Author: Mr. Chase

So, I was feeling rascally today.

Things in second period were a little off during our journaling at the beginning of the period.

How to deal with this? How to focus the students without setting out for a day of stress and frustration. I truly woke up this morning and told myself I would not be coming back to my apartment frustrated. The question became, then, how would I accomplish this?

Then answer: Don’t teach.

As my lesson was completely set up on the ActivBoard (including discussion questions), I handed over my stylus to a student and said, “Take the class.”

He took over the class and I sat at a desk and participated as a student.

I raised my hand, I asked questions, I offered answers during discussion. Even better, rather than leading the students through difficult vocabulary in the passage we were reading, I raised my hand and asked, “What is an ‘alibi’?”

My students worked these questions out, discussing and arguing and moving on. At no point did anyone say, “Mr. Chase, you know what that means.” Caught up in the moment, they took my questions as genuine and answered them as such

I thuroughly enjoyed myself. As the experience went so well in my first class, I decided to give it a go in my next as well.

I’ll tell you something, it was eye-opening. The lesson was two-fold. The students in the seats were involved in learning what I had planned. The students who were teaching were involved in learning how to communicate a message to a resistant audience.

Things went very well, from my point of view.

The most memorable moment, for me, was when my 6th period teacher looked at me and said, “Ok, Mr. Chase, I get the lesson.” He was not talking about our discussion of what it took to make a quality piece of writing. He was speaking of what it takes to hold a class together. He was talking about the gymnastic rigamaroll included in keeping a room of 8th graders interested in anything. You know what, he did get it. He did not (nor did any of my literal “student teachers”) give up. Each of them toughed out the entire period with some astounding results.

The question becomes, can I go back there again? How often?

Tomorrow, we’ll be completing our monthly timed writing, so I’ll be leading the class. Still, a seed has been planted. Can this exercise evolve to the point where I give my students a topic or information set and a date and tell them to be prepared to present?

More later.

technorati tags:english, education, teaching, languagearts, writing, middleschool

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My second period class didn’t know what the midterm elections were. They didn’t know why last night had any potential to impact America. Only time will tell if last night’s results really did have any impact on politics in America.

We did get into an interesting conversation about political parties. A few of my students decided things would be better if there were only one party in power at one time. Say, a Republican president were elected, they decided the entire Congress should also then be Republican. We spoke further and talk turned to the war in Iraq.

“Why are we there?” I asked.

“The Iraqis flew the planes into the World Trade Center,” was the majority response.

“No,” one student said, “It’s because of the weapons of mass destruction.”

Thinking this was a strong road to follow, I asked the student to elaborate.

“Bush didn’t pay off the weapons of mass destruction, so the people from Iraq attacked us.”

The discussion was heated and everyone had an opinion. Tomorrow, I suppose I’ve got to decide whether I follow them down the rabbit hole. For right now, they’re writing. I can’t wait to see what they have to say.

More later.

technorati tags:Iraq, teaching, lesson, war

My students have been reading The Freedom Writers Diary. Yesterday, we read Diary #5 which recounts one student’s decision to buy a gun for protection from a group of teens in his neighborhood who are constantly messing him up. In the discussion that followed in each class, my students were in 100% agreement that they like this book. It’s difficult not to be drawn to truth and honesty. My response was to ask the students whether they thought they had stories worth telling.

From playing the Line Game, I knew the answer was “Yes.”

My next question was more difficult to answer, “Why aren’t you telling them?”

In truth, no one has ever asked them to tell their stories. No one has said to them, “Write something you would want to read.” The Freedom Writers Diary has helped them see that what they want to read, they could write. My assignment at the final 15 minutes of the class period was to “write a story from your life that you would be interested in reading.” The results were varied from the expected to the intense. I want to use these truths to begin editing and publishing. I need to get from these stories to blogs. They need to be able to post anonymously. Logistics to think on.

What’s ironic is that I was waiting for their skill sets to get to the point that my students could blog. This was wrong. I needed to wait until they had a voice that needed hearing. We’re almost there.

My hope is that we will be able to have a level of interaction similar to that of Will Richardson’s class when they blogged about The Secret Life of Bees. Having had the chance to actually get to meet the freedom writers, I feel sure they would take 5 minutes every once in a while to write back to my kids. Here’s hoping.

More later.

technorati tags:WillRich, FreedomWriters, Gruwell, English, Teaching, Writing

A man’s voice is booming from my CD player as I sit this Tuesday morning putting the final touches on my lesson. Layered over it are the soft cajolings of a woman encouraging me to “let it rain and clear it out.”

