I walk in the classroom exactly at 1:08 with my water bottle full. “Grab a copy of Old Man and the Sea and turn to page 99″. The class quickly does so –  a feat that has taken a full school year of expectations setting and reprimands for off-task behavior. No one groans, no one begins a side-conversation, no one  is blaring Weezy through their overly expensive Beats headphones. This makes me euphoric.

I begin to read aloud the section of the book where Santiago begins sailing home after catching his Marlin. I ask a few analysis questions as I read, which the students quickly answer after a long year of prodding and modeling of analytical reading.I drop off at the line about the sharks coming and let the students read it themselves. I then read Hemingway’s masterful description of a Mako shark, with its finger like teeth in eight rows, then show them a horrific picture of the beautiful, terrifying Mako shark on the overhead projector. Some ask a few questions about the Mako shark, genuinely interested.

I then tell them to read fifteen pages, and come up a with a “stump the teacher” quiz question from their reading. Creating these questions solidifies their comprehension, but they don’t realize this, as they relish the opportunity to be smarter about the book than me in front of the whole class.

As the students begin silently reading, I come back to take attendance. The windows are open and I hear sirens and other city noises down the south Federal section of Denver that I have come to love as a home.

I begin to get overly sentimental about the neighborhood. The otherworldly authentic Vietnamese and Mexican food, the charming beaters with big rims and bigger stereos, the kids in Lincoln hoodies at the bus stops wearing Jordans, the maddening traffic that is routinely stopped by crossing pedestrians and lumbering busses and people driving 20 mph in a 45 mph zone.

This is all representative of the strong connection I have made with not just my school, but this community. A community I never would have known if my life had gone as planned and I ended up as some ad guy living in a homogenous neighborhood.

Loving is much different than liking, and there have been too many days of pain, stress, and frustration at Lincoln for me to say I like it, but I can easily say I love it.

I will head to business school next year, and I’m scared that life will become homogenous again. Rap music, Jordans,  and snapbacks have cemented themselves as important artifacts in my life of this experience. I don’t think I can ever truly explain the transformation of understanding that this experience has had for me, and sometimes J.Cole and even Waka Flocka are the only voices of understanding. I don’t know if the people I’ll interact with in the future will ever truly get that.

That is why, in the last three weeks of my life as a teacher, I am trying my hardest to love and appreciate all that is in this teeming, outwardly struggling yet inwardly amazing school. The 500 students and football players I’ve spent 100s of hours with have impacted me more than they will ever know, and I will  miss them so much.

Maybe the future will hold a return to this environment, but until then, I’m just gonna enjoy reading Hemingway with the sounds of a spring city coming through the windows.

….

Growing up, I always thought failing was the worst possible thing that could happen. With failure comes shame, feelings of inadequacy, and a nuclear bomb to self-confidence. When I had the ball stolen from me in a basketball game, when I made a conversation with a cute girl extremely awkward, when I would hurt those I thought were closest too me, I felt like I was worthless.

This mindset instilled in me a tendency to take a cautious route rather than a risky route. While this decision enabled me to succeed on a moderate level, it prevented me from taking enough risks to achieve things that wouldn’t be possible with only caution.

When I was a senior in college, I was part of a senior project that was receiving a failing grade midway through the semester. I had never failed a class before, and here I was staring down the possibility of failing my senior capstone project. I was almost paralyzed by my fear of failing.

I distinctly remember talking to my dad on a Sunday afternoon about the project and the extreme amount of stress it was causing me. He shocked me when he said, “If you fail, it’s ok.” Everything in my body reeled at this statement. Failing was not OK! I had high standards! He had high standards for me! However, the longer I thought about it, the more I realized how empowering those words were. “If you fail, it’s ok.” If I truly worked at something and put my best effort in, it was ok to fail. With that empowerment, I was able to approach the project with a new sense of confidence, and eventually the idea that I could fail pushed me to succeed.

I’m teaching The Old Man and The Sea currently, and the story centers on a poor old man who catches the fish of his life, only to have it destroyed by sharks before he could bring it home. Despite not having anything to show for his hard work, the old man falls asleep with a sense of peace in the last page of the book.

This presents a poignant message to both my students and I. Happiness doesn’t stem from success. Instead, we can find solace in the fact that we tried our best, even if we did not succeed.

