In my most recent post, I described the value of being able to instruct students who have grown up in a digital world. Those who have grown up with the answers a website away need a fast paced and energized classroom, where questions are broadly asked and welcomed, and information is given in an applicable and relevant way. With the infusion of the digital age, businesses have changed the way they market, educators must modify the way they teach, and we have even changed the way we socialize. This has been one of the greatest gifts and curses of the digital divide.

Those of us who have been ingrained in the digital culture are proponents of two major concepts—sharing and customizing. The digital generation seems to do this subconsciously: making your favorite song your ring tone, creating a play list on your ipod, uploading pictures to your My Space profile, blogging or twittering about the restaurant you were at, or taking the “What Marvel Superhero are you?” quiz on facebook and publishing the results on your profile. While the information can be useful, entertaining, and a fun diversion, each action creates its own digital footprint, a fossilized record of you for ill or naught. The image you are looking to create and ideals or information you are looking to impart have the potential to be misconstrued, and remain part of your digital image forever.

Take a few minutes after reading this and Google your name to see what comes up. A fellow corps member did this with my name and learned all about me before we even met. You can find that I am from small town suburbs in Massachusetts, ran college track, and still have my name on the school’s top ten list, served as student body president of Connecticut College, went to boarding school in Rhode Island, scored well on my Advanced Placement tests in high school, wrote an op-ed piece published in the news about Teach For America, and am currently a member of Teach For America…..and so on. There is a plethora of information on my growing digital record. Another thing that immediately comes up is this blog, one that we started with the goal of making our own teaching situations very real to fellow educators, those considering, family and friends, and professionals alike. Additionally, we have sought to foster an environment where dialogue and disagreements are welcomed, and people can contribute and share their own perspectives. Moreover, we have attempted to use wit, humor of varying nature, and have customized this blog to appeal to many types and entertain—even though educating those in the inner city is a very important and serious job, you need to have a sense of humor to deal with the daily stresses.

Writing has been cathartic and oftentimes a release. It has been our way to show faith in the system while dealing with its frustrations. However, in the digital age and as we leave behind our own fossilized record, what you seek to reflect may ultimately be viewed with a jaundiced eye. Take this quote in my recent post “Helpless or Hopeless?”, which shares my clash with idealism and the very real struggles that we have as educators:

Teach For America dogma and my own personal convictions tell me not to give up on these students. In fact, they are the first ones I should focus my attention on and devote time and investment to. I have dragged each one of these mules, braying and kicking to the edge of the pond, savored the cool water and showed them the satisfaction of quenching their thirst. And yet they would not drink. I had their friends, parents, and family, share with them the fulfillment they get from drinking from this pond, and yet they would not drink. I splashed them in the face so that they would feel its cool, cleansing drops, and yet they brayed and kicked even more.

Those who know me, or even took the time to read previous posts know that I am unwavering advocate of Teach For America and champion my students at all times and costs. For friends, family, colleagues, professors, deans, and my former teachers who have became regular readers the image is crystal clear—that I am frustrated by what appears to be the obstinate behavior of two students and am using the metaphor of one of the most obstinate animals to portray this. When writing this, admittedly, I felt a tremor and knew my own inner PC button, honed through four years at a college that has made pluralism, internationalism, and diversity it’s mantra, was being pushed. Is this something I can attribute to my name? Am I carrying this metaphor too far? And most importantly, how will this reflect students in a low income community? Uneasily, I submitted this piece as written, and naively thought my fossilized digital footprints would vindicate any misunderstandings.

These are the very dangers of the digital age, coming full circle. What I thought would be a crystal clear image of my struggles could effortlessly be misconstrued. It is like looking into a shimmering pond, after dropping pebbles into it and trying to make out the image between the ripples. Those who did not know my record on diversity, read previous pieces, or know me personally might view these lines as explicitly racist, and overtly comparing my classroom to a zoo. That, in itself, is the problem with sharing in the digital age: you may only be given a snapshot, rather than your entire record. That one snapshot has the potential to incinerate, razing all evidence. Some will view your record with the image you were trying to present, while others will naturally distort it into something ugly and grotesque.

