teaching

Please, Keep Writing and Teaching [Kick More Ass]

by Jose Vilson on April 30, 2013

Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3

Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you’re a blogger writing about education and a whole mess of other stuff that permeates the experiences you have as an educator looking inward and outward, trying to seek solutions to complex and amorphous situations.

Let’s say you decided to look at the landscape of writing about education through this lens. You see messages and e-mails asking you why you put your name out there, no pseudonym, in a land where central district offices want to block and fire teachers with dissenting opinions, follow and interrogate teachers who pose hard questions on Twitter, or only highlight the teachers who please corporate sponsors and / or proffer ed-tech solutions. While the rhetoric sounds supportive of the “best” teachers, the policies themselves call worsening working (and learning) conditions. Congress and the White House continue to bundle the social safety net of America and prepare it on a cutting board, directly affecting the works of educators for everyone except the most privileged.

Your last message asks you if the person should keep her blog around in an environment like this. Your answer is hell yes.

As writers in the education field, we have a right, a privilege, and for many of us, a responsibility to tell the truth about our professions. The “best” of us can do it through anecdote or diatribe, but these finely honed skills matter none if we don’t use them to affect and effect social change. Speaking up and out about our daily struggles, the way we approach our craft, and the passion with which we inspire may prompt the next educator to look at their classrooms a little differently the next morning.

As writers who sun-light as teachers, we have an extra responsibility to the students we serve, and to do so in a way that encourages others to see themselves as teachers, as not alone, as not naive for having stayed when the best rewards are called “small victories.” With kids stuck in little cubicles in front of computers getting programmed like The Matrix in pilot programs, high-stakes standardized assessments stripping time from children who need as much time as possible to learn, and “non-profit” lobbies pegging teachers, parents, and students against each other in the name of kids (who didn’t ask their help, mind you), teacher-writers have the insight necessary in a dialogue bereft of voices from the classroom.

Indeed, you might have grander inspirations. You might have a manuscript in need of someone to believe in its marketability. You might have a few unfinished lesson plans and web sites you signed up to finish. You might be traveling to a few places along the way, but hoping your family doesn’t resent you for finding your Personal Legend.

You have a job. You’re tired. The school year is almost over. You’re tired of the nonsense. Something’s gotta g ive. You don’t want to stop because you know someone’s reading semi-religiously. You have to stop because you’re going at a blinding speed. Your heart hurts. So does your back. Your teeth hurt not from smiling, but from gnawing and snickering.

You’ll never get your voice out like this. You take a step back, and stand there for a minute. Your kids matter. You need this step back so you can run forward. Don’t stop blogging. Just hope that the next time you do, it inspires someone to kick more ass.

Jose

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Born To Do This Shit [On Personal Legends and Teaching]

by Jose Vilson on April 25, 2013

The Alchemist

The Alchemist

“You have 135 minutes left on this test. Are there any questions?”

After a quick pause, I said, “You may begin.”

As the students got to work on this section of the test, I began to reflect on my life as a teacher, and came to realize that, yes, I was born to be in a classroom, teaching.

The set of students in front of me, a gathering of opted-out English Language Learners from different classes including mine, had different experiences coming into that exam, yet already had an engrained respect for me before I even said my first words of the day. They might have seen me pass by in the hallway, covering a class, or heard rumors about me from different kids. They knew I didn’t laugh, at least not in front of them. They knew I cracked some jokes, and rarely wrote up students, preferring to talk them out of their unwise decisions.

They heard I love teaching students, and they can see it in my eyes.

A few years ago, I didn’t know how my body language (or my actual language) manifested in them thinking I hated my job, or at least that I should hate it. They confided in me that teachers in these environments work less like gurus, more like prison guards. They tell me that they couldn’t work “with these stupid kids” who “never want to do anything,” so becoming a teacher would be too hard for them. They don’t like the lack of respect teachers get generally, and wonder why someone like me actually wanted to teach, and not do anything else.

America as a whole has similar beliefs.

Yet, after reading The Alchemist, I realized just how close I am to reaching this “Personal Legend.” The students I reach in the classroom – I’m happy I reach the majority of them – have an appreciation for math now, and I hope I had a positive effect on that sentiment. The ones I don’t aren’t the “bad” kids, or the “most troubled” kids. It’s the kids who simply aren’t ready for me, or maybe not anyone, right now. I’ve learned that great teachers have plenty of students who simply weren’t ready to learn from them. Maybe I’m not ready to teach them, either, and I still have lots to learn about teaching them.

