Saturday, September 17, 2016
My Oter Car Is Pnis
This year one of my five schools is in an achievement zone (yay), which is referred to as an AZ school because, as I've said before, educators are addicted to acronyms. (As a side bar, I've noticed that this country has a habit of calling unpleasant things by misleading, more pleasant sounding names, e.g. The Clean Air Act, which one would think is a mandate to clean up air pollution, but it turned out to be a bill designed to allow companies to continue polluting the environment Or the Patriot act, which was anything but patriotic because, in the name of fighting terrorism, it allowed the government to perform illegal wire taps and search business records.) So it's no surprise that the AZ is the part of the county with the lowest performing schools. It's unclear what, if anything, they're achieving, unless you count high teacher turnover as a positive outcome. As I've said many times before, schools can not be expected to fix what is wrong with the community at large. If we don't address the larger issues like poverty, unwanted and too many teenage pregnancies, drugs and crime, then schools will only be a band-aid applied to a gaping wound
The schools in the AZ community wisely decided to extend the school day because elementary students are so good at staying on task for 8 hours a day. By the time the last class comes they are either in a super- charged caffeinated state or comatose, sort of like having Donald Trump and Ben Carson together in one room. The longer and more productive fun-filled days allow the schools to have a professional development day one Friday a month while the students are at home trying to recover. (I have a suspicion that the parents are not very happy to have their kids home one more day a month.) Not surprisingly no one stopped to take into account that if you are a specialist, one third or more of your curriculum is not going to being taught on those classless that fall on Friday., especially when you factor in the award assemblies that many schools hold on one Friday a month.
I attended my first professional development today. Luckily it was just music teachers because other schools frequently make the specialists attend professional development that has no earthly relevance to our subject area, but does allow some of the younger teachers to sit in the back and play on facebook or pay their bills. Most of the teachers in the AZ group are young and eager to do a good job, but I bet that in 3 years none of them will still be teaching. One teacher said that 7 teachers quit last week. I told her that 8 quit at the beginning of the year last year so that's a positive trend.
Back to the meeting. It's always nice to feel the shared pain. Everyone had war stories. We traded funny student names. I won again this year: Antonin Dvorjak Carter III (and his name is pronounced exactly the way you would pronounce the composer's name, minus the Carter. I'm guessing the familial lineage is probably a bit faulty at best.) But that name still doesn't come close to this beauty: NVMeMzBerthaMae Jones. When our coordinator walked in we'd return to one of our assignments, which was to share student work I don't make my students do much writing. I'm too busy trying to make music. But sometimes I have them write a reflection when I send them to time out. Here's what I go t from a third grader. If you can decipher it, then I think it's possibly a love note to me.
The art teacher, who I share the room with, said I should make it a bumper sticker. I thought that was a great idea, but I'd add to it: My oter car is pnis.
*translation" You are a vagina. I don't care.
Friday, September 2, 2016
Hickety Tickety Bumble Bee
I am welcoming myself back to my 87th year of teaching. Summer vacation came to a screeching halt the second day of August. I don't know why we start in August. It's summer, damn it! At least half of the population in my part of the county doesn't show up until after Labor Day because it's summer, damn it! And wisely, the county has a 10 day count so that it can play fruit basket turnover and move teachers from school to school because, God forbid, there might be classes with less than a zillion children in a room. So after Labor Day, which is THE END OF SUMMER VACATION, DAMN IT!® the numbers go up and there are now a zillion children in a class. Yay.
But I do like the first week of school, or honeymoon season. The kids are in sussing out mode and they're not going to misbehave because it isn't safe yet. So I get to play lots of fun getting to know you activities without having to stop children from saying, "You nasty" or "Stop breathing on me" to each other. Pure bliss.
But kindergarten--that's a different story. They don't know how to suss out the situation. They're in a state of perpetual confusion. I'm positive that if you took an MRI of a kindergarten brain it would look like a ball of yarn that the cat got into. I greet them at the door and say, "Follow me in." Half way into the room I look back and they're still standing at the door staring at me. I go back and say, "Let's play follow the leader. I'm the leader. Follow me into the room." They stare at me, blink a few times and finally the line leader, whom I assumed was crowned line leader because he could lead the line out of troubled waters, realizes his call to duty has come, and finally follows me in. Half way into the room I turn and the line leader is behind me, but the other children are walking around aimlessly looking for their mother ship. I remind them to follow the leader, so they all return back to where the line is, but now they're not in the same order as when they came in so they cry.
10 minutes later line order is restored and we make a standing circle. I say, "Sit down where your feet are, please." What they heard me say was, "Flop onto your belly like a baby seal or do a nose dive onto the carpet" I stand them up and show them how to sit down. "Excuse me.," one pipes up. "I have to use it." I have to use it is the odd way these kids ask to use the bathroom. I explain the rules about specials and the bathroom. And besides, right before this class I saw this bunch lined up outside the restroom. Apparently they were as confused about the what the restroom is for as they are about follow the leader. When tears appear, I allow the child to go to the restroom. But of course, that sent a signal to the other children that right now they all had to use it. I said to them, "If you go now, you won't be able to play my fun games today." That seemed to satisfy their restroom need until 15 minutes later when a child who hadn't asked to go to the bathroom stood up and peed onto the floor. Sigh.
