Rush to the Front

I saw Rush (the band, not the pseudo-pundit) with my best friend at the Los Angeles Forum back in 1979. My friend drew the band's trademark red star logo (sans naked man with gripping butt cheeks) on the left breast of a pair of heavy cotton hooded warm-up pullovers popular in those days with night time Huntington Beach-goers. I still have mine, and it fits if I try hard.

We scored our front-row, center tickets from a Ticketmaster booth next to Anaheim Stadium for a mere $80.00. Sure, it ate into our Asteroids and Defender budgets, but it was way worth it for such awesome seats, dude.

We rolled in, red stars prominently displayed, found our seats and were soon embracing a bra-less hottie (er, "fox," to use era-correct parlance) with her own homemade T-shirt sporting the words, "Neil Peart: Achiving Balance." We didn't really care that she couldn't spell "achieving" and were disappointed when ticket-checkers discovered she may have simply been jiggling and hugging her way to the front row with no more authorization than her breasts could muster. In our book, that was pretty substantial authorization. My friend and I both agreed she deserved to stay a little longer for her efforts.

After Geddy, Alex, and Neil played for us, I felt complete. I couldn't aural direction-find for a week; my deafness was a battle-scar: "Sorry man, I can't hear you very well, I had front-row seats to RUSH in LA last WEEKEND. FRONT-ROW."

Yes indeed, chicks dig eardrum scars.

Sadly, I only went to one other Rush concert after that: Wembley Arena, London, 1982, lame seats, no pre-show breasts, no 7-day aural disorientation. Since then, I've wanted to see Rush in concert and I missed their last gig when they came through town. In fact, I purposely missed it because I was a weak, tired, middle-aged old dude.

Lame, lame, lame.

Now I find that the mightiest epic-rock-power-trio ever to grace a Dungeons and Dragons gaming session is rolling back through town on their Snakes and Arrows tour. I know, as sure as my 8:30 PM bedtime, that I need to see Geddy's hipster goatee up close, count the hairs and wonder if "Just for Men" gets his business. I need to (carefully) bang my head and play unabashed air guitar/drums/bass to whatever the hell the boys want to play. I need to wail along with Geddy, "Earthshine/a beacon in the night/I can raise my eyes to Earthshine" and watch Neil hammer tight and clean through another set.

Bring me up front, Tickemaster, plant my ears in the 4KHz killzone.

Sure, for $740.00.

What! Is that the inflation-adjusted 80 bucks of my youth?

Adjusted for inflation, my 1979 tickets would run me $156. 80 today. Not too bad, I could probaby get the wife drunk and convince her that spending $627.00 for the whole family to get their eardrums pasted was a good deal. As long as I didn't mention bra-less, half-educated hotties willing to snuggle for a seat I'd probably be golden.

So what's going on here? If we leave out the fact that I now automatically count admission to anything that costs money in sets of four and look for "family pack" discounts, something seems terribly wrong. Is there some sort of conspiracy to jack up the price so aging guys can't live out their rather hum-drum rock and roll fantasies? I don't think so. I think it's simply supply and demand, ram 'em when you can capitalism. I suppose I shouldn't complain, The Police are coming and ear-bleed tickets for their gig in my town are running $3,750.

It looks like I'll have to buy cheap seats, pull on something sexy, and work my way to the front.

Come the Supplicants, Seeking Favor

It’s the end of the first quarter and I am like a little god. The villagers, in their time of need, have rediscovered my shrine; they have cleaned it of seven weeks overgrowth and re-consecrated it with murmured flatteries.

I grant grades.

Or at least they believe so. It is difficult weaning the masses off blind faith and onto personal responsibility. They BELIEVE that somehow everything will be fine with just a little prayer and maybe a quick “extra credit” project. How, after all, can I really fail them? If I do, or don’t allow them an extra day to turn in late work, they can always tell their secular rulers that their little god is weak. The shifting of responsibility away from oneself and onto others, earthly or otherwise, seems to be something we are born with.

