...But you can't make him swallow

Evan can't wait until next year, he tells me.

Next  year he can fail me.  If I can fail him then he can fail me.

"I don't fail you," I remind him, " you earn a passing grade, or you don't."

Evan didn't.  

He has this phone problem.  Everyone at school has a phone problem, including many teachers.  Its an addiction.  I worked with one teacher who spent her day on the cell phone updating her Facebook status.  I was the union representative then,  so when the very kind assistant principal handed me a printout of her status - updated hourly, including large chunks of time when she had teaching assignments, I went to speak with her.  I don't remember exactly what I said, but I remember the phrase "theft of services," coming up.  The conversation had two results.  One- I was immediately "defriended" and two- she ate all day long.  She was a size two, most of the students out weighed her by a factor of two.  But being detached from her phone meant she could only get through a day by using her fingers for feeding instead of texting. Its an addiction.

But I digress.   

Evan would love to eat all  day long. I probably wouldn't  even stop him (and he has a considerably larger frame to fill) but he doesn't even have the self restraint of my former coworker.  So many of our days go like this.

Me:  Evan put your cell phone away.

Evan:  I got you miss, (and then Evan does not put his phone away)

Me:  Evan put your cell phone away or I'm calling the dean

Evan:  How come you're always picking on me?

I could go on but the conversation doesn't change much.

And Evan doesn't have a  steep learning curve- not for math, not for cell phones.

When the dean gets called, he gets a five day suspension from school.  (In all fairness  to the school's disciplinary team, Evan is always given the choice of surrendering the phone for one WHOLE day, or being excluded from the daytime school- he could attend the late afternoon session, for 5 days.

Evan will never surrender his phone.

Several weeks ago Evan entered the room with the cell phone out.  (See above for ensuing conversation).   Evan then plugged the cell phone into the outlet. (Imagine the ensuing conversation).

Then the cell phone rang.  I told him if he picked it up I would call the dean and he would be suspended.

Suffice it to say I am a woman of my word.

The governor imposed a teacher evaluation of the New York City Department of Education last week.  Plenty of blogs have done a far better job than I would of illustrating the city teachers' reaction-  here  and here and here are just a few.

Among the many other intricate and confusing aspects is the piece the city requested about including student surveys in the evaluation.  Evan heard the news- and he's happy.  He's going to get his revenge he tells me as I hand out the final.

The surveys will count for five percent of the evaluation.  I have fifty students a semester.  I am generally popular.  I sing, I dance, I give you my cell number and I help you do your final.  So even if Evan gave me the very worst evaluation the most  it would count for is  2% of 5% that would account for .001 % of my evaluation.  And that would assume he wasn't suspended the day the surveys were distributed.  I want to explain  this to Evan, but that's what he wants- to distract me from giving the final. Anyway he wouldn't get the math.

"Do the final"  I tell him.  "I'll show you with what you missed.  You can find me later and I'll help you."

But he doesn't.  I tell the story to the principal.  I remind him of all the students who have "stalked" me over the years looking for that promised help. The ones who squeaked out an eleventh hour passing grade.

But not Evan.
The principal says, "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink."

Its more like: You can lead horse to water, pour it down its throat, but you can't make him swallow it.

Maybe I should text Evan the lessons to his cell phone.

Is that all we could do?

The subway series was in full swing this week.

The Knicks and the Rangers got themselves eliminated from the playoffs, so all that was left to talk about in 5th period math was baseball.

Terrel was recounting the unbelievable success of the Mets.  He gave the pitch by pitch recount  (and thanks to an inherited affinity for the Mets coupled with a disdain for the Yankees- I was able to ascertain the veracity of the report).

Terrel can't remember which line is the X axis and which is the Y, and counting up the boxes for a rise over run calculation of slope, is way out of his league, but even his least favored sport- baseball, was getting an accurate and complete review.

I asked, "Terrel, is there any sport you don't follow?"

"No Miss,"  Terrel answered with a shrug and head thrust.  Terrel has this tic that makes him the kind of person you worry about sitting next to on the bus and then hate yourself for being that way.