Although I do not agree with everything written on this blog, and some of the images and depictions it presents, I believe the editors have presented teaching and it’s challenges in a light (hence the title of the blog), creative, and mostly witty way. They have tried to provide a forum for educators and non-educators alike, amuse those with our frustrations and triumphs, and illuminated others on what we deal with as inner city instructors. It has also served, at times, as an outlet for our own gnawing frustrations with a system that fails so many. I recognize that being a part of this forum adds to my digital record. Even if I do not agree with something displayed on this blog, or without my name attributed to it, being a part of it is tacit endorsement. My name is engraved on this blog, and with it comes an image, a record, that can easily be disfigured.

For these reasons, and until I can come up with an alternative way to express my thoughts, I will no longer be a contributor to this blog.

–Evan Piekara

Do Now: FML. It’s still 5 days until Spring Break, and you just can’t wait for that mojito on the beach. You can hear the Beach Boys already, the sway of palm trees against the warm breeze, the steady roll of the waves. You want nothing more than a beach towel and an excuse to not have excuses. It’s paradise, in its most unadulterated form.

There’s just one problem. You’re still in the suck.

There’s no beaches in the South Bronx, and the closest thing to a mojito you’re going to be sipping is black coffee from the bodega across from your school. Beach Boys? Not if Jay-Z is readily available. That swaying of palm trees is actually the sound of gypsy cabs zooming by, waiting to rip you right off. Oh, and that beach towel isn’t for the beach; it’s to wipe off the nasty shit you got on your pants riding on the 6 this morning. And the only excuses you’ll be hearing are from your students, in regards to why they didn’t do their homework.

Spring break, my friends, is close, but oh so far away.

A new generation requires a new way of teaching, thinking, and learning. It is readily apparent when you walk down the streets and see kids nonchalantly changing music on their Ipods while simultaneously texting their friends and rapidly readjusting to look up the nearest ice cream place on their Iphone. The world has fundamentally changed, and thus so has the way we educate students. The Old Model of education—absorption and repetition—must make way for the modern student. Today’s student is a product of their environment—fast paced, full of questions, and looking to discover on their own—all of which comes from having the world at their fingertips. As Seymour Papert, an expert on using technology to impact education, once said, “The scandal of education is that every time you teach something, you deprive the child of the pleasure and benefit of discovery.”

The mass production economy and it’s one size fits all absorption techniques has evolved into the Net Generation. Thus, our teaching methods must evolve accordingly, away from lecture and note-taking and some of the traditional styles of teaching and towards inquiry based learning, collaboration and experiential learning. Broadcast learning of old was teacher centered, molding to the teacher’s own flair and style. It was an inflexible and one-size-fits-all method that utilized individualistic learning. Today’s Net Generation—as a result of the many stimuli and prevalence of technology—must become much more learner centered, discovery based, one-size-fits-one, and collaborative. The teacher must follow an interactive model to grasp and hold the learners’ attention and must present them with real world applications and issues that they must synthesize, analyze, and respond to.

Nearly half who dropped out of high school have found school uninteresting or boring, and 70% of these dropouts felt unmotivated or found the material irrelevant. Part of this stems from the fact that teachers are no longer endless supplies of knowledge, circumvented entirely by the internet. If students want an answer, it is a quick search away on the Internet, an endless fountain of knowledge. This accessibility must be brought into the classroom. In a wiki generation, teachers must be able to enter the classroom with malleable plans, and be able to go off on a tangent if it creates discussion and fosters a lifelong love of learning or interest in the subject matter. Lecturing must be replaced with questioning and the Socratic method. Questions must not only be encouraged, but attempted to be answered, either by you as the classroom guru, or as a cooperative effort by the class. Students are eager to hypothesize probable answers, reasons, or explanations, and have the ability to test their responses on the Internet.

The Net Generation has been characterized by some as an entire generation suffering from attention deficit disorder. Up tempo, shifting gears, and focusing on several different things at once has been the gift and curse of this generation. It has enabled people born during the rise of the Internet to be able to process faster, compartmentalize, have an average IQ over three points higher than the previous generation, and multi-task like it’s our birthright. With these developed abilities, comes the necessity to nurture these skills and cater to what has become the Net Generation’s nature. The Internet and technology have changed our lives in every aspect; marketing, producing, consuming, how we work, read, learn, and relax, and it will continue to do so. Teachers must be prepared to adapt to this generation so that the classroom has become an extension of their lives.