I’m not sure of the name of the song, but it’s inspired many of my female students to enter my room and dance. It’s a dedication and energy I wish to tap in to when I’m teaching.

They flock in and out of the room, some watching, some participating, everyone wanting to be a part of the experience. How do you get this kind of excitement and thought about learning?

I want the best way to subvert this culture. Yes, technology is where they live, but most of my students use technology as a means to get to their real homes – their music.

In the five minutes of writing this post, the number of students has gone from 10 to 20. They are 100% engaged in what is going on.

The bell has rung. The experience is over.

Lightning in a bottle.

More later.

technorati tags:music, rap, dancing

I suppose I’ll eventually return to a halfway witty post title, but I’m going with what’s on my mind at the moment. My midnight return played havoc with my waking this morning. My head was swimming with everything from the weekend.

I needed some sort of FW detox. It’s nice to be back in the classroom. So much to do. I’ve got to pace myself.

I woke this morning to an e-mail from Principal Steve. He’s been reading the blog and had this to say:

Your most difficult battle could be convincing “old codgers” like me that we need to reexamine our belief systems when dealing with students in the domain of discipline (sounds as if you may have had a ‘philosophy-changing moment” in this regard).  Having been around the block a time or two I think I know something and not so sure we don’t have some anecdotal and data proof to back it up.  High expectations, a relationship-based approach and a gradual shift to the center is a recipe for post graduate success for our kids.  I mean our students will have to function in society, won’t they?

I’m in agreement with what he has to say about high expectations and a relationship-based approach to teaching. The thing is, we can’t just worry about the relationship between the teacher and student, we must also be agents of change for building relationships between students.

I don’t know that I’ve had a philosophy-changing moment, more of a philosophy empowering moment. I’m going back to the essay I wrote at the end of my time in university. My “Why I Want to Teach” essay. Though my understanding of the working of a classroom and the daily struggle for relevance is refined and evolved, my target is the same. My core values haven’t changed.

On the ride to the airport yesterday, I wrote this:

Andy Hargreaves talks about the fact that people rarely give up who they are all at once. It is something that happens piece by piece. With that mellowing process, educators become ENRONS of public education. I saw that happening; I saw myself slowly giving in to the pressures of a methodology of pedagogy that is not my own. My kids have missed out because they have been moving targets in a war of educational assimilation. It is not “standardized” thinkers who become heroes.

More later.

technorati tags:FWW06, Teaching, Education, English, Hargreaves, English, LanguageArts, classroom

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Some students were in my room this afternoon during lunch using my laptops. One student was using the USA Track & Field website to map out a route he would be running this weekend. Another student, Jose, was sitting next to him and looking to find his house.

“Jose,” I said, “see if you can find your town in Mexico.”

He got this look on his face, this, wonder struck look.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, “I never thought about doing that.”

So, he went to the general Google maps page and zoomed in on Texas.

“Now, where is the Rio Grande,” he said.

He found the river, but was a little upset that it was so long.

I suggest he do a search for a town name he remembered. He googled Eagle Pass, TX and the excitement increased.

“Here’s the church we used to go to.”

“Here’s the place where my mom’s house used to be.”

“Here’s where we would go to the flea market.”

“Here’s where we would cross over.”

“Here’s where a border patrol agent shot a lady while she was crossing.”

I asked how long it had been since he had visited – 6 years.

No lesson I could have created on reading maps or autobiography could have rivaled what took place this afternoon. A site I use all the time to get directions or find a new running store did more than that today. It helped me to connect with one of my students. It helped him visit home.

technorati tags:google, texas, usatf, lep, education, esol

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So, today was literally one for the record books. Phoenix and Booker Middle School were the two schools in Sarasota County to participate in Florida’s effort to break the Guiness World Record for the most people reading the same thing simultaneously.

Despite the somewhat corny intro. and showing by Gov. Bush and our state’s education czar that they are fairly disconnected with the psyche of Floridian middle schoolers, and despite my initial reservations, I have to admit it was a fairly exciting thing to be a part of.

The students weren’t really sure what to say about it. The cynical side wanted to mock the whole thing, but the prospect of breaking a world record kept that in check. Instead, we were left with awkward jokes they didn’t really believe in.

So, we got a couple hundred thousand Florida students reading simultaneously today. The next step is getting all of them to learn simultaneously.

More later.

technorati tags:guinessbook, record, florida

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