Eleven thirty-five a.m., just sat down to lunch in the cafeteria with about one hundred-eighty students and fellow teachers, and the room was suddenly plunged into darkness. As you can just imagine, the squeals and screams that erupted were deafining. Just another "CUC Rolling Blackout".
After getting them to quiet "a little", we finished lunch and went back to our already heating-up classroom. There we stayed, my students and I, trying to learn and teach in that environment until almost two p.m.. Does anyone do their best in an uncomfortable environment?
Some schools contacted CUC, found out it would be out longer than two hours, and let their students go home. We could not contact CUC, because phones are tied to power. This meant that we just had to endure. One cannot teach computer, use the overhead projector, or a Power Point presentation if the power is off. This can make teaching very dificult! It is not always easy to come up with enough creative teaching methods to fill two hours in the dark. CUC and the schools have to find a better solution to "keep the power on" for education's sake.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
Staffing an issue in the States as well
Here is a story from the New York Times about the sorry state of teaching in the U.S. It focuses on the number of people leaving the profession, and the difficulty in staffing qualified teachers in math and science in particular, and even more so in low performing districts.
Also, when I went into this field I was single, and I was being paid enough for me. I didn't look down the line so much. I don't have a big money complaint with things here now, but when I look at the salary guides for the states that aren't much better, and being aware how much more expensive things like housing and car insurance are there, plus all the other options that don't exist here that grab at your money, I wonder how I will be able to make it work. I could easily be one of those people who have to get out that are described in this piece.
I'd be curious to hear from my teacher readers if they expect to be in this profession 5, 10 or 15 plus years down the line.
The retirement of thousands of baby boomer teachers coupled with the departureTeaching students interested in learning is a total joy -- the frustration of the discipline problems drives most people out of the business. Of my current crop about 3 in 4 are really there to learn within reason, and 1 in 4 are there to deprive the other 3 of that opportunity. I'm better than most at keeping that 1 in 4 on task, but it is exhausting and demoralizing to have to do so all the time.
of younger teachers frustrated by the stress of working in low-performing
schools is fueling a crisis in teacher turnover that is costing school districts
substantial amounts of money as they scramble to fill their ranks for the fall
term. Superintendents and recruiters across the nation say the challenge of
putting a qualified teacher in every classroom is heightened in subjects like
math and science and is a particular struggle in high-poverty schools, where the
turnover is highest. Thousands of classes in such schools have opened with
substitute teachers in recent years.
Also, when I went into this field I was single, and I was being paid enough for me. I didn't look down the line so much. I don't have a big money complaint with things here now, but when I look at the salary guides for the states that aren't much better, and being aware how much more expensive things like housing and car insurance are there, plus all the other options that don't exist here that grab at your money, I wonder how I will be able to make it work. I could easily be one of those people who have to get out that are described in this piece.
I'd be curious to hear from my teacher readers if they expect to be in this profession 5, 10 or 15 plus years down the line.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Teacher Student Ratios
On Monday, August 27, 2007, an article in the Marianas Variety mentioned that PSS has the highest teacher student ratio in the country. The official ratio is 24:1. I would like to know how PSS came up with that ratio. They must be counting counselors, librarians, cooks, custodians, office staff and administrators as teachers to get numbers so low and completely off the mark. The smallest class ratio I've had in 3 years is 28:1. I have colleagues in the 7th grade with 32 students per class (for science !!!) and some high school teachers have 32 to 35 students per class. Lets be honest about the ratios and maybe the legislature and the community might start to notice how much PSS needs financial help. Hopwood had to do without 6 teachers this year and our librarian is in a classroom. Ironically, PSS earmarked several hundred thousand dollars of grant funds for literacy at the middle schools this year. That money is targeted for the libraries. What good is having a library when you don't have enough staffing to run it properly. Our Library Aide is very capable and good at her job, but she can not effectively serve 1,200 patrons all by herself. I teach science at Hopwood and my room was built for 24 or less students. I asked to cut the long, built in tables this summer to accomodate larger class sizes and was turned down by the Capital Improvement folks at central. Seems they know best how to manage an overcrowded science lab full of high energy, hormonal teenagers. I have 6 students per group because of the table configuration and ideally, each group should only have 4 students. Mondayitis has reached epidemic proportions!!! Last week 8 teachers were absent and none on Tuesday. Today 6 were out, and I'll wager a can of 'teacher tea' that tomorrow we'll have 0-1 people out. I lost my prep today. I had to teach language arts and the teacher didn't leave a lesson plan. Absof#cking Fabulous!!!
