A Spoonful of Respect

I spent yesterday filling in for a colleague at Spring Valley High School:

12th graders.

Basic US Government.

All 5 class periods.


Now, I suppose at this point you're expecting a rant about the kids' complete lack of political awareness and general apathy. Well, there was some of that. Quite a bit of it really. I'm not going to pretend they were particularly up on things. Still, all of them knew the names of the two primary political parties. They were aware that there was some kind of debate going on about the budget, and a few of them knew what the NRA and AARP were generally about.

These monster organizations came up because the day's topic was interest groups and whether or not students felt they endangered our rights or were an essential bridge between the populace and its representatives.

Of course, the answer depends on one's perspective, which came out slowly as we moved through some basic questions and discussed the nature of rights and how people in general perceive their own arguments versus those of people with whom they disagree.

If Bohemian Ear Spoons are outlawed . . .

It seemed most kids supported liberalization of gun laws. The bulk of each class agreed that people should be allowed to carry around firearms. One girl said, "You can kill someone with a spoon. A gun is no different." Very few students, in fact only one out of all five classes, attempted to support more restrictive firearms policies for civilians. She vaguely indicated that "Yeah,but if I had a gun I could, like shoot you from over here and I couldn't do that with a spoon."

I thought, well, maybe with a Bohemian Ear Spoon.

In general, kids who jumped in proffered the same basic arguments we've heard in the firearms debate. Curiously, not too many really seemed to care about abortion. In one class, marijuana legalization was a hot topic.

Hey, it's cheaper than Earl Scheib

Without taking a position on any of the specific arguments, I used it as a lesson not only in the lobbying process, but also in how people argue. I pointed out that most people go straight into "what a fucking dumbass" mode when offered a view alternative to their own. This, I explained, is why bumper stickers do nothing but wreck your paint job.

I also demonstrated that if we disallowed lobbying by groups we philosophically oppose, we also risk having our group shut down. This seemed to strike a chord in some students.

It was great to listen and hear them try to work out ideas. I'm not sure how often this happens in schools. I mean, the teacher for whom I was subbing dropped me a note and asked me to try to get them engage in exploratory, open discussion, because he said it is difficult to get them to open up. I think I succeeded.

And as I wandered off the campus, I thought about the use of discussion in high school classrooms. It can be highly effective while at the same time can be an excuse for many kids to check out.

Unfortunately, it's hard to tell the difference between an introverted kid who is just quietly listening and absorbing what is going on around her and a bored slacker just spacing out and waiting for the bell to ring.

However, I am more convinced every day that if I am allowed to do my job without worrying about headphones or texting or dropping an occasional piece of taboo language or dress code or trips to the Deans' office, I could probably get most of the space cadets to come around. It is a matter of speaking to them as equals who are early in their experiential journey.  You know, like you have something to share that's pretty cool, and they are welcome to chill for a bit. Whatever.

http://sprinklebrigade.blogspot.com/

True, some will act like fresh sidewalk turds on a summer's day, but I find teachers who skip being condescending and arbitrarily controlling tend to have students who are more inclined to listen to the teacher and to each other. Scooping the turds can come later.

In the end,  I worked hard for my chickens , but my reward came from at least one kid at the end of every class, who on the way out thanked me for making the topic interesting and told me they learned more in my hour than they often learn in weeks of note taking.

I'll take that.

Like Chickens for Elephantiasis

I offer a service. I can help people learn how to organize an essay, use a semicolon, and avoid pronoun-antecedent disagreement. 

Interested?

Bob is. He decides my service is worthwhile and useful as part of a larger goal of getting a college degree. So Bob decides to trade currency in the form of banknotes that have a value determined by general agreement for my service. Now, Bob doesn't give me his currency. He gives it to an institution who holds it for him until another institution, one that has agreed that the services I offer are useful to people like Bob, requests that currency. At which point Bob changes some numbers and currency shifts from the first institution to the second.

The second institution and I agree to cooperate. I provide my mad English skills and the people and structures within the institution act as intermediaries between me and Bob. Still tracking?

An English teacher who also washes cars

Now, on the weekend I decide I need to get my car washed because, you know, it’s about that time of year. I don’t want to do it myself, so I drive my car to a local car wash that has other people who have made agreement with the owners of the car wash to provide me a service I desire: doing their best to make my dented 2004 Civic presentable.

I hand one of these people a card that belongs to another institution who has promised a short-term loan for currency I have been promised in exchange for teaching Bob how to parse complex texts, and the car wash owners have some people soap up my ride while I sit on the patio and enjoy a coffee.

