Day Two: New Jacket
Tuesday has always been my hardest day.
Monday is not the problematic day. Think about the start of anything: it's not hard at first (at least, not really). You're fresh, you're rested, you're ready to go (in theory), so you survive Monday and move on to the next day.
And then it hits you. You've got to do it again. You've done one day before, but there's no landmark to pat you on the back and say, "good job." Wednesday is Humpday. More than halfway there. Thirsty Thursday is good because what that really means is that you can have some fun Thursday, phone it in on Friday, and still be okay. And yes, sometimes I phone it in on Friday: classes feel looser, kids are happy they made it, we celebrate achievements and make goals for next week. Friday is for the finish.
Sometimes we celebrate surviving Tuesday.
This Acceleration Academy is no exception. When one kid was in my room at 8:58, I knew something wasn't quite right. My gut feeling didn't stop me from waiting until 9:05 to start class, when about four students showed up in my room. Four. Fifty percent attendance.
Now, I say "about" because I'm not convinced they were all there. One student, a powerfully assertive and driven young Latina, was ready and raring to go, but did not like that her classmates were dragging their feet. One kid who dryly refers to himself as "Grump" shuffled his feet and complained. Another student intimates to me that he has gotten less than two hours of sleep. And then another student, well...I got the olfactory impression that they really weren't meant to be there.
This is going to be a dumpster fire, I thought.
--------------------
And dumpster fire it was. Transitions were clunky. The three tired stragglers tailed behind me while my motivated rock star dragged them through every activity kicking and screaming. One student was gone by eleven (guess who...). Seat work was out of the question. Any attempt I made to scramble things or mix it up went horrendously awry.
For example, one of the tried-and-true activities that will produce a linear scatter plot for teaching lines of best fit is to make a simple paper bridge out of a folded strip of paper and load it with pennies until it fails. Then, make a bridge out of two strips of paper and do it again (then three, then four...). It produces a reliably linear scatter plot and so is perfect to teach extrapolation and interpolation, positive correlation, and a host of other things.
I didn't get any pennies. I had to use paper clips instead. And since paper clips take up way more space than pennies do for a similar mass, the experiment was horrendous. Failure points were less about bending and more about torsion. Paper clips spilled everywhere. Data didn't make any sense. The kids were apoplectic. So we had a heart to heart at two o'clock.
We talked about my two years in Lawrence teaching to seniors who hadn't passed the MCAS yet, and about how that was their last shot, and what that meant. We talked about my own experiences teaching adult ed to adults who never graduated. I talked about my own family and what I know about the personal, professional, financial, and emotional value of education. They asked me questions about what I wanted to do with my life, and why it was that I almost failed out of college twice. We talked about all of it and got things straight fast.
--------------------
A typical trick I've used to keep awake is just to stand. Standing up seems to get blood flowing and increase your heartrate, and it always seems to help when I feel like I'm going to doze. Conversely, if I sit, I'm done for, and I start to fade. So when one of my kids thought it was time to go to sleep for good, I insisted he stand.
People have a previously conceived notion of "teacher voice". Some people think it's loud, or stern, or forceful, or projected as though it is meant to knock people over. There is no need for such brashness. Rather, "teacher voice" is meant to communicate in imperatives. It implies urgency, immediacy, and imploration, rather than force. My teacher voice is quiet and doesn't really know a whole lot of tense. It's here and now. Do this now, please, before it gets worse or harder. I usually hush my tone when I use my teacher voice.
This time, it was simple: Stand up.
The student stood, and his eyes started to open. When they opened, I put six geometry books in front of him and put the seat work we were doing in front of him. He stood for the next hour and a half while he worked. Another student said, "hey, you can sit now."
"No, it's habit now. It's helping me stay awake."
--------------------
Later that evening, I did some lifting and started some curriculum writing, a full packet with five and a half hours of instructional material for Thursday (one teacher in the Academy had prepared two days' worth in advance, and a Chelsea teacher prepared a third day, so I volunteered to write the work for Thursday). Later, Jeff Riley came to the lobby and met me to deliver a gift: one of the coveted Sontag Prize jackets, this time one that read "Chelsea Public Schools" on the back. The Chelsea Public Schools logo features a bridge. Makes sense: the Tobin Bridge runs from Chelsea to Boston. But this is the only bridge to the great city that lies just across the harbor, and the only bridge back. There's no other way there unless you want to go all the way around the harbor and through the concrete jungle surrounding it. And that toll road costs money. I put that jacket on immediately, and it fit. Oh, did it fit.
I told Jeff about my day, but before long, I found myself chalking up some little victories: we really did cover a lot of content, from scatter plots and correlations to equations with two variables. My relationship with those kids is stronger for having survived a shit day. We covered a lot, but it felt like such a letdown, like the air was out of the balloon.
After making a little more conversation, I told Jeff I was going to get back to the room and write a full day's worth of curriculum for Thursday.
"Do what you do, brother," he said.