Learning isn’t linear, and neither are our lives.

In some meetings, we get the privilege to debrief with our colleagues with varying degrees of frustration, of pain, or annoyance. At the kids. At their superiors. At the system as a whole. This source of frustration, although warranted, can also cloud us from our objective. As I’ve heard a few of my colleagues say time and again, we don’t teach our subjects; we teach our students these subjects.

In time, if we let that little bubble of frustration grow, we get blinded, strayed from what we originally came to do. We see teaching as just a job, and not as both profession and passion. We see children as cogs to fit into a framework and not as people we’re giving tools to build. Some people are OK with that, and they’ll have their vision for what teaching should be, too. I just can’t allow that.

Maybe the kids respect me because I walk in like I was born to do this shit, and I want to take them along with me.

Jose, who can’t / won’t / shouldn’t talk about the test until tomorrow afternoon …

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If You’re Teaching Black History Month This Way, Please Stop

by Jose Vilson on January 31, 2013

BranchRickeynJackieRobinsonHofF

Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson with wife Rachel, Hall of Fame

First, I’d like to acknowledge that, on the chance that you’re actually celebrating Black History Month, congrats. You haven’t let the Common Core madness deter you from celebrating culture, whether it’s your own or someone else’s.  The decorations will spring up. Common faces like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Benjamin Banneker, and Will Smith will border the walls of a few classrooms, and probably a few hallways. There might be a fact-a-day in the announcements, and one in 400 schools might have someone who knows the Black National Anthem. (I know you’re mumbling it after the fourth line.)

But, has it ever occurred to you that, as well-intentioned as this might be, we ought to take the next step and celebrate Black history on March 1st as well?

We already know that Black History Month wasn’t meant to stay as lack History Month. Carter G. Woodson intended for this celebration to happen until it clicked for curriculum creators to speak to the story of the American Negro as part of the American history, and not just in platitudes and the Civil Rights movement.

People often argue that, when we stop celebrating Black History Month, people will start celebrating year-round, and there’s no way I’ll ever argue that. In fact, we should start celebrating all cultures and colors year-round so the need for specialized months for our marginalized groups would look antiquated. In other words, put John Steinbeck and Malcolm X quotes together, and celebrate The Beatles and the Temptations simultaneously. We can celebrate Michelle Obama as part of the lineage with Barbara Bush and Eleanor Roosevelt.

To Kill a Mockingbird in English class is a start, and so is having a Black president. Yet, we have so much pushback, I always wonder if we’ll ever not need a Black History Month. The “civil rights issue of our time” has a severe lack of sincere educators willing to tackle on the issue of diversity without trying to let go of their privilege, too. With the decline of black teachers happening all over the country (Chicago a prime example), it’s time for our White brethren to teach with compassion and understand on the issue of race if they aren’t already.

So jump into Black History Month, and get your feet wet with some of this history. Do your research a bit and drop the dime in a child’s ear, because that might inspire them to aspire. But once February 28th hits, leave those chapters open and bookmark those links.

The kids still need to know that there were, are, and will continue to be people who look just like them that positively impacted the lives of others, role models for the lack thereof in present times.

Jose, because this is to the memory of Hadiya Pendleton …

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5 Ways To Use 300 More Instructional Hours In A Year (THIS IS AMERICA!)

by Jose Vilson on December 3, 2012

A Scene Left In The Cutting Room of the Film 300

A Scene Left In The Cutting Room of the Film 300

This morning, I woke up to the news that a pilot program starting in a few states, including Connecticut and New York, would add 300 more instructional hours to the school year starting in 2013. I don’t know about you, but I have yet to see a real study showing a positive correlation between classroom time (teacher-student face-to-face for a designated class) and student achievement. If you’re not as informed with the research, your natural inclination is to say “Yes! More schooling sounds great.” What it usually means, however, is that those 300 hours get used for test prep and, well, more test prep.

No recess, no extracurriculars, no special electives.

What’s more, some of us (:: ahem ::) can do lots more with less periods a week. Currently, I teach two classes at eight periods a week. If I had them at five periods a week, I just freed myself up to plan for the remaining three. Interestingly enough, the US leads the world in classroom time, so why argue that we want to compete against the world when we’re already blowing the rest of the world away in this category?

