Career Change: In Education, One Size Does Not Fill All...

...And yet, I'm supposed to be teaching like it does.  Before I rant on, I will reiterate that I adore my students. They are wickedly funny, smart, street savvy kids with hearts of gold (well, most of them anyway). Do they have the biggest book knowledge? No, but is that so very important - not really.  Here's my bugaboo about my students:

Why, why, why am I told to prepare all of my students for college when it is abundantly clear that most of my students will not be successful in a collegiate academic setting.  I currently have approximately 50 seniors.  Out of those 50, I would say that perhaps 5 are prepared for the rigors of a 4-year college, possibly another 10 will be fine in a community college and yet, I am to teach all 50 like they are all ready for and will be successful in college. Since when does every high school student need to go to college?  Let's face the facts - someone needs to be snaking drains, fixing heating and air conditioning, and repairing automobiles. Trade schools are perfectly respectful post-secondary educations. In fact, most tradespeople make a boatload more money than I do with my "fancy and expensive" college degree, which I will be paying for for the rest of my life. 

My students have been at a severe disadvantage their whole lives due to a multitude of reasons: language issues, poverty, dysfunctional homes, teenage pregnancy, etc. Most of these issues are not their fault but we have to face the facts that these factors are a reality for them and giving them false hopes of attaining a college education where there is limited ability does more harm than good.  Not everyone is meant to have a college education. Nor is college for everyone. I have a bunch of friends who are smart and successful professionals and have not gone to college. Does that make them any less intelligent?  Of course not.

Additionally, can we stop blaming bad teaching/teachers for why these students are failing?  These students from the moment they stepped into a school at the age of 5 were years behind their suburban counterparts. While I'm not saying the education system in the US is perfect, people should not be placing the blame solely on teachers. Most teachers I know are hard-working dedicated professionals who are up against a wall when it comes to low income students. Studies show children from disadvantaged households have a significantly smaller vocabulary bank than those children from middle and upper class households. Those gaps only get wider as these children get older.  You cannot fix this problem in school.  These problems exist from the time these children are toddlers.  We need better pre-school programs in place for low income communities.  You can read some statistics about student vocabulary here.

The last thing I will rant about is when did failure become a bad thing? I know failing is not good but does it make sense to let students "pass" classes at any cost? It would serve students well to actually fail their classes so that they are taught a lesson about the importance of their education.  Here's the problem: every teacher at my school has been told that they need to have all assignments from the beginning of the school year through end of term 3 available so that students can make up all the work they didn't do over the course of the year so that they can pass our classes. Ummmm. What?? How is that teaching them anything? Not only is it ridiculous that these students who did nothing all year can now give me a boatload of crap to grade, but it's causing students who are doing the work to wonder why they are doing the work on time if they can just make it up whenever.  This is not education or teaching!  And it's not the reason that I took a nearly 40% pay cut!

Yeah, I'm having a hard time dealing with some of the issues that are being dictated to teachers by the powers that be. Oh well, it's spring break.  Time to go do something fun for me! Oh wait... I have a pile of work to do first.  

This is the "small" pile of work that
came home with me. Spring Break?

Do We Ever Stop Giving in to Peer Pressure??

Because I see hundreds of high school students on a near daily basis, I am amazed at the amount of peer pressure that goes on in a teenager's life. I suppose as one ages, one forgets how it works in high school. I observe my students constantly encouraging questionable behavior in others, which got me thinking about adults and peer pressure.  Seriously, do we ever truly stop dealing with peer pressure?  Yes, it might not be as rampant as it is in high school but adults equally try to pressure peers in a variety of situations.

What brought this query to the forefront of my mind was Scott Bakula. Yes, Scott Bakula of Quantum Leap and Star Trek: Enterprise fame. Yesterday, on my way home from work, I was listening to the Broadway cast album of the 1988 show Romance/Romance. This relatively unknown musical starred Mr. Bakula and every time I either see Scott on television, in a movie or listening to a recording of his singing, I am reminded of a conversation that I had with a friend a good 20-ish years ago. (Yes, I occasionally curse my superb memory, which allows me to remember stupid things like this conversation.) I was discussing Quantum Leap with this friend and how much I liked Mr. Bakula and the show and I distinctly remember my friend's response: "I think he's dull." It's an unimportant statement and yet 20 years later, I still find myself pondering that statement. I keep questioning my friend's response and how I fought back on it.  To this day, I'm not certain if I was fighting to prove my friend wrong or to keep from feeling that perhaps he was correct and I just didn't see it. This friend was someone whom I deeply respected and I was disappointed in his response, but why can't I just accept that he finds Scott Bakula dull and I don't. Was I trying to keep from giving into peer pressure by not agreeing with him? Or was I trying to pressure him into changing over to my viewpoint? Why?

