Act of badteaching interrupting badblogging.

Ideally, this would've been a recap of the first week's lessons and it would've been posted this past Friday. Unfortunately, it isn't, and it wasn't. No, this whole school thing is getting in the way. There was the grading, oh yes, the grading, which is not even close to being done. And there was the @(%#@* yearbook, which refused to be finally put to bed despite my best editorial efforts. I swear I'll be haranguing students about next year's edition while making inconsequential edits to the old one. Then there were the peaks and valleys of planning three brand new courses to start the year.

Of course, here I am complaining about how my time has been ill-used over the past week, and I just spent about fifteen minutes finding this picture to the right. Look at it, though. Worth every second. Is that an alligator he's holding? And what's going on in the background there?

Suffice it to say that the school year's off to an invigorating start.

Also, John Oliver is awesome. If he's coming to your city, or even a city near you, and you enjoy things that are fun and entertaining, go see his show. You'll never feel so indebted to the British Empire.

And now, a Haiku about New Teacher Orientation.

Orientation:
Your meetings and paperwork
Drown me in sorrow.

Okay, so it's not all bad. Alas, teachers are not free from the soul-sucking meetings that singe the backsides of cubicle jockeys the world over. Today, for instance, my interminable desk-carrying was interrupted by six hours of chair meetings, training, accreditation seminars and semi-mandatory meals. I spent so much time sitting and listening that my legs hurt. That's definitely a new one.

Of course, some of this time was well spent. I spent a thrilling two hours in a life-altering behavioral management seminar that may threaten my status as a Bad Teacher (not likely). Everything starts with stability (of the classroom environment) and significance (of the material taught). If students find either of these elements lacking, they will surely immolate even the nicest teacher, no matter how many stickers he/she doles out. That's what they apparently teach at Michigan State, at any rate. Maybe without the burning and the fire.

But did all of this sitting and listening and hand-cramping note taking help me finish my course outlines? No. So I'm working on them right now. Yes, late into the evening. Hey - even the worst teachers have to do work sometimes.

badmanuallaborer.

Why, you might ask, is this young lad smiling so joyfully while sitting at his desk? Because he didn't have to carry the damn thing down three flights of stairs, that's why.

You see, it's that time of year when teachers artfully arrange their classrooms so that this jolly whippersnapper and his ilk can destroy them within a matter of weeks. For me this meant lugging ten desks from the fifth floor to my classroom. No elevator, only a winding staircase slanted to promote the highest potential for plummeting to your death.

Why was I doing this? I arrived at school this morning to find that oh joy, oh rapture, enrollment was up up up. Which is good for the school, allowing us to stay open and so forth. But it is not good for my classroom, which is not meant to hold upwards of thirty morose fourteen-year olds at one time.

My room is very nice. It stays cool in the caustic days of late August and warm in arctic January. Still, its maximum capacity is, oh, twenty-four desks. It is small, which is not something I am upset about. It's good for everyone involved when a class's size is kept as low as possible. More one-on-one time with students, etc. But the kids will be packed in my room like yuppies at a street festival, and I only have twenty desks. Well, had. Now I have thirty. Thirty antique, gum coated, sticky scoliosis-inducers ready for my students' displeasure.

Four hours of this and other similar pack-mulery also means that I did not have time to work on my lessons today. Will I be working on them tonight? Probably not.

Why?

Do I really have to tell you the answer?

Classroom Management: Idealism vs. Reality.

One of the biggest challenges for any new teacher is drawing up an effective, above all useful classroom management plan. I have never done one, not really. Oh, there was the crap they have you do in teacher school, but none of that stuff is actually applicable in real life. But you have to have one to be a real life teacher, even if you don't have a model to work from. Because that would just be too easy.

I typed the words "classroom management" into Google, hoping to find a model written by someone who is NOT a Bad Teacher. Unfortunately, most seem to be penned by Dirty Hippies. These tend to call for lots of sitting in circles, holding hands and talking about feelings. One of the first links I pulled up included the following gem:

"The best rule that I have heard and I would believe to be my attitude towards classroom rules is that I need a classroom where learning takes place, and if we can respect each other then we don’t need any other 'rules.'"

This is a wonderful sentiment. I love this idea, that I could walk into a classroom and quantify "respect" in such a way that teenagers will automatically give it to a) me and b) one another. I also like how the author puts "rules" in "quotes." Is he/she implying that "rules" are in fact "cookies" or "dinosaurs?" Will they wander the room feasting on "plants" and "smaller dinosaurs?"

Okay, you're right, I'm just being unreasonable because I don't have any "rules" of my "own" to put in a "classroom management plan" yet. So here's another wonderful sounding, but completely suicidal idea:

"I may try to create a class constitution if behaviors in the class are inconsistently out of control."

I feel terrible for the author of this line. You see, they have probably been stuffed into a locker by their students at this point, if by some miracle they are still alive. It is one thing to start the year with a class constitution. Then it's already in place, the students know it's there, etc. But to draw one up because the students are throwing a Boston Tea Party in the back of the classroom... now, that just doesn't seem wise. And what does the author mean by inconsistently? Wouldn't it make more sense to try to change rules if students are consistently out of control? What the hell is going on here?