The most insistent worshipers are those who ignored my dialectical journal and vocabulary assignments for five weeks and are failing as a result. These poor souls want to know if they can “do something” to get their grade up. I tell them that since I am more forgiving than many of the other minor deities in the building, I will grant them the right to present me with all five weeks of completed work before I close the grade books. Many are appalled that I would require such a thing. “But Mr. Rice, that’s going to take me forever.” I provide my standard response, delivered with the appropriate gravity, “It will take time, probably the same amount of time it would have taken you had you done the work over the last five weeks except now you will have to do it in only a few days. Furthermore, because you will not be getting the same academic benefit you would have received by doing the work in stages and getting my feedback after each stage, I will be deducting points. The points I deduct will be based on your level of engagement with the text and how hard you work to address all of the requirements. If you submit sloppy, poorly executed work, you will receive a significant mark down. I will deduct fewer points for lateness if you submit carefully crafted and insightful work.”

No sick or lame animals on my altar, only the fatted calf will do.

Some students return the next day proud and tired. “I worked all night on this.” I have a a few of responses based on my mood. The knee-jerk response is what you might expect: “Thank you, but had you done this over the time allotted you would have gotten more sleep last night.” Sometimes I snap back, “Great, now you need to apologize to my wife and daughters for taking me away from them to grade your work in one large piece. You realize that you stayed up all night doing one series of these while I have dozens of students’ work just like your's to grade. How late will I be up because of your inefficiency?”

My favorite response was to a student who never does classwork or homework. He complains constantly and repeatedly tells me I should extend my due dates to accommodate him because, as he says, “I can’t help it if I’m a procrastinator.”

This young man came to me for some help as part of an exercise he was doing in another class. The students in this other class were being required to build a portfolio with a set of educational and career goals, a resume, and a letter of recommendation. He came to me the day before it was due and said, “Hey, Mr. Rice, will you write me a letter of recommendation?”

“When is it due?” I asked, although my god-like powers allowed me to already “perceive” the answer.

“Uh, tomorrow morning.”

“Great,” I said, “How long does it take you to get me what I asked you to provide? Did you turn in your first dialectical journal assignment yet?”

“Yeah, I turned it in this week.”

“So how long did I wait for it?

“Five weeks.”

“OK, I’ll get your letter of recommendation back to you in five weeks.”

This little god is a forgiving god but one with a feel for irony. I gave the letter to him the next day but I wonder if he is familiar with the phrase, “damning with faint praise.”

Spring break begins next week. The weeds will begin to grow again around my shrine and I will be neglected and forgotten until May. Perhaps I shall enjoy the solitude.

A Round for the House

This entry has nothing at all to do with the American education system. I apologize if you came here looking for a classroom war story or a bit of fiscal whinging.

Today I must pass along some sad news.

According to an item on the Hook Norton Brewery website, the old Free House at the top of the village is now under the care of Mel and Sarah Phipps. I imagine they are quite capable and friendly landlords and I will certainly pay them a visit when I next find my way along the M40.

However, the ascension of the Phipps means, for me and probably many others, the end of an age. It is yet another symbol for all our journeys: places and people static and certain in photographs while reality recedes rapidly in the rear view mirror, no longer familiar.

I have an old and dented Ind Coope beer tray on the wall over my wet bar. Deep into Joey's bachelor party I used it to bash Dave over the head as he alternately bashed me with his tray in steady time with a bar full of fellow revelers singing and clapping, "Oh Lordy, pick a bale of cotton . . ." crescendoing faster and faster until the pans banged almost in unison and their rims bent on our senseless skulls.

Margaret put on a wonderful meal for my 21st birthday and from then until I moved away my pot, a gift from Joey and Frances, hung over The Red's bar on a hook graciously awarded by Colin. It now hangs sadly over our breakfast table, perhaps thinking of its own days, full to overflowing with 64 pence pints of Hooky's Best Bitter.