How can we do this in low income communities? In the face of deflating budgets and countless other school needs, more resources and means for interactive learning must be brought into the classroom. Anthony Marx, president of Amherst College, laid out this issue, “The funding of our K-12 schools is by design regressive. We base it on property taxes. Schools nearest the wealthy get far more resources than those in poorer neighborhoods, which instead often need more, not less, to bring their students up to speed. In America today we spend six times as much per student in the best funded schools as in the least. This is an astonishing indictment and a violation of American ideals.”  Technology must be added incrementally, lessons must be crafted with student interests in mind, and teachers must go in with a breadth of knowledge on the subject to invoke enthusiasm and passion. Students are naturally galvanized by some of these random, yet applicable facts that can be found on the Wikipedia pages. It does not take much to do some research ahead of time, for instance the textbook may say Ramses the II was the “King of Kings” for all of his accomplishments. However, it does not hurt being able to add that “by the way, he also had more than 100 sons.” A quick comment like that made my students double take, snap awake, and start firing questions. You may not be able to answer them like the Internet, but it provides you with fresh ground for discussion, collaboration, self-discovery, and a conversation that could extend far beyond the classroom.

–Evan Piekara

Do Now: Be creative, but also be subtle. Remember, any fool can lather their students with T-Pain or Lil Wayne lyrics, but that just seems like pandering in the end, and nobody wants that. The trick to any lyricist is to insinuate identity through a weaving of ideas and verse. Joan Baez would have made a bad-ass teacher, and Bob Dylan should teach 1st year teachers the art of persuasion through lyrics. And what would lesson number 1 be? Simple: the lyrics should match the theme of your lesson or message, lest it be obscured by the greater stimuli of the classroom. For example, when you hear students talking about being a few points shy of passing, offer some Rascal Flatts: 

What hurts the most
Was being so close
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away
And never knowing
What could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was tryin’ to do

If they give you a sour face, it’s because of one of two things: either (1) they don’t recognize the song or (2) they recognize the song, and they’re not impressed. Either way, it couldn’t hurt to add another “Is what I was tryin’ to dooooooo,” just for effect.

Do Now: This is a mixed bag. On one hand, student performance is inherently tied in with blood-sugar levels. Early mornings can be as disastrous as story time with Stephen Hawking unless you get some bagels in your sleepy scholars’ mouths. Afternoon classes will be absolutely silent unless sandwiches manifest themselves. I have a rule in my class: students can eat as long as they work. This is where we must be cautious, for eating can be productive for a diligent student, but it can also be downright distracting to any lesser ones. Candy bars become noisy wrappers. Corn chips become speed bumps to the lecture flow. So implement your own food rule, but remember, food in the classroom is a contentious issue, for it all depends on how the cookie crumbles.

One of the pillars of Teach For America has always been the respect for low income communities, and a key metric of this dogma has always been in the exoneration of parents/guardians and the defense of their attitudes. It has always been assumed that all parents want their students to learn, succeed, and go to college. However, our students might be constrained by medical conditions, family responsibilities, or work. Furthermore, as an addendum, canon law has been extended to all students, who are perceived to have an innate desire to succeed, they just need a dedicated teacher to demonstrate how, and push them to believe in themselves. Of all of Teach For America’s “core values,” this one has always been the third rail of their educational philosophy. Accountability has been siphoned away from parents and students, and placed squarely on the shoulders of their teachers. Lately, this lofty and idealistic principle has waged a private war in my head.

Take one of my student’s—let’s call him DeShawn—a wild eyed twelve year old with deep set eyes looking back and forth like pin balls. After not seeing the student for nearly a month because of his propensity to come to school and roam the halls terrorizing students, taunting administrators, and disrupting classes by repeatedly pulling the fire alarm, his mother finally paid a visit to school. This was after nearly two months of unreturned phone calls, and personal messages that I left asking to simply speak with her at anytime so we could develop an action plan for her son to be successful. My soft power calls were strengthened (or weakened) by hard power threats from administrators, threatening expulsion or calls to child services. After six weeks of calls falling on deaf ears, a conveniently timed changing of their phone number, child services paid the household a visit. The mother could no longer keep her head buried in the sand, and came in a week later with her son to speak with me.

