Wordless Wednesday: Belated

Goodbye Summer.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

OK, I know it's 20 minutes. It's time to sharpen up your dull, mooshy brain cells class. Yes, TV shows pander to your 7 min attention spans. Snap out of it! I promise- you will be smarter for it. This bloke is funny, and oh-so witty/ intelligent.

Oh yeah, and he has a British accent.

He eloquently weaves the very speech I would say when all the parents in my district decide that the Art Teacher could indeed, save the world.

Wordless Wednesday

Courtesy of a smarty pants fourth grader.

Please direct your attention to the subject matter being lamented.

I keep this in my wallet.

The Teacher as the Student... Again

I like writing about my blunders.

It might be a shameless attempt to monopolize on my misfortune in order to garner some readership- this is true. But most importantly- I like writing about what I learn. Leo Tolstoy once said:

"It seems everyone is trying to change the world, but no one is trying to change themselves."

It might seem odd that I spend so much time focusing on moi and my scatterbrained stories. After all, this space is about teaching- yes, I know. I guess I've always hopefully clung to this idea- that if I make myself better, I can do my job better. So that's what this blog is about more or less.

Here is a good lesson I learned three weeks ago, and knew as soon as it happened, I would be posting about it.

It has probably become apparent to some of the longer-term members of this Brazen classroom, that I am lead-footed. I own a fast car and feel very strongly that if we aren't supposed to drive fast, we should all get cars that top out at 70 mph....

That being said, I seem to fall head on into motor related fiascoes because of this mentality. It's a trend I am learning to break, albeit slowly and with much heel-digging on my behalf. For once the story I'm about to relay- illustrates shenanigans that weren't provoked by myself. I will admit the situation was exacerbated by my Brazen nature however, and hence where the life lesson comes into play at the end. But I get ahead of myself.

I was driving Little Red to the drug store. Little Red is not a person, rather- but my car. I hold her in fond regard, just beneath my road bike in matters of priority. She and I were merging together onto a freeway on-ramp when a very large silver Navigator blew through his yield sign, cut off the Civic behind me and scared the be-jeezus out of this teacher, as I watched him plow up to my rear bumper, slam on his breaks and ride me like a [insert sexual reference here.]

Now, it's not my nature to become Brazen from the get-go. I am rather shy in all altercations regarding strangers, so the first thought in my mind was not: "You As*%#@!" but rather:

"I am going to get Navigator Grill in my back seat"

In my fear I let off the gas just enough to successfully cause the Navigator some additional frustration. In an effort to let me know that he was in a "big hurry" he laid on his horn and did some arm waving out his window. It was at this time I crossed the threshold from "scared" to "clearly agitated," whereupon I made, perhaps- not the best choice. I decided to stop on the on-ramp.

Watching his reaction in my rear view mirror made the decision worth it, I assure you. His eyes bugged from his skull. I had yet to see what one looks like when their eyes physically exit their head. I wish I could thank him for providing me with some frame of reference in the matter.

I will not bore you with the details of what happened thereafter, although it included much more horn blowing and teacher giggling. I then sped off onto the near empty freeway (thankfully) with the Navigator in hot pursuit. I could tell it was time to put a stop to these shenanigans, lest something really bad happen. I dropped a gear and cut two lanes- settling behind a powder blue VW Beetle. The Navigator blew past me, screaming not-very-nice-names, as I waved my fingers daintily out the window.

It was quite apparent I was the winner of that altercation. The Navigator was driving up ahead weaving angrily, and I was snickering under my breath feeling quite collected. Drivers like him deserved it. Stupid Yuppie.

And almost as quickly as I heard those thoughts, I heard another:

"You don't know what he's going through to make him so angry."

But who wants to start thinking like Buddha when they just laid a smack down? Framing him as a rich, spoiled, and hateful man who places himself in the centro del universe, made my less than mature decisions seem noble and brave. I had put myself in harms way to teach him a lesson after all. I'm a teacher. It's what I do.

And I would have stuck with that notion too, had I not turned on the radio and heard this:

But of course when I heard it- I entered the song mid-chorus.

"Then you really man know what it's like...."

Sigh.

Okay universe.

I got it, I got it.

The Biggest School of All: Part I

Dear Human Race,

I am writing you about something that has troubled me for a long time.
Please forgive me for not saying something sooner.
I bashfully admit, I was afraid you wouldn't listen to me.

As I get older, I have noticed you like to control things.
And I've noticed the thing you like to control the most... is how people behave.

I am not sure why you do it.

