Tuning in #SOLC26 6/31

After I broke my wrist in December, I took a few weeks off from walking the dog. In fact, I took a few weeks off from walking at all; I had no desire to find out what might happen if I slipped on another patch of ice. Can one break a currently-broken wrist? What if I slipped and broke my left wrist? What does one do with two broken wrists? I decided that I didn’t want to know the answers to these questions so, since Ottawa is definitely icy in the winter, I stayed home and “let” my partner and the kids walk the dog.

The children were compliant but not thrilled with their new duty. Mr. 15 wondered pretty regularly exactly how not icy it would have to be before I would take up my former duties. “Winter lasts a long time, Mom,” he stated bleakly. Mr. 17 tried to talk me into “just” using my left hand – but walking Max, our large energetic black lab mix, is a two-handed endeavour. Still, I missed my daily walks, so in mid-February I tentatively rejoined the dog-walking rotation: anytime the sidewalks were mostly clear, I took the dog.

Things were different now. Where before walking Max was just something I did, now it required my full focus. I scanned the sidewalks for icy patches; I looked ahead to spot other dogs that might cause Max to pull on the leash; I checked the streets for any vans he might need to try to attack (he really hates vans and buses). To protect my right hand, I needed my wits about me, so I did not put in earbuds and listen to podcasts as I used to do. I didn’t even look for things to photograph – something I love to do. I just walked the dog.

Suddenly I could hear those much-detested vans earlier and help settle Max before they arrived. When the weather broke for a February thaw, I heard the birds. And I noticed anew that people who passed me spoke several different languages – one of the many things I love about our neighbourhood. When I felt steady on my feet, my mind was able to wander. I hummed songs and just sort of thought.

This morning, as my mind meandered, I remembered the first time I realized that headphones (or MP3 players, I guess, though I didn’t know it at the time) were going to change the world. I was walking down the Champs Elysees, trailing the students I had accompanied overseas. The iPod was relatively new, and several kids had brought theirs on the trip. As some of the boys exited yet another patisserie (I’d be willing to swear that all they did on that trip was eat), I realized that Ben was bopping down the wide sidewalk of the great boulevard with his ears full of his own music. He wasn’t hearing the language swelling and swooping around him or the street noises that rose and fell as we passed various stores or even the thrum of the traffic. He was taking in the sites with his own soundtrack. I’m not 100% sure, but I think I told the kids to take out their headphones and be in Paris. I know that at some point I gave up the fight. 

My objection seems almost quaint today. Now, students sit in class, an earbud in one ear, strategically hidden behind a shock of hair or under a hat. They are vaguely offended when I ask them, again, to take out their personal life soundtrack. During silent reading time, they insist that they “read better” with music on. When I ask, many can’t think of a time that they aren’t listening to something unless they are forced to take their earbuds out. They hate the “silence” and tell me it’s uncomfortable. In my office, most of my colleagues have something in their ears all the time so that they can “concentrate.” I, too, often go through the world with someone else’s voice in my ears. 

My broken wrist may have broken that spell for me. Sure, I miss my podcasts, but I am enjoying the space that I’ve found. I can’t call it silence because the world is full of sounds, I’d just forgotten that they could be enough. Maybe I’ll get sick of it soon. Maybe I’ll slip back into the sense that every minute needs to count as two – or that every minute is mine to control in some way – but I’m starting to think that maybe I won’t. I think that maybe it’s time for me to remember that the world provides its own soundtrack and that my mind is happy there. It turns out, I like the space that comes from being a little tuned out.

What to Wear on Wednesday #SOLC26 5/31

When I was in high school, friends of mine kept track of how many times our Chemistry teacher said a particular phrase. I think it was “um,” but surely that is too banal. Surely we had better things to do in Chemistry than tally the number of times our poor teacher hesitated every class period, day after day, right? Of course, we also kept track of at least one teacher’s outfits: ah, there’s Tuesday’s skirt! Right on cue, Thursday’s dress! And my sister’s class once united to torture a student teacher by tearing out their notes, day after day, then pretending she had not given the previous day’s lecture. 

Clearly, this was before cell phones.

