

Happy New Year.

Again.

HAPPY NEW YEARS

2007-01-08T05:59:00.000-08:00

January 8th, 2007. First day back after a two week very nice vacation. I drove to work and even the traffic wasn’t that bad. (Nonetheless I’ll be on the train tomorrow—easier to get more things done.)

OK—so I’m hoping we have a new beginning here. No violence. No fighting. All of the teachers present the first day back. All of the students ready to learn. Everyone in a Viet Nam frame of reference. (Read the previous blogs—The Man from Viet Nam.)

I’m ready. I brought roller skates to demonstrate concepts in physics (potential and kinetic energy, friction, and when I fall, gravity) and a number of musical instruments (to demonstrate sound waves, vibration, pitch, etc.) I may even use some tuning forks. Haven’t decided yet.

We’re going to continue reading Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango Street and do a quick write on what we remember about Charles Dickens Christmas Carol. We’re going to start our functional reading time and our research time and our contest to see which room has the best comprehension in science—though last year’s class (the seventh grade class next door) should have an advantage because most of them did the book last year. (Today my colleague begins teaching science, too, with the General Science books—the best science books I know.)

I believe her teaching out of the General Science books and me working on experiments and comprehension through contests that our students earned a 97.5% on the science portion of the Illinois standardized test, the ISAT.

Anyway I’m looking forward to a great year.

(On other note: Coming into the school today another teacher, the janitor, an office clerk and I had to put chairs on an area in the front of the school. Someone broke out the window yesterday evening—or so they think—and there was glass everywhere. Oh, well. Not a promising start but the fact that we worked together—at 7AM no less (and hour and a half before anyone else arrived)—to get the glass up and away before the students arrived is really a very big deal. If we begin the year caring, we’ll get through it with flying colors.

Happy New Year. May this one bring prosperity, good health, and a lifetime of learning.

Frank Christensen--The Man From Viet Nam, 2

2007-01-03T17:31:00.000-08:00

He's sixty years old and looks way too healthy. He teaches English in Viet Nam. He used to teach in one of the housing projects in Chicago. When he left, he didn't look as healthy.

"Discipline problems?" he asked. "Oh, yes we have them. I had one myself last year. It happened two months ago. A kid wouldn't stop playing so I came to him and told him he was disturbing the class, and he said, 'Sorry, Teacher,' and never misbehaved again."

("Teacher" is a sign of high respect. Just thought you'd want to know.)

Recently his students were in a quiz show kind of program. His students took first place, of course (because that's the kind of teacher Frank Christensen is), and the comments from his students--comments they put in writing--tell it all: He's really smart for someone that old, the best teacher in the school, he is always fair, everyone wants to be in his class.

Enough said.

I could at this juncture quote verbatim from a paper one of his student's wrote about him, but I won't. Let me just say he loves teaching in Viet Nam, loves how his students are responsible for their own learning, and loves the fact that there is actually a holiday to honor teachers ("Every store I went to hired extra people just to gift wrap all of the gifts going to teachers. They don't give gifts on Christmas. They don't have to. The day they honor teachers everyone in Viet Nam--no matter how rich or how poor--digs deep into their pockets and buys a gift for a teacher.")

A holiday honoring teachers? Not money? Not doctors as in My-Daughter-Will-Marry-A-Doctor? Nope, just teachers.

How refreshing.

And what was the biggest insult he heard when he stood in front of a school located in the area where I teach--the quote of the day, according to him.

"I watched the boy's mother grab him by the upper arm and say, 'I don't give an f---- what your teacher says. You will do exactly what I say.' In front of a school no less. I could not believe it. She said it in front of me and a few others. Did she not realize where she was? Did she not think about the message she was sending to her son?"

In Viet Nam, Frank teaches. "The children come to school prepared to learn. They understand they are the ones responsible for their learning. I teach. I don't discipline."

And at the end of a series of lessons on a book? "I never give them away. The students line up to purchase the book. Books are very valuable because learning is very valuable."

I gave my students a book for Christmas.

"I don't have to," he says. "They never stop wanting to learn."

Now that's refreshing.