I find myself thinking about these things often. Do I take that last piece of cake because a friend forces it on me or do I just not have any willpower? Have you ever gone out for drinks with friends and/or colleagues and as you are ready to leave, you hear: "Stay and have one more drink."  So you stay. Are you truly staying because you want to or because you are giving into peer pressure? I tell my students daily to avoid giving into peer pressure and yet as an adult who is well into her .... wellllllll ... let's just say that I am a woman of an indeterminate age... I still find myself having to fight against peer pressure.  It's just something that I find interesting.

Yes, as adults, the type of peer pressure we deal with is significantly different and generally harmless as compared to what teenagers have to deal with, but we do still have to fight ... or not fight ... peer pressure. How can we expect better from our youth?

Just for giggles as it has nothing whatsoever to do with peer pressure, below is a video of one of my favorite songs from Romance/Romance - oddly enough not one that Scott sang (it's sung by the wonderful Alison Fraser), but is also part of my list of cathartic songs! Lyrics can be found here.

It's a "Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time"

Back in 2004, several reader friends encouraged me to read British novelist, Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which marked Mr. Haddon's first foray into the young adult/adult genre. Up until this novel, he had written only children's books.  While planning my Freshmen Honors unit plans, I made the decision to teach this novel to them because of the very unique protagonist featured in the novel.  But as I hadn't read it since 2004, I needed to spend some time re-reading the novel in the hopes that I was correct about my initial assumption of this book.

Synopsis: "Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, Christopher has Asperger's syndrome. Everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning for him. Routine, order and predictability shelter him from the messy, wider world. Then, at fifteen, Christopher's carefully constructed world falls apart when he finds his neighbor's dog, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork, and he is initially blamed for the killing." Set in and around the town of Swindon, England, Christopher decides to investigate the death of the dog, but is often helped by and occasionally hampered by his specific learning disability.

Review: It has been nearly 10 years since my initial read of this wonderful book and it's just as fantastic.  Mark Haddon has written a most unique and fascinating character in Christopher. Written in the first person point of view, the novel allows the reader to delve into the mind of someone who has a high functioning, but incredibly disabling brain. Warm, funny, sad, moving, witty and brilliant are just a few words off the top of my head to describe this novel. This novel is just a delight and so far my students are enjoying it immensely.

The best way to describe this novel is from the author himself: "In July 2009, Haddon wrote on his blog that 'Curious Incident is not a book about Asperger’s....if anything it’s a novel about difference, about being an outsider, about seeing the world in a surprising and revealing way. The book is not specifically about any specific disorder,' and that he is not an expert on autism spectrum disorder or Asperger syndrome." (Wikipedia) As someone who grew up being an outsider (even still), I appreciate the efforts that Mr. Haddon went through to describe in great detail what it's like to be an outsider.

I highly recommend this book for any adult and young adult reader. 

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Completely Random Stuff

Okay, so I've come across some random stuff in the past few days that I wanted to share. There's not much I can say about them as they pretty much speak for themselves.  So here we go...

 

One of the best videos I have seen posted on YouTube, entitled "The First Honest Cable Company".  Enjoy.

I saw this t-shirt at my local pet store.  If I didn't hate slogan t-shirts, I might have bought it.

I am really over winter, so much that I'm questioning why I moved to New England! <grrrr>

Music Doesn't Lie - Part 19 (You Could Drive a Person Crazy)

"Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world,
then it can only happen through music." – Jimi Hendrix

Yesterday morning, on my way to school, I had accidentally set my iPod to randomly play whatever it desired and got quite a shock when I heard a certain song begin to play. Why? Because the singer was me! What the... holy cow! I had completely forgotten that I had placed on my iPod an album (Queen Bee) that I had self-produced a bazillion years ago... Okay, in reality it was a mere 13 years ago, which only FEELS like a bazillion. 

I decided to take a listen to the entire album and, even though I'm incredibly critical of myself, I had to admit it was a really fun romp through my former performer life. It made me a little homesick for those days... but just a little. I wouldn't change my current career because of how much I love teaching, but I will acknowledge that creating this album was tons of fun. I had the opportunity to work with some really fantastic people - like my incredibly talented friends Chris and John who were kind enough to join me in performing a couple of duets.

I thought I'd have some fun with one of the songs, "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" from Company and create a video for it (see below). This song is probably my favorite on the album for a few reasons. One, it's a Sondheim song.  Two, my voice coach (Steven), who is a musical genius, came up with a few changes to the song that are brilliant.  Three, it's another song for which anyone could apply to their personal lives (seriously, who has not felt this way). And four, it's just a really funny, fun song. Lyrics can be found here.  

If you're interested in hearing more of the album, you can always check it out on CD Baby, or Amazon, or iTunes. This is not a sales pitch. In fact, my friends can personal message me, if they're interested in receiving a copy and I will send the mp3s.  

I had way too much fun creating this video, so much so that I may do another one soon.

By the way - speaking of teaching, some new photos have been posted to My First Year of Teaching photo album.  Enjoy!