I am now in my 50s, and some days I feel lucky if the students even notice if I’m in the room, but these memories explain this morning’s dilemma: what to wear to school? I have plenty of options, but it’s March and I am sick of every item of winter-adjacent clothing I own. Plus, of course, I couldn’t wear the green palazzo pants today because I want to wear them tomorrow when we have a guest speaker. Why do I need to wear those pants for a guest speaker who I’ve never met before and may never see again? I do not know, but this morning that was my only fully-formed idea about clothing. As a result, I stared longingly at the green pants for several minutes. 

Eventually, I reached for a black dress with white stripes, but I suddenly feared it might be my “Wednesday” outfit. I put it back, deciding that my safest bet was something navy – because when was the last time I wore navy? Minutes later, I realized that I probably hadn’t been wearing anything navy because I couldn’t find my navy shoes or any cardigan that coordinated even vaguely with navy. 

At this point, getting dressed – something that normally takes me no time at all – had taken me quite a bit of time indeed. I texted my carpool buddy that I was running late and, ignoring the nagging voice in my head – the one with a distinct Southern accent – that whispered “No white before Memorial Day,” I grabbed a white cardigan. I finally located my navy shoes, then ran downstairs to grab breakfast. I threw together a lunch, and took my breakfast to go. My carpool buddy arrived, and we headed off to school: me, confident that I was not wearing a Wednesday outfit and knowing that, at the very least, my shoes were appropriate. No tally sheets for this teacher!

No tally sheets, that is, unless my students are keeping track of days when I have completely forgotten to put on any make up. Sigh.

At least tomorrow’s outfit is ready to go, and – who knows? – maybe the guest speaker will be really impressed by my green palazzo pants. Maybe he’ll add them to a secret tally sheet of “really well-dressed teachers for a Thursday in March.” I bet I top the list for that one.

Let it go? #SOLC26 3/31

During my prep period I head to the front office to ask a question. In the lobby, the Principal is talking to two of our regular “hall walkers” – students who spend most of their time in the halls rather than in class. I maintain my pace but watch, intrigued, as he moves them inexorably towards the office even as they argue with him. At one point he says, “1,150 students are in class. Why aren’t you?” I’m impressed by this statement, but the students remain defiant as I pass. 

Just before I enter the office, I see a few more regular loiterers hanging out nearby. Though I have no real authority other than that of being an adult in the building, I believe that teachers and administrators should work together to help students meet our expectations, so I spur them along a bit with a joking phrase and “You should be in class.” They acknowledge my words with a clearly false response and stay where they are. I ignore their obvious lie and go into the office. Actually getting them to class would take more fight than I’ve got in me right now.

A few minutes later, I’ve finished up in the office, and I walk out, chatting, with a colleague. We continue to talk as we wend our way back to our classrooms. More students linger in the lobby. Again, I pause to say, “You should be in class.” Again, they offer anodyne excuses that have little to do with reality. I know they’re lying; they know they’re lying. We all continue on our way.

Once we reach my classroom, my colleague comes in and shuts the door behind him. “Hear me out,” he says, “before you say anything.” I figure this is because of my terrible habit of interrupting, but this time it’s more than that. He looks directly at me. “You need to stop telling kids to go to class.”

He explains his logic: every little interaction like the ones I’ve just described is a tiny annoyance, a mini increase in my blood pressure or my stress. And for what? Every time, the students lie or ignore what we say, and every time they get a little “win.” They only go to class if we follow them there, and that is a much much bigger annoyance for everyone and a bigger stressor for the teacher. He believes that ignoring their behaviour is better for us and, at the very least, no worse for them.

I have to think about this. I consider the “animal training” philosophy that suggests we should ignore behaviour we don’t like and reward behaviour we do. I consider the amount of effort it takes even the Principal to get kids to respond appropriately. I consider what I lose when I ask students to go to class but don’t follow through. 

Then I think about what it might mean if no one asked students to go to class. What happens if most or all teachers just turn their heads instead of intervening? But are we really intervening now or are we just playing at intervention? I don’t know. 

