The Recruit

I've never known anyone who's gotten involved in a cult. But I'm getting that kind of vibe with one of my seniors who is planning to join the military - let's call him Pete. Pete had taken the ACT and was the only one to have also taken the SAT, and was planning to apply to college and study criminal justice, when he got a call from a recruiter. Now he's far more motivated to decrease his time running the mile than increase his chance of getting into college.

My political views aside, I actually support going into the military for some of my students. It is a great way to get job training and money for college. If that's what they want to do, I believe it is my job as the career advisor to help them do it. But something about this situation makes me nervous. Pete's gone from a kid who spends his time writing college admissions essays to one who walks around wearing Army paraphernalia and thinking about where he'd like to be based when he's not in Iraq.

The No Child Left Behind Act tied Title I funding to schools handing over students' information for military recruiting. (You can opt out, and many families do, even in my gung-ho military community.) It would be one thing if that information was going to people whose primary concern was teens' best interest, or even national security. Instead, I've learned, military recruiters get paid for filling certain quotas for certain positions, and they can use some questionable means to do so. One of my students' fathers was an Army recruiter for 30 years, and warned me not to let any student speak with a military recruiter without talking to him first.

I don't know what the recruiters say to my students, but obviously it's much cooler than what I or their parents have to say. There's nothing new about teens not wanting to listen to their parents or teachers. But still I get this cultish feeling. I'm nagged by a story of a former student who was contacted by a recruiter. The recruiter was planning to throw him a big 18th birthday party with all of his friends, but told him not to tell his parents. The idea was that they would have him sign all the papers the minute he turned 18. Long story short, a teacher found out about it and told the parents, who put the kibosh on the idea. The recruiter apparently wigged out on the kid, calling him parts of the female genitalia.

Anyway, I had a parent-teacher conference today with Pete and his dad, during which Pete said there is a "100% chance" he will go to Iraq. The parents are against it but Pete will be 18 in a few months. My concern is not to keep Pete from joining the Army, but to help him make a rational decision that will put him on a good career path and minimize his chances of injury.

Climate change made real

The school of bloggers are back from Atlanta, where we spent Thanksgiving with tons of uncles and aunts and second cousins and so forth. Being in a place with such a threatened water supply left made me acutely aware of how much water I use every hour of the day.

My Uncle Steve (the national hydrographer) and my Uncle Eddie and Aunt Paula, who used to live up there, took a trip up to Lake Lanier. The lake is a major source of water for the northern suburbs, but is said to have less than 80 days worth of water supply left. They took pictures, including this one:



It's sad that this is what it took, but I'm finally forced to think "do I REALLY need to use water right now?" each time I turn on the faucet.

Charter renewal

My school's going through its charter renewal now. Very different from the charter renewal process in New York, which was a yearlong, ulcer-inducing gauntlet for the schools I worked with there.

Our sponsor (or authorizer), the local school district, hired a team of three current and former teachers and administrators to conduct the site visit. Today, Day 1 of their two-day visit, they met with school leaders, students, and parents. After school they met with the teachers (no school leaders) and asked us some general questions about the school model. Tomorrow they will be sitting in on classes.

No one seems too concerned about the charter getting renewed. Stay tuned.

Or, as my students would probably prefer, Guns, Guns and Guns

The Global Studies class I'm team-teaching is starting to read Guns, Germs and Steel this week. I think a few kids will be okay with the reading level, but the majority will struggle. So I'm looking for some sort of teaching guide for the book -- finding nothing.

Anyone know of anything out there? Anyone ever used this book with high schoolers? Am I crazy?

One thing I did was to prepare students for some of the big themes in the book using an anticipation guide. These were the questions:

Agree/disagree: The way the world is today COULD NOT be any different than it is: history follows a set course.

Agree/disagree: It's possible that things could have worked out differently in history and our world would be a very different place.

Agree/disagree: There couldn't be a world without "winners" and "losers:" someone has to win and someone has to lose.

Agree/disagree: It's possible for the world to exist without "winners" and "losers."

Agree/disagree: A person's or group's success in life depends on genetics.

Agree/disagree: A person's or group's success in life depends on what resources they grow up with.

BTW, I know this book is problematic in many ways. But I think that it's a great entry point for advanced high schoolers into a critical understanding of history, and while the reading level is difficult, it's within their "zone of proximal development." (My, I'm going crazy with the education school lingo today!)

Yes.

Thank you for reading my mind (and posting it on the internet).

Happiness ...

... is taking a mental health day.

Trial update

We put Christopher Columbus on trial this past week. The verdict: Guilty.


Who, me?