"I'm trying to figure out rugby." he added. "But, I haven't gotten all the rules down yet."

So I asked him if he saw the movie Invictus, about Nelson Mandela rallying a post -Apartheid South Africa around a predominantly white rugby team.  

He didn't.  He thinks he's heard of Nelson Mandela and South Africa.  Apparently social studies is no less of a struggle than math.

I'm glad he's happy and talking this week.  Last week the current event horror story of the week had a direct impact on him.  A fourteen year old girl was shot to death on a public bus on the way home from a sweet sixteen party.  Perhaps the bullet was meant for the girl next to her, perhaps it was random. I don't watch carefully, the "if it bleeds it leads." stories on the local news.

But Terrel was devastated.  "She was like a little sister, to me Miss," he told me."I was going to take her for a tattoo and now I'm going to the funeral." 

I told  the principal the story, and we looked at Terrel's academic records.  Terrel has passed everything and has lots of a academic credits. But with the exception of the math Regents his highest Regent grade is 12.  Way below the chance level.  

How could that be?

I cannot speak for anyone but myself.  

I will give Terrel a passing grade.  He comes everyday, willingly gives a complete and thorough sports cast and then makes an attempt to do the math. 

I cannot, in all good faith say he earned a high school credit worth of math, but I cannot live with the thought of not giving him a credit for doing what he could and never not showing up for another day of trying to do it all again the next day.  (And an audience for the sport's news of the day)

The principal shook his head as he read the record.  "If this is all we could do for Terrel, was this the right place for him?" he asked.

The principal and I came to the school late in Terrel's high school career, but I don't think we could have done any different.  The current climate of No Child Left Behind and the other nonsense means Terrel has no choice but to take a series of college prep classes that he passes but does not understand.  Then the gate of standardized testing slams shut in front of him, not allowing him to graduate with a "real" diploma.

The city promises it is opening more career and technical high schools next year, too late for Terrel, but who knows if others like him will get a better chance of course work that might make there life easier. 

I will make sure Terrel registers with the office for vocational training.  

Then when he leaves  I will wish him well. 

And hope that he will have a place in his future to be safe and happy and audience willing to listening to the recount of latest game.

Sarcasm Part III - In Spanish

I explained earlier how after careful thought and consideration (and the fact that no one else agreed to do it) I got to teach a non-special education, bilingual geometry class.

It goes something like this- I explain something in English, someone translates it into Spanish. Everyone laughs.
What I said was not funny in English.
So I translate it into Spanish.
Everyone laughs again.

Now I am sure they are talking about me.
Is this how non-English speaking kids feel in English classes?
I think  I am getting paranoid.

It would be unpleasant- except it isn't.  This group is the sweetest one I have.
They arrive one at a time (everyone in our school does- punctuality is a lost art).
We sit in semi-circle (all ten of us- my special ed tradition extended into the bilingual classroom). And each entrant comes in stops at each desk and if male - kisses all the girls and shakes the hands of all the boys, if female- kisses everyone.

Except me.
I am sad.
Why am I not worthy of handshakes and kisses?

I ask.
Everyone laughs.  I must be a very funny teacher.

Friday we are working on a group of problems finding the missing angles in a polygon.
Sr. Alto, a quiet, tall Dominican young man who earned his name because he often arrives before the kissing cycle which results in him being asked to reach the folders stored on top of the locker, has worked through the first set.  Carla is holding his papers in one hand and writing away on her own paper with the other.

I suggest she try the problems herself.
"No Miss,"  I show him how to do it, now I write what I tell him".

"Oh, and I fell off the turnip cart, yesterday."
I try to translate that one- but quickly realize I have no idea how to say turnip in Spanish.
And the sarcasm is lost in translation.

So the period goes on. I lose the page on the Smart Board once, accidentally erase the writing twice, and trip over the wires three times. (a typical day- did I mention how much I miss my chalkboard?)

There is another set of problems to work out, Sr. Alto is working away.
Carla not so much.

I ask if she is again explaining to him how to do it.

