All Things Considered: The Resurrection Parents

Truthfully, I know I shouldn’t pass judgment on parents when I myself have never experienced the pain, trouble and work that go along with raising a teenager, but sometimes, parents drive me crazy. I’d like to think I was a pretty good teenager, and I am sure my parents might agree or disagree, depending on how they were feeling about me at that particular moment or whether or not I had pissed them off that day. I think teaching middle school is one of the most difficult yet rewarding grade levels to teach – of course I am fully aware that teaching middle school is my ONLY teaching experience, but hey, I have coached high school volleyball for 8 years, so that counts for something, right? But the end of the year stress for myself (and others, I might add) may not actually be the children in my classroom. It’s the parents of those children that tend to drive me insane.

Why is it that parents who hadn’t been involved ALL school year (or were involved at first, but then drop off the face of the Earth) now suddenly decide to parent and email the teachers demanding to know why their child is not earning an “A” in their classrooms? They are like those resurrection ferns you see while hiking in Myakka that look like they're dead in the heat of the summer, all dried up and brittle. But the moment it rains, they wake up out of dormancy and come back to life. I know it’s never too late to get involved, but I just love it when parents freak out with only 12 days of school left once they’ve realized their child hasn’t turned crap in all quarter and ask why we can’t make a special exception for their child because little Johnny just doesn’t have the self esteem to earn another zero.

I especially enjoy it when parents ask us why we grade the way we do and try to provide suggestions, like giving a grade based on effort. “But little Johnny would have handed it into you if you had told him that it was due.” You’re right lady, I make sure your kid is beyond earshot or in the bathroom shitting his brains out and THEN I tell the rest of the class that the assignment is due the next day. Not to mention that information is written on the frickin’ board in the same freakin’ spot everyday. But hey, it’s never little Johnny’s fault, is it? It’s because I’m a rotten teacher.

I also really enjoy meeting with parents, coming up with ideas and strategies to help their child, and then the parent never following through on any of them. Then when you call them on it, it’s like they never agreed to do any of that anyway. NO WONDER your child has an 80 IQ, for the love of God!

Truthfully, I feel sorry for the children of these parents, because their parents are not consistently involved in their education. And kids know when adults aren’t being genuine. I think this parental behavior is a source of empowerment for the students, because if they aren’t receiving enough attention at home and notice that their parents appear to give a crap when their grades slip, then they put 2 and 2 together. They begin to let their grades slip on purpose, JUST so they can get the attention they crave, and more importantly, need from their parents.

I know for every neglected child I have in my class, there are 75 kids who are blessed and lucky enough to have parents who care and who are willing to do whatever it takes to help their child succeed on their own. For all you good parents out there – thank you for being supportive and involved. Keep up the good work. Your child will thank you someday.

18 days, but who's counting?

The end of the school year always seems to be rush by you like a blur. Remember when you were a kid, sitting in the back seat of the conversion van (complete with “Disney World or Bust!” handwritten sign that you made the day before left), counting the minutes until you finally can be more than 5 feet away from your younger and annoying sibling, and watching the numerous motorists speed by your window? Depending on the angle at which you are looking, that car could just look like a colored brush stroke that is there for a fraction of a second, and then it’s gone. That’s how quickly the end of the year is for me. This will be my 4^th experience with “end of the year” activities, end of the year stress and end of the year excitement. I always mention this, but I feel that you knowing how many years experience I have greatly influences not only my perspective, but it also provides you with a background on my somewhat limited teaching experience.

The kids are working on a fantastic collaborative project called “The 20^th Century: The American Experience”. The name is schweet – I made it up myself. As you know, if you are an avid reader of this blog, I absolutely adore integrated units. My mentor, Debbie Shults, showed me what a true collaborative unit should look, smell and feel like for student and for a teacher. I just can’t get enough of those darn units! They take an immense amount of work and time for each teacher on the team, and sometimes there are disagreements, but we put our egos aside and do what’s best for children.

So thankfully we have that unit to keep the kids busy and to keep us preoccupied with actually teaching. Seriously, I am just as anxious for school to be out as the kids are, and it’s not because I hate my job, but it’s because I just need the break! As I age in years with this profession, I begin to see what my retired teacher parents have said for years – breaks are not for the students as much as they are for teachers. But then again, why should I have ever taken anything my father said seriously, especially when he would tell me that flies would come out of the ceiling fan in the bathroom and eat your hair if you didn’t wash it? My dad, by the way, has no hair on the top of his head. He would use his baldness to scare my brother and I into cleaning ourselves well, hair included, because apparently the bugs and flies ate his hair at some point in his life.

