Your Education Policies: A View from the Depths

I've had a really tough time so far this year. A passel of new regulations, passed by a viciously anti-teacher legislature last spring, have tied me up in knots and wasted a lot of my time.  I wrote this essay between midnight and 1:30 a.m. just to blow off some steam.  It's not like I had time to write during my 11-hour workdays. I'm planning to share it with my legislators and with SCORE, a Trojan-horse organization founded by Republicans in Tennessee to de-fund public education and drive every last well-meaning teacher either out of the state or into private or charter school jobs.

I teach at a school that you represent, Station Camp High School in Gallatin. I’m beginning my third week of the school year, teaching German, Creative Writing and 11th-grade English.  I sponsor three clubs at our school (yours and mine and my 9th-grade daughter’s).

I’m burned out. That’s right, and it’s only the third week.

Someone needs to tell what’s going on.  Someone needs to describe all the work that has been wasted by the onerous regulations placed on public school teachers and administrators in the 2011 legislative session.  Someone needs to get you to see the effects of decisions you made six months ago.  I will do my best to try.

This is my eighth year at my high school.  During that time I have taught every grade level of English, and every strata of each class except A.P.  I have also taught--as I am teaching now--German 1 & 2 and creative writing.  After three years here--years in which I was observed regularly, and I carefully worked out lesson plans under the direction of my administrators--I earned tenure back in 2007.

While politicians, movie producers and journalists tried to disparage tenured teachers like me with allegations of ineptitude and stories of mysterious “rubber rooms,” I was proud of my tenure.  I knew how hard I had worked to earn it.  I also knew the ways it could be used to benefit both me and the students who would study in my classes in subsequent years.

Tenure gave me the freedom to turn my classroom into a learning laboratory.  I knew how to teach, plan, and manage a classroom--that’s what I understood my tenure to mean.  It meant that I had the freedom to experiment with new styles of learning, to reach out and form community partnerships that might benefit learners in my classroom, to organize learning experiences outside the classroom and collaborate with teachers across subject areas and grade levels.  I wouldn’t have gotten tenure in the first place if I hadn’t shown mastery of basic teaching methods over three years.  Tenure gave me a solid foundation from which I could reach higher.

Over the past three years, this foundation has produced amazing results both for me and for my students at SCHS. My love of experimentation and my creativity--with the support of my school administration--really began to blossom in new ways.  I formed a close bond with TPAC Education which brought teaching artists into my school to help make lessons more meaningful.  I learned Google Docs and used a donation of 32 used laptops from Volunteer State Community College to create my school’s first “paperless classroom.”  This past summer I won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study American history through song at the University of Pittsburgh, where I developed ways to use folk music to augment my literature classes.

I returned from Pittsburgh four days before the administrative day where we learned about the new evaluation system:  that tenure was transitory, that teachers who didn’t perform “above expectations” or “significantly above expectations” for two years in a row would return to probationary status.  When I saw the regulations--about 30 minutes of paperwork per 90-minute lesson (and I teach three different lessons a day)--I knew that my days as a tenured teacher were numbered.  But that didn’t bother me as much as knowing that the freedom I had worked so hard to gain, build, and share with my students, was also transitory.

You need to know what is going on in the schools you represent. If you’re working for teachers, parents and students, you need to understand the results of your policy actions.

This is how Tennessee Educaton Reform 2.0 has worked for me so far:

