Yo Mista!

A long time ago it was inherently assumed teachers wanted the best for their students. It was assumed teachers develop their own systems, procedures, assignments and grading policies. As a principal, you didn't tell teachers to track kids' progress. You didn't tell teachers to assess student skill levels on the first day and then teach accordingly. Times have changed. Today, New York City teachers are told what to do and how to do it, even when we are already doing what we're being asked to do. It's as if principals now assume teachers only want to be teachers for the pension, which by the way is shit, you could do a lot better in the market on your own. If a bulk of principals think this way, I can only imagine what the people above them think of teachers: a greedy bunch of fat cat bums that assign problems out of a textbook and merely grade them. This type of thinking is toxic and unproductive, and only hurts the kids in the long run. It starts with preparatio...

After years of contemplation, I've come to the conclusion that birthdays are a lot more fun when your age hasn't hit double digits. I have few good memories of my childhood, and of those, my birthdays seem to dominate most of them. It makes sense: December 20th rolled in right before Christmas break. Yes, I said Christmas break, because back then, nobody said, "Happy Holidays." You fucking said "Merry Christmas" or you didn't say anything at all. There weren't too many Jews or Muslims where I grew up. Right around my birthday, school started slowing down. Instead of learning new material, we'd make decorations for our respective Christmas parties. Or maybe we'd go see a school play or watch It's a Wonderful Life . I would bring in some cupcakes on my birthday and we'd be set - coloring with crayons, using scissors, putting shit together with Elmer's glue, and eating chocolate cupcakes. It really didn't get any better for ...

Last Wednesday marked the beginning of a new trimester at my school. Naturally, this was a high attendance day, as most students come to school to pick up their schedules and renew their free NYC MetroCards. Sadly, some of these students will never show up to class for the rest of the term. I began day one with a brief lesson on perimeter and circumference, when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed two students passing a note back and forth to each other. I looked away and grinned: this was going to be too easy. I progressed through the lesson and as students continued to do a problem on the board, I pretended to make my way around the classroom, checking their answers. As I made my way around to the students writing the note, I quickly snapped it out from in front of them. Then, I began reading it out loud to the entire class: Exhibit D: Actual student work. Do note the somewhat decent penmanship. As you probably guessed from the racial slurs, this exchange was between a H...

Nobody's perfect. A few months ago, I wrote a post about how happy I was that Mayor Michael Bloomberg was launching a Young Men's Initiative for New York City. Then, he went ahead and said this: What irritated me most was not his comment about "firing half the teachers." It was what he said after that: "Double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students." Uh.... No. It's not. Doesn't matter if you're fucking Jaime Escalante . Any teacher knows there is a direct relationship between the number of students in your class and how productive your class will be. Not to mention all students learn differently, and so if you increase the number of students, you lose the ability to work with all students one-on-one at some point in class. This holds true for college and university as well. For my undergrad at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I honestly learned very little material in my "lecture-sty...

Today is the last day of the first trimester. It also happens to be a Friday. Only now, in my third year of teaching at a transfer high school, I finally know what to fully expect on days like this. Note: If you don't know what to expect on days like this, you haven't read this . Or this . Grades were due to the administration today at 9 AM. Since my Algebra classes culminated last Wednesday with a final exam, I decided to wrap-up the remainder of the week with Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. Yes, I do realize this movie portrays Holmes engaging in numerous fist fights. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle readers: I do sincerely apologize for the heart attack this may have caused you.  Before you judge me for showing the Hollywood version of Sherlock Holmes to my students, consider this: in the movie, Sherlock not only uses his superb reasoning skills , but he also comes off to be somewhat "cool." Downey's version of Holmes is mainstream enoug...