Friday, August 24, 2007
"OLD" and "NEW"
In the process of getting through the first few weeks of school, in a new grade and a new room, I have had to go through many things! Old text books had to be gone through and remarked with new room numbers, and new text books had to get their initial markings. We have been told that ALL teachers will be getting brand new Laptop computers within two weeks. I hope that we get to keep the old ones for classroom use, to give students greater access. We also have some old policies and some new areas of concern. My materials also had to be gone through to see what would apply to this group of students. I, like most teachers, am a pack rat, always afraid to throw something away, because I might use it next time.
Through all of these transitions I hope that the administration keeps putting the focus on student performance, not on which department is getting the most funding or on trying to keep the funding equal! I know, understand and appreciate everyone's right and responsibility to keep the culture alive, BUT, WE ARE HERE TO TEACH ENGLISH! I hope that we can throw out old ideas of seperating english or language from everything else. Without knowing english, one cannot read in english. All subjects depend on this! To learn any language there are two levels. First, the spoken language, and then the written language. PGFC, NJFL, NFL, and Thespians all embrace both these two areas and should continue to be funded in full! No other program in the CNMI gives all ages the opportunities that these students are recieving. Some have even recieved scholorships to college from these worthwhile programs.
I hope that like many things both here and in the states, that PSS does NOT throw away the programs by discontinuing the funding of accedemically linked programs that benifit our students both now and in the future!
Please leave your concerns or comments! Remember, our Board members are reading!
Through all of these transitions I hope that the administration keeps putting the focus on student performance, not on which department is getting the most funding or on trying to keep the funding equal! I know, understand and appreciate everyone's right and responsibility to keep the culture alive, BUT, WE ARE HERE TO TEACH ENGLISH! I hope that we can throw out old ideas of seperating english or language from everything else. Without knowing english, one cannot read in english. All subjects depend on this! To learn any language there are two levels. First, the spoken language, and then the written language. PGFC, NJFL, NFL, and Thespians all embrace both these two areas and should continue to be funded in full! No other program in the CNMI gives all ages the opportunities that these students are recieving. Some have even recieved scholorships to college from these worthwhile programs.
I hope that like many things both here and in the states, that PSS does NOT throw away the programs by discontinuing the funding of accedemically linked programs that benifit our students both now and in the future!
Please leave your concerns or comments! Remember, our Board members are reading!
Monday, August 20, 2007
Get back to basics
I suppose this is a post that might get me in trouble, but oh well, I'm honest and I'm calling it like it is, and I don't give a damn who it upsets. I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that this school system as it exists now is an abysmal failure. Yes we're worlds better than other mini Pacific Islands in the region, if we look at them as the competition, but we're still not even in the vicinity of up to par in a globally competitive way. I dealt with the finished product, seniors, for four years, so I know exactly what students look like leaving the system, and it isn't pretty. I tried to fill in all the gaping holes as best I could while I was there with seniors. Now I'm with freshmen and trying to establish good habits, which is harder and much more exhausting.
What is clear to me is that teachers system wide simply do not emphasize the basics enough. I would say a full half of the seniors could not write two sentences clearly differentiating plurals and possessives. I mean given instructions, and examples, and days of instruction, a student could not write: "There are ten cats outside my house" followed by "The cat's tail is long and white" consistently if asked to do so. Forget about the wrinkle of plural possessive, that blows the situation up even worse. I suspect they were doing it the wrong way for so long it became ingrained. I wonder if the teachers were correcting these things.
