What happens when you don't have planning periods and there are students in your classroom until 5 or 6 every night

...You send out long-ass emails where you break down common unit planning...

I'm thinking I'd rather get it done and over with before the students have a long break at the semester. I really liked how Fences worked out - finished the book fairly quickly and then did work on it after that, dividing the unit nicely into a "reading section" and a "writing section" of the unit. I also really like how the three assessments have worked out. I basically have three grades for the 9th graders this quarter (and some classwork stuff) and it's so much more manageable than tens of little assignments.

I'm passing out the books tomorrow and we will start reading it together in class for the first few days. I really want to write my unit tonight and give them a calendar. I'm thinking of having my first quiz on Friday the 18th, Chapters 1-10, (parent/teacher conferences, and I'll grade them in class and be able to show parents the kids' scores), and we'll do much of the reading together in class. That's 80 pages.

I think I'll assign another short section for a quiz the next week (Wednesday? I hate to do that because of kids taking off, but Tuesday is the assemblies), maybe Ch. 11-15. I'll assign a little bit over break (Ch. 16-20), and then we'll finish it the week of Jan. 4th upon our return. The Jefferson chapter is a tough chapter and we'll rejoin up for that and have it finished then. I think that's better than spreading it across midterm week. Then, we'll focus on the letter and any other final ideas we have upon the return to 2nd semester.

This is something I'm throwing out there to you guys. I just think that spreading the book over the semester break makes it seem burdensome to the kids and make it seem like it's going on forever. I didn't get those complaints with Fences because I think we set up the unit well.

I spoke with __ today and I agree with her that we're literary analysis-ing these kids to death too early in our program and that we're sucking the joy out of reading and they're forgetting they need to respond to books in an honest fashion in order learn how to read better. I'm not sure what a good thing for them to be working on during the reading of the book will be. Perhaps journaling? I like our idea of writing a letter at the end of the unit but what will they be doing during it? (instead of the dialectical journals) I'm going to go through my materials tonight and think about that. I think I have a good student journal activity for ALBD.

In summation, I'm thinking about this:

Friday, Dec. 18: Ch. 1-10

Wednesday, Dec. 23: Ch. 11-15

Monday, Jan. 4: Ch. 16-21

Friday, Jan. 8: End

I like to be flexible, though, so I could change. I don't think it matters that we align reading schedules, just goals and common assessments.

Thanks Curtis

The Tigers traded my favorite two players today. In particular, they traded my favorite Tiger of all time, Curtis Granderson.

It'll probably be a good trade in the end. Curtis never could hit lefties very well and we got at least one stud player, Max Scherzer from Arizona.

But when you follow someone in the minor leagues, then cheer your heart and soul for them for seven years, and then they're traded, well, wow that kind of sucks. I'm in grieving mode right now. I think there are good baseball reasons for making this trade, but I still wish Granderson could be a Trammell/Whitaker type who played his whole career with one type.

Random thoughts about A Lesson Before Dying

A colleague of mine is starting off the study of A Lesson Before Dying with a research project about Capital Punishment. I'm okay with that, because kids need to learn how to research. But I have issues with thinking of this book in terms of capital punishment. I mean, that's certainly something that happens in it, but it seems to me that it's more about what a person does when all the cards are stacked against him, when there is a mountain of injustice in his path.

In fact, I've gotten in arguments about whether the book was about racism or not. Dana Huff, my favorite teacher blogger, has a webquest for students, all pointing them to sites about capital punishment and Jim Crow and racism. But, I wonder, is that what this book is about?

Jefferson makes a poor decision and gets in the car with his two drunk friends. His two drunk friends hold up a liquor store and shoot the storeowner, who shoots them back. All three are dead. Jefferson is in shock, and decides to steal the money out of the cash register and take a shot of whiskey to calm himself down. When the next people come into the store, he is stealing the money and drinking whiskey. Forget the racist 1940s south: that circumstantial evidence would have convicted anybody anywhere. Perhaps modern ballistics would be able to test whether Jefferson had shot a gun or not, and perhaps there was an air of inevitability to his conviction because of racism, but Gaines wanted there to be ambiguity there in his character. You can't blame the judge nor the jury for the conviction, which doesn't seem to be a product of racism but, rather, more the product of a couple of bad choices and a horrible wrong-place-in-the-wrong-time incident.