*Perhaps it's because you believe people won't learn from their mistakes...
*Perhaps it's because you like the power...
*Perhaps you have misplaced understandings of how people learn...

But I suspect that among the myriad of reasons there is really only one reason...

You're afraid.

Humans after all- could make a choice that might cause the Human Race problems.
Disrespect.
Pain.
Or even (gasp) Death.

This teacher understands that must be a scary feeling.
And since it's your nature to do something about your fear, you have created some systems to show people "the right way to live."





And...

If people still don't get it, and screw things up... you create systems to politely (or not so politely) remind them.








And these systems "would work" you say, "if people could just be better."
But the Human Race doesn't FEEL like it's getting better.
And I can see many of you still don't FEEL safer.

And at first I thought you were ignoring the real problem because you were embarrassed.
But now I see it's because many of you don't even know what the problem is.


Never fear.
Brazen is here.


You see, your systems are cutting you off from the real lessons.
The real lessons you are supposed to be learning in The Biggest School of All Called: LIFE.

For example:

sometimes a human being does something like this:


Now the Biggest School of All called LIFE is trying to teach this human something.
It is trying to teach this human that if they move too fast in a large mass of steel, aluminum, plastic, gasoline, and mechanical parts...

Some bad things could happen.

- They could lose control and hurt themselves.
-They could lose control and hurt others.
-They could lose control and hurt the ones they love.
-They could damage their property, or another's.
-They could kill another.
-They could kill themselves.

OR....
Some Good things could happen:

- They will get where they are going faster
- They will get a rush
- They will have fun
- They will feel powerful

Then this human can- over the span of their life- weigh their experiences and learn for themselves which actions best reflect who they are, and who they want to be. This human will learn to pick and choose which things are worth risking, and which things are not.


But because you humans don't trust the Biggest School Of All called LIFE to do this for you, you take it upon yourself to create your own consequence(s):



And now this human has learned the wrong lesson.
He/ She has learned:

If I speed, I will get a ticket.

Rather than:

If I speed, I could have fun or arrive somewhere faster. But it would be at the expense of another or myself.

Which lesson seems more important to you?

Wordless Wednesday

Dear Apple,

I love your Ad campaign so much,
I am giving you a free plug.

Cool Teacher of the Month: Kat

I've always wanted to interview other teachers. And I've had the privilege of meeting many fantastical teachers over here in this Brazen Classroom.

I chose Kat to be the first Cool Teacher of the Month- because she my dear readers- is a paradox. Let's break for a vocabulary lesson.

Paradox: (noun)

-	any person, thing, or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature.

-	an opinion or statement contrary to commonly accepted opinion.

How is Miss Kat a Paradox? She's unapologetically brash. She swears. She has a dirty mouth. And when her opinions meld (or don't meld) with others, there are glorious fireworks over at her blog. Flip over the coin however, and you'll see a really kind, sensitive teacher, who loves children, and wants to make a difference.

Case in point: when I emailed her these questions I was expecting some pret-ty inflammatory stuff in my inbox. What I got was highly gentle and thought provoking. Well at least until she describes her principal. I love people like this. To me it's a sign of ingenuity- and of someone not afraid to be themselves.

Each month I'll highlight a different teacher, using exactly the same questions. As I always say to my own students, when another speaker takes the floor: "Show them the same courtesy you would show me." Then I eye the trouble makers, raise my eyebrow and add: "Or even better than me." He he.

Here we go.

What’s your horoscope sign?
Lol wasn’t expecting that too funny….I am a Capricorn, my birthday is the day after baby Jesus’

What grade/ subject(s) do you teach?
For the past three years I have taught 8^th grade Special Education Language Arts and Algebra…yeah I teach my kids higher level math go figure. I also teach an hour of Academic Support where I reteach the general ed Science and History Lesson, the rest of the time I am co teaching those two subjects with the General Education Teachers.

For bragging rights, please list your degree(s) and certification(s)
I have a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education, also a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction. I am a certified Teacher Consultant, and am certified to teach Elementary K-5^th all subjects, and K-8^th all subjects self contained.

How many years have you been teaching?
Wow this will be my fifteenth year! Only 15 more to go lol

What was the reason you decided to be a teacher?
I knew I wanted to be a teacher since I was a kid, I love telling people what to do, no just kidding, I don’t know it’s just something I always wanted to do, and remarkably it seems to be the only thing I think I really do best, can’t imagine doing anything else.

