Hey dude, your swag is mint!

Apparently, this is what passes for cool when you’re one of today’s teens.

When I was in the third grade, my teacher, Miss Hubbard, spent part of a day introducing us to the concept of slang.  I don’t remember what the point of the lesson was, but I do remember that at one point, she went around the room and asked each of us what slang words we were used to hearing.  The typical ones went around–awesome, cool, dude–and I remember that she explained what those words really meant, but the one she couldn’t explain was the most popular at the time: mint.

Stop laughing.  It was 1986.

Anyway, she tried to explain it as best she could.  She knew what mint was in terms of a flavor, and she also knew what mint was in terms of condition, but had never heard it used as a synonym for awesome.  Had Urban Dictionary been around in the mid-Eighties, I’m sure she would have looked it up:

Mint

An expression that means something is nice or cool. This is usually used in response to a statement.

Danny: I just got some brand new Jordan retro 2′s.
Brandon: Mint

Fast forward 26 years.  I’m at yearbook camp last week, sitting in the Online Design Tips and Tricks session and Jeff, the guy running it, was showing us how to merge a photograph and some text together so that the photograph fills the text (I can’t remember what the actual term for this is.  Ghosting?  Masking? Phototextinessing?).  It was pretty easy too and got me all psyched because my staffers totally want to do this trick, and I was able to do it within a few seconds.  So were the teenagers sitting at the computers to my right–when they weren’t texting and giggling about stuff on their iPhones.  I had to do a double-take at their screen, however, because she had, in big block letters, written “SWAG.”

“I really wish that word would go away,” I thought to myself before realizing that this is what Miss Hubbard must have thought when she had 20 eight-year-olds saying “mint” every other second.

Following up on AIDS, the president, and context

So I’ve written this week about AIDS education and President Obama’s “You didn’t build that” comment that the right wing has been hammering him on ever since he gave a speech.  In surfing around these past couple of days, I came across two pieces that serve as great follow-ups to what I was talking about.

First, there’s “AIDS Conference, New Documentary Raise Questions About Sex Ed.” from Education Week:

In Ms. Morris’ health education class in Greenville, Miss., a lesson on sexually transmitted diseases is almost comic.

And Ms. Morris seems to know it.

She can’t say the words condom or contraceptive to explain how the spread of an STD, including HIV/AIDS, might be prevented, much less to prevent pregnancy.

It’s a really good look at how off-kilter sex education has become in the United States (and it made me feel even more grateful for the education I did receive).

And on President Obama’s comments, we have The Daily Show, which is brilliant as always. (“Democalypse 2012–Do we look stupid, don’t answer that edition”)

“You didn’t build that”

Lately it seems like not a day goes by when I don’t see an image like the one at the right, usually posted by a friend or two of mine who has conservative political leanings.  Now, I have voted Democrat since I was 18 and will continue to do so, so none of what I see in this regard is going to change my mind at all.

I have, however, found it a little offensive.  But, I have to say, not offensive in the way that might be expected.  Making fun of the president is a national pastime for both political parties, and unless the ridicule crosses a line into something that’s bigoted (which this does not) there’s no real reason to find it offensive.  What is offensive, though, is that everyone who has harped on this doesn’t seem to realize that this isn’t what President Obama said.

Oh sure, he actually uttered the phrase “You didn’t build that,” but those who don’t like him are taking that one phrase completely out of context from these paragraphs of a larger speech:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.  (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.  There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own.  I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service.  That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together.  That’s how we funded the GI Bill.  That’s how we created the middle class.  That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam.  That’s how we invented the Internet.  That’s how we sent a man to the moon.  We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President — because I still believe in that idea.  You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.

That sounds a heck of a lot different than “You didn’t build that!”, now doesn’t it?  In fact, that sounds like the spirit of collaboration I often hear discussed among my fellow educators.  I’ve said before that I value the efforts of the individual, but I definitely know that in order to succeed in whatever profession they choose, my students are going to need to know how to work well as part of a team.  It doesn’t matter what that chosen profession is–teachers, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, construction workers, video store clerks, baristas all at one point or another work with someone or perhaps for someone.  There is no vacuum for success and while there may be competition, even that isn’t done completely alone.