My dad also said that the 3 best things about teaching are June, July and August.

If you would have asked me 2^nd quarter what I thought the 3 best things about teaching were, I probably wouldn’t have answered the same way my father did. I probably would have deliberated on it for awhile and would have tried to say something honest and profound.

Right now though, I’d say June, July and August are starting to sound like a rather intelligent response.

The planets need a job

So while my kids were toiling away with their state standardized tests the past 2 weeks, I was given the opportunity to work on some planning. I have to admit, I have been extremely busy with completing my National Board portfolio the past 2 weeks, so my month-ahead lesson planning had fallen closer to being only a week ahead of the kids. I know, bad teaching etiquette, right?

I don’t think so and the reason is this. As I have a unit plan in place, there will come times when I need to make adjustments, create time for deeper learning experiences or even make time for teachable moments. I like being prepared, don’t get me wrong, but I also have learned to become flexible and have evolved with my students.

So for my next unit, my students are going to create planetary resumes. You read it right, folks. Resumes of the planets. In Mr. Simoni’s social studies class, the students will be introduced to personal economics and will actually begin writing their own resumes. The boys who have already informed me that they plan on applying to Publix this summer are already ecstatic about writing their own resume to accompany their stellar job application.

What I noticed that while I was creating this mini-project is that I cannot possibly plan any other way than backwards. I have seen the promise land and will shout from the mountain tops on how beneficial and effective backwards planning can be. Ok, so I don’t have a mountain, but I do have a blogspot.

Anyways, I created a rubric, a sample planetary resume on Pluto (who knew Pluto could be so useful?!), a chart of Human Resume sections compared to Planetary Resume sections (e.g. work history vs. planetary history) and even a data table example of what students SHOULD copy down in their composition notebooks. For the last project, I provided students with some website examples but let them explore the web using numerous search engines. Well boys and girls, the scaffolding structure needs to be removed – my little munchkins are using Google, NetTrekker and any other search engine they can think of (and isn’t blocked on the network) to complete their quest to make a planet’s resume. After they research all 8 planets, they will be paired up with their new shoulder partners (thanks to Kagan) and will each complete 4 resumes, combining them to create a packet of the solar system.

Pretty nifty, eh?

I thought so, given I have never done this type of activity before. I have created a few sample templates using Microsoft Publisher for the students to choose from on my science website that they will download into their network folders. If students feel creative and adventurous enough, they can create their own.

We start tomorrow.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Verdict Is In

Ok, so Monday was the last student presentation on Work & Power. I have to admit, while my students were ready for me to return to my position of the whole "song-and-dance" gig in front of the classroom, I too was just as eagerly chomping on the bit. I missed being in front of the kids, helping them with their work and watching their a-ha moments. Honestly though, I think I missed feeling needed.

On Monday they also received a self and peer evaluation form. They were to first give themselves a grade for their work, effort and participation with the group project. They then needed to assign a grade to each of their group members. It was hilarious to see just how they viewed themselves and how they had some very high expectations of themselves and of their peers. Some kids willingly gave themselves a "C" while giving their group members "A's" and "B's". Some kids were brutally honest and were tough as nails when filling out the peer evaluation forms, while others would sacrifice their grade in order to keep their friends happy. It was entertaining to read their reasoning (for example, one student wrote: She was the best leader I have ever worked for in a group project!) in order to support their peer grades. I cracked up at how they commented on what they learned:

"I learned how to work with people I don't care for very much."
"I learned that teaching is a lot harder than it looks."
"I realized that Newton's laws really weren't that difficult to understand - you just had to have someone explain it to you in English."

Cute, right?

I am not sure if every student learned all that they could have about physics through this project but I do know they learned something. Whether that something will help them pass the FCAT, I'm not certain, but I am sure they learned that my job is not a cake-walk, physics is a rather difficult topic to teach and Sir Isaac Newton was definitely a weird dude (he invented calculus and then didn't tell anyone about it for 30 years).

I still can do some fine tweaking here and there with this activity, but overall, I would declare this project a success.

More kids are ruined at the dinner table

I am a former collegiate athlete and I can vividly remember working my butt-off to have the chance to play volleyball for a Big Ten school. I remember my father pushing me to be the best that I could, but he did it in a way that never made me resent him. I loved volleyball and I loved the fact that my dad did too. He never talked much about me and my mistakes on the court while at the dinner table or on the way home from a match. I consider myself lucky, considering he was the varsity girls coach anyways. He always said that “more kids are ruined at the dinner table than out on the court.” I didn’t really get what he meant until this year.

