Up and Down the River

On August 6, 2007, the principal of S.V. Marshall High School stood in the middle of the gymnasium and introduced the new teachers -- as usual, about 1/3 of the faculty -- to the assembled students.  Four new math teachers were introduced, and the school year started with the following line-up:
    7th grade - Ms. Gordon
    8th grade - Mr. Arandt
    9th grade - Mr. Ray
    10th grade - Mr. Nastrom
    11th grade - Mr. Naklicke

When the year ended the staffing pattern of those positions looked like this:
    7th grade - Ms. Gordon / Long-term Sub / Ms. Clark
    8th grade - Mr. Arandt / Long-term Sub / Mr. Collins / Long-term Sub / Ms. Walker
    9th grade - Mr. Ray
    10th grade - Mr. Nastrom
    11th grade - Mr. Naklicke / Long-term Sub / Mr. Chisholm / Long-term Sub

Those are facts.  It's also a fact that in August 2007, 26 MTC members started as 1st-year teachers and 24 were still there on the last day of school.  To us in MTC, those numbers (92%) suck; anyone who quits in the middle of the school year is a tremendous disappointment.  But in comparison to my department last year, which had only 40% of its original teachers at the end of the year and had lost 2 mid-year hires on top of that, 24 out of 26 isn't so bad.

In light of these numbers, I marvel at the internal worry in MTC over whether we're qualified to be there or whether we have good motives or whether we do any good at all.  Now, after a year of teaching, the answers are so obvious the questions are barely worth asking.  And a year ago, when I agreed to join MTC, I really checked at the door all reason to gaze at my own navel about these things.  I signed up to do a job and that was that.

But that's just me, and I've been wrong before.  Maybe I still should be looking deeper.  Or maybe -- probably -- almost certainly, I really believe that I can do some good in a critical needs school, and self-doubt has no place in this theater of operations.

If the history books are right, Mississippi has always been a place for people willing to make big decisions in a big hurry and back them up with whatever it takes.  I suppose that's still true.

The children of Humphreys County Junior and Senior High Schools always get an extra smile the day after Mr. Amutah takes time to partake of fried catfish at The Varsity.

080520 - Varsity

Back in the summer of '99 I had my first legal job at the Federal Public Defender in Detroit.  In contrast to popular perception, I noticed that the best lawyers tended to be the most humble and asked the most questions.  When I started working in private practice I saw the same thing: the lawyers with the corner offices and the seats on the executive board that ran the firm were the lawyers who were constantly asking questions.  They would listen to anyone, even a summer intern or a lowly first-year associate who came to them with a carefully reasoned suggestion.  They were the best because they didn't act like they were the best.

Being a second-year MTC member and ex officio coach I am thinking about those great women and men I worked for because the example they set is that no one ever stops learning.  With a year of teaching under my belt, I have experience to share with the first-years.  Not much, but more than them.  They, in turn, have no years of teaching under their belts and thus are well equipped to take the edge off my cynicism.  They are excited about teaching and trying things that I tried a year ago but gave up during the year because I was too tired or too cranky or too whatever-it-was.  I didn't realize how much bah-humbug had crept into my thinking until the first-years arrived and started walking the halls of Holly High with excitement falling out of their pockets.  It's persuaded me that the ideas I had last summer and early in the fall were good ideas even if I didn't quite know how to implement them at the time.

As for specific coaching techniques, I believe all situations are covered by these three principles:
    1. Praise as much as possible.  Everyone likes to have evidence of their goodness.
    2. If criticism is necessary, get to the point.  No one should have to speculate about what they can improve.
    3. Encourage second opinions.  Even when I know I'm right, there's a chance I might be wrong.

I played around with many things during the year when it came to assessments.  I started off loose, writing tests the morning I planned to give them so I could take into account how things had developed as I taught the lessons.  That had benefits but also the major drawback that virtually none of the questions were multiple choice.  The students disliked open-response questions, and the various evaluators from the state department and consulting firms told me in so many words that, because the state test is all multiple choice, I did my students a huge disservice by giving them anything other than multiple choice tests. 