The Five Stages of Conference High

From what I understand, people walked away from this with some serious conference high.

So last week I attended my fourth consecutive yearbook camp.  If you’re unaware of what I’m talking about, yearbook camp is a summer workshop held in various places by various publishers (Jostens, Herff Jones, Walsworth, etc.) where advisers and students spend a few days learning about what makes a good yearbook and taking the steps toward putting together their next book.  It is one of those extremely valuable experiences because not only do you get to “talk shop” with other students and be taught by experts on topics from writing to photography to design, it really gets the creativity going and those schools who leave camp leave with a serious head start on what should be a great book.

I wasn’t able to take students with me this year (funds and my editors’ schedule prevented this, but we are doing a fall workshop), but I did walk away energized and ready to get back to work on the yearbook.  You know, just like those colleagues, friends, and people on Twitter (Twits?) I know who attend conferences and workshops feel.  Not a year goes by when someone has attended a conference held by ASCD, NCTE, or some other national organization and tweets or posts about how awesome an experience it was and how many new connections they made and how many ideas they walked away with.  I get a little jealous because I never get to go to those conferences–I’m broke and my district won’t pay for my membership in NCTE, much less my attending a confrence–but it is both cool and amusing to see all of the tweets and posts that come out after the conferences conclude.  Cool, because those who attended always have great stuff to share; amusing because all of them have conference high.

Yes, conference high: the feeling of elation when you’ve spent three or four days in an isolated environment discussing your work and sharing ideas.  I’ve experienced it more than once in more than one profession and it never really changes.  In fact, it’s such a consistent phenomenon that I’ve been able to break it down into five stages …

Stage One–Denial:  “This is great!  I’m so inspired!  I’m going to try all of this!  My students will want to buy in to all of it and will get everything done no problem!  I’ll be able to share it with the world!”

Stage Two–Anger:  “Are you kidding me?!  You are telling me that you got your students to watch, ask questions, and help guide a doctor through open-heart surgery on Skype?  You asshole, mine don’t even know how to turn a computer on!  That’s if the network isn’t down!  It must be really nice to have so much money to do all of those things.  Call me back when you have 20 teachers fighting over a projector and the one working photocopier in the building has become self-aware and spends the day vomiting toner on anyone who looks at it funny.”

Stage Three–Bargaining:  “Okay, so maybe I won’t be able to do everything, but I can do some things.  And I know that they won’t buy into it at first, but I’ll trick them into doing it.  Yeah.  You know, like, we’ll give out candy because they managed to do a blog post.  Or I’ll tell them that if they are able to do this the way I want them to, I’ll give them loads of extra credit.”

Stage Four–Depression:  “I am not an innovative educator.  I am THAT teacher.  Look at all of these people.  They are going to save the world through education, and I’m going to rot.  They are building bonds that will last a lifetime; I’m committing suicide in 45-minute increments.  All I have to look forward to is the reception tomorrow night because there’s an open bar.”

Stage Five–Acceptance:  “You know, taking a look at what I’ve seen here and the reality of my situation, I see how I can make it work.  I just have to keep reminding myself of the number of missteps and failures I’m going to have before I find success; and even then, that success will be followed by more failure.  I know everyone else seems to be soaring, but I need to forget that and focus on what I need to do.  This will happen and when it will do it will be awesome, but even more than that, it’ll be my brand of awesome.”

So there you go.  Enjoy it while it lasts, continue to chase the dragon with another conference, and hopefully in the meantime you will find that what you bring to your classroom afterwards is ultimately rewarding.

Does AIDS education need another look?

The cover of Time, August 12, 1985.