The next game we played after follow the leader and pee on the floor, was Hickety Tickety Bumble Bee. Will you say your name for me? The child says his/her name and the class echoes. I model for the students. The first few say their names and all is going well until one girl answers, "Bzzzz." I said, "What's your name? "Bzzzz," she says again. I asked, "What does your mother call you/?" No answer. "What does your teacher call you?" No answer. I move on. Two students later I get another "Bzzzz." I skip over her. A few more get the idea that Bzzz is a lovely name and they try it on for size. I skip over them. One bzzzzzer cries because she didn't get to tell me her name. I said, "Then perhaps you should say your name and not tell me it's Bzzz. I decide to give her another chance. The class sings Hickety Tickety Bumble Bee. Will you say your name for me. We wait And wait. No answer. I say, "I'm giving you another chance to tell me your name. What is it?" I never did get a response. A few more kids actually say their name until one of them tells me his first name, three middle names and last name, which of course, is hyphenated. I ask him to just tell me his first name. He repeats the whole deal again. I ask him again for just his FIRST name. I get the whole string of names again and decide to cut my losses and move on. Two more correct answer until I get to one kid who says, "Bee." I said, "Bee is your name?" He shakes his head no. I said what's your name. Again he says, "Bee." "I said, "What does your teacher call you? " He said, "Sir." I was about to laugh, but I noticed that on my student roster, sure enough, there was a kid named Syr. Thank goodness he was the last one in the circle because at this point the only name I wanted to call each one of them is not very nice.
The next game we played goes like this: Apples, peaches plears and plums. Tell me the month your birthday comes. First child says, "I don't know." I ask, "When is your birthday?" "He says, "March." I said, Well, that's the month your birthday comes." "Oh, " he says and then stares at me. The next child says, "Wednesday." I said, "Is Wednesday a month or a day of the week?" Answer, "Wednesday." " Is your birthday this Wednesday?" I ask. She says, "Wednesday." I move on. Another child says he doesn't know. I ask when he celebrates his birthday. He cries. I ask why he's crying. He doesn't know. Out of 28 students, 21 stared, 3 cried, and four answered an actual month, even though they all told me the same month, so I can't swear that it's really the month they were born, or they just liked the way Febary sounds.
I decide to ask them their favorite color. Surely they can give me a reasonable answer.. I ask them to think of ONE favorite color. ONE, not two three, four, a zillion. . I ask them to touch their noses when they have ONE answer. He are a couple of answers I got: Rainbow. Light, light pink. I don't know. Green, Orange, Blue ... I stop the child. I say, "One color, please." She says, "Green, orange, blue."
I should've let them all go to the bathroom because they weren't missing any fun games.
I should've let them all go to the bathroom because they weren't missing any fun games.
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Testing First Graders in Music. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
I am in the processing of administering post-test SLOs ( motto: Education. We generate new acronyms for the same old ideas. SLO stands for student learning objectives) to first graders. The test has two parts and takes 2 weeks to administer. This means that four weeks of curriculum are taken up with testing. Factoring in field trips, assemblies, days when there is a .01% chance of snow within 500 miles, and the last two weeks of school because of field days, awards days and days when the teachers take the kids outside until specials and bring them to you smelling like wet sheep that had just rolled in their own poo and you have to spend half the class period getting them to stop bleating, means that if you teach each class only once a week, that can be a loss of 12 out of 36 lessons--a third of the curriculum!
So just because the core subjects are forced to administer high stakes testing round the clock, the specials classes need to share in this joy, too. Our fun test is given to the first graders because I don't know why. The first part of the test uses a scantron form and is in multiple guess format. The second part is an oral and written assessment that has to be administered one on one. When it comes to the one on one part, no one thought about what to do with students who are not taking the test. First graders can entertain themselves for about 3 minutes before finding ways to amuse each other, i.e. throwing crayons, eating erasers, playing chase the dust motes or shrieking.
It's hard to decide which part is the most fun. Some first graders have mastered the fine art of bubbling in answers. (This is even more fun in the beginning of the year when these little guys have no idea what bubbling in an answer means, nor do they have the fine motor skills to accomplish this. I was told to bubble in the answers for them, which I can't believe is not a testing violation.) I use this activity to find out who has OCD--those are the kids that color in the circle, erase the microscopic stray lines, color in some more, erase some more, and then cry when they have made a hole in the answer sheet or they can still see remnants of that microscopic stray lines that are only visible with an electron microscope. And then you get the kids that have just transferred in from a galaxy far ,far away, and are clueless about what you do with a bubble sheet, unless you consider making pretty patterns a viable use. I got two aliens this week. One of them thought that he should only use question 1 to record all his answers, so he colored in A, for question 1, B for question 2 and then on the 3rd question he thought the answers was A and he tried to color in the A bubble again. After amusing myself by watching him try to puzzle out what to do, I decided to stop torturing him and explained, for the third time, how bubble sheets work. . The other student decided not to record his answers on the bubble portion and wrote them on the top of the paper, even after I pointed to the letters on the bubble sheet and showed him what to do Somewhere on Mars a mother is worrying about her missing child.
Part One's Fun
The first question asks the student to identify the rhythm pattern that was clapped. It's pretty easy because there's a rest in the example and if the student has any visual ability, he can see that I touch my shoulders on the rest. Some teachers hold both hands out to indicate a rest and I've seen a few people say, "shh," which I think isn't that great an idea because a rest is supposed to indicate a silence and "shhhh" isn't silent. .At any rate, there's a visual cue.
