Research

The best part of being a middle school teacher is the fact that lesson planning occasionally devolves into spending an hour watching youtube videos–and it really is in fact a relevant and productive use of my time.

Some of my favorites from today:

Related rates (but I might be able to get a system of linear equations out of it…)  This one is also awesome–and they have smexy accents!

Exponential relationships (or chemical change vs physical change if I taught science)

An alternative to the champagne pyramid problem…

Domain and range with a review of linear equations?  Awesome!

Here’s one that is just silly…

Quote of the day (yesterday):  Ms Walsh, do you want to feel my shoes?  Why yes, Neema, I would love to feel your brand-new bright purple satiny Chucks.  Swagg!

Critical Mass

I had an interesting idea during yoga:  identify and mentor the students who are “getting it” so they can have the tools they need to really step into the leadership roles I already see them taking in the classroom.

What I hope will happen...

There are some really talented mathematicians in my classes, and I’d like to tap into that resource. I already see them taking positions of leadership in the class. Other students want to sit at their table groups because they know they can get help. They are asking for harder material, and are serious about redeeming this math year and getting ready for high school. I will be inviting them to participate in an innovative and student-driven program that I just made up yesterday in my head during triangle pose.  (Or maybe I was a tree…) I’ll invest one lunch per week mentoring and preparing these students to be leaders in the classroom and then see what they come up with. I’m 100% confident that it will be much better than anything I could come up with on my own. I’ll be targeting students based on their level of mastery as well as the motivation and leadership qualities I’ve seen demonstrated in my classes.

The first Critical Mass Monday will be by invitation, however any student who would like to participate would be welcome after that.

What’s it going to look like?  I don’t know.  But off the top of my head I think I have 28 potential leaders, and there may be some more I haven’t identified yet.  I ran the idea past a few of my 5th period students, and got some pretty enthusiastic feedback, which is really encouraging.  I’ll invite them all to come to a lunch-time brainstorming session on Monday, then see what happens.  If half want to participate, that’s going to be 14 students who are part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.  That can be nothing but awesome.

Why “Critical Mass”? Research has shown (and Ms Bryn has confirmed by her personal experience this year) that in a standards based grading system, where students are assessed exclusively on their mastery of skills and concepts, and receive regular, meaningful feedback throughout the learning process, the class average tends to center right around the B mark, which is Working Independently (and therefore meeting the standard). We’re obviously not there yet, but I believe that once we get enough students at the Working With Support/Working Independently border we’ll build momentum and really start to gel as a learning community. It’s gonna be rad. But it takes having enough students at a WWS/WI level so that the ones that are still Just Starting are in the minority and can get the help they need from myself and from their peers. Too many Just Startings and we can’t really get started.

That is Critical Mass. And I can’t do it alone.

Where did she go???

I’m now a (sort of first-year) middle school math teacher in an overcrowded, urban, high SES school who took over a very challenging set of classes after the original teacher quit last October. It’s been a rough year. At the semester, 57% of my eighth grade math students had less than a C, and I was spending all of my energy controlling the classes’ behavior and had nothing left for teaching content. (Not that I could get through two sentences without having to address behavior issues, so I’m not entirely sure I can even say I was teaching content…) I decided to make the switch to standards-based grading at the semester because many of my colleagues in different departments were having success using that approach with our shared students and I needed to do SOMETHING different. It was incredibly difficult to make the switch mid-year, especially because my 3-day weekend between semesters was lost due to snow days. (Curse you, Father Winter!!! It’s not supposed to snow in SEATTLE!!!) So I’ve been playing catch-up for I’m not sure how long now, but the change I’ve seen in my classroom is like… well, it’s nothing short of miraculous. For the first time ever, today every single one of my students (with one exception) was engaged in learning for (almost) the entire period, all day long. They get the “it’s about learning” philosophy of SBG because they’ve been hearing the same stuff in science, LA and SS all year. SBG taps into their innate sense of wanting to become better people, which I think is something middle schoolers have that high schoolers sometimes lose as their experiences drive them towards cynicism and apathy. But I digress…

…I guess I just wanted to say to my mother and my one other blogreader that yes I am still alive, and that things are looking up.  And it’s 5 weeks till spring break.  I promise to call then.

Going for a walk

I’m leaving in the morning to spend the next two weeks walking part of El Camino de Santiago. We’re doing part of the northern-most route, and it really is a sort of spiritual journey, not just a hike.

Not sure I’m really ready for this.

It’s not just the fact that we’re going on a 14 day hike (which is still a big deal—I’ve not trekked much in the last, say, 10 years.) And I’m getting older, and wimpier, and whinier. But I have a good pack, and I just took a bunch more stuff out of it, so it only weights a half a ton which is a good thing.

I’m most decidedly antipathetic towards the whole spiritual side of it. I very much want and need to experience God in my life again, in a visceral way. It’s been just choosing to believe what I know to be true, but not really feeling overwhelmed by God’s love lately. And I’ve lost all motivation. All of it.

Thing is, though, that I don’t want to be the kind of person that relys on the “as soon as X happens, then things will get better and I’ll be happy” way of dealing with things. I want to be the kind of person who finds joy in the middle of whatever it is that I’m doing. I want to not just trust and know that God is at work in my life, I want to see it happen. And I don’t want to have to wait for a retreat or a pilgrimage or whatever for that to happen. So I guess that’s my prayer/hope for this trip. That I’d learn how to be the person I used to be, before all this life happened.

At the very least, I’m looking forward to turning my brain off for a bit. I’ve been thinking a lot this week about all the things that have happened in the last few years. This past year was especially challenging. Walking for 14 days… at the very least I’ll get time to rest from all this worry/frustration.