I first saw the word “AIDS” on the cover of Time from August 12, 1985.  I was eight years old and had no idea what AIDS was or what I was seeing in that cover photo, but it seemed important.  A few months later, I’d see a story about Rock Hudson dying of the disease on Entertainment Tonight; again, I still didn’t know what it was but since the program about movie stars was taking the time to report about it, it seemed important.  Three years later, I’d learn quite a bit more in my fifth grade class when my class took part in the first wave of AIDS education that was attached to the Family Life Curriculum that our district had introduced that year.

This Family Life Curriculum–which was basically a series of filmstrips featuring rather sterile-looking diagrams of human reproductive systems and dull narration about our growing bodies and how a baby is made punctuated by loud beeps that told us when to go to the next frame–was pretty controversial when it was introduced in my district, or at least that’s the impression I got in 1988.  There were at least a few meetings that the district held to introduce the curriculum to parents, and I remember that my sister’s friend was not allowed to go to school on those days because her mother–a born-again Christian–would not allow her to take part in sex ed.  To be honest, the sex stuff was pretty tame and the only reason it really had an impact on me was that I would wind up studying human reproduction every year for the next three years courtesy of Family Life, then science and health classes.

But the AIDS lesson had a little bit more of an impact.  By the time I was in the fifth grade, the disease had received much more media coverage and there was a solid push for AIDS awareness to help stem the public health crisis.  In fact, the education I received at the hands of my public school about AIDS was incredibly thorough–we even had an “AIDS Awareness Day” in school two years in a row.  That was  not without its share of drama (apparently one teacher decided to take 45 minutes to preach from the Bible and talk about the evils of homosexuals) or boredom (a presentation of pieces of the AIDS quilt is fascinating, but when it rolls on for more than an hour, you get a little restless), but I have to say that by the time I was a senior I had raised money for and participated in three LIAAC AIDS Walks, and really felt prepared for when I would start having sex (read: I bought the strongest condoms they made).

Master Teacher? Well, master something …

On The Huffington Post this morning, there’s this story about President Obama pledging up to $1b for what the headline of the story calls a “Master Teacher Corps” (article here):

Teachers selected for the Master Teacher Corps will be paid an additional $20,000 a year and must commit to participate multiple years. The goal is to create a multiplier effect in which expert educators share their knowledge and skills with other teachers, improving the quality of education for all students …

“I’m running to make sure that America has the best education system on earth, from pre-K all the way to post-graduate,” Obama said. “And that means hiring new teachers, especially in math and science.”

Sounds like an interesting idea, even though I am a little skeptical that it will actually work on the level it needs to because of the money involved (and btw, that’s a little painful for me to say because I’m still a staunch supporter of President Obama).  I mean, just look at this comment from the GOP side of the aisle:

An aide to Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, noted that the federal government already has more than 80 teacher quality programs and said it would be foolish to pump money into programs that may be duplicative or unproductive.

“Republicans share the president’s goal of getting better teachers in the classroom,” said Kline spokeswoman Alexandra Sollberger. “However, we also value transparency and efficient use of taxpayer resources.”

I have to say I actually laughed at the first sentence of Sollberger’s comment, especially since much of what I hear from Republicans is rhetoric about how teachers are overpaid union lackeys who don’t work enough, cannot be fired and are strangling the economy.

Throwing money at teachers to reward them for “mastery” isn’t the greatest idea, mind you–it kind of reminds me of the old joke about a boat being a hole in the water you throw money into–just like I think that a push for a merit pay system is faulty because school districts don’t turn profits and I don’t know if most people who love their merit pay rhetoric understand that if teachers are good at their jobs they will want raises and therefore will cost taxpayers more money (seriously, guys, accountability isn’t just about being able to fire people).

I wish that he or someone else would take a look at where the money is really going in education and take companies like Pearson to task.  Does the NEA even have teeth anymore?

Oh, and not that it matters to me anyway.  I don’t teach a STEM subject; therefore, I’m not important.