We take this admittedly simplified series of transactions for granted. Everyday we buy stuff and get other people to do things for us in exchange for money. We are, by proxy, offering our goods and services for their goods and services. It is very rare that people in the developed world trade services or goods directly.  I doubt that Julie at Green Valley Car Wash would wipe down my car in exchange for a quick lesson on compound sentence structure. Simplifying this system to eliminate proxy exchanges of goods and services through the use of currency is impossible in any culture more advanced than a Stone Age extended family. True, there are instances of straight barter in our lives. For instance, I traded my neighbor a piece of scrap lumber for a handshake and a bit of goodwill. My father traded permission to stay in one of his rental units for a few paint jobs on other units to a tenant who was unable to produce money. But this simplistic form of direct exchange does not keep a civilization based on specialization running. The reason I have hauled you, if you are still here, through my half-assed economics lesson is because I sometimes think people forget the necessary complexity of a modern economy. I keep running into people who seem to hold a view of economics borne of hyper-nostalgia and a romantic notion of rugged individualism based on simple transactions. They view the economy as an exchange of mutually beneficial contracts between equals: I make things, you can choose to buy them. I will provide a service in exchange for a service you provide. The problem is that love for this sort of modern economic fairy tale permeates some political circles and strongly informs the public debate on health care in America.

A few years ago there was a kerfuffle around Sue Lowden, a Nevadan with a penchant for the public eye and periodically successful runs for public office, who said, “Before we all started having health care, in the olden days our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor, they would say I'll paint your house."
She stood by her comment, and not only as figurative language. She implied that health care should be part of the marketplace and subject to negotiations of contracts between equals and, by extension, those who have something worth exchanging for say, a colonoscopy. If you couldn’t come to an agreement, maybe the doc wanted a cow instead of a chicken and you didn’t have one,  you were SOL. Or maybe you could trade some chickens to the rancher. But then we’re starting to get complicated. This implication by Lowden and many others that health care should be wholly part of the marketplace is something with which we have yet to really decide, even though we have made this decision with regard to many other services. We decided that the education of our children through the age of 18 is an essential service and something important enough to provide to all our citizens. We decided the same thing for fire protection, judicial services, major transportation infrastructure, and enforcement of safety norms. Sure, my Libertarian, homeschooler, and organic-veggie-for-hemp-sandals-bartering friends would argue that some of these services would be better managed by individual families at the kitchen table and with garden hoses, firearms, 4WD and a strong sense of caveat emptor. But wherever you stand philosophically, we live in a republic where the social hierarchy is built around individuals we elect through a system of mass expression to stand at the top and make decisions for the group. At this point, it is clearly decided that in general it is worth funding schools as well as fire stations, highways, courthouses, and the FDA. While there are some, like those Libertarian friends, who crow their disgust at many of these institutions, most people I know really just want to get on with their everyday lives, while throwing out an occasional Facebook rant or slapping on a bumper sticker. In poll after poll, most citizens are willing to gripe about some aspect of the services we as a society have decided to support, but are unable to decide which of those services they personally would like to do without. It seems crazy to me that one of the major services we seem to have been unable to address philosophically is health care. We can’t decide whether healthcare is like getting your car washed or like educating your children. We haven’t decided if keeping everybody as healthy as possible is beneficial enough to fund in the same way we do the other services we’ve deemed critical, or if health care is an optional service that should be available only to those who have enough chickens (or produced enough chickens by proxy) to afford it. Look, health care is limited. It will always be rationed. There will never be enough to service everybody at the highest possible level.

Sorry, there's only one of me to go around

Do we ration it via the marketplace, just like we do Teslas and Coach purses and valet service and landscapers and painters? Or do we ration it the same way we ration education, another service without enough providers to go around? Making health care a service governed by the same business principles as grocery stores will mean that quality and access to care will be clearly defined by the marketplace. Limited supply will drive demand and prices will adjust accordingly. If you can’t afford it, you don’t get it. Making healthcare openly available, as have most Western democracies, might indeed dilute the quality of care some people receive and where we submit our currency will shift from private companies to public entities.  However, those with no access in the market-based system will get some level of basic care. Should the ability of our citizens to access medical care be as important as their ability to access K-12 education, safe drinking water, and legal defense? Or should the ability of our citizens to access to health care be as important as their ability to access a movie theater, get their cars washed, and have their yard mowed? So, before we get derailed arguing about someone taking our money to give to somebody else, which is what happens in all modern economies, we need to answer this question: Is access to health care for all our citizens fundamentally important to the strength of our nation? Pass your answer up the chain. It may help us get past this mess.

Pedagogical Resurrection

I gave my last high school semester exam in June of 2012, pulled the student projects from the walls, picking staples like nits from the orange peel drywall. I started this project in 2007 and its end came in a shrugging anticlimax of last-day checklists and whiteboard cleaner..