If I look carefully in my attic boxes, I might find some cocklebur or bit of barley from my first tramp across the fields from RAF Upper Heyford to the village on the hill, guided by the square Norman steeple incongruently crowned with a red light to warn off low-flying F-111s as they slid downward toward the airfield. Perhaps it came from a place I kayaked a year later, flooded knee-deep with water from the heavy rains and overflowing Cherwell. Perhaps the little seed or weed is there now, as I write, stuck at the bottom of a box or clinging to a forgotten pant leg, knowing it will be needed to stir some distant memory: to bring to life the smell of wildflowers, or wet earth, or burning corn stubble.

Only phantoms now: ghosts of winter fires in the corner hearth, of summer flowers and warm stones out front, of laughing friends, of children grown, of lovers found and lovers lost. The sad remnants of a coming of age, one among billions, flickering now to one day sputter and give out, remembered by no one but burning to the last. I know when I return to The Red I will be given the warm welcome of stranger in a country pub, a stranger whose heart is unknown but stays hidden under the brass and hardwood, close to the hearth, behind the bay window, and pressed against the bar.

Cheers, mate.

That's Chief Rice to You

At my approach during a mildly chaotic "clean up" time toward the end of a class period, one of my students, a tall, strong, intelligent, and intensely self-confident young woman, came to a slouching stand from the desk top upon which she was seated.
"At Ease, Cadet," she said, lifting two fingers to her forehead in what appeared to be an exceptionally sloppy Cub Scout salute.

I took the easy shot.

"Excuse me, I am a retired Chief Master Sergeant of the United States Air Force, not a 'cadet.' To call me such is an insult." Of course, my voice was clean, low and even and my face that of, well, an angry but well-disciplined Chief Master Sergeant of the United States Air Force. She shifted and moved into the young-teen defense mode and backed off, her body language shouting an unspoken, "Whatever."

"Damn," another student said, "where did that come from? That was cool."

Another student took up my cause. "Hey, you see those stripes up there on the wall, you know what they mean?"

Three students near the now sulking offender asked me if I could "show them some military stuff." I offered to show them how to come to attention and I asked the Cub (or, I suppose, Girl) Scout if she wanted to learn how. She wasn't interested.

At the end of the short lesson I turned to go back to the front of the room to prepare to release the class. She gave me a parting half salute and called me, of all things, a lieutenant.

I spun around. "That is perhaps the most insulting name anyone could call a senior non-commissioned officer." To which she replied, "Whatever, I don't know anything about the military, I don't even care about it."

"Then," I said, "Stop posing."

To be honest, I wasn't truly insulted. Of course she didn't know anything about the military and, if you'll reference my "Grown Children" blog, you'll know I do not hold any of them truly accountable for minor social missteps. Indeed, one must be careful with this age group. They are tough to others but tender to themselves. They have not yet internalized the grown-up maxim, "Don't dish it if you can't take it."

Still, I am a teacher and they have to start learning sometime.

Cash Money and So On

My thanks to Susan R. for making some excellent points and touching on most of the themes integral to water cooler commentary surrounding teacher compensation. I absolutely agree with her observation that my "Cash Money" entry seemed to find me "wallowing in a wee bit o' self pity."

I assure you all, however, that I did my homework; I'm just now getting around to whining about it.

First, pay was one of the three primary reasons I did not enter the teaching profession in my twenties. Now, with my pension, I can afford to teach because I like teaching. I am not concerned about my salary, but like Susan, watch as a pauper's compensation package drives away many highly competent people.

Second, my own Air Force colleagues' were skeptical of my post-military career choice. Why would I want to give up a lucrative contracting or GS gig? I served in the intelligence field for the last 13 years of my service, held a TS/SCI clearance, was professionally well-regarded, and had enough connections with active and retired Air Force officers and SNCOs to be able to land a job somewhere for at least twice my current teaching salary.

Third, I still chose to teach. Why? For all the intangible reasons every teacher who stays in the profession claims as his or her own: the joy of watching young people grow intellectually, emotionally, and socially. Unfortunately, there are teachers who do not have my choice or my access to Uncle Sam's back pocket. They entered the field with high hopes and a drive to teach and are now working hard in a field many people outside the profession consider to be a pretty easy way to make money. Teachers, like many others in jobs with little hope of meaningful advancement and faced with the same grinding schedule year after year, opt out or burn out and trudge forward, counting the years until retirement like so many inmates scratching tallies on concrete walls. Maybe society can survive a deadening of employee spirit in some sectors but I would argue that unless public education systems work toward a corporate model we will not move significantly forward no matter how many standardized tests we give. Principals need flexibility over compensation packages, they need to be able to headhunt and poach from schools, and they need to be able to develop more innovative ways to gauge teacher effectiveness and student achievement.

