"B" day, which meant my two block classes. Easy day, really, as all we did was a couple DOL sentences, a new vocabulary list, start vocab list #5 stories (intricate, dank, lackluster, inaudible, submerge, lustrous, inebriated, ponder, auhentic, compel, genial), finish Roots video, and play simulation.

Their descriptive essays were also due today. Only 20/25 turned in an essay in my morning block class, and even worse was my afternoon block class -- only 11/18. I graded them all last night (Monday Night Football was boring, so I turned it off and graded essays), so the fact that not all of them were turned in probably saved me 45 minutes of work last night. But it still is a little disturbing. 70%? I am used to a much higher work rate than that. I expected 4-5 students not to do the essays, but not 14!

Tuesday Oct 19, 1999

"A" day, which meant three Literature/Speech classes and my prep period. Casual day, and easy. I showed a twenty minute video about scoring speeches using the state standards scoring guide, and then rest of class was spent reading our novel and finishing up the assignments for chapter one.

The video was very helpful because it showed examples of speeches whch were scored way below the standards, meeting the standards, just below the standard, and way above the standard. A friend of mine working in another school made the video with his students, and he is an excellent speech teacher -- even helped the state devise the speech benchmarks for various grades. The kids now know exactly what is expected of them; they saw what not to do, what an acceptable speech looks like, as well as what an unusally sophisticated and artfully presented speech looks like.

As the kids were working on their literature assignments, I quickly scanned the speech outlines of those who had prepared them already. I am pretty confident those students will do a good job with their speech as they wil have the time to actually practice it before class on Thursday. Those that didn't prepare their outline yet will spend tonight and tomorrow getting it ready and won't have time to actually practice it, so they probably won't do as well. But that will turn into another learning moment for them, as they will see students who had practiced give good speeches and be able to contrast that with what they did, or with what others just like them did. Being prepared for success and not waiting 'till the last minute to get prepared are valuable lessons my eight grade students learn this year. Thursaday, I'm sure, will be an opportunity for some to learn that lesson.

Wednesday, October 20, 1999

"B" day, which meant two block classes.

Language Arts class was an absolute fun house today. After our daily D.O.L. sentences (which the kids are doing very well with, btw), we played a vocabulary game. It was boys vs. girls, which meant emotions would be high and the competitive juices boiling over. I had a grid containing all the words from the first four vocabulary lists, plus a few extras they had never seen before, and the two teams would take turns giving definitions of words picked at random off the grid. Each student had their turn as boys and girls had to let a new member of their team take a try each time. Before a word was chosen, the students had to declare how many points they were going to risk, in 5 point increments from 5 to 50. So confident students would tend to risk 50 points and less confident students would tend to risk 5-10 points. If one team failed to define a word correctly, the other team could define it and win the points. If their definitions were a little unclear, I would have them use the word in a sentence. If both sides failed to define a word correctly, I would get the points -- and for a while I was actually winning the game in my afternoon block class.

The game lasted thirty minutes, was very boisterous and loud -- so loud that I was worried about disturbing the neighboring classes. I believe this game was very motivational as the kids who defined words correctly for their team got such an immediate glow of satisfaction, and I'm sure the kids who failed will be more motivated to putting more energy into their studies so they will be successful next time.

The wild card in the game was the extra words I threw in -- words I was sure they wouldn't know: hegira, gheee, inveigle, picayune, mugwamp, jacktar. So I got points every time one of those words came up. Also, sometimes a word was picked which had already come up, and so these were easy points. These little wild cards were a welcome bit of chance that energized the game even more.

U.S. History class was a lot of fun too. We read Chapter 3, sec 3 which dealt with The Enlightenment, Ben Franklin, and The Great Awakening of 1740. I real aloud to them an excerpt of a famous sermon given by Johnathon Edwards titled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." I put forth my best Burt Lancaster impersonation, and practically had the kids reaching into their pockets to give me money in order to save their souls before I was done.

This was a good lesson in that it brings to light some of the oft-neglected forces at work that helped foster the Revolution: religious toleration, the spirit of equality and democracy fostered by the Great Awakening, the way the Enlightenment worked to buttress the notion that people could improve their station, way of life, and thus their system of government through using their minds.

Overall it was a very fruitful day. The energy and passion the kids had in their vocabulary game was mirrored by my impassioned rendering of that famous sermon. Nobody will soon forget these two classes -- probably one of the best I'll have all year.

Thursday, October 21, 1999

"A" day which meant three Literature/Speech classes.

Today was the day for speeches, and quite a few performed very well. I scored many a speech as meeting the standards, as many kids used good delivery skills (eye contact, gestures, voice quality), had good organization (quite a few used the lessons I gave them earlier to devise some very good introductions and conclusions), used good language (actually, most were just normal, nothing exhibiting what I would call really good. But one student [Andrew] used a great allusion and several effective similes, so he scored very high on use of language. His speech was about the metaphor of how the school was like a jungle, and he made an allusion to the movie Soilent Green-- which impressed me quite a bit), and had clear and supported ideas and content.

Since they had to have completed an outline form I gave them for their speech, most had three good points to their speeches, but unfortunately several students failed to provide enough supporting details or specific examples to support their main points, so I couldn't score them high enough to meet the standards. But at least they quickly learned that lesson today. Ironically, these were also some of my brightest and most talented kids. What happened is that they put their speeches together very quickly and just didn't include enough. This is a typical method of some of the brightest students. They get used to being able to do very well with little effort or work, but it doesn't take more than a month or two in my classes to show them that that method will not often be good enough. The obverse is that the students who worked hard and followed all directions to create their speeches invariably did very well.

