Random Pattern Weekly

Teacher Notebook- The Joys and the Pains

2011-12-28T18:54:34Z

Source of Joy:

Everyone likes to feel like they did well. We like it when we do something well and we need someone to tell us we did well. If someone else doesn’t say it, you’re just giving yourself a pep talk. Often we’re unable to see when we did well because what we do isn’t like making a basket or catching a fish. We don’t physically do anymore when we either do well or poorly. Today, we mentally do (? not quite the right word because doing also involves a kind of physical action?) and others evaluate us. Often we may not see a final product. Then we are utterly reliant on the observations of others in order to know whether or not we are doing a good job.

We feel good when we’re doing a good job!

Source of Pain:

When we don’t feel the joy of doing a good job we still feel something. That something runs the range of feeling contentment or sorrow. Sorrow can fill the void of joy for hope building in our minds to hear words unspoken. Through grand recordings and observations, we’ve been shown what an optimal condition looks like on paper. A standard will be set and everyone must measure up. To not meet the mark means censure of some kind. Doing well means being among the best for whichever standard interests us at the moment. Doing well may become a race from the pain of praise ceasing to exist followed by a series of official and unofficial warnings.

The Teacher’s Situation:

The standard is arbitrary from the very beginning. I’m not trying to invalidate the standard, but rather to recognize one standard does not make or break an education. Teachers are given standards to teach.

Students should be able to describe a character in fiction based upon a narrator’s words, the words of other characters, the character’s own actions or thoughts. Every group of students arrives for instruction and the teacher greets them all with the same standard.

Students should be able to identify word meaning based on Greek and Latin roots as well as affixes. Students should be able to define multiple meaning words based on context. Students should be able to identify bias in persuasive text. Students should be able to summarize the main idea and critical details in expository text. Students should be able to describe the effects of persuasive strategy. Students will be able to use graphic organizers to help with comprehending text.

During our second 8 weeks together I greeted my students with these standards. In first hour, the kids want to drift and wander but they’re manageable. One on one they mostly become rational. Second hour is my largest class but they are the most on track. The kinds of disruptions arising during this time are what you would expect. 3^rd hour loses their minds from start to finish. They just waste time with nonsense, but I have them before lunch. I mark the time for them where time is being wasted. I’m very annoying about it too.

“This is where you’re wasting your time. So when we’re sitting here during lunch finishing today’s task, remember, this is where we wasted our time. Don’t be made at me. You’re doing it to yourself.”

4^th hour has settled in and been doing good work. It has taken probably the first ten weeks of school to get them set into a routine they can work with, but I expect the rest of the year to run smoothly. 5^th hour is just batty; very capable students, but a strain of insanity running through some of them. On any given day, there is one of three students I need to eject from my classroom in order to get anything done.

My Specific Situation:

We just completed the 2^nd Quarter and my students took the quarterly benchmark test. The results of 8 weeks instruction, as measured by a 35 question multiple-choice reading test, are below.

Students will be able to use graphic organizers to comprehend text

I liked this standard the best this quarter because we also tested it on the first quarter benchmark test. Across the board there was tremendous growth from each of my class’s first to second quarter. This is an intangible kind of standard as well. What is a graphic organizer and how many are there in the world? How might you approach teaching the 8^th grade ones?

Students will be able to describe the effect of persuasive strategies

We spent a lot of time on this standard. I had the kids reading Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X speeches. We trudged our way through an article from Robert MacNeill (co-creator of MacNeill & Lehrer) “The Trouble With Television.” We used a crazy diagram for weeks analyzing an argument in terms of speaker, message, audience, emotion, logic and character. We talked about persuasion a lot and my classes did pretty well considering 62% is a Meets on the state test. Teachers in my school say our benchmark tests are much more difficult than the state test.

This is where the district’s crazy grading scheme comes in. 75% is the unspoken goal, but a Meets on the state test is 62% or higher so that’s also our goal. With the district test though, there is an added bit of mystery to the results. Someone has a magical formula which changes individual student percentages into some kind of developmental growth score. No one knows exactly how it is calculated or even what it means, but we are supposed to care about it and make the students care as well. This number is calculated even though the standards tested on the first quarter test are mostly different from the ones tested second quarter. Until I receive this magical development number, I don’t really know exactly how my students did on this test.