---------------------
Later that night, I headed out to Harvard Square, one of my favorite spots in the area. The difference between Cambridge and Chelsea is vast. You can wade in the difference. It's all around you. The nature of the language and the look of the people and the way they walk and buy things and laugh. There are restaurants where the food costs more money than some people make in two days. People wear clothes that are pristine and pay exorbitant amounts for things others might think are superfluous. I go to eat good food, visit a friend, drink tea, and talk and make good conversation, but I can't help but notice the change and feel strangely beaten. It still felt like Tuesday, and everyone around me felt like Friday.
The jackets I have from my Sontag Prize experiences are prized possessions. I wear them because I'm proud of having earned them, but also because they are warm and practical and stylish. But this new one felt a little like battle armor. The Chelsea version of the jacket is black with a slight hint of red. It is a size up, which I asked for to accommodate some weight gain. I once again had that nagging feeling that it was something I hadn't earned. But then I reconsidered.
I don't think it's any accident that Tuesday is named for Tyr, one of the Æsir. According to my quick online reading, Tyr is not only a war god, but the one also responsible for upholding justice and the law. Tyr sacrificed his arm to the wolf Fenrir in exchange for his agreement to be bound, the only god in the Æsir to offer that sacrifice. Tyr is an unremarkable god to most scholars of Norse Mythology (apparently) because The Binding of Fenrir is apparently the only full myth featuring Tyr to survive. Tuesday is an unremarkable day.
Tuesday is always a battle of sorts, and I think we all have to give a little more to get through it well. I don't want to sacrifice kids to the goals I set for them, but I do push them. This tension is what education is all about: how do we push kids to succeed outside of their comfort zone without shoving them into the dirt? When has a kid really had enough, and when are they just providing inertia on which to push? This is a question that has no right answer; the art is in the push.
---------------------
On the way home, I walked through the same corridor at Downtown Crossing where I met Rose. She was gone.
---------------------
Walking the streets of Chelsea is daunting. The streets are dark and the squares are somewhat spacious. It's easy to feel small beneath a black light polluted sky and towering overpasses. There are several dark spaces and corridors and it's easy to feel watched. The 111 bus heading from Haymarket Square to Chelsea and back has been packed each time I've been on it. I disembarked with about twenty other people, who all dispersed into the dark. It wasn't long before I couldn't see them anymore.
I sincerely doubt I was visible walking away, wearing a black jacket and a brown kilt. I walked a walk that felt like a teacher voice felt: urgent, immediate, quiet. And I felt like I was wearing armor. I felt strangely unsafe.
I can't imagine what living here must be like for a kid.
I got to the hotel, shed my jacket, and wrote curriculum from 10:00 PM to midnight.
Monday is not the problematic day. Think about the start of anything: it's not hard at first (at least, not really). You're fresh, you're rested, you're ready to go (in theory), so you survive Monday and move on to the next day.
And then it hits you. You've got to do it again. You've done one day before, but there's no landmark to pat you on the back and say, "good job." Wednesday is Humpday. More than halfway there. Thirsty Thursday is good because what that really means is that you can have some fun Thursday, phone it in on Friday, and still be okay. And yes, sometimes I phone it in on Friday: classes feel looser, kids are happy they made it, we celebrate achievements and make goals for next week. Friday is for the finish.
Sometimes we celebrate surviving Tuesday.
This Acceleration Academy is no exception. When one kid was in my room at 8:58, I knew something wasn't quite right. My gut feeling didn't stop me from waiting until 9:05 to start class, when about four students showed up in my room. Four. Fifty percent attendance.
Now, I say "about" because I'm not convinced they were all there. One student, a powerfully assertive and driven young Latina, was ready and raring to go, but did not like that her classmates were dragging their feet. One kid who dryly refers to himself as "Grump" shuffled his feet and complained. Another student intimates to me that he has gotten less than two hours of sleep. And then another student, well...I got the olfactory impression that they really weren't meant to be there.
This is going to be a dumpster fire, I thought.
--------------------
And dumpster fire it was. Transitions were clunky. The three tired stragglers tailed behind me while my motivated rock star dragged them through every activity kicking and screaming. One student was gone by eleven (guess who...). Seat work was out of the question. Any attempt I made to scramble things or mix it up went horrendously awry.
For example, one of the tried-and-true activities that will produce a linear scatter plot for teaching lines of best fit is to make a simple paper bridge out of a folded strip of paper and load it with pennies until it fails. Then, make a bridge out of two strips of paper and do it again (then three, then four...). It produces a reliably linear scatter plot and so is perfect to teach extrapolation and interpolation, positive correlation, and a host of other things.
I didn't get any pennies. I had to use paper clips instead. And since paper clips take up way more space than pennies do for a similar mass, the experiment was horrendous. Failure points were less about bending and more about torsion. Paper clips spilled everywhere. Data didn't make any sense. The kids were apoplectic. So we had a heart to heart at two o'clock.
We talked about my two years in Lawrence teaching to seniors who hadn't passed the MCAS yet, and about how that was their last shot, and what that meant. We talked about my own experiences teaching adult ed to adults who never graduated. I talked about my own family and what I know about the personal, professional, financial, and emotional value of education. They asked me questions about what I wanted to do with my life, and why it was that I almost failed out of college twice. We talked about all of it and got things straight fast.
