Tag Archives: students

The Blog That Was A Decade In The Making! Part Four

5 Oct

October 5, 2011

Part One can be found here,
Part Two is here,
And you can find Part Three here.

On the surface things really hadn’t changed much. I was still moving from room to room, though I only had four different rooms instead of eight, and I still had discipline problems. But here I had backup.

The biggest was a supervisor who not only supported me but knew the students and the situation I was in. Not only did she tell me to send bad students to her, she demanded it. And trust me, they did not get a single cookie from her. I wasn’t crazy about it because I felt that having her handle the unruly kids made me look weak, but we had to establish that there were consequences to disrupting the class.

As the years went on I sent fewer and fewer students to the Assistant Principal’s office. It became a point of pride. I was able to handle the bad situations on my own but more importantly I had the experience to keep those situations from ever starting. In fact, One of my strong points was classroom management. Not only did I later develop the school’s student code of conduct, but I was given a class that literally drove another teacher to tears (and the verge of a nervous breakdown) because I could handle them.

That was still in the future. In my first semester at the high school I was in a bad situation. I began teaching three weeks into the semester, so the kids were on a free ride. They had a string of substitutes and no real discipline. No matter what anyone tells you, a substitute teacher is there for one reason only: to prevent the kids from running in the halls and setting fire to the school. A teacher who leaves work for the sub to give the students and actually expects it to get done is crazy, at least in the schools I taught in.

But I changed that too, eventually.

The kids had experienced three weeks of total abandon during English class and now they had a teacher. And they knew that I was also new to teaching, two strikes right there. They tested me, they pushed me, they tried to beat me down. But even down two strikes the advantage was to me. First, I had resources. Unlike my old school where I never had a class set of anything, here I had six book rooms of textbooks. My old school had a delay of three days to a week if I wanted anything copied. Here I could go to the department office and copy as much as I needed at anytime. I was able to establish not only rules but consistency. Rules are good, consistency is king. The students needed to know what was expected of them, it had to be enforced, and it needed to be the same from day to day. They needed to know- clearly- what they were required to do, how it impacted them if they didn’t, and how it all affected their grades.

In the early, challenging days I was able to begin to develop the strategies that would make the later year far less challenging. And I cannot overstress how important it was that I had colleagues who went out of their way to help me. Those I shared rooms with were generous and helpful. My department became a team in every sense of the word.

But not every department was the same. Despite the strength of the English department many of the others were weak. I shared a room with a selfish social studies teacher who didn’t leave me a single closet for storage. It wasn’t that big a deal because I only taught one class in that room and I stacked the textbooks in a corner. He came to me after a couple of days yelling at me for leaving the books out because his students were throwing them out the window. He was actually mad at me because he could not control his own class. I told him it was his fault and he tried to tell me that all supplies had to be locked up to protect them from the students. Ridiculous.

We had bad students, that was a fact. Our school underperformed and had some high profile troubles. We got only kids who couldn’t get into another school and it was in a spiral. In my first semester I had a real scare. One of my students was obnoxious. She was loudly talking and carrying on conversations while I was trying to teach. I was still weak and having trouble controlling her. During this particular class we were reading from a story about a girl and a monster. We were making predictions about what would happen next and during the conversation I said, in reference to the character in the story “it looks like Christine is going to die.” One of the girls carrying on the conversation caught part of that and told the obnoxious one, whose name was Christina, “he said he’s going to kill you!”

She jumped up and said “what did you say? You’re going to kill me? You’re fucked! I’m going to get you fired!” She and three of her friends marched out and of course, the rest of the class was a lost cause. They did nothing but scream and tease me about how I was going to get arrested.

I ran to my boss’s office to explain my side of the story. She didn’t believe for a second that I threatened to kill anyone. I wrote up a statement and she wrote one up based on her talks with the girls. They all admitted that they didn’t hear what I said, they all admitted that they were fooling around in class, and they all ended up on suspension. I never heard another word about it, but I had a very tense few minutes after they ran out until the class ended.

Compare that to this incident a few years later.