I’ve been thinking about this since my prep today. I can honestly say that asking students to go to class has only ever been effective when I have accompanied them all the way to the door of the classroom. Even then, I overheard one of our VPs say that she had walked a student to class today and the student left the room again within minutes. Maybe I’ll give my colleague’s idea a try, even if it feels weird. What do you think?

The Experienced Teacher #SOLC26 2/31

Lately, I’ve been feeling my age as a teacher. Look, I don’t think I’m old, exactly, but I’m definitely much nearer the end of my teaching career than the beginning. I’m literally the same age as the mother of one of my colleagues. I try not to think about it, but it’s still out there. I’ve given up on some things – I no longer even bother pretending to keep up with celebrities and slang. I pick up a bit here & there, toss it into the occasional class discussion and pray I’m only a bit out of date. Is skibidi still a thing? Six-seven? Ariana Grande? Who knows? Who cares? Not me, honestly.

As a Department Head, I pride myself on encouraging teachers in the department to try new things, take risks, see if we can meet students where they are and all of that, but too often I still think of new things as, you know, books. Meanwhile, my colleagues are tiptoeing into the world of teaching video games and YouTube essays. They use reels and bring up streamers (who are people, not party decorations). It’s impressive, and I kind of hope I retire before I need to use these things regularly. I mean, I keep a blog – which I write without AI. 

Which brings me to one of my grade 9 classes this year. They are energetic and hilarious, which translates into “always talking” and “often sneaking out their phones.” They don’t read and they don’t do homework. (Obviously some of them do, but classes have personalities and this one is, ahem, riotous.)

It’s a year-long class that meets every other day, so February marked the beginning of our second semester together, and last week marked the end of my patience. People were late. People were talking. We’d given up independent reading time several weeks ago. On this day, notebooks were not out; no one had a pencil; only two students had completed the article of the week. Their midterm marks were atrocious, but they didn’t seem to care about improving. I gave up. I asked the students to sit in a circle and I spoke to them honestly. I didn’t know what we were going to  do, but it couldn’t be this. We would not make it to the end of the school year. “So,” I said, “too hard, too easy or too boring?”

The answer, of course, was yes, though it took a while for them to trust me enough to talk about it. Once we had established that, we moved to the next question. “What do you want or need to make this class better?”

“More fun,” they said. (Well, after they said no reading and no writing, no vocabulary and no sitting and all group work and let them use their phones – and I laughed and laughed.)

“What does fun look like?”

No one really knew at first, but slowly they came to agreement: they wanted to read something together, maybe out loud and definitely not on their own; they wanted to move around more; they wanted to work with other people, even though they know they’re not really good at actually working in groups. They wanted more support for their writing.

“Ok,” I rubbed my hands together. “I can do that! Let’s choose a book!”

And, because I am old and I am a Department Head, I know who teaches what and when, so I went to the book room (don’t worry; another teacher stayed in the room with them), and I grabbed a few copies of every book that had a full class set. I found seriously old books (Lord of the Flies) and slightly old books (Speak) and modern books (Frying Plantain) and brought back enough copies for people to page through. Still, nothing was really hitting them.

Finally, R looked up and said, “You know, I thought in high school we would read Shakespeare.” Several others agreed with her. “Could we read Romeo and Juliet?” Across the room, some of the boys perked up, too. They were down with Shakespeare.

Y’all. Shakespeare? I hadn’t even considered Shakespeare. These kids are from all over the world. Their English is everything from native to fluent to okay to, well, we’re trying. Some of them are excellent readers; some are decidedly not. They generally disdain English class. Shakespeare? Perfect!

Experience has its privileges: I know that the language will be hard enough that it will equalize the class – all the readers will struggle with the words. I know that this is as much a gang story as it is a love story. I know that we will be on our feet all the time and that they will have to work together and do close reading to figure out what in the world is going on. I know that I have myriad options to support kids at different levels and I know that this will work. I know it right away. 

“Yes!” I said. “Let’s do it! This is going to be fun!”

I put all the other books away and gathered the students in for a second time that class period to talk about feuds and families and sneaking out of your house. I may be old, but when it comes to teaching, I like to think that experience means I know what I’m doing.

Excuses #SOLC26 1/31

Might as well get these out of the way on Day 1.

