When I first started working at the alternative school, teachers in the district offered to lend me "easy" texts for the students to read. I immediately rejected them. The assumption is that at-risk means dumb. There is absolutely no empirical evidence to prove this. It merely reveals the bias of the educator. Just this year when I was at professional development with the other ELA teachers, one of them commented that I should be teaching gifted students. I respond, "I do."
Early on I realized that my students had a very strong voice, but it was rarely listened to. This is why I started our Alternative Voices project which is a spoken word CD. Students at my school have been recording their poems for the past twenty years. We have gone from burning CDs to creating a YouTube channel, but the important thing to remember is that it is student created.
Throughout the years my students have created black history posters that are hanging around the district, interviewed people in the community about gun violence, published websites, and filmed videos. The poems they wrote about Michael Brown are part of the collection at the Missouri History Museum. When those poems caused controversy we invited the mayor to our classroom to discuss why they were problematic and how the police department in their town differed from Ferguson.
We have read Oedipus Rex, Tartuffe, Fences, Parable of the Sower, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Flowers for Algernon, The Road, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lax and many other texts. These are not "easy" texts.
I have never "dumbed down" anything for my students which is why the current situation is so depressing. I have up to five classes in my room during some periods which makes it impossible to do project based learning, group reading, or watch movies such as Seven Samurai. Recently we lost our science teacher because she was not certified for high school, but instead of replacing her we now offer online courses and hire a behavior specialist because it is more important to teach "these kids" how to behave instead of to think analytically. More students are in online classes because of a scheduling catastrophe. In fact students are taking online courses in subjects in which we employ certified teachers. The systems is so disrespectful of the students that it was determined that the original online classes which actually had an instructor were too difficult, so we switched to E2020 which we have ample evidence that the students cheat on. I was literally told to give the students worksheets to complete while I am teaching the other class that is in my room. This is the very definition of "busy work." I am being asked to keep students busy instead of engaged.
My drives to and from work have become tearful as I mourn the wasted semester and wasted minds. The lack of respect for my students is appalling, and it is all happening because nobody wants to take the time to fix it. We are literally warehousing students searching through the master schedule looking for a bin that they will fit in.
Monday, January 27, 2020
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Second Semester Reflection
Link to First Semester Reflection
World Lit.
I will start with the worst. In the first time is several years I had students refuse to watch/read Seven Samurai because it was a black & white movie. Some of them insisted that it was a “silent” movie without any dialogue. It is is a hard movie to do in this school because of the forty-five minute class periods, but it usually works because I can draw parallels between the Bushido code and the “code of the the street.” This year most of the students did not make that connection. The snow days did not help because is seemed like it took a month to watch the entire movie.
The posters that the students made to illustrate the bushido code actually worked out well. Next year I will work on getting the right balance of stopping to explain and letting the kids enjoy. I might try pre-loading a little more and put it in writing for students that don’t get to class when we do all of the early work.
I ended up with a weird amount of time at the end of the semester which was not enough time to do a full PBL. I modified my creation story unit, but did not give it a full effort. It would have made more sense to do this with the hero unit and keep all of the mythology together, but because of the change in sequence do to class name changes everything was a little bit of a mess.
Both units need to be kept, but the order needs to be rearranged, and the calendar needs to be better organized.
Lit. & Comp
I used this class for the poetry unit, and because we had to rearrange all of the schedule I did not have nearly many students participating in the writing and recording poetry for our spoken word recordings. Only eight students went to the recording studio and as of today the second to the last day of school, only one student has turned in a video.
I was really hoping for a huge improvement this year, but this was definitely a step back. I do think some of this had to do with the students, but somehow I need to do better job selling this.
American Lit
I move the my literacy unit into this class. We read about several Americans and how literacy affected their lives, and then the students were to write an essay about their experiences. Again turn in rates were ridiculously low. It was the only essay I required in any of my classes, yet they still refused to do it.