2011-2012 Summer Reading Project: The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life

When I got my Kindle about a year and a half ago, it wasn’t long before I went about looking for stuff to add to it that wouldn’t cost me much or anything at all.  Amazon’s free Kindle store was my first stop, and I’ve managed to find a few classics among the self-help and tacky-looking erotica. My second stop was Project Gutenberg, the open source library that features books mostly available in the public domain.  I was less successful with what I found there–mostly old poetry collections and the occasional novel–but I did come across Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life.  It wasn’t very long and I figured that since I was in the middle of reading a couple of books that were about traveling through that part of the country (in fact, I think I was in the middle of Cross-Country when I downloaded it), I decided that this would fit in nicely with my little project here (which, after this particular post, has only two books left).

The book documents two months in 1846 which Parkman spent on the Oregon Trail, which was the famous 2,300 migration route from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon that thrived through much of the 19th Century.  He goes west with a hunting expedition and spends much of the time during this expedition hunting buffalo with a band of Ogala Sioux.  And … that’s pretty much it, really.  It’s less of a journey and more of what he says the book is in its subtitle: sketches of prairie life.

Parkman is pretty descriptive, especially in his detail about the hunting of the buffalo and the relationships his party has with the Indians.  He even seems to make the people in his hunting expedition seem like they are characters in a novel, giving the book a little more narrative flair than letting it simply be a recollection of experiences he had along the trail.  However, I have to say that I didn’t find it very engaging and by the time the last half of the book was rolling around I was more committed to finishing it than reading it.  I did, however, walk away with three things …

2011-2012 Summer Reading Project: The Great American Road Trip — U.S. 1 from Maine to Florida

So with all of the virtual road trips I’ve taken by reading these books, one of the things I have found the most fun has been seeing how these writers get to meet people in addition to visiting places over the course of their journies. Each of them takes the time to describe those they talk to and capture their personalities, even if they do not necessarily agree with their political views. They are attempts to capture America at that specific time, to give the reader a full portrait of the country and to show a common thread (in a manner of speaking).

Peter Genovese’s The Great American Road Trip: U.S. 1 from Maine to Florida is no exception. Genovese, a journalist based in New Jersey, spent a significant amount of time (two years, I believe) traveling Route 1 from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida and chronicled his journey in the way a journalist would–observing the nature of the highway, visiting attractions and other places along the highway, and also spending a decent amount of time with people.

The result is the only “coffee table”-sized book I’ve read for this project, as he divides his travel up state by state (including the District of Columbia) and includes both black and white and color photographs of the people and places he encounters. It’s a pretty thorough trip down a highway that he admits doesn’t get a lot of recognition for being important because it’s not as noteworthy as Route 66 or Route 40 (aka “The Lincoln Highway”), even though during the course of the trip he passes through most of the major cities along the east coast. Stops include a roadside motel in Maine; The Bronx Zoo; a wax museum dedicated to African-Americans in Baltimore; the headquarters of the National Enquirer; and plenty of bars, junkyards, hubcap dealers as well.

I remember first coming across this book in the early 2000s, when I read Sarah Bunting’s two-part chronicle of her own trip down Route 1 in 1998, a trip she considered turning into a book but wound up posting on her site, Tomato Nation (“U.S. Highway One: Straight No Chaser” Part 1, Part 2). I bought my copy of Genovese’s book a few months later, and at the time, the book had been out for a couple of years, so it wasn’t easy to find, but my copy says that it had been marked down to $16.95 from whatever the cover price was, so I bought it used, but where I can’t remember (probably eBay). It currently sits among other “important books” that involve travel or places on a shelf in my living room, and even if I wasn’t rereading it, I certainly would have enjoyed flipping through it.

The end of Route 1 in Key West, Florida.