The rest of the novel does have some significant undercurrents of racism - the defense attorney's hyper-racist "defense" of Jefferson, the superintendent's inspection of the black schoolchildren like a slaveowner would inspect prospective slave purchases, the mixed-race bricklayers picking a fight with dark-skinned Grant, the can't-act-smart-in-front-of-white-people act that Grant has to fake - but to look at the main "lessons" learned by both characters, they're not about race or facing racism. They're about standing up and standing strong (perhaps, in Jefferson's case, against unbelievable injustice). Against white people? Perhaps. I might be convincing myself of things that I didn't quite believe before I started writing this.

But I guess one of my points is this: with To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (in a setting about 15 years before A Lesson Before Dying) wanted us to examine racism in the south. She made her innocent black character, Tom Robinson, so ridiculously innocent (he can't use his hand! he couldn't possibly have choked Mayella!) and her accuser so ridiculously malignant that only a jury completely blinded by racism could find him guilty. And she spent a lot of time on that trial, as we see all the witnesses called and hear from both sides and all the onlookers. We see just how innocent Tom is, so his guilty verdict is a shock (or, at least, it is to the innocent Jem, who had not yet realized the racism of his society).

On the other hand, Gaines gives us a 5-page description of the trial, and Grant's first words about it ("I was not there, yet I was there") also speak to its inevitability. The trial is a given. The racism, ironically, is mainly demonstrated (and rather cartoonishly at that) by the defense. It's everything else that matters - the redemption that Jefferson gets, the two horrible choices he was faced with (no matter how bad life is, no matter how much injustice you are faced with, you still have a choice) and the relationship between Grant and Jefferson.

What's my point in all this? I guess it's that I think capital punishment and racism are both important for the story, but that it's more universal than that. It's about the Lesson that both men learn, which I don't really think is about either. The capital punishment and the racism were inevitable parts of their world. But was that their lesson before dying? No, it's about dealing. Jefferson learns to accept and to stand up and die like a man, to be strong for his community, even though he doesn't deserve to die. Grant learns (maybe - I love his ambiguous ending) to stand strong for his community as well, to (hopefully) not bitterly run away but stand strong.

I often introduce this text with the film Dead Man Walking (I know, I know, it's about capital punishment), which basically tells the story without racism and without innocence. It's still remarkably similar, at least in a lot of ways, and talking about these similarities and differences makes for some really interesting discussions in class.

Mini-Reviews

Hamilton Tavern: Still the best veggie burger in the city. I've been there quite a bit lately, and it's always pretty charming.

Maisy's: A friend of mine opened this place up a few months ago. It took me forever to get down there, but it was worth it. It's basically the same decor as Copra (re: classy, nice bar), but the food is better. I had macaroni and cheese with scallops and it was terrific.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox: Great little movie, really droll, pretty amazing stop-motion animation. Highly recommended.

The latest Entertainment Weekly: There are a number of dumb choices and initially I was annoyed with trying to lump all genres into the '100 Greatest of the Decade' list, but where else would you put the "I'm F***ing Matt Damon" video? The Wire only gets #26, though... way low. And some of the writeups on the list are just so dumb. (They cite Dixie Chicks' Home as one of the 100 best things to come out of the decade, which I disagree with but can deal with, but then explain it by listing the two cover songs on the album as great roots music.)

Advice needed...

Maybe someone can give advice: I'm trying to buy my dad's car in Michigan. He's giving me a deal I can't refuse. I was approved for an auto loan from Mecu, but they won't do a sale for an out-of-state car. In doing some googling, I'm seeing quite a few banks that also won't (M&T won't, for example). It doesn't make sense to me, but I have to figure out a solution. Anyone ever bought a car out of state? Should I try to get financing in MI and just switch title/registration to MD later?Try a bank that is more national than regional M&T and Mecu?

Car Update

I'm not sure if I've shared yet, but I've chosen my next car. My dad is selling me his. He is, of course, giving me a good deal, a deal I cannot refuse. This probably isn't the time of financial security and comfort for me to be able to get something that I really want (a Honda CRV for $20,000 or so), so I'll be getting a 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix for less than half that. It's worth quite a bit more, but dad is helping me out, and he's also excited to get himself another car. The car is fairly fancy (leather seats, automatic starter, heated seats) and silver (not my trademark blue), but nicer than any car I've ever driven and I'm pretty excited.

I've been approved for a loan with a mediocre interest rate from my credit union. Because the car is cheap, I'll be able to pay it off quicker than the length of the loan. My credit union, MECU, has about the worst customer service ever (I've been calling them all week, and unable to get a live person on the phone), but I like that they'll take it directly out of my paycheck for ten months, and not ask for a payment during the summer, when I'm not being paid.

