9 posts from 2008

alright so im sure most of yall have been exposed to pandora by now....if not, in a nutshell...its an internet radio station where you type in an artist, band, or song name....then pandora generates a playlist similar to that taste of music....i was skeptical at first but the site is VERY accurate

anyway, in class on day we were doing some coloring of skulls and skeletons for my students' day of the dead project and i asked what music they might want to listen to. given all the differences in taste, i brainstormed my head for music that EVERYONE likes....the closest i could think of was music from disney movies. lets be serious, its hard NOT to like songs from the likes of Alladin, Little Mermaid, Lion King, etc.....

so i type in Disney in pandora...what luck, the first song was that phil collins song from tarzan (be in my heart or something)....next was whole new world, followed by beauty and the beast....what a great station with all the disney hits!.......then the shit hit the fan....

what followed was an endless array of hannah montana, jonas brothers, hillary duff, high school musical, etc, etc....at first reaction i started dying out laughing, then something even funnier occurred....almost all of my female students KNEW EVERY SINGLE WORD TO EVERY SONG...apparently, the other channel behind MTV that my students watch is the Disney Channel. i laughed even more on the inside at the thought of jamming out to the Disney pandora station with my students at Wingfield. their reactions and outbursts played out in my imagination

"WTF is this sh*t mr jimenez! you gay or something?"

10 miles.....only 10 miles separates these districts and students

there are many benefits that have come with being a member of the MTC....however, like everyone else, there are a couple that really stick out.

the first i can think of would have to be the humility that has come with teaching. ive never considered myself to be someone who was really full of themselves in the past, but i can definitely say that i was not a modest person and enjoyed the action of tooting my own horn here and there. the first humbling experience was when i first came to oxford for the orientation and when i met all the other participants. granted ole miss isnt a bad university and its honors college was great to me, but i also know it doesnt have that national reputation as an academic powerhouse such as the universities from which the other MTC participants were coming from: princeton, duke, harvard, UNC, etc.....

next was just the experience of teaching in a critical needs school with the kind of students that attend those schools....as i grew up, it was just expected for students to respect their teachers and do mostly whatever they said...however, once i started teaching at wingfield, that all went out the door. never before did what i have to say become so unimportant....when some students will blatantly look you in the eye and tell you to f*** off, you know you have gone through a humbling experience. in addition, just the fact that i was serving a position that was almost completely thankless.

the other benefit from MTC has been my drastic increase in appreciation for MS and its history. growing up, i was dead set on getting out of MS after i graduated high school. after attending ole miss for undergrad and having dr mullins insight from classes and guest speakers, i have really come to appreciate more the history that MS has come from. also, from meeting the other MTC students and hearing about their reactions fo how things "work" in MS, it really showed me how different and somewhat backward MS has been in the past. before, i couldnt really appreciate faulkner's quote:

"to understand the world, you must first understand a place like mississippi"

now after having had classes on the history of education in MS and meeting some of the influential people that have lived through it, i feel like i have a better grasp on the history of my state which has given me a greater appreciation and better idea on what should be done in the future

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008810210372

because switching from a school like bailey magnet to a school like wingfield, callaway, jim hill, forrest hill will really make THAT big of a difference.

hi kettle, my name is pot....im different from you

http://www.palestra.net/videos/play/15823

me on foxnews college network talking about the grove...pretty cool segment and she kept coming back to my comments   =D

i was grading some quizzes and then entering in the grades into my gradebook and i noticed a really funny pattern...

most of the students who have last names towards the beginning of the alphabet were the ones making really high marks on the quizzes...then i got to thinking, maybe this is because due to their last name and assigned seating in most classrooms, these students are the ones who are always placed on the front row. im sure there are already studies that have shown that students that "choose" to sit on the front row generally make better grades because it can be a sign of motivation, etc. but what if these kids were routinely placed on the front row due to their last name?

granted this would only work if you do your alphabetical seating chart going across the front row first, then the 2nd and so on, rather than down the row....but it seems like it could be something that could be studied if you implemented that kind of seating chart in a district. then would your kids with last names towards the end of the alphabet who are placed in the back become worse students? less attentive because they consistently sit in the back? just something that randomly came into my head. other thoughts?

