This is the question I not only asked myself daily last year, but nearly everyone I knew as well.  After years of having mostly Juniors and Seniors on my caseload for Special Education, I took on the deceptively undaunting challenge of having Freshmen.  I thought it would be relatively simple – communicate regularly with parents, stay on top of what was going on in the General Education classes, make sure my students were organized, and make sure they were doing their homework on a nightly basis.  Easy.  After all, it’s what I always do with kids on my caseload.  I figured freshmen might need a little more guidance, at least up front, and perhaps parents might need to be included in the loop a little more, but that’s really about it.

It wasn’t long after the year started that I started to get slammed.

Let me back up a bit and give a little perspective.  We SpEd teachers are used to difficult students.  Our kids come to us with a variety of challenges, and for the most part we are able to handle things in stride – but it takes a well-coordinated department and a true team of individuals to make things work well.  For years I had used a small network if school personnel that I count reliably count on to help with classroom situations or more difficult IEP’s as the need arose.  I thought I was a team player and could stay within my bubble of experience to handle anything that came my way.  What I’m trying to say without sounding too much like an idiot is that I was woefully unequipped to deal with my 9th graders.  I thought I had it down but I didn’t.  In the end, without sounding too much like a complete drip, I learned more from them then they probably did from me.

Here’s what I found out:

1. The freshman class did not come in with a host of new, undocumented, unrecognized, non-DSM IV (or is it V?) disabilities.  For the most part it was pretty standard.  The tools used to identify and document the learning challenges kids with LD face are still good tools, and the strategies used to help them are still good strategies.  The IEP paperwork was a different story altogether. I’m going to generalize here, but when a kid is transitioning from one school to another, or from one level within a District to another – like from Middle School to High School – IEP’s need to be rock solid.  There should be no guesswork as to what services were provided, and what accommodations were implemented.  The line between accommodations and modifications needs to be clarified and clearly delineated in the IEP.  High school is the critical period when kids move from adolescence to adulthood, and the accommodations and modifications needed to assist them on their way to independence should reflect this.  Starting in 9th grade, there needs to be less hand-holding, not more.  I can’t tell you how many meetings the 9th grade caseload managers at my school needed to have at the beginning of the school year to make sure that accommodations and modifications were clear for the parents.  It’s not that the SpEd teachers were saying that a student couldn’t have a particular accommodation/modification, it’s that we needed to be very clear about what was what.
2. Parents need to back off.  Sorry parents, but in the long run it will be the best for both you and your kid.  I know it’s hard: my son was in 9th grade this past year and sometimes It was all I could do to keep myself from strangling him and/or his Biology teacher.  Let the system work.  Give everyone the time a space needed to get to know your child free from your natural parental love and bias.  Let us see for ourselves how wonderful your kid is.  I’m not saying Don’t Ask Questions.  I’m not saying Blindly Accept Everything That Happens.  I’m saying Let the Process Work for your child.  In many ways high school is a completely new environment for kids.  There are so many more challenging academic and social situations that arise, and kids need to be able to navigate these with as much independence as possible.  Let the process work.

An example from this past school year might illuminate the above two points a little more:

I had a student who came to my caseload with the “accommodation” of unlimited time to complete all schoolwork.  His parents were adamant that he be given this accommodation in all his classes, and that his grades not be allowed to suffer in any way if he was not completing homework.  I met with his mother before the school year started and she went to great lengths t tell me how smart her child was was, that he was doing online courses to advance himself, and how he found school boring because it was so easy for him.  I should have of course seen imminent disaster approaching, but at that point I felt that everything would sort of “even out” once the school year started.

Things did not even out.  The student in question did not do any work.  I’m absolutely serious…maybe a modicum of classwork, but definitely zero homework.  Nothing.  You can imagine how very quickly this became an issue.  His mother began immediately emailing me daily about each and every missing assignment.  If he has unlimited time, her argument went, then there should never be “0” entered for any grade on any assignment he never turns in.  By this logic, the student could conceivably turn in an assignment in June that was due in January.

The student’s parents wanted to child to attend a University after graduation.  They had (and still have) big dreams for him.  We all have big dreams for our kids, right?  The mismatch however between what the parents wanted and what the kid was actually able to do – despite his intelligence I might add – was huge. Eventually after much stress, worry, concern, failing grades, meetings and negotiations, we were able to get an IEP together that I think better served the child.  There will be more work to do in the future, but parents needed to be clear that unlimited time is not an accommodation.  It is a modification, and if they wanted to include it in the IEP then it would change the nature of the grade the student received in that class.  It’s not that the kid would not be able to attend a University, it’s just that with modified grades  a community college would be more appropriate right after high school, and this is something the parents could not abide by. In the end we settled on an “extended” time agreement that at least pacified for the time being both parents and educators.

3. It’s getting harder and harder to get kids to focus on anything but their technology.  9th graders in many cases do not yet possess the maturity and restraint to put their phones away and turn their attention to schoolwork.  SpEd 9th graders can be even worse in some cases.  For the first time ever I had to physically take all cell phones from my Freshmen, just so they could turn their attention to academics.  It was if I had asked them to chop off their own arm or awoken them from a six month-long coma.  I would walk around the room with a box and had each kid drop their phone into it, promising them that their technology would be safe and that it would be returned at the end of the period.  No matter how many times I did it, I was greeted daily with looks of pain, bafflement, or just outright resistance.  I also got quite a few “hold on a minute’s” as the kid twisted his or her phone this way and that to try and catch the last millisecond of a video or defeat the whateveritwas in a game.  The thing itself is not as much an issue as the complete absorption into their devices for quick entertainment that is alarming to teachers like myself.  Its not as if distractions just sort of popped up out of nowhere to destroy the minds of children.  After all, in the 80’s we had Sony Walkmans, which were the coolest thing you could ever own at the time.  And yes, we had them on walking to school, between classes, or standing in line to get food.  When class started however, they were put in backpacks and left there.  Never was there any question that they would be allowed during class.  Pagers and similar pod-like electronic devices that required you to keep a little creature alive throughout the day were distractions as well, but all you had to do was ask that kids turn them off or put them away.  No big deal.  If you forgot to feed the tiny dinosaur and it died then a new one was created.  Now kids are not only cut off from their games, videos, and music when the cell phone is turned off and put away, but their virtual social world as well.  You’d get a more favorable reaction if you asked them to shoot their own mother.  It has become increasingly difficult to hold the attention of kids whose minds are becoming attuned to lightning fast chunks of flash and color, even if you do transition from lecture to activity fairly quickly, as is standard in most classrooms.  Anything longer than 20-30 seconds begins to seem like a protracted road trip to visit the grandparents in Florida.