For the last half of the semester I started creating a new unit about conspiracy theories. I am excited to continue working on it over the summer. I originally just thought of it as a reading topic, but as I was working with the students I realized that we have done a great disservice to the students. For many years while attending tech conference students were often referred to as digital natives. This designation presumed that they came with a certain innate skill. However, just like American citizens who have to learn the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in Civics class, students need to learn how to be digital citizens. It became abundantly clear that they did not know how search engines work or how to verify information. Next year I will use conspiracies both real and imagined as a gateway to digital media literacy.
Overall
First of all I would like to talk about the good things. My unit on gun violence was recognized in St. Louis magazine. It was an exciting opportunity for the students that were interviewed. I also won an NEH grant to study southern culture and the blues over the summer. This is great news for my unit call Red, White, & The Blues.
Now for everything else. This year was a hot mess. For the first time I can remember I had students that literally turned in no work. They kept coming to class, but did absolutely nothing. I tried serous talks. I tried letting students come up with lessons. I tried jokes. I could not motivate them. It got so bad that I actually created an entire research project for myself about game design and fun in the classroom. You can read it here.
The renaming of my classes a week prior to the school year require a massive reorganization that did not go as smoothly as I liked. In prior years the Communications class was a catch all so that I would have all of the students in at least one class in which I could focus on fundamentals of writing and communication and then reference that in my other class. Now it just seem like a bunch of random ELA classes.
The elimination of the Exploratory class and the our PLC made it difficult to approach the students with a unified message. The students need to see us a a team that is here to work with them. Also the all school read and group projects helped bring the students together and gave an opportunity for teachers to learn with students.
The loss of two of our team members for specious reasons, one of which was not replaced, had a major impact as well. To be honest, I actually considered taking mental health days this year. I have never thought of it before because I like my job, but at time I felt it was pointless to be here. The students were combative often demanding credits and points instead of caring about learning. The administration is directionless as to what our goal is. Students were unaware of what this school is for or why they were enrolled in it. I am not looking forward to next year. Not only will we have a new “director” instead of a principal, but none of the issues from this year have been addressed.
World Lit.
I will start with the worst. In the first time is several years I had students refuse to watch/read Seven Samurai because it was a black & white movie. Some of them insisted that it was a “silent” movie without any dialogue. It is is a hard movie to do in this school because of the forty-five minute class periods, but it usually works because I can draw parallels between the Bushido code and the “code of the the street.” This year most of the students did not make that connection. The snow days did not help because is seemed like it took a month to watch the entire movie.
The posters that the students made to illustrate the bushido code actually worked out well. Next year I will work on getting the right balance of stopping to explain and letting the kids enjoy. I might try pre-loading a little more and put it in writing for students that don’t get to class when we do all of the early work.
I ended up with a weird amount of time at the end of the semester which was not enough time to do a full PBL. I modified my creation story unit, but did not give it a full effort. It would have made more sense to do this with the hero unit and keep all of the mythology together, but because of the change in sequence do to class name changes everything was a little bit of a mess.
Both units need to be kept, but the order needs to be rearranged, and the calendar needs to be better organized.
Lit. & Comp
I used this class for the poetry unit, and because we had to rearrange all of the schedule I did not have nearly many students participating in the writing and recording poetry for our spoken word recordings. Only eight students went to the recording studio and as of today the second to the last day of school, only one student has turned in a video.
I was really hoping for a huge improvement this year, but this was definitely a step back. I do think some of this had to do with the students, but somehow I need to do better job selling this.
American Lit
I move the my literacy unit into this class. We read about several Americans and how literacy affected their lives, and then the students were to write an essay about their experiences. Again turn in rates were ridiculously low. It was the only essay I required in any of my classes, yet they still refused to do it.
For the last half of the semester I started creating a new unit about conspiracy theories. I am excited to continue working on it over the summer. I originally just thought of it as a reading topic, but as I was working with the students I realized that we have done a great disservice to the students. For many years while attending tech conference students were often referred to as digital natives. This designation presumed that they came with a certain innate skill. However, just like American citizens who have to learn the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in Civics class, students need to learn how to be digital citizens. It became abundantly clear that they did not know how search engines work or how to verify information. Next year I will use conspiracies both real and imagined as a gateway to digital media literacy.