THE JEFF CITY CHA CHA CHA

2007-01-02T08:03:00.000-08:00

Just thought you'd like to see what we contend with when we go to Jeff City. (We own property there) Click the link below.

THE JEFF CITY CHA CHA CHA (but in slow motion without the obscenities, gross anger, confrontation, cursing at police and general ignorance).

Second note--this happened about eight months ago and then the police asked us "politely" to stop filming.

WHY WE TEACH (AND HOW WE WANT TO USHER IN THE NEW YEAR)

2006-12-30T23:13:00.000-08:00

WHY WE TEACH

Teaching is not for the selfish
nor those who have a jealous streak.
Teachers are not bullies
nor are they anger and flame.

We teach because it is our calling.
We teach because it fills us with song.
We teach because it is our passion

like collecting stamps,
listening to music,
a long walk in the park with someone we love.

We teach because it makes us dance,
fills us with joy, makes us whole.
(Have you ever seen a smile on the face of a child?)

Why do we teach?
We teach because we are selfish--
we teach because we must.

To offer the gift of knowledge,
assist someone in finding an opportunity for every possibility,
to show a tree and discover a forest,

to find a butterfly, a rainbow,
a prism of color, a prism to self,
the human experience over and over and over again

and bring it to life
and help it develop
and watch it grow--

this is why I teach.

Michael H. Brownstein
@12/2006

Frank Christensen--Spiritual Poverty

2006-12-28T07:13:00.000-08:00

So what's the biggest difference between Viet Nam and America? I ask.

Frank Christensen tells me there are a lot of differences.

But the biggest one?

Spiritual poverty.

I tell him I met a woman from Ecuador once. Yes, she told me, spiritual poverty. America has big stores and great shopping. That's not enough. There is no spiritual richness in America.

Frank has been in and out of the country a lot during the last few years. Spiritual poverty, he repeats. That's a problem.

I never told him what the woman had to say. I actually wrote a poem about it. It will be interesting to hear what he thinks.

THE WOMAN FROM ECUADOR SPEAKS

It's not that America is a great country,
I'd just rather be home.
In my country, poverty is very real,
but here there is a greater suffering.
Home, I fill myself with poets,
storytellers, those with idealism.
Home, we give honor to the teacher.
Your country breeds a spiritual anger,
a poverty more devastating
than a lack of food, a lack of clean water.
Why can't Americans wait patiently in line?
Where is it written a house needs a five
car garage? A phone in every room?
A diamond to die for? A PlayStation 3
to fight over? I would rather own
a gem of verse, a storyteller's laugh line,
knowledge from a teacher.
Those are things to die for. I have to go
home. The water is too shallow here.

---Michael H. Brownstein
@2006

Frank Christensen--The Man from Viet Nam

2006-12-27T11:25:00.000-08:00

Frank Christensen taught with me when I first began teaching in the Chicago Public Schools. He ran the drama club; I, the science fair and school newspaper. Another teacher I cannot remember ran the chess team. We wanted to change the culture of the school. When the award ceremony came, our trophies were huge. A year later the basketball team had a hard time recruiting players. Their trophies were always much smaller than ours.

Frank did Shakespeare and presented plays at the community center. This was no small thing. The school, Carver Middle, was at the east end of Altgeld Gardens, a housing project that remains to this day. (I revisited it recently--twenty-five years after I was tranferred from it--and it remains the same. The scent of violence is perverse enough to feel and I saw more police in that one neighborhood than I see in the area where I work in two days. And where I work needs police.)

A few years later I transferred to another school in the projects and shortly thereafter he went to another inner city school. But what a legacy he left behind. Thirty years later Frank is still in touch with students and parents from Carver.

Now he lives in Viet Nam. He came back home for a week before Christmas vacation and Friday he visited my school.

"Tell Mr. Brownstein the police are here," he told one of my students who hurriedly rushed to my classroom concerned.

"Mr. Brownstein, Mr. Brownstein, the police are here. They want to see you."

"Send him up," I said with just the right air of not caring at all.

"But it's the police. What do they want? Why are they coming for you?"

I thought they came because I had witnessed too much over the last two weeeks or that they wanted me to file assault and battery charges. I thought a number of things.