• I have attached below the lesson-planning form that was adapted by my school’s administration. It includes all the relevant data that will go into my evaluations this year.  It took me 30 minutes to produce.  The toughest part about the planning form isn’t the questioning or the assessment--I’ve been doing that since I started teaching, it’s how I gained tenure.  It’s wasting time referencing the standards.  In German 1 there are about 20 to utilize, but in English 11, there are almost 70 state performance indicators (SPI’s). I find myself asking, “This is a logic lesson. Is it 5.2 or 5.4?”
• This has tripled the amount of time it takes me to plan lessons.  Usually I have lesson plans posted a week in advance of the lessons I teach.  This year, I’m struggling to stay one to two days ahead.
• My grading has increased markedly--not directly because of the state regulations, but because of an ambitious goal I had set to make my classes paperless.  With laptops at every desk, students generate about 30-35% more work for me to grade.  This is an exchange that I’m willing to make, because (1) I am investing my time to see kids learning more, and (2) I’m optimistic that eventually technology will let me cut the grading load to what it was before or less.  Before, the satisfaction of seeing successful learning and being a part of technological innovation made the extra work worthwhile. Now I feel like I’m doing a lot of work the State of Tennessee doesn’t necessarily want me to do, and instead I should spend more time acting and planning like a non-tenured teacher. You might imagine the frustration I feel there.
• I have no time.  Last year I graded at home from 9 to 10 five nights a week; this year I am grading/planning from 8:30 to 11, and I have little to show for it.   Last year I graded on Sundays only when I had a big batch of essays to complete.  The first Sunday of this school year, I spent four hours at my school setting up for the launch of my paperless classroom.  Last Sunday, my wife and kids went to the movies without me so I could spend five hours getting my grades ready to post and plotting out lessons for my three classes.
• I can’t perform the kinds of leadership roles I want to provide to other, less-experienced teachers.  I mentioned earlier how I arranged for teaching artists from TPAC Education to come to our school.  Last year I had three colleagues join me in an Arts in Education Unit.  This year, we’re all so busy trying to keep our heads above water, we’ve all but given up on the idea, losing precious momentum toward Arts in Education that I had labored to build over two years.  I learned some cool new teaching tricks at the NEH Summer Institute that I would love to share through a professional development, only I have no time to draw up a proposal, much less plan a three-hour training.
• I can’t develop the technology that I brought into my school last year, and I can’t train other teachers to use these 21st-century teaching tools.  I want to train more teachers at my school about Google Docs and utilizing technology in the classroom. This summer the district brought in a “tech guru” from Atlanta as a keynote speaker.  I got to have a private meeting with her to share some of the things I was doing with Google Docs in the classroom.  While she had a broad knowledge of Google applications--and other forms of software--she hadn’t experimented with it in the classroom setting like I had, and she was very impressed.  I don’t get paid four figures a day to visit Tennessee like she did (it would be nice, but let’s face it, I’m just fighting to keep my job in this state, much less tenure).  I live here and have committed myself to my county’s education success, not just my own.  I can’t do it, though.  That’s what I’ve realized in just three weeks.

I’m just speaking for myself. I cannot speak for the administrators whose work loads have doubled with the additional evaluation responsibilities.  I cannot speak for the colleagues who were a year away from tenure and now have to wait for three.  My kids are all in school now (my youngest is eight), I can’t speak for teachers with young families or those expecting babies, who are now facing this increased workload.  You need to talk to them.  It is you who need to listen.

I share with SCORE and many others the desire to see Tennessee’s public education system become the best in the South, and I hope that I have demonstrated a willingness to do the hard work that profound change in education requires without explicit, step-by-step direction from the state department of Education.

I just fear that we’re missing out on opportunities for implementing real learning by treating teachers like numbskulls who have to fill out a planning guide and list out standards-based questions on their forms before they can teach a German class how to say “What’s up?” or lead an English 11 class through the turbid waters of Moby Dick.

Last Sunday’s New York Times featured a number of respected thinkers who finished the thought, “If I were president....”  James Dyson, the engineer who re-invented the vacuum cleaner, wanted to change education in the right way:

“Standardization and rote learning lead to sub-standard results because they don’t inspire or challenge. My solution: get rid of binary right and wrong answers. Experimentation is learning. Only through making mistakes do we find out what works, what to do differently and how to get better.  Box-ticking does not correlate with world winning. Certificates won’t beat global competition. Creativity will.” --Kornbluth, Jesse, “If I Were President,” New York Times, Sunday Review Section, 21 August 2011.

Part of me is willing to accept a lower TVAAS score because I chose to teach my students about thinking and not “box-ticking.”  I would rather see a student demonstrate a love for learning than a high score on an end-of-course exam.  As a teaching professional, of course I want to grow towards both goals, but as an overworked, maligned public school teacher, I feel hung out to dry.

In your capacity, you attend a meeting, you write a press release, you attend a luncheon or a fundraiser, and you feel like you have done something with your day, you might even feel like you did some good.  Where I’m at now, I grade sixty papers and work 90 minutes on planning, and I feel like I have only fallen an hour further behind where I need to be. I haven’t contacted parents, I haven’t arranged extra time to help a student who isn’t yet up to speed, etc.

Tennessee has gone too far towards standardization in its onerous micromanagement of teachers, both tenured and non.  Legislators and policy advocates have taken away from teachers and administrators the freedom to experiment with learning, the room to let students try--then fail--then explain and learn.  I hope that this letter may apprise you of the situation on the ground and encourage you towards more balanced, more rational policies in the future.

Sincerely,

James Dittes
Station Camp High School

A Moby Dick Breakthrough

I just finished "Whaling Week" with my 11th-graders. We voyaged with Moby Dick for two days, sang whaling songs, and engaged with three years' worth of resources I have collected on this amazing work of literature.

By my estimates, these students are now part of a select group: I would venture that fewer than 10% of American literature classes in land-locked Tennessee even attempt this work, much less spend a week on it.