I’m not ready for this month. I haven’t prepared topics or set aside time. I’m still in the middle of the book I meant to finish before March, and it’s due at the library, so I need to prioritize that. I didn’t manage to finish marking all those essays I swore I’d finish before the March challenge started, and now I might never find the time… or at least not until April. The students will suffer.

I’ll never have time to comment on as many other posts as I want to. I might miss someone. I’ll miss my “regular” blog buddies. What if my comments are boring? What if I don’t say enough? I should spend time on my students, not these random teachers I’ve never even meant. How is this useful? Why am I even doing this?

I’ve already learned everything I needed to learn from writing every day – this is indulgent – or time-consuming – or something. My partner calls this “Hell month” then, when I object, he threatens to record me saying how much I love this month and play it back to me on, say, March 25th. I glare at him. Writing every day just to prove my partner wrong is probably the wrong motivation.

I forgot to write and now it’s late at night. It’s too personal. It’s not personal enough. I don’t have anything new to say. I don’t have anything to say. Who wants to read this anyway? This piece stinks. I’m not a writer. I think I actually hate everything I’ve ever written. 

What if ________ reads this? What if no one reads this? What if everyone reads this?

What if I’m no good? What if I’m too much? What if I’m not enough? What if I mess up?

What if I do this? What if I write? What if I enjoy myself? What if writing is fun? What if I find a community that lifts me up? What if this is just what I need?

I’ve done this before; I’m ready; this is just what I need. March, I’ve been waiting for you. 31 posts in 31 days. I’ve got this.

Lost and Found

Tuesday morning. 8:10am. 

The phone rings one traffic light before the entrance to the highway, and the computerized voice in the car announces that my spouse is calling. My stomach drops: this is likely not good. “I hope nothing’s wrong,” I say to my carpool buddy as I press the “answer” button on the steering wheel.

“Hi Honey,” his voice is tense. I catch my breath. “Things are a bit akimbo here and we’re hoping you can help us. Mr. 17 is trying to find his clean clothes. I know you put Mr. 15’s clothes in the dryer before breakfast. Is there any chance you saw Mr. 17’s clothes when you did that? Do you know where they might be?”

I have to press my lips together to keep from laughing out loud.

“Um, yes. I put them in the laundry basket and put the basket on the stairs leading up to his bedroom.”

My spouse is disbelieving. “Are you kidding?”

“Not even a little.”

The message is relayed to the child, and the missing clothes – in a bright blue basket – are, indeed, discovered on the middle of the bottom step, the one he had to walk on to get downstairs to look for his clothes. Through the line, I hear my child’s voice ring out, “Got ‘em!”

My spouse and I guffaw; my carpool buddy and I guffaw some more, and the call ends, seconds after it started. Now we’re on the highway, heading towards even more 15 and 17 year olds who could very well be, at this moment, running through their own homes in their underwear, desperately looking for the laundry that their parents put directly in front of them.

Or maybe it’s just my kid.

Not bad for a blizzard

As an immigrant to Canada, I may never get over the way schools here handle snow days. In South Carolina, we sometimes had “weather days” because somebody somewhere had uttered the word “snow”; everyone freaked out, panic-bought milk at the grocery store, and school was cancelled. In upstate New York, where my sisters went to high school, school was occasionally cancelled because it was too cold out for kids to be waiting for buses. In Ottawa, if there’s a LOT of snow and we’re really lucky, they might cancel school buses, but schools are pretty much always open. “There are plows,” Canadians shrug. “Leave early.” And so we do.

This morning we woke up to clear skies and reasonable (read: still very cold) temperatures. There was no reason to expect buses to be cancelled. I didn’t even check my email. Luckily, my carpool buddy texted before 7am:

Hmm. A blizzard. OK.

Email revealed a message from one of my children’s teachers: students were “encouraged” to come to his morning class, buses or no buses. I woke Mr. 15 and sent him in. Mr. 17 said he would probably go in for Calculus because “it’s not snowing yet.” Blizzard-shmizzard.