"Send them up," I repeated and a minute later in walked Frank.

"He's not the police," I told my student--and a few others who gathered with him. "This is Frank Christensen. He teaches school in Viet Nam. He's one of my best friends."

But they did not believe me.

"OK," I said, "he's my father."

I put on my coat and said, "I have outside duty. You want to come."

Of course he did.

All around students whispered police, police, police, Nr. Brownstein's father, Mr. Brownstein's father, police, police.

Nike had given away three hundred pairs of gym shoes. We had no problems. It was the day before vacation, every student had a bag full of Nike stuff, and so many parents came to pick their children up, it was a quick and painless dismissal.

It helped a lot that they thought Frank--the Man from Viet Nam--was really a cop.

PARTY SCHOOL/GYM SCHOOL OR SCHOOL SCHOOL

2006-12-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

Friday, the day before our two week vacation, and it's raining outside and though I'm not planning a party, I do have enough games to keep us occupied after we do some school work. I mean this is a school.

And my class complains. Everyone is having a party. (Only three classes are.) Everyone is having a movie day. (We only have two TVs in the entire school, but, yes, two classes have doubled up to watch movies all day and another class is watching HOME ALONE over and over again.) We should have freetime. (This is much harder. On and off most classrooms are having bits and pieces of freetime. I have planned for freetime too.)

They don't know we will be having a game day after we finish our reading, listening, writing, science and homework for the vacation lessons. (I gave each child from both seventh grade classes a brand new book they can keep forever, but they must do a book report on it due the day we come back. So I gues it's not really a gift cause it has strings attached to it. But it's still sort of nice. Most of my students are thrilled. They really want a book. Parents take note.)

Nike is bringing gym shoes and socks and a Nike hat to the gym and when they call my class, we will get all of these things too. (And so my class complains about this also.)

So what do I do? It's ten-twenty and it's raining outside and the moans and groans are getting louder. I line them up. Now they're excited. Are we getting our shoes? Are we going to gym? Nope. I'm taking them to the front of the school so we can read the sign.

Someone please read the sign outside to me.

______ School, one of them says.

Not __________ Party Place? Not _________ Gym? Not ________ Free Time All Day Academy?

No, they answer, and I think most of them get it, so we go back upstairs.

This is School School. Even on the day before our vacation. Time for the essay lesson. And we do it. And most of my students do it very well.

Thanks for reading.

Have a healthy and prosperous holiday.

THE SAFETY AND SECURITY MEETING

2006-12-22T05:12:00.000-08:00

How many people signed up sheet for the committee to assist in the hallways before school?

No one.

How many people signed up sheet for the committee to assist on the playground before school?

No one.

How many people signed up for the committee to assist with dismissal?

No one.

OK—now that we know none of the teachers at my school have the guts to back their talk, there were a few good suggestions.

Place signs on the doors to the street notifying the children not to open them to anyone.

Keep the front door locked to outsiders at all times.

Place a saw horse in front of doors near the kindergarten and art room to block children from using those doors as exits.

Create a list of adults who cannot freely roam the halls of the school.

Can anyone help me and Dave? I ask.

Once again, the teachers at my school—or at least the ones who came to the meeting—could not answer with a yes. So, yes, the sign up sheets for teachers to help the two of us—he has to do outside duty and security (that’s his job), but I don’t (not in my job description)—is still empty and we are still the only two outside against over three hundred students and others before and after school.

Yesterday Nike distributed over three-hundred posters in hard corrugated containers. I confiscated over a half dozen. Doesn’t anyone know how hard these feel when you hit someone on the head? Remember: only Dave and I are outside to prevent a major fight because someone who gets whacked also gets mad.

Thankfully, confiscation and the presence of the two of us were enough. But it probably really was the rain that saved the day.

Still I wish people would have the courage to act on their words. Especially when we’re trying to take back the school.

Like I asked yesterday: Is there anyone out there? Is anyone reading this?

Help!