4. As distractions have increased in number, yet magically contained within slim, rectangular packages with spider-web cracks on the glass, academic pressure has ratcheted up as well.  The things kids are required to do in high school is absolutely amazing, and far beyond what anyone of my generation was expected to do.  9th graders today are expected to already have learned Algebra by the time they walk in the door, and will start either in Geometry or Algebra II.  I have seen this change happen before my eyes at the high school where I teach.  Even SpEd classes have become increasingly academic, with the expectation that Common Core Standards are covered with nearly as much detail and accuracy as in the Gen Ed setting.  The average student becomes relegated to the level of struggling, and students with learning disabilities become marginalized and eventually disenfranchised within this environment, with the ultimate effect that only those with a GPA of 4.0 or above are considered ready for college.  Group work, projects, public speaking and performance, and Socratic Seminars are supposed to mirror the workplace, a dynamic atmosphere where ideas are presented and discussed intelligently, but it is poor simulation at best.  Sadly what the US is producing seems to be an army of extremely well-educated, yet woefully unprepared for the actual world of work, high school graduates.
5. Family dynamics plays a bigger role than I thought.  This goes above and beyond parents just learning to back off and let the process work, as I stated previously.  It has to do with the entire set of values and beliefs that a family brings to education and school in general.  Academic pressure from peers is one thing, but the pressure from within families can tip the balance to create an unbearable situation. At a young age kids become tested. The question becomes: what will they do under this pressure from within and without? Some will rise to the challenge and learn to work harder and better than they ever thought they could.   Others will try the best they can but feel as if they can never measure up, and so they resort to self-destructive behaviors as a cry for help. Others still give up before they even really try because they feel that no matter what they do will ever be enough. These last two scenarios are on the rise – not only in my school and throughout my District, but nationally as well. The problem with kids identified early as requiring Special Education support and services is that they will learn to use the system to never actually do much. A lifetime of giving up before you start is difficult to reverse once a child is in high school, and by this time families are resigned to the same old story. For teachers this simply means that we need to maintain clear and consistent lines of communication, and to be as upfront and honest as possible. I thought I had always done a pretty good job of communicating with parents, but this past school year taught me that I needed to tailor the type and amount of communication depending on what I learned about the family. Some parents never respond to email at all, but will readily react to a text message. Some only want to be called. For some parents an email or two is fine, and for others no amount of emails or responses to emails is ever enough. You could spend hours just emailing a parent about their kid in some cases. Get to know the family dynamic and work within it to the best of your ability, or whatever is comfortable. Let parents know your limits, and if things aren’t working then sometimes a different case manager will make all the difference.

This next school year will be a true test if anything I did the previous year made any difference whatsoever. Not just me, but the entire IEP team – teachers, parents, administrators, school psychologists, counselors, behavior specialists, speech and language pathologists – all of us. I am hopeful for a calmer year overall, but that is probably just a dream at this point.  What is wrong with all these 9th graders is what’s wrong with all of us, with what we’ve created.  The more we expect of kids that are not yet ready to handle the pressure of these expectations has made an academic world that is very challenging to manage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Years ago we had Mariah Carey.  Before her we had Whitney Houston.

Both incredible singers that, as far as I’m concerned, revolutionized vocal music.  Nobody had ever quite sang like these two exceptional ladies before, but there are thousands who can now.

These women were truly special.

Now you can find thousands of videos on You Tube with girls as young as five singing exactly like Mariah Carey.  Watch daytime television and you will be inundated by the number of amazing child singers, with their adoring parents beaming in the audience.  Look around at your friends and neighbors and note how many of their daughters take voice lessons in order to sound like Whitney Houston, replete with all the jaw warbling that made Ms. Houston so great.  If all I had to do was make my mouth shake and my voice jump all over the place like a fish flopping around on a boat dock, I too could be a celebrity.  Or at least earn a five minute interview on the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Are these children special? I would argue that they are not.

Can they sing better than most?  Most definitely.  But if thousands can do what you can do, then that ability is not special.  It becomes, for lack of a better word, commonplace.

Chances are your child is not special.  They might have some abilities, but destined for a record contract they are not.  They are not going to sign with a major league baseball team either.  Nor will they ever play tuba in the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Don’t get upset, because I’m in the same situation.  You see, my children are not special either.

They are special to me, of course.  And to my wife and a small smattering of close relatives, but that’s about it.  As much as I have wanted the pro athlete and the scholar and the humanitarian and the musician and the billionaire, what I’ve got are two pretty normal kids.  That they might excel in something someday and find their passion or whatever I’m supposed to call it is not up to me.  There are no amount of enriching activities I can fill their lives with that will change this scenario.  They will be what they will be.

There are kids out there who know they want to be a doctor, or a mortician, or the Pope.  They may display proclivities toward these professions as well, and really seem like they are headed in that direction.  Things change though, and suddenly the child is ready to move on.  I’ve seen it happen.  The boy who was so into gymnastics that every other activity was dropped, including friends and the parents’ social life, spending money for tournaments and uniforms and traveling all over the Planet Earth to attend events so that the child could be the next incarnation of Tim Daggett.  The girl who was so into singing that she had a private teacher and sang here and there for civic events, recording cd’s that her parents took over to all their friends homes and had to play so they could all revel in the beauty of the girl’s voice.

Come to find out that both individuals are doing other things now.  In short, they got burnt out.

I did it with my son and baseball.  Years ago my son was able to hit the ball like nobody else.  His coaches said, “Oh he’s such a natural hitter”, and “He’s got such a great swing”.  I played catch with him regularly and took him out to hit balls off the tee or do soft toss at the local school.  I helped coach his teams as well, imparting my own inexact knowledge on other people’s kids in addition to my own.  I talked with my son at length after every game, asking him what he thought was good, and what he could improve upon for next time.  All through T-Ball, Coach Pitch, Machine Pitch he was hitting, hitting, hitting.  Then one day in bating practice he got beaned.  Nothing too big – on the meaty part of the thigh.  Most kids shake that off and get right back into the batter’s box the next time they are up.  That’s what the pro’s do anyway.

Not my kid.  It took him four more years for the end of his bat to reach the inside edge of home plate when he took a swing, and by that time his hitting was more inconsistent than an incontinent man’s urinary pattern.  I continued to work with him though.  I continued to coach his teams, took him to a private hitting instructor, talked to him before and after games.  I pushed and pushed, and watched him fall further and further behind.  My wife told me that the only reason he was playing baseball was because I loved it so much, and that he didn’t share my passion.  I didn’t listen, and now he’s done.

In the particular public high school where I teach, I encounter wonderful kids everyday.  Many of them achieve very high grades in extremely demanding, college prep classes.  They are involved in clubs and sports and volunteering and all the other things that will help them get an edge when applying for college.  I look at these bright young men and women and think to myself, “These poor kids are a dime-a-dozen”.  There is very little that distinguishes one from another.  In short, there is nothing special about any of them.