The second question asks the student to identify which pattern was sung. This requires the student be able to read simple solfege patterns on the staff.. That means I am forced to teach reading notes on the staff, something which I t would rather do in second grade because the research shows that younger children should be aurally identifying and decoding music patterns--in other words, developing their musical ear The note reading, which John Feierabend calls, "paper training" is more developmentally appropriate to start in second grade so I compromise and start teaching note reading a week before the test because that's as close to second grade as I can get. Anyone can be taught to read music but f musicality hasn't been developed, the reading part is useless. I remember when many high school students would tell me they studied piano for elebenty thousand years and I would expect to hear the great great great grandchild of Liszt but instead would get a sonatina that was played by Pinocchio.
When I do start note reading on the staff, I use five lines. The test uses a two line staff; I redraw it and make it a five line staff. . Many Kodaly teachers use a laborious process of going from a two line, then a three line staff and I assume somewhere after post doctorate work, the five line staff is introduced. I can find no research anywhere that shows that reading a two and then three line staff is necessary. We aren't taught to read half a word in first grade and then the second half in third grade. Many students find it confusing, as do I, to go from 2, 3 and the 5 lines. And if you have any students who study an instrument, then they really are confused (Those who struggle with note reading, I am willing to bet, have some form of dysgraphia. or learning disability and probably wouldn't do any better with fewer lines on the staff. To many students mapping the concept of up and down or higher and lower is difficult to not only aurally identify, but visually as well. I haven't done any scientific research, so this is anecdotal evidence, but every time I have a student who struggles reading notes on the staff, I ask the teacher about his reading skills and 11 out of 10 times, that student struggles with reading as well as other types of symbolic decoding).
After I sing so la mi mi, I ask the student to point to the example that I sang. When the student has pointed to his answer , I ask him to check his response and point to each note as I sing it. Sometimes if the student has pointed to the wrong answer, he will correct it. Sometimes he will stick to his guns. Then I ask follow-up questions: Can the student aurally identify if the pitches are going up (higher) or down (lower)? Can the student show me which pitches on the staff represent upward or downward movement? Can the student show me repeated (same) notes?
I ask the students several follow-up questions because I want to know how much the student understands about staff reading. Getting the answer wrong or right doesn't tell me much . For example, today a student pointed to the correct answer the first time I sang it. I asked her to point to the notes that were the same or repeated. She pointed to the first two notes, which are not the same. One is on the line of the staff and one is on a space. One is higher than the other one. I asked her if the second note was higher or lower than the first one. She couldn't tell me. Then I asked her if the last two notes, which are the same pitches, were the same . She said no. I asked her if they were repeated notes. " No," she said, Clearly she didn't understand same and different when it came to repeated notes or notes on different lines and spaces. It was a student who had just enrolled a few days ago---yeah--two weeks left until the end of the year and we're still getting transfers. I gave her credit for the right answer, even though I'm not at all convinced she knew what she was doing. I'm not sure what she was confused about, but I do know that I need to work with her a little more. And I also know that I would not have known any of this if I had given the test without interviewing the students.
Part whoopdee doo two
This part of the test requires the students to write a four beat pattern using a combination of quarters, eighths and quarter rests and then echo me as I sing so la mi mi, which is now really starting to grate on my nerves.
After the students write their four beat masterpiece they have to say it using rhythm syllables such as ta and ta ti as well as clap it, and I grade them based on a rubric that I believe was possibly translated from Aramaic to English and then run through Google translate. It goes something like this: If the student can clap and say the rhythm and keep a consistent tempo while standing on one leg and swatting flies, then he gets a perfect score of 10. If the student makes one mistake and finishes his opus before lunch that's a 7. If the student writes hieroglyphics or claps something completely different from what he wrote and you can not detect a steady beat at any time,, or speaks in tongues but maintains a steady beat, that's a 3. If the student stares at you and doesn't move, that's a 0.
That is why multiple guess tests and data give an incomplete picture. The SLOs are just SLAs (S**hitty Little Assessments) That plus the fact that we are also asked to assess whether a student can echo sing correctly using head tone. Ok, I don't mind assessing that, but some students for reasons both physical and/or developmental can't do that. But why should the teacher be accountable for that assessment? I have a kid who has some congenital larynx malformation and can not use his head tone. His score from pre to post did not improve, yet conceivably, if the county decided to tie teacher compensation to test results, that would count against me. That just .....
S**tty Little Objectionable tests.
So just because the core subjects are forced to administer high stakes testing round the clock, the specials classes need to share in this joy, too. Our fun test is given to the first graders because I don't know why. The first part of the test uses a scantron form and is in multiple guess format. The second part is an oral and written assessment that has to be administered one on one. When it comes to the one on one part, no one thought about what to do with students who are not taking the test. First graders can entertain themselves for about 3 minutes before finding ways to amuse each other, i.e. throwing crayons, eating erasers, playing chase the dust motes or shrieking.