Therefore, I presented this information to my students as compared to the school’s overall average, the district’s overall average and standards on the state test.

Students will be able to define meaning based on roots and affixes

One of the five questions asked was to define “aspiration” based on root word knowledge. The base word of aspiration is “aspire.” Base words are different than root words though. To define aspiration you have to know aspire means to dream of something. A root word question would be something more like define democracy based on root word knowledge. The root words of democracy are demos and cracy. They are root words because the can be used to form other words. Aspire, on the other hand, is a base word because you can add prefixes and suffixes to change its meaning.

It’s a technical argument but it pissed me off anyway.

One of the distracter answers gave the definition of aspiration as breath. Therefore, students confused by aspiration and respiration would select that answer. I had many students select that answer. How can you teach a student every word like aspire in eight weeks? With a large number of primarily Spanish speaking students, as well as a significant Special Ed population, I’ve got students who have never heard the word gloomy used before let alone aspire. I’ve got students who have largely never heard the expression “more often than not.”

I’m happy with my results when another one of the questions asked students to use their knowledge of root words to define the word logic. My first year teaching I instructed seventh grade students in the root words: logos, ethos and pathos when I taught persuasive strategies. Afterwards, my students were very confused about the more basic stuff they needed to learn like bandwagon, loaded words and peer pressure after trying to understand logos, pathos and ethos.

Students will be able to define multiple meaning words

I think we did pretty well here except for 3^rd Period. In 3^rd period, we had a good long talk about motivation and performance. They don’t focus well, but they focused on numbers like these. Their first responses were statements like: “we’re stupid” or “I’m retarded.” They make excuses and too many of them lack focus so they take everything off track before they have the opportunity to learn it.

Students will be able to identify bias in persuasive text

This is where I start to get discouraged a bit because we focused a lot of our time on identifying bias. So then I have to look at the school’s average and the district’s average. When barely 50% of the students taking a test pass a certain section, it may be more of a statement about the test than the students.

Students will be able to summarize main idea and critical details

Again, see my comments above. In this case, less than 50% of students in the district passed this section. There’s at least three ways to interpret these results; either: most of the teachers in the district are doing a poor job as educators; this question set wasn’t clear; or the students in this district are not capable of summarizing main idea and critical details.

Students will be able to describe character based on thoughts, words and actions

This particular set of 5 questions I went back through the test and analyzed. This is certainly, in my eyes, a bad test set for the following reasons. All five questions were about a two and a half page excerpt from an Anne Bronte novel written in 1827. I didn’t have to read Emily Bronte until tenth grade. It was difficult to follow even then.

In an informal class survey, less than 40% of my students even read the whole passage. I don’t think the questions should’ve been dumbed down, however, I think the interest level of the passage could’ve been better selected by choosing an excerpt that uses language more current than 150 years. That’s not even mentioning that having all five questions based on one passage may just be testing whether or not students understood the one passage rather than whether or not they can describe a character.

Final Reflection:

We have another twelve weeks until the state test (after we get back from break.) In that time poetry and functional text are the primary standards of focus. We will use 2^nd Quarter data to build on improvement and motivation in the 3^rd Quarter so students feel successful enough to do well on the state test.

For better or worse, the state test is the test which matters most to the short-term future of my students and me regardless of what they learn this year. Pushing that aside for the moment, by the end of the year I know my students will be familiar with Hal Roach’s Our Gang in the early 1920’s through the 1940’s. My students will have a new familiarity with Malcolm X, Jim Croce and the Lone Ranger. They will have been asked to think about what they want to do with their future. They will be asked to consider the past. By the end of this school year, my students will have been exposed to a lot of background knowledge which is seemingly random and trivial, but without which I believe they will be held back more than by anything they can circle on a multiple choice test.

For better or worse this work came from the mind of W.D. Sargent.

Teacher’s Notebook Happy Veteran’s Day

2011-11-11T20:54:49Z

One of the perks of teaching is the schedule. Don’t get me wrong, the schedule can be brutal if you take your job seriously. The schedule is pretty sweet though. I’ve got a full five days of teaching next week (Week 13) in front of me and then a weekend. Then we come back for Week 14 which is only Monday and Tuesday.