If every kid has a 3.5 GPA or above, then I would say there is nothing special about that particular academic ability.  To me, a 3.5 and a 3.8 aren’t much different.  I know it makes some kind of difference somewhere with certain colleges, but I would hope that my own children would not aspire to attend any of those institutions.  What makes kids special is not the things they can do that are like everyone else, but what truly sets them apart.

I’m not talking about resume-building activities.  I’m talking about things that aren’t measured by conventional means.  Like the ability to strike up and hold a conversation.  Like a good sense of humor, or a funny way of dancing.  Maybe its a love of camping, or of riding in elevators, or any other quirky thing that serves to separate one person from another.  I have always liked people that are into music.  I don’t necessarily need to like the music that they are into, but it tells me something about that person.  Music can be kind of weird, and if you’re really into it, then that makes you special.  If you can put that on a resume, then I guess so be it.

Just keep it off You Tube, please.

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s face it, parents.  Your child isn’t that smart.  At least, not as smart as you think he/she is.

Your child is not that talented.  In a world where everyone can sing, dance, act, or do whatever silly thing will land them on You Tube or the Ellen DeGeneres Show, then singing, dancing, and acting cease to be special.

Your child is not particularly athletically inclined.  Maybe she is the hotshot on the local softball team, or perhaps your kid is a talented soccer star on the elite select club team in your county.  The reality is that the chances of them playing in college or beyond grow increasingly slim as the years pass, and you’d better have a backup plan handy when those truly destined for the pros overtake them.

The truth of the matter is that your child is most likely possessed of average to above average intelligence, and maybe a modicum of skill in some other area.  Like most other children, your child has strengths and weaknesses which will need cultivation and work, and they will need strong adult role models other than yourselves to help guide them through life.

Your child will need to be exposed to a wide variety of experiences and meet a diverse group of people in order to get along in this world.  They will need to be able to work cooperatively with others, problem-solve, and communicate effectively.  They will need to take classes that engage them intellectually without burying them in a pit of busy work.  They will need to become involved in something other than academics in order to indirectly foster some of the 21st Century Skills that everyone is talking about but few really know how to implement or directly teach.

In short, you need to send your kid to public school.

Don’t waste your time with This or That Academy, X or Y Prep, or whatever exclusive high school is in your area.  Save your money.  Your local public high school will do a fine job of educating your child.  Your child will be able to go to college if they want, and they will have the opportunity to participate in band, or badminton, or join a service club – or all three if they are really motivated.

I know what I’m talking about.  I’m a public school teacher, and in many cases I know better than you what’s best for your child.

I realize that there are some pretty crappy public school out there.  There are some pretty crappy public school teachers.  There are schools that do not offer all of the enrichment opportunities that private schools do.  However there are just as many exclusive, private and parochial schools that are not as wonderful as their marketing materials suggest.  Don’t be swayed by the number of PhD’s on the teaching staff, either. Since when does having a doctorate count more than a teaching credential?  Can they work a room of teenagers and inspire them to think creatively and to learn things they’ve never learned before?  Maybe so…

I have worked in private schools, and I am not completely blind to the allure and the promise of a better and more complete education that these institutions offer.  The promise is what sells, but the results do not bear weight.  Your child will get a just as good, if a not a better, more complete education at your local public school.  I see it everyday in the teachers that I encounter, the classes I have been in, and the opportunities presented for students to become involved and step outside of the academic bubble.

Some parents I have met want their kids to attend private schools because they are afraid of the “social element” at public schools.  They are concerned with bullying, gangs, violence, drugs, and large class sizes filled with unruly, unmotivated kids.  It’s true that public schools take everyone who comes to their door – “the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads” – to coin a phrase from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Public school takes them all.  There will be elements of all of the aforementioned, everyday – and they will need to navigate their way through it.  Just as you and I did, attending Dead President or Long Forgotten Community Benefactor High School so many years ago.

Do you think all these personalities suddenly disappear when your child enters the workforce?  Look around you.  They are still there, just as their adult selves, still making their way through life as we all are.  Don’t shut your child away in a place where whichever undesirable element has been eliminated.  Expose them to everything society has to offer, and send them to public school.

Years ago this is what we all did.  Walked or drove to the local public high, endured the blatherings of our un-PhD-ed teachers, avoided the mean kids, huddled and laughed with our friends, went to football games, attended club meetings, dealt with sex and drugs and Rock n’ Roll, and somehow turned out fine.

Somehow this isn’t a good idea anymore.  That what we had wasn’t enough.  That what we went through was so terrible that we can’t possibly make our child endure the same indignity.  That our education was so lacking that we need to spend thousands of dollars to send our sons and daughters to exclusive schools in order to provide them the opportunities we feel we have missed, or should have had.  Who is our child’s education for…?  Us?  Them?

Send your kid to public school.

They will be fine.  They will learn things.  They can take challenging classes.  They can meet new people.  They can learn how to balance and present oneself in our complex, multiracial society.  They can talk to counselors that can help them deal with stressful personal or academic problems.  They will meet wonderful teachers and also meet some duds.  They will become young adults.

Send your kid to public school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1983 I worked as a busboy in a local restaurant.  I had a paper route when I was younger, but working in a restaurant more than a day or two a week was my first “real” job.  The older kids at the restaurant were cooks and waiters, and had generally been working there for a few years.  I was in awe of them.  They seemed so old and worldly, and aside from a few words here and there we really didn’t speak.  Mostly they just ordered me around – and I happily complied with their every request..

One guy in particular was fairly nice to me.  His name was Bill, and he had been working at the restaurant for a year or two.  He was a hilarious kid.  He had everyone in the kitchen and dishwashing area cracking up regularly with his imitations of customers or shift managers.  One busy evening I was getting a little lazy with my duties, and the manager, John, was unhappy with me.  Seemed like everything I was doing (or not doing) was making him angry, and at one point he came in behind me after I had picked up a full bin of dishes to run through the washer.  John started yelling at me so loudly that some of the wait staff in the front could hear him and came over to see what was going on.  I was standing there taking it when Bill walked in, listened for a moment, and confronted John.  He told him to back off and give me a break, which only made John more angry.  They started yelling at each other, which was a relief to me as it took the attention off of my performance completely. At this point half the staff had trickled back to watch the spectacle, and at this point Bill was fed up.

He held up his middle finger and yelled, “F*** you !”  John stood there for a second in disbelief, staring.  Right before he could offer some kind of reply, Bill brought up both middle fingers and proclaimed: “No…double f*** you!”  Needless to say John fired him on the spot, and I lived on to bus tables another day.