No bus days are also “no new material” days because many students can’t get to school without buses. In practice, this often means that we end up with a handful of students and not much to do, but today was different. The few grade 12 students who arrived for first period asked to read their books, and then they did exactly that – for more than an hour! Then, during Reading class, we watched CNN10 and discovered that we could stream the Olympics – luge and ski jumping soon filled the room. 

Now, at the end of the day, I am sitting in a darkened classroom with students I’ve collected from several grade 9 classrooms. Kids have pulled out food (Where do they get it all? Is this what is in their backpacks? I’ve been offered both sour gummi worms and white chocolate.) and we are watching Olympic women’s hockey – Canada vs USA – while a literal blizzard blows snow outside the classroom window. There’s a steady undercurrent of talk and giggles. Phones are out, but kids are watching, too. They’re speaking Turkish, Arabic, and English while they cheer our team on. It’s not school, exactly, but it’s not bad for a blizzard.

Vocabulary Lesson

We’re nearly done reviewing yesterday’s words when a voice floats up from the back corner of the classroom. “Why are we learning these words? Who even says ‘persevere’?”

I bite my lip to keep from laughing as I face the class. “Persevere? Of all the words, persevere is the one that bugs you?”

Giggles. Yes.

It’s the second day of second semester. Most students have all new classes, but Reading class has only sort of changed. Sure, some students from Semester 1 have “graduated”; they are now reading at least a grade 8 level, so we’ve sent them off into the wilds of their regular classrooms. And some students have opted to take a break; we might think they still need reading support, but they need some time away to consider whether the hard work of improving their reading is worth it for them. Some students have opted in; someone has suggested that they might benefit from extra support, so they’ve joined our class. But the truth is that most students from the first semester are back for a second semester of improving reading skills – because learning to read takes time. This means our class is now a mixture of students who are deeply familiar with our routines and students who have no idea what we’re doing.

What we’re doing is getting ready to watch CNN10. Coy Wire, the anchor, is a fixture in our classroom. Every day, he brings us ten minutes of news, building background knowledge that was previously unavailable to many of our students because, well, reading. We started working with vocabulary in October, after Coy told us that “the perpetrators of the brazen heist at the Louvre were still at large” and I realized that our students didn’t know 

  • what or where the Louvre is 
  • what a heist is 
  • what brazen means
  • what perpetrators are and
  • what it means to be “at large”. 

Oof.

Too often, information swims right past these students, and their defense mechanism is ignoring whatever is going by. In October, I paused the show, and we developed a routine: say the word, tap the word, spell the word, define the word. Then we discuss the issue at hand: what on earth is Coy talking about? CNN10 is supposed to be 10 minutes long, but it often takes us 20 minutes to get through. Last semester, students mastered words like consensus, unprecedented, to mint, autonomous and scintillating. Their pride was almost tangible.

But that was then, and now it’s the second day of the new semester and the back of the room wants to know if anyone actually says “persevere.” Challenge accepted. 

“Hold on,” I say. “I’m going to find the first adult I can who is not teaching and bring them back here to see if they know these words.”

The giggles become shocked laughter. 

“I’ll be right back.” And I am. I return with Amy, an EA from down the hall. Not only is she extremely cool looking with her shaved head and stretched ear piercings, it turns out that she is the aunt of one of my students. Immediate credibility. 

“Ok,” I say dramatically, “have I prepped you in any way?”

Amy says no. 

“Have I whispered the answers ahead of time?”

No.

With a flourish, I turn to the class. “Are you ready?”

Yes.

I ask Amy if she knows the word “icon” and she gives the class a withering look.

“Seriously?”

They tumble over each other to assure her that they already knew that word and I just put it on the board for… reasons. They encourage me to continue.

“Segregate.” She nails it.

“Perpetual?”

“Goes on and on – like it lasts.”

I pause for an extra beat and take a deep breath.

“Ok, this is the challenge: Do you know what ‘persevere’ means?”

She does. 

“Do you think people use the word ‘persevere’ or is it one of those useless school words?”

Amy looks a little incredulous. “Um… people use it a lot.”

