Yesterday ended the first week with students at my new school. On Monday we had only freshmen so they could begin to learn their way around the building, and on Tuesday the rest of our students (except for those whose families decided to take an extra week of summer) arrived. Since our classes are 90 minutes, every other day on an A-Day / B-Day schedule, that means I have had classes with students twice - again, except for a few who took a long weekend, somehow their parents deciding a four-day weekend was more important than a good start to the school year.
Except I have seen my advisory five times, beginning Monday. we use advisory for orientation, for things like instructing them on the Code of Conduct and Academic Integrity, on trying to prevent bullying and sexual harassment, and other things not directly involved in academic instruction. We are a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) high school, with over 100 of our freshman participating in that program. Since half of my classes are STEM and I am new to the school, I am one of three teachers with STEM freshmen, somehow in my case with 37, although that may be slightly adjusted. They are bright, personable, eager to learn, and not quite sure what to make of me.
I taught for 13 years in the same school, the last seven of which most of my students were 10th graders who had some idea of what I was like as a teacher. I am a new quantity this year, and three of my classes, with about 40% of my students (other than my advisees), juniors or seniors. By late afternoon Tuesday, our first full instructional day, students were asking to be assigned to my classes even if their schedules had to be changed. So I was told by the STEM counselor, who handles the scheduling of students in the program.
So I think I am off to a good start?
Come along with me as I explore what it means to again be teaching.
Normally our classes are ninety minutes except on Fridays, when we have advisory. With advisory every day, classes from Tuesday on were only about 75 minutes.
Third period is when students have one of four lunches. MIne is the fourth lunch, which I enjoy, because it means we have the entire class before the students head down the hall to the cafeteria. On A-days I do not teach that period, and on B-Days I have a class of juniors in STEM Policy.
With shorter periods, my planning was somewhat different. Normally in 90 minutes I will plan for 3 discrete activities, but with two, I somewhat divided the classes into two segments, especially in AP Government, which is from where the tales about me began.
The first half of the class was getting students into their seats, going through paperwork, distributing books and getting books slips, having them fill out student information sheets (which I glanced at quickly, making some comments where relevant - about my perhaps writing letters of recommendation for certain colleges either because of having attended as undergraduate or graduate or knowing people in the admissions process), suggesting considering additional colleges that might be relevant to their interests, or perhaps telling them about specific scholarship opportunities (some are considering U of Maryland at Baltimore County and surprisingly did not know about the Myerhoff Scholars Program). If they were interested in some occupations, I might initiate a discussion about that - one student had written that she wanted to be a forensic pathologist and had been told she would need 12 years of training. I pointed out that was generally true for most medical specialties, but that there were programs to shorten the 8 years of undergrad and medical school. She later came to me at the end of the day and I pulled up a list of such programs, and then sent her the email link.
I also shared some of my background, including my having retired but come out of retirement to teach at this school, at the request of the now former principal. For all my students except the freshmen in my advisory, they had had him as a principal for their entire time at the school, and he was greatly respected by parents and liked by the students. I explained how we knew one another, and how I had visited the school last October at his request, and that I had turned down a firm job offer for more money much closer to home when I had not yet been interviewed for my current position, only scheduled.
For my STEM students, most of whom I did not see until Wednesday, I explained how my background actually qualified me to serve in the particular class for which i had them.
And starting Monday night with my advisory, I began to call families, and word about that also began to get around. I will talk about that a bit more later.
In all my classes, I make some comments about how to take a multiple choice test - in the process I tell them that living near Baltimore is an advantage, because there is a poet who died and is buried there who is of great assistance, and his name was Edgar Allan Process-of-Elimination. As I continue to talk I begin to step up first onto a chair and then on top of a stool, as I remark that in his most famous poem there is a bird who tells us what we should do with the wrong answers on a multiple choice question, we should find them and with the bird go "AWK! NEVERMOREEW!!!" as I make the motion of crossing out the wrong answer.
That does get their attention.
So does a little two-part exercise: I ask who is a good speller. I pick a volunteer. I tell the student "the longest word in most standard English dictionaries is antidisestablishmentarianism. Spell it." As soon as the student begins "a.n.t.i..." I interrupt them. Sometimes another student immediately guesses. The question instruction was to spell "it." I point out they need to be sure they know the question they are answering.
I then ask who is good in math. I again pick a volunteer. I start speaking at a normal pace: A bus leaves a terminal with 2 passengers on board. At the first stop it picks up 2 more passengers. (now I begin to speak ever more rapidly as I continue ) - At the next stop it picks up two and one gets off. At the next stop .....
I go far too quickly even for most to calculate in their heads, as the class begins to giggle.
.... and then the bus returns to the terminal and all the remaining passengers get off. How many stops did the bus make between leaving and returning to the terminal? No one ever gets it.
