Week 2, Finding a Rhythm

Over the three day weekend I made a trip to downtown LA to check something out from the library and have a look around the arts district that seems to have so much buzz. The LA Central Library is a beautiful complex, a restored old temple to books attached to a modern and spacious wing. But it’s not a place I would ever want to really hang out in, simply because practically every seat and cubicle was occupied by a homeless person. Don’t even consider using one of the restrooms without preparing yourself for something vile.

The journey from the library to the arts district took me through the skid row that I’d seen before but never like this. It was a beautiful day out, the sun was out but not too hot, the air was clean from the recent rain. Block after block after block of tent and tarps and people just wandering, many in the street. I have seen homeless people and children all over the city now, but I’ve never seen anything like the scene going on right now in downtown LA.  I don’t know how we can call ourselves civilized when we allow fellow human beings to live like that.  When I traveled through India I saw some entrenched poverty, but it wasn’t as soul crushing as simply driving through the downtown of the city where I live.

This has nothing to do with teaching except that it was reality check for my privileges, which includes a warm and safe bed on the third floor of a building where no one can break in from the street level. I have lots of stuff and get to eat well. I have a job I love that’s very close to where I live. Sure my stress level is insane but I’m safe. The people suffering are not just addicts and veterans, there are people just not making enough money to pay rent. For all I know, some of my students may be in this situation or living out of a parents car, which is a luxury compared to a tent on the street. There’s very little reporting about this in the local media, but I read that at night over 2,000 people share 9 nasty bathrooms.

I don’t have any answers to this problem, I am so happy to have a home and not to have to see  that squalor on a regular basis. If you’re insulated like me, just know that something ugly is happening right here in LA and I fear in many other places in the USA and we’d better decide what kind of people we really are.  I borrowed a DVD of Charlie Chaplin’s film City Lights at the library. I’d seen it before on TCM but wanted to see it again. All the people that rave about that movie are so right- it’s amazingly good. As big as a Buster Keaton fan as I am, I have to say that nothing can compare to Chaplin’s genius in this film. The beauty of his conscious mute button is like water in the desert of our blowhard culture. The lovable tramp is a street person trying to hold on to his dignity- shouldn’t be very funny at all, but Chaplin did it. I had to watch the ending a bunch of times just to study how it works, how it pulls your heart out of your chest and instructs your tear ducts to flow without reserve. I would love to see this film in a real theater with an audience, if I can sneak it into the classroom some day I will. Although I think the themes may be over the heads of children, the humor and pathos is Chaplin’s eternal gift for all humankind.

So I’m technically a science teacher but I think of myself as just someone sharing life and experience with younger people. I’m not smarter, I’ve just been around longer and have a few interesting experiences, some hard knocks. I’ve overcome shyness, sexual abuse and been brainwashed by a cult. If it don’t kill you it makes you stronger, right. I never figured out how to date and be in a conventional relationship, make a family, that feels like my achilles heel sometimes. Other times I remember that I don’t have any roll models I can recall who’ve shown me how to do that. My therapist hears about my heavier issues but in general I have long thought that men and women don’t know how to talk to each other. We’re so afraid of rejection that we can’t be ourselves, basically. It’s another big problem I don’t have the answer to, at least not yet. But we keep on going and try to bring a little change, a little hope, a positive thought, a step forward every day.

It helps to know where you’re going. In the case of teaching, this means following a lesson plan, one that’s been tested and vetted and makes sense. I am so grateful to have the GEMS OSS right now, it’s grounding me. Even the IQWST at least lets me know that my lessons are going somewhere, there should be conceptual payoff for my students soon enough. I’m only about a day ahead in the planning for each unit, I have to be so flexible for the hundreds of variables that make me deviate from the printed plans.

Considered some trainings coming  on the next few Saturdays and the answer now is “no”. I need those days to get off the merry go round. It’s enough to try and teach well. Combine that with the NBC component, being formally evaluated by an administrator this semester, those are my extra curriculars.  If I think I can pull it off, I’ll make a halfhearted attempt at the PAEMST, but it isn’t as critical as grinding through the arcane prompts of NBC Component 4.

I need to “ capture my abilities as an effective and reflective practitioner in developing knowledge of my students and then applying that knowledge to advance my students’ learning and growth. I need to show how I base instructional decisions and assessment practices on my knowledge of  students as gained from collaborations with learning communities and understanding of sound assessment principles. I have to demonstrate this understanding through examples of assessments used for formative and summative purposes. I’m to provide evidence that I use assessments, the information gained from them, and other data sources to positively impact the students’ learning. “

It doesn’t sound that hard, right,  but only talk to me if you’ve actually done it!  How much do I really know about my students? Nowhere near as much as I wish I did or even could,  given the numbers I have.  Where is that info? On Misis or MyData or Schoology?  I haven’t wrapped my head around this yet. And the goal is to have this info thread through the evidence…. Knowledge of students,  Assessment expertise, working with parents and other teachers.

That’s the main guts of it but then there’s also this ambiguous thing called a “professional need” and a “student need” that I need to identify.  The Professional Need can go back two years and that should be easy for me since I have done SO much professional development, (and a Fulbright DAT) especially around NGSS and science, making and passion projects…- but the key is to give specific evidence of how my PD is impacting student learning. And I’m the guy who says student learning is the unmeasurable elephant in the room. So it’s going to be as much truth as I can conjure up and a big dollop of the education-ese nonsense that my profession deals in.

It’s the “Student Need” where I feel stuck and need to think it through. Most likely it will be advocating for the Gifted and especially the under identified (ie, not White).  The two “needs” don’t have to be related but it would be much simpler if they were. I think I’ve figured it out,  then! Focus on developing real differentiation skills for the gifted, in the context of inquiry science. That topic will actually be fun to write about. If I can make it fun I will be more motivated and do better work, which is exactly what I preach!  Over the weekend, hopefully I can start to outline and brainstorm along those lines.

Now I want to watch the premiere of season 3 of “The Path” on Hulu, that is a show I am very interested in. Must got to bed early though, as I was a zombie today from lack of sleep.  LOVE the 4 day week. It seems that if I could have three days to recover and process everything that happens in 5 periods of science in a classroom day, I could truly be an “effective and reflective practitioner”.  But I have to do all this on the fly, like eating lunch while walking, taking your coffee to go in a car, and texting instead of meeting eyes to a real soul. Those are examples of bad living that I wish I could erase.  I’d like to be an effective and reflective PERSON, let alone a teacher. Truth is we are all teachers, children are watching and challenging us for guidance at all times. I’ve just decided at my age to face that wave as face-first as I can instead of letting it hit me in the back. But sometimes you do want to duck down and let the bigger wave go over. And it’s not a good idea to turn your back to the ocean, and the needs of children are as relentless and exhilarating as the waves on the shore.