Four Years in Transition

I considered changing the "dek" for this blog since it still reads ". . . as he transitions into his new career as a high school English teacher." I decided not to.

I didn't, because at four years in I am still very new and I am certainly still transitioning. Many days I question my decision to take on this job and stay with it. Working with adolescents is both exhilarating and disheartening, sometimes both emotions are separated by mere milliseconds.

There is never a day when I come away feeling I did my job particularly well. Teaching writing is tough, but teaching it to 184 16-year-olds in 55-minute blocks shot full of Deans' Office summons, announcements, and more good questions from students than I can possibly answer make it impossible to teach with any focus.

Our school has now entered its third year of just missing making AYP as determined by the state in its efforts meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. As a result, we are polishing our books, printing binders full of charts, and changing the format of our lesson plans. Anyone who has worked for government agencies that are inspected by other government agencies knows exactly what all this polishing, printing, and changing is designed to do.

I just want to figure out how to better teach my students. Maybe I can't.

Green Robes and Cell Phones

There were roughly 600 seniors in my youngest daughter's graduating class. At the ceremony, they were arranged in two columns: boys on the right and girls on the left. Each column was further divided: a few International Baccalaureate graduates robed in black sitting at the front, followed by honors graduates robed in white, followed by non-honors girls in green and non-honors boys in blue making up approximately the last 60% of each column.

This color and gender sorting method made for at least one interesting observation: The heaviest users of portable telecommunications devices during the ceremony wore green robes. I noticed some blue-robes using these devices as well, but no white or black-robes. I was further away from the blue robed graduates, but could clearly see the female black and white robed students.

By observing frequency of use, I could also determine which speakers the graduates found most interesting. The principal's speech had the fewest number of users and the valedictorians' had the most.

Year 3.5

This year saw me take on 120 Advanced Placement English Language and Composition students in the middle of the school year. Their teacher was diagnosed with cancer about two months into the first semester and they had substitute teachers from then until the middle of January, when I stepped in for the second semester.

Alas, the intrinsic academic motivation of most 16 year olds regardless of prior achievement is fairly limited, and they spent their time sleeping, communicating with other students face-to-face or via portable electronic telecommunication devices, listening to music, playing cards, or perhaps attempting cut through the din to study for other classes.

A few students were concerned that this environment wasn't conducive to preparing for the rather rigorous AP exam, but they couldn't do much about without competent adult guidance, so they shrugged their shoulders and assumed they would be inadequately prepared. Then I arrived.

I had four days to prepare to teach the class, and I did my homework well. Fortunately, I had taken an AP seminar in 2008, and knew what to expect and how to broadly proceed. The sudden application of AP standards and expectations was a shock to the system for most of the students, and many reacted with indignation, some sought to flee the field before what appeared to them to be an unconquerable foe but only two managed to transfer out. Some attempted to bring in reinforcements and my position was assailed by off-board artillery, whining in through telephone lines and e-mail missives from parents concerned about the damage my program might do to scholarships and college applications. A few questioned my competence and motives, as if perhaps I was unqualified to teach the subject or was loading their sons and daughters down with pointless and punitive work. Oddly enough, they didn't complain when their kids were under the care of babysitters, learning nothing, but getting default "A" grades.

In any case, the real test of my program comes with the release of test scores sometime in July. I am supposed to be able to see individual students results then. The global mean score on a scale of 1 - 5 was 2.88, so I'm hoping my students beat it soundly.