I explain that on a math question, before they begin pushing buttons on the calculator make sure to know what the question is asking. Also, you might be able to eliminate answers because you know the answer has to be an even positive number larger than 100.
This is part of what gets students' attention.
But it is what happens in AP Government that seals it.
I tell the students to answer this question = What is Justice? I say to jot down their ideas while I have to run a quick errand.
I step out of the room, put on a peruke (white wig) and black robe and throw open the door - "Oyez, Oyez... What, you don't stand up when a judge comes in? All Rise?"
They giggle, but they rise.
"Oyez, Oyez, all ye having business before this honorable court rise, Kenneth J. Bernstein Presiding. Order in the court." I walk to the front of the room and say "you may be seated."
I pick a student to answer the question - if it is not directly on the idea of punishing those breaking the law in some form, with questioning I get it to that point. I will then ask whether that means Harriet Tubman should have been imprisoned for theft in helping so many slaves escape North from Dorchester County MD, or if the Giep family should have been executed for hiding Otto Frank and his family from the Nazis.
No matter what a student does, I push it further.
I then transition, and I do not always do the next section in the same order. Usually I will point out that the question I have asked them, "What is justice," is central to Plato's Republic. I will note in the Declaration Jefferson's words "that to preserve these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their JUST powers from the consent of the governed." I will note that in the Preamble that "We the people" who "do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America" after the legal fiction of establishing a more perfect union (rather than what they were really doing, replacing the Articles of Confederation), first list as a purpose "establish justice."
We explore what life would be like with no rules or laws, in a state of nature. Here I rely upon Chapter 13 of Leviathan, what Hobbes has to say, ending with "and the life of man; solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." I turn to Locke and the notion of the social contract. I start with his idea that if we all have all our rights we have no way of resolving when rights come into conflict. I begin swinging my arms, saying "for example, I have the right to swing my arms." I will with arms swinging, begin to move towards a student, saying "But Brittany has the right to keep that cute nose. How do we resolve this conflict?"
I use that example deliberately, the idea that my rights end at the point of your nose.
I point out that Locke says we come together, surrendering the right to enforce our rights to the society we set up in the social contract. I illustrate by the example of the difference between civil and criminal justice, setting up by perhaps I hit you, you kill me, my wife blows up your car with you in it, your family goes and kills my entire extended family. This could happen absent a system of law.
I illustrate this by saying if I hit a student, there are two cases that can occur. The student can sue me for physical damages, and pain, and reconstructive surgery, and my arguing that I think I did him/her a favor by improving his/her looks will probably not be a successful argument, but that it will only cost me money. That case will be student v. Mr. B.
But we don't want teachers hitting students. So I will be arrested and charged. Only the student's name will not be part of the case. Instead, it will be the People of the State of Maryland v Mr. B., because I have broken the agreed upon standards of behavior, I have violated the social contract, and the government is what acts to enforce the terms of that social contract.
I then explain these two notions - what is justice and the nature of the social contract - are what will guide our course.
"Court is now over. All rise!" As they do I take off the peruke and robe.
I have begun every government class I have ever taught this way. It does get their attention.
And it does contribute to my reputation.
If that were not enough, in the 2nd day in every class, Thursday or Friday, I took time to remember the 1963 Civil Rights March, whose 50th anniversary was Wednesday. I gave a brief background of the development of civil rights. I talk about how I got involved, my experiences in attending the March. I then show them two speeches. The first is that of John Lewis, at the end of which I point out that when he was addressing the 250,000 people at that March he was 23 years old, that much of what happened in the Civil Rights movement was as the result of what young people did.
I show the version of King's speech on the video put out by the King Center, which at times illustrates using video from other occasions - in Birmingham in particular, but also all the people kneeling and praying after crossing the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, with the assembled law enforcement that would later ride through on horses and among other things bash in the head of John Lewis.
I tell them about King going off script in the speech, which they can see when he stops reading, sometimes having to search for words, in the I have a dream portion of the speech.
There is more in these first two days of instruction, much more.
If it sounds like I am enjoying it, I am, even though I am expending a lot of energy.
But then there is this. I have been having constant sinus problems, having to take a benadryl every four hours around the clock, yet still suffering. Yesterday evening I realized that since Tuesday Morning I had taken a total of five benadryl, three of them before going to bed, and that I had not really been suffering. Could it be my body is healing some because I am doing what I should be doing?
People have asked me to share the experience of returning to teaching, hence this post.
We will see how it goes, but so far I am pleased, even though I still have another 80 phone calls to make in the next few days.
As Dirty Harry says in Magnum Force, "a man's got to know his limitations." For better or worse mine is this - I am most alive, most myself, of greatest value to others, when I am a teacher.
Pewace.