Music Doesn't Lie - Part 18 (I Know Him So Well)

"Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world,
then it can only happen through music." – Jimi Hendrix

I think it's been well-established that I am a theatre geek - particularly musical theatre. If I could have spent my entire life doing nothing but musical theatre that would have been a dream come true. For a long time, I kept a wishlist of all the roles that I wanted to perform.  Maybe I'll post that list one day. But suffice to say that it's a long and impossible list. One of the shows that I had always wanted to perform in was Chess. Now there are only two roles for women in this show (Florence and Svetlana) and I'm so not physically right for either one, but that didn't stop me from wanting to perform either role - but especially Florence.

First produced in London's West End in 1986 and Broadway in 1988, Chess (music by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson (yes, of ABBA fame) and lyrics by Sir Tim Rice) "involves a romantic triangle between two top chess players, an American and a Russian, in a world chess championship, and a woman (Florence) who manages one (the American) and falls in love with the other (the Russian); all in the context of a Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, during which both countries wanted to win international chess tournaments for propaganda purposes."  (Wikipedia)  Svetlana is the estranged wife of the Russian chess master.

As all good performers know, personal pain can be incredibly useful to enhance a performance. Many of the roles on my wishlist are ones that I could play but might not necessarily have an real-life emotion that I could tap into. Chess used to be one of those shows, but experiences over the past couple of years has changed that. If I were still an active performer and had the chance to play the role of Florence, I would blow the roof off of the theatre with my emotional connection to this material as I discovered today after listening to the cast recording. Below is the Broadway recording of Judy Kuhn and Marcia Mitzman performing "I Know Him so Well" - which I think is quite possibly the best recording of any available (although the Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson version is pretty darn good too). This song in particular now has a strong emotional connection to my life and I will never be able to listen to it with emotionless ears again. Lyrics can be found here. 

One of the reasons I love music is its ability to acts as a catharsis, so much so that I'm in the process of creating a "catharsis" playlist.  Many of the songs that I've highlighted in my blog will be on that list, including this one.  Now I just need the perfect name for the playlist:  "Liar, liar, pants on fire" or "Not worth my tears" or "Lies (Are Breaking My Heart)" are all in consideration.  :-)  

I thank the songwriters of this world for bringing music into my life!  (Yes, it's an ABBA song! I thought it fitting with Chess.)

"The Paperboy" Doesn't Quite Deliver...

The other day, I was perusing the video collection in my local library and came across a movie that I had never heard about - The Paperboy (2012) and because one of the stars is John Cusack (a favorite of mine), I brought it home to watch. But before watching the video, I did a bit of research and, unsurprisingly, found out that the movie is based on a novel written by Pete Dexter. I decided to read the book before watching the movie, because generally speaking the novels are better than the movies. 

Synopsis: "The sun is rising over Moat County, Florida, when Sheriff Thurmond Call is found on the highway, gutted like an alligator. A local redneck is tried, sentenced, and set to fry. Then Ward James, hotshot investigative reporter for the Miami Times, returns to his rural hometown with a death row femme fatale who promises him the story of the decade. She’s armed with explosive evidence, aiming to free—and meet—her convicted 'fiancé'. With Ward’s disillusioned younger brother Jack as their driver, they barrel down Florida’s back roads and seamy places in search of The Story, racing flat out into a shocking head-on collision between character and fate as truth takes a back seat to headline news." (Amazon.com)

Review:  While I enjoyed reading this book, there were a couple of things that bothered me about it.  It starts off as sort of a murder mystery, with a pair of reporters investigating the conviction of a backwoods Deliverance-type character in the murder of a unpopular, racist sheriff in a sparsely populated county in Florida. The narrator is the brother of one of the reporters. The plot eventually moves away from this theme, and becomes sort of jammed between a character study of the narrator and his brother, an indictment of media morality, and some sort of Greek-style tragedy. The overall effect is that the book wanders a bit, and doesn't seem to be able to decide what it's trying to do. It almost seems like whenever the book gets perilously close to making a statement, it backs off and goes in a different direction. This is something of a pet peeve of mine, as I think sometimes writers do this kind of thing to seem mysterious and profound, under the assumption that being understandable means being simple and shallow. But in reality, it's just annoying.

Other than that, the book was well written and for the most part the characters were interesting, although most of them were not very likable. I think the book would have been better if the narrator's brother Ward, who was perhaps the central figure of the book, had a detectable personality instead of just acting like a journalistic robot. The book was saved by the narrator, whom it was possible to sympathize with, and even like a bit.

Overall I would mildly recommend it, but it is not a must read.

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars

This novel was the first Pete Dexter book that I've ever read and it's not making me run out and pick up any of his other books. As for the movie, it suffers from the same fate as the book.  It just doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up.  A good cast with a weak story and mediocre dialogue.  Skip it unless you are really bored!  The New Yorker posted a really funny and spot on review of the movie - a far better review than I could ever write!