Now it's just the logistics: how to physically get the loan, how to exchange cars, how to sell my current car (blue book value is $500). I'm not good with logistics and feel like I'm working harder than ever lately, but I'm away on this Saturday morning to see about getting this loan.

All of these lines across my face tell you the story of who I am

I have not as into the female singer/songwriter thing in recent years, crowded out by the likes of Lupe Fiasco (a former student burned his new mixtape for me, thankfully, as I still have no idea how to download music in a post-Kazaa, non-ITunes way) and Kid Cudi and such. I still will follow Melissa Ferrick and Tracy Chapman to eternity and see them live whenever they're near, and still count Brenda Kahn as one of my favorite songwriters. But no one new, at least in recent years, though my obsession with Lauryn Hill did start within the last two or three years.

But, wow. Just discovered Brandi Carlile. I'm a little late jumping on the train, but I just can't stop listening. This song, too. The lyrics probably wouldn't do anything for me if written on page, but her delivery is so raw and beautiful. I just can't stop listening.

I also think she's beautiful. Just read she's a lesbian. Typical.

The Lighting of the Monument

Seven years ago was a historic evening, one of the best nights of my life.

My first year in Baltimore, going to the Lighting of the Monument was just about the first social event that I ever was involved in. I went with my old friend Marcia; I brought my newly acquired dog Holden; I got a girl's number; I heard beautiful music and saw this magnificent thing light up in the middle of a bunch of old buildings. It was really the first time I felt like I was part of this city. It was amazing.

That's not the night I'm talking about, though. The second year I was here, the year that was seven years ago, was even better. By then, I'd made plenty of friends. Now, the Lighting of the Monument always occurs on the first Thursday of December. That year, though, there was a bad snow/ice storm on Thursday, so they delayed the Lighting to Friday. I think school was canceled, too, which made it even better.

We started off at Sascha's for dinner and drinks, then headed to the lighting. The monument looked so beautiful and I really felt like I was a part of this city. I was at the lowest point in my weight loss ever (right around 195), so I felt svelte and great. I sure felt good about myself then. And, I was in love, and it might have been that night when I realized it. Such a great night, ended by getting kicked out of Spy Club in the early morning hours several hours later, and talking to her in the cab the whole night home. I was at a crossroads then, and probably didn't turn the right way, but one never knows. I also might have dodged a bullet. But that night, everything felt perfect.

If my Baltimore experience is defined by moments, that one shines brightest in my memory. I still try to head to the lighting every year, but even tonight I barely made it in time to see it from my car (I heard Sheila spoke; that would have been cool). Too many responsibilities and commitments.

Honestly, they should just change them to Fridays permanently.

Socratic Seminars and James Baldwin

I teach two classes of IB Seniors. They are back to back and I have lunch right afterwards, so I have time to reflect immediately about how the classes went. Often, this reflection is thinking about the differences between the two classes, which are as strikingly different as any two classes of the same prep and size could be. The first class contains most of the stereotypically "top" students in the Class of 2010 in terms of grades, while the second class is filled with smart kids who are not necessarily the ones with the highest GPA. As students, perhaps they're a little rougher around the edges, at least as a whole, but of course both groups are great kids.

Still, often their class goes much smoother than the other class. First, they generally seem to listen to each other more, and seem to operate in a way that is less competitive. Secondly, the lesson is being delivered for the second time from me, and I'm sure I've, at least subconsciously, worked out some of the kinks. These classes are full of all new literature and all new lessons and assessments for me, and I'd be lying if I said there weren't some kinks sometimes. So, I like both classes, but generally that second class feels more relaxed and successful.

Today was one of those days, however, when the first class felt much more successful than the second class. We were discussing the James Baldwin essay "Notes for a Hypothetical Novel." It's a tough essay, with Baldwin using the titular hypothetical novel to muse about the status of America, which he writes is "a handful of incoherent people in an incoherent country. The overall essay is basically an examination of this incoherence, which springs out of American mythology and the "melting pot" mentality that even I can't quite get if Baldwin is critiquing or praising. I didn't have to assign the essay, but I thought it had some really interesting ideas about America and about the function of the American writer, and thought at least a few students would find it interesting.