I always end the week with a fun activity--a harpoon-throwing contest. "You have just read from Moby Dick," I told my standard-level juniors, "and you get it. Not even the kids in AP English can say that." We went out to the football field, where, in the end zone of the football stadium we would throw a rake handle (a.k.a. harpoon) at a plastic box (a.k.a. whale).

One student, Dee, was the last to leave the room. Dee is a challenge to teach. I have a lot of these 4th-block kids turned on to learning at this point of the semester. Quite a few come in asking "what are we doing today?" or "this is Slavery Week, right?" (When kids ask questions like these, they are ready to learn anything.)

Dee usually asks, "We're not doing anything today, are we?" He is usually the last to take out pen and paper. He just doesn't seem to care; he just doesn't seem to 'get it.'

I handed Dee the "harpoon" as we left. "I'm really tired," he told me. He had gotten his driver's license this week, maybe that explained it.

"It's OK, we're going to do something fun now," I answered. Then he said something that shocked me.

"With my last breath...."

I caught the reference immediately, "With my last breath, I stab at thee, though damned whale!" They are the last words of Captain Ahab. We had read them the day before. And Dee had been listening.

Later, on the football field, Dee threw a pretty straight harpoon, but he didn't win the competition. The boys blamed the wind at first for their bad aim. Then cheerleaders started practicing their dance routine at midfield. The boys couldn't have been more distracted!

(I asked them what would be harder, throwing a harpoon from a whaleboat bobbing on the ocean waves, or throwing a harpoon on a level football field with cheerleaders practicing nearby. We had trouble reaching consensus on that one.)

Another student, Matt, won the competition. I touched him on the shoulder three times with my model harpoon, and with every touch we shouted, "O Captain, my Captain!"

It was a great end to whaling week, but Dee's memory was probably the highlight for me.

The Tennessee State Capitol: Nathan Bedford Forrest

[I tried to post this as a photo & comments to Facebook last Friday. It didn't work out quite right. I'm going to re-post this as a blog post. Sorry if you've read it before.]

I'm in the state capitol today at a student conference, and I want to share some observations about my state.

This statue in the Capitol gallery is of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a man who fought AGAINST the United States. Moreover, he was a founder of the Klu Klux Klan.

So why does his statute occupy a priviledged place in the Capitol? It is an example of the South's complicated relationship with America's history, with the country's present, and with the future.

Forrest was one of the Confederacy's most effective raiders. Never defeated in battle, his motto was "get there first with the most." At war's end, he became a potent Southern leader at a time when Northern opportunists were raiding the Southern economy for quick profit and political gain (like Lincoln,these transplanted "carpetbaggers" were Republicans, which is why, from the end of Reconstruction in 1876 to the 1990s, Republicans were considered with abhorrence by conservative Southern whites.

Forrest's days as the first "Grand Wizard " of the KKK were short but effective. In modern parlance, he claimed that the KKK was a "fair and balanced" alternative to the Republican "Loyal Leagues." As one Alabama newspaper put it, "The League is nothing more than a nigger Ku Klux Klan." One editorial cartoon of the period showed a KKK lynching: its victims were white, and written on one victim's carpet bag was the word, "Ohio."

Today we think of Forrest's KKK in strictly racial terms. In the 20th century, their burning crosses and white-capped members sought to intimidate Southern blacks into compliance with segregation.

But I know of no attacks that Forrest carried out against freed slaves. His target was Republicans. He hounded them out of their judgeships, targeted Northern-owned industries, and eventually returned the South to the dominance of the political, Democratic, conservative class that had ruled from the time of Andrew Jackson to the end of the Civil War. Forrest was a SOUTHERN patriot, even if he wasn't an AMERICAN one.

Eventually things got out of control. The armed "night riders" under the sheets weren't always acting for political reasons. Shortly after a federal grand jury declared the Klan a "terrorist organization"in 1870, Forrest disbanded the organization completely, claiming that it had been "perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace."

The closing years of Forrest's life wouldn't seem to reflect the actions of a notorious racist. The New York Times, in its obituary of Forrest, October 30, 1877, noted that his last public appearance was before a 4th-of-July celebration of African-Americans near Forrest's home in Memphis:

"[In] his last notable public appearance .... he appeared before the colored people at their celebration, was publicly presented with a bouquet by them as a mark of peace and reconciliation, and made a friendly speech in reply. In this he once more took occasion to defend himself and his war record, and to declare that he was a hearty friend of the colored race. "

This brings to light two ironies of Tennessee's Capitol today.

One: both legislative chambers in Tennessee's Capitol are controlled by Republicans! If Forrest were to return from the grave and learn this, there would be hell to pay. Folks would get hanged. The Capitol might even be burned.