It's hard to decide which part is the most fun. Some first graders have mastered the fine art of bubbling in answers. (This is even more fun in the beginning of the year when these little guys have no idea what bubbling in an answer means, nor do they have the fine motor skills to accomplish this. I was told to bubble in the answers for them, which I can't believe is not a testing violation.) I use this activity to find out who has OCD--those are the kids that color in the circle, erase the microscopic stray lines, color in some more, erase some more, and then cry when they have made a hole in the answer sheet or they can still see remnants of that microscopic stray lines that are only visible with an electron microscope. And then you get the kids that have just transferred in from a galaxy far ,far away, and are clueless about what you do with a bubble sheet, unless you consider making pretty patterns a viable use. I got two aliens this week. One of them thought that he should only use question 1 to record all his answers, so he colored in A, for question 1, B for question 2 and then on the 3rd question he thought the answers was A and he tried to color in the A bubble again. After amusing myself by watching him try to puzzle out what to do, I decided to stop torturing him and explained, for the third time, how bubble sheets work. . The other student decided not to record his answers on the bubble portion and wrote them on the top of the paper, even after I pointed to the letters on the bubble sheet and showed him what to do Somewhere on Mars a mother is worrying about her missing child.
Part One's Fun
The first question asks the student to identify the rhythm pattern that was clapped. It's pretty easy because there's a rest in the example and if the student has any visual ability, he can see that I touch my shoulders on the rest. Some teachers hold both hands out to indicate a rest and I've seen a few people say, "shh," which I think isn't that great an idea because a rest is supposed to indicate a silence and "shhhh" isn't silent. .At any rate, there's a visual cue.
The second question asks the student to identify which pattern was sung. This requires the student be able to read simple solfege patterns on the staff.. That means I am forced to teach reading notes on the staff, something which I t would rather do in second grade because the research shows that younger children should be aurally identifying and decoding music patterns--in other words, developing their musical ear The note reading, which John Feierabend calls, "paper training" is more developmentally appropriate to start in second grade so I compromise and start teaching note reading a week before the test because that's as close to second grade as I can get. Anyone can be taught to read music but f musicality hasn't been developed, the reading part is useless. I remember when many high school students would tell me they studied piano for elebenty thousand years and I would expect to hear the great great great grandchild of Liszt but instead would get a sonatina that was played by Pinocchio.
When I do start note reading on the staff, I use five lines. The test uses a two line staff; I redraw it and make it a five line staff. . Many Kodaly teachers use a laborious process of going from a two line, then a three line staff and I assume somewhere after post doctorate work, the five line staff is introduced. I can find no research anywhere that shows that reading a two and then three line staff is necessary. We aren't taught to read half a word in first grade and then the second half in third grade. Many students find it confusing, as do I, to go from 2, 3 and the 5 lines. And if you have any students who study an instrument, then they really are confused (Those who struggle with note reading, I am willing to bet, have some form of dysgraphia. or learning disability and probably wouldn't do any better with fewer lines on the staff. To many students mapping the concept of up and down or higher and lower is difficult to not only aurally identify, but visually as well. I haven't done any scientific research, so this is anecdotal evidence, but every time I have a student who struggles reading notes on the staff, I ask the teacher about his reading skills and 11 out of 10 times, that student struggles with reading as well as other types of symbolic decoding).
After I sing so la mi mi, I ask the student to point to the example that I sang. When the student has pointed to his answer , I ask him to check his response and point to each note as I sing it. Sometimes if the student has pointed to the wrong answer, he will correct it. Sometimes he will stick to his guns. Then I ask follow-up questions: Can the student aurally identify if the pitches are going up (higher) or down (lower)? Can the student show me which pitches on the staff represent upward or downward movement? Can the student show me repeated (same) notes?
I ask the students several follow-up questions because I want to know how much the student understands about staff reading. Getting the answer wrong or right doesn't tell me much . For example, today a student pointed to the correct answer the first time I sang it. I asked her to point to the notes that were the same or repeated. She pointed to the first two notes, which are not the same. One is on the line of the staff and one is on a space. One is higher than the other one. I asked her if the second note was higher or lower than the first one. She couldn't tell me. Then I asked her if the last two notes, which are the same pitches, were the same . She said no. I asked her if they were repeated notes. " No," she said, Clearly she didn't understand same and different when it came to repeated notes or notes on different lines and spaces. It was a student who had just enrolled a few days ago---yeah--two weeks left until the end of the year and we're still getting transfers. I gave her credit for the right answer, even though I'm not at all convinced she knew what she was doing. I'm not sure what she was confused about, but I do know that I need to work with her a little more. And I also know that I would not have known any of this if I had given the test without interviewing the students.
Part whoopdee doo two
This part of the test requires the students to write a four beat pattern using a combination of quarters, eighths and quarter rests and then echo me as I sing so la mi mi, which is now really starting to grate on my nerves.
After the students write their four beat masterpiece they have to say it using rhythm syllables such as ta and ta ti as well as clap it, and I grade them based on a rubric that I believe was possibly translated from Aramaic to English and then run through Google translate. It goes something like this: If the student can clap and say the rhythm and keep a consistent tempo while standing on one leg and swatting flies, then he gets a perfect score of 10. If the student makes one mistake and finishes his opus before lunch that's a 7. If the student writes hieroglyphics or claps something completely different from what he wrote and you can not detect a steady beat at any time,, or speaks in tongues but maintains a steady beat, that's a 3. If the student stares at you and doesn't move, that's a 0.
That is why multiple guess tests and data give an incomplete picture. The SLOs are just SLAs (S**hitty Little Assessments) That plus the fact that we are also asked to assess whether a student can echo sing correctly using head tone. Ok, I don't mind assessing that, but some students for reasons both physical and/or developmental can't do that. But why should the teacher be accountable for that assessment? I have a kid who has some congenital larynx malformation and can not use his head tone. His score from pre to post did not improve, yet conceivably, if the county decided to tie teacher compensation to test results, that would count against me. That just .....