So. Assuming I don’t die, I’ll post pics when I get back. Should get some pretty cool ones. ☺

Further proof…

…that God loves me and wants me to be happy.

Cake is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

We all crave intimacy.  We want to know, and to be known.  The dumbass stuff we say and do in order to meet this need more often than not actually works to prevent others from really knowing us.  And really, no human can know another completely.  Not the way we want to be known.  No man is a mind-reader.  But God is a mind-creator.  He knows me better than I know it myself…

I checked out of this whole connect process for a while.  At first I threw up a big-ass smokescreen, put my big girl pants on and dared anyone to step too close.  Eventually, I stopped trying to connect with people on pretty much any level.  I thought it was because I was bone-tired exhausted.  I told myself I didn’t want to be friends with anyone who didn’t want to be friends with me, and that people would prove that they want to be friends with me by befriending me.  Which is bassackwards, and not someone I’ve ever been before.

Really, it’s cuz I was afraid.

A part of me was afraid that I wasn’t cool enough to hang with the cool kids.  The reality is that there aren’t any cool kids.  We’re all of us tormented by the inner band geek (or maththelete, drama geek, etc).  Another part of me was afraid that if I put myself out there,  if I let someone see me for who I am, they wouldn’t like it.  Which, to be honest, sort of did happen.  It hurt, but I didn’t die.  But that’s a tale for another day…

So what brought this up today?  A bunch of stuff.  A great conversation over a few bottles of wine with some really great friends last weekend.  Another (admittedly at times a bit awkward but still more or less not terrible) conversation with a friend this afternoon.

But really, it’s about a printer.

When I moved to Madrid I made a conscious choice to not invest in expensive things that I could live without for a bit.  Like, for example, a printer.  And a coffee pot.  (That’s dumb.  I gotta buy me a coffee pot one of these days…)  Most of the time, printing stuff at school has worked fine.  Actually, I don’t print much at all.  Very ecological of me.  (Not really, I just don’t own a printer).  But now I’m at the point where my paperless organizational system is breaking down.  Breaking down bad.  So in a fit of minor frustration coupled with anticipation of just how bad things could get very very soon, I updated my status:  It’s official.  I need a printer…  Sixty seconds later, a friend tells me he has one I can have.

And I get it.  In a rare moment of lucidity I  hear God’s still soft voice, reminding me that He knows what I need long before I do, and is delighted to provide for me because He delights in me.  Because I’m delightful, and He loves me.  I didn’t even ask Him for it.  I just admitted I needed it and <poof>!

Why do I so easily forget that the Creator of the Universe has the power to go <poof>?!?  I am so dense sometimes…

I also hear Him reminding me that the body is HIS body.  His hands.  His feet.  He will use them to care for me.  He will use me to care for them.  This is something that I do not get to opt out of.  I cannot pick the scabs off old church wounds, make them bleed again, and say:  See?  Church people are bad.  Stay at home with your book…  God is concerned with the individual, yes, but He is also concerned with the community.  God is at His very core a community.   Intimacy with God.  Knowing God, and allowing Him to know me… I can’t just do that just me and Him in my safe place.  Not long-term.

I didn’t even take a step, exactly.  I just looked back.  And He showers me with His love and wraps me in His arms and I’m helpless to resist…

Re-relapsing. Double drat.

I’ve got my sassy back.  It’s been a while, but it is back.  With a bit of a vengeance, actually.  My hair is longer.  I haven’t felt it on my shoulders in years, and the ponytail is working again.  I like the ponytail.  I’m painting my fingernails, wearing (totally tasteful) smokin’ hot red shirts, and girl shoes.  I wore girl shoes today.  All day, even.  I wore makeup for no reason last weekend.  Not much, and no one noticed, but that’s not the point.

The point is that I am stunning, curvy, crazy-smart in a does-lots-of-stupid-shit sort of way,  wicked-funny, sometimes snarky but always at the root of it caring and compassionate–sometimes too much so.  But I let life beat me down.  It would be nice to be able to blame somebody, but it’s really no one’s fault.  Life just doesn’t happen the way we want it to happen sometimes.  Choices we make for good and right reasons have consequences.

A few months ago I made a choice that I thought at the time was the only choice that would preserve any shred of mental/emotional health.  A few weeks ago I unmade that choice.  In the words of a very wise woman, “What the fuck, Jen?”

…that’s a good question.

Three more Mondays…

There are only three more Mondays left in this school year. I am totally and entirely exhausted. That is pretty normal for me for the end of a school year, but I anticipate that the pace of things is just going to keep getting more intense the closer we get to the end. And I’m not totally in charge of things, so there will be many small emergencies coming at me from many different directions, some of which will even be my fault. Case in point: I realized about fifteen minutes ago that I’ve not yet prepared the either the oral exam for natural science nor the review lesson that goes with. And I need it done by tomorrow morning. Oops. And this on a night I was hoping to go to sleep early.

Sad day for Jen.

I also need to get myself organized for English lessons this week–and now that my bilingual classes are going in different directions that means prepping four separate lessons. AND I need to sit down with Nieves and write the Art exam by Thursday. So I either need to work on it beforehand, or lug my computer to school. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but lately I’ve not been coming home on Thursdays between school and my community group, which would mean carrying it around until I get home at 11 or shortly thereafter. That would be a pain in the butt…

I did have a chance today to start the end of the year clean out my teacher cubbie process. That felt good. I also have some chaos here in my house I need to deal with. I’m hoping that with a full night’s sleep I’ll have the fortitude to start in on it tomorrow afternoon.

And I want to play with my paints again this weekend. I think I need some thicker paper, though, because the last time I played with paints the paper got all warpy. Sad.

…three more Mondays. We can do this.