Shared Roads

You could say I am a fan of the Canadian band, Rush. I certainly say it. It might help, however, to clarify the word "fan," at least as far as I am concerned. Yes, I own all their major studio releases and live albums and have a couple of esoteric releases as well. But I've only been to two shows and I have only one Rush t-shirt and that no longer fits me. So hard-core fans might balk at my "fan" status.

In any case, I find myself comfortable with them in that weird way that only fans of something can understand. Whether you are a fan of a particular musician or group or painter or writer, you feel there is a metaphysical connection between you and the object of your devotion. If you're crazy, you'll stab and slash at the rational voice that says, "Hey, I get it. The artist has done the job well and your emotional response has made you feel something and feel it quite strongly. Therefore, it's no surprise that you'll extend this feeling from the art to the artist as a person. It is much like falling in love. I get it. But it isn't real."

But if you're not crazy, you can simply enjoy the feeling and the art and occasionally marvel at some coincidental connection between you and the artist. For instance, as a teenager I fantasized that Geddy Lee was singing my name in the nonsense vocals section of "Didacts and Narpets."  And by the way, if you get that reference without looking it up, you count as a Rush fan as well, whether you want to admit it or not.

Today I noticed another interesting coincidence that really isn't all that amazing but does make me feel strangely connected to Neil Peart through a piece he wrote about shunpiking with his motorcycle in the United Kingdom. When you put Peart and the Sceptered Isle together in one article, with pictures, I get a feeling I can only describe at this moment as nostalgically euphoric. When I saw the post on Peart's page, I immediately thought of Hardknott pass, a single-track road that climbs like a rocket and twists like a wounded night crawler. I was so entranced by the idea that Peart must certainly have shunpiked his way through the pass, probably stopping at the ruins of a Roman fort near the top, I didn't read the article at first, I just mouse-wheeled down, scanning the contents and sure enough, Hardnott appeared. I immediately felt a completely irrational sensation that Peart and I were road buddies, asphalt Eskimo brothers, ready to throw up high fives and throw back pints of bitter and the end of the travelling day. So if you're a Rush fan, maybe you'll want to join Neil and me on my delusional road trip:
http://neilpeart.net/index.php/space-for-news-items/drummer-singletrack-mind/

Watch Out for SASI, Sarah Connor

At 0600 this morning, I set the Civic on autopilot and blasted NPR for a thumpin' ride to Spring Valley High School. I'm back on the "guest teacher" circuit and today I took some classes for a colleague. Striding the halls and jawing with so many of my former students made me feel like I might want to get back into the full-time high school teaching biz again. But not for long.

SASI?

Today was "count day" (say it like a camel), a ritual fraught with danger. Asses in chairs are important, because all those ass cheeks get ground into an algorithm up at the "Ed Shed" where they are then packaged into staffing and funding sausages.

This makes administrators anxious. If counts are too low, principals get less sausage, and despite what they say about watching it being made, sausage is pretty damn yummy.

Now, you might think counting would be a pretty easy deal. Each high school has a dedicated registrar and all the kids are counted from the moment their parents drag them in to the day they move to that new matrix of D.R. Horton fabs next to the half-empty strip mall. They are counted like convicts, every school day, every school hour. In fact, CCSD runs a Cyclopean piece of software called SASI to take care of this ass-counting business. To be fair, this monstrosity does way more than just take attendance. It tracks test data, stores transcripts, and yes, provides an interface for teachers to take roll at the beginning of every class. So you might think SASI would make count day button-push simple.

Nuke'em til they fund

Not so fast, overworked teacher. SASI's powers must be limited or need some sort of oversight because on "count day" (say it like a camel), every teacher in every room at every period must have every student sign a class roster.

In third period, teachers must note the number of students present, the number absent, add the two together, note this information on a slip of paper and wait for another adult to come in to double check the teacher's numbers and manually count each ass in each seat and then co-sign the slip of paper. At no time were any asses to be moved from seats during this process. This reminded me of loading B-61s on F-111s. Two-man concept, double check the switches, get ready to centrally heat the Warsaw Pact.

I can't explain why SASI can't be trusted. Perhaps it is really SkyNet.

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.

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.

Today's journal was centered on an excerpt of a talk given by Michael Shermer at the 2006 TED meeting. Here's the link, for those interested in viewing (the excerpt I showed in class begins at the 9:00 minute marker) 

 http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things.html

I wrote the following writing prompts to the left of the slide on which the video played:

Watch and listen to the video and think about what you want to believe.