AND ON AND ON

2006-12-21T06:03:00.000-08:00

OK—I went to the doctor yesterday. Remember the blow to the head on Thursday last week during the best science fair I ever ran?. The day I collapsed. The day I thought—

He listened, examined and then ordered x rays of my neck and a cat scan of my head and told me not to go to school for the next two days.

Did I listen?

I didn’t listen the first time when my doctor told me on Thursday to go to the emergency room. Why should I listen to him on Wednesday?

So, yes, I’m here at school.

And what happened yesterday? Confusion down the hall and a room out of control.

CAN WE COME TO YOUR ROOM? Please. Please. Please.

And I would have taken them, too, but I had a doctor’s appointment.

Today: We are meeting before school on the security and safety issues since the big fights began. I, of course, am the chair person for the Professional Problems Committee and I had to call for a meeting. I mean how is it to come to school and there is a police car in front and then go home and there is a police car in front and when you walk down the halls during the school day, women teachers are so scared they lock their classroom doors.

Did I tell you about the man who made an obscene gesture at one of the youngest teachers on our staff? No. Well, now you know? How did hew get in? How did he get past the office?

For those of you reading this out there—

Help!

PS. I’ll let you know how the meeting goes.

PS 2, Good news. We finished reading Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol and in our discussions, both of my classes really took off. Today we are reading how Christmas was saved. Did you know Dickens may have done that too?

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL--SOCRATIC DISCUSSION

2006-12-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

Monday morning. Reading. We’re doing Charles Dickens, THE CHRISTMAS CASROL, and I’m way up for this. I have divided by classes into small five to six people focus groups. We're discussing the segment with the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come.

And it’s great.

“Do they have the right to steal?” I ask.

My students search the text. They spout their own opinions. Yes, they feel, in this case it can be justified.

But does the text justify it? Is there any rationale offered that allows for stealing?

Scrooge is laid out on his bed. He’s dead. The three individuals he employs are rifling through his stuff. He’s dead. What will he care? But then one of the students explains that he is in the room. Didn’t the charwoman just remove his sleeping cap from his dead head?

When is stealing OK?

And we go all over the place. One group justifies the stealing because of poverty and greed. Who will get Scrooge’s stuff? Why can’t it be them?

A second group hears a strong argument for when stealing is OK. If it’s on the ground, why can’t you just take it? But what if you know who it belongs to? Doesn’t matter. They left it on the ground. It’s up for grabs. But isn’t your book bag in the closet on the ground? According to you, it’s OK for me to take and keep.

And each group goes around and around.

I have to prompt some groups and others I just sit back and listen.

In the end every group concurs: Stealing is wrong. There is no justification for it. It does not matter how evil Scrooge was. It doesn’t matter how moral and/or Christian his workers are. All that matters is stealing is wrong.

And then I ask: Is Scrooge responsible for Tiny Tim’s death?

And everything begins again.

A great day!

Now I should tell you how we solve physics equations by hand and then utilize the calculator.

Nah. There's nothing to talk about.

We solve a number of equations in the afternoon and my seventh grade students are into it and I guess all I can say is the day becomes even more great.

How cool is that.

AND ONTO PART 3--WHEN WILL IT END

2006-12-19T05:35:00.000-08:00

8:25 in the morning and already there are warnings of trouble. This may be hard to believe, but when you work in the inner city long enough, you can smell the potential of the day as you walk from the train to the school. (I’m not sure this works when you drive to work. I don’t think the walk is long enough.) When I leave the train—the Green Line at the 43rd Street Station—there is an unmistakable odor of violence already and violence to come.

Today’s trouble comes from an unexpected source—a parent walking her first grade son to the lunchroom for breakfast. Two members of one of the fighting factions of girls are in the hallway and I’m escorting them to the gym or the lunchroom, but not upstairs where they want to go—no supervision—when the parent stops us and asks them why they did not acknowledge her. I stop too.

“Hey, girl,” she points to one of the students, “don’t you remember? I was right in there fighting too. I was on your side.”

I’m wondering why she is bringing this up. Is she looking for glory? Respect? She’s grown. She’s not a nineteen year old with a six year old son. No, she must be in her twenties. I almost ask her why she needs to do this, but one of the girls tells me they’ll go to the gym and then the other thanks the adult for her comment and the adult smiles.