I knew I would miss the classroom, miss the students, miss the energy. The room echoed my emptiness. Cast adrift, I walked out, unlocked my car, and drove home. the reasons I left were varied, but they had nothing to do with the relationships I formed with my students. In fact, those relationships kept me tethered to a job that gradually seemed an exercise in futility.

Fortunately, I had picked up a job in 2010 as a freelance writer for Vegas Seven and Greg Miller, the managing editor, asked me to put together an essay on why, on that warming June day, I walked out of my classroom for the last time. Here it is.

http://vegasseven.com/latest/2012/08/23/back-school-not-me

Now it seems I can get back to building relationships and teaching again. I have missed the classroom more than I ever thought I would. I assumed my estrangement wouldn't be painful for long. My wife and I rolled across country in September and hopped around Europe in October. When we returned, I picked up a short gig filling in for Virtual High School and kicked up the output for Seven. Still, something was missing. And I'm not talking Jesus.

It looks like I've found a fix for my jones. Due to happy blend of synchronicity and networking, I picked up an adjunct teaching position at Nevada State College. Now I'm in my fourth week teaching English composition to 15 college freshmen. So far, so fucking awesome.

Yo Peeps! Mr. Rizzle Be da Teacher a da Month!

I was surprised last week by a phone call from our local pop hip-pop station. I was wary when the guy on the other end of the line identified himself as being from 98.5 KLUC; had my closet love of all things gangsta been somehow leaked to press?

Fortunately not. Instead, he was calling to inform me that one of my students had entered me in the station's "Teacher of the Month" contest and he needed to know when it was convenient for him to come down to the school and pass me a plaque and say a few words. We decided on last Tuesday morning, when the student who wrote the winning essay would also be in my class.

I got my plaque and the student and I got a coupon for a free sandwich at a chain sub store. Furthermore, I am automatically entered the Teacher of the Year competition sponsored by Southwest Airlines, Nevada Power, and Nevada State Bank, and Findlay Toyota. Airline tickets are definitely on the table, although I'd just as soon have a break from my summer electric bill.

Nice, right? It gets way better. These guys handed me a golden teaching opportunity on a chrome-plated spinner, yo. All the kids know the station and half of them worship it. And here I was, with the class's full attention after a member of their crowd had just achieved his first encounter with literary notoriety. So I took my Slim Shady chance and danced my words out:

"Brandon did this, not me. Brandon wrote 100 words and Brandon's words made something happen in the physical world. His words had the power to get me this award. So many times I have tried to explain why it is important to become skilled communicators and now, now you can see words in action!"

It was exhilarating, wonderful, f-ing amazing to watch all those minds behind all those faces get it. At that moment, the light of wonder and intellect fired around the room. It was a totally bitchin' experience.

To see the young writer's name next to mine, go to http://www.kluc.com/pages/1635063.php

Hell Week

Students officially arrive in my class for the first time on Monday at 0700. I've been working since 15 August and still feel anxious and unprepared. I am also excited. I am excited because these are my first full-year students and we have the opportunity to do some great things together. I will be able to watch them grow academically, socially, and emotionally. That's if I don't screw it up.

I want to get through five novels, one play, some poetry, a research project, review the eight parts of speech, reinforce and build grammar skills, build a robust vocabulary capability, develop voice, build confidence with the basic five-paragraph essay, take the personal essay to a more personal level, and perhaps most importantly, get them to realize the power of words.

Time restrictions have already forced me to dump two of the novels, what's next?

I have also been selected as the Freshman Grade Level Leader. I receive no extra pay for this auspicious position but do get an extra preparation period. The extra prep period gives me 170 more minutes and 70 - 80 less students than I had last year. My duties are a bit nebulous, but it appears I am required to keep the lines of communication open between our supervising administrator, one of three assistant principals, and the ninth grade teaching staff. In addition, I am there to help my colleagues solve day-to-day problems. I will provide them with basic software tutelage, simple supplies, and procedural clarifications.

In any case, tomorrow is a day for first impressions. Tomorrow I am driving a new shop, setting expectations, and introducing procedures. Tomorrow I am using my military persona to its fullest: efficient, mission-oriented, by the book. The first two homework assignments are already posted. It's Hell Week in Mr. Rice's room.

And in that vein, here's a quick checklist for my first day out:
1 ea. Plain dark slacks, pressed
1 ea. Plain long-sleeve shirt, pressed and starched
1 ea. Conservatively patterned tie, double Windsor knot, extending when at attention to within 1 inch of the top of belt buckle
1 ea. Plain black belt
1 ea. Plain black leather shoes, dusted and shined to a low gloss
1 pr. Plain black socks
Comfortable underwear

Haircut, high and tight, blended on sides and back
Shower
Shave with five-blade, ultra smooth razor
Deodorant, solid stick, double application