Can you hear the back-masked message?

What does this have to say about how susceptible we are to suggestion? 

So, if you haven't watched the video, here's a summary:

Shermer plays a section of "Stairway to Heaven" forward, then backward, then asks the audience to identify the "secret message," then displays the the text of the supposed "secret message" while replaying the section backwards again. 

Here's the first unsurprising news: The first time it played through backwards, my students couldn't understand it and took it as gibberish, but the second time through, they, like Shermer's TED audience, were able understand the words clearly. This, of course, makes Shermer's point that we look for patterns and once the sections of our brain that respond to sensory stimuli are "primed" we can rapidly build and cement patterns and meaning to that which is patternless and meaningless.

Here's the second unsurprising news: Many of the students had already heard the rumor that Zep's music was laced with secret Satanic messages and figured it was probably true.   In any case, the "believers" also couldn't understand the "words" at first, but when shown them were even more convinced of their initial belief. Alternatively, those who considered the whole thing a bunch of hooey had their beliefs confirmed as well.

So here's the interesting bit: The students who hadn't heard of either proposition became more convinced that Zep intentionally placed secret Satan-loving messages in their music after hearing the evidence that clearly showed how easily our brains our tricked. One young lady, who read her entry aloud, commented on how "scary" the presentation was and that she was now concerned about Satanists in the music industry. She was going to go home that evening and begin looking for ways to play her CDs backwards to look for more secret messages. In the discussion that ensued, I asked them to consider why we believe what we believe and why we are so easily taken in by these things. 

The answer, I discovered, was obvious when posed the following question: What is cooler, that Zep is a bunch of Satanists who are trying to convince the world to join them or that playing a record backward makes weird sounds and if we work a little, we can make whatever we want of them? 

I'm Doing My Job; I Can Tell by the Whining

I teach critical thinking. I want students to break out of the educational millworks they were placed in at the age of five. It's hard for them though, since it involves effort well beyond the multiple-choice world they are used to. These last few months have been especially painful for them since they want to simply keep providing book reports rather than conduct meaningful analyses of the literature they are reading. I have had a fair bit of success, but one bold and intelligent young lady wrote me an articulate and well argued response to the question: "How do these ideas [presented in the text] integrate into your schema?"

"Oh schema, how I still don't even know what this means. I could give you my Miss America response about how this taught me not to worry about everything. God has a plan for me or that patience is a virtue, but those are things one should already know. The meaning of [The Sundiata] to me was something I hear all the time at church so it wasn't something extremely new. What was new was the comment my mom said while she saw me sitting reading with the checklist in front of me. She simply said, 'Doesn't that take the joy out of reading" and everything clicked from there. Of course I hate reading, this is a punishment. I may find this material boring, but I believe I think that because I know that after I read I just have to write and write and analyze and make up some more stuff to write about it. This feeling can't really help my schema because I have the choice to do it or to fail, but I think it can help your schema. If one can't write for punishment [a rule I have; writing is a privilege], then why are you having us read for punishment? If I logged on to Facebook right now I could read multiple status's complaining about this, I can check my new texts which I know are about this, or I can go to the table in the morning and hear how no one even did it which shows that students do think of it that way. Yes, this may not be schema, but I know if it is taking the joy out of reading then when I become a teacher I want to make sure I'm not having my students hate to read. Maybe this is more of a rant, maybe it's because I am tired, or maybe it's a schema for my future."

She is a good writer and an excellent student, but one to whom until now learning has come easily because she is quick-witted and the assignments were simple. I wrote a response to her, as well as to another student who wondered as teens have for millenia, "why am I reading this old stuff?"

04/03/2009: Purposeful Reader's Checklist Africa Responses. I finally began digging into the bulk of your work and have received some excellent responses. I found one case of academic dishonesty, and another rambled pointelessly for several pages about nothing in particular; those both received 0/50 points. 

Another student stated that she didn't "fully understand how something that happened centuries ago [could] fit into [her] life somehow." For those who feel that way, I urge you to consider the following statement by S. I. Hayakawa, a former United States Senator from California:

"In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish." 

Furthermore, we are the only species on this planet who can do this. By not considering the lives, loves, joys, and pains of those prior generations, we do them a great disservice.