Smiles.

A few minutes later the grandmother of one of the fighters and her grown daughter enter the building. (This even after security is told they are not allowed in.) The grandmother comes in cursing and screaming and rushes towards the office where the principal is standing. Next thing you know she is pushing the principal hard out of the way.

The police are called. They arrive in ninety seconds. Three policemen in full body armor.

How does everything end? It hasn’t yet. The grown daughter removes all of her children from the school and I make sure the others are safe and supervised in the school’s lunchroom. All of the fighters but two—they were actually victims of Friday’s assault—are suspended for five to ten days, the Chicago police will have an officer stationed in front of the school before and after, and security and safety have been unofficially notified. We’re filling out assault incident reports and the Professional Problems Committee—which I am the chair of—are going to meet on Thursday.

SOMETHING'S CAN ONLY GET WORSE

2006-12-17T12:02:00.000-08:00

Friday afternoon the office buzzed my room. We’re sending an aide to you so you can take an important phone call,

Only emergency phone calls are this urgent. I rush to the phone. It's the teacher’s union. They can’t read my writing. It’s a problem of a change of address. I’m immediately relieved.

But as soon as I hang up the phone, it rings. So I answer it. It’s the security guard. Why’s he calling the school? He’s in the school.

And he tells me. The fight from yesterday happened again at 8:30 in the morning. He got hit in the head this time. He had enough. He’s not in the school. He went home. He wants to quit. A bunch of girls who don’t even go to the school invaded the front office and the fight that began after the science fair began again.

Nine police cars. One security guard, the assistant principal—a woman, by the way—and a former woman teacher tried to break it up. Thankfully the police are there within seconds. It was as if they were waiting. A lot of people are handcuffed and sent to jail.

The security guard wants to transfer to another school. I end the phone call by convincing him to give the school one more chance. One more chance.

One more chance.

Do you know how it feels to want to cry? This is what I’m thinking as I say it over and over.

One more chance. One more chance.

He said OK and then I went back upstairs to work—my class full of my students, three students from next door and two boys who wanted to fight on the first floor. I don’t even get a chance to sit down. A sub is in the hall yelling my name. Yelling it. OK—this is how it continues.

THE SCIENCE FAIR--PART 2

2006-12-15T05:07:00.001-08:00

So here it is, 9:00 and the children are lined up to come inside and I have thirty minutes to go before the science fair begins. We split up my class—they stay outside and have gym with 211—and I go through the final touches.

9:30: Over a hundred projects are on display in the gym and I’m feeling really good about this. One judge does not show, but no problem. The social worker volunteers to take his place and so does a parent volunteer.

One third of the school is in the gym, I’m in charge, the judges are judging—everything is arranged. All I need to do now is walk around and monitor behavior and view all of the projects.

But I made a mistake. There is a seventh grade student who I failed last year and believed beyond reason her pride would not allow her to come back to this school (and I was right until she got kicked out of the school she transferred to in Wisconsin), She is back in the school now—about two weeks—not my room, but I have her for science and reading each day. Last assessment she did the very best in the seventh grade so I did to her what I do to all successful assessors—I placed her name on the classroom website, printed out the page for the outside bulletin board and her mother, and brag about her.

This is the good part. She started doing well with everything. Including assisting younger children on their science projects. She did, in fact, help one student develop a very nice science poster for the science fair just two days ago.

So what do I do? I reward her. I add her to the list of three students from my class to help me monitor and judge the science fair. (I had created a simple rubric for them to use when they judged the primary grades.) And she is great. An objective, but nurturing judge. An excellent monitor. She helps set the projects up. She helps build confidence in the little ones.

And then—

Well, then she accuses an eighth grader of spitting on her. This is not true. I am watching when she walks by the eighth grader. But truth doesn’t matter when you suddenly have an urge to go off. So I lift her off the ground—and she must weigh as much as me (she’s actually bigger than me)—and remove her from the gym through a side door.

I know this girl. So I go to the front door of the gym and stop her from entering through one of the main gym doors. This time I walk her to the office.