The second irony can be found on the wall that Forrest's statue looks at. It's time for lunch, but I'll develop this more a little later.

Cool Conclusions

I've been teaching writing for thirteen years now. Every year or so I come up with a new wrinkle.

This year my challenge was lazy conclusion-writers in my 11th-grade class. Somewhere along the way--probably 8th grade language arts--they learned to "bail out" on a conclusion. In other words: restate the thesis, give a pat answer, get outta Dodge.

We're practicing for the statewide TCAP writing test by writing essays for college applications. I was trying to come up with a word that summarized a good conclusion.

I came up with three:

Jedi Mind Trick.

Remember how Obi-wan Kenobi would wave his hand in front of the object's face and say something like, "These are not the droids you are looking for"?

THAT'S how to write the conclusion to a good essay. You are placing in the mind of the reader the very idea you want them to say back to you. In a college application essay, that would be something like this:

"You will enjoy having me on your campus"

"These skills and more will make OSU a livelier, funnier place"

What Jedi mind tricks do you have? If you were applying to college again, what would you want the admissions clerk to mindlessly type into their computer after reading your essay?

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, the Birth of What?

I'm preparing a lesson on Randall Jarrell's classic World War II poem.

As so often happens, I've found something new; something that I hadn't noticed before; something I wanted to share with you.

From my mothers' sleep I feel into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

I have always recognized the caustic reference to the State and the ultimate sacrifice it demanded.

For some reason, I have always missed the imagery. "Mother's sleep," "hunched in its belly," and "loosed from its dream of life" are all images of pregnancy and childbirth. Now that I think about it, the ball turret rests on the belly of a B17 much like that of a fetus, hovering innocently "six miles from earth."

So what happens? There is "black flak" and "nightmare fighters." The child awakens to the weapons of death.

It's an abortion that Jarrell is describing, isn't it? Read the last line again. It's an abortion.

Why didn't I understand that before?

Mankind is … some metaphors

From a recent assignment on metaphors, I culled the following comparisons:

• "Mankind is a busy ant hill that has no fear of being stepped on."
  
• "Mankind is Kanye West."
  
• "[Mankind is] a llama."
  

It's great to teach such deep—and weird—thinkers.

Improvements to Moby Dick (As If)

Eighteen months ago my principal and English department head conspired to do something that would shake my teaching to the core: for the first time in 12 years of teaching, they assigned me to teach 11^th-grade American Literature.

It seems strange that it took me 12 years to get to this point. I had always considered myself a "Brit Lit" kind of guy, having studied for a year in England, and I enjoyed the basic essay-writing skills taught in 9^th and 10^th grade. I really didn't care to teach American Lit—until I had to care.

What was I to do? I took on the task with gusto. Soon my love for American history and my passion for my country was pouring out. I was reading great American books for the first time like The Great Gatsby, Walden, and Moby Dick (What took me so long? The education I received in American literature had been far inferior to that I received in the Brits. Enough said.) I even made Moby Dick the theme of a Summer Road Trip in 2008 to Plymouth and New Bedford, Massachusetts.

This week has been "Whaling Week" in my English 11 standard class. Today we capped off the week with the conclusion to Moby Dick, an 8-page excerpt of the chapter, "The Chase—Third Day" in our textbook. Melville has always been tough—and unpopular. Why else would an English major like me have avoided it for 20 years? But Moby Dick is worth the effort. In plot, characterization and philosophy, it is unequaled in Ame

rican literature. I think it's a lot like The Odyssey or The Bible: its meaning and impact get greater every new time you read it. I remember getting to page 450 in my first read and realizing, "I'm going to have to read it again to really, really get it." And you know what? I wanted to do it.

That's not to say that standard-level English students will feel the same way. That's why I break the Moby Dick lesson down to two days—and I precede it with a day reading non-fiction excerpts from In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, the real-life whaling story upon which Melville based his novel, and watching a video. I have a scale model of a harpoon in the class. This year I even had these landlubber students of mine practice knot-tying. By the time we started they were ready.

I read the first excerpt, from The Quarterdeck, out loud, pausing to help students wade through the language. I give voices to all the characters—Ahab always has a really raspy, "pirate" voice—and I try to do a little acting and add some sound effects. By the end of this reading, the kids have a vivid view of Ahab: god-drunk with hubris, exhorting the men, "Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!" Truly, the only other character I can compare to Melville's Captain Ahab is Shakespeare's Richard III.

And the comparison doesn't end there.

On the 2^nd day of the reading, I have arranged a choral reading. I have highlighted the parts of Ahab, Stubb and Starbuck. Students read these from the front as I read the non-dialogue parts. This year I added sound effects. A student at my computer played sea waves, bird calls, hammer sounds—even the theme to Jaws during the bits where the whale is bearing down on boats or The Pequod.