Monday, Tuesday then we’ve got a five day break for Thanksgiving. Don’t let anyone lie to you. The schedule is pretty sweet when you’re a teacher. Although now that I’ve said it, it sounds like I’m bragging.

I hit my first burn out period this last week. I was tired of the kids because I have had some exceptional behavior issues to deal with (e.g. the troublesome few causing problems for the compliant many.) I had a kid get up, tell me to F myself and walk out of class this week.

I needed today to refocus and reflect.

Last week, I had a day where my fourth hour was completely calm from opening bell to close. It was amazing, but my third hour was horrible. By the end of the week, I’m ejecting at least one kid from my classroom during third, fourth and fifth period a day. “Just get out. I’m done with you.” It’s crazy, but if I have to sacrifice one in order to teach thirty it is a fair trade.

I challenged 8^th grade students this last week to a very conceptual task. Break down the argument made by Martin Luther King Jr. in “I Have a Dream” or the argument made in an excerpt of Malcolm X “By Any Means Necessary.” Their analysis of the argument must conform to a graphic organizer we’ve been working with for the last three weeks. Students had to first remember how to draw the diagram with only the aid of the associated words posted on the wall. Then fill in the graphic organizer with particular examples from the speech they chose.

The work had to be done independently and it was a task with which many of my students struggled. I had a ton of behavior issues that day, but I had the majority of my class complete the task independently. I don’t think they were able to deeply analyze the elements of persuasion used by Dr. King or Malcolm X, but I do think they have a better understanding of the persuasion analysis organizer.

Next week, I’ll go back and more firmly tie loaded words and transfer (i.e. techniques of persuasion) to the emotional support segment of the diagram. Testimonial, peer pressure and bandwagon will be linked to forms of character support of an argument. Logic will have to be as simple as repetition as well as “here’s something I believe and here’s why I believe it.”

We’ll keep working with the organizer as a tool for analysis because I think there’s a benefit in its adaptability to visualizing the process of analysis. Break what you want to study into its component pieces and evaluate them. That’s analysis!

At least at an eighth grade level.

Next week I’m going to introduce paired reading as the way we will read. I want to take the focus less off of me and more on them, so I will need to be diligent up front to establish class expectations. 1. Stay on task. 2. Read quietly. 3. Everybody reads at least once. 4. Be ready to discuss at the appointed time. I think all five of my classes are ready for this kind of activity but some will adapt better than others. As I go into next week, I need to remain focused on engaging students early in the week in the reading material and options. I plan to have prepared for four articles from which my students must choose two to read in the week.

Monday we’ll go through vocabulary instruction like usual. Tuesday we’ll extend vocabulary instruction into the week (some new, but short, activity) then go over examples of bias. Wednesday students will be asked to read with their shoulder partners and answer a set of questions or perform activities. The last ten or fifteen minutes of class will be reserved for discussion.

My expectation for this kind of reading structure is that my second and fifth hour will be mostly fine. First hour will complain but most of them will get to the reading. Third hour will probably be noisy and I might have to pick an article to conduct class with whole group rather than in pairs. Fourth hour, I expect much the same as third hour.

I think paired readings will be beneficial to my students though, because it will allow the students I have who are ready to work to work and grow while I can focus on minimizing distractions with the ones who will be off task. I’m looking forward to trying a paired reading structure in my classroom, plus increasing the frequency and tweaking the way in which we study vocabulary. Hopefully, this will change things enough in the classroom where my burnout period and theirs can be the first burnout period we’ve move past this year.

On another note, to all my fellow veterans: Happy Veteran’s Day!

For better or worse this work came from the mind of W.D. Sargent.

Spanking the Dirty Little Secret

2011-11-04T01:01:09Z

I figure this has got to be staged, but a quick check on cnn.com reveals this video to be legitimate. The girl was 16 in the video and now she's 23. Apparently, her father threatened to stop giving her money so she hit upload.