I remember Bill not only for this act of random kindness, but for the type of kid I observed him to be over the ensuing months.  He was in a punk band, and everyone seemed to know him.  He had that unique combination of danger and approachability that made him likeable.  Not quite popular, but likeable.  He looked out for me, in a way.  I remember another incident several months later when he gave me a ride home from wrestling practice.  I had lost a challenge match to a kid that in my mind should never have been able to beat me, and I was distraught.  He drove up alongside me as I was walking home and asked if I needed a ride.  Within a few minutes I was laughing and had forgotten all about my troubles.

I had a student this past year who reminded me a great deal of Bill.  I guess today’s equivalent of the punk rocker from the 80’s would be the skate rat, and T. definitely fit that description.  I first became aware of him as a scrawny freshman – one of those kids that lingers on the periphery of a teacher’s awareness of what is happening on campus.  He had a hairdo that reminded me of Shaggy from the old Scooby-Doo cartoons, and wore the scraggly, nondescript uniform of nearly every other kid in his particular subgenera.  I would see him skateboarding between classes (not allowed), wearing a shirt with a pot leaves on the pocket (not allowed), or sometimes getting into it with teachers outside of class (allowed – but T. pushed it to not-allowed levels).  I knew he had bounced around in general education classes, but had no conception of what he was like as a student until his senior year.

Actually T. came in once during the end of his junior year, basically to meet me and tell me he would likely be in my Geometry class the following year.  Not knowing him, I didn’t know how to respond, but his actions over the next twenty minutes or so convinced me that if he was indeed in my class it was going to be a long year.  By the time that initial twenty minutes were up, he had: 1) danced in front of me, 2) leaped over nearly every desk in the classroom as if he was a horse in a steeplechase competition, and 3) humped – yes, that’s right, humped – the table at the front of the classroom.  He also managed to writhe on the floor and engage in a short but heated argument with a teacher passing by that made the mistake of casually asking T about his pot-leaf shirt.  When he left the room I was exhausted, and part of me hoped to God that I wouldn’t have him in my class in the Fall.

T. was a difficult student to understand.  There were days when he could be engaged and helpful to other students, followed by days when he could turn the room into a veritable warzone.  He could be respectful and calm one instant, and utter the most awful, hurtful epithets the next.  One minute he would be in his chair, calm and collected, then suddenly he would be up in a great Whoosh and begin parading around the room like a Samurai on LSD.  In fact, I wondered if sometimes he might actually be on LSD.  1-1 he could be reflective and apologetic, but could also be argumentative and defiant.  He had been suspended a number of times for various reasons, most often for being oppositional, and by the time I had him as a student he had definitely burned his bridges with a great many patient educators.  Still, you couldn’t help but like him – which is why he reminded me of Bill so strongly, and gave me a convenient word to use when I talked about him to others.

Simply put, T. was the Anti.

I came to appreciate T. for the kids of person he was, rather than the student I wanted him to be.  As opposed to so many students on campus, T. had only hazy, ill-formed ideas of what he wanted to do with the rest of his life beyond graduation.  He had worked in the past, but never for very long.  Something had always gone wrong – or worse yet, somebody had asked him to work weekends, which clearly were his time.  He knew he was smart, but put the blame for his poor grades on his teachers.  After all, they never bothered to make the content interesting or relevant, and besides he couldn’t be expected to sit for that long anyway.  He received behavior intervention services as per his IEP once a week or every two weeks, but lately things had been getting worse.  As with far too many kids in Special Education, his graduation was in doubt.  Recent incidents in particular did him no favors, as at least three times in a two-week span of time he had: engaged in a heated, insult-laden argument with a teacher (in apparent defense of a fellow classmate), defied the directives of a substitute teacher in my class (which happened to be a well-respected, knowledgeable, and popular teacher on campus), and failed to appear for assigned detentions for the aforementioned outbursts.

The Anti in him could not be put down.  T. would rather be suspended, and potentially not graduate, rather than be subjugated.  Still, his case manager and teachers knew that at the very least we needed to do something to help him.  Behavior plans and current supports were not helping, so what was there to do?

We are often confronted with this exact situation in Special Education.  Despite our best laid plans and our beautiful IEP’s, the kid is not progressing.  As an 18-year old senior in high school, maybe it’s time to finally say, “We’ve done all we can  -it’s up to him now.”  We’ve “led the horse to water” so to speak, and it’s not our fault that he’s not taking advantage of the opportunity he’s been given.  What then with the kid who willingly subverts the help he is purportedly receiving, as in the case of the Anti?  Having a label such as ED, or Oppositional/Defiant, or OHI do absolutely no good in giving Special Educators a course of action for how to proceed.  Do we give up or go to work?  I think you already know the answer.

You meet again as a team, and strategize.  What about this?  How about that?  What are we trying to do?  Do we need to make T. comply completely with every request, or is there a certain amount of the Anti we can handle?  With T. in particular, I found that he often said awful things in anger that he did not remember the next day.  Do we need to make sure he feels the sting of his actions in the moment, or can we make sure we touch upon those things the next day when we can process it calmly together?  There is no correct answer.  In the end, the team decided to create a check-in time with me every morning, just to see how T. was feeling and to debrief important items for the day ahead.  Simple as it was, the plan worked.  We started to notice an improvement in T. almost immediately.  I got to know him, and he I.  There were still difficult days, but T. at least felt listened to.  I knew who he was because I had seen it before in Bill, and although they were different people the Anti streak was a commonality that I could recognize and work with.

The key to understanding the Anti is in realizing he is an individual, not an archetype.  He will have a strong moral sense, and will fight for others, but the way this manifests itself is different in each kid.  Above all, he does not want to feel controlled.  He is not to be reasoned with in the thick of an argument or fight.  He can be reflective and apologetic, but if the Anti is also in Special Education than there will need to many of these opportunities in order to see any effect. In either case, the Anti is different.  They march to the beat of their own drummer, but often do not have a good handle on what drives them.

This is our challenge, I feel.  We can’t give up, and yet also can’t seem to get them to see that often there is an easier course.  We feel that life will hold many hardships for them, and can do nothing to avert that reality.  The teen Anti will become an adult Anti, as scary as that sounds.  Perhaps they will figure it out.  Perhaps not.

 

 

 

Want fifteen seconds of fame?  I can guarantee you will get absolutely zero.  Want to be remembered for your teaching skills?   I can guarantee you will be remembered fondly for barely anything you ever actually taught.  Your meticulously crafted curricula will amount to almost nothing, relegated over time to some dusty trophy shelf – a faded memoir of pedagogies gone by.  Perhaps your picture will hang in a forgotten corridor of your school or in the little used boardroom of your former employer, smiling at a memory that few care to recall.  Want to be a teacher? Get ready to question everything you’ve ever done or thought every single day you come to work.  Get ready to work with kids, and get ready to suffer for it.

Sound depressing?