I was teaching a class and a student came in late. Normally that never disrupts a class because I had procedures in place to handle lateness but this was different. This particular student was not a bad person but had poor impulse control. Even though she couldn’t pay attention in class and was badly failing we still got along. Over the years many of the students I failed were also the ones I got along with best. It was strange that the students I failed often treated me better after I failed them, even though they wouldn’t have me again. I was usually able to have a separation between professional and personal so even when a student failed they knew why and didn’t blame me. OK, not always, but usually.

As I said, this student had poor impulse control. And something had happened in her last class that set her off. She came into my room, let out a roar that made some of the kids jump, and kicked the garbage can across the room, making five or six kids duck. I was moving towards her with the intention of guiding her into the hall when she walked to my desk and flipped it over.

This was an old, heavy wooden desk. It had drawers on both sides and was not easy to move. She was so enraged that not only did she flip it over; it did a complete 360 in midair. Picture this, the desk completely revolved in midair. And I had a lot of papers and books on top which ended up all across the room. The desk landed on an angle and shattered into one large and three or four small pieces.

This was one of only two times I was stunned.

I was shocked into immobility, the class was so stunned that no one breathed, and even the girl who flipped the desk couldn’t believe what happened and just stood there. Someone in another room must have heard the commotion because as I finally started to react security showed up and took her away. But what did the rest of the class do? Instead of going crazy and using it as an excuse to have a wild time, they asked me if I was all right and cleaned up the mess. Without being asked. In a few minutes we were back to the lesson. That was how far I had gone from the days of being yelled at day after day for not controlling my students.

I always arranged my rooms (when I finally got my own room) in a horseshoe. That gave me a lot of room to walk around and see what the kids were up to. Rows, I am convinced, are good for almost nothing. They bind a teacher to the front of the room. If you walk to the back the kids in the front can’t see you. If you go down row five then row one is out of your direct line of sight. One advantage of a horseshoe shape is that I could teach from any point in the room. There were many days when I taught my classes while leaning against the back wall.

It also led to the other time I was stunned.

I had a bad student who was failing every class. He wasn’t just my problem; he was a problem in every class and also at home. I almost never saw his face, he was always turned around to talk to someone. We didn’t have desks, we had chairs with the desk built in to the arm. I once lifted his chair, with him still in it, and turned him around. He laughed and spun around again.

By a total coincidence I got a phone call just a minute later that his parents were on their way up and I wasn’t to say anything. They wanted to see for themselves how he behaved in school so they were going to peek in the window. Thanks to the horseshoe they had a clear line of sight and what they saw was not good. I saw them in the window and their faces were not happy. The father came in the room and without a word gave the waggling “come here” finger. Their son didn’t move fast enough and the mother charged him, grabbed him by the ear, and pulled him outside.

I stayed inside and tried to keep the class under control because they were howling with laughter so I missed what happened in the hall but I heard it.

The father was whipping the son with his belt.

Security happened to see it and ran to break it up.

I developed a reputation as a fight breaker. If two students started fighting in my room, and it happened too often, I got in the middle and broke it up. Eventually I was officially informed by both my boss and the UFT representative that I was to let them fight. No one wanted to see me getting hurt and I could get written up if I got involved. It galled me but I had to stand on the sidelines once while I saw one girl get a clump of hair ripped out.

One debt I owe to my first school is that because the Principal was in and out of my room so much I stopped caring who entered my room. Not only did nothing bother me, but I soon took ownership of the room. It was my room. If I wanted to control who came in I locked it and let someone in when I was ready. I never interrupted a lesson, not a single sentence, to open a door to let someone in until there was a natural break. That was true for late students, other teachers, and even high level Department of Education officials. The kids would get freaked out that I wasn’t opening the door. I told them this was my class and in here not even the Mayor could tell me what to do. That was my attitude. That was the confidence I eventually gained.

And unlike my first school, no one ever made me pass a student I wanted to fail. In fact, after my first semester I was applauded for the number of students I failed. It sounds strange but it is a testament to the freedom I had.

TO BE CONTINUED

Part One can be found here,
Part Two is here,
And you can find Part Three here.