Because I live in America, the conversation about the judge beating his daughter will probably devolve into two sides picking whether or not her father (who is a Texas judge) should be prosecuted. Are the statute of limitations in effect? Can a criminal trial proceed? The conversation will become very dull.

I prefer to wonder how it is this can be in the world? The only legitimate defense he has is to cite the Bible. A primary area of concern for him (in the video) seems to be the submission of child to parent. He wasn't terribly focused on the abundant amount of anger he was unleashing.

And the only imaginable defense I can come up with for him rests on the Bible. Is that a good defense? Can we demand that a child always be submissive to their parents? I'm a parent and I'll be damned if my child is going to speak to me in an inappropriate way. The Bible demands children respect the authority of their parents and that much seems good.

But what about this video?

That's just ugly. Nobody has the right to turn that kind of hostility loose on anyone else let alone out into the world in general. There's a fair amount of frustration and angst twirling in that guy during that video. He certainly wasn't citing the Bible's language clause, but children must be obedient.

And this allows such behavior to continue.

For better or worse this work came from the mind of W.D. Sargent.

Teacher’s Notebook: Reflection

2011-10-27T01:13:57Z

It’s a day to day triage of behavior issues and attitudes. Some days the attitudes and behavior is better than others. Everyday is extremely taxing. We’ve reached the end of real consequences.

When a kid doesn’t care if you suspend them, then why would you suspend them? It’s not a punishment at that point and we must to some extent rely on whips as well as carrots. That is if we imagine our children are something to be whipped to a greater prosperity.

How does growing up take place? Is it something to be planned ahead of time in great detail? Scripting every word to be said was a goal and objective of my initial teacher indoctrination training three years ago. One of our exams was to script a whole week of lesson plans with standards and scripted “Teacher says/Student says” levels of detail.

That’s nonsense and a waste of time! How can I plan what the students are going to say to me? The rougher the students, the less predictable their responses will be. Today, I was leading a discussion about persuasive strategies and showed a picture of a Target Ad from Vanity Fair Apr 2001 issue.

The choices for persuasive strategies used were: transfer of emotion to product, loaded words, testimonial, bandwagon, peer pressure and repetition. I would accept three answers for my first three classes. The three strategies I saw were: transfer, peer pressure and maybe bandwagon. In my fourth period, a student pointed out the obvious repetition of the Target sign all over the ad. I totally missed it and he saw it.

Fourth hour is my lowest class, but when they engage they can be quite creative. So the question then is what do I do in order to engage them? They’re out of control at times and lots of time is eaten up with nonsense. And from this description, you might imagine a teacher out of control or a classroom full of students producing spurts of chaos.

It only takes about six, apparently Tourette’s-Syndrome prone, children at any given time to shut down a lesson. What am I to do? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that in a whiny tone. Rather, I’m inquiring about a serious question. What am I to do? I can respond to student misbehavior aggressively and seek to shut misbehavior down immediately. I track the misbehavior concisely and nobody slips through the cracks. In the process, the students grow to hate or accept the system. The more aggressive students fight the system and then it comes down to a percentage game.

Are there too many to expel them all? After all, the school does make its money based on head count. So if too large a portion of your head count is tied up in problem children, at some point cost benefit analyses start taking place and dollar signs get involved. When you get to the point where a student doesn’t care whether they’re suspended or not, and administration is giving out second chances, how far can consequences realistically push?

You’ve got detention.

I’m not going.

Then you’ve got two detentions.

I’m not going.

Then you’ve got Saturday school.

I’m not going to that either.

Then you’re suspended.

Good.

The thought process is one of pushing away those people who are trying to help you. Responding to this childish cry for help with aggression is often, I think, misperceived by the child as someone ‘not liking them.’ At the cynical age of 12 or 13, someone not liking you may result in a student increasing their bad behavior in your classroom. Some people will be quick to shoot me down here and say it’s not about the kids liking you and to an extent I think that’s true.

I don’t need to be friends with my students to teach them. I shouldn’t be friends with my students because the relationship could ruin the classroom culture. However, that doesn’t mean my relationship to my students should be a rigidly status driven interaction or one of simple rewards and consequences. Somewhere in the space of being a classroom Nazi and having the classroom out of control there’s a space for creating an environment where students talk and the teacher interacts with them.