She tries to come in a second time and a third and a fourth and a fifth. Each time I have to put her back in the office. How is she getting up and coming to the gym each time is beyond me, but she is. After the fifth time, after I assist her to a seat in the office again, after I shut the door behind me, I go to the cafeteria to reconfirm the lunch schedule. And when I come back into the gym—to the largest science fair I ever compiled—to one of the best I have ever run—there was Big Stanley, one of the judges, pushing two girls out the door.

She has escaped from the office a sixth time and has grabbed the eighth grader who has no choice really but to defend herself. So here I am, next to Big Stanley, pushing the girls out of the gym.

And that’s where it should have ended. There is already a police officer in the office. He comes running out to see what the commotion is. And then all of us are knocked together by the rush of students joining the fray.

Suddenly the allies of the seventh grader are in the hall jumping on the eighth grader. This, in turn, brings every family member of the eight grader into the hall.

I have to admit. The police are on it. Suddenly everywhere I look there is an officer. But I am still in the middle of everything. Freeing this girl from this boy. Getting hit on the head eight or ten times forcing another girl from—who knows. Once I even have to move an officer out of the way because he cannot stop two girls tugging each other’s hair.

In the end I am hit in the head too many times to count. My back hurts. My hand feels wrong. I actually order the police to move the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s to two different rooms in two diametrically opposed directions. I go back to the gym. Order everyone to their places. Everyone runs. Everyone is quiet. I ask for the police to round up the students who were in the fight who are still in the gym. They are removed.

In the office two girls are in handcuffs.

“Who started it?” one officer asks me and I point to the seventh grader who promptly begins to curse up a thunderstorm and a tornado and a few hurricanes for extra effect and then she spits in the policeman’s face.

Nothing else to talk about. She is on her way to jail. The eight grader comes back shortly thereafter and takes up her spot in the science fair. And my adrenalin rush fails and I feel every blow to my head and I go to the bathroom and I shut the door and collapse on the floor.

Collapse.

And stay there, my hands on the ground, my head bowed, and I cannot breathe, I cannot think, I cannot do anything at all.

And I stay that way for a long time.

And that’s how the science fair ended.

THE SCIENCE FAIR

2006-12-14T05:46:00.000-08:00

Everyday this week I worked on the all school science fair. Monday I judged all of the classroom science fairs (with the help of two hand picked seventh graders). Tuesday and Wednesday students from the fourth to eighth grades came to my room to be judged and/or show me the improvements they made so they could be in the science fair. On those days, my seventh graders assisted every student who wanted to enter, but were in need of help.

My room was an explosion of activity. Poster boards laid out everywhere. Staplers coming and going at the speed of sound. Scissors making music you could dance to. It was great. It was exhilarating. It was fantastic. It was—oh, my, oh, my, oh, my—fun! It’s what a classroom of learning should look like.

At the end the room was a mess—but my students helped create more than fifty graphs and charts, beautify over forty posters, and practice the presentation with thirty or more unsure students.

This is why I like my class.

(Even if a ton of poster board border littered the floor and the tables.)

Today—Thursday—is the school science fair. Over a hundred students qualified. Over a hundred. How cool is that?

Every evening, every morning, walking through the halls of the school all I hear: Do you have any more poster boards? Can I come to your room for help? How can I make a graph? Etc. Etc. Etc. Please, pick me. Pick me. I have a great project. Pleeeeease!

And the projects are great. The enthusiasm is that grand. The gym is set up and everything is almost ready. I can’t wait. In an hour and a half over a hundred students in my school will be set up to be judged and viewed in the largest science fair I have ever run. Hope I get some kind of help.

Nah.

Won’t it be great when tomorrow I write how great the science fair went, how well it was judged, and then I end the entire blog with: I did it by myself?

Wish me luck. (But I really won’t need it.)

THE N WORD

2006-12-08T05:26:00.000-08:00

Ever since Michael Richard’s temper tantrum on the stage, I have been enforcing my curse word rule: the N word is a curse word and you will get punished for using it. Don’t curse in my room. Don’t call someone the N word.

OK, one of my students asked yesterday—and I’ve been telling them I considered the N word a curse word forever (way before Michael Richards)—why can’t we use it?

