Teaching Gap

I am reading a really great book for one of my master's classes. It's called "The Teaching Gap" and it's about the latest TIMSS study, where 8th grade math classrooms in the US, Japan, and Germany were videotaped, analyzed, and compared. Part of the justification for the study is that teaching in the US is in need of an overhaul, but not everybody agrees on that. This book spends some time on the interesting concept that teaching is a cultural activity. There is a distinctly American pattern of teaching, just like there is a distinctly Japanese way and a German way. There are some similarities between the three, and some differences. The major difference between the US pattern and the Japanese pattern is that here in the US, the person in charge of doing the math is the teacher. In Japan, the teacher puts a problem up, reminds the students of how they solved a similar problem yesterday, and then lets them go. But back to the cultural thing... I don't think that as a nation we have addressed the fact that our schools were created to educate a specific population of white males. Teachers back then were white and female. Teachers now are still overwhelmingly white and female, and our methods have not changed much. The student base, however, is dramatically different. I agree with the authors in the end - a major overhaul is needed. I think I will start by allowing my students to struggle more - something that is suspiciously absent in the American pattern of teaching math.

They think I'm sane!!

One of my colleagues is having a very hard time at work. She came to me because I am the VP of our union local. She said that she had talked to another of our colleagues last night, and that person told her, "You need to call the sane person, and that's Melissa."
HA!! That just made me feel so good.

It's only life, after all

My new favorite song:
(And letter to my stronger self)

I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
Its only life after all
Yeah

Well darkness has a hunger thats insatiable
And lightness has a call thats hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it
I'm crawling on your shores

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
Theres more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitives
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

And I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a b-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
Got my paper and I was free

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitives
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
And I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as Id been the night before
And I went in seeking clarity.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
Yeah we go to the doctor, we go to the mountains
We look to the children, we drink from the fountains
Yeah we go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
Theres more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitives
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

(Indigo Girls)

Evolution of a Workout

Curves has produced motivational CDs for purchase by members. There is spunky music playing in the background, and every 30 seconds, a female voice says a positive affirmation. She says things like, "You are loyal!" and "You are healthy!" At the Curves where I work out, they play these every now and then instead of the regular voice that says, "Change stations now." So yesterday, I was on the arm-curl machine and there is no voice telling me to change stations. My arms are starting to lose feeling, and I said, "TINA!! (that's the gal who manages the place) There's something wrong, it's been more than 30 seconds."
So she goes over to the machine and says, "Ok, 5 more seconds." Then I hear, "You are motivated!"
Well, the whole place erupts in groans and complaints because everyone professes to hate this positive affirmation thing instead of the regular voice saying change stations. And truly, I was grumpy yesterday when I was working out. I had a monster headache all day, the freaking cyst behind my ear hurts, burns, and itches, and my administration PISSED ME OFF. The really funny part is how susceptible I am to that voice, and how my attitude had changed by the time I left. It sorta went like this:
"You are loyal!"
Fuck you. I hate you.
"You are wonderful!"
Wish I could say the same about you. Shut the hell up.
"You are positive!"
Positive I hate you. Jesus Chocolate Christ.
"You are strong!"
You're right, I am strong. I could probably beat the hell out of you.
"You are healthy!"
Well, true enough, this is a very healthy thing I am doing right now. Other than following each positive affirmation with a negative one.
"You are determined!"
Obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be here listening to YOU!
"You are wealthy!"
????
"You are beautiful!"
Well yes, I guess you could say that.
"You are loving!"
Most of the time, yes.
"You are loyal!"
True enough.
"You are wonderful!"
Thanks... so are you.
Then I left in a much, much better mood than I was in when I got there.