The lives you will influence will care for nothing else then the way you made them feel.  Real or imagined, these memories will be the thing they carry with them ALL their lives.  They will remember you.  The funny things you said, the hard conversations, the way you believed in them, the time you called home, the comment that forever changed them – even if they didn’t realize it until much later.  Their memories will be much more important and meaningful to you than any amount of actual fame, more rewarding then money, and better than any job anyone could ever have, ever.

Not so depressing now, huh?  Have heart teachers, because what I tell you is true.  If you are committed to this profession, then you will make a difference.  It doesn’t matter how long you do it, or even if you’re recognized as being “good”.  You will make a difference.  Kids will remember you, and in spite of what I said in the first paragraph, some of them will actually recall some content.  Maybe even lots of content if you’re lucky.

Somehow thinking about J makes me think about these things.  When I wonder what I am doing with my life and why I continue to beat myself up for the things I should have done, or the things I should have said in my day-to-day interactions with students, I try and remind myself to think about J.

I knew about J before becoming a public school teacher.  I wrestled in high school and knew him as a rival coach – plus he knew my dad, who was also a wrestling coach at that time.  I had no clue that J was also a teacher.  I will touch on J’s influence on me as a coach in a future post, but basically the lesson is the same.  Summing it up as simply as I can, if Nick taught me how to think, J taught me how to BE.  He taught me to teach who I am.  By being as authentically myself I can, by being honest with myself and my students as to my strengths and weaknesses, by admitting to myself that I do not know all the answers and still have a lot to learn, I am ultimately more human and accessible.  I am ready to be both a teacher and a learner, and I am able to truly reach kids.  When you can be comfortable in your own skin and your students are able to see that, then a trusting, often long-lasting relationship is created.  You become a mentor and then potentially over time, a friend.  Your real self and your teaching self do not need to be different, and you do not need to separate your work life from your actual life because they are one and the same.

I told someone many years ago that I never wanted to be known for what I did.  I wanted to be remembered for who I was.  I can see now that I am the most ME when I am doing what I do for a living.  Make sense?

J is the last person on earth who would ever take credit for any of his many accomplishments as a teacher or coach.  He is remembered for his winning teams and champion wrestlers.  He is remembered equally as well for his abilities as a teacher and his unwavering dedication to his job.  You could write a book about these things alone.  I have had the pleasure of talking to J many times since his retirement, and we’ve discussed this exact topic on numerous occasions.  He is definitely proud of what he has achieved, but all of the accolades pale in comparison to the lives he has touched.  The only thing he has ever wanted to do was to be a positive influence for kids, and for that there needs to be no award.  The job is reward enough.  I wish I had learned this long ago, but I figure it’s better late than never.

Teaching is as much a collaborative process as it is individual.  We stand alone in our rooms but should never feel that we teach in isolation.  It is true to say that as much as teamwork is the rule in education, many of us struggle to accept feedback and listen to others’ ideas.  Oftentimes we feel as if we need to jump in and pretend we know exactly what to do or say because that’s what teachers are supposed to do.  We hide when we should be open.  J’s example has been instructive in this regard as well.

J’s teaching career took a dramatic turn when he decided to switch from being a Special Education teacher to being a General Education teacher.  If you’ve ever done it then you know how hard this actually is.  Contemporary education pundits would shake their head at this proposition, but current reality dictates that the two worlds do not necessarily coincide.  To make the switch not only takes guts but is a huge cognitive leap.  You have to accept that you will not know all the answers, and that you will need help from others.  You have to be able as well to admit this to your students.  Again, if you can just be YOU, then you can accomplish this.  Indeed, anything you want to do in this profession you can do.

I can’t speak for every profession, because teaching is the only thing I have ever done and know how to do.  I suspect that the above example can be applied to anything, however.  This has nothing to do with the current, mildly new-age “Find Your Passion” movement that has been written about lately and discussed in high school college counseling sessions across the country. Sorry, but some of us need to start working and worry about finding our passion later.  If we’re lucky, then what we do becomes our passion.  I think that if we try to open ourselves up to experience and to constant learning, then whatever we do becomes something we can be proud of.

Thanks, J.  Talk to you soon.

 

 

 

 

Nick died last week, and while it wasn’t a shock, it certainly has left me speechless.  A day or so after I wrote my last post, I emailed him to tell him about my site.  I only hope he had a chance to read it before he passed.

He had been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer – a fact I omitted in my tribute to him – mainly because I didn’t think it incredibly important.

We don’t often have a chance to tell those who have made a difference in our lives how we really feel.  Remembering people after the fact is ok I suppose, but what if we had the chance to just tell them, while they were alive and coherent?  I don’t want to miss that opportunity.  Maybe I didn’t with Nick, but I will never know for sure.

This is not about one of my students.  This is about one of my teachers.

Nick did rigor ( see “Rigor?” 12/24/15) before rigor was cool.

I was reminded of this the other day in a discussion with another teacher about how high school classes used to be.  In the old days, when the “Old World of School” had no challengers, students would receive information, do some work in class, do some homework related to the information learned later that evening, and then take a test at some point in the future.  The process pretty much repeated itself over and over without a ton of variation in most classes, year after year.  These methods have  proven to be less than effective for the new world of the global economy, as evidence and recently published literature on the subject have clearly shown.

Is it possible, though  – we wondered jokingly at first and then seriously as examples came to the forefront – that some of those “Old World of School” teachers managed to do it right using traditional methods?

Nick was my British Literature teacher in high school.  He was well known at the time as the journalism teacher, and coordinated some of the most intelligent, crazy, energetic, subversive kids I have ever known into producing a successful, award-winning school newspaper.  I did not think I was of the caliber to be in his journalism class, or to dare try and write for the school paper (which we all read cover to cover, religiously), but really wanted to have him as a teacher.  Up until taking his class I had no clue what British Literature might entail, or why it would in any way be different from, say, The Sword of Shannara.  I mean, isn’t Terry Brooks British? I had read all the Tolkien stuff in fifth grade, so I felt I was pretty much good to go in the Books-By-English-Dudes-Department.

Up until taking Nick’s class I had never heard of symbolism – that perhaps what takes place in a work of fiction might not actually be what the author is intending to say, that perhaps there are things about life the author is attempting to highlight, point out, or comment upon – that perhaps there is an intent beyond what is merely stated.  It seems preposterous given today’s curricular demands that a student wouldn’t be exposed to such ideas until midway through his or her high school career, but that’s what happened with me.

One of the novels we had to read was Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.  We began our assigned reading and I was immediately, thoroughly,  and completely bored.  It seemed like a nice little story about taking a trip someplace on an African river, but there was little there that grabbed me at first.  No elves, no mythical beasts, no wizards.  No magic.