The first discussion today was not perfect, but it felt like an honest grappling with the text. Students had intriguing ideas and used their classmates to further their understanding. "This sentence is really weird," one student asked. "Can anyone else make sense of it?" Another even connected this sort of question to techniques Baldwin uses, asking "Do you guys think that the parallelism here is emphasizing an uncertainty or a certainty about America's shapelessness?" There were too many silent students and not enough attention to devices, but overall I loved hearing what these students talked about with this tough, very tough essay. They spoke for 25 minutes without teacher interference and really, I think, got to the bottom of some of Baldwin's ideas.

The second discussion, though, felt totally different. About two or three students came very well prepared, having comments thought about ahead of time and plenty of clear devices and techniques. Others had half-formed comments that were apropos of nothing much else being said. Still others did not seem to be prepared but said intriguing things that unfortunately were cloaked within a din of incoherence that drowned out the intriguing ideas. Students were not, in large part, listening to each other, and the discussion was largely unsuccessful. Only a couple of conclusions made, with overall minimum attention to what Baldwin is doing to create these ideas. And I feel like I can't come down too hard because I don't want any of them who are trying to stop trying and shut down. Students who can sit silent for 25 minutes in a graded Socratic Seminar are also an issue that I'm trying to fix, and I don't want to multiply them. Socratic Seminars are supposed to raise questions, but not in this way.

It's also so hard to assess, because often it is about the dynamic of the students in the particular Socratic Seminar. I want some students to elevate the discussion ("a rising tide lifts all boats") but I'm tempted to put all the super-quiet kids in one seminar to make sure they talk, and the talkative and quick kids in another so they don't drown out other students. But then the feedback will come, from the outside circle, and that might be too harsh for certain groups who need to be more concerned with reaching an analytic understanding rather than the format of their comments. I don't particularly want a student who barely has the guts to share a comment to be critiqued for mispronouncing the word "etiquette," for example.

So much dissonance for me right now, about a forum that I love to teach in but often end up with issues like this. For this text, we're spending three weeks with two Seminars a week, so the issues with seminars are coming back to the forefront for me in my classroom practice. I'm grappling with it so much, in fact, it's almost like I need to have a Socratic Seminar to talk it out with a group of like-minded folks.

Baldwin Redux

The first collection of Baldwin's essays, Notes of a Native Son was awesome.

The second one, Nobody Knows My Name is just alright. I'm getting bored and my two-Socratic Seminars a week schedule is getting monotonous.

I have to bring it in for a home run with next week's study of The Fire Next Time. Need to change things up at least a little.

In other words, teaching 9th graders to write their first literary essay is a trying experience. I'd forgotten. Or I'd never done it this early in the year before. Today was Peer Review day. They were supposed to bring in a first draft to do a Peer Review. I got a third turned in for every class. So what to do with the other two-thirds of the students? Ugh.

Negro League Museum to open in Baltimore?

This should provide a cool trip to pair with Fences every year!

Though it doesn't look too pretty right now:

Former Towson student wins $8000 parking ticket judgement

Former Towson student flies back to Maryland to fight (and win) $8000 in fines

Reminds me of my case, which I won after going to court and fighting it.

There really has to be an overhaul about how this city handles parking tickets. Absolutely outrageous.

Omar's Dream Role? To Play James Baldwin on Film.

(Thanks Jackie for the tip!)

Actor Michael Kenneth Williams

"My dream role is to portray someone like James Baldwin. I've always been a fan of his writing, and I feel like he's one of our unsung heroes. He's been pretty much forgotten, and I think he needs to be recognized. He had to go all the way to Europe to find recognition and acceptance, and I'd just like to bring him to the forefront. It's a fresh story.

Rosaries as gang apparel

Religious Objects co-opted as objects of hate and violence

Worth a Read, especially here in Baltimore.

Blast from the past

My college professor from Michigan State University is in our building this week, working with and observing a colleague for a study she is conducting about the current teachings of To Kill a Mockingbird in the United States. I'm not teaching Mockingbird this year, hence my lack of inclusion in the study, and my professor actually contacted our district and school independent of me in order to conduct the research.

I haven't seen her in nine years or so, and it's neat to get re-acquainted. Apparently Michigan State now has an Urban Education program, which is interesting, although I admit my experience at college probably would not have been any different had MSU had the program then. I was not interested in Urban Education until I became a student teacher, and was placed in Lansing Eastern High School. Like my current school, it was filled with a lot of really great kids who often needed some extra support, and there I learned that providing this support as well as maintaining high expectations for these kids was my calling in life. I don't think I would have thought to be involved in an Urban Education program when I was twenty years old; it took actually getting placed in an urban school for my yearlong student teaching experience that brought me over to that viewpoint.