O M G

The phone call I had been dreading for months finally came. I talked to an investigator from California about the case against my mother's sister's husband (I would say uncle but I refuse to claim him, or my mom's sister for that matter) and found out that the records of my case in Tucson from 26 years ago are nowhere to be found. So I had to relive the whole thing - well, I didn't have to, but I did because otherwise the creep's granddaughters won't be safe from him. It will be a month or so before I find out if they are filing charges against him. I hope it goes to court because I'd really like to testify. I didn't get to do that when I was a kid because he took a plea, which he will probably do again if given the opportunity. I hope he goes to jail and becomes some bruno's girlfriend.
The first two weeks of school are done. Eight more to go until fall break. We have five new teachers on our staff, and two of them are close to quitting. I am surprised every day they show up for work. I feel so sorry for them, because I remember what that felt like, being new to my district and trying to do everything they want us to do, which isn't humanly possible by the way, and trying to decide what was urgent and what wasn't because it all seems urgent, so I would just dissolve in a puddle of tears, which is what these teachers are doing. So I keep dropping what I am doing to help them, which leaves me with a LOT to do over the weekend. So now I've really cooked my own goose because there aren't enough hours to do everything I have to do. Watch:
I have about 10 hours worth of homework for my online class. That's 2 weeks because I haven't done any homework since school started. This is a class that is required by the state of Arizona in order to keep my teaching certificate.
I have about 10 hours worth of lesson planning to do. I didn't get any done over the week, plus I have to plan Tuesday and Thursday for a sub, which takes longer.
I need about 3 hours to clean the house, and that's if my bratty daughters help me, which is a pretty big IF. I'm gonna have to take away their phones and stuff in order to convince them. Ugh.
I have about 2 hours worth of planning for the union meeting, for which I am the vice president, and it will take 2 hours because I've never done it before.
I've already committed to spending Sunday between 1:00 - 5:00 with the new teachers, helping them plan for the coming week.
Sleep is about 16 hours. Won't give any of that up.
The fam is coming Sunday for dinner, so Sunday night is shot.
I have about 2 hours worth of grading papers, which absolutely has to be done. No wiggle room there.
So that is 48 hours worth of stuff, and guess what, I just blew 1/2 hour writing on my blog so I am left with 47.5 hours to do all that. I better get going. And hope I don't have to poop any time in the next 2 days.

Day Three!

I am carpooling today with one of my coworkers. We are going to help each other leave at a reasonable hour. Also she is going to help me with my exercise program. She is a runner, and she changes before she leaves work to make sure she goes. How she goes in this heat, I will never understand. Anyhoo, I told her I am going to change too, and so now I have that accountability piece of sticking with my plan. Plus we're saving gas. So we'll see how that goes.
The students have been great so far. I can't believe how happy I was to see those 8th graders - the ones I taught last year. It's so wonderful to watch them adapt to being 8th graders! They already know my management style, so it has been a breeze working with them. Maybe it's all going to come crashing down, I don't know!

Which teachers are these??

Secondary school teachers are expected to increase in numbers by up to 17 percent by 2014. Salaries are rising as well; the American Federation of Teachers estimates the average salary of all public elementary and secondary school teachers in the 2003-2004 school year was $46,597.

Second Day

The first day went well! The 7th graders are scared to death, as usual. It's their first year of switching classes, and they were exhausted by the end of the day. Of course so were the 8th graders since they've been staying up all night during the summer break. Anyway it went well. Except when I went to lunch, I was taking my food out of the microwave and butterfingered it and it fell facedown on the floor. Luckily the plastic cover saved half of it. And then I dropped my nectarine and made marks all the way down my shirt. But other than that it was good! Here's hoping today is just as good! And that I get to eat my lunch and not wear it!

First Day of School!

Today's the day. I think I am ready. I put a big banner above one of the white boards that says, "If you don't have time to do it right, you must have time to do it over!" That's my favorite part of my classroom decorations. I got a good night's sleep, no bad dreams! And I am really excited about meeting all my new 7th graders.

The First Very Long Day

Today is the first Very Long Day of the school year - Open House. We have high parental involvement so a lot of them will probably be there. They vote for site council representative, find their kids' classrooms, and meet the teachers. It will be a 12-hour day but it's worth it. This way the first contact I have with all those parents will be positive. Then they will react better when I call them in a few weeks to tell them little Johnny is a shit.

I'd just like to point out...

There is a one page writeup in People magazine about whether or not Harry Potter will die in the seventh book. At the bottom of the page there are tips for parents to deal with their children's grief if it does happen. Now, I realize People isn't exactly serious literature. Still, I'm just sayin'... prepare.

Or maybe I'm just an idiot.

I am taking an online class right now so I can learn how to teach people who don't speak English, without speaking their language while I do it. The state is requiring every teacher to take this class, and it's free if I take it online. So last night I am trying to get through chapter 1 of the textbook, and I've been trying to get through it for days and it's just not going well. I keep drifting off, my eyes running over the words but my brain not reading them. I am thinking about everything I still have to do in my classroom before school starts, whether I should have another root beer float, I didn't exercise again today, my clothes are too tight, etc. Every paragraph I do manage to get through I have to go back and re-read at least once. So I finally started to ask, why is this so freaking hard?? I am a reader! And then I saw it. The book is chock full of scintillating gems like this:
"As Erickson and Shultz (1991) have discussed, student comfort with the social participation structure of an academic task, for instance, can vary according to culturally learned assumptions about appropriateness in communication and in social relationships, individual personality, and power relationships in the classroom social system and in society at large." HUH???
And this:
"The model is operationalized in the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP)." WHAT??? I feel like the Geico caveman.
Here's the best part - the title of the book is "Making Content Comprehensible." They might start by making the freaking textbook comprehensible, dontcha think??