The inclusion of the words "may" and "try" on behalf of the teacher seems to suggest that the students have already seen the whites of his/her eyes and have opened fire. The minutemen are burning the supply depot while the red coats try to enforce the rule of law.

Here's hoping I can come up with something in between an idealist's wet dream and the "nefarious scheme" suspected by Calvin. Not that there's anything wrong with idealists - you kind of have to be one to be a teacher, after all.

Camping, and other excuses.

So, we really fell off the deep end there for a while, didn't we? No posts in, well, many days, and that after six consecutive days posting at the start of this blog's existence. There was camping, oh, was there camping, that got in the way a tad (hard to blog when you don't even have access to a phone), but there was also the inescapable fact that teaching isn't really the most relevant topic during the summertime. And since this is supposed to be a blog about teaching and not a collection of witty observations about Major League Baseball, I took a break.

Let's get right back into it. Here's Reason Number Three I'm a bad teacher: I left a big chunk of my planning for the end of the summer. Since school starts early around these parts, I'm in critical danger of running out of time here. As in, I should be done before tomorrow, just in time for orientation. I've got my syllabi all set, as well as my course outlines, but not my classroom management plan. Just to make things interesting, I still don't have a book for one of my classes. Always interesting planning to teach something when you don't have a text to base lessons on. Whatever.

Anyway, we're back in action for the school year, hopefully better than ever.

Intrepid journalist blows the cover on the teacher shortage!

Ah, this article is like an old friend. You see, there are really only three things that journalists like to write about teachers. One and two have to do with things you might see on a "ripped from the headlines" episode of Law & Order: Make People Paranoid Unit, often involving some misunderstanding of how the internet works. Thankfully, the author of this article focuses on number three: the famous teacher shortage.

You see, every year someone looks around and notices that there aren't really enough teachers in certain important subject areas, typically math, science and special ed. The reasons are trotted out one after another, like the standard parts of a Greek comedy. Low pay. Red tape. Lack of autonomy. Too much autonomy. And so on. But not until the end of the article does the author approach the real issue:

"Shortages have long been noted in special education, math, science and educational assistant positions in our state. As the state survey noted, it's a deep-rooted – and complex – issue to tackle. '[N]o single action will magically correct the balance of supply versus demand.'"

And then the article ends. Isn't the next logical step to examine the actions that could be taken? That's really what's important here. Too many people are being accepted into teaching programs where they learn to be, broadly, English or Social Studies teachers. I know I was. Maybe if there was an actual dialogue in the press about how the problem can be fixed, some progress could be made.

That sound you just heard was me stepping down from my soap box.

We tired few, we overused Shakespearian allusions...

If there's anything my first year or so as a teacher lacked, it was a consistent curriculum. I taught three different varieties of social studies while student teaching, but my first paying gig was in an English department. Not exactly what I set out to do, but when you're a liberal arts major, you roll with the punches.

Now, it's an international law that every English class has to include a Shakespeare play or two. It doesn't matter what content or continent is covered, the bard has to be a part of it. My class read Romeo and Juliet along with 98% of the rest of the world. Nothing like a little teenage suicide to lighten up fourth period.

As great as Mercutio and the rest of Verona's rich and violent are, my favorite play was always Henry V, which is great because I'm not at all alone. I've read not one, but two books recently where the play's language is alluded to, and they could not be more different.

The first, by Christopher Moore, was A Dirty Job. It's the overly-gonzo story of a wishy-washy guy who becomes Death, or at least a death. He collects people's souls when they die. The book has its moments, some good and many bad, but it's about the last place I expected to see someone charging into a breach. Of course, this is a reference to that famous line shouted by Henry to his troops at the siege of Harfleur: "Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead." It is rendered thus in Moore's words:

"What irony, that he would finally summon his courage and charge into the breach, only to end up lost and stuck in the breach."

The story's protagonist finds himself both heading through the wall and closing it up at the same time. This cannot be a coincidence. The word "breach" when used this way is meant summon visions of Kenneth Branagh on horseback. Why did Moore decide that this was the image he wanted his comically inept hero to project?

Michael Lewis wants to conjure up similar connotations in his book Liar's Poker when he cribs from Henry's St. Crispen's Day speech. This is the speech of "band of brothers" fame, which lends its words to HBO miniseries and Confederate marching songs alike. Here's Lewis, describing a group of traders:

"No, there was no finer place to be in January 1985 than with Michael Mortara's righteous few, that rich band of brothers, the mortgage traders of Salomon Brothers."

Now, I like the way Lewis adapts Shakespeare's language. Henry's men were the "happy few," Mortara's the "righteous." Henry's men sally forth to slaughter Frenchmen, the traders pillage the savings and loan market. And Lewis isn't the only one in the book to use the phrase. Later on, another Salomon trader says, "We were a band of brothers."

Still, why is it that this play continues to be counted on by absurdist writers and Wall Street hotshots as a cheat sheet for how to talk in high leverage situations? Isn't there some other piece of martial high drama that can be called upon during climactic battles and inspiring board meetings? Why is Henry V the Elizabethan equivalent of Jock Jams?

I won't even mention Moore's Julius Caesar reference. Here's hoping someone writes something to take some of the pressure off of Shakespeare soon. In the meantime, let's just let Henry speak for himself:

http://www.chronique.com/Library/Knights/crispen.htm