Weekending

First of all, I have to recommend the Mill City Museum to my fellow Twin Cities social studies teachers. Small and manageable, the museum does a good job of providing a coherent (if a bit monochromatic) narrative of the city's history. I'd bring students here for examples of material culture and oral history, or for a unit on urban planning and geography.

The School of Bloggers had a lovely day walking around downtown yesterday to the museum from the central library (which I also hope to make into a field trip someday). At the museum, we found ourselves on a double date with a Minnesota Timberwolves player and his (much shorter) female companion.

Hyperbole at the World Series

Last night on FOX I heard the Red Sox announcer call John Williams "the epitome of our culture."

I like John Williams as much as anyone -- I will inevitably like a movie if he is the composer, even if it's The Patriot. But the epitome of our culture?

Sadly, I think if anything is the epitome of our culture it's FOX.

Weirdness

Usually the unsolicited emails we get at theschoolofblog AT gmail DOT com are pretty relevant to our interests. A tip of the hat to the people who troll blogs and manually enter in email addresses to send out press releases on various to-dos.

The most recent one, however, is sort of puzzling and also intriguing:

APWagner.com Announces North America’s Oldest Appliance Contest

APWagner.com, an appliance parts website, announces North America’s Oldest Appliance Contest. Visitors to the site can enter to win $15,000 in Cash and Prizes.

Buffalo, NY October 15, 2007 – APWagner.com announces North America’s Oldest Appliance Contest. Do you know of an old appliance? We want to see it!

...

North America’s Oldest Appliance Contest is a nationwide call to find the oldest appliance, working or not, in the United States or Canada. Contestants wishing to enter should send a 2 minute video of themselves and their appliance to www.apwagner.com .

The contest has six categories and each will have a winner. The grand prize winner with the Absolute Oldest Appliance will win Three Brand New Whirlpool Appliances plus $1,000 in Cash! There will also be winners for the Oldest Refrigerator, Oldest Range, Oldest Dryer and Oldest Washer.

...

For More Information:

Christine Smith

716-961-7142

Csmith@apwagner.com

www.apwagner.com

Even though this is sort of weird and random, I am actually really interested in seeing North America's oldest appliance!

Airport Airblade Air-someness

The bathrooms in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport have gotten a lot of publicity lately. (My favorite was a song Garrison Keillor sang a few weeks ago -- listen to it here, it's right after the shout-outs.)

But what the bathrooms REALLY should be famous for is having the BEST HAND DRYERS OF ALL TIME.

I have never looked forward to using a bathroom hand dryer before. Now I'm considering taking a trip down to the airport just to use it.

Encounter

So in my Early American History class we're putting Columbus on trial. I got the idea from the teacher I worked with last year and also from the book Rethinking Columbus, but I'm still finding myself making everything up from scratch. So any resources you all might have would be very welcome!

Last class I had the defense and prosecution teams come up with a list of witnesses. The jury members each had to come up with an identity (past, present, real, fictional, etc). Before they did that I had them examine these images:






(actually it was a different illustration from this same book)

I had planned to hold the debate ON Columbus Day (which we do not have off), but like everything else that plan ganged aft agley.

P.S., in my insomnia I finally got around to updating my blogroll! Apologies to anyone I've left off.

Pence saved are pence earned

I just bought the new Radiohead album for ₤0.65.

I feel like I'm taking part in a big Econ 1 experiment.

National Anti-Quartering Association

Gotta find some way to work this article into a lesson ...

History alive

I'm team teaching a course in which the students are looking at epidemics in history (bubonic plague, smallpox, TB, etc), leading up to an intensive study of the current AIDS crisis. This was all going to lead up to an event called Peace Jam in the spring, where students would have the opportunity to meet Desmond Tutu.

Now it's not clear if he's going to be able to speak. He's been uninvited from the University of St. Thomas, where Peace Jam is scheduled to take place.

Tutu was uninvited because of this:

The mention of Hitler in the speech comes during a section in which Tutu urged the audience not to assume that the status quo lasts forever, and in which he urged those listening to challenge to “Jewish lobby” in the United States. “People are scared in this country [U.S.], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful, very powerful. Well, so what? This is God‘s world. For goodness sake, this is God‘s world. We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end, they bit the dust.”

I'd be REALLY bummed if the students did not get to meet Tutu. But as a Jewish person with extremely conflicted feelings toward Israel, I'm finding this very hard to discuss with my students.

I am in complete agreement with Tutu (aside from his equating the pro-Israel lobby with the "Jewish lobby"). I find it to be a serious problem the way all conversation shuts down the moment it heads toward a certain comparison. I was once at a training session with a horrible organization called "The David Project" whose mission is to teach adults to work with students to reframe Israel as "David" and the Palestinians as "Goliath," rather than the other way around. At the training they went over how to teach students the "red lines" when it comes to discussing Israel, and what to do when another student crosses the line. Needless to say, one of those lines is any comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany. I was repulsed and offended by their curriculum.