I think the state test does my students and my school district a huge disservice by existing but that's not my decision to make and it's irresponsible of me to disadvantage my students because of my personal opinions.

So I adapted, but not all the way right away because I'm stubborn like that.  In the second nine weeks I started mixing in multiple choice questions.  That worked OK.  In the third nine weeks I implemented a plan straight from the state department's playbook: 100% multiple choice tests written before planning any of the unit's lessons.  Easy to score, tough on the students as their grades dropped.  In the fourth nine weeks, with the instruction out of the way and review for the state test as the main topic, I dispensed with tests altogether.  That worked best because the students relaxed.

All along I never really had a plan.  Since I'll be teaching Algebra I again next year, I want to be more systematic about everything, now that I have a better idea what to expect.  Here are some things I'll take into account:

 1. The window for teaching new material closes on the Friday before Presidents Day.  After that the sports tournaments start, then spring break, then Easter break, then . . .

 2. Class attendance is a form of assessment.  This past year I had exactly 33% of my Algebra I students miss at least 20% of the class days in the first semester.  Not surprisingly, all but two of them failed my class, and those two needed a lot of luck, hard work, and good will on my part to pass.  This year I think I'll tell kids who fall in that frequent-absentee category to start saving their pennies for Summer School 2009.

 3.  5 x 20 ≠ 20 x 5.  Last year I skimped on quizzes and relied on a few long tests to assess my students.  I now believe it's better to give several short assessments because the material is fresher and the students don't freak about a quiz like they do about a test.

At the end of last year's summer school, I hoped that my students and I could just get along.  I had listened all summer to the horror stories and really wanted to be different.  So I went in with rules, but they were rather general -- more like goals than objectives to borrow the terminology of curriculum development.  At the same time, I was adamantly opposed to rewards on the theory that I should not have to give a student a prize for doing what she should have been doing all along.

After three weeks of trying the gentler approach I was at the end of my rope.  I over-corrected and became oppressive.  My students behaved better but they did not like me at all.  Eventually I realized something would have to give or I wouldn't have any fun at all.  I still didn't have a reward system.

080328 - 7th graders

The single most important change in my classroom management plan came the day we returned from Thanksgiving break, when I finally caved.  I unveiled streamlined, succinct rules.  I added a consequence of putting names on the board and, more importantly, I created a reward system with tickets.  To this day I am amazed how powerful it is to put a kid's name on the board.  It seemed to work especially well for boys.  The candy worked well with everyone.

Through all of this there were a handful of students that I never got along with.  By Christmas our relationships had become so hardened that I could tell within a minute or two if I would have to put them out of class.  Looking back, I probably could have avoided a lot of the entrenched conflict early in the year but I was overwhelmed and didn't know what to do.  Next year I hope to have better luck intervening gently with the repeat offenders at an earlier stage, before every day becomes a high-noon stand-off.

In closing I would warn first years that developing a classroom management plan before teaching a day in your school is like trying to draw a detailed map of a place you've never visited.  Naturally things will have to change so the question becomes what changes to make.  I found that the feedback I got from people who observed me teaching in my classroom at my school was invaluable in deciding what adjustments to make.  It's not that other people don't have sound advice to offer, but I placed more stock in the words of people who had seen with their own eyes the crap I had to put up with.  Maybe that's just me...

Without question curriculum mapping is a useful tool.  If we could get by without a map and just wing it, that would mean we have students smart enough that we wouldn't be needed at all; someone could just give them a bunch of books and tell them when to show up for the tests.

My problem with curriculum mapping is closely related to my problem with writing detailed lesson plans: once I've taken the time to put together a coherent, structured document, I subconsciously become highly invested in following the document.  Students don't seem to have understood anything I've said all day?  Oh well, lesson plan says it's time for the independent practice.  No one scored above 60 on any of the quizzes given in this unit?  Oh well, curriculum map says it's time for a unit test tomorrow.  I'm exaggerating, but I do struggle in those directions.