Nick started to discuss the book.  By discuss, I mean that he posed a series of questions and asked us merely to comment.  Nobody was singled out, nobody was cold-called, nobody needed to participate necessarily.  His questions, however, somehow drew it out of us.  He would read and line or two of text, or ask one of us to, and then we would talk about it.  His questions, and his enthusiasm for the subject matter, drove us forward.  Some of us even asked our own questions.  Others, like me, were more timid.  I wanted to hear what others were saying and build off that.  Never did he make me or anyone else feel that we didn’t have voice when it came to analyzing a piece of literature.  We…I…got excited by the discussions and wanted to read more. I started to take notes in my little paperback copy, and started to raise my hand more and more in class.  I became completely immersed in the novel, and often didn’t stop past a certain page limit each night.  One could argue that Nick’s class was conducted in a traditional manner, but he allowed us to formulate our own ideas about the theme of the book, and questioned us until we could write something convincing regarding those themes.  We were able to listen, discuss, problem-solve, formulate ideas, test theories, pose our own questions, and communicate our ideas through writing.  Aren’t those skills the very ones the New World of School and the Global Economy require?  Aren’t these the skills American students lack?

What happened, then?  Did some of us get so traditional that we just simply started to suck?  Why didn’t more of us stick relentlessly to the pure joy of discussion – especially when it comes to literature, instead of shying away from it?  Today, there is so much emphasis on formulating an argument and defending it in writing.  How are you supposed to do that when you don’t have the time to create an informed opinion? Discussion and thought is one way.  Is Sparknotes the alternative?

Another discussion we had recently at my school centered around creating a Climate of Care (read Denise Pope for more information on the subject).  All good stuff.  All stuff I heartily believe in.  All stuff teachers need to do.  Yet somehow the discussion veered off into the direction of traditional teachers, who, using traditional methods traditionally left us feeling like they didn’t give a crap about us or what our lives were like.  Nick again was a model of the movement before the movement became a thing.

He may have questioned our assumptions about what we were reading.  He may have ranted and raved at us, spittle flying all over the classroom from the energy and enthusiasm he put into every lesson (and I suspect also due to the genetic architecture of his lips), and he may have even told us we needed to read more carefully in mildly angry tones – but we knew he cared.  He took the time to get to know us.  He asked about our lives and knew who our friends were.  He laughed at our jokes, and was ok if we called him by his first name.  He kept in touch with us and remembered us years and years later.  I knew he cared, and it made all the difference in the world to me.

I came across Nick again as a public school teacher nearly 20 years later.  He had retired from the day-to-day and was working as a mentor to new teachers.  We talked at school and had lunch a few times.  It was great to see him again and reminisce about our friends and other teachers from that period in time.  As expected, he remembered everyone, and had a ton of stories to tell.  He was always very encouraging to me as a teacher, and treated me like an equal.  All that was wonderful, and for me would have been the best to be expected from our relationship.  The most amazing thing came later.

At some point during my first or second year, Nick told me that I should join a book club that he and other English and History teachers in the school were part of.  He told me about the current book they were reading, told me what page to get up to, when and where the next meeting was, and that I should definitely attend.  I was a little blindsided by the offer, and quire intimidated by the company, but decided to give it a try. I read the pages I was supposed to read, and thought about what the author’s purpose was.  I thought about what he or she was telling me about life.  I made notes in the margins and wrote down questions I had.  I underlined sections that I wanted to point out to the others in the group, and was excited to hear what they had to say.  I was excited for the ensuing discussion, and for the debate of ideas.  It was, for me, just like high school.

The best part came a month or two into the book club.  We had read a particular passage together, and I had a few questions to ask.  Nick was looking at me, and for a moment I forgot completely where I was.  Here I am, I thought, discussing literature with the man who had taught me what it was to read and discuss literature, and he was looking at me.  Waiting for my question, just like he had taught me so many years before.

 

 

 

 

As you, my fellow teachers know, rigor is a relatively new buzzword in education.  Teachers have of course been trying to make their classes more rigorous for a long time – and while the concept is certainly not new, the focus on this most nebulous of terms is.

To most of us, if someone says a class is rigorous, we automatically think “hard”, and most likely “fast-paced”.  I would have to say that many of the general education classes I have been in and observed at the well-known public school where I teach are indeed rigorous by this definition.  Students are introduced to concepts and given time to practice, work, debate, and discuss.  Similar ideas and corollary concepts are presented without pause soon after, without a whole lot of process time or review of the previous day’s material.  If that’s not enough, homework, papers or projects are simultaneously assigned, just to make sure all the information is crammed in before the test.  It’s all very stressful and I honestly have no idea how students thrive…but somehow they do.

Special Education has long been left out of the debate on rigor, probably because even approaching the subject in any meaningful way sparks debate that frankly nobody wants to touch with a ten-foot pole.  This sounds like a humongous cop-out, but finding the time to discuss the definition of rigor, what it looks like, and what specifically the term entails within a special education classroom does not exist within the confines of a typical school day.

Whether we want to or not, the subject needs to be discussed.  If our special education students are to be afforded the same opportunities as their general education peers, then some level of rigor needs to exist in every class.  Issues of equity arise when we do not sufficiently incorporate appropriate academic rigor in order for our students to be able to handle the challenges of entering a workforce that is vastly different from the one us forty and fifty-somethings entered years ago.

While this is a bit of an oversimplification, when special educators say their courses are rigorous, what they mean is that they try and mirror the general education curriculum as much as possible.  This complicates our job and makes many elements of what should be a valuable and well-thought out curriculum inaccessible.  The curriculum was never meant to be the same for students who need to be pulled out for academic reasons.  Otherwise every class would be an inclusion situation, and not every child within special education is able to handle such courses.  For those of us with separate classes, our job is to narrow the curriculum to the essential, non-negotiable skills we feel every child must know in order to achieve proficiency in a certain content areas, and to incorporate the requisite rigor so that students are prepared for the demands of the “real world”.

In his book The Global Achievement Gap, author Tony Wagner advocates for a new definition of rigor, one that incorporates the essential skills for students to be able to succeed in a challenging, complex, ever-changing economy.  I’m glad that he further defines these ideas, titled the Seven Survival Skills, as transferable to the collegiate world and both the blue- and white-collar workforce.  These are the skills that we need to incorporate in our classrooms daily.

And why not? It’s already given that we can’t keep up with the lightning pace of the general education classroom.  It’s already given that we can’t cover the same content in the same way as the general education curriculum.  So why not do something that will actually benefit our students?  To be more clear, instead of saying that we “can’t” cover this, or “can’t” do that, we need to say “shouldn’t”.  It is unwise and surely a disservice to our unique population to do exactly what the general education classrooms do.