S**tty Little Objectionable tests.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Me Want Spring Break NOW!
Lisa: This post's for you.
The majority of my career was spent at the secondary and college level. Most of my students were on a pretty even keel for the majority of the year. Sometimes I would notice senioritis when graduation was approaching, but for the most parts my students' behaviors remained consistent. At the elementary level, it's quite different. Around March the kids start to behave like wolves with PTSD.
At first I thought that perhaps the children had been left out in the sun and baked too long. Then I thought that maybe their brains were infected by ninja larvae warriors. Teachers would ascribe the behavior changes to full moons, but they're only full for a day, so that didn't seem like the correct explanation. Other teachers said the kids needed a break, but there are several breaks for them after the winter one and they return to school squirrelier and squirrelier each time.
Finally I think I know the reason: The kids have sussed out the situation and have learned that they are the ones in control. Yesterday a fourth grade teacher told me that one of her students punched another student square in the face. leaving a crater large enough to hold a coffee cup. The AP said she wasn't going to suspend anyone right now because that all important Critical Multiple Guess Test that measures how good your test taking skills are, is coming up in April. These are the students that wouldn't pass the test anyway.,and their presence in the classroom prevents other students from learning. Seems like suspension would be a less worse option. On the days that certain crazy bugs are absent from a class, it's like teaching in Nirvana. You don't have to spend 98% of the class time keeping that child from calling out, thumping on the floor, jumping off chairs, or any other behavior that sucks the life force out of the room.
Schools don't like their suspension rates to look bad so they allow these little terrorists to commandeer their classes,. So if suspension isn't going to be an option, then there should be an opportunity room or holding pen or whatever you want to call it, where the students sit in little desks with blinders on each side, doing the work they are keeping the other students from doing. Apparently you have to have a certified teacher to monitor them, and I'm not sure why because substitute teachers are not certified teachers , so instead of hiring an extra level of ridiculously overpaid administrators at the county level whose only function, as best as I can discern, is to generate new acronyms, why not hire a few certified personnel to do this job? The kids in my community don't care if they get suspended. Most of their parents don't seem to care either, unless it's an inconvenience for them. One day one of my second graders came up to me while I was on cafeteria sentry patrol to ask me if I had missed seeing him the other day. I said I did and asked why he was out. He said, "I had to take care of my baby brother." I asked how old his baby brother was. He said, "He was just borned (sic) a few months ago." I asked where his parents were. He said, "My mother went in the car and I think my father is at work. These are the kinds of parents that wouldn't notice whether their child was suspended or was playing in traffic.
The other thing I noticed about the kids at this time of year is that they have now formed mini gangs that excel in varying levels of hating each other. Doing activities is like an exercise in logic; Student A can only sit next to Student B, but Student B is only allowed to sit near Student A if Student C is in the middle, except on alternate days of the week. But if Student A is absent, then student B has to sit with Student D unless Student D consumed food that was within 500 miles of a peanut. No one can partner up without this refrain, "But my teacher said I can't be by him." Here's what I say, "Fine, then he will be your partner the rest of the year, including lunch, and then I will come into the cafeteria and sit with you two.to make sure you're still partners. Word got out that I will actually do this, so they don't mess with me on that one.
Back to post- January behavior disorders Ooooh PJBD. I can generate acronyms, too! Maybe I can move into an administrative position at the county level now.
On Tuesdays I have a class of the future criminally insane. One of them is Kenny from South Park's doppelganger, except that he is alive at the end of every class, although he seems to be working on changing that. . He was in a self-contained BD class up north, but for some reason at our school he is free to roam around screaming and cursing and jumping off of furniture, especially if it's really high off the floor. Yesterday he called me a "son of a bitch," in front of the class. I so wanted to correct him and say "daughter," but I ignored him. I rang the buzzer. No one came. When he saw that no one was coming to get him, he started playing billy goat gruff and jumped from chair to chair. I saw him today in the hallway the next day Apparently his IEP allows him to call teachers bitches and do mountain goat imitations. Either that or has reached the maximum number of suspensions for a child with an IEP, which I think is 179, one less than the total number of instructional days.
Aside from Kenny and his three cohorts that follow him around like he's Jim Jones, there are about 7 really, really mean girls and they don't seem too fond of me. At least, that's what I surmised when one of them said, "I hate you." They argue all day long about important topics such as who said what about whom. I told them last week to solve their problems before class, so this week they came into the room and solved it over a 10 minute period while I sat with my arms folded and waited. They said, "But you told us to not bring our issues into the classroom and we were trying to solve them and now we're mad at you because you told us to not do that." I breathed slowly and thought about what I could say that would make any sense I mean, they had just come from lunch and recess. Couldn't they have solved it then? . I softly said to the rest of the class, "If you want to join me fine. If not, that's fine, too." I started my activity and the 5 normal ones joined me. But gradually the rest of the class joined and I was thinking that finally things were going well, but then crazy Kenny started doing his lion tamer routine and the rest of the class couldn't focus any more.
When I got home I cried for about an hour. I told my husband I wanted to quit. I take it personally when a class doesn't go well. I will beat myself up until I figure out what things I could have done differently. If I were younger, I wonder if I would quit and looked for a job as a mime or anything where I wouldn't have to talk or worry about anyone liking me. But I hate feeling like a failure, so I I decided to do some critical self-examination. A little self-flagellation helps the medicine go down.... in the most delightful way. Sorry. Sometimes being a music teacher means that you have to get that little bit of song out of your head lest it become an ear worm.
