Tag Archives: teachers

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 Three

28 Sep

September 28, 2011

You can find Part One of this series by clicking here and Part Two by clicking here.

I had left my old dysfunctional school and was about to enter a school equally as dysfunctional but in far different ways. I had no way of knowing it but if I did it would not have mattered to me. It was a change. I was now working in a high school and it was only five minutes from my house.

Although you can find the names of some of my coworkers and the high school in many of my old blogs, I won’t name them here, and I remind you that any names you will read I have changed.

The high school was in transition. They had gone through a pair of one-year Principals and though they did not know it yet there were more to come. The Principal when I started, Mr. Cooper, was also new to the school and he didn’t want to be there. However, he was professional about it and did a good job but when a chance to leave came he took it. I ran into him years later working in a district office. The following year brought in a new Principal, Mr. St. Clair, who also did not want to be there and it showed. He didn’t do much. He was bored and uninterested. He observed my class for a formal observation and spent the entire time looking out the window. It freaked me out that he wasn’t bothering to watch me during a formal observation, and then it angered me that he was setting such a bad example for the kids. The third year opened with my third Principal, Mr. Stevens, and for some veteran teachers it was their fifth or sixth leader in that school in as many years. Unlike the others, he wanted the position and one year later, when I began my fourth year at the school, we finally opened with an experienced leader.

No matter what you think of a Principal, good or bad, having the same one year to year is preferable to starting over every year with someone who has new ideas and ways of doing things. I cannot overstress the importance of continuity.

One side effect of the revolving door of Principals was that the real power was held by the long-time Assistant Principal, a man who ran the school like it was his personal dukedom. He was nasty and arrogant. He was mean and rude. And he was also looting the school like it was his personal bank account.

Mr. Anderson was a wealthy man. Though I never saw it, he owned a camera shop which did fantastic business, I heard. But I and every other person in the school knew that his wealth really came from being on the books for a dozen or more cushy jobs within the school. For example, every school has a “fireman” who is in charge of making sure various safety rules are enforced. He was it. Any paid position or position where money was controlled went to him if he could manage it. Certain jobs that required hands-on effort he’d pass on, but if it was a more or less do nothing job he’d grab it. I personally saw him punch three or four time cards for various jobs that he was getting paid for at the same time. So once his official hours as AP ended he was on the clock from 4 to 8 (for example) on a variety of concurrent jobs, none of which required any (or little) work.

Though I was a new teacher in my first semester in the new school, I was chosen to be an inaugural teacher in a prestigious, privately funded program, Getaway.

The Getaway Program was to be a school within a school. Those students would have their own schedule, dedicated classes, and a dedicated room where they could study, get tutoring, even hang out during their free periods and it would be their home inside the school. When we were setting up the program I had the responsibility of spending dedicated Getaway money on supplies. Of course, the money went through Mr. Anderson.

I ordered a lot of electronics, from cd players to a pair of giant televisions. All of it was delivered to the school; none of it was delivered to the Getaway program.

Furthermore, while we were given a room we not given any furnishings. We were assured they were coming. None did. For weeks the room sat empty and unused. My boss, a wonderful person who was not (but should have been) involved with the program asked me every day what was happening with the room and every day I told her “nothing.” All of us in the program were under pressure from the foundations and corporations that granted money to Getaway. This was a large program running in many schools and if it didn’t work here, they’d move it to another school. We had to get this room open.

Two or three times a week if I had a free period I’d ask Mr. Anderson about the furniture and he’d give me the same answer, it’s coming. After a few weeks two things happened. One, he told my boss that I was “harassing him,” and two, the furniture arrived.

But not really.

Someone in high authority finally told him to get it done so he had me and another male teacher go to the storage room on the top floor to move the furniture. You see, to pay me back for making him do his job, he claimed the janitors couldn’t move furniture. He fully expected me not to move it either but we called his bluff and we moved the furniture down two floors, no elevator.

However, he had the last laugh. This was not the new furniture the program expected, this was old and beat up, left over school supplies. Where did the money we allotted for furniture go? Where do you think?

And we only got some of the electronics. These I knew for a fact were ordered because I ordered them and not only did I see the invoices, I saw the actual electronics. Weeks after the program started I knew the supplies had been delivered because the invoices were on the Getaway coordinator’s desk but we were never given anything. So I “harassed” Mr. Anderson again by politely asking him when we would get it. To punish me for daring to ask for our supplies, he told me that I would have to get them myself. I took a cart down to the vault where I became one of the very few teachers ever to see the inside of it. It had a big bank-style metal door but inside looked like nothing but a normal, dingy room. All my supplies were there but I could not take them all alone, and Mr. Anderson had a “backache” so I had to do it myself. I took all the small electronics and one of the two giant TV sets. I planned to get the other set later.

The next day I was not allowed to go to the vault, and eventually it was obvious I never would again.

This was where I learned CYA, “cover your ass.” Mr. Anderson was complaining about me. He claimed it was because I was harassing him but in reality it was because he could not steal from the Getaway program while I was around. My boss gave me a heads up and from then on I had to keep a record, one copy for me and one for my boss, of every interaction Mr. Anderson and I had, just in case.

I am not making the statement about theft lightly. Not only did we never get the second television, but Mr. Anderson soon claimed that we only received one. I was the only teacher to see the second set. Who was I to claim he was wrong? I could always go back and check the invoice but strangely, it went missing. And eventually the story became that we had only ever ordered the one set.

I said then and I say now that the second giant-screen TV ended up in his garage.

The postscript to the Getaway room is that when it was finally furnished it was padlocked and the only key was held by the coordinator who locked the room when she was not in it. And she was not in it six out of eight periods a day so in effect, the room was almost never open to the students. Each Getaway teacher was scheduled to staff the room at a certain time. I was scheduled when it was padlocked and the coordinator refused to give me (or anyone) the key. Don’t forget, this was for the students, not me.

Mr. Anderson complained that I was never in the room, and he was right, but only because I could never get into the room. So, CYA, I had to document every time I tried to get the door opened and failed.

Eventually the Department of Education caught wind of Mr. Anderson’s shenanigans because the Principal Stevens reported him. Bad move because he had some naughty things going on himself and the upshot was they both “retired.”

We were then assigned a new Principal who was the worst person I or anyone else would ever work for, but she will come into the story later.

But while my new school was in shambles at the top, I was doing pretty well for myself, as we’ll soon see.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Part Four will appear here next Wednesday.
You can find Part One of this series by clicking here and Part Two by clicking here.

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