She turns and asks the assistant in the back of the room, "Como se dice.... (how do you say?)

The best the assistant can offer, is "lies".

"No, that's not it," she replies, frustrated.

"Sarcasm?"  I offer.

"Yeah-sarcasmo!"

"Very good,"  Violeta offers, "Now you understand our Spanish!"

Time to look up the Spanish work for turnip!


Sarcasm Part I and II here and here

Sneaky Reading

The year is rolling to a close.  A friend posts the remaining number of days above the time clock, and the spring weather has decreased our already dismal attendance.

Regina  finds herself alone in my tenth period math class often.
I ask a question as she comes in that one day is going to get me in deep trouble.

"Reading or math?"

Regina is not half bad in math.  She "passed" the state Regent's exam in January.  By passed, I mean, she scored enough point to earn credit when her IEP is taken into consideration.  It doesn't exactly qualify her as an algebra genius but most of the students in the self-contained special education program don't even reach that level.

We moved on to geometry.  Which means we spend a lot of time coloring foldables (my new addiction) about angles and postulates and theorems and things like that.  And Regina gets it.

But when tenth period rolls around and the halls have become deserted by all but the girl's track team, who practice in the hall since the boys get the running track, Regina often finds herself the only student  in the math room.  The first day in September I asked Regina to read aloud, she refused.  She came up to me later and explained she didn't know how.  She spent the first thirteen years of her life in country where education was not a regular thing and arrived in our school system long after the grade where reading instruction is a given.

I try to sneak it in.  Sometimes we stay late.  Sometimes I think maybe its more important to know how to sound out two syllable words than identify  corresponding angles. I am aware it is not my decision to make.  Its not Regina's either.  I am her math teacher, her schedule says tenth period geometry.

We sneak out of the math room and hide behind the barriers in the Resource Room.  There Regina figures out that pan and cake makes pancake.  She knows the word or.  When you have no phonic skills you get good at memorizing sight words.  But it is a revelation that  an h  in front -and some letters in the back make horse.  Or now store and  forum become readable. Regina reads through a whole a story we found in an ancient stack of unloved readers.  The pages are yellow.  The stories refer to such  anachronisms as video stores and beepers.   They are not the shiny new complex non-fiction texts that the Common Core staff developer urges us to "scaffold" for our "challenged" readers.(Not that I have to worry about that - I'm a math teacher.)

But Regina gets through the whole page.  She will never again say she can't read. (Okay so it was probably on a second grade level- but it was a lot of words and she understood what all those previously mysterious symbols were trying to convey).

She beams.  This is happiness.

We got away with it.  We did reading instead of math.

We didn't get caught.

Back to triangle theorems tomorrow.

Reading your mind

Field Trip
For reasons that involve the convoluted organization/ reorganization of  a turn-around, closed, no wait- not closed, still opened, New York  City high school, I ended up on a field trip to the Bio-engineering Labs at City College.

CCNY as well as our school were built in the days when educational institutions were "cathedrals of learning."

Even though there weren't actually students from within the special education department on the trip I got to go. 

I got on the bus at 9:30 am.

I got off the bus with the student who was using a variety of the seven words you can't use on the radio, at  9:31am.

I had a discussion about "professional language." (as well as the acuity and accuracy of my hearing). with the trip leader and said student at 9:32am.

The bus pulled away from the curb at 9:35 (all agrieved and non-a grieved parties -boarded)

We spent the morning touring three labs in the Grove School of Engineering, learning first hand about state-of -the- art research.

I still have a hard time making teenagers look enthusiastic, but it was fascinating.

In the neuro-engineering lab we looked and heard about all sorts of devices that measure the human (or sometimes rat's) response to electrical stimulation. The Phd student assured us, the research was on the path to  being able to decode human thinking inside the brain.

"Can you read my thought?" Roger asked.

Our guide, responded, they weren't quite there yet.

"I can, " I told Roger.

"What I am thinking?"  he asked.

"You're thinking- when do we get to eat lunch?"

Roger nodded.  We moved on.