On Wednesdays I have my present day criminally insane children. I don't have any Kennys, but these kids were clearly created on a Monday morning after a weekend of partying with Class I drugs.*. What I had decided was that I was going to make a deal with them. If they got through my lesson without their usual hi-jinks (stuff like screaming at each other, throwing things, forcing foreign objects into their neighbor's body parts, laughing at words that have a similar phoneme to a curse word and/or sexual act like the word vibraslap), then the next week I would take them outside for the whole class period and do some playground games. The previous week I noticed that one of the ring leaders was actually doing a fairly decent job playing xylophone ( he was not making dents in the instruments; my bar is admittedly fairly low) . I made a huge deal about it. I took him up to the other music teacher and bragged about him. This week when he came to class, he had a different attitude--the belligerent what did I dog gesture and whine routine had been replaced with a teacher pleaser. All I had to do was look at him and he knew to stop that behavior. It served as a reminder that if I can find just one complementary thing to say, it really means a lot. It says that there's an adult who cares about them. Sometimes I forget to do this because I am so frustrated, so maybe the previous night's crying jag helped me get back on track.
Can't do that with the mean girls, though .They don't fall for flattery. I'm still thinking about how to deal with them. But this class is mostly boys so I will become the queen of compliments. . I was feeling pretty good after class, but wouldn't you know,, as we were leaving two lunkheads sneaked into the music storage closet and stole some tennis balls. I wouldn't have known except one of the balls fell out of a boy's pocket. Then that boy pointed at the other boy and said he had stolen some and two more balls go bouncing down the hallway The first boy, being as bad a liar as he is a thief, said he brought them to class with him. I tend to doubt it because his pants are rather tight and he wears them around his nether region and there's not even enough room for an inchworm, let alone a tennis ball.. It was kind of funny because they both ratted each other out while denying culpability, even as the tennis balls went bouncing by. . Oh,, and of course, to make it even a more special day, one of the boys made the international sign for oral sex. His teacher said to write it up, but I really wrestled with how to describe it. I ended up writing, "He made a V sign with his fingers and thrust his tongue in and out between them."
Spring break. Spring break. Spring break. Spring break. Spring break. Spring break. Spring break.
SCHEDULE 1 (CLASS I) DRUGS are illegal because they have high abuse potential, no medical use, and severe safety concerns; for example, narcotics such as Heroin, LSD, and cocaine. Marijuana is also included as a Class 1 drug despite it being legal in some states and it being used as a medicinal drug in some states.
The majority of my career was spent at the secondary and college level. Most of my students were on a pretty even keel for the majority of the year. Sometimes I would notice senioritis when graduation was approaching, but for the most parts my students' behaviors remained consistent. At the elementary level, it's quite different. Around March the kids start to behave like wolves with PTSD.
At first I thought that perhaps the children had been left out in the sun and baked too long. Then I thought that maybe their brains were infected by ninja larvae warriors. Teachers would ascribe the behavior changes to full moons, but they're only full for a day, so that didn't seem like the correct explanation. Other teachers said the kids needed a break, but there are several breaks for them after the winter one and they return to school squirrelier and squirrelier each time.
Finally I think I know the reason: The kids have sussed out the situation and have learned that they are the ones in control. Yesterday a fourth grade teacher told me that one of her students punched another student square in the face. leaving a crater large enough to hold a coffee cup. The AP said she wasn't going to suspend anyone right now because that all important Critical Multiple Guess Test that measures how good your test taking skills are, is coming up in April. These are the students that wouldn't pass the test anyway.,and their presence in the classroom prevents other students from learning. Seems like suspension would be a less worse option. On the days that certain crazy bugs are absent from a class, it's like teaching in Nirvana. You don't have to spend 98% of the class time keeping that child from calling out, thumping on the floor, jumping off chairs, or any other behavior that sucks the life force out of the room.
Schools don't like their suspension rates to look bad so they allow these little terrorists to commandeer their classes,. So if suspension isn't going to be an option, then there should be an opportunity room or holding pen or whatever you want to call it, where the students sit in little desks with blinders on each side, doing the work they are keeping the other students from doing. Apparently you have to have a certified teacher to monitor them, and I'm not sure why because substitute teachers are not certified teachers , so instead of hiring an extra level of ridiculously overpaid administrators at the county level whose only function, as best as I can discern, is to generate new acronyms, why not hire a few certified personnel to do this job? The kids in my community don't care if they get suspended. Most of their parents don't seem to care either, unless it's an inconvenience for them. One day one of my second graders came up to me while I was on cafeteria sentry patrol to ask me if I had missed seeing him the other day. I said I did and asked why he was out. He said, "I had to take care of my baby brother." I asked how old his baby brother was. He said, "He was just borned (sic) a few months ago." I asked where his parents were. He said, "My mother went in the car and I think my father is at work. These are the kinds of parents that wouldn't notice whether their child was suspended or was playing in traffic.
The other thing I noticed about the kids at this time of year is that they have now formed mini gangs that excel in varying levels of hating each other. Doing activities is like an exercise in logic; Student A can only sit next to Student B, but Student B is only allowed to sit near Student A if Student C is in the middle, except on alternate days of the week. But if Student A is absent, then student B has to sit with Student D unless Student D consumed food that was within 500 miles of a peanut. No one can partner up without this refrain, "But my teacher said I can't be by him." Here's what I say, "Fine, then he will be your partner the rest of the year, including lunch, and then I will come into the cafeteria and sit with you two.to make sure you're still partners. Word got out that I will actually do this, so they don't mess with me on that one.
