It's everyone's favorite time again - the least exciting part of the year. Testing!
I'm going to be sitting around the classroom, hopefully watching silent children silently complete their test. Any amusing links and emails you can send me would be appreciated.
Normally, I love this job. Proctoring standardized tests... not so much.
I think it is continually fascinating that my English Language Learners are much more likely to get my silly puns than my native English speakers. For example: practically without fail, my Latino boys (and some girls) will laugh when I call a student selected by pulling his equity stick (a set of sticks, each with a different student's name written on them - an engagement strategy that lets every student know that he/she can be called on, even if they don't volunteer, and helps address any subconscious biases I might have) a "sticktim" (a victim selected by equity stick - as opposed to a volunteer who rases his/her hand). Very few of my native English speakers appreciate my silly puns.
I don't know what, if anything, it means, but I find it odd and entertaining.
Is there such a thing as Perceived Frequency Creep?
By that I mean does the frequency with which something happen seem to increase with repetition, even though the frequency does not actually increase?
I ask because I have a really crappy phone - smart enough to actually crash periodically, just like a crappy computer, but not smart enough to actually do anything smart - and it seems like those crashes are coming with increasing frequency. It hasn't reached the point that the crashes are exactly common - we're not at the "once a week or so" level - but it does seem that they happen more often. It seems that the first few times my phone crashed, I had to strain to remember the last time it had happened, whereas now, while I can't recall the exact date, it seems much more recent.
This sounds exactly like the kind of bullshit our brains produce to keep us looking out for the newer, better, and tastier... but then again, my phone is really crappy.
I hate giving tests.
It's boring for me. I came here to teach, not to sit around and torture children. If I have to torture children, I'd like to at least be active about it! Tests stress the kids out so I have to give a lot of consequences, and I'm not convinced that it really has any place in education.
In other words, total fail.
Anyway, my first and second periods have been pretty easy on me. Let's see if that holds true for the rest of the day.
Coming to you up a muddy road
Good an' dirty, I got a truck load
And when you get it, you got something
Don't worry, 'cause I'm coming
I'm a mole man, I'm a mole man
I'm a mole man, I'm a mole man
Got what I got the hard way
And I dig it deeper, each and every day
So honey, said don't you fret
'Cause you ain't seen nothing yet
I'm a mole man, I'm a mole man
I'm a mole man, I'm a mole man
I was brought up under the street
I learned how to dig before I could eat
I was educated at Woodstock
When I start loving, whoa I can't stop
I'm a mole man, I'm a mole man
I'm a mole man, I'm a mole man
Just grab the rope and I'll pull you down
Give you hope and be your only boyfriend
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
I'm talking about a mole man, mole man
I'm a mole man, I'm a mole man
I'm a mole man, I'm a mole man
I have achieved my second Tiny Plastic Spacemen related injury! Yay?
I'm in the process of stripping down some used models I got for free, and last night I managed to give my left hand a major cramp. First world problems, I know: "man, it's so terrible. I was doing some art on some plastic toys that I got for free and I gave myself a cramp." But, actually, it really hurts! I'm sure it will be fine by the end of the day. To be honest, I'm taking it as a badge of honor. You can tell you're serious about your fun when sometimes it hurts.
Of course, this still isn't as gory as the time I buried my exacto knife in my left index finger. It looks like it will heal clean, but you can still - just barely - see the seam where the cut was.
The models were a serious windfall though. That was probably more than 200$ worth of used Space Marines - practically a small army! - and it was all free, and now it's all mine. Of course, they had a truly horrible color scheme: base-coated black and smeared all over with bronze paint. Really gaudy and really poorly done. The marines are well put-together, but the tanks seem to have been assembled with rubber cement and are falling apart as I strip them. Of course, that's a problem that's not a problem; the more to pieces they fall, the easier it will be to strip the paint off, and when all is said and done I can easily reassemble them.
Oddly enough it's the Space Marines that are the biggest treasure, even though it was the tanks that first delighted me. There are some seriously old, seriously cool, and seriously out of print metal marines in there, including this awesome guy with huge skulls on his shoulder pads. I may not be the world's best painter, but I am going to be able to do some seriously cool stuff with these guys, once I've got them stripped and base-coated.
Anyway, the whole thing includes about twenty Space Marines, some of them Assault Marines, some of them Tactical Marines, and some of them with various special weapons, two tank chassis, and four (four? These guys are always fielded in groups of five or more) Terminators.
I'm going to have a lot of fun with this.
"Death Spiral" is not the name of a goth metal band, but it should be.