After I had retired from the 5 hr practices, the long weekend away matches and the persistent excruciating pain in my left knee, I decided to give coaching a try. Believe me, coaching is not as easy as it looks. Just because you are a great player, trust me, that doesn’t always equate to being a great coach.

I started out coaching freshman volleyball and then middle school track. I absolutely loved it. It allowed me to still be involved with sports that I love, but I didn’t get as sore as I used to. I would still practice with my kids and demonstrate stuff, but it just isn’t the same as being out there for games, you know? Anyways, this year marked my 10^th year coaching girls volleyball. And you want to know what? I finally feel like I knew what I was doing. Not bad, I suppose. It only took me 10 years to get here!

No matter the amount of experience you have accumulated or the number of victories or the number of tournament trophies, you will always have to face at least one parent every now and then who feels like their kid just isn’t being given a fair chance. Honestly, I rarely experienced this whole parental –confrontation thing until I was here in Sarasota. I am NOT saying parents are worse here than they are in Westerville, because my dad has some real hum-dinger stories about crazy parents from up there too. The most recent incident remains fresh in my mind because I interact with the parent just about once a day while I am at work.

I hate keeping more than 12 kids on the volleyball team because I just feel like if the kids are there everyday practicing, then I need to reward them with playing time. If I keep more than 12 players on the team, then those extra kids are competing with each for that slice of valuable playing time, which equates to everyone getting to play less. But on the other hand, I absolutely hate cutting kids from the team. It breaks my heart every single time. I tell myself not to keep more than 12 because it only brings problems. I give the girls the whole “Michael Jordan was cut from his freshman basketball team” speech and how if I could keep all of them on the team, I would. And I mean it. I wish I could. It’s such a Catch 22. When I hold the parents meeting, I tell parents that I do not promise equal playing time because playing time needs to be earned. I also created a list of ways that parents could become their child’s cheerleader, and not the overbearing, nagging and confidence-crushing parental type.

So the most recent episode was in between matches. Two parents came charging out of the stands to have it out with me. I didn’t even see them coming until they were on the court, jaws clenched and heads shaking back and forth. Their child hadn’t played yet that day and I was honestly going to play her in the next game. But how could the parents know that? All they saw was their little girl looking depressed and defeated while on the bench. I am not a parent yet, so I can only imagine what it is like for them. I also have rarely sat the bench as an athlete, so I can only imagine that too.

Regardless, the parents accused me of playing girls with half of their daughter’s talent and this and that… And I let them speak, nodding my head, saying “I understand, but I will not discuss other players on this team with you. I will only talk to you about your daughter.” As she continued on, I reiterate my original statement and I told her that I heard her. She then says, “If you weren’t going to play her much, then maybe you shouldn’t have kept her on the team!” And I responded, “You’re probably right.”

The truth is, this little girl was a last minute add on. I had originally cut her from the team, but on the last day of tryouts, I saw some real potential. So I decided to take a chance. Unfortunately, she didn’t improve and instead, her dedication, her enthusiasm and her effort just went downhill. The asst coach and I tried to work out why, but we just couldn’t help her. She would come to practice late because she would be socializing with her friends after school instead of changing in the locker room – which I never told her parents because I was truthfully afraid they were pushing her too hard in this sport anyways. I also absolutely refuse to put an athlete into an unsuccessful situation - how is THAT going to help her self esteem when she commits social suicide on the court with her team mates shaking their heads and questioning why she is even there in the first place? The last thing I wanted to do to was to make this young athlete hate volleyball even more. So I tried to protect her.

After the parents stormed off, I stood there with the asst coach, digesting what had just happened. I thought about sending the child home with her disgruntled parents. I thought about not playing her at all. But then, who was I really “punishing”? The young female athlete or the parents? But what if the parents thought what they said to me actually made me play her in the next game?

At that point, I didn’t really care what they thought. They had never played volleyball before and why should I be concerned what they thought of me? Just because the parents were acting like butt-heads didn’t mean I needed to treat their daughter like one.

After we won the next game, the father tried to apologize. He hugged me and said, "No hard feelings, right?" I smiled and pulled away from him and responded, “Regardless of how I feel about you and your wife, that doesn’t affect how I feel about your daughter.”

Boo yah.

