my LC

My literacy coach of my school teaches in my room. My LC should be a mentor, providing support, materials, offering advice. This should be awesome. Right now, at this very moment, my LC is teaching the summer reading to her 11th grade class. They're half-way through one of the two assigned summer reading books. She assigns questions about each chapter at night, and then they go over the answers the next day. She reads aloud answers that they are supposed to copy down. I don't think you need to know about learning modalities to have a few questions about this practice.

It makes me feel like I should disinfect the room. When I work in here during her teaching periods, I can't look up from my desk. Afraid I won't look the flower and be the serpent underneath. (I'm teaching Macbeth with my 9th graders.)

The bell rang. It's my house now. Time to finish The Scarlet Letter. Which many students have told me is the first book they actually read in high school, and the first book they actually liked reading in high school. Good thing this is the first time teaching this curriculum and my LC was able to provide support.

I've never been good at not looking the serpent. Flowers are for wimps.

the more you care...

Teaching is a really easy job if you don't actually teach. You come to work at 8, you pass out worksheets, if you have good management, you don't have to yell. You can even catch up on your crossword puzzle skills. You have about 2.5 hours to play with during your day when you're not teaching. You go home at 3, in time to see Oprah. And you don't have anything to do when you go home because there's nothing to grade because you don't actually teach anything. This is the life of a gym teacher and unfortunately, many other subject teachers. Gym teachers make the same amount of money as math teachers. Or English teachers who assign an insane amount of work because clearly, no other English teacher has before and your kids can't write an essay to save their life.

The more you care, the more you teach, the harder your life is. The two and a half hours of your free periods are eaten away by making photo copies, planning lessons or grading. You got to work at least an hour early, but some days you have to get there two hours early. And forget about leaving at 3. It's a good day if you leave by 5, because there's still so much to grade and students need extra help after school when you teach a lot.

I share my room with another teacher. She teaches in my room two periods a day. Prior to this year, she has only worked as a literacy coach and has not been inside the classroom. At a department meeting this week, we were supposed to discuss intervention strategies for our lower level students. I said that I couldn't distinguish the bottom third in terms of writing because they are all so deficient. I said I was assigning a two page essay every week. The literacy coach said, "If you don't mind my asking, how will you grade all those papers?"

Exactly. That's the job. It's work. It's a 7-5 plus another hour or two at home job. You work as much as you care. I don't have to assign a paper every week. I could assign work and never grade it (that's the other route teachers go). But I care and they're taking the Regents in January. So I work. A lot. That's the job. That's teaching.

crawling out from teddy bears

After three days of sorting, hauling, throwing and (insert violent, action-packed verb here) old crazy hoarding lady's former classroom, I have found mine underneath the stolen, mice-dropping strewn, five years of dust laden, t-shirt covered, if for lack of a better phrase, insane hot mess. My assistant principal came in to help me for about 10 whole minutes, and spent part of the timing wondering out loud how it got like this? (Answer, she may have been crazy, but you let her express her craziness out loud in this room.

But here's the good part. For those of you who know, cough, competent literary coaches, you'll understand.

My literary coach is teaching two periods of 11th grade English in my room. (And it is mine, I found it under the rubble.) I am also teaching 11th grade English. As I disentangled the books in the room, I pulled aside the ones I wanted to use (aka, Huck Finn, Awakening, 451, Gatsby, etc.). I asked her what books she wanted to use. She said, "Oh, just the Regents prep books, grammar text book, vocabulary workbook and World Literature textbook."

[It should be noted that in a lengthy series of meetings at the end of last year, meetings in which she was a participant, the entire English department agreed on reading lists and curriculum mapping for each grade, and decided 10th grade would be World Literature and 11th grade would be American literature.]

When I reminded her that 11th grade was American literature and not World literature, she sounded confused, and said she didn't remember that, and that she'd have to ask the Assistant Principal. She pulled out a course syllabus from last year that outlined the fact that 11th grade would have World literature textbooks. I said, since all the 11th grade teachers taught American literature last year, that syllabus is wrong.

It sounds minute, it sounds so unworthy of spending 15 minutes mentally regurgitating the whole brief episode here. But imagine it this way. Imagine you work for American Express. Imagine that this whole episode took place, but in a fancy corporate America conference room and not in the shambles of an old crazy lady's classroom formerly decorated with teddy bears. Maybe gross incompetence happens in corporate America. It most likely has on an astronomical scale given the economy. But was the conference room covered in teddy bears? Did the CEO walk by the conference room decorated with teddy bears and say hey, kinda cooky, but we'll let it slide?

No.

Thank goodness for public education to keep the craziness alive and well.

Welcome to the rabbit hole.