All Conference Eve

Conference day isn't officially scheduled until tomorrow, but this afternoon I had a single student-led conference in order to accommodate a parent's conflict. Oooh, it was a good one! It had a little of everything-- obfuscation, disappointment, tears, scolding, recognition of personal strengths, pride in some tasks well-done, a promise and a plan for both improvement and continued success, and a hug at the end-- all in a little over 20 minutes.  Not bad for the first conference of the year. I wonder what tomorrow will be like.

Code Switching

I had the second session of my professional learning group on grammar today. Our assignment was to read the first three chapters of Catching Up on Conventions: Grammar Lessons for Middle School Writers by Chantal Francois and Elisa Zonana. This section of the book describes how they, two teachers committed to writing workshop, came to the conclusion that teaching grammar is important. Their main reason had to do with the fact that their classes were predominantly made up of ethnic minority students and they felt that it was necessary for them to master academic English, which is the language of power.

Our group talked a lot about this code switching. The reasons the authors described resonated with one of the other white teachers because she felt they applied to many of her students. For the teachers from our north county schools such an argument was irrelevant-- over 90 percent of their students speak the dominant language at home; they don't need to learn another vernacular. As for me, I thought it was hypocritical to make an argument like theirs without acknowledging that such an attitude perpetuates an unfair dynamic. To dismiss the necessity for some people to have to learn the language of the majority as simply a necessary evil does not address the underlying issues.

(Don't worry-- I'm not against teaching conventions-- I just think we should teach them to everybody, in the context of their writing, based on the individual needs of those particular students.)

The other teacher from my school, who is Black, affirmed the importance for people of color to learn to speak and write academic English but also pointed out the social complications that accompany such a choice. "It's sad to say," she told us, "but kids and even adults make fun of Black people who talk too White."

We also discussed proofreading marks, and one of the teachers confessed that she just never got the hang of using them: there were too many and she found the marks confusing. "It's just code switching," I teased, but when later the conversation turned to texting language, we discovered that of all the teachers there, I was the only one who doesn't use it, thanks to my trusty iPhone and perhaps my own resistance to code switching. In my experience, though, this is the exchange that is most difficult for students. Once they get hooked on shortening words and phrases and ignoring capitalization and punctuation, it is very difficult to get them to switch to standard conventions for school writing.

Maybe text talk is a minority dialect; it is a language that belongs to the young. The difference between that group and most ethnic minorities? One day young people will be in charge. r u rdy 4 dat?

Change is Good?

Well, I went ahead and did it. The Battle of the Sexes classes have been officially reorganized. The numbers in my two after-lunch classes are now 9 boys and 7 girls and 8 boys and 8 girls. Has the gender balance been a magic bullet? No. Some personalities still stand out, but in general? The students seemed less playful and less social and therefore more focused on the task at hand.

This particular success could be my imagination, but grouping, in the form of class scheduling, small group work, and even seating assignments is a time-honored tool of classroom management. Even so, I believe we should use our power carefully. These days, we try to spin it positively to the kids, especially when we split up friends, as in you don't work very well with that person, and We just want you to be successful, and Don't worry! You'll still see so-and-so at lunch.

We do that because kids, especially middle school kids, often have a hard time with what we adults see as a simple schedule change. As an example, when I told my classes of the above mentioned switches, there were gasps and groans of horror, and many kids openly begged me not to change their schedule. This after four weeks of school.

I believe that there are far more insidious reasons for us to take care about moving students for their own good as well as the good of the class, though. In my experience, a lot of the time the kids we want to separate are minority students. In a diverse school such as ours with almost equal representation of Asian, Black, Latino, and White students, it's most often those Black and Latino cliques that get busted up in the name of group dynamics, and that gives me pause.

A.K.A.

Middle school presents an opportunity for kids to reinvent themselves-- we always tell them it's a clean start, a fresh slate, a chance to be the best they can. Some take advantage and some don't, and some are more successful than others. Six years ago, I taught a young man named Kenneth who introduced himself as Kenny. Kenny was as cute and charming as they come, but he didn't always complete his work, which was what I was telling his mom in our parent-teacher conference when she whipped out her cell phone. "Excuse me," she said to me as she deliberately dialed.