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The Blog That Was A Decade In The Making! Part Two

21 Sep

September 21, 2011

Part One appeared in this blog last week and can be found by clicking HERE.

 

I had started my teaching career in September and by January it was clear that I wasn’t going to be long in my position. I was either going to be fired or I’d quit.

The students were out of control and the Principal was encouraging it. I was brand new to teaching and I wasn’t yet any good at classroom management. Lesson planning and marking tests is only part of being a teacher, and I tend to think that it isn’t the most important part. Classroom management is, and the only way to get good at it is by experience. And I was having a trial by fire.

The main thing any new teacher needs is support. I had so little support that when the school year began I did not even have a classroom. The school was tiny, grades six through eight, and only four classes of each grade. That’s a very nice amount of students but not in that building. We were a new and experimental school and we were in a converted apartment building that was far too small even for our little populace.

We had no supplies. While other schools had giant bookrooms (the high school I later taught in for nearly a decade had six, and that was just for the English department) we had a cabinet. One cabinet that held every book, piece of tape, and eraser for the entire school. I never had a full set of books.

I taught five periods a day, and six on Wednesdays, for a total of 26 periods each week. I taught those classes in eight different rooms. I had no home base. I had to carry all of my belongings with me from room to room. Anything I could not carry I stored in the teachers room. The room schedule was a problem for everyone but no one had as many rooms as I did. I taught classes in other teacher’s rooms where they would not let me erase their boards so I had to tape poster paper to the walls. I taught humanities in a science room where the kids played with the sinks and threw water at each other.

And for the first week I taught three periods in the cafeteria.

It was so bad that I had to change rooms in the middle of a double period class and walk the students to another floor.

By December I was given a room that I was in almost full time and the Principal told me “I did it to make it easy on you.” I replied back “no you didn’t, you did it to try to keep the kids out of the halls.” By then everyone knew I was on my way out. And not by choice. Besides getting yelled at every other day I was always getting written up for ridiculous and unfounded charges. I was the only teacher who got written up for failing to control students at dismissal.

Each teacher had to walk his or her homeroom class out of the building and one day I was written up because my students ran out of the building, an alleged security violation (it was not) that every student in every class committed.

I was written up for failing to keep accurate attendance records. Anyone who worked with me later on will be shocked because one thing I was known for was keeping meticulous records. Back at the start of my career I was always fighting over this.

NYC schools keep attendance on bubble sheets. If a student is absent the proper circle gets filled in, if present, no mark. The forms were delivered to the schools blank and the roster printed at the individual schools. My school always printed them badly. The names never lined up with the proper bubbles. I’d try to use a ruler to line them up but most of the time the names were printed on a slant. Try as I might, I’d often mark an absent student present and a present student absent. No matter how many times I showed the skewed sheets the Principal always said that no one else had a problem. And I knew it was a lie.

The most obvious thing she did to tell me it was time to go was assigning me a mentor. On the face of it that sounds very positive but it wasn’t. Three times a week she’d sit in the back of my class and when it was over she’d offer me advice. Invariably, her advice was that “the students are animals. You should leave.” But that wasn’t the worst, it was offensive. I was told “why do you want to be in the classroom? There are plenty of jobs for teachers in the Board of Education offices.” (We were still a Board, not a Department back then.) So not only was I being told to get out, I was being told to get out of teaching. I have no idea what the mentor thought of me or the situation. Even though I knew that everything I told her went right back to the Principal I told her everything in hopes that I could get some real advice. I never did.

But she did write me a nice letter of recommendation that I never used. I still have it.

By February I could not stand going to work in the morning and was throwing as little of myself into the job as I could. While I may have been the most miserable teacher I was not the worst. In the weeks between September and December six teachers had left the school, a huge percentage of our tiny staff of twenty-four. That does not include the teacher who was pushed down the stairs. While the other six left on their own, he, despite being a victim, was somehow blackmailed by the Principal to not make a report and he was the only person, student or teacher, to be investigated in the incident. He left in January, escorted out by security.