Overall
First of all I would like to talk about the good things. My unit on gun violence was recognized in St. Louis magazine. It was an exciting opportunity for the students that were interviewed. I also won an NEH grant to study southern culture and the blues over the summer. This is great news for my unit call Red, White, & The Blues.
Now for everything else. This year was a hot mess. For the first time I can remember I had students that literally turned in no work. They kept coming to class, but did absolutely nothing. I tried serous talks. I tried letting students come up with lessons. I tried jokes. I could not motivate them. It got so bad that I actually created an entire research project for myself about game design and fun in the classroom. You can read it here.
The renaming of my classes a week prior to the school year require a massive reorganization that did not go as smoothly as I liked. In prior years the Communications class was a catch all so that I would have all of the students in at least one class in which I could focus on fundamentals of writing and communication and then reference that in my other class. Now it just seem like a bunch of random ELA classes.
The elimination of the Exploratory class and the our PLC made it difficult to approach the students with a unified message. The students need to see us a a team that is here to work with them. Also the all school read and group projects helped bring the students together and gave an opportunity for teachers to learn with students.
The loss of two of our team members for specious reasons, one of which was not replaced, had a major impact as well. To be honest, I actually considered taking mental health days this year. I have never thought of it before because I like my job, but at time I felt it was pointless to be here. The students were combative often demanding credits and points instead of caring about learning. The administration is directionless as to what our goal is. Students were unaware of what this school is for or why they were enrolled in it. I am not looking forward to next year. Not only will we have a new “director” instead of a principal, but none of the issues from this year have been addressed.
Wednesday, May 01, 2019
Rejected NEH Admission Essay (Later Accepted)
In 2002 I attended a symposium at the University of Kansas celebrating the centennial of poet Langston Hughes’ birth. While I have to admit that I was excited to see Kevin Powell because of his stint on MTV’s Real World, and the reading by Paule Marshall at a local bookstore was a highlight, it was a lecture by Amiri Baraka that heralded my sixteen year fascination with the blues. I had just begun teaching a few years earlier, and my knowledge of Langston Hughes consisted primarily of The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Mother to Son, but Baraka introduced me to Hughes’ twelve-bar blues. That same year I took began recording a spoken word CD.Students would write poetry, and we would go to a studio owned by a former student to professionally record and mix the tracks. I have shared examples and modeled “blues poetry” that year and every year since, but I have never been able to find the hook. I want to use the knowledge I gain from this conference to find new avenues to lead my students to a deeper appreciation and understanding of the poetry of the delta.
For a long time the blues was a personal obsession. I would annoy my wife and son on road trips listening to Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt, and a seventeen minute version of “Tobacco Road” by Edgar Winter. I insisted that we stand front and center on the hard packed dirt of a rodeo arena in ninety-five degree heat to see Leo “Bud” Welch at the Pilgrimage Festival in Nashville. At the Beale Street Music Festival, I made a beeline to the blues tent, and later that night, we jammed ourselves against the railing to see the headliner, Jack White. Arriving earlier than usual to LouFest, a local music festival, I made sure that the whole family enjoyed Buddy Guy’s set. We have stood in line in the French Quarter to hear the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, forced our son to take our picture at the Tallahatchie Bridge, visited the Woody Guthrie Center and paid our respects at Robert Johnson’s grave, but until this last school year I had not been able to successfully incorporate this love of music into my classroom.