Because that’s what America does. Oversized stadiums, supersized fries and drinks, and large enough egos to believe that those who don’t know much about education can run it. Cool.

So, rather than completely dump on the idea that adding 300 hours (the equivalent of over a month more school!) would provide better numbers, I thought about some ways in which we can use all this time more effectively:

5. Take more trips.

Yes. More trips. But we’d take educational trips. On the subway, you learn lots about civics. At the park, you always have that one guy willing to teach the kids about contacting their inner nature. When half your kids can’t really afford lunch, you take the whole class back just in time. That’s math.

4. Read more non-fiction texts.

Like the appendices for the Common Core State Standards. After reading them, I figure my students can learn the appendix back and forth, left and right, just to spend the time. It’ll be excruciating, but maybe I can do impersonations of David Coleman.

3. Wait.

Waiting sounds like fun. It’s only 37 days or so. My shoes are new enough that I can keep tapping them. Yep. Just waiting. Any minute now …

2. Tell More Stories.

Nothing in our contracts says we can’t tell stories. Maybe we can all become storytellers. We can stop every seven minutes between examples of problems with a “I remember this one student …” The students will eventually get tired of it. Then, they’ll remember you for it. Then they’ll hate you for it. Then the test will come. Then they’ll want more of your stories. Less about pineapples without arms.

1. Start an “opposite day” challenge.

For the last few decades, America keeps saying they want to compete with the rest of the world academically, yet keep doing the opposite of what everyone else has learned. So, instead of doing the opposite of what other countries do, let’s do the opposite of what we already do, just for those 300 hours or so. It’s a pilot, so we won’t punish anyone for trying it. We’ll test it over a few years and see how it works. If that happens, we’ll include things like recess and real homeroom. We’ll let teachers get into natural teams instead of “inquiry teams,” and give teachers enough time to get through all that paper work. Maybe we’d get paid properly to compensate for the other days we don’t. We’d have the most qualified teach our kids most in need, and administrators will have taught for a good chunk of their careers at an effective level.

Only for the 300 days.

If that works out, then we’d scale it and localize it to America’s teachers, and keep this opposite behavior going until it becomes our regular behavior, making the opposite behavior archaic.

Alas, this is Sparta America.

Jose, who wants DMX to do a whole album of these …

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Closing Schools In The Time Of A Hurricane [SchoolBook]

November 26, 2012 Mr. Vilson

An excerpt from my first post at the popular Schoolbook, a WNYC project: As educators, we are charged with helping our children feel that, as wild as the world may seem, we will pull through. Parents, children, and other invested adults seek asylum in our schools because of our routines, the familiarity, and the dulcet [...]

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A Dozen of One, a Half Dozen of the Other [On Parenting and Teaching]

January 23, 2012 Jose

Before my 25th birthday, I thought to myself how much I’d like to have my own son. The closer I got to finishing my 2nd year of teaching, the more I wanted to have a little nugget to teach the ways of this Vilson. My son started appearing in my dreams in different forms. My [...]

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A Little Breakfast. A Little Water. A Little Air. A Little Time.

October 19, 2010 Jose

A huge struggle I’m having in my class is kids coming in late. OK, it’s actually been a problem since I’ve started teaching. It’s been exacerbated by the fact that we no longer have homeroom, so students don’t feel attached to the teacher who sees them in the morning and teachers don’t feel as attached [...]

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Top 5 Reasons Why The Kids Don’t Like You

October 11, 2010 Jose

To Teachers This May Concern, Pardon my candor, but there’s a reason why the kids just don’t like you. At first, I couldn’t understand the dynamics of certain teachers and classes, especially if they stick together and bond for a few months. The general theory states that a good teacher is a good teacher irrespective [...]

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Whereupon I Might Encourage Bodily Harm to a Teacher

April 8, 2010 Jose

Today, after another long day at the grindhouse, I saw some of my former students, a pair of girls who haven’t grown in stature, but hopefully in status. Students who graduate from your nest are a great gauge for the effect you’ve had on present and future students. Fortunately for me, these students actually admit [...]

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RIP Jaime Escalante, Famed Math Teacher

March 30, 2010 Jose

It is with regret that I report about Jaime Escalante’s passing today. He was 79. He lived his life inspiring all types of people within the education system, but with little money left to treat his terminal bladder cancer. I am amongst that number of people who he inspired through the seminal work about his [...]

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