Actually, I was introduced to the term "Death Spiral" by RPGs. In an RPG context, a Death Spiral is a rule that causes a character (or other entity) to become less effective as it approaches death. For characters, this has the effect of heightening tension and increasing drama. As the character becomes increasingly injured, he or she must struggle on despite the pain and handicap of wounds. Death Spirals - although for this to work they usually have to be accompanied by a mechanic for ignoring them at some cost - can often produce some awesome "from hell's heart I stab at thee" moments.
Of course, there are problems with Death Spirals. For one thing, the "circle round and beat the crap out of an increasingly crippled opponent" scene isn't much cooler than it sounds. A few games have done interesting things with inverted or otherwise altered Death Spirals that make opponents different or just plain nastier as they get more hurt, which is counter-intuitive, but usually a lot more fun, in that it produces rising action over the course of a battle, rather than falling action.
In the last few minutes, I've also learned that Death Spiral can also refer to some economics conditions, too.
But I digress. I'm here to talk about the Death Spiral in terms of sleep.
The Stress-Work-Sleep Death Spiral goes like this:
First, I am stressed. This is a general condition of my life. Then, I have work to do (also a general condition of my life). Because I am stressed, I am often doing the work at odd hours of the night. As it gets later, I get more tired, which reduces my efficiency and increases my stress. Which reduces my efficiency. Which causes it to become later. Which increases my weariness. Which reduces my efficiency.
And so on.
This is probably the worst thing about reality. Time, man, it totally blows. I would totally arrange things differently if it were up to me.
I think that recognizing the Stress-Work-Sleep Death Spiral (SWS Death Spiral, or SWSDS, for short) has helped me to avoid it, or at least mitigate it. The problem with totally preventing the SWS Death Spiral is that it acts upon the part of my brain that, well, acts. I may see it coming, but that doesn't mean I can do anything about it because it's the parts of me that manages time, makes decision, and works creatively that are slowed down, skewed sideways, and otherwise fucked up. However, there is something powerful about sitting in front of my computer at 12:45 AM and saying "damn, I know what this is - this is the Death Spiral" that helps. It opens the door to radical solutions, like "fuck it - I'm going to go to bed and set the alarm for 5:30 so I have time to do this before school" (a personal favorite). On a smaller scale, it sometimes helps spur me on to make more intelligent decisions about how to manage my time and reach the inevitable conclusion of the SWS Death Spiral - finishing my work and going, the fuck, to sleep.
And for the record, I know where the spacebar is. There's some kink of the Dreamwidth interface that they're still working out that occasionally erases my spaces. It's a space erasure. Very exciting.
In my line of work, it's considered a virtue to be sensitive to the culture(s) of the kids we work with. We are supposed to educateourselvesinwhat's appropriate and inappropriate in the cultural contexts of our kids and then do our best to meet their expectations. In a lot ofways, thisisan entirely good idea. It helps us get past the "culture of poverty" myths, connect to our students, and dodge a lot of the social,racial,andeconomic issues that could potentially divide and destroy classroom culture.
Even though I know this is basically a good idea, I sometimes wonder if it's bullshit.
Before I go any further, I feel like I should add a disclaimer. By that, I mean that the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarilyendorsed by the writer. In other words: I don't really know what I think about this issue, much less how I feel about this issue. I'm unloadingmyemotionsand expressing my feelings, and if you take this post as anything but me thinking out loud for your entertainment andedification,you're a jerk.
So, with black kids - and, in many cases, kids who belong to other cultures but have undergone a lot of their socialization around black kids -you aren't supposed to single them out by name. It's apparently disrespectful. I don't really understand how, but I don't have to. It's aculturalthing. It's true for the kids. Whatever.
The thing is, you can imagine that as a classroom teacher this isn't easy to deal with. How the hell else am I supposed to deal with kids ifIcan't single them out? It's important for me to note here that I'm not talking about insulting or humiliating kids - yes, yes, at least not bymyentirely subjective standards - I'm talking about saying something as simple as taking a break from whatever bit of instruction I'm doing tosay"hey, Manuel, please stop talking and listen to me" or "Christine, spit out your gum please."
I want to note that it's not like I'm taking any heat from anyone in authority to do this differently. My administrators seem pretty content to let merun my classroom my way, and they're pretty happy with how I relate to the kids. I've noticed a lot of conflict in my classroom, and I'm trying tofigure out how to improve my classroom culture. My classroom culture, not my kids' culture. That's their business. My mentor's advice was toconsider this "calling out" phenomenon and see what I can do to change how I relate to my kids.