I give the class a triumphant look. They reluctantly agree that I *might* be right about ‘persevere’. Amy goes back to her classroom; we go back to CNN10. I begin making a list of hard words from today’s show:

Endure
Appeal
Scathing

And then… out of the blue Coy says that someone has “persevered.” Everyone sits up. Giggles. Grins. The back corner looks slightly abashed (not that they know what abashed means). I get side-eye and someone says, “I bet he won’t say it tomorrow.”

We shall see, friends. Or perhaps I should say, we will persevere.

Q&A: Report Card Edition

We are rapidly approaching the end of January. Here in Ontario that means plunging temperatures, rising snow banks and the end of first semester courses in high schools. That, in turn, means that stress levels in schools are ratcheting upwards. Students race to finish assignments and juggle projects from various classes; teachers push to gather evidence of student learning and struggle to mark myriad late assignments before exams. And everyone worries about report cards.

As a Department Head (officially known as a “Position of Added Responsibility” – a phrase designed to make it very clear that I am in charge of precisely nothing), I experience the end of January as a long series of “what if” questions that usually end in either frustration or confusion.

First, some clarity (it will be the last in this post, I assure you): 

  1. For reasons beyond my comprehension, Ontario uses letter grades through grade 6 when we randomly switch to numbered “achievement levels” (which teachers must then convert to percentage marks. So, A = 4 = 87-94%; B = 3 = 73-76%. Oh, and the A/ 4 range is 80-100%; all the rest of the levels have ranges of 10.) For this post, I’m going to use A, B, C, D because that makes sense to many people.
  2. A summative = a major final project; some classes have a summative and an exam; some have a summative and an exit interview; some have a different combination of things. Every class has some sort of final something.

“So,” a teacher sits down next to me at the lunch table. “I have a question.” 

Question: I have this student. They came to class for the first part of the semester and did really well. Lots of A+ work. Then they stopped coming a few months ago – I think maybe they were sick or something? I’m not really sure. Anyway, Guidance wrote to say that they’re coming back just in time for the summative. If they pass the summative, what mark should I give them?

Answer: Just ignore the parts where they didn’t come and, assuming they’ve done work for all the major curriculum expectations, give a mark based on what they did.

Question: So they don’t lose any points for not coming?

Answer: Nope, not if they’ve demonstrated their abilities.

Question: I have another student who emailed me that they were tired, so they skipped the summative and went home. Do I have to let them make up what they missed?

Answer: Yes.

Question: But their absence isn’t excused.

Answer: Exactly why is that a problem?

Question: A student told me they didn’t feel like reading Animal Farm, and they want to write their essay on Twilight instead. I haven’t read Twilight, and it doesn’t seem to be about the themes we discussed in class.

Answer: Wow! Are you complaining about a student who wants to read a novel? What sort of teacher are you? Of course they can substitute a random mediocre novel you haven’t read for the one you taught. And you should probably get a start on that book tonight – and maybe make time for the movie on the weekend, just so you’re well-versed on its world-building.

Question: I have a student who really loves the book series they discovered in grade 3. In fact, they love the series so much that they refuse to read anything else. If the lowest description for passing is “Limited” does reading this count as passing in grade 12?

Answer: Have you been paying attention? The curriculum doesn’t say how limited “limited” is. If they can read, they pass. Any reasonable grade 3 student should immediately be awarded a grade 12 credit.

Question: I have a student who attended class two times this semester. Can I give them a zero?

Answer: A zero?! After you’ve seen them? What are you thinking? They made it to class twice! Give that child at least a 30!

Question: I have a class that has done multiple major projects and essays. I already have all the evidence I need to evaluate their learning and I don’t plan to give a formal exam because it doesn’t make sense with the course content. Must I require them to attend during the exam day?

Answer: Ah… trying to slack off, I see. Wiggle out of exams, huh? We’re on to you! You must REQUIRE students to attend. And you must have something for them to do on that day that will help them improve their final mark.

Question: Hmmm… ok. I’ve made an exam because you told me I have to. Now  have one student who failed the final exam and another who skipped it. Can I…

Answer: Stop right there! Missing or failing the final can’t hurt their overall grade. What kind of monster are you that would let one day harm a child?

Question: Can you give me a concise explanation of what constitutes a passing grade for any class?

Answer: Have you been paying any attention at all?

N.B. Most of this is not true. Most of it.