Frankly, I'm not sure how to get through that problem except practice.  Vague, general pacing guides aren't worth the paper they're printed on, so that's not a solution, even if it is a compromise.  I'll just have to work at slipping and sliding enough to keep my sanity in the wonderful world of Mississippi public high school education.

On the way home from work I stop at a laundromat to wash my clothes.  I am able to do this because my laundry basket has been in my trunk for almost a week, taunting me.  

Inside, two women are complaining about how hard it is to get their husbands’ work clothes clean.  One woman, so large she sits down to fold her laundry with her thighs serving as a table, says that her husband works on a farm, and “Sometimes that man get home, he be lookin’ like he spent the day rollin’ ‘round in oil.  I sure don’t like washin’ these clothes, but nobody else is goin’ to do it.”  It turns out the other woman, rail thin, has a husband who works on the road for a local utility company; he fares just as poorly at keeping his clothes clean.  

Then I miss a transition in their conversation, and before I know it they are loudly and vehemently agreeing with each other about how people just don’t respect their elders anymore.  They go on at length about the benefits of respect (someone’s aunt just covered a $500 payment for something, just because someone has always been respectful), and the obvious dangers.  The conversation is far from over when the thin woman’s last load comes out of the dryer and is folded about 20 times faster than I can fold clothes.  She leaves, and the laundromat is silent except for the machines.  

After a couple minutes I set down my laptop and tell the woman still there that I teach school in Tchula and every day I see exactly what she was talking about -- if people don’t respect their parents, how are they going to respect anybody else?  We agree on that for a little while but it clearly doesn’t have legs as a conversation topic between us. 

So I ask where she stays.  Belzoni, she says, on Ladybird, a notoriously unpleasant street where at any given moment at least two or three of Chimaobi’s students are doing something they’re not supposed to.  

080426 - last class01

She doesn’t like it there because people are always trying to break into houses and stuff, but “when you don’t have much money and want to buy a house you take what you can get.”  After a moment she adds that she does her laundry during the week so she can be home on the weekends to watch the house because there’s always something going on outside, just people standing around selling drugs.  She doesn’t like it at all.
  
I mention that I wash clothes only at this laundromat (on Highway 49), not the other laundromat located uptown near a corner where people frequently loiter and hang out, because it seems like a lot more than washing clothes goes on at the other place.  She says it’s right of me to come to this laundromat--at the other one there are too many people wanting a dollar or fifty cents, and I never could leave my computer on a chair to check on a load of clothes.  It would be gone before I could turn around.  That’s why she comes down here whenever she has enough gas in her car to make the one-mile trip.    

As our conversation wraps up, she says, “I got to go home and cook supper now.  I don’t like doing it, but nobody else is goin' to.”  I tell her that I hope it turns out well and the food tastes good.  She waves her hand and says, “Oh, he eats pretty much whatever I cook.  He’s just like that.  That’s how I got so big, because when you be cookin’ so much like that, you got to taste the food.  When you always around food, you just get big.”

With those words hanging in the air, she opens only one of the two doors and gracefully exits with her laundry bags or any part of her massive body touching neither door or frame or anything but the sunshine.

The website has not been part of my MTC experience since I applied over a year ago.  However, during that time the website convinced me that MTC was different (better) than other similar teaching programs because content on the website was more transparent, less slick and polished than other websites (NYCTF, TFA, etc.)

The most important thing I encountered on the website was a September 2006 blog post entitled "I quit" by someone who was quitting her job and quitting MTC.  I never would have found that blog if it hadn't been linked on the website.  I kept thinking about that one blog and how impressive it is that MTC did not take down the link to the blog.  It gave me a strong positive impression of the integrity and transparency of MTC as an organization.  I like to think that in this respect I am a very typical MTC applicant, more likely to be put off by the absence of negative facts than their inclusion.  The website should feature more of that.