So I support Tutu and oppose his St. Thomas ban on many levels, personal and professional. But when it came up in class today, I became very defensive.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the other day a student at my school called a (non-Jewish) teacher a "fucking Jew," or that the kids have been known to use the phrase "That's so Jewish" (part of the South Park Syndrome). For some unknown reason, this brings out my defensive pro-Israel reflex.

Anyway, this is something I'm going to have to figure out if I am going to be a social studies teacher. Why am I as critical of Israel as can be when I'm among other Jewish people, but defensive and weird when I'm not?

Discipline part II

Thanks, Ms. Frizzle (or Ms. V) for the encouragement!

Last week was exhausting -- I didn't feel good about any of my classes. I felt like I had been teaching my students from one end of a long tunnel and none of it had reached them on the other side. It took me a while to figure out that part of the problem was classroom management. Even though they weren't being blatantly disruptive, the students weren't really paying attention.

So last night I started reading this book my mom gave me, Positive Classroom Discipline. The first couple of chapters are basically a Klutz Guide to classroom management. It goes through, step by step, how to use body language to communicate to students that you "mean business." There are detailed diagrams of teachers in 80s clothing and various serious faces and poses.

I was so relieved to learn that what I'd heard in grad school -- that if your curriculum is good enough, you won't have discipline problems -- is a myth. And it was really illuminating to see how my body language (smiling, averting my eyes, rushing around, etc) has been working against me.

So today I tried an experiment. I was at the door when the kids came into class giving them immediate instructions. I had them rearrange the tables and gave them new seating assignments. I stopped class whenever someone was not paying attention and practiced my serious face. It was EXHAUSTING. But the students in my classes were much more engaged.

They definitely chafed a bit at the new level of structure. We'll see how they react to day 2 of the experiment.

Discipline.

I have a problem with it.

Happy

Ms. Frizzle is back!!

Toolbox

With a week of teaching classes under my belt, I have learned a thing or two. One of the biggest things I learned this week was that, even though I'm tens of thousands of dollars in debt to Citibank, I am still very, very glad I got that master's in teaching. When I decided not to apply for emergency certification programs it was with the knowledge that I am a very, very bad improviser. I am still a very bad improviser. But now, when I don't know what to do, phrases like "sourcing heuristic" and "mentor text" come floating to my brain. I can also pull out some good sound bites from my student teaching cooperating teachers, like "I'm sorry, Kendra, can you repeat what you just said so that Joshua [pointing to inattentive or chatting student] can hear you?" Another thing that comes from student teaching is the assurance that even though things may be frustrating for a while, after some point I will love -- really love -- my students, and everything will just seem so much easier.

A goal for this year is to get better at thinking on my feet, rather than striking a doe-in-headlights pose when something foils my well-laid plans.

Kids and race

This article from The Nation about the "Jena Six," a group of African American students in Louisiana who face trial for retaliating against a student who made a racial slur, comes out at a really interesting time for me. (Disclosure: the writer of this article, Mark Sorkin, is my soon-to-be brother-in-law! He keeps the world up to date on juvenile justice issues on his blog.)

Last year, having only worked with New York City high school kids, I would not have believed teenagers capable of making the racial slurs that prompted the reaction of the Jena Six. After today, I can believe it. I can see something like this happening at my school.

I don't think my white students would ever intentionally make a racial slur against a peer. And I don't think that when they hung nooses from the "white-only tree," the members of the Jena High School rodeo team thought they were being racist. I think they thought they were making a joke.

How did these kids get to the point where they thought this extremely ugly act was an acceptable form of humor? One side of it is what I think of as the South Park Syndrome. Yes, I know how old-fogeyish it sounds, but I think shows like South Park and The Family Guy that make viewers laugh with the shockingly taboo are shaping how many teens in this country think about race -- in a very negative way.

Take a look at this clip from Family Guy, and if you want to be even more depressed, scroll down and take a look at how YouTube viewers responded to it. To me, the leap isn't so far from laughing at Kermit with a shotgun to hanging up nooses on a tree.

The other side of it is the fact that our students know this is supposed to be funny, but they don't really have enough knowledge to understand why it's so shocking. It's on TV, so it's okay to laugh at it. Maybe they have a little twinge of discomfort, like this kid, but they don't understand why this kind of humor is hurtful and harmful.

So the onus is on social studies teachers, I believe, to not only teach kids the historical context for these things, but also to give students the skills and safe space to really be able to think and speak about race.

Now the question is, HOW do we do that?