If I had a nickel for every "his my friend" I've seen in a paper, I'd be buying Google tonight. Tense, subject/verb agreement and other mildly confusing subtle word differences like your/you're, its/it's are a train wreck. I've been working on these issues since school started this year, and a considerable number of students still can't do it consistently. Perhaps I suck as a teacher, I don't know anymore, but I'm growing weary and demoralized by this state of affairs -- already. The parents need to get involved. I've never really seen any involved, at least among the students that most need help. They seem to think that parental involvement is strictly an elementary school function. It isn't.
I routinely get sentences without punctuation or capital letters or simply giant uni-paragraph essays. I emphasize the correct fashion pointing out the most common problems almost daily, but it doesn't seem to matter much. I look over 120 of these displays a day, and it wears me down saying the same thing 50 times a day. Of all the classes, Language Arts needs a size reduction, but it is the largest class across the board -- exactly the worst thing possible.
World awareness is even worse. I've had people tell me that Toronto was a city in the country of "Europe," and that "Baby Ruth" was the first African-American in Major League Baseball. Students think the governor is in charge of every last detail of a civilization including the price of gas, and many can't give you a ballpark time period for World War II.
Teachers have a near impossible task here, I know this all too well, but I can say for sure they aren't ensuring mastery of the basics. It has to stop. A student at the very least upon graduation should be able to read and understand literature as simple as the Saipan Tribune and write in at least a reasonably grammatical fashion. They aren't right now, and it has to stop.
What is clear to me is that teachers system wide simply do not emphasize the basics enough. I would say a full half of the seniors could not write two sentences clearly differentiating plurals and possessives. I mean given instructions, and examples, and days of instruction, a student could not write: "There are ten cats outside my house" followed by "The cat's tail is long and white" consistently if asked to do so. Forget about the wrinkle of plural possessive, that blows the situation up even worse. I suspect they were doing it the wrong way for so long it became ingrained. I wonder if the teachers were correcting these things.
If I had a nickel for every "his my friend" I've seen in a paper, I'd be buying Google tonight. Tense, subject/verb agreement and other mildly confusing subtle word differences like your/you're, its/it's are a train wreck. I've been working on these issues since school started this year, and a considerable number of students still can't do it consistently. Perhaps I suck as a teacher, I don't know anymore, but I'm growing weary and demoralized by this state of affairs -- already. The parents need to get involved. I've never really seen any involved, at least among the students that most need help. They seem to think that parental involvement is strictly an elementary school function. It isn't.
I routinely get sentences without punctuation or capital letters or simply giant uni-paragraph essays. I emphasize the correct fashion pointing out the most common problems almost daily, but it doesn't seem to matter much. I look over 120 of these displays a day, and it wears me down saying the same thing 50 times a day. Of all the classes, Language Arts needs a size reduction, but it is the largest class across the board -- exactly the worst thing possible.
World awareness is even worse. I've had people tell me that Toronto was a city in the country of "Europe," and that "Baby Ruth" was the first African-American in Major League Baseball. Students think the governor is in charge of every last detail of a civilization including the price of gas, and many can't give you a ballpark time period for World War II.
Teachers have a near impossible task here, I know this all too well, but I can say for sure they aren't ensuring mastery of the basics. It has to stop. A student at the very least upon graduation should be able to read and understand literature as simple as the Saipan Tribune and write in at least a reasonably grammatical fashion. They aren't right now, and it has to stop.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Just Another Manic Monday
There were seven teachers absent today and the Principal. One of our Vice Principals resigned last week. The bells are off too. Every time the power goes off or surges our clocks speed up. Today, some bells didn't even ring. I reset my trusty Transformer Watch with the first bell each morning. Today, Hopwood is 5 minutes behind the clock on my computer. By 3rd Period, the bell was 7 minutes early! So I reset my watch again.