Without going into a ton of detail, the Seven Survival Skills are as follows: Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving, Collaboration across Networks and Leading by Influence, Agility and Adaptability, Initiative and Entrepreneurialism, Effective Oral and Written Communication, Accessing and Analyzing Information, and Curiosity and Imagination.  A closer investigation of these skills and how they could be honed to be used with in a special education classroom could be the focus of future posts, but if you want further detail at this point you’ll need to read the book.

As much as I tried to read the book objectively, the special educator in me reacted strongly at several points throughout the book.  In the section discussing teacher and administrative training programs, I felt totally debased.  How dare he say that all my training and everything I have done up to this point has done little to nothing to help my students meet the demands of the workforce!  This guy whose experience has primarily been in educating and administering in affluent, lily-white schools.  What does he know about the students I teach – the underserved, the under-educated, the (largely) forgotten?

Sorry, but that’s how I felt.

Further reflection allowed me to see Mr. Wagner’s point more clearly.  The blame for American students being so woefully behind does not rest solely on teachers.  We are working hard, doing our best everyday given the tools we have learned, either in our teacher-training programs or on the job, painfully aware that our students are slipping in comparison to the rest of the world but unaware how to change it.  So we march on, doing much the same thing year in and year out, but trying harder than ever to add a bit more to the curriculum, and cover more ground.  The blame does not rest solely on administrators either, who are doing everything they can as well, and genuinely have the students’ best interests at heart.  If all this is true then I still think we are part of the problem, despite Mr. Wagner’s efforts to keep us largely off the hook.  If the majority of the blame lies with an entrenched, outdated, unwilling-to-change public school system, then teachers, administrators, and unions are  major players in why things are so bad.  We need to be the agents of change, rather than wait for some politician with little to no direct contact with the daily life of a teacher to tell us what to do.

The Common Core gets us there, I think.  If you analyze the curriculum items at any level within the Common Core, and check out some of the performance activities and tasks that correlate with such items, then you begin to see the correlation with the Seven Survival Skills.  It is getting us there, but in my mind is still overloaded with “stuff to be covered”.  If we can get beyond teaching to a standardized test, then we can start to minimize the curricular items and really begin to cross reference with the skills actually needed to engage in the modern world.

Finally, back to Special Education and what scares me about this whole thing.  I worry that our students have not been exposed to any form of academic rigor in most (but not all) of their classes.  I worry that suddenly being asked to think critically, problem-solve effectively, communicate wisely, and analyze information – in addition to learning content  – is going to be too much.  I worry that despite laws designed to protect our students and in the face of documentation that is supposed to provide special education kids with every educational opportunity, the cycle of academic disappointment and low expectations across the board will continue.  Increased expectations and actual academic rigor may further disenfranchise our population even more than they are currently, and I worry that we will lose them.

We can change this.  Even us, the much-maligned, badly educated educators.  We can do  things in our classes everyday that will help our students be better prepared for the new world of work, and maybe even help them prepare for a life of constant learning.  Perhaps this starts with knowing what they are passionate about, or perhaps it starts with teaching them to ask good questions.  I have some ideas, but am no means an expert – as should be abundantly clear from reading any of my blog posts.  We’ll see what happens in 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the second part to my answer.

You never know, not only because it is nearly impossible for teens to be able to accurately predict what they will be doing ten years from the moment they so feverishly insist that they will be NOT be doing anything related to the content you are teaching, but also because the human brain is able to make amazing connections between things that you never realized connected in the first place.

I will use myself as an example again.

I never felt like I was good in math.  I had good test scores, especially at a young age, but I never felt like I “got it”.  I could add fractions with unlike denominators, and could multiply things and follow a process…but I never understood what I was doing.  You could ask me, “Which is bigger…1/4 or 1/3?” and I  honestly would not be able to tell you.  I was not able to tell you until somewhere in my mid-twenties, and to be honest I’m not all that confident now with my responses to those types of questions.

Other kids seemed so much more at ease with mathematics, and I had to work so hard.  For me, there were never any shortcuts – no easy ways to solve problems.  I latched onto a process and used it, no matter if there were more efficient methods.  I had friends that seemed to do math so effortlessly, and I wondered how they saw things.

It got worse in high school.  Algebra was fine.  In Algebra, there was a process.  There was linearity, there were ways to solve equations that followed a pattern.  There were graphs.  There was a distance formula, a slope formula.  I could plot points and solve systems of equations using methods I had been taught.

The next year, Geometry kicked my ass.  Suddenly now it seemed as if everything algebraic I had labored to understand so intently had traveled elsewhere, possibly to be revisited again in a land known as Algebra II.  Now I was confronted with shapes, angles, perpendicular lines, theorems and postulates that felt like a list of Do’s and Don’ts at the local pool.  Like, who reads those and who cares anyway? Who says you can’t have diarrhea and go swimming?  Really?

And there were proofs.  What an awful concept.  I felt that perhaps if somebody else long dead had proved this stuff hundreds of millions of years ago, why should we have to prove it all over again.  Couldn’t we just copy him?  I would study for tests and have no idea whatsoever what I was doing, and it scared me.  I knew that there were more math classes out there, and they would probably be harder.  I felt like I was trying my best and getting nowhere.

The first time I talked to my geometry teacher about my frustrations and falling test scores, I was nearly in tears.  He agreed to meet with me two mornings a week before school, to help me review and to try and understand new concepts.  Without his help, I could never have scratched out a “C”.

Had you told me then that I would be a teacher when I grew up, I probably would have scowled at you.  Had you told me that I would be a math teacher someday, I might just have barfed up my lunch.  I was going to be a writer, or a marine biologist, or the Pope – and those professions probably didn’t use a whole lot of math.

Life progressed and college happened.  Much to my chagrin, upon switching to Business from English (foolish, short-sighted, ill-advised yet necessary move) I discovered I needed to take a Calculus class.  Laughable, I thought.  Ridiculous, I surmised.  Stupid, I concluded.  Calculus for Business majors, not like real Calculus but some dumbed-down version for people like myself.  I bought the book, purchased a special calculator, and showed up on the first day with a bad attitude.  My professor was this tall elderly woman that acted and dressed like a 4th grade teacher,  replete with ugly sweaters and odd burlapy hoop-like skirts to match (or not).  She treated us like 4th graders too.  “Spit out your gum”, “Sit up straight”, “Where is your pencil, young man?”  I was in hell.

Yet somehow not. Along with being out-of-place traditional in appearance and retro in her methods, my professor was really into her subject matter.  I slowly began to find that I actually liked the class.  As time went on I discovered that my liking of the class coincided with my understanding of the material, or vice versa.  I felt that for the first time ever, I could see how other parts of math congealed and came together to form this mystical math called Calculus, and that it really wasn’t anything to be afraid of.  I started to ask questions, and to make connections between things that I had never thought to connect before.  Finally there seemed to be a reason why I learned math in the way it was taught.  I learned how the concepts built upon themselves and became ever more complex.  I learned to enjoy problem-solving, at least in an abstract sense.  I learned that I could do math, and I could enjoy it.  My crazy teacher helped me to see the connections, and she made it possible for me to learn.

