NAILED IT!

Yesterday I did a lesson on the importance of city grids and how much you can tell about a city just by looking at a satellite image of it. We talked about the characteristics of the old and new sections, rich and poor districts, business section, and so on. Then we spent the next part of the class looking at satellite images, using Google Maps, of fifteen different cities from around the world including: New York, Boston, Chicago, LA, London, Paris, Dublin, Sydney, Tokyo, Beijing, Manila, Johannesburg, Reykjavik, Wellington, and Rio de Janeiro.

But in any case, I had an informal observation yesterday too where my department head snuck in the room and observed me for about 15 minutes. I didn't even see her come in, it was just all of a sudden she was in the back of the room taking notes. I thought it went well, some parts were a little shaky but all in all I was pleased.

I just saw my department head this morning when I walked in and she asked how we wanted to go about "debriefing." I told her whatever works best for her was fine and right then and there she started discussing my lesson in the middle of the main office (no one else was there yet - it was about 6:30am). But she loved it, she said I was animated, I did a great job getting the kids to participate, she thought it was really well done including my Prezi and she appreciated the global perspective on how all cities develop in the same manner and have similar characteristics.

It was a very validating, although brief experience for me, this was the first real time I was observed and critiqued outside of student teaching or the current program I'm in. I'm not saying that those observations/evaluations haven't been beneficial, but at some point those experiences have been more about so focussed on a person trying to be a teacher and learning about what that means (if that makes sense). This was one of the first times I was evaluated for being exactly who I was, without any preconceived notion that "I'm in the process of figuring this out."

It was just nice to be seen and evaluated as a real teacher, not just some form of student teacher.

Continued ...

• Citizenship Test results 

We took the citizenship test once more this year, and my students surprisingly did much better than last year. In all of my five classes, I only had roughly 15 students "fail" the citizenship test. One student got 100% and I had another student who is an exchange student from Thailand score a 58%. Sure he technically failed, but he did really well in terms of US history and government for someone who moved her last August.

• University of Maryland application

One of my students in study hall was trying to fill out her application to the University of Maryland. The school isn't on the Common App or something, because its questions were kind out out there and all over the place. Yet, still hilarious. It didn't help that my student was writing ridiculous answers. For example:

1. What place on earth do you want to visit most? --- Cleveland, Ohio 

2. What was the most exciting thing you did last Tuesday? --- Went home and took a nap

• Mayflower shaped Thanksgiving basket

Every year the school does a Thanksgiving drive for needy families. To go along with the donations of food, each homeroom decorates their baskets as part of a competition. This year, the homeroom I help cover placed second in the competition because a student built the Mayflower out of wood to decorate the basket - it was pretty awesome.

• Teaching about slums

Last week we covered slums and the development of cities as immigrants came in waves. We talked about Five Points, New York and what that was like in the mid 1800s. (I feel like I have more to say about this but I'm completely spacing)

• City Project --- to be continued

COMING SOON:

There will soon be a blog update about the following:

• Citizenship Test results 
• University of Maryland application
• Mayflower shaped Thanksgiving basket
• Teaching about slums
• City Project

I just don't feel like typing it out now.

Until then.

New Colossus

For homework, my students had to read the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus about the Statue of Liberty -- the poem with the line, "give me your tired, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."

I gave them a quick 5 question quiz on the poem (I had warned them yesterday).
Question #1: What is the title of the poem?
Question #2: Who is the author of the poem?

You have no idea how many kids had absolutely no clue what the answer to either of those questions was.

Recommendations update

Completed: 27
Not done yet: 2




awesome.

Gorilla Glue

When talking about reasons why immigrants came to the US, one of the students said escaping from a natural disaster is a reason to immigrate to the US. So I asked what is an example of one of these natural disasters. Right away a student's hand shoots up and she yells, "HURRICANE KATRINA!" Yes, that is why people immigrated to the US, to escape the hurricane.

In a different class we started talking about how to make glue (it worked - somehow) and I commented that they used to use horses. One student then asked if gorrilla glue comes from monkeys, my response was that crazy glue comes from the criminally insane. A different student then asked about glue-sticks and I knew it was time to change the subject.

Also, yesterday the kids took a Twitter Quiz on Native Americans. I had some fun with some of tweets and user names. Like General Custer's user name was "NeverStandingAgain" because he had his "last stand" at the Battle of Little Bighorn, and Sitting Bull who was Hunkpapa Lakota had the user name "iloveitwhenyoucallmehunkpapa" sadly only a handful of the kids got the Biggie reference.

Debate!