More specifically -- and this might get tricky -- I think the website should give some accounting for what happens to all participants over their two years.  Right now the website features the people who have stayed and lists their initial placement.  The website would be even more transparent if it kept track of participants' status, initial placement, and second-year location.  For example, right now the website indicates that Mary D. is at Leflore County and Elizabeth W. is at Jim Hill.  That has not been true for a year.  I suggest including something like this on the participants' page for each class:

       Name      Status          Initial Placement         Second Year
       AB          Active           Jackson (Jim Hill)         Jackson (Jim Hill)
       CD          Active           Drew                            Clarksdale
       GH          Quit (date)     Marshall County            n/a

It would be even better, if possible, to include a brief statement by everyone about their decisions -- quit, change schools for the second year, stay at the same school for the second year.  I would guess that almost everyone has thought at least once about quitting and/or changing schools, and MTC participants are sufficiently literate to generate thoughtful copy worthy of inclusion on a recruiting website, even if the thoughts included some negativity.

Over the break I read the recommended book Lanterns on the Levy by William Percy. 

It was an emotional, challenging process for me.  On one hand, Mr. Percy writes beautifully in a style long out of fashion, his words conveying people and places, not abstractions.  Also, it doesn't hurt that many of my life experiences, prior to teaching, run parallel to his, albeit on a less grand scale.  On the issue of race, however, my revulsion overwhelmed my admiration and I read long passages muttering, "you son of a bitch".

The most painful section of the book for me was Mr. Percy's depiction of listening to his father and other men, the writer's self-described "heroes", spend hours discussing the affairs of the day.  It's a fabulous passage touching on the universal experience of remembering with reverence the people we listened to as small children who knowingly or not made us much of what we are today.

Then comes Mr. Percy's aside that these same men stole the ballot boxes during Reconstruction and otherwise led the local effort to restore white supremacy.  Mr. Percy shares this detail with all the shame of someone describing how his father changed a tire on a family vacation.  It needed to be done, and that was it.

I was stunned.  It's one thing to be alive and drive around and see and experience America's racial problems on a daily basis.  It's different to read it in a book so well-written that every word takes life.  As Barack Obama has pointed out, words do have meaning, and when artfully strung together can move just about anything.

A favored tactic for diverting attention from racial tension is to describe the problem as economic, not racial.  Mr. Percy never asserts that his heroes acted from economic motivations because economic actors are presumed to act rationally, and there was nothing rational about what those men did.   At least not if we believe Mr. Percy's later assertion that after the war plantation owners lost what they had left, and spent their lives taking care of helpless former slaves, as he described it.  What rational person would enter that contract?

Similarly, what rational community, losing jobs and people every year, would persist in maintaining two separate school systems when it can't afford even one?  It makes no sense, but that's what happens across the Delta and in many other communities where MTC places teachers. 

I believe that the legacy of legally sanctioned racism is the greatest challenge facing education in Mississippi today.  Whether in social studies or English or math or science, we stay up late and rise early to plan lessons aimed at helping our students become better thinkers, more discerning, more rational.  On the way home from delivering those lessons, we drive past rusty signs pointing the way to the corrugated tin sheds where the local white kids are going to school.  It's like living in a Franz Kafka story.

The real problem here is an unwillingness to embrace "the other".  Societies that cannot do this pay an enormous price.  For example, in the introduction to Lanterns on the Levy, Mr. Percy's nephew Walker Percy points out that the "northern liberals" detested by his uncle had fallen on hard times by 1973, largely because of their disgraceful treatment and subsequent abandonment of the southern blacks who had moved north in search of work.  Anyone willing to go to Detroit and follow Woodward Avenue from downtown all the way across the city and into the suburbs will find a metropolitan area with grit, but no soul.  White people won't go into the city anymore for anything other than sporting events unless they are crack addicts looking for a rock or teachers taking students on a field trip.  In a similar vein, Vienna was a cross-cultural marvel throughout the 19th century, but the southeastern Europeans disappeared after the World War I, and the Jews 25 years later.  Now it's just a stuffy German city that happens to be in Austria.  The list could go on endlessly.

This email is already excessively long, but I feel very strongly that any discussion of what's wrong with education in Mississippi must begin with a discussion of how this happened -- who did it, and why (hint: it wasn't economic).