--------------------
A typical trick I've used to keep awake is just to stand. Standing up seems to get blood flowing and increase your heartrate, and it always seems to help when I feel like I'm going to doze. Conversely, if I sit, I'm done for, and I start to fade. So when one of my kids thought it was time to go to sleep for good, I insisted he stand.
People have a previously conceived notion of "teacher voice". Some people think it's loud, or stern, or forceful, or projected as though it is meant to knock people over. There is no need for such brashness. Rather, "teacher voice" is meant to communicate in imperatives. It implies urgency, immediacy, and imploration, rather than force. My teacher voice is quiet and doesn't really know a whole lot of tense. It's here and now. Do this now, please, before it gets worse or harder. I usually hush my tone when I use my teacher voice.
This time, it was simple: Stand up.
The student stood, and his eyes started to open. When they opened, I put six geometry books in front of him and put the seat work we were doing in front of him. He stood for the next hour and a half while he worked. Another student said, "hey, you can sit now."
"No, it's habit now. It's helping me stay awake."
--------------------
Later that evening, I did some lifting and started some curriculum writing, a full packet with five and a half hours of instructional material for Thursday (one teacher in the Academy had prepared two days' worth in advance, and a Chelsea teacher prepared a third day, so I volunteered to write the work for Thursday). Later, Jeff Riley came to the lobby and met me to deliver a gift: one of the coveted Sontag Prize jackets, this time one that read "Chelsea Public Schools" on the back. The Chelsea Public Schools logo features a bridge. Makes sense: the Tobin Bridge runs from Chelsea to Boston. But this is the only bridge to the great city that lies just across the harbor, and the only bridge back. There's no other way there unless you want to go all the way around the harbor and through the concrete jungle surrounding it. And that toll road costs money. I put that jacket on immediately, and it fit. Oh, did it fit.
I told Jeff about my day, but before long, I found myself chalking up some little victories: we really did cover a lot of content, from scatter plots and correlations to equations with two variables. My relationship with those kids is stronger for having survived a shit day. We covered a lot, but it felt like such a letdown, like the air was out of the balloon.
After making a little more conversation, I told Jeff I was going to get back to the room and write a full day's worth of curriculum for Thursday.
"Do what you do, brother," he said.
---------------------
Later that night, I headed out to Harvard Square, one of my favorite spots in the area. The difference between Cambridge and Chelsea is vast. You can wade in the difference. It's all around you. The nature of the language and the look of the people and the way they walk and buy things and laugh. There are restaurants where the food costs more money than some people make in two days. People wear clothes that are pristine and pay exorbitant amounts for things others might think are superfluous. I go to eat good food, visit a friend, drink tea, and talk and make good conversation, but I can't help but notice the change and feel strangely beaten. It still felt like Tuesday, and everyone around me felt like Friday.
The jackets I have from my Sontag Prize experiences are prized possessions. I wear them because I'm proud of having earned them, but also because they are warm and practical and stylish. But this new one felt a little like battle armor. The Chelsea version of the jacket is black with a slight hint of red. It is a size up, which I asked for to accommodate some weight gain. I once again had that nagging feeling that it was something I hadn't earned. But then I reconsidered.
I don't think it's any accident that Tuesday is named for Tyr, one of the Æsir. According to my quick online reading, Tyr is not only a war god, but the one also responsible for upholding justice and the law. Tyr sacrificed his arm to the wolf Fenrir in exchange for his agreement to be bound, the only god in the Æsir to offer that sacrifice. Tyr is an unremarkable god to most scholars of Norse Mythology (apparently) because The Binding of Fenrir is apparently the only full myth featuring Tyr to survive. Tuesday is an unremarkable day.
Tuesday is always a battle of sorts, and I think we all have to give a little more to get through it well. I don't want to sacrifice kids to the goals I set for them, but I do push them. This tension is what education is all about: how do we push kids to succeed outside of their comfort zone without shoving them into the dirt? When has a kid really had enough, and when are they just providing inertia on which to push? This is a question that has no right answer; the art is in the push.
---------------------
On the way home, I walked through the same corridor at Downtown Crossing where I met Rose. She was gone.
---------------------
Walking the streets of Chelsea is daunting. The streets are dark and the squares are somewhat spacious. It's easy to feel small beneath a black light polluted sky and towering overpasses. There are several dark spaces and corridors and it's easy to feel watched. The 111 bus heading from Haymarket Square to Chelsea and back has been packed each time I've been on it. I disembarked with about twenty other people, who all dispersed into the dark. It wasn't long before I couldn't see them anymore.
I sincerely doubt I was visible walking away, wearing a black jacket and a brown kilt. I walked a walk that felt like a teacher voice felt: urgent, immediate, quiet. And I felt like I was wearing armor. I felt strangely unsafe.
I can't imagine what living here must be like for a kid.
I got to the hotel, shed my jacket, and wrote curriculum from 10:00 PM to midnight.
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