DeShawn sat with the wild eyed look of an animal with its haunches caught in a trap. Several times he told the assistant principal that she was a liar, as the mom watched idly with a war-worn look. We resolved that DeShawn would get evaluated, but in the meantime he would report to my class rather than roam the halls, would be transferred to my advisory where we did art drawings, played football, and listened to music – all activities that he fervently enjoyed. His mother paid weary lip service, repeating the words as if pronouncing a death sentence. The idealism still coursing through my veins, I left with high hopes that regular attendance in my class would be the remedy that tamed DeShawn.
The week that followed this meeting of the minds with DeShawn and his mother has been catastrophic to say the least. To date, DeShawn has yet to step foot in my classroom or advisory, both of which could have been something he succeeded in and enjoyed—in my English and social studies classes, when DeShawn showed regularly he scored in the 80’s and 90’s on tests and quizzes, and showed a flair for the innovative and dramatic. Instead, DeShawn strategically sidestepped my class. I later heard that he had appeared in math and science, two of his worst subjects and spent those periods throwing paper, threatening students, and disrespecting the teacher. Was it a favor to me that he didn’t show some teachers asked? I saw it more as a death row condemnation on his own education—a choice that I hope he would not notarize and write in stone. During that week after his mother and I spoke, DeShawn was arrested outside of a nearby pizza parlor for threatening the store owner and then telling the cops, “I’ll fuck you up nigga.” The next day, DeShawn arrived to school serendipitously after my classes and ran around the building yelling, “She’s got a gun,” which incited a riot. Students in the building, most of whom were familiar with violence and gangs in their neighborhood fled, trampling each other on the stairway, and stampeding away from the perceived threat. DeShawn’s behavior has warranted a principal’s suspension of at least thirty days.

Another student, Chris, had been marked absent for two weeks before showing up for his first day of school in late September, obviously enjoying an extended summer vacation. There was something noticeably different about Chris: for one he had a thin veil of facial hair, entered the room with a $250 leather jacket, and was a giant towering over the budding eleven and twelve year olds. Chris was nearly fifteen and still in the sixth grade. He would show up to my class infrequently, sometimes disappearing for days on end, and like a ghost, reappearing as if he never left the building. Other teachers were puzzled with his absences, which began to turn more and more into him sneaking out of the building, or showing up after my class to avoid a teacher who would hold him accountable (and to keep me from knowing he was in the building). After what seemed like a mountain of paperwork filed on Chris’ absences, near daily calls home, and several failed investment plans and heart to heart conversations, Chris and his mother surreptitiously asked for him to be transferred from my class. In our final in person meeting two weeks before she had him silently transferred from my class, his mother told me that “his absences had never been a problem,” and “no teacher had ever complained about him missing school before.”  

Forget the fact that he is mandated by law to be here. Forget the fact that without an education his prospects in one of the poorest communities in America are significantly dimmed. Forget the fact that without coming to class, Chris will be locked in the sixth grade forever, lacking the skills to simply formulate a complete sentence, or read beyond Dr. Seuss. Forget the fact that without an education he would not be able to take care of his family someday. These endless conversations had not budged Chris or his mother, and like Sisyphus, I felt myself tumble to the bottom of the hill, resigned to wondering if each attempt had been in vain, or if the next boulder would reach the top. Since Chris has been transferred to another class, he has not shown up for over a week and a half, and his mother has reported him missing- perhaps another casualty of the streets.

Teach For America dogma and my own personal convictions tell me not to give up on these students. In fact, they are the first ones I should focus my attention on and devote time and investment to. I have dragged each one of these mules, braying and kicking to the edge of the pond, savored the cool water and showed them the satisfaction of quenching their thirst. And yet they would not drink. I had their friends, parents, and family, share with them the fulfillment they get from drinking from this pond, and yet they would not drink. I splashed them in the face so that they would feel its cool, cleansing drops, and yet they brayed and kicked even more.