PS  We had a very good lunch in the Student Union cafeteria

Logic

If I teach logic, then I will get. it.
That's an if/ then statement.
In math its called a conditional.

I know that 'cause I teach logic.  Then there is the truth value thing.

If the first part is true then you look at the second part and if that is also true then you reverse it, and then you do the hokey pokey and your turn yourself around.  And that's what its all about.

If you're too young to remember the hokey pokey and then  we'll go with the Missy Elliot quote- if  its worth it than work it - put your thing down flip and reverse it.

The point?  The truth value  is false.
Obviously.
I teach it- but I don't get it.

Here's another conditional

If you love to teach then you teach.

Let's look what the converse of this one is.

If you teach then you love to teach.

Anyone who has been around schools and- kids, and - teachers, for more than a little while- has to question the truth value of that one. I had a friend  who has a job working with teachers who are in jeopardy of losing their jobs due to terrible reviews.  Sometimes she  finds , the reviews are due to something other than actual teaching skills , sometimes she's successfully makes them better teachers and sometimes she finds that people who actually teach hate  to teach.


And now for the negation.
Those who don't love to teach, don't teach.
They find ways to make those who do -miserable.

By making educational policy-
By deciding people who can't determine the difference between odd and even numbers should take college preparatory math courses.
By thinking that if you make everything harder, then everyone will learn harder things.
Then developing  tests to  determine that students can't do the stuff that you decided to put on the hard  test ,  but you didn't tell anyone in advance how hard it would be since you didn't know exactly what was going to be on it.

In fact you were so confused about what hard stuff to put on the exam that you used passages from the textbooks you were also selling the people to prepare for the hard exam.
(That will show people who love to teach- not to buy anything but your textbooks.)

And of course if it all goes awry - you just blame the teachers.

Is anything I wrote logical?
Does it make sense?

Who knows?  I already admitted I don't get it.

Basic Construction- This is hard

I teach geometry 1, self contained, tenth period.

In a school where remnants of an old special education system exist, even if the form in which they currently exist no longer makes sense,  I am assigned students who "successfully tested" past the first high school mathematics course, but are considered in need of separate (but equal) instruction in a separate classroom. (Okay- the educationally cool word, is parallel-talk about your geometry vocabulary!)

That's the remnants part.  There are no more courses for adolescents with no literacy skills, no programs for students who can't handle a compass, let alone a geometry proof.  Everyone is placed in college-preparatory programs

So I try to teach college preparatory  geometry.
This is hard.
That's Bartholomew's favorite line.  Bartholomew who wear's diamond (or cut glass- I'm not a jeweler) studs in both ears, talks in a squeaky voice and hides under the desk in social studies. (I don't know how or why, but the social studies teacher came in one day to offer him pizza if he wouldn't hide under the desk anymore- He didn't - We shared the pizza).

This is hard.
This being whatever I ask him to do, solve for x, find the area of a four by four rectangle drawn on graph paper, or  basic geometric constructions- which is what we were doing last week.

Thursday afternoon, I worked with him constructing the angle bisector using a compass and a straightedge.  It involved sequencing six steps and manipulating a compass.
This is hard.
Yeah?  You think?- try teaching someone who insists picking up the compass is hard- to construct an angle bisector.  Forty minutes later, I have no idea who was more frustrated Bartholomew or me.  Bell rang- we went  home-frustrated.

I would just pass him.  It was ridiculous to keep harping on it.  We weren't getting anywhere - and he didn't deserve to fail, because the skills were out of his functioning range.

Then I got to thinking- what would Bartholomew really need to know in his post secondary (as the IEP calls it) life?  Would he have to solve for x  or would he have to use tools in some prescribed series of steps?

Friday we tried again.  I changed the task to copying an angle, four steps instead of six. I drew a big angle on blank white sheet. I asked him to touch his nose, bend his elbow, clap his hands in order.
This is weird.
Yeah, weird.  But - he could follow three directions in the appropriate sequence. So I guess weird is better than hard.

We worked all period on copying that angle,

With limited success.

But some limited success is better than frustration.

We both went home happy. It was the weekend.