Again, to you – E.  So right you might be.  You may never use this.

But you never know.  You cannot possibly predict what you will be able to do 2, 5, 10 years from now.  Which doors will open and which will be forever lost.  I never connected with any math, of any type, ever.  Then suddenly I did.  How could I have known what I would be able to do?  How could I have seen that I would be able to see?  You might be able to solve the most complex problems facing the world today – climate change, poverty, war, or even why all old ladies over the age of 75 suddenly smell exactly the same.  It might just be a mathematical connection, a simple drawing of a line between concepts, something nobody has ever thought of or done before.  God knows you are smart enough to do that.   Do you know what I mean?

Maybe not, E.

Maybe I’m the naïve one.  Maybe I got lucky, and have simplified things into a convenient narrative for storytelling purposes.  Maybe it’s true that you either get it or you don’t, that you either use math or you don’t, that you will never have a need for point-slope form.

But you never know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wish I could start by saying this is an age-old question.  I have no clue, especially because I don’t recall ever having said this aloud when I was in school.  In fact, I don’t ever recall even thinking it.  I’m hearing it more and more these days, however…especially in math, when concepts sometimes seem so abstract that students can’t connect the information presented with anything they currently encounter or might encounter someday.

As a normal everyday person, I certainly understand the frustration.  I mean, what does solving for a variable really do for me?  How will knowing the quadratic formula help me achieve my dream of becoming a mortician?  No joke: I had a student once whose dream was to become a mortician.  These are basic algebraic concepts, but we can easily extend this into other mathematical areas beyond algebra.   Some students are content with the knowledge that completing one level of math helps them gain insights into the next level.  For some savvy kids, knowing this isn’t good enough, and the standard answers don’t seem to particularly motivate them.  Many of these kids are in special education, and may very well be the ones to raise their hand (or not) and ask the question in the middle of your lecture.

As a math teacher, my job is to go there.  The question needs to be addressed in some manner, and it needs to be done without taking too much time out from what you are trying to accomplish.  Heaven forbid you ever get behind in your curriculum!  Many of my previous answers have included the standard tried and true responses, the stock answers that I have heard math teachers say many times before.  I could list the jobs that might require one to use Algebra, or even easier, Geometry.  I could mention that math is a universal language that we all use everyday, sometimes without even knowing it.  I could say that algebraic thinking is problem-solving …I mean, aren’t you solving for X whenever you try and figure out something, given a seemingly limited amount of information?  I could skate around the question by conveniently mentioning that, at the very least, passing Algebra and Geometry are required for graduation.  All these answers, plus many more I have neglected to mention, can be sufficient to pacify the student, but they don’t really answer the question for some.

A student named E. asked this question one morning last year in an inclusion Algebra class that I was co-teaching.  I believe the topic that day had to do with graphing absolute value formulas, and may have had some fractions thrown in for further confusion.  E. was getting frustrated, and had been mumbling things in that barely audible tone that every student in the room can hear, but that the teacher can only guess at, for a few minutes, before I asked, “Do you have a question, E.?”

Over the next couple of months E. asked this question with increasing frequency, always when frustration levels were reached, or when the material became abstract and/or involved.  Other students, feeling emboldened by E.’s pertinent, albeit ill-timed queries, began asking as well, audibly and barely audibly.  I had been thinking about how I could answer E.’s question without giving him one of the aforementioned standard responses.  None of those were working anyway.  He wanted an answer, so I told my co-teacher that I wanted to address the question in front of the class.

The best way to do this is when it happens, right when the question is asked.  I am not kidding when I say that this was next to impossible to do in this particular Algebra class.  The pace of the class was such that slowing down, or pausing to go into more depth within a certain topic was out of the question.  You were seriously inconvenienced, maybe even outright screwed, if you happened to miss a day.  I was not the content expert in this particular co-teaching relationship, so I followed along with what was planned.  I loved it, but this is the adult me talking.  My head may have literally exploded if I’d taken this class in high school.  Needless to say, we agreed that I would take a few minutes to give the question a thoughtful response.

I didn’t really do a very good job.  E. was certainly unimpressed.  I need to write it down here so that at least someone knows there is another way to respond to the question, and also when I have time to address it I can give a more complete answer.  The answer comes from my own life, as all true answers must.

“When am I ever gonna use this?”

The answer is: you might not, but you never know.

Part One of the answer has to do with the path a life takes, and all the trials and tribulations you endure to be at the point you are now.  I never in a million years thought I would be a teacher, much less a math teacher.  Math was never my thing, and it got worse in high school.  I did fine in Algebra, but Geometry killed me.  Some things I just didn’t get.  Theorems, postulates, proofs, angles – it is all a blur.  I was struggling, and asked my teacher for help.  He agreed to meet with me before school everyday so that I could get extra help, and that’s the only reason I was able to scratch out a “C”.  The kindness of a teacher, and the time and attention he took.  With me.  I took my three years of math, graduated, and took math again in college.  I was an English major, but decided there was only one profession to go into upon earning a degree in English, and that was teaching.  Something I vowed never to do.  My father had been a teacher, and he came home looking miserable and grumpy everyday, so why would I want to do that?  I switched to Business and had to take a Calculus class.   Calculus-Lite, I call it, but easily the most difficult math class I had ever taken.  Again, I had a teacher who cared enough about me, and about me learning the material, to get me through it – this time with better than a “C”.  I graduated with a Business degree and decided that the only thing worse than teaching was my 22-year old version of what being in business was like.

“When am I ever gonna use this?”

You might not, but you never know.  I was adamant about NOT being a teacher.  The pay is crappy, students are a pain, you have to grade papers, and you get to come home miserable and grumpy.  My (limited) experience with the business world had taught me that I at least needed to do something that involved some degree of excitement.  I took an introductory Education class, just to check it out.  The only thing I remember about the class was that we needed to do observations of different classes at schools in the local community.  For some reason I chose a middle school, and for the first time in a long time felt like maybe I belonged there.  It was fun.  Could being a teacher really be fun?

You never know.  Remember: I was adamant about NOT being a teacher.  It was a rocky start, and nearly didn’t happen, yet here I am.

So E., my savvy, street-smart student.  You never know.  Right now you are so adamant that there is no way in hell that a situation exists where you might use this.  Your life will take so many cool twists and turns that it will make your head spin, especially after you land wherever you’re supposed to land.  I don’t really care if you truly believe me or not, because there is a huge probability that I’m incorrect.  But I could be, so keep an open mind and graph those absolute value equations.