Lastly, I welcome all grammar, spelling, and punctuation nitpickers. I have yet to draft or publish an error-free piece of writing.

Cash Money

I have a BA in English and M.Ed. I am employed full time as a school teacher and given all the pay and benefits accorded to that post. According to the contract I signed with the school district, I am paid a couple of copper pieces over $29.00 and hour and access to a decent health package, employer-paid contributions to the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS), and 13 weeks of vacation every year.

The district's math gets a little tricky though. You see, I am actually a salaried employee which means, of course, the posted pay scale reflects an annual rate not an hourly rate and I am expected to work like a salaried employee; I work until the job is done and normally wear the uniform of a white-collar professional. My annual rate of pay is a couple of lumps over $38,000 per year. OK, still not bad considering the health, retirement and vacation package, but starting to look a little thin for someone with a graduate degree. In fact, according to the US Census Bureau's Evidence From Census 2000 Earnings by Detailed Occupation for Men and Women, it is $11,000 less than the 1999 median salary (50th percentile) for individuals with a bachelors degree or higher.

Sure, you may say, but you only work a few hours a day, five days a week and get all that sweet summer vacation. Using that logic, 29 bucks an hour isn't that bad for teaching kids stuff you already know.

So let's get back to the hourly rate. That number, the wage-for-a-non-wage-earning-employee, is calculated using the contracted teaching day of 7.11 hours including one 85-minute lesson preparation period and a 30-minute lunch break. By this calculation, I only have to work five hours a day for 180 days a year. What' the problem?

I don't work only five hours a day nor do I work only 180 days a year. Lesson planning, paper grading, student counseling, parent calling, and staff meetings, fill my prep periods, add another five hours to each day and usually take up at least 75% of every weekend during the school year. Outside the school year, I am expected to attend professional development classes and refine my lessons for the next school year. Thus, I am really working 12-hour days, six to seven days a week during the school year, and reduced hours over my breaks. Furthermore, the pay calculation does not include the need to purchase classroom supplies, much of which comes out of my own pocket. Our total English department supply budget, I was told by more than one source, amounts to a paltry $1,000 for the entire school year (excluding paper). With that, 15 teachers are expected to buy all the usual things you might expect a room full of students to need as well as some you may not have considered, like toner cartridges, four of which will eat the annual budget in one gulp.

Here's one last interesting fact: my take home check from the district every month is $300 less than my military pension from the United States Government and I can collect Uncle Sam's largesse while sitting on the couch watching Twilight Zone marathons.

Results of the Student Note Prompt

The students were far less critical of their peer's work than they were of the substitute teacher's. No surprise there. Most students were hesitant to remark on the notes, either because they may have been one of the authors or because they knew the authors or because they suspected one of the authors was in the room. Student solidarity against teachers trumps almost any desire to demonstrate academic prowess. I was able to coax out some obvious commentary but usually that commentary was delivered deadpan, empty of the blood lust evident as they circled and pummeled the teacher's note. The defense of the student notes is best illustrated by my exchange with one young man who sits in the desk closest to the screen and my normal lecture territory.
"But Mr. Rice, everybody writes like that."
"No they don't"
"Yes they do."
"Not everbody."
"Yeah huh."
"Dude, how old are you?"
"Fourteen."
"How old am I?'
"I don't know, old."
"I'm 45 and I'm here to tell you not everybody writes like that. I'm also here to tell you that if you insist on using chat shorthand, misspelling simple words, and fumbling your sentence construction outside the small world you now inhabit you will be considered . . . class?"
"AN IDIOT."
"Thank you class."