Did it work? I think it did. It was clear to the kids what had happened to Ahab—and to the whale. More importantly, I had many more kids taking part in the reading. I felt that it held their attention.

But as I read it aloud, one name kept coming back to me: William Shakespeare.

When I hear Moby Dick read out loud, I hear Shakespeare. I mean it. I'm here to say that Herman Melville is the closest American writer to Shakespeare's characterization and his cadences.

Consider two of the sections I read today. First, Starbuck's growing awareness that death lurks as he sees Ahab row away from the ship a final time:

Heart of wrought steel! Canst thou yet ring boldly to that sight?—lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day…? Oh! My God! What is this that shoots through me, and leaves me so deadly calm, yet expectant—fixed at the top of a shudder! Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl; thou fadest in pale glories behind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes grown wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem clearing; but clouds sweep between—Is my journey's end coming?

Aside from the brilliant image that is caught, "fixed at the top of a shudder," this is a heartbreaking line. If it were performed on a stage, even a middling actor could wring tears from an audience. It's almost better when it is spoken than read. Maybe that's why Moby Dick was considered a failure after it was published. Maybe that's why no one "got" Moby Dick until America's primitive movie industry put it on a screen in 1926, over 30 years after America's Shakespeare had died in obscurity.

When you hear it, you know.

When you read Moby Dick, it is easy to get bogged down. Every chapter of plot is followed by highly symbolic, highly philosophical treatises on the whaleboat, the line, the whiteness of the whale, etc. This is the stuff that makes the novel great (John Steinbeck uses the same tactic to intertwine the story of the Joads and the Dust Bowl in The Grapes of Wrath). This is what makes the novel worth reading again and again—as we unwind the puzzle of antebellum America Melville has hidden for us.

But the sounds of Moby Dick bring it to life. I want to introduce one more speech—the last words of Captain Ahab. This time I'll break it down to pentameter to see how it works:

I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego!

Let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three

Unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked

Keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm

Deck and haughty helm, and Polepointed prow—

Death-glorious ship! Must ye then perish,

And without me? Am I cut off from the last

Fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains?

Oh, lonely death on lonely life!

Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies

In my topmost grief. Ho, ho! From all

Your furthest bounds, pour ye now in,

Ye bold billows of my whole foregone life,

And top this one piled comber of my death!

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering

whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's

heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake

I spit my last breath at thee.

Sink all coffins and all hearses to open common pool!

And since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces,

While still chasing thee, though tied to thee,

Thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!

Why didn't I teach American literature until I had been at this twelve years? Maybe I wasn't ready yet.

Why did I teach Shakespeare dozens of times before I taught Melville. I think it's because you have to know one to love the other.

Teaching Whitman...Like Clipping Grass with Fingernails?

If there’s such a thing as a Rorsach test for English majors, it has to be the poems of Walt Whitman. Every year I face the choice of either trying to create a framework by which students “get” his rambling, free-verse poems, or I skip him. This year in English 11 Honors, I chose the latter, but when rain canceled my exciting “Romantic” walk outdoors, I had to fall back on Whitman.

I decided to focus on metaphor—a real strength of the Romantics. In the first 30 minutes I had introduced the kids to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “giant transparent eyeball.” I had 50 minutes to cover “Leaves of Grass.”

Walt Whitman is one of the messiest writers in American letters: a Romantic’s Romantic, he broke all the rules of writing. He never rhymed. Rather than publishing new works, he simply re-published Leaves of Grass every time he had a new batch of poems to add to it. For the unprepared, his writing is tedious, confusing, totally baffling.

For the English major, the love of Whitman begins with the sound of the ideas spoken aloud. His love of language is ebullient, outrageous. A perfectly good line of poetry is interrupted by onomatopoeia like Ye-Honk or Yawp. Personally, I can’t read it without getting glassy-eyed--that's glassy-eyed in the case of "wow, my mind is really percolating."

I decided to try to rip a chapter from "Dead Poets Society" and see if I could "gut" the Whitman lesson. I figured, if I acted like this was the most incredible poetry ever written, maybe the kids would fall for it. I set up a table to compare the metaphors, then we got into excerpts from "Leaves of Grass."

By the end of the first poem, I thought there was hope. "For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you," Whitman wrote. I made the connection with Transcendentalism. A slam dunk, I thought. I looked up. I saw glassy eyes, but they weren't inspired, they were confused.

To me, Whitman was firing on all cylinders. Who else could turn an everyday hay barn into a playful commentary on death?

The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready;
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon;
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged;
The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.
I am there—I help—I came stretch’d atop of the load;
I felt its soft jolts—one leg reclined on the other;
And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of wisps.

