Good stuff

Today was a good day.

I got in a big, loud argument with my principal about the total absence of a discipline system in our school. Examples: A student threatened me, and the principal had no plans of suspending her or taking any other action. Yesterday, another student brought a knife to school, and he was sitting in all of his regular classes today as if nothing had happened. Another student called me a dumb bitch today, and still another told me that he was about to deck me. No real consequences for any of the above.

So I let it all out behind the principal’s closed office door, expressing that I find something very wrong with the fact that we pay no attention to students’ or teachers’ safety. I explained that there HAVE to be some intermediary steps between a teacher saying, “Hey stop doing that,” and a suspension- because we only do suspensions for the most serious offenses, like physically injuring someone. Our school is in utter chaos because of the absence of those intermediary steps.

BUT

As I said, today was a good day. Despite all of the above. Drumroll please... I made a student LIKE a book. Go ahead. Laugh. "It's mid-March!" you say. "You're an English teacher!" you say. "You're supposed to be making kids like books every day." Psssh. In my 7.5 months of teaching, I have had very few breakthroughs with my students. I've cracked the shells of some very reluctant writers, and I've won over some tough personalities, but I definitely haven't "reached" nearly as many kids as I'd hoped when I first started, and though I hate to say it, I have not led many kids to like many books. BUT TODAY I DID!!! :)

It was fantastic! We were just talking through the plot of the book and analyzing some of the characters when I realized that she had missed some of the big points in the book because she didn't pick up on some of the simple clues along the way.

Anyway, it got me thinking about a couple things:

#1: I wish that classwide novels weren't damned under Balanced Literacy curriculum because it's kind of impossible for me to read 60 young adult novels at a time. So I can't have these in-depth meaningful conversations with all of my students because I haven't always read what they're reading. If we could do class-wide novels, yes, some kids would find them too easy and others would find them too difficult, but that's what the classwork and small group discussions would be for. We could all learn new vocabulary together, analyze plots, characters, etc. But under Balanced Literacy- which is what NYC is all about right now- every student reads their own book at their own level. The teacher then conducts reading conferences to check their comprehension and help them along. This is an excellent idea if the teacher has read every book in the classroom library. I have not. I have a feeling I will love Balanced Literacy after I have a few more years of experience under my belt. But right now, I'm finding it difficult for our conferences to be meaningful and helpful because I haven't read a lot of their books. I'm especially struggling with teaching and assessing vocabulary. I need to consult with more experienced teachers on how to do a better job of this.

#2: I've been reading a lot of YA novels, but I obviously need to burn through them more quickly.

#3: My students don't hate everything I put in front of them just for the sake of hating it and being difficult. They're probably just not GETTING a lot of it. You read exactly that in every teaching book out there, but it's still sometimes hard to convince yourself that the kid isn't just being a brat when they're screaming out in the middle of class. "All these books SUCK!" Even though we have tons of 4th and 5th grade level books in our 7th grade library, some of my students are still not fully understanding the plots and characters. This is good to know- and actually believe, as opposed to just describing this phenomenon and still believing the kids are being brats.

#4: I like my job sometimes. :)

Ok, off to grade lots-n-lots-n-lots of assignments because I'm behind. Oops.