The first thing is that I'm very confused about how the heck to communicate with my kids if I'm not going to single them out anymore. What am Isupposed to do, say "remember that gum isn't allowed" while looking meaningfully at one of my students while she chews? Is anyone but meaware that this will totally fail to produce any kind of response?
I know what the solution is, of course. My school has a number of excellent teachers who are born and bred in Oakland's black community. Ican - and will - go and watch them and see how they deal with it. Perhaps I'll discover that it's simpler than I think.
What's really frustrating is that the entire project seems a little ridiculous. My classroom isn't just full of black kids. There are black kids from Oakland, black kids from elsewhere, latino kids, kids born in America, and latino kids born abroad, Mongolian kids and Chinese kids and Vietnamese kids, and even one lonely white kid (actually, I think the white kid moved, but I still see last year's white kid in the halls sometimes). I know that more of my kids are black than anything else, but by bowing to their cultural preferences and ignoring everyone else's, aren't I perpetuating the same inequalities I hate, just for different reasons?
And for that matter, why the heck don't we expect black kids to develop cultural competencies like (nearly) everyone else in America (except the white people) has to? I know that the black and Jewish experiences in America are very different - for one thing, we got to be white eventually, and I'm not sure America can handle making black people white - but nobody ever gave a shit about my culture when I was growing up. I've had to learn to appreciate the Jesus myth in literature. I've had negative interactions with teachers based on my argumentative and belligerent ways. I've had to explain my weird Jewish holidays over and over again. Is this a white liberal guilt ("we must limit the ways our awful white culture impacts these poor innocent black kids!") thing? A low expectations ("we can't expect these fucked up, poor, urban black kids to adapt to other cultures") thing? Or is it some other thing?
*sigh*
The thing is, I understand that none of that really matters. It doesn't matter where this thing comes from or how I related to it in my childhood. What matters is that I want to teach these kids science, and the more harmoniously I can do it, the more science they will learn. If I have to figure out how to discipline kids without talking to them individually - or whatever it turns out I have to do - then I'll do it. But I still have a lot of questions, and I think I'm going to have to get used to not having answers.
Today we begin one of my favorite units of the year: the HIV Mini-Unit.
I enjoy teaching this unit for several reasons. Firstly, I'm really proud of a lot of the activities I've cooked up for it, including the T-Pain Suicide analysis activity (culturally appropriate pedagogy for the win!). Other activities that come with the curriculum, like the "Drinking Party" or the "Mix and Match Fluids and Orfices" activity, are fun just as written. It's also fun to get to teach something that I know will definitely be relevant to my students' lives, practically no matter what choices they make. Everyone should know how to do science - it adds a lot to your life to understand the world around you, and the problem-solving skills it provides are invaluable - but let's face it, a lot of people don't remember an iota of middle school science and they do fine. HIV-avoidance, however, is a matter of life and death.
And, let's face it, I'm a bit of a sadist about this work. I enjoy cracking open my kids' brains and challenging their adorable little assumptions and preconceptions for its own sake. It's fun. The HIV Mini-Unit gives me lots of opportunities to do that.
"Do we have to do this unit?" C asks me, in a typical whiny twelve-year-old voice.
"Yes," I reply, curtly. I don't like to spend a lot of time answering questions my students already know the answers to, things like 'do we have to do this?' and 'can I go to the bathroom?'
I thought the matter was safely resolved, until I walked by during the Pair Share to discover that C was sobbing. A moment of conversation revealed that C's aunt had died of AIDS last month.
I had been trying to explain to my kids that HIV is a growing problem in Oakland. Case in gut-wrenching, tragic, mother-fucking point.
Anyway, I shuffled C off to the counselor's office. It turned out later that all of the counselors are out sick today (wtf?), but when I saw her again she was feeling better; I guess a break from class did her good. C's mother - I called home to giver her my condolences and a head's up about C's feelings - is adamant that C participate in the unit, and I can see why. She's also a little puzzled about C's feelings, since the deceased was her father's sister and not someone she knew very well, but you never can tell with kids. Sometimes things effect them in weird ways.
Anyway, I don't think I actually did anything wrong, but I feel weird nonetheless. It's not every day I dive feet first into someone's personal family tragedy, and while I've had kids who have lost family members to HIV in three years I haven't previously had the bad luck to begin the HIV Mini Unit a mere month after an AIDS death.
That's it from the trenches today - unless someone else starts crying in my six. Wish me luck.
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