The Weekend is Here

Gotta love the weekend. Casey has a game tonight. Kristie and I will get there early and park the Trailblazer in the corner of the endzone. It's a great view, especially when it gets cold or when I want to listen to our game on the radio. The only drawback are the rednecks who park next to us and drink. I could see - maybe - in the parking lot pre-game - maybe. But not during the game!

A colleague said he had a better story. He was coaching an away JV softball game in Grygla when he noticed a truck full of parents with a cooler in back. Then he thought, well I guess that's how they do things here. Then he realized they were parents of his players!

Saturday will hopefully be nice so we can relax and enjoy the day. No plans. Just a nice lazy day. With any luck.

Sunday brings football and homework.

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Readership is up. Fifty one hits since last night. Slowly but surely.

I’m trying to be kinder and gentler this year. And more positive. Right now I couldn’t write about anything really negative if I wanted to. Things are going that well - in the classroom and at home. Classes are working hard. Kristie’s new job is great. Casey and KoKo are enjoying school and fall sports. My life on the field is a different matter, but what can you do? The same coaching and plays got us two 7-1 teams. We’ll rebound.

But the frustrations will come. And you have no idea how cathartic blogging is for me. I have done more thinking and writing about my teaching last year in my blog than I did in my first three years of teaching English (quite poorly too - I admit) combined.

Some readers will certainly find my writing about a class on Chaucer completely uninteresting. But that’s a big part of my classroom life. Others may like that and care less about the happenings at home. Others may just like to read some of my essays (which are too few and far between. In fact, I’m losing track of what I put on here and what I don’t). I hope you find something to like.

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I corrected like a madman yesterday. Most of it was daily work - reading inventories, reading guides, book work, and stuff like that. Do I pour over it? No way. I sometimes just check to make sure it’s completed and give full credit. Other times I pick the most important question on one of these and examine that in full depth and grade accordingly. I used to put a lot of time into these. But early on in my career I realized I was putting more time in to grading than the kids did in working. Not smart. It’s just more effective to put my time and energy into other assignments and planning.

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Classroom management.

Where to begin with this subject? When I started this literally kept me up at nights. My classes were awful. And so was I. I was new and young and didn’t know - for the most part - what I was doing. And the kids knew it and took advantage of me. From that I learned kids are capable of A LOT more than what I expect of them. If they can manipulate me completely, they can at least do the assignments. But I didn’t get around to this until rather recently.

Then it hit me one day doing either Julius Caesar or A Separate Peace: notes. Moreover, grading them on notes. It was too far along in the quarter for me to just expect them to take notes. See they had me duped. I’d lecture and give notes and have all kinds of grand pre-reading and during-reading and even post-reading strategies that I got out of some textbook. But the students would lament how they didn’t understand it and they’d want to review before a test. Well, basically I ended up telling them everything that was going to be on the test. So they really only had to behave on day out of an entire unit - the review day. The rest they could goof off - and drive me nuts - and they’d just give me a sob story and I’d relent. My God, what would I tell a parent if I failed their child and they came in? I was terrified.

But after about a semester, I caught on. I think the turning point came when one of my students - who was the ring leader of the pains in my side - missed the class period when we took a vocab test. So I put the other tests down in the library. Well, he came up and turned it in. Then later that night, (I was good - at least - back then about correcting their work promptly) I graded his test and saw that he aced it. Deep inside, I knew he had cheated. Now if I could do it over again - and what I wouldn’t give to be back at that moment - as he handed it in, I’d ask him to define a couple of the words. Surely, somebody who was about to ace it - and when he couldn’t define them - as he most assuredly would not be able to do - I’d let him have it.

So that was rock bottom for me. I changed. I wasn’t going to be a prick and yell and scream. I’m still not good at that.

I was going to work them. Even though it was old school lecture and notes kind of teaching. Damn the research. I needed to take control of my classes.

So I designed every class, we were on about 50 minutes classes back then, for at least 40 minutes of notes. To make sure the took them, I actually had them leave their tablets and I would grade them on it. I ended up making the notes worth as much as the tests themselves. Soon - if they didn’t want to fail (and believe it or not, some didn’t) - they soon were conditioned to come in and take notes and - best of all - to listen and behave rationally.

I won’t say - in terms of pedagogy - that it was a sound practice, but it was my survival strategy.

Since then I’ve developed my own teaching persona and have not really worried about discipline since.

I used to stay up nights just wishing I had some leverage on the kids. If I were only their coach or knew their parents or could toss them around (I was far too small). I just needed some way to control them. But now I know better. The real key is this - there is no way to control them. The kids control my classes. There’s nothing I can do about that - other than trying to make learning relevant (cliché, cliché, cliché, I know), respecting them and expecting them to do the same to me, and making the work rigorous (I know I’m stealing this from our superintendent’s speech at our in-service) because they are capable of so much more than what is usually expected of them - they just either complain about it or are unaware of what they are actually capable of doing.

Like I said, I haven’t worried about discipline since.

Now my classes aren’t perfect. I just learn to roll with the punches. For example - I have one troubled young man in a class. I’ve had him in other classes and we’ve had very rocky moments. But he is on the edge of some serious trouble - trouble that has nothing to do with my class. He is often late, does shoddy work, and speaks out once in awhile. But I tolerate it. Do I like it? No. But it’s better than freaking out on him - and causing the situation to escalate. He knows, he either passes or fails on his own. He once called that my “I don’t give a shit attitude” when he wrote about me in his descriptive essay last year. But I know he knows how much I do - to use his words - give a shit. Otherwise, he would be long gone from my class. I just try to see him as a kid who has a lousy, horrific life outside of my classroom. Will I save him? No. Will he get left behind. Most likely. From how he talks and especially how he talks about his life, I know he is aware of that.

But I know I am doing the best I can with him. Busting his balls and making him obey my rules and my will would not be what is best for him. Making him work and pass is what is best for him, and so far he is doing that. So far.

So when he saunters in late - pissed at the world and wanting a confrontation, I don’t even bat an eye. It’s like he is invisible. He slinks in, plops down in his desk, and we don’t break our stride. He can either hop aboard or . . . get left behind.

And when he does start to get to me, I think of this - he wrote an essay about his favorite place to be - at his grandparents house at the lake where they treat him like a king. When he was telling me about it, I could see in his eyes and hear in how he talked just how much he liked it there, especially where they saw him as their grandson and not as a delinquent. And feeling like the way he does at his grandparents is probably how he spends 2% of his life.

So whenever I feel like getting on him or letting him have it, I think about how his grandparents treat him - no - I think about how he looked when he was telling me about how they treated him and how he must have felt a slight tingle at the memory of being treated like that - and I lay off him and try to make him feel not like a king - but maybe a little less like the delinquent he spends 98% of his life feeling like. Maybe he has that 2% of pure bliss at the lake, 97.99% of getting the shit end of the stick by life, and .9% of having an okay time in my class.


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My College Comp class is reading their novels. There is something most magical about watching people read, especially when you know their minds are engaged. A pen rests on one student’s lip. Another scrolls on the Post-It Notes I gave him. Another leans against the wall and wraps the pages around the spine as he reads.

And a few - like the girl obnoxiously chomping her gum or the boy with the mohawk - who bide their time sneaking glances at the clock. It’s not a perfect world. But for those who read -- what a way to spend a class session.

And the books? A sampling - “Huck Finn,” “Crime and Punishment,” “Moby Dick,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “A Farewell to Arms,” “Tom Sawyer,” “The Great Gatsby,” “The Jungle,” “Jane Eyre” . . . What a collection!