Authentic Activities

I used the substitute's note from my last posting as a warm-up exercise. I scanned it and projected it, three feet wide and two and a half feet high, on the screen at the front of my room. Above the note, I typed, "DWR: (the students know this means, "daily written response") Write a response to this note. Comment on the content and identify errors in grammar, spelling, and construction." The class did not immediately begin writing.

"Mr. Rice, the sub was like a crack addict or something."

"Mr. Rice, she came in here like she was the Queen of England."

"Mr. Rice, let me tell you what happened."

"Mr. Rice, was that our class?"

"OK, guys," I said, "After only four weeks I know it might be hard to remember, but what are you supposed to do when you first come in the room?"

"We're supposed to write, not talk. You know, just respond to the text or image or music, whatever you have up."

"Right," I said, "Push your thoughts through your pens, not your mouths; we'll have time to discuss this in less than ten minutes. You know, I have to take roll and I like to write spontaneously to these prompts as well."

"But Mr. Rice . . . ."

This dialog, or something like it, happened in all of my six English classes, especially the class with the offending young lady. In each case, they finally settled in and wrote for a few minutes with only minimal muttering.

The discussions after "pens down" went along the same path as well.

"She's stupid." "Her grammar sucks." "I can't even read her handwriting."

"OK, be more specific." Identify a sentence fragment or a run-on. Look for a sentence that doesn't make sense. Is she trying on a metaphor here or has she just scrambled her words?"

It worked out great, they gleefully butchered her work and stepped directly into my pedagogical trap.

"All right you guys, what level of education is required for someone to get a job as a substitute teacher in this county?"

"High school diploma."

"Big degree."

"Nothing."

"College."

"A four-year degree or two years of college with at least six credits in the field of education." I finally revealed.

"What do you think of someone who writes like this?"

"Wow, what a loser."

"Yeah Mr. Rice, she's a real idiot. Lame, yeah, really lame."

The class got a kick out of this woman's ignorance especially after discovering she had attained what they consider to be an extreme level of education.

Perfect.

" How did she manage to graduate high school and probably graduate college and still write like this?"

"She cheated."

"Yeah Mr. Rice, she probably cheated."

"How can you cheat on essay tests? Anyway, I'm digressing."

"I'll tell you how she ended up like this. She didn't pay attention, she didn't engage her assignments, and her teachers were probably tired of trying to make her. So she slid by and now you guys are calling her an idiot and stupid. She's a real moron, right? Do you want to be called a moron after you get out of high school? Do you want someone to snigger at your writing and think of you as an idiot? I am your English teacher, and I don't want you to be called an idiot, at least not because of your writing. That's why I push you guys. I'm not your previous teacher. I don't give out crossword puzzles and word searches as authentic work and I am very willing to fail those students who fail themselves and who fail to make an improvement from where they started this class in September."

"Oh."

This week I'm going to be projecting a couple of the notes they left behind on desks last week. They will be accompanied by the following prompt:

"DWR: Although these pieces of writing are quick notes between friends, there are some some unnecessary spelling errors. See if you can identify them. Which note is better constructed and has the fewest errors? Why?"

Battlestaff Brief is in One Hour, Does Anyone Have Some Duct Tape?

Setting up and getting started in my classroom over the last few weeks has been much like getting dropped into a deployed location, given 250 troops from different bases who have also just deployed, and supported with not much more than a hearty slap on the back from a grinning commander, "I know you'll take care of it, let me know if you need anything, gotta go." Well, actually sir. . .

The only thing I haven't done is exchange a knowing, "flexibility is the key to airpower" with a colleague hustling past in the hallway.

The parallels are truly amazing. I was officially hired two workdays before I was to greet my class. In those two days plus the weekend, I had to figure out where to get the keys to my room, get access to the district intranet, buy or scrounge supplies, locate and check out a digital projector, set up my seating chart, figure out where my students were academically, prepare lesson plans, prepare a class mission statement, develop a discipline plan consistent with school and district policy, put together course syllabi, locate the teacher work areas, establish policies and procedures for my classroom, grade semester exams I had not written or proctored, post semester grades using a piece of software I had never encountered nor received any training on, duct tape extension cables to the floor to keep students from tripping on them, duct tape the mission statement, policies and procedures, seating charts, and discipline plan to the wall, fill out several forms that presumably mean something to somebody somewhere else in the organization, and finally sit down and put together my first day's presentations.