Debates today in three of my classes. Overall, they went really well. In my first class, things got heated. Kids were yelling back and forth, throwing around statistics to aid their arguments, and bashing each others' argument at the same time. I had to force them to take a breather at least three times just to calm everyone down.

My next class went well too. Low key, but the major points were there. In my third class, kids started to get heated again but the surprising part was that the loudest kids in the debate were the kids who hardly ever spoke in class to this point.

Fourth period we played a review game where the students had to guess important people/events/places from our Native Americans chapter by only being able to give three words worth of clues. The best was one kid who for George Custer just yelled, "Horse-Wall!" and for Sitting Bull he said "Perching Bovine." Whatever gets the right answer I guess.

"What are we doing today?"

So not having the skype chat really messed me up today for some periods. I was supposed to watch the video of the skype chat in four of my classes today, but no video led to some issues.

In three of the classes I handled it well. We went over the homework in full detail, I brought in different crafts and objects from the reservation to show off and pass around, and we began hashing out the major points in a class debate that was going to happen the next time the class met.

In my fourth class, things did not go as well. This class met an extra time last week so they already went over that homework, already had the class debate (which went really well), and did not have anything due today. I couldn't give them their chapter quiz early because (1) they already had a pop quiz this chapter - and this was a big quiz any way, and (2) I didn't get my copies back from the people who photocopy everything for the teachers yet.

So in class, I talked about what happened with the skype chat and why it didn't save (or evaporated is more like it - it legitimately just disappeared as the computer was trying to save the recording), we talked about the major points of the skype chat and how it went in general, I passed around the crafts and objects and we talked about them for a little while, and we went over what the quiz would be on. Then came the dreaded question from a student, "so what are we doing today? just this." To answer the question directly, Yes. But I couldn't say that to them. So I strung them along for a little while and talked about other things, but they could see I didn't really have anything planned for today.

That was fun. But then they started asking questions about the notes and I was able to use the next few minutes in class being articulate and knowledgeable for the students - it proved I wasn't a complete idiot.

We'll see how tomorrow goes.

Skype Chat recap

My plan was to skype with my friend's 6th grade class from a reservation in South Dakota. Using SMART notebook, thank you school for downloading it onto my computer, I was going to record the chat and show it to my other 4 classes that didn't get to be part of it in the first place. Well, to cut the story short - at the end of the chat I went to hit save and my computer decided "delete" was a better option. So there is no copy of the skype chat out there - sorry other classes of kids.

In any case, the chat itself went well. You had my 22 juniors and my friend's 8 sixth graders, but it went well enough. Right when the skype chat turned on, you could hear her kids yell, "wait, why are they all white?" Awkward.

The questions both sides were asking were pretty good. Basic ones like "what do you do in your spare time?" "how far away from your school do you live?" and "what's your family like?" were able to provide a lot of info about both sides.

There was one kid in my friend class that would answer every question by first saying "shiiiiiiiiit" like he was wicked cool. My kids kept turning back and looking at me, "did he just swear? I think he just did it again ... Wow, this kid just won't stop ... This is hilarious!"

Skype Chat

No real funny stories or experiences have happened lately. I'm in the middle of my Native American unit as of now and it''s going well. We just started going over the Reservation system as of the 21st Century with a specific look at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota (where I used to work). We've read articles, watched videos (20/20 did a Special about the Rez on October 14th), looked at pictures, and I told about my experiences.

Tomorrow, in one of my classes, I'm skyping with my friend who teaches on a the Pine Ridge Reservation. My juniors will be asking her 6th graders questions and vice versa. Today in class, we went over the appropriate and inappropriate questions they could ask. You can't just ask a 6th grader "what's poverty like?" straight out. Instead, what we covered today, was how to get answer you want but by asking the correctly phrased questions. For example, if you ask "how many people do you live with?" it is not intrusive, inappropriate, or rude. But you would be able to find out a lot about a child's home life if they answer that they live with over 10 other people.

In any case, we'll see how it goes. My students seem really excited about it. But who knows, they might get "stage fright" and not ask any questions tomorrow.

Random Assortment of Stories

 “I kind of just grabbed it and it was in my hand, so I just went back to my seat” – Student in the cafeteria

I started to overhear two students talking about how weird it is to go to a Catholic school. One girl said this high school is the first Catholic school she’s gone to and the guy with her started to say that he’s not even Catholic; he was Protestant and didn’t understand the “rituals” involved with Mass.

GIRL: “do you still receive the Eucharist at Mass?”

BOY: “I don’t wanna look unclean by not going up.”

GIRL: “seriously, what do you do?”