Overall, I was very pleased with today. It was obvious that my instruction was very good as many students who learned the little lessons I have delivered so far, and who worked hard on creating their speeches, did very well. I am expecting some truly outstanding speeches in the future as these kids try to score 5s and 6s on their speeches instead of just 4s -- 4s meet the standard; 5s indicate very strong, exceeding the standard; 6s are truly, unusually extraordinary quality. Quite a few students scored 4s -- which is very good -- but those only add up to a "B" or 80% in my gradebook. I'm sure they will start shooting for scores of 5 and 6 which adds up to an "A" or "A+".

On Monday we will complete the speeches, as not all of them got the chance today. I could manage to do about 15 per class, so we'll finish the remaining 5 or so in each class next Monday.

Friday, October 22, 1999

I went to a class today on teaching to the reading standards across the curriculum, so I didn't see the kids.

Long day -- had to get up extra early and drive 70 miles to the class, and it lasted 'till 4:30. So by the time I had driven back home, gone to school to check on my substitute's performance and grade vocabulary tests and vocabulary stories, I didn't get back home 'till 6:30 -- 12 hours after I left the house this morning. I will end up going back to school tomorrow sometime to finish grading the stories, tests, and history assignments the kids did today.

The class was very fruitful. I came home with several very good strategies and tools to use to help the kids reach the reading standards. Since I always feel lucky to get just one useful thing at a class, today was a good day.

Since I had talked our school's site council into paying for this class, I'm sure I will have to present what I learned at our next staff meeting. Knowing this ahead of time, I took copious notes today and came home with loads of examples to show off.

I had a stressful staff meeting yesterday morning. The principal was making a big deal of pointing out many of the positive things he has seen happening in our school recently -- and lots of people deserved lots of kudos-- but at the end I presented an idea for the staff to consider that was somewhat of a downer, and it really upset the PE teacher. He took great offense at what I said and directed some really ugly energy my way.

The context is that we had a prep rally assembly yesterday to celebrate the 7th and 8th grade football teams' undefeated seasons (quite an accomplishment and deserving attention), and to celebrate the modest success the girls' volleyball teams had. The girls volleyball teams were also recognized for their success and hard work, and the whole point was to spread some positive energy around and boost school spirit. Well, that is all fine and good, but the problem I pointed out was that the girls were obviously marginalized in a graphic way in front of the whole student body, and I suggested at the staff meeting that we, as a staff, needed to become cognizant of the way we do these sorts of things and make sure the girls don't get demeaned and marginalized like they did yesterday.

The PE teacher got furious, and couldn't contain himself. He felt attacked by my comments and got up and frothed a furious fusillade at me just as the meeting was ending. Basically, he didn't understand my point at all, and didn't think the girls were short changed, demeaned, or marginalized at all. Well, they were, and it was obvious to anybody who possessed the kind of vision to see those sorts of things. Unfortunately, not everybody on staff was capable of seeing it -- a really sad fact.

Here is what the student body saw at the assembly:

The assembly lasted an hour, and the boys took up 47 minutes of it. For much of the assembly, while everybody was watching the introductions of the boys, and the assistant football coach getting his hair shaved off by the 8th grade team, the girls were left sitting on the edge of the gym waiting -- they were supposed to play an exhibition game with either some of the boys or a collection of staff members so they could show off what their skills and get a little attention. Well, they were left hanging 'till there was only 8 or 9 minutes left, and then they played a quick game against some staff members.

That game was really demeaning and disrespectful because the assistant football coach -- a big muscular guy with a freshly shaved head -- started serving the ball to the girls like he was playing against the US Olympic team instead of a collection of 13 year old girls. He was doing these jumping, overhead power serves that the girls had no more chance of handling than a spider web could have stopped a cannonball. And he kept at it for about 5 minutes till the staff built up a 10-0 lead. He finally missed a serve with a few paltry moments to go, proceeded to swan around posing with his arms raised up in the air like Rocky Balboa. The girls got to play about three or four points in the final minutes, and luckily the next staff member to serve was a female volleyball coach who didn't try to decimate the poor little girls -- she served at a reasonable speed which allowed the girls a chance to actually play the ball a few times.

The end result was that the whole student body saw the boys get about 47 minutes out of the 60, and for the few brief moments in which the girls could have center stage and show off their skills they were totally upstaged and disrespected by a big, muscular assistant football coach (a volunteer parent, I believe, and not licensed staff member). So my comments at the staff meeting were right on, I thought: The girls had been marginalized and demeaned, and we should become cognizant of this sort of dynamic during these occasions -- after all, the boys generally dominate the emotional atmosphere in many classrooms already, so we need to pay special attention to recognizing the girls and respecting their contributions, efforts, and achievements.

I was satisfied that the principal seemed to acknowledge the wisdom of my comments, and I received many supportive comments throughout the day from other staff members too. Even a member of the school board relayed to me through email that she too was disturbed that the girls were so obviously short-changed. She also thanked me for bringing up the issue at the staff meeting. But I am very disturbed at the rabid reaction of our PE teacher. Sometime next week I am gonna have to try to explain it all to him so he understands...something which may be impossible as I believe he now thinks of me as public enemy number one.

End of Week 4.....