Then again, I always enjoy the idea that a person could take one highway and really experience it to its fullest like this.  I’ve also always been the type of person who wonders where the road I’m on keeps going — and no, I’m not speaking metaphorically here, I literally want to see the beginning and the end of a particular road.  Since I lived on Route 1 for a few years in my twenties (in Arlington, Virginia), I feel some sort of connection to the highway … which is what piqued my interest in a book about it.  And thankfully, there is a sort of “drama” to the beginning and end of Route 1, as it starts in specific places where you can, if you’d like, stop and savor the moment, unlike many interstate highways, which begin and end when they merge with other highways or parkways (this, by the way has always been my beef with the Northern State Parkway on Long Island.  Every other parkway ends at a state park, but the Northern State just … ends randomly.  If I were still living on Long Island, I would drive out there, find it and take a picture, but alas I am not. One day …).  Genovese does his best to convey this feeling, especially since the beginning of the road is rigth near the Canadian border and the end of the road here is pretty much at the literal end of the east coast, in Key West.  There’s no majesty to the trip, per se (after all, quite a large amount of Route 1, at least from my experience driving it in Northern Virginia, involves strip malls and fast food joints … but I do give him props for visiting the Krispy Kreme in Alexandria, which is always a stop of mine whenever I’m up there), but I think that’s what I like about it.  It’s kind of hard for an experience on a road like that to feel artificial and you do get the feeling that there is some of the “real America” that John Steinbeck and so many others were looking for when they set out on their various trips (as well as the “real America” that so many moron politicians attempt to pander to, especially in an election year).

As I mentioned, it’s not the easiest thing to get a hold of the book.  A new copy on Amazon will cost you nearly $40, but it is on Kindle for $14.99.  But if you ever find this while wandering through a used book store, pick it up.

Dancing With Myself

I’m on Twitter a lot (well, maybe not in recent weeks because of power/internet outages and vacation, but trust me, I am), and quite a number of the people I follow are educators, so I get some really good pieces of advice on how to improve my teaching.  It’s hard not to agree with most of it, either, because most of these people are very smart and really seem to have a handle on what’s next in education (or at least they’re really good at either looking for it or faking it).  One thing that many of my fellow tweeters (twits?) have been talking about a lot lately is collaboration; specifically, promoting a collaborative environment among both teachers and students.  ”We should be collaborative because the world is collaborative!” they say and retweet.

It’s hard to disagree with this sentiment, even though it’s really nothing new; I remember touting my ability to be a valuable team member as far back as my first job interviews when I was looking for an internship in the summer of 1998 and graduating college in 1999.  Heck, working well with someone else factored into my summer job as a state parks employee when I was in college, and most of that job was picking up garbage off of the Atlantic shoreline.  But I can see why there would be a push for it among educators, because we do tend to be a group that gets stuck in its ways (seriously, if I hear “Well, we’ve always done it this way,” one more time I am going to hurt someone).

What I also see and understand is why there might be resistance to an idea that on its surface seems so simple it should be a no-brainer, black-and-white concept.  And this is not because some teachers are so set in their ways they are the stereotypical “dinosaurs” who I’ve seen quite a number of people accuse of ruining students’ education (not that they don’t exist, mind you, but having worked with plenty of veteran teachers in my short career, I refuse to demonize them in order to make a point).  Where I understand resistance to the culture of collaboration is that there is value in working by and for yourself sometimes, and I am wary of the pendulum swinging so far that we lose sight of that.

During the last few weeks, I have been at home on summer break, away on vacation, and at my school to run SOL test remediation.  So, while I have had the chance to be away from work, I have also had the chance to sit down and take a look at my courses for next year and begin planning.  The way I do this is probably a little insane, or at least it tends to look that way to anyone who isn’t me.  The early stages of my planning process have me all over the place, and there have been times when, given an empty classroom, I have been known to fill up white boards with planning notes that are indecipherable to just about anyone but me (at least that’s what I can tell based on the perplexed looks co-workers have when they walk in on this).

I like this.  I like being able to breathe.  I like the moments where I can get lost in my own head space and not feel that I have to explain where I am going or what I am doing.  I like having the time to sort out the pile of information in front of me without the noise of other voices (and yes, the ideas of those other voices).  And being someone who teaches collaboratively on a daily basis, I think that having this time to myself makes me a better collaborator because I come into collaborative planning better prepared and ready to work.