It was, for those who are familiar, exactly like putting together an intel shop while the battlestaff is screaming for a brief. Only this battlestaff is composed of more than 200 14- and 15-year olds each of whom can be far more critical, disinterested, and potentially disruptive than any wing commander or mission director I have ever encountered. Furthermore, the briefing must maintain interest, increase knowledge, and challenge juvenile intellects for 85 minutes.

You know, that gives me an idea, maybe intel briefs would go over better if we gave wing commanders different colored markers and butcher paper to draw on, and then played a game to help them retain and apply the information.

Grown Children

Most of my ninth grade students look like young adults.

The boys are mostly man-size: tall and heavy and strong. Most of the girls seemed to have passed menarche, given the number of requests I get to go to the nurse's office. I suspect some of these requests are actually sincere and not simply designed to exploit my natural disinclination to pursue a detailed discussion on the topic. The girls always get their nurse's pass. Boys, on the other had, often ask to go to the restroom but they obviously cannot play the "monthly" card. Most of the time I ask them to wait until later in the period when I have them working in groups. Often they forget they actually had to go. When I do allow them to leave, another student normally perceives this as a potential method of escape and asks me if he can go as well. I say that I will sign his pass but only after the previous student has returned. This usually results in disappointment. Although they look like adults, they often behave as little children.

Their brains and the way they use them are, of course, a dead give away of their age. Their emphasis on social and emotional connections almost always overrides their sense of professionalism and responsibility. Those not accustomed to dealing with young teenagers might respond to this statement with a, "well, duh," but I suspect they too might be initially fooled by these adult-sized humans with nascent socio-cognitive abilities. You see, sometimes they flutter between periods of mental maturity and childishness in the same way their voices once shifted tone. I have students who are perpetual children and those who seem adult beyond their years: these are at either end of a steep bell curve. Most lie in the middle, on the peak of churning wave, at times petulant, rebellious, and arrogant and at other times contrite, helpful, and considerate. This shift between personalities is, I believe, at the heart of what frustrates teachers and parents: They see the physique of adulthood in its prime: virile and capable, but have difficulty squaring that with juvenile social behavior. We must not forget that they are children, but children being emotionally born, making that transition from the second womb of childhood into the adult world. The work is painful and long, and no emotional C-section or spinal block can shorten or ease this labor.

I attach for your benefit evidence of a recent stir in my class room: a note from a substitute teacher who had an encounter with a student who is normally reasonably well-behaved.

Starting Over

I am a new teacher. I retired last July as a Chief Master Sergeant from the United States Air Force after 25 years of service. Six months later I find myself teaching English in a ninth grade classroom on the edge of city of almost 2 million people.

This is my first entry.

Alas, I am now just starting my third week as a public educator. I have 250+ 14 and 15-year old students of varying ability, some barely write at the fifth grade level. Much of my time has been spent counseling students and calling parents in an effort to get my classes under control. I inherited one class in particular with students who were fond of ripping dictionaries to pieces and throwing their pages around the classroom. I am pleased to report that I have moved them above that behavior, at least in my room. All of my classes started this school year with a new teacher who threw her keys at the principal before the end of the last semester and then they suffered under a series of substitutes and are thus behind in both their academic ability and their general civility.

I am starting a review of standard English conventions coupled with an autobiographical writing project as well as beginning a novel unit in order to build their ability to read actively and critically and to develop their sense of place within the context of the written word. All of this goes toward meeting state content standards and getting them ready for the state interim ability testing taking place in seven weeks.

I am surviving day to day and look forward to knowing exactly what I will be doing in the classroom a week ahead of time. It is a modest dream to those outside the profession but to those who have ever been first-year teachers it has a familiarity that brings knowing nods. I have other, less modest goals as well: start a quarterly literary journal of student work, develop connections with other secondary schools around the globe, and build culture of excellence in my classroom.

The ground here is fertile, I just need time to plant.