My students are terrified of failing. They are so terrified of doing something wrong, or being confused, or looking stupid, that they usually decide to forego doing any work at all. That way, they can avoid the pain that comes from being told that they didn’t get it, or the work is inadequate. One of the biggest missions in my classroom is to foster an embrace of failure, not from laziness, but from hard work and risk. When failure becomes an option, then students can take risks, learn from their mistakes, and actually learn. When failure is not an option, as every cliched movie general and coach has said, students leer away from challenges and the risk of failure.

While I try to instill this mindset into my students, I need to keep developing it in myself. One of the most beatiful parts of Old Man and The Sea is after the protagonist arrives on shore, with nothing but a carcass of the beautiful fish he caught to show for his work, he immediately begins planning for the next day, using his knowledge of his last failed adventure.

I fail a lot as a teacher. I don’t design lessons right, I have typos on quizzes, and I break promises to my students. One of the most crushing ways I fail is in relationships with my students. I don’t always have the maturity or patience I need with my students, and sometimes, when I am frustrated or disenchanted, I say things that cause a lot more harm than the intended effect of motivating my students to do better. This eats at me, and I can let it consume me when i have a failed interaction with my kids.

Like The Old Man, the most important thing I can do after failing is go back into the sea and try again; my failure giving me another modicum of wisdom for the next time.

I hope you figure out a way to embrace failure today.

My students need this time, because most of them have had very little experience using word-processing software and their experience in this class is invaluable.

The printer runs out of paper, so I ask the lab tech for some more paper. She tells me curtly that she does not have any. I then run up to my room and take out my personal supply of paper so my students can get their work printed.

After lunch, I receive this heart-warming email.

“TEACHERS,

IF YOU ARE HAVING YOUR CLASS PRINT, PLEASE PROVIDE PAPER. I APOLOGIZE BUT WE DO NOT KEEP PAPER STOCKED IN LABS.

EACH TEACHER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR PROVIDING THEIR OWN PAPER FOR THEIR CLASS. SORRY!!”

Thanks. I will make sure to provide my own paper to the lab even though the school gets 4 million in funding. Thanks for all the help.

p.s. Can we chill on the all-caps? That is stressing me out.

Love love love high schooler logic.

Photo from Denverpost.com

Today it is -17 in Denver. This is without windchill. Every school district in the Denver metro area is closed. Except for DPS.

Every morning on the drive to work, I see kids at bus stops wearing jeans and hooded sweatshirts, even on the coldest of days.

DPS sent out the following warning.
“Parents are being reminded to dress students warmly, in heavy layers, limiting skin exposure as much as possible.  “

The median family income at my school is less than $35,000. These children don’t exactly have Mountain Hardware Puffies and North Face boots. Look at the picture above and tell me, do these kids look properly dressed for -16?

One of my students walked into class this morning, apologizing for being late. I told him it was no big deal, then asked him how he got here. He walked, obviously. No hat, no gloves. However, he told me he had his hood, so obviously it was no big deal.

Furthermore, in some half-hearted attempt at sympathy, the district has implemented a “modified attendance and tardie policy”, which asks teachers to excuse any absences.

What is the point of being in school? There are five or six kids in every class and our principal told us to modify our lesson plans since we would have so many absences.

From superintendent Tom Boasberg,
“Our schools also serve tens of thousands of children who come from low-income households. Schools are not only are vital places of learning for those students, but they are also in many cases the only place where these students get two free hot meals a day, health care, counseling and support services. We felt it was the right thing to do to give our parents the option of sending their kids to school.”

Oh, so we are just babysitters for parents who don’t have anywhere else to send their kids? Also, how come there is no mention of other low-income districts that are closed? Or the fact that we had a snow day yesterday, and didn’t have to babysit?

Could it be that the district gets some sort of bonus if they don’t reach a threshold of sick days? hmmmm…

My weeks have been increasingly busy, due in large part to a GMAT class I am taking that requires 6-8 hours of homework a week as well as a three hour long class once a week.

This weeks stress was compounded by a 3 hour TFA seminar, district achievement tests being graded, a midyear conference with the principal, and my voice being gone for the fourth straight week.