My biggest blow came when my friend Catherine, who had a far, far easier time than I did (she had the highest level students) could not take it anymore and quit right at the start of the new year. She left teaching all together.

One day at the start of February I could not stand the thought of going to work to the point that I was physically shaking. I called out of work that day. I had been calling out a lot by then and it got to the point that the secretary didn’t even ask me why anymore.

I got in my car and drove to every high school in Brooklyn handing in resumes. I started at the farthest one and circled back in. I didn’t have much of a resume. In some schools no one would see me and I’d have to leave my resume with a security guard. In other schools I, having no appointment, would have to wait for an hour before I was given a quick and painful interview. The only school I skipped was South Shore, which everyone in the school system knew was a violent pit but somehow the press never bothered them like they did the school I ended up in. (Years later when I was in a postion to know certain things I found out crimes that happened in South Shore that should have have shut it down.)

The cliché goes that you always find the thing you are looking for in the last place you look. And that is true because after you find it you stop searching, so of course it was the last place. But this was literally true in this casebecause I was hired on the last school on my list. And better yet, it was a mere five minutes from my house.

I got there at 3:30, after most kids had left but while the staff was still there. I didn’t know it but they had a vacancy in the English department that they had been unable to fill and were desperate for a teacher.

The right place at the right time.

The Assistant Principal of the English Department, a woman who over the years I would come to admire and respect as the best boss I ever had, not only interviewed me but gave me a quick test. I passed with flying colors, and I do mean “flying” because she grabbed me by the arm, ran with me down the hall and down a staircase, her other arm waving, all the way to the Principal’s office.

“I found a teacher! I found a teacher!” She was screaming with joy.

Anyone else might take that as a warning but it was music to my ears.

The Assistant Principal looked up from his paperwork, asked, “does he have a file number?” I said that I did, he said OK, and that was that.

But I couldn’t start right away. I had to inform my (now) old school and give the school system time to do the paperwork.

I told my old Principal that I was leaving and she didn’t bother to hide her happiness. She already had my replacement lined up. I told some of the teachers but not many. I never really fit in with them and kept to myself a lot. And I never, ever, told the students.

I had six days left in my time at the middle school and little by little, day by day, my belongings were going home with me. Once I got a room I had filled it but now it was emptying out and by the time I left it was empty. On my last day I walked out with only my near-empty school bag. Despite seeing things disappear daily, the students never put two and two together. On the fourth day one of the students told me that another teacher said I was leaving. I lied. I said I wasn’t going anywhere.

On the fifth day somehow word got out and I was asked by a dozen kids if I was leaving. It was the end of the day, right before I walked them out for dismissal, and I said no. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. They wanted nothing more than to see the last of me. I was the guy who yelled at them all the time.

Believe me, I didn’t like yelling. I am not a yeller. I tried everything to motivate and get through to them but it all just caused chaos and I ended up yelling. I learned from it though, and in my later career I can only recall one or two times when I yelled. By then I knew far more effective- and scary- things to do to students.

On my last day the cat came out of the bag when in the morning another teacher, one of the few I got along with, came to my room during class. She had a going away present. (The teacher’s standard present- a Cross pen and pencil set.) I did not want it. I refused it. It was just so hypocritical, a present from the teachers that didn’t help me, from the school that forced me out, a symbol of the misery I experienced on a daily basis, but I took it for one reason only, because the teacher said she thought I deserved it. I didn’t but I took it out of regard for her.

The rest of the day was a chaotic mess. The same teacher, when she was free, took over my classes just to give me a break for once. And she had the kids make me going away cards, cards which I actually kept for a while. They ended up with me in my new school, in the back of my file cabinet, and I tossed them out about a year later.

At the end of the day before dismissal the kids were being especially wild and as a going away present I, for the only time in my teaching career, told my students just what I thought of them. I won’t go into it but I did tell one student that I’d see him in a few years when he was picking up my garbage.

Not my finest hour.

And then I walked them out of the building, kept walking, and I was gone.

TO BE CONTINUED 

Part One appeared in this blog last week and can be found by clicking HERE.

 

 

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