Back to post- January behavior disorders Ooooh PJBD. I can generate acronyms, too! Maybe I can move into an administrative position at the county level now.
On Tuesdays I have a class of the future criminally insane. One of them is Kenny from South Park's doppelganger, except that he is alive at the end of every class, although he seems to be working on changing that. . He was in a self-contained BD class up north, but for some reason at our school he is free to roam around screaming and cursing and jumping off of furniture, especially if it's really high off the floor. Yesterday he called me a "son of a bitch," in front of the class. I so wanted to correct him and say "daughter," but I ignored him. I rang the buzzer. No one came. When he saw that no one was coming to get him, he started playing billy goat gruff and jumped from chair to chair. I saw him today in the hallway the next day Apparently his IEP allows him to call teachers bitches and do mountain goat imitations. Either that or has reached the maximum number of suspensions for a child with an IEP, which I think is 179, one less than the total number of instructional days.
Aside from Kenny and his three cohorts that follow him around like he's Jim Jones, there are about 7 really, really mean girls and they don't seem too fond of me. At least, that's what I surmised when one of them said, "I hate you." They argue all day long about important topics such as who said what about whom. I told them last week to solve their problems before class, so this week they came into the room and solved it over a 10 minute period while I sat with my arms folded and waited. They said, "But you told us to not bring our issues into the classroom and we were trying to solve them and now we're mad at you because you told us to not do that." I breathed slowly and thought about what I could say that would make any sense I mean, they had just come from lunch and recess. Couldn't they have solved it then? . I softly said to the rest of the class, "If you want to join me fine. If not, that's fine, too." I started my activity and the 5 normal ones joined me. But gradually the rest of the class joined and I was thinking that finally things were going well, but then crazy Kenny started doing his lion tamer routine and the rest of the class couldn't focus any more.
When I got home I cried for about an hour. I told my husband I wanted to quit. I take it personally when a class doesn't go well. I will beat myself up until I figure out what things I could have done differently. If I were younger, I wonder if I would quit and looked for a job as a mime or anything where I wouldn't have to talk or worry about anyone liking me. But I hate feeling like a failure, so I I decided to do some critical self-examination. A little self-flagellation helps the medicine go down.... in the most delightful way. Sorry. Sometimes being a music teacher means that you have to get that little bit of song out of your head lest it become an ear worm.
On Wednesdays I have my present day criminally insane children. I don't have any Kennys, but these kids were clearly created on a Monday morning after a weekend of partying with Class I drugs.*. What I had decided was that I was going to make a deal with them. If they got through my lesson without their usual hi-jinks (stuff like screaming at each other, throwing things, forcing foreign objects into their neighbor's body parts, laughing at words that have a similar phoneme to a curse word and/or sexual act like the word vibraslap), then the next week I would take them outside for the whole class period and do some playground games. The previous week I noticed that one of the ring leaders was actually doing a fairly decent job playing xylophone ( he was not making dents in the instruments; my bar is admittedly fairly low) . I made a huge deal about it. I took him up to the other music teacher and bragged about him. This week when he came to class, he had a different attitude--the belligerent what did I dog gesture and whine routine had been replaced with a teacher pleaser. All I had to do was look at him and he knew to stop that behavior. It served as a reminder that if I can find just one complementary thing to say, it really means a lot. It says that there's an adult who cares about them. Sometimes I forget to do this because I am so frustrated, so maybe the previous night's crying jag helped me get back on track.
Can't do that with the mean girls, though .They don't fall for flattery. I'm still thinking about how to deal with them. But this class is mostly boys so I will become the queen of compliments. . I was feeling pretty good after class, but wouldn't you know,, as we were leaving two lunkheads sneaked into the music storage closet and stole some tennis balls. I wouldn't have known except one of the balls fell out of a boy's pocket. Then that boy pointed at the other boy and said he had stolen some and two more balls go bouncing down the hallway The first boy, being as bad a liar as he is a thief, said he brought them to class with him. I tend to doubt it because his pants are rather tight and he wears them around his nether region and there's not even enough room for an inchworm, let alone a tennis ball.. It was kind of funny because they both ratted each other out while denying culpability, even as the tennis balls went bouncing by. . Oh,, and of course, to make it even a more special day, one of the boys made the international sign for oral sex. His teacher said to write it up, but I really wrestled with how to describe it. I ended up writing, "He made a V sign with his fingers and thrust his tongue in and out between them."
Spring break. Spring break. Spring break. Spring break. Spring break. Spring break. Spring break.
SCHEDULE 1 (CLASS I) DRUGS are illegal because they have high abuse potential, no medical use, and severe safety concerns; for example, narcotics such as Heroin, LSD, and cocaine. Marijuana is also included as a Class 1 drug despite it being legal in some states and it being used as a medicinal drug in some states.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
My Student Who Mastered the Recorder
I am continuously amazed at the deep and profound knowledge about sexual acts that elementary children know about. Back in the dark ages, c. 1963, when I was in fifth grade (not sure if that year is correct, but it's in the ballpark. My math skills rival those of my 2nd graders). But anyway, in fifth grade we, the girls, were asked to go to a special assembly to see a movie with our mothers. I can't swear it was a Disney film, but if not, it would've been the way Disney would've handled the topic. The topic was "THE PERIOD." I learned about what happens when you get YOUR PERIOD, which wouldn't be until five years later, when I was 14. Today the age of puberty has been pushed back a LOT. I have 2nd (SECOND!) graders who have started to menstruate and I've seen mustaches on boys in Kindergarten (double exclamation point)
I don't remember anything romantically sexual about the film; just the facts, ma'am about what happens during The Fenine Cycle. When I got back to the classroom, the boys were busy looking in the dictionaries to see what they could find about PERIODS. They were disappointed to find only definitions reflating to grammar or measurements of time. One boy asked aloud, "Why did the girls see a film about punctuation?"