As a rational being who studied economics in college, I have been performing a cost-benefit analysis and wondering if it is time to cut my losses. I have devoted my very limited time, resources, money, patience, innovation, and energy to two students, and have been met with greater opposition. The resources I have spent on these two students have taken away from the sixty others, who have all had their share of behavior problems, academic issues, and challenges. Take the handful of students who were born addicted to crack and heroine, who have bounced from foster home to foster home, who have attended funerals of their parents and family, have spoken to parents held behind bars, or who dodge the drug slingers and bullets on the walk home—they are beginning to see education as their way to a better life. Now, I am left with the ethical quandary: Do I sacrifice these two problem students and truants for the common good of the whole? By allowing these two to fail, can I allow more students to succeed and achieve? In what has felt like infinite patience, planning, and an endless battle against educational inequity, must these two students and I lose this battle, so that I can win the larger war afflicting the remainder of my classroom? As this inner turmoil and moral dilemma encompasses my soul one phrase continues playing over and over in my head, “You cannot help those who will not help themselves.” Thinking back on the hours lost, the special programs and incentives brainstormed, implemented, and discarded, the countless conversations, discussions, and justifications on the importance of education, perhaps my final step is to simply hope… and to pray. My heart whispers its own silent prayer whenever I enter and leave the fortress of the school, “May they all see the value of their education before they become another fatality of the streets.”

—Evan Piekara

Do Now: Be observant. Teachers have to utilize all of their senses, including the all-too-famous sixth one, which we in the industry like to call, teacher intuition. It’s that fuzzy feeling you get when your lesson isn’t going quite right. It’s the force, only it can only inform and not manipulate the situation, which is unfortunate when you’re dealing with a classroom issue. Instead of waving your hand and Obi-Waning some little talkative shit in the corner, you just get the prickles on the hair on your neck, which really isn’t the same. 

But you’ve noticed that your students are coming in fewer numbers, and that’s something even untrained Jedi padawans like us can observe. Well, there are multiple plausible reasons why this may be. It’s late in the semester, so those kids who gave up already gave up. It could also be the month of March itself, which snakes along like an endless tail to a gargantuan monster. But take one look outside, one smell of blossoms in the air, one taste of the air, once frosty now moist with life, and anyone can tell you where your students are: they’re somewhere outside, and it’s almost spring.

I am sitting here in my classroom, currently waiting for students, parents, or a combination of both to walk through my door. I have my grade book set up and the lighting just right so that everyone can see the yellow line that denotes homework disappear into obscurity. I hear my co-teacher speaking to a student’s parents in Spanish. My Spanish is about as good as a five year old kid with down syndrome, but I do make out the following words: “baja”, “malo”, “castiga”, “dio mio”, “conejo”, and “?Quieres comer? !Manos a la obra!”

To me, conferences are like Christmas. Bad ass students are suddenly reduced to syccophantic chipmunks. Loners and introverts suddenly ask for extra work. I realize its temporal, but gosh, it’s nice to see what could be.

UPDATE: Our Assistant Principal just makes an announcement for the raffle winner. We have a raffle at Parent Teacher Conferences. For showing up, you get a ticket, and the winning ticket wins a Nintendo Wii. Considering all the distractions our students face on a daily basis, this proves to be an overtly inappropriate gesture.

I’d say the best way to marginalize any school-wide function is to incentivize it with a Nintendo game. For all of our students who cannot manage their time and their parents who cannot manage their students, an interactive time-sucking machine should be the last thing they want. But to pander it with tickets? Who came up with that idea? Why do we want to transform Parent Teacher Conferences into a carnival?

Do Now: Let’s face it: everyone loves March Madness, and everyone loves teachers. Even Dick Vitale was once a teacher. Bracketology should be part of every child’s education, and commentary from the Duke-Kentucky Laettner shot game should be recited like poetry. Show a clip of Jimmy V running onto the court and have students write a poem about how it makes them feel. Show them the correlation between free-throw percentage and win percentage and have them describe the relationship statistically. Have them fill out a bracket and write a 1 paragraph response for why they made the choices they did. Or better yet, make it a 5 paragraph essay; after all, you have your own bracket to update.

Do Now: Make a stupid youtube video and sport Yao Ming jerseys.