My answer: Jew don’t call each other kikes; Hispanics do not refer to themselves as spics; and even during the era of Polish jokes, I never heard a Polish person refer to themselves or others as Pollocks. Each of these groups received these insulting nicknames from an outside group who hated them and thought to keep them down and—you get the point.

But I wasn’t sure my class did get the point.

Everyone uses it, one of my girls said.

No, I answered. I don’t use it. It’s an insult to my ears when I hear it and I’d appreciate it if we would stop. You can make a difference. You can change the world. We have started by collecting money for UNICEF. (We donate money because the cure for one of the world’s greatest killers of children, diarrhea, is only sixteen cents, according to UNICEF) We are learning the best gift is the gift of life and by making these small donations, we are saving lives. So we can also begin to save other things, too. We can stop using the N word.

I don’t know if they caught on yet. It is widely used in the neighborhood where I teach, and, no, I do not feel its appropriate when it is used by African-Americans towards other African-Americans. Once I heard a Jew call another Jew a kike, and the word resounded throughout the parking lot and the man was made to feel worthless by our looks and our gestures and he did, in fact, apologize.

Don’t put yourself down. Don’t let those who wish to make you inferior continue to be successful. Pick yourself up. Words have power. Use them wisely. And not using the N word might be one of the strongest messages you—as intelligent African-American children—can make.

DECEMBER'S TEACHERS UNION MEETING AND OTHER STUFF

2006-12-08T05:20:00.000-08:00

The following is the report I distributed to the staff of my school.

Teachers Union Meeting—December 6, 2006
Michael Brownstein, Union Rep

“One of the teachers at my school broke up a fight and the next day the parent of the child—who is always a discipline problem—filed a police report for battery against the teacher. What can she do to protect herself?” asked a teacher at the Chicago Teachers Union meeting, December 6, 2006, during the question and answer period.

“The teacher should file the following reports,” explained the union officer fielding questions, “an assault report with the principal and, if needed, a police report. Any member can file a police report. You can go to any police station and do this. This is your right. Of course, you will always be provided with union representation.”

Marilyn Stewart, the president of the CTU’s president report:

Gift cards. The Board gave out gift cards at a cost of over a million dollars. “This is another divide and conquer strategy. Only teachers received the cards. Not counselors, union officials, social workers, paraprofessionals and others. The board wants to divide us by giving gifts to one group and not to others.”

Merit pay. “The union has never endorsed merit pay.” Merit pay is highly subjective. “No child succeeds because of your classroom teaching for one year.” It takes a school to teach a child—M. Brownstein.

The Board’s 27 million dollar grant. “They want to use the money for merit pay. We say no. Merit pay does not work. Professional development does.”

Conditions of the schools. “Many schools are crumbling. People are getting sick from our schools. Let us know if there is a problem in your school. We have trained personnel who can assist you in getting the help to fix the problems.”

Social security numbers. “Our private information has always been vulnerable. The Board mailed out over 1700 letters with complete contact information including social security numbers and addresses. The Board only wants to be liable for a year. We will not let the Board off the hook with this one. Do not sign anything without our consent.”

Clerks. Clerks are being asked to do after school paperwork during their working day. “This is an overtime activity. My advice: Do your job. Do it well. Keep records of all of your unpaid time. We are filing a grievance against the Board to stop this practice.”

Teachers can buy up to two years of credit for teaching in private schools: 16.5% of their first year’s salary and 8% of their pension contribution for every year of service.

Three resolutions were passed unanimously: a resolution to honor paraprofessionals, a call to the Board to use only the last four numbers of our social security number, and a resolution to define and support school health programs and healthcare personnel.

Mildred Porter at her meeting at Mollison before school 12/6/06: “Don’t let a parent use corporal punishment in front of you. A teacher received a fifteen day suspension without pay for allowing a parent to spank her child in front of the class.”

For assault cases: Student should be removed from class immediately. File assault report and misconduct report immediately to the principal. Make a copy. If needed, file all documentation with the area office. Porter said she would be available to assist in this process. You have the right to file a police report.