Today in class, we reviewed what we learned last week about nutrients, digestion and nutrition, by playing a game that Sally found on the internet. In the game, the students create an assembly line to represent the digestive system. A 'food particle' represented by a small ziplock bag with candy (nutrients) is inside a larger bag with corn starch packaging foam and shredded paper. That bag is inside a larger bag with the same filling. The 'teeth' tear open the bag and saliva (water) is added. The food particle is passed down the esophagus, where the food is squeezed and in the 'stomach', acids (water) are added and the food is squished some more. In the 'small intestine', pancreatic juices (water) are added and the bag is squeezed some more. Then the bag with the nutrients is removed and given to the 'blood', to be delivered to the 'cells'. The 'large intestines' mop up the excess water from the table and pass the remaining waste to the 'rectum' which poops it out into a garbage can.
During each class period, there are 6 teachers on prep. If someone is absent, the teachers on prep sub and we rotate days so we don't lose our prep every day. Since 7 teachers out today, the counselors had to sub too. So Doug printed out a word search on careers and had the students look up different types of careers in the library. I have to sub today for Bilingual. In the past I've taught Spanish, since some of the words transfer. But today, I was going to just show a movie, when a miracle happened. Someone brought me an activity for the students to do!!! I don't know if the teacher prepared it in advance or someone else did, but that made my day a little better.
Anyway, the Bangle's song, "Manic Monday", is going through my head.
Just another Manic Monday
Wish it were Sunday
Cuz that's my Funday
Today in class, we reviewed what we learned last week about nutrients, digestion and nutrition, by playing a game that Sally found on the internet. In the game, the students create an assembly line to represent the digestive system. A 'food particle' represented by a small ziplock bag with candy (nutrients) is inside a larger bag with corn starch packaging foam and shredded paper. That bag is inside a larger bag with the same filling. The 'teeth' tear open the bag and saliva (water) is added. The food particle is passed down the esophagus, where the food is squeezed and in the 'stomach', acids (water) are added and the food is squished some more. In the 'small intestine', pancreatic juices (water) are added and the bag is squeezed some more. Then the bag with the nutrients is removed and given to the 'blood', to be delivered to the 'cells'. The 'large intestines' mop up the excess water from the table and pass the remaining waste to the 'rectum' which poops it out into a garbage can.
During each class period, there are 6 teachers on prep. If someone is absent, the teachers on prep sub and we rotate days so we don't lose our prep every day. Since 7 teachers out today, the counselors had to sub too. So Doug printed out a word search on careers and had the students look up different types of careers in the library. I have to sub today for Bilingual. In the past I've taught Spanish, since some of the words transfer. But today, I was going to just show a movie, when a miracle happened. Someone brought me an activity for the students to do!!! I don't know if the teacher prepared it in advance or someone else did, but that made my day a little better.
Anyway, the Bangle's song, "Manic Monday", is going through my head.
Just another Manic Monday
Wish it were Sunday
Cuz that's my Funday
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Exciting PD's ?
Another first day of state level professional development(PD) down. I do not need every year to hear the mission and purpose of PSS. We all have that memorized by now! I also think that we all know that things are not the best, and we do NOT like to or need to continue to keep hearing about it. What I think we all would have appreciated, was more information on what they are doing to do to make it better. Better PD choices would be nice.
An example of a GREAT PD was the one offered by Florine Hoffschnieder(Please excuse me if this isn't spelled write!). The workshop was a writing institute that all would have benefited from! It was an extension of an intense writing workshop put on this summer. Even a Bilingual teacher shared how it was helping her students learn how to write.
Did you attend a workshop worth mentioning? If so, please leave a comment! If you know of one that you atended or heard about in the past let us know! Maybe we can start recomending ideas to Ms. Jackie.
Enjoy you second day of PD's. Remember, be on the lookout for GREAT ones!
Angie
An example of a GREAT PD was the one offered by Florine Hoffschnieder(Please excuse me if this isn't spelled write!). The workshop was a writing institute that all would have benefited from! It was an extension of an intense writing workshop put on this summer. Even a Bilingual teacher shared how it was helping her students learn how to write.
Did you attend a workshop worth mentioning? If so, please leave a comment! If you know of one that you atended or heard about in the past let us know! Maybe we can start recomending ideas to Ms. Jackie.
Enjoy you second day of PD's. Remember, be on the lookout for GREAT ones!
Angie
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