BOY: “the first time I went up, I just kind of give them a head nod and grabbed it, I didn’t know you had to do all this weird stuff [does the sign of the cross].”

GIRL: “did you say Amen?”

BOY: “no, I kind of just grabbed it and it was in my hand, so I just went back to my seat. Then it got really awkward, people started to ask me, ‘why do you still have the body of Christ in your hands?’ and then a teacher yelled at me. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Also today I had two guys point to their crotches while talking to me. Why? I don’t know either.

GUY 1: “so I got poison oak this weekend, all over. On my face, on my arms, and … [points to his crotch and makes an awkward expression]”

GUY 2: talking about a girl on an opposing volleyball team, “yeah she was really good at volleyball, she could jump high and everything but she hit me in the crotch [points] right when I walked in after she spiked the ball over the net so I didn’t like her.”

High school kids are great.

This morning, I had a girl from one of my classes run up to me in the hallway, “Chad [a classmate] got in a car accident!” she then proceeded to keep walking by, I asked if he was ok, “oh yeah, he’s fine. Whatever.” She was obviously concerned. 

Tone

Sometimes when I teach I try to create a tone for the class. As lame, cheesy, and stupid as that sounds. Today we are learning about the Massacre of Wounded Knee. I could easily have just lectured the information and told them exactly what happened, but that doesn’t do it justice. So instead, I try to create a tone for the room. On Friday I did my first run of this lesson and I’m doing it four more times today. I shut off the lights, closed the curtains, projected a picture of a snowy hill and valley and took a seat at the front of the class. I never normally sit down when I teach, and most times it freaks me out if I do. But for this lesson, I simply want to tell my students a story. I slowly get their attention and begin the story. It’s a depressing and kind of heavy story about the massacre of the Lakota tribe at the site of Wounded Knee Creek. In total, close to 300 Lakota men, women, and children died. I told them the story of the events of the day, about the three day blizzard that followed soon after and the mass grave that was dug after that.

The class was silent, we finished with fifteen minutes still left in the period, but I knew it wouldn’t be wise to keep going. I decided to stop and just answer questions knowing how heavy the class had been. The kids (juniors and seniors) looked a little stunned, they were silent and seemingly afraid to be the first person to make a noise. Eventually one girl asked a question which started a good discussion in class.

The bell rang and instead of them jumping up and sprinting out of the room, the casually took their time. As depressing a class it was, I know my students won’t forget it. They may forget the names of the people and the facts of what happened, but they’ll always remember the tone & mood of the room and the weight of the story of the Massacre of Wounded Knee.

Tatanka Sauce

While teaching about the importance of the buffalo (tatanka in Lakota), a student asks, "is it true that you grind up the bones of a buffalo to make buffalo sauce? And what part of the buffalo is the wing?"

Idiots.

Wall o' Horses

Today we learned about the Battle of Little Bighorn and went over Custer and everything like that. One of the weirdest aspects of the battle happened towards the end when Custer was grasping at straws in order to defend himself. Having nothing for protection to use as cover, Custer actually ordered his men to shoot their horses and make a wall to hide themselves. I tried to get across to my students how ridiculous of an idea this was and I think it worked. In any case, one of my classes just kept referring to "horse wall" throughout the rest of the class.

At lunch, a science teacher came up to me and asked how my day was going (seemingly out of nowhere) I said it was fine, but she continued "some of my students couldn't help but talk about your class during mine. Something about a wall of horses? I don't know what they has to do with marine biology but they thought it was essential to share with the rest of the class."

Oh horse wall.

Pirate Ship

I tried the "Reservation System" with a different class of mine. The only other class I tried it with. It didn't go the way I wanted, they loved it. The were pumped they got to push their desks so close together. The point was still made, they still understand the reservation system - they just have positive memories of it.

I walked past one of the kids in the hallway yesterday morning:
ZACH: Can we sit like the Great Plains again today?
ME: No sorry, not today?
ZACH: What about the Rocky Mountains?
ME: No Zach.
ZACH: Appalachian Mountains?
ME: No Zach
ZACH: Mississippi?
ME: That's not even a mountain range.
ZACH: We can twist and bend the desks like the river.
ME: No Zach.
I walk into the Main Office, Zach keeps walking down the hall. W hen I leave the office, I see Zach in the hallway walking in the other direction.
ZACH: What about a pyramid?
ME: I was waiting for you to come up with a new one, but no.
ZACH: Pirate Ship?
Me: Ok, I'll give you that one.

In any case, I guess the overall goal of having them remember the reservation system did work. The kids have been sitting with the desks all bunched together for the past three days now. We'll see how long that keeps going.