Over the summer I went to a workshop sponsored by Teachrock.org. It was held at a local casino, and to be honest I thought it was going to be terrible, but I knew that after we listened to their speil, we would gain free admission to the Little Steven concert that night. The presentation was only a half hour tour of their website, but it is the mother lode of music related lesson plans. The very first thing I did after the concert was to type the word “blues” into the search bar and found a lesson entitled The Blues And The Great Migration. I eventually adapted this in to a project based lesson called “Red, White & The Blues” in which students read Fences by August Wilson through a musical lens, studied the local St. Louis crime ballads “Stagger Lee”, “Frankie & Johnny” and “Duncan and Brady,” and created presentations with a soundtrack for an era in African-American history. My research for this unit brought me full circle to Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) and his book Blues People: Negro Music in White America and led me to a deeper understanding blues history of St. Louis, but I feel that I have only scratched the surface.
W.C. Handy wrote the song “St. Louis Blues” in 1914, yet the title of the song is more widely known as the name of the city’s NHL franchise. One hundred and two years after it was composed we became home of the National Blues Museum, and that, for most people, is the sum total of St. Louis’ connection to the history and culture of the Mississippi Delta. Residents embrace their connection to western expansion with a mid-century monument, constantly remind visitors of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and name libraries and grade schools across the region after Lewis and Clark. Route 66 is celebrated with signs and historic businesses, while Hwy 61 is virtually ignored. The city celebrates its version of Italian cuisine while ignoring soul food and Delta delicacies. Whether conscious or not, St. Louis distances itself from its southern roots, denies the influence of the great migration, and buries the history of many of its people. By attending “The Most Southern Place On Earth” workshop, I hope to reconnect my students with their community’s through music, food, and past to empower them participate in its future.
For a long time the blues was a personal obsession. I would annoy my wife and son on road trips listening to Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt, and a seventeen minute version of “Tobacco Road” by Edgar Winter. I insisted that we stand front and center on the hard packed dirt of a rodeo arena in ninety-five degree heat to see Leo “Bud” Welch at the Pilgrimage Festival in Nashville. At the Beale Street Music Festival, I made a beeline to the blues tent, and later that night, we jammed ourselves against the railing to see the headliner, Jack White. Arriving earlier than usual to LouFest, a local music festival, I made sure that the whole family enjoyed Buddy Guy’s set. We have stood in line in the French Quarter to hear the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, forced our son to take our picture at the Tallahatchie Bridge, visited the Woody Guthrie Center and paid our respects at Robert Johnson’s grave, but until this last school year I had not been able to successfully incorporate this love of music into my classroom.
Over the summer I went to a workshop sponsored by Teachrock.org. It was held at a local casino, and to be honest I thought it was going to be terrible, but I knew that after we listened to their speil, we would gain free admission to the Little Steven concert that night. The presentation was only a half hour tour of their website, but it is the mother lode of music related lesson plans. The very first thing I did after the concert was to type the word “blues” into the search bar and found a lesson entitled The Blues And The Great Migration. I eventually adapted this in to a project based lesson called “Red, White & The Blues” in which students read Fences by August Wilson through a musical lens, studied the local St. Louis crime ballads “Stagger Lee”, “Frankie & Johnny” and “Duncan and Brady,” and created presentations with a soundtrack for an era in African-American history. My research for this unit brought me full circle to Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) and his book Blues People: Negro Music in White America and led me to a deeper understanding blues history of St. Louis, but I feel that I have only scratched the surface.
W.C. Handy wrote the song “St. Louis Blues” in 1914, yet the title of the song is more widely known as the name of the city’s NHL franchise. One hundred and two years after it was composed we became home of the National Blues Museum, and that, for most people, is the sum total of St. Louis’ connection to the history and culture of the Mississippi Delta. Residents embrace their connection to western expansion with a mid-century monument, constantly remind visitors of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and name libraries and grade schools across the region after Lewis and Clark. Route 66 is celebrated with signs and historic businesses, while Hwy 61 is virtually ignored. The city celebrates its version of Italian cuisine while ignoring soul food and Delta delicacies. Whether conscious or not, St. Louis distances itself from its southern roots, denies the influence of the great migration, and buries the history of many of its people. By attending “The Most Southern Place On Earth” workshop, I hope to reconnect my students with their community’s through music, food, and past to empower them participate in its future.
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