Yesterday during my fifth grade clown college class, one of the boys who was sitting on the carpet turned around to face the girls, who were sitting on chairs. They kept giggling and I realized that this boy was not facing me. You'd think I'd have noticed him sooner, but my class is like whack-a-mole. I put out one brush fire and another pops up in its place. After class the girls came up to me to tell me that this boy was rubbing the recorder as if he were masturbating. Yup, they used that word to describe what he was doing. I asked them why they didn't tell me immediately and one girl said,"Because it was funny." Yeah, I guess it's funny if you're an adult in the Catskills listening to
\
Buddy Hackett
I try not to be curmudgeonly and yearn for the good old days. But yesterday I wanted to turn back the clocks to a time when children didn't know about adult sexual activities until they were at least pimply faced and were half-way through puberty. I am wondering, how does knowledge about sex affect the children's emotional well-being? Back in the Victorian ages, a mere ankle viewing would set males swooning. I don't want to go back that far, but if 9 year olds are exposed to oral sex, then what will it take to set them swooning? The bar is set kind of high.
It's difficult to teach children who are not children. I am no longer am able to read Puss and Boots to my kindergartners. I can not say booty or booties when referring to shoes. Ok, I can live with that. But I can't say vibraslap or vibrate without getting hysterical reactions. A few years ago I saw one boy turn around and make the international sign for oral sex with a woman. All this information without any emotional or social context can not be good. And just because yesterday was master your recorder day, when I walked into my room to get something, the AP was taking a deposition from a 4th grader and I overheard him say that another child was touching the penis of his classmate in the bathroom.
It is difficult to teach children who are so street savvy. Because they lack so many fundamental music skills and knowledge, it's a challenge to find literature that teaches the basics without being cute or sweet. I was doing a lesson from Artie Almeida's book called IMPROVISATION. There's an echo section to introduce each instrument, like, "Xylophones are in the zone, let's hear from metalophones" I allowed my fifth grade boys to modify the text and for awhile they did some fun things, but then sexual innuendos starting creeping in--something to do with big booties, which, I admit, does not rhythm with wood or glockenspiel, but somehow the boys decided that they had won poetic license to go completely into after dark HBO hours.
And that's why I'm home on a mental health day. Also, I think I woke up with a hangover.
I don't remember anything romantically sexual about the film; just the facts, ma'am about what happens during The Fenine Cycle. When I got back to the classroom, the boys were busy looking in the dictionaries to see what they could find about PERIODS. They were disappointed to find only definitions reflating to grammar or measurements of time. One boy asked aloud, "Why did the girls see a film about punctuation?"
Yesterday during my fifth grade clown college class, one of the boys who was sitting on the carpet turned around to face the girls, who were sitting on chairs. They kept giggling and I realized that this boy was not facing me. You'd think I'd have noticed him sooner, but my class is like whack-a-mole. I put out one brush fire and another pops up in its place. After class the girls came up to me to tell me that this boy was rubbing the recorder as if he were masturbating. Yup, they used that word to describe what he was doing. I asked them why they didn't tell me immediately and one girl said,"Because it was funny." Yeah, I guess it's funny if you're an adult in the Catskills listening to
\Buddy Hackett
I try not to be curmudgeonly and yearn for the good old days. But yesterday I wanted to turn back the clocks to a time when children didn't know about adult sexual activities until they were at least pimply faced and were half-way through puberty. I am wondering, how does knowledge about sex affect the children's emotional well-being? Back in the Victorian ages, a mere ankle viewing would set males swooning. I don't want to go back that far, but if 9 year olds are exposed to oral sex, then what will it take to set them swooning? The bar is set kind of high.
It's difficult to teach children who are not children. I am no longer am able to read Puss and Boots to my kindergartners. I can not say booty or booties when referring to shoes. Ok, I can live with that. But I can't say vibraslap or vibrate without getting hysterical reactions. A few years ago I saw one boy turn around and make the international sign for oral sex with a woman. All this information without any emotional or social context can not be good. And just because yesterday was master your recorder day, when I walked into my room to get something, the AP was taking a deposition from a 4th grader and I overheard him say that another child was touching the penis of his classmate in the bathroom.
It is difficult to teach children who are so street savvy. Because they lack so many fundamental music skills and knowledge, it's a challenge to find literature that teaches the basics without being cute or sweet. I was doing a lesson from Artie Almeida's book called IMPROVISATION. There's an echo section to introduce each instrument, like, "Xylophones are in the zone, let's hear from metalophones" I allowed my fifth grade boys to modify the text and for awhile they did some fun things, but then sexual innuendos starting creeping in--something to do with big booties, which, I admit, does not rhythm with wood or glockenspiel, but somehow the boys decided that they had won poetic license to go completely into after dark HBO hours.
And that's why I'm home on a mental health day. Also, I think I woke up with a hangover.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
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