What is one thing you love about teaching?
I love working with the kids, my kids, not to sound like a snob but anyone with the right training can teach general education kids, but I honestly think it takes someone with multi talents to teach special needs kids. It’s more than just knowing your subject areas, you have to know how to deal with a maried of disabilities and teach to each kids deficits and learning styles.

What is one thing you um, don’t?
I hate the paperwork, it is completely insane I tell you….IEP’s (Individualized Educaiton Plan’s) now run about 20 pages at a minimum, that’s just for an annual review, if it’s a three year evaluation you are talking up to fifty pages…it’s ridiculous ! And because my kids are 8^th graders I have to do two IEP’s a year to transition them to the high school. Did I mention I hate paperwork???

Describe your principal in 10 words or less.
Liar, No people skills, No personality, douchebag , wanker, sonofabitch

If you could share one thing about your profession with non-teachers, what would it be?
It’s not as easy as you think it is. And there are many reasons why kids aren’t achieving in school, many that I have no control over. I can teach till I am blue in my face, and it doesn’t mean squat when a student refuses to even write their name on their assignment let alone do it. It’s easy to dump all the responsibility on teachers when it actually takes a village to educate a child….to bad everyone but the teacher has abandoned the village.

If you had to pick one student that left an impression on you, good or bad- who would it be and Why?
I had this one student last year who had been in downward spiral all year long. He has no self control, acts inappropriately all day, gets in fights, uses racial slurs with minority students, throws temper tantrums in the classroom and is simply at best defiant to the extreme. He's such a train wreck that I dubbed him the anti-christ the first week he was in my class.

Ironically, I was supposed to be his miracle worker, his redeemer, his one last shot to get his act together and pass the 8th grade. It's not that I haven't tried. I have expended more energy on this kid than I have on any other my entire career. But it gets to the point where I can't even conduct class without him spewing venom on me because he can't follow even the simplest of classroom rules.

So here I sit in a meeting telling the crisis team what a complete nightmare the past 12 weeks with this kid has been, that I don't have the skills to deal with this kid who is obviously disturbed beyond any resource I have to draw upon. My voice does not go unheard and his mother tells me she realizes he more messed up than any
of us in the room could imagine.

The sad thing about this situation is that this isn't just a kid who is obnoxious, the monster that he is, was not inherited but rather created. He has sustained physical abuse that would make even the most skeptical observer cringe. He's also been told what a sack of shit he is all his life. Yeah, nice environment to be brought up in I know. He's been removed from that environment for a couple of years now, but the damage was done a long time ago. I have empathy for him but some days it is just hard to be sympathetic when he's screaming at me "you fucking bitch, I can do what ever I want" I digress.

So we come up with a plan of action for this kid, and basically he's removed from school for the rest of the school year. Mom was taking him that morning out of school and directly to the Emergency Room and putting him under a psych hold for as long as legally possible. Finally he is going to get the intensive psychiatric help he needs. For his sake it's the best thing for him, and honestly I think it's his only hope.

But what I wasn't expecting was for him to stop by my room on his way out of the building. I wasn't expecting him to thank me for letting him be in my class. I wasn't expecting him to actually listen to me when I told him that I wasn't doing this because I hated him. That if I didn't care I wouldn't have called for the meeting. I wasn't expecting him to tell me he would miss me, that he would miss seeing me everyday, miss me helping him feel like he wasn't the loser everyone told him he was every day of his life. I wasn't expecting to see the tears in his eyes, the sincerity in his voice. I wasn't expecting the lump in my throat. The crack in my voice....I wasn't expecting to spend my lunch hour unabashedly balling my eyes out while sitting in my car. No this was not what I was expecting today.

What is one thing that you wouldn’t want parents/ students to know about you?
I would not want them to know where I live or my phone number, I have a lot of kids that stalk me, yeah stalk me and the less they know about my residence and how to contact me outside of school the better. Oh and well I wouldn’t want them to know about my blog either, just cuz well it’s so in your face, they might not understand

Do you have a favorite quote or mantra?
Fair isn’t always equal. It doesn’t matter to me how my kids achieve the goal of learning the material they need to learn as long as they learn it. If they can orally tell me the important facts that led to the Louisiana Purchase, then they get credit for knowing the information. Who cares if they can’t spell Louisiana right or string together a coherent paragraph to explain what they know in their head. General Education teachers don’t get that sometimes and believe me I have made many an enemy among my colleges because I have been an advocate for my students and have fought for their rights.

If I said: “Must be easy to have your summers off…” you would reply:
I need the break! I work with the most needy kids in the school population, not just academically needy , but emotionally , physically, and psychologically needy kids. Most days it is completely exhausting, satisfying, but exhausting.