I mean, I have the ability to think on the fly, but I’m also one of those people who can get easily overwhelmed when presented with a lot of information at once and very often needs time to process it, which is why whenever I am in a large-scale collaboration session (like a department meeting or a workshop), I tend to stay quiet.  Okay, part of that is because despite what you read here I am not a blowhard and I have learned to let the blowhards have their moments because they tend to burn out quickly and when I finally get involved with the conversation it’s at the point where things are a lot more constructive and there’s less chest thumping.  But really, I cannot fault people who seem hesitant to “participate in the conversation” or seem off-putting because they sometimes prefer to go off and do their own thing.  There is as much value in working alone as there is in working together, and I don’t want to see that value disappear because our rhetoric is so focused on the collective.

Eggs of Enlightenment and Waffles of Inspiration!

Photo by Old Shoe Woman. Used under cc license.

I used to be one of those teachers.  You know, the teacher who had a clear set of rules clearly posted in the classroom (in fact, mine was typed in comic sans, mounted on red construction paper, and laminated), who paid a lot of attention to the concept of classroom management and who lived in fear of hearing comments about his classes being “out of control.”  When I got compliments from substitutes on how well-behaved my children were, I beamed with pride; when I heard comments about my classroom being a “revolving door” I took it personally and cut down on bathroom passes.  But a few days ago, I had an experience that changed my view on classroom management and may very well have changed my life.

I had breakfast in a hotel lobby.

My family takes a vacation each year to Virginia Beach and for the past three years we have stayed at the same hotel.  One of the huge advantages of this place is that it has a full breakfast buffet.  And when I say buffet, I am not talking about a spread of overripe bananas, stale coffee, soggy danish, and sweaty bagels you’d get at your average Days Inn; I’m talking about eggs, biscuits, sausage, bacon, waffles, and other hot food that makes you want to get out of bed before 9:00 in the morning to avoid the rush.

Now, before I begin connecting this experience in any way to classroom management, I need to preface it by saying that I am a product of the abusive industrial model public school system.  My classes were always grouped by date of manufacture, and my teachers destroyed my freedom when they forced me and all of my classmates to learn the same set of 26 letters and the same arithmetic functions.  Furthermore, my schoolmates and I all had our dreams stolen when we were told to keep a neat desk, walk in a straight line, wait our turn, and not talk when someone else was talking.  I am pretty sure that all of this ruined my life, because nothing I learned as a part of that system of indoctrination prepared me for an experience like the breakfast buffet.

First of all, much to my surprise, when you go down to a hotel lobby for its breakfast buffet, there are no assigned seats.  You simply choose where you want to sit.  And it’s a true collaborative environment because if you are with someone, they can save the seat that you have chosen because even if you put your stuff down to save your seat, there is no rule dictating that other people can’t just sit there anyway.  In fact, the tables in the lobby can be used for more than simply eating your breakfast.  I had the opportunity to see a family set up and play The Game of Life during the busiest time of the breakfast buffet, and while everyone was shuffling around, worried that they would not get a seat, these people were sharing and using critical thinking skills to move pieces on a game board.  It was truly inspiring.

The line for the food itself is nothing short of amazing.  Because while it is polite to stand in line for things like a tray or utensils or food, those who do often find themselves missing out on a carton of milk, a tub of cream cheese, or an apple cinnamon muffin because a guy in a Yankees T-shirt who is obviously thinking way out of the box will eschew the conformity of the line and seize the opportunity to grab that last muffin by shoving his arm right between you and your intended baked good.  And he is wonderfully modeling this for his children, who if they’re not in line can be seen over at the self-serve coffee station emptying every sugar packet available into one cup of coffee after having thrown about all of the cups, lids, and creamers in a burst of experimentation and creativity that makes even my heart soar.