I point out Dickenson, and I try to contrast Whitman's optimistic view of death with her dark brookings. I feel like I'm firing on all cylinders.

I look out. Students' heads are down. They just aren't getting it. Sigh--or rather YAWP!!! No, that doesn't work either.

Tomorrow is Thoreau. This has been a tough crowd. I need some inspiration--maybe a walk in the woods will help.

Not that F-word, Mr. Dittes!

Some questions aren’t worth the asking.

That’s not a very good thing for a researcher to write—particularly someone like me who spends several months out of the year teaching high schoolers how to research.

But it's true. Sometimes it's better to have never asked at all...than to have asked and known.

I gave my honors students a research assignment: find origins of family and ethnic groups that immigrated into the United States. At the least I was expecting students to trace the migration of Italians, Irish, Germans and Africans, from which we are all descended.

These being honors students—and among the best students that I’ve had the privilege of teaching, they quickly gravitated to family history sites, finding family crests and detailed data about their family origins. Amidst the thrill of this discovery, one student—who I’ll call “K-“—raised her hand.

What exactly is a “faggot?” she asked.

That’s not a word I like to hear in class. I write detentions for students who use it as a pejorative. But K- wasn’t the kind of student to get detentions. She’s smart, well mannered, a cheerleader; she’s the prototypical all-American girl.

She directed my attention toward the web site on which she had found her last name, Womack. “It says ‘faggot’ right there.” (It also says, “applied as a nickname for a thin person.”)

I stammered for a few moments. I tried to explain the real meaning of the word, “faggot”—how it was still commonly used in England to describe a cigarette or a bundle of twigs. I speculated that one of her ancestors had been a woodcutter who sold bundles of sticks in the village. I wasn’t making any headway. I felt like I was making things worse. K- still looked quite disappointed (although if she had been a male, about 2 years younger, she may have faced a total emotional breakdown). I encouraged her to do her best and ignore anything difficult, and she did.

The next day she turned in a wonderfully detailed report, showing the county in Wales where the Womacks originated, and even their settlement rates in individual American states. It was a complete presentation--a tour de force of research talent. There was nothing, I might add, about woodcutters or skinny people or 'faggots.'

Should I teach this assignment again? Do I dare peer further into my own name's origins?

Maybe I should just learn my lesson. Maybe I should just stop the questions...right...there.

Are You Smarter than a Sixth Grader?

Several years ago, when I was getting back into teaching from my embarrassing foray into grant administration, my first job was teaching five Language Arts classes to sixth graders at Shafer Middle School in Gallatin.

The regular teacher had gone on maternity leave, and I began the job eager to get back into teaching and show what I could do. Sure, they were 6th-graders and I had only taught high school before, but I wasn't awed. "Bring 'em on!" I thought, in a misguided-ignorant-George-W-Bush sort of way.

I was several weeks into teaching there before I got a solid understanding of what had hit me. The creatures in my classes--were they children? teens? tweenies? how do you categorize 12-year-olds (you don't)--did bizarre and inexplicable things.

There were the two boys who took turns making animal sounds whenever I turned to write on the board. There was the girl who alternated between helplessness and contempt in her interactions with me and other students. There was the boy who couldn't stop moving, either in the room or in the hall, until he ended up in ISS for the final two weeks of school and made up all his work. And then there was the day all the staff spent in the cafeteria, ready to prevent a food fight that we successfully headed off.

I learned something about 6th-graders that year--and a lot more about myself. I gained a new respect for that age level--and the teachers, pastors and parents who are needed to guide them through this important time.

But what I learned the most was about the intelligence of 6th-graders, something I had underestimated, or at least misunderstood. They are a wickedly crafty species of homo sapien, and one not to be taken lightly. Now that Ellie has moved into 6th grade, I am revisiting many of those lessons learned long ago. Am I smarter than a 6th-grader? I certainly hope so. Otherwise my life is about to be a lot worse.

Here are a few observations about 6th-graders. I'm composing them now, so that I can revisit them over the course of this year. Perhaps you will appreciate them, too, if you have parented one of these creatures, or you can file this away from when your time comes.

6th-graders divide and conquer. I used to think that the quest for independence begins in 9th grade, when kids are fully fledged teenagers. I was wrong. The battle for command begins in 6th grade. It's a bizarre kind of warfare, based on animal instinct and exploding hormones. I couldn't even call it generalship--because that would take planning and an overall goal.

No, 6th-graders are more Pancho Villa than Patton in their approach to warfare. Their goals are immature--give me what I want, don't hold me responsible--but their tactics are often brilliant. I watched my own parents grow divided and angry in response to attacks from a 6th-grader when I was growing up. The combination of teddy-bear looks and devious tactics can run roughshod over the institutions that are meant to direct them: schools and marriages are the first line of assault.