Bemused, I waited for her cue to continue. In a moment I heard the mwah mwah of a voice answering the phone. "Is Brandon there?" she asked. Confused, I wondered if I should pretend to be busy with something else. "Well get him out of bed," she told the other party. I shuffled a few papers and clicked my pen once or twice. Soon I heard another muffled "hello" and she picked up that progress report and started in on the person on the other end of the line about those missing assignments. It quickly became clear that Kenny was an alias for the student formerly known as Brandon, which was his middle name. Once she hung up, it was sort of challenging to continue the conference-- I wasn't sure how to refer to her child.

I saw Kenny's mom today in a professional development class I'm teaching. "Do you remember me?" she asked, and I smiled because when I had seen her name on the roster I couldn't wait to find out how Kenny was doing.

"I sure do," I told her. "How's that son of yours?"

"He's a senior! Can you believe it?" she said.

"Wow!" I answered. "What's he going by these days? Kenny or Brandon?"

"I still call him Brandon," she shrugged, "but everyone else? They call him Kenny, and he's doing great."

By that, I took it that he was getting all his assignments in, and silently I congratulated him on his successful reinvention.

Now Playing

I recorded the first episode of Tony Danza's reality show on A&E but I haven't had the chance to watch it yet. Called Teach:Tony Danza, the premise is that Danza teaches one section of high school English to 26 students at a school in Philadelphia. What teacher could resist watching at least one episode?

This morning at the farmer's market we ran into some parents of former students, along with a relative of theirs who also works at one of our district middle schools. "Have you seen Tony Danza's show?" she asked. When I told her that I have it recorded, she said "I won't ruin it for you, but the guy has one class of 26, with another teacher in the room with him, and they make him cry in the first episode!"

The non-teacher in our group said, "That's good, right? It shows how hard teaching is." Not having seen the show, I hope he's right that it shows teaching can be tough rather than Tony Danza can be lame, but my reservations are a little more serious than that. I've read a bit about Danza's press junket to support the show, and it sounds like he is highly supportive of teachers and the complexity of the job we do. That represents a departure from the majority of other public voices recently heard on teaching and schools.

NBC and other high-profile media organizations have been paying a lot of attention to public education lately, inviting philanthropists, politicians, chancellors, and bureaucrats to speak about what the "problems" are. Notably absent? The voices of teachers... but don't worry: an actor who by most measures is a bit down in his career and taught one class for one school year is evidently a more than legitimate spokesperson for our profession. Just ask Oprah.

My Theory of Parking Dynamics

I believe that you should never wait for a parking space, especially if the garage or lot is really crowded. By doing so you stop the flow of traffic, making it difficult for people to both get into and, more importantly, out of spaces. If everyone simply drives until a parked car is ready to pull out, then everyone will get a space with roughly the same amount of waiting time. By following this practice, you may increase your own personal wait-time occasionally, but your wait will also decrease at other times, as will the general frustration level of all parkers, you included.

Doesn't that make sense? Who's with me?

(Remind me to post my theory of merging when a lane ends on the highway sometime.)

In the Kitchen

I spent 20 minutes or so when I got home tonight julienning some butternut squash to toast in the oven. I wanted to use it as a crispy garnish for risotto. I tossed it with olive oil, sage, salt and pepper, and put it in the oven with a timer to check and turn it in 10 minutes, knowing that I would have to attend to it closely so that it would cook evenly. Things happened... the phone rang, the neighbors stopped by, and I watched my squash, truly I did, but not carefully enough, because the last time I checked, some were perfect, some were still a bit limp, and a good bit were too done to

Maybe that's a good analogy for teaching: All the shreds of squash start out roughly the same-- they are in the same pan, in the same oven, but they don't bake evenly. Who knows why? You have to stay focused and keep checking and making adjustments so that all the individuals who make up the collective are well-prepared; otherwise it's all no good.