I also had a fairly articulate complaint that connected directly to my personal experience as a young man and young writer. The schema section of this young lady's submission was devoted to her assertion that analyzing literature takes the joy out of reading. I laughed when I read this because her words were my words many years ago. Because she was forthright, I returned with a forthright response. I transcribe it here for you since it may apply to many who were not so bold:

"Please bear in mind that I do no assign work out of some twisted sense of cruelty. Every checklist I assign, I must grade and comment on. I am obligated to make sure you are prepared to engage material regardless of your personal level of interest. If you begin to learn how writing is constructed on a deeper level than your natural talent for writing, you can then become a truly excellent writer, rather than simply a talented, glib, 10th grader. I know this because I was a self-absorbed 20-something writer who thought analyzing writing was pointless and joyless and there was nothing left to learn. My undergraduate English teacher, Ms. Pamela Schoenewaldt, jerked me up by the collar, gave me a few "B"s, and forced me to think. I make no pretentions about being your (or anyone's) Schoenewaldt, but I am committed to try, in spite of your persistent and predictable protestations."

I also would like you to consider my qualifications and efforts thus far. I have extensive background in the world: I'm roughly 30 years ahead of you and have extensive experience in written and spoken communication delivered in a wide variety of ways to a wide variety of audiences. I understand what you are feeling, not individually, but as an adolescent. One of the reasons I understand this is because I was an adolescent, I listen to and read adolescent spoken and written language, and I read a wide range of material about adolescents. I came into this field because I have something to offer you, although I cannot make you believe me. I can ask you to trust me. I am not your enemy; I am your coach, and I want you to keep doing crunches and taking laps until you can write and read like a pro. 

If you've made it this far, you deserve to have access to the following thread: 

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2007/06/18/on-teens-and-the-fact-their-writing-sucks/

OMG! I'm Pregnant!!!!!!!! kewl!!!!

Confiscated note exchanged between two 15 year-old students:

"Does everyone know you're pregnant?"

"I put my ultrasound pictures on my MySpace page, duh!"

Teenage Life Today?

The title of this blog is the title of an e-mail a good friend sent me. His e-mail inspired me to post these short anecdotes and commentaries.

1. A student of mine told me, rather sadly, he remembered nothing of the summer between 8th and 9th grade because he was constantly high on a variety of pharmaceuticals his mother provided him. He said that although she didn't approve of his drug use, she felt that if she didn't provide him the drugs, someone else would. He told me that at first he thought it was pretty cool, but now that he can't think as quickly and the time loss is weighing heavily, he feels his mom should have been less of a dealer and friend and more of a, well, mom.

2. In 8th grade, another student of mine ditched out of her apartment to go smoke weed and drink whiskey with some friends. She became so intoxicated she was afraid of going home so she went to the apartment of a friend of her friend where she passed out. She regained consciousness in the bathroom early the next morning and remembered screaming something in the middle of the night. Then she discovered she had lost her virginity by being raped by a third "friend."

3. Last year, a junior at our school fell in with the wrong crowd and was found shot to death and dumped in a large drain pipe in the cross-over bridge near the junction of the I215 and Rainbow Blvd.

4. During football games, we are required to keep students away from the cyclone fence surrounding the stadium because students have been known to throw weapons over the top to accomplices on the inside.

5. A group of boys, mostly part of a large Romany clan that lives in the area, routinely get drunk in the school parking lot over the summer break. One of these boys was a student of mine two years ago and was badly injured when the truck he was riding in flipped over on the way to the lake. Like something out of a Mark Twain novel, he and his brother and cousins were ditching school to go fishing.

6. Today, a group of students identified the feature they most had in common was that they "blazed" and they were too lazy to get up and participate in the exercise. That is, they proudly declared their love of smoking weed and sitting on their asses, in writing, on the whiteboard, in an academic environment, with an authority figure present.

7. A small minority of students become pregnant during high school. One I remember in particular became pregnant at 14 while addicted to meth. Her limbs, face, and mouth (and I presume her body) bore heavily the sores associated with meth use. With her distended, eighth-month belly, mass of scabs, and young-old features, she made the perfect picture of responsible motherhood.

8. Overheard in a group conversation in my classroom with at least 15 other students present: "So he's like got me bent back like this, right, and hes banging away, and he's like pushing my legs further back and apart, and I'm like, ow!" Laughs all around.

9. Overheard in the same forum, different day: "I told I him I wasn't going to have sex with him even though I had sex with his friend. I mean, I might consider a three-some, but not just him."