I remember how completely the administration of my middle school were divided from the teachers as a result of these tactics. I would write a kid up, only to hear later from the incompetent vice principal that I was the one who had been in the wrong. I had two girls complain that I had kept them from going to the restroom during their menstrual periods in the six weeks I taught there--double the number of high school girls who had pulled this trick in six years of teaching high school. The kids ran the school, and within a year both the vice principal and principal had been replaced (the new principal is awesome, by the way, and my mother-in-law teaches there now, which is cool).

6th-graders are not responsible. There are many frustrating tasks that I have had to complete in my lifetime, none more frustrating than having to argue with a 6th-grader about something they blatantly did. A preferred tactic of the 6th-graders I taught was to deny (this continues through the first two years of high school, I might add). I was always so shocked to hear this, that sometimes it worked. I backed down due to temporary brain lock!

A more common trick was to talk back through blame. "You didn't say anything when X did it!" This is a terribly effective strike because it's even more confusing than the first one. But the argument at it's base, "I don't have to be good until everyone is good," is devastating. If 6th-graders can win this argument, then no rules can be effectively enforced. It's amazing how 6th-graders study everything in their environment--stuff I wouldn't normally pick up on--just to get out of responsibility.

Of course there are magical, wonderful moments when 6th-graders become aware of their responsibility and accept it. These usually coincide with unity--the school and parents being on the same page, or both parents being together rather than divided. The kids' faces light up. They actually grin (because they know in there primitive animal minds that they need an Alpha figure) and move on to plan the next ambush.

6th-graders are victims of runaway hormones. Again, I had thought before that 9th grade was when the hormone thing started. Was I ever wrong. Sixth grade is the point where boys stop talking to girls and get embarrassed by them. It's the point at which girls divide up the boys and "go out" with them--yet at the same time seldom talk to or associate with the boys who are their "boyfriend."

When I was twelve, my friends in Ohio started "dating." They were girl-crazy. My friend, Eric, had a girlfriend, so did Kevin. I helped Kevin get his girlfriend. He told me to go and tell her she was a "fox." Apparently this was all it took.

I found this really confusing. My idea of a girlfriend, at the time, was someone you spent a lot of time with and held hands with (kissing was out of the question, of course). They tried to set me up with a girlfriend of my own--an unknowing, innocent girl named Tabitha. I was too scared. I didn't have a "real" girlfriend until I was 15 or 16.

It is only now that I look back on those "relationships" and understand them a little better. Kevin and Eric and I ended up spending most of our time together, not with girls. We played more than our share of softball and football. We had a great time together. But for a few moments each week, Kevin and Eric were boyfriends, and I was merely confused.

Ellie had a similar romance a few weeks ago. Her friend, Tristin, lured her to a car, where a 6th-grade boy was sitting in the back seat.

"You like her, don't you?" Tristin asked her cousin, the object of Ellie's affections.

"Yeah."

"You like him, don't you?" Tristin asked Ellie.

"Yes!"

Thirty seconds later, Ellie was giggling with her girlfriends, and the boy was hanging out with his buddies again.

No harm done.

Am I smarter than a 6th-grader? It's a question that I cannot answer. It's a challenge that I face every day, and will continue to do until my 6th-grader(s) until they are mature young adults.

(An aside: does anyone recognize how the traits of 6th-graders (more Pancho Villa than Patton, never responsible for their actions, head-hunting tactics meant to divide opponents) also apply to the Bush Administration? Were these folks smarter than 6th-graders, or were they 6th-graders?)

I do think that it's a question that helps me to anticipate the next ambush, appreciate all the changes that are going in my favorite 6th-grader's life, and prepare to parent even the most difficult of stages of development.

The Things I Have to Teach

There are only four weeks left with my German 2 class. Tomorrow is Culture Day: our weekly examination of German history.

We have really enjoyed Culture Days this semester. We began the year with Napoleon and the destruction of the First Reich in 1806. March found us in World War I, and I worked hard to show the German side of things--and the horrors that all nations went through in that great war.

Of course April has been World War II month. The kids have been really interested as we have charted the rise of Hitler and the devastation of the end of the war. I was helped by three movies that I watched with the class: Europa, Europa, Downfall, and As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me.

Now I find myself in a dilemma. It's time for the Cold War. When one is studying German history, that means introducing East Germany. But there is no East Germany, just as there is no Soviet Union.

I find East Germany incredibly difficult to explain to these kids. It loomed so large: our opponents in the Olympics (back then they were the steroid-laced cheaters, now it's the USA), our mortal enemies. The Berlin Wall seemed 100 feet high in my imagination.