Still, it's good to hear that Michigan State has created the program; it speaks well of an Education program that regularly ranks as the top in the nation. Probably overdue, in fact.

It was neat catching up with my former professor, and we'll continue to chat throughout the week, I'm sure. Chatting reminds me of where I've come from and how far I've gone since that Student Teaching year, but also how a lot of my current practices are grounded in the things I learned at Michigan State. For example, I still write units based on the ways I learned to write units in her class - a key question or topic, and using the literature to explore it.

Why I love James Baldwin

I have known both of you all your lives, have carried your Daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed and spanked him and watched him learn to walk. I don’t know if you’ve known anybody from that far back; if you’ve loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father’s face as it is today are all those other faces which were his. Let him laugh and I see a cellar your father does not remember and a house he does not remember and I hear in his present laughter his laughter as a child. Let him curse and I remember him falling down the cellar steps, and howling, and I remember, with pain, his tears, which my hand or your grandmother’s so easily wiped away. But no one’s hand can wipe away those tears he sheds invisibly today, which one hears in his laughter and in his speech and in his songs. I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be, indeed one must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man. (But remember: most of mankind is not all of mankind.) But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

It's all there: Balwin's parallelism, his cataloguing of adjectives and phrases, his shifting of narrative voice ("I" to "One"), the cautionary parentheses, the long sentences constructed to form a sort of biblical rhythm, the beautiful and eloquent anger. It's so devastating and beautiful.

Dogged optimism

My favorite songs of the moment:

"I am going to make it through this year if it kills me"

>

"The end is never the end. A new challenge awaits. A test no man could be prepared for. A new hell he must conquer and destroy. A new level of growth he must confront himself. The machine in the ghost within."

Teaching James Baldwin

A few thoughts, so far:

I'm using James Baldwin's Essays collection, which looks like this:



I chose this mammoth volume for a couple of reasons. First, I didn't think it was enough to read one of Baldwin's short collections of essays (Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, or The Fire Next Time, and am pretty sure one of those volumes doesn't reach the IB minimum requirements for non-fiction. Secondly, even though we're not reading the entire 600+ pages of essays, I figured students might have to read some of Baldwin's work later in their academic lives, and now they have a volume that contains nearly all of Baldwin's essays. The total cost ($18) of the collection is pricey, but not as much as buying two of the aforementioned essay collections would have been, so I thought it work well.

And, so far, it has. My unit plan was heavily weighted towards essays in the three aforementioned collections, and students seem to be connecting well. It has gotten better as it has gone, and I'm happy with the selection. Baldwin's techniques are really clear, even if his ideas are sometimes too dense for these seniors.

Teaching non-fiction is somewhat tough. How much contextualization is needed? If we're reading work from throughout Baldwin's career, is it important for students to know that he wrote this particular essay in 1955, kind of at the cusp of the Civil Rights movement, and then this one in 1963, when it was in full swing? Should students know some of the key Civil Rights activities occurring when Baldwin is writing the essays? How much do they need to know? At what point is concentrating on that rather than Baldwin's techniques and what he is saying doing a disservice to the collection? I'm finding myself up in the air about these issues, and still a bit uncertain.

I'm definitely going to teach the work again next year, but need to do a better job of teaching the students how to read essays. For example, I'm finding that they often miss key things, like that it's really important to identify the conclusion that Baldwin comes up with by the end, and to re-read the introduction and conclusion to see how he arrived at the conclusion. I've also developed some handouts throughout the course of the unit that would have been better earlier, so next year I will be able to utilize those earlier in the unit.

I'll be formulating other reflections as I go and posting them here.

Car and Twitter

1. Hmmm, I'm considering tweeting under my actual name. I already am, actually, but just created a tweeter identity under "EpiphanyinBalto" that I thought I'd tweet from more often and connect to this blog. I'm still thinking about it. I have over 100 followers on the my name. It's this "sort of anonymous" goal I guess I'm worried about.

2. I'm buying my dad's 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix. It's not exactly what I wanted, but it's a nice car that should be reliable for several years. I loved my current Pontiac; it was the best car I ever owned. And dad's giving me a great deal, one that I would be financially foolish to eschew. I'm going to be spending about $5000 less than I would if I bought it at a dealer, so I should be able to pay it off quickly. I was approved for 7.74% interest through my credit union. Not very good, but okay for my just-above-average credit in this economy; and I'm going to love not having to worry about it in the summers (they spread the payments across 10 months, not 12).