I have to admit, I felt a little proud of myself for being much like my father. He was always good at those kind of things. One-liners, calming parents down, 400+ victories… you know, the usual. I am just glad I acted more like my dad in that situation than my mom.

Lord only knows what my mother would have said. My kids would have been taught a bunch of new cuss words, that’s for darn sure.

Kids never cease to amaze me…

Alright, so I am going to be the first to admit that I am not very knowledgeable on the topic of physics. Granted, my undergraduate degree is practically in Biology and I have difficulty with math, so I am probably not the best candidate to be educating the youth of Sarasota on Newton’s laws, force and acceleration. I am actually probably doing them a disservice by even attempting to tackle word problems to produce some random number with the unit of joules attached. (Or Newtons or m/s² for that matter.)

So I decided to try something new. I decided to jigsaw the physics portion of the curriculum by dividing it up into 6 topics – magnetism, kinetic & potential energy, Newton’s laws, simple & compound machines, force & acceleration and work & power. Ok, so the concept of jig sawing is not a new technique but I have truly been apprehensive in the past because of class dynamics, constructing set guidelines or expectations and, for lack of better terms, lack of teaching experience. I just didn’t feel like I had enough know-how to implement a jigsaw activity AND have it be an effective learning experience for my students.

I really wasn’t able to put it all together until Monday. I had my assessment in mind (the kids were going to create 2 low, 2 medium and 2 high level questions) so I knew what I wanted them to cover. I then made a rubric, a self evaluation form, a peer evaluation form, a student checklist and the project description sheet. The students had a set of guidelines they needed to follow in order to earn full credit. They had to present a 40 min lesson to their peers and had to include the following: essential vocabulary, equations, practice problems, visual aides, a demo, a hands-on activity, use of technology and an in-class assessment. I was trying to get my students to hit as many of the learning modalities as possible, as well as getting them to work effectively together within a group.

So on Tuesday, I introduced the project, went over the rubric and answered questions. I had at least 3 different textbooks on the desks and I put all of the laptops away. The first 2 days consisted of gathering information and teaching themselves on their topic. One of my students commented to me after looking through the books on the first day, “This is going to be tough! We have to learn the material before we can teach it!” I smiled and asked my students if the lights were getting brighter in the classroom, because I saw the light bulbs going off above their heads. I was still concerned though. I was worried my 4 day time line for research and presentation construction wouldn’t be enough. Don’t get me wrong, I am ok with extending deadlines IF (and it is really a big if) the entire team is experiencing difficulty.

I allowed students on day 2 to work on the computers to gather more information and to begin putting their presentations together. I even showed them how to save pictures and place them into the backgrounds of the Power Points (PPT). I also reminded them on how to hyperlink websites to their PPTs and for a moment, they looked at me like I was the most intelligent human being they have ever seen. I have to say that it was one of those few times that I felt more knowledgeable about technology than they were. The really great thing was, my kids were working. They were working together to accomplish the same goal. They were focused. And I was bored. During a few periods, I wandered from raised hand to raised hand to clarify directions or to say “Yes, you can use the restroom.” It was a rather dull and uneventful day.

Day 3 was even more amazing. I showed my students how to download video clips from United Streaming and then hyperlink them into their PPTs. They were so ecstatic!

And the boredom continued to worsen. I was no longer needed, with the exception of a few questions such as “How does this look?” or “What if we did this…” or “We want to do this demo. Do you happen to have iron filings?” I brought my laptop in with me every day to help kids locate sample worksheets or video clips or information. But they didn’t need me. I guess I should be proud of them, like a momma bird pushing her fledglings out of the nest, my students were learning on their own. The thing was, they really didn’t struggle and have difficulty like a baby bird would – they were efficient, strong and ready. Almost too ready.

Day 4 was even better than day 3. My kids polished up their presentations, practiced demos, and even practiced giving their presentations by using stopwatches to see how long they were presenting for. They looked through the textbooks for sample problems and ideas for hands-on activities. They perused the Bill Nye DVD collection I have, in hopes of finding a 3 min video clip that could supplement their lesson.

I was so proud. My kids were finally there. They were independent learners, the objective I had been trying to accomplish all year long. You would think that I would be excited and relieved. And I was. I really was. It’s that Catch 22 thing – I was proud but I was also bored.

Next week, the kids will be giving their lessons to their classes. I am already impressed with their work ethic and their excitement with this project. I cannot wait to see how it goes. Yes, some will flounder, but so did I.

And I think I turned out ok.