Now it doesn't exist. It fell years before these kids were even born.

What is an East Germany?

I have tried film. I rented The Lives of Others, an oscar-winning German film that follows a Stasi spy who ends up protecting a couple under surveillance. It's a great film, but it isn't appropriate for kids--a little too drawn-out, methinks.

I think I'm going to play a spy game. I'll show a video about Checkpoint Charlie. Then we will play a game: three kids will want to escape to the West, three kids will be "normal" East Germans who support the Socialist State to varying degrees, three kids will be Stasi agents. At the end of the game we will see who has figured out each other.

Do you have any other ideas? I'm teaching a foreign language, so this should be second nature. But I could teach the planet, Venus, about as easily as East Germany!

Youth Legislature

I'm blogging from the Tennessee State Capitol, where I'm sponsoring a group of students from my high school in a weekend youth in government conference.

This is not for the faint of heart: three days of grueling meetings, featuring debate and lawmaking. It's fun, though, seeing students grow over the course of the weekend. My students have proposed the following bills:

• Eliminate voting fraud by requiring state-issued photo IDs in order for people to vote
• Provide funding to provide a heart defibrilator to all marked police cars, which are usually the first-responders to accidents (this was our club's highest-ranked bill this weekend, and I'm proud to say that it passed the House by a 77-8 vote)
• Provide a tax rebate to Tennesseans who buy hybrid vehicles or train/bus passes
• Ban abortions for all teens--even if they have parental consent
• Decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana
• Allow the use of cell phones in schools in the case of an emergency

The state of Tennessee allows students to use legislative facilities--even the Supreme Court chambers--to engage in mock debate and lawmaking. I have four students running for office, including one who wants to be governor next year.

It will be a long weekend, but in view of the long-term benefits of a program like this, it's worth my time, I feel. When I was in academy, I loved statewide and regional events (in my case they were music festivals, where I got to practice my choral skills). I would have totally loved a conference like this one, where research, debate, and critical thinking are honed.

World Turned Upside Down

It's been a crazy week--a simply crazy week, and I fear this school year is about to spin out of control. I hope not.

We had a snow day this week (yes there was snow, too, which made it doubly good). We have had one snow day, tornado day or holiday for each of the past six weeks now! That means that I am fully engaged with the four-day-workweek trend at my high school.

Even more bizarre, my principal has really been going through it. The school came down hard on a boy earlier this week who tried to steal a meal from the cafeteria--a meal that would have cost an honest man 40 cents.

The kid's mom went to the media, claiming poverty, claiming injustice, claiming that her son had "never been in trouble before." (He's not in my class, so I can't assess how seriously he takes his education.)

Somehow the blogs get involved with the boy's defense. People from all around the country are calling to criticize the principal (who cannot publicly talk about the boy's discipline record). People are even mailing in 40 cents to give the kid--and others. I guess these kind people will stop every kid who steals a Twinkie and tell them, "It's OK," I'll cover it for you.

When I checked, almost $300 had been donated, and the kid had walked away yesterday with over $200 in gifts--given by my principal himself.

Public schools have a hard job, and it's never right. Too strict. Not strict enough. Teachers are too close to students (and sexually abuse them); they are too distant and remote and out of touch. If this kind of thing happened in a private school, no one would blink an eye (or it would be hushed up).

Oh well.

Juniors and Jefferson

Every Friday, I assemble my students in Socratic Circles, where they discuss a given work of art amongst themselves while I observe and credit kids for talking.

My 4th-block class just loves this part of the week. They're very opinionated 11th-graders, and I'm happy to say that they even back up their opinions from time to time.

Last week I gave them a selection of quotes by Thomas Jefferson, America's founding father. We watched a video ahead of the discussion. The video discussed the many contradictions of Jefferson's life: how he initially supported royalists in France, despite the atrocious conditions of the poor; how he owned slaves at the same time that he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Justin V. had a strong opinion. "This guy owned slaves and wrote the Declaration of Independence?" he asked, before stating, "Jefferson is the second-biggest hypocrite in history, next to Adolf Hilter, who killed 6 million Jews even though he, himself, was Jewish."

Another boy pointed out that Hitler had killed himself last of all. "Then Jefferson is Number One," Justin huffed.

Justin S. had problems with another famous Jefferson quote. "'I cannot live without books.' What does that even mean?" he asked disgustedly. (Needless to say, this is a group of talkers, not readers.

"He's a nerd," answered Dorae, rattling her manicured nails on the floor of my room.

Am I a great teacher or what? My students now think that Thomas Jefferson was a "nerd" and a "hypocrite." That's not necessarily where I would have steered the discussion, but I'm proud to see them thinking, nonetheless.