well, what can i say? my first days back have been completely awesome. my new school is so much fun, especially considering that i am coworking with my previous spanish teachers and we are all on the same hallway.

the very first day, i was just the same as i was last year: very strict, straight to business, with only 1 or 2 small little jokes that the students didnt really think were funny anyway (at first, its a good thing to have your students think that your an old fogey with lame jokes)...however after those initial house keeping days, i blew the roof off

my personality was allowed to come out and interact with these kids mainly because they knew when it was ok to play around, and then when it was time for business. the best part about my students? they WANT to learn spanish. already i have had about 10 students drop my class after the first 2 days because it was obvious to them that we were gonna be going balls to the wall spanish and that that wasnt something they were really looking forward to. the students that have remained with me though are primarily excited each day as they come into the class.

one girl in particular, each day she comes in, sits on the edge of her desk, and looks up to at the front of the class with a big ole goofy grin on her face and her eyes as wide as platters. now granted this might be because i am the hott new spanish teacher (sarcasm aside of course) but i like to think that she is just really excited about learning spanish and is really liking my class

so, fortunately i have been able to open up and have more open conversation in my classes. the other biggest change is that i dont have "rules"...i have "expectations"....and they are labeled on my posted rules poster as such...expectations because as i told my students, i shouldnt have to make rules to come down on yall with, rather, i have expectation of them because by now they know what a healthy learning environment looks like and what they need to do in order to make that happen

lastly, my other change is that im doing tickets as a positive consequence and the kids love it! they are very eager to volunteer and get mad at the other person who had their hand up. i will ever be confused by the attitude and motivation of students that do not live more than 10 miles away from each other. i guess, as we have stressed, it all starts at home.

so, i can sum up my classroom management reflection with one story

it goes back to right after christmas break and i was still having trouble with my 4th block. i called ben, just planning on asking some questions and suggestions and it later turned into me breaking down on the phone with him. he realistically asked me if i (1) had rules, (2) enforced those rules, (3) enforced those rules consistently. i could only sort of half way answer YES to the first one. obviously there was a problem.

it was pretty much like this in all of my other classes. if any serious issues came up, i just wrote kids up. it seemed like too much of a hassle to go through the writing of names on the board etc etc. however, it worked like a charm for my 4th block.

RULES:
1) Raise your hand and wait for permission to speak
2) Raise your hand and wait for permission to leave your desk
3) Keep your self and your belongings inside your desk area
4) Extreme violation earns immediate write up

Consequences
1) Warning
2) 1 day after school detention
3) 2 days after school detention
4) Write up

I talked to my administration about this before implementing this scheme and they were all for it as long as i called parents about detentions which i did.

i even had a rewards system in which the class would earn 1 point for every day i did not have to issue detention. however they didnt even make the first milestone (5 points for 5 points on a test) before the year ended (yes i started this right after christmas)
and from that point on, 4th block was still difficult, but i didnt dread it every single day. for the rest of my classes, i just kept on with the same ole "if you piss me off enough, ill write you up" policy. as non-effective as that can be, i made it work enough to keep my sanity

its always hard writing a curriculum map for a subject you arent even certified to teach. even better is when there are lessons that you still dont completely understand (appositives, all the english buzz words, etc).

i feel that our final map was pretty good though. im glad i got first picks on what lessons to teach though so i could really be successful teaching it. at the same time, mapping for a summer school is very difficult. there is so much you want to accomplish and so little time. plus you cant really get a feel for the students' abilities until the first week. theres a chance that the students struggle greatly with english and that is why they are in summer school OR that the student doesnt struggle at all and was purely lazy throughout the year and didnt go to class or didnt do their work. already ive noticed both these kinds of students in my class.

in addition to gauging students' abilities, you have to gauge time. already we are 3 classes behind because of school wide test that was administered. however, i dont think this is too bad for first years to experience considering most schools have weekly disturbances that throw a wrench here or there into any teacher's scheduling. not everything is cut and dry organized like MTC summer school tends to be

however, i am looking forward to mapping out next year, considering im switching schools. i plan on looking at the other spanish teachers at my school and going off what they have (because MS doesnt provide a pacing guide for spanish). hopefully then i can start to stabilize a curriculum map that i wont change between school years