10. Interestingly, a student was expelled from school for having medieval weapons in his van. He forget to take them out after spending the weekend at the local RenFair.

11. I work in a relatively affluent area with a demographic that is mostly white middle and upper-middle class (a small percentage are very wealthy) with a healthy dose of Asian and Hispanic middle and lower-middle class families. We are considered a desirable high school.

I could go on, but I have homework. I'm starting a program to become a school librarian.

Quote-Free Friends

Chad Eklund and Linda Dickinson both asked me to be their Facebook friends. I put quotes around the word "friends" when I first typed it and then I took the quotes away. Chad Eklund was a friend in the early 1990s when we were stationed at Edwards AFB together. We never stopped being friends, we just moved and didn't bother communicating. Therefore, I suppose he still counts as a quotation-mark-free friend. Likewise, Linda Dickinson, f.k.a. Linda Weinberger, was a high school friend with whom I lost contact so she also gets a quote-free endorsement.

There is something more to say about the word's rapid morphing of meaning, but not right now.

I am also getting ready to start my second full school year as a high school English teacher. This year, I get to work with sophomores and Ms. Aspen, my own 10th grade English teacher, might want to see about becoming my "friend" so she can smile as karma takes its inevitable toll.

A Legacy of War (published)

We are back from four days in Ohio. It was lovely, green, humid and our short time was filled with eating and visiting family. While I was gone, Every Day Fiction published my short story:

http://www.everydayfiction.com/a-legacy-of-war-by-kurt-rice/#comment-6848

Keeping Wallflowers from Speaking

It's summer and I'm reading. I just finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.

I'd like to be able to teach this book, together with House on Mango Street, because the protagonists are both self-reflective, teenage observers of human nature. Chbosky and Cisneros use short "chapters" written in deceptively simple English that contain truths eager for mining via discussion. There are many other comparisons and contrasts between the two works that would make for a wonderful ninth-grade unit and, as a bonus, many of last year's ninth graders are picking up Wallflower and reading it on their own. In fact, I hadn't heard of the book until one of my students gave me a copy as a gift on the day before she moved to another part of town.

So teach it, you might exhort, especially given that students are finding the book, recommending to their peers, and enjoying it all on their own! What a great gift that young lady gave you! And what better way thank her for opening your eyes to this little gem than by teaching it to successive generations of freshmen.

You'd be right, of course, but the book contains instances of 1) straight premarital sex, 2) gay premarital* sex, 3) illicit drug use, 4) underage drinking of alcohol, 5) underage smoking of tobacco, 6) sexual abuse of minors by family members, 7) use of taboo language like "shit" and "fuck," 8) abortion, and 9) bad driving habits. Kicking the shit out of a gay student is also in the book, but would be of little concern to those who would be opposed to my teaching the novel.

It is no surprise to find out that Wallflower made the American Library Association's 2007 most challenged book list. Check out the list and you'll see the dirty fingerprints of arbitrary religious values all over the young and shapely bodies of 10 books written for young people (including the number one most challenged book, And Tango Makes Three, a children's picture book about penguins that supposedly mentions homosexuality and is "anti-family.")

Alas, the inability of teachers to bring into the classroom a sensitive and reflective protagonist immersed in a real and compelling coming of age in modern America further deteriorates their credibility in the eyes of their charges.

*Thanks to the State of California I couldn't have written "gay premarital sex" and had it mean anything legal until yesterday. Let us pray to a kind and loving deity that the Christian Right doesn't force me to revise my phrase.

Moving to the Tenth Grade

It looks like I'll be heading up to tenth grade with many of my current students. That is a good, since I can continue to get the struggling students ready for Nevada State High School Proficiency examinations. I hope that those who did not choose to do much this year will experience an epiphany over the summer and come back ready to engage. It's hard to teach writing to those unwilling to write.

Still, the overwhelming majority of the final essays I received showed at least a moderate amount of improvement from those I received at the beginning of the year. Students did pick up skills along the way, even if they failed the class. That's a good thing, because I have heard that summer school English classes are easy to pass and I'll be kicking them into high gear at the beginning of next school year. Can anyone say, "First-quarter research paper and presentation on a creation myth of your choice?"

(I was also voted "Goofiest Teacher," "Most Popular Teacher," and "Most Involved Teacher" by my colleagues in the Freshman House. Those three and a buck-fifty will buy me a coffee at Denny's. I didn't get "Hottest" or "Best Dressed," which made me ponder my ragged mortality once again.)