Great quote

"If you hear a voice within you say, 'You cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."- Vincent Van Gogh

It's so good to be home

I left class at 8:30 p.m. and drove all the way to Tucson... that's how desperate I was to get home! The girls stayed awake with me so I wouldn't fall asleep driving. They were really excited to get home too. They've already made plans with their friends for today.
I have one week off before I report for work. I think it will be just perfect. I'm already itching to get back into my classroom, but a quick visit should take care of that because I'll see all the work I have to do and then I'll want to leave.
Flagstaff was awesome and I learned a lot. Hopefully my next trip will be to the Galapagos Islands. Toyota sponsors a program to get teachers there for research.

Battle Scars!!

On Monday, the last time I went out into the field, I was stepping over a dead tree and was not careful enough with my footing. I stepped into a branch and the tip of it drove into my leg and the tip broke off. "Eh..." I thought, "A splinter. It will work itself out." Four days later, with an angry red welt and a black spot in the center of it, I had to call the campus health center and have it looked at. The doctor cut a 1/4" incision in my leg, and it's at least as deep, to dig the thing out! Seriously! It's still numb right now but I think it's going to hurt!

No more cinder pits!

The field work is finished. Yay!! Now I can work on my statistics. I have a spreadsheet for all my data that I can use to run statistical tests on a software program the university uses. Then I am going to do a poster.
The class has been a huge waste of time so far. We all sit and "discuss" topics put up by the teacher, but there are only three people she really wants to hear from, so the rest of us watch while the four of them "discuss." It's a long three hours, let me tell you. It's Mondays and Wednesdays from six to nine, so there's a lot of time to "discuss."
Meanwhile I brought a TV back with me and there is cable in my room, so I am happily sucked into the vortex of food network when I get back to my dorm!

Flagstaff

Here are some pictures of what I am doing on the days I go out in the field. I go two or three days a week. My freckles are increasing exponentially!

Measuring last year's growth...

This is why I'm hot. Walking in the cinders is a lot like walking on the beach.

The puffy brown parts are called strobili. We have to count them.

They can number in the thousands.

This is me and my best friend, Bug n' Sun, out in the field.

I have a question.

It's a research question, mind you. Here's my project for the summer:
What is the effect of scale infestation on mortality of pinyon pines during a drought?
I want to do two things in order to answer this question. First, I want to be a part of the research team that collects data for the project. Basically it's a day long hike slogging around in the cinders, and every 15 minutes or so we find a tree that is tagged with the right numbers and we measure the growth. Not hard. Except that there are about 900 trees. The most important thing for my project will be mapping the trees that have died. As my mentor says, "Death is good for business."
After that is done, I can begin to crunch the numbers. I want to compare the trees that have died a drought-related death to the trees that have died a drought-scale-infected-related death.
Here is my hypothesis: Scale infestation of pinyon pines during a drought increases mortality.
It's more complicated than it sounds, really! Here's the deal: Arizona has been in a drought for about the last 10 years. The pinyon pine population is suffering from three major maladies. First is the drought, then the two insect infestations of moth and scale insects. The moth population decreases during the drought, but the scale population increases. This is all just stupefyingly boring, but it matters not! The trees are dying or dead, and I get to figure out how much of the dead trees died due to drought versus drought combined with scale infestation. So there's my job. I'm sure you were dying to know. Ha!

Scale Insects

Well, I found out what I will be doing for the next few weeks! Well, sort of. For the last 30 years or so, the biological sciences department has been studying the local ecosystem and gathering data. My project is focused on the pinyon tree population. This population is inhabited by two parasitic insects. One is a moth that makes the trees look more like shrubs because it eats the tips of the tree, and the other is a scale insect which looks like a tiny black dot on the needles of the tree. They are barely visible to the human eye. They sit on the needle and suck the phloem out, which eventually kills the needle. So trees that have this insect have branches that are bare except the very tips, which have new growth that the bugs haven't killed yet! Tomorrow is my first day in the field. I sort of get to design my own research, and I am thinking about looking at the seedlings to see if I can figure out how old the trees are before they become infected. I have lots of articles to read and research to do on the scale insect, so I can firm up my ideas and present them to my boss on Thursday. She is very laid back and seems so nice!
Now, I am going to go eat sushi for the 3rd night in a row. I don't care if it's selfish. I'm doing it anyway.

stupid foot

I have located the gym, and I walked there, worked out, and walked home this morning. On the way back I had to get a parking permit, and it took me a while to find the place. Bottom line, I walked for about an hour. Now my foot really hurts. I am going to be very upset if my stupid foot gets in the way of my weight loss goal this summer.