I’ve been teaching my classes about evidence for thesis statements in persuasive essays as well as the difference of simple and compound sentences. I’ve thrown a lot of information at them and pushed them hard, which means they are tired and impatient, and I am mentally exhausted from explaining and trying to keep them engaged through difficult lessons.

With all of this in the back of my mind, I was approached for help by a student after the last period of class. He is a student who is on a low level and has figured out how to game the system in classes. He is respectful and pretends to know what is going on, but hasn’t handed in homework or done well on assessments. He has refused to ask for extra help, probably because he feels like it would be another check of humiliation in a difficult school history.

This semester, he has really built up his confidence, and is starting to ask questions and attempt the homework. Because of this, his grade has skyrocketed. All of this is important, because when he asks me for help with his homework at the end of the day, it is a rare opportunity for me to give him the remediation he needs.

The assignment is one of the most difficult i’ve given..students are supposed to create an anecdote, hypothetical situation, and an analogy for a thesis statement. I looked at his homework, and saw that he had awesome examples of hypothetical situations and anecdotes, but was struggling with the analogy.

“An analogy is taking an unfamiliar idea, and connecting it to a familiar idea”

He nods, but I can see he is lost. His thesis is that uniforms should be enforced at my school.

“What happens when someone can’t afford to get cool clothes?”
“They get made fun of” he admits

“ok..so think of another situation that is similar to that, and compare it to it”

“What do you mean?”

“Ok, lets pretend that I’m the reader, and i have no experience with uniforms or kids making fun of each other for their clothes. However, I have experienced people making fun of others for having cheap cars”

“So I just explain that kids make fun of each other for their clothes?”

“No..you need to compare it to something that the reader is already familiar with.”

…and this conversation went on for 4 or 5 minutes. I’m getting to the point of some cop-out statement, like “i”ll show you some examples tomorrow”, or “just hand in what you have right now”. He’s getting frustrated, and I can see all the years of frustration and disappointment in school creeping into his eyes.

I give it one last explanation, and his eyes get big and a smile happens on his phase. A CFL popping up over his head couldn’t be more obvious. He gets it. He starts to write furiously, comparing being made of for having cheap clothes to being made fun of for having a cheap car.

It’s a weak analogy, but it is a start.
…..

Yesterday, I met with my principal for a midyear conference. After discussions about classroom data and the next semester, he asked me what my plans are for next year.

I’m not prepared for this question.

“I’m planning on coming back next year. Teaching these kids means a lot to me, and I want to do it even more effectively”.

He is relieved and excited, saying that he is glad I’m coming back.

After leaving the meeting, I am a little shocked about my statement. The shocking thing was that I truly meant everything I said. Teaching these students does mean a lot to me, and I’m going to miss it a lot, warts and all when I leave.

Seeing a struggling student “get it” at the end of the day only enforced my belief that I think I am doing the right thing.

Apparently, newfound philanthropist Mark Zuckerberg is the newest expert on education. (What makes him an expert? The fact that he has money, I suppose.)  His ideas are disappointingly mundane and poorly investigated. (Charter schools, performance based pay, etc.)

This article points out some flaws in his logic, and then presents several more creative approaches from people who actually have some experience in education.  It was inspiring to me..check it out.

http://vox.fastcompany.com/magazine/152/how-to-spend-100-million-to-really-save-education.html

How would YOU spend 100 mil to fix education?

I’m sorry I’ve been so terrible at updating this blog. With the new year comes new motivation, so I will be more disciplined in my writing.

The second year of teaching is so much easier than the first year. I have a lot more confidence, I feel a lot more skilled at explaining lessons, and most importantly, I’ve developed a much more relaxed atmosphere in my classroom with far less negative consequences. This has resulted in a lot more positive, motivated attitude from my students.

Anyway, all has been a struggle still, but a more meaningful struggle with many more positive moments to outweight the negative.

All that to say, I learned this morning that it is dangerous to play two truths and a lie with your students. (two truths and a lie is an icebreaker game where people say two truths about themselves, or in this case their break, and one lie, and the others have to guess which is a lie).

I found out that, over break, my students:

Broke a window in an abandoned house

Got drunk on New Years

Shot a dog

Ran over a dog

Got into numerous car accidents

Saw people getting killed in Mexico

And that was just advisement hour…

The joys of public school