I think my students will learn because they’re encouraged to speak, but encouraging them to speak means hearing all kinds of things. The things they talk about with each other. So the conundrum is how to encourage speaking while discouraging inappropriate speaking. It seems that this must come through in communication. In someway the student must internally understand why they should be productive rather than destructive. That’s part of the education they need to learn on their own and I can only point them in a direction.

I exert authority when the situation has moved beyond simple warnings and one-on-one conversations. We are in times of questioning authority though. What is the right way to move a student forward? Shall we climb on their backs and whip them like horses to finish the race? Is it possible to encourage original thought and self development that way? I’m going to try to produce something like original thought through conversation again this year and cross my fingers that my students will develop enough to pass the AIM’s test.

Because passing a multiple choice test is the ultimate goal from the state to my school for what my students should know by April.

For better or worse this work came from the mind of W.D. Sargent.

Teacher Notebook: Back from Fall Break

2011-10-18T01:00:34Z

It was the first day back today. We had a week off and it was much needed. I'm not going to complain about the life of a teacher, because I love it. However, it is a lot of work and I'm not sure I could keep doing it well if we didn't have breaks every so often.

I was rusty today though.

I got through most of what I wanted to get through in my first three classes today. The last two, I don't know what happened. Other than individual classroom management ate up a bit of time. Most of the kids were good though. Maybe they were tired, but we didn't have a bad first day back. I reminded them about the consequences and rules as well as our routine.

The kids didn't seem to mind.

I'm going to continue to focus on classroom management tightly for the first week back. After that, I expect we'll fall into a nice pattern to finish out the 2nd quarter before Winter Break. I put the results from my students' quarterly benchmark reading test scores into a spreadsheet (the template is attached if you'd like to use it.)

Benchmark Test Grade Book

I was ambivalent about the results before I created the workbook. I was really just staring at numbers and getting bogged down. Some of my students did as well as I thought they could and some really under performed. Too large a number of my students achieved far below their potential.

Overall, trends are positive though.

65% of my students (87 of them) did better on the 1st Quarter test than they did on the Pretest. The raw number, though, is only 45% of the kids in my class passed the first quarter reading test. That number is an improvement though!

My 1st period went from 18% passing the pretest to 42% passing the 1st quarter test. 2nd period went from a 45% pass rate to a 77% pass rate. 3rd period, 28% passed the pretest and 45% passed the 1st quarter exam. 4th period, 7% went to 18% and 5th period went from 28% passing to 43% passing. These numbers are not where I'd like them to be, but they're moving in the right direction.

I'm taking this as a good sign. I'm helping my students move the numbers and now I believe we are dialed into our routine. I expect they'll buck every now and again, but I also expect that they will respect our short time together and the routine. I strongly believe there is reading success in engaged vocabulary development coupled with reading all kinds of material that are of interest.

Studying persuasive text, we will be reading and watching George Carlin's bit about Baseball vs. Football. I think it should engage.

Amid the intensity of concentration required to energize the kids in anyway, I have made a pledge to ride my bike 4 miles every school morning. The last couple of years, I've ended up fat and out of shape at the end of the school year. Therefore, I'm up at 4:30 am to make sure I put in the miles.

So far I've kept my commitments.

For better or worse this work came from the mind of W.D. Sargent.

G.O.P. Regime Flashback 1/6/2007

2011-10-15T16:42:04Z

Because there seems to be nostalgia, by some folks, for how good things were before President Obama and the Democrats took over government in 2009; I am going to start a project of reposting news and commentary (posted here over the years) about W's regime and the glory that was America before President Obama took office. I will do my best to minimally edit reposted content in order to keep the "in-the-moment" feel to each post.

Waiting for an Idea (original post: The Random Pattern Weekly 1/6/2007)

President George W. Bush seemed to artfully dodge reporters for most of the last week. What with the death of Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein, the press largely had no interest in America’s great thinker.

Therefore it all must be over now except the singing, right? W’s courage appeared, followed by his Mission Accomplished. His heart appeared as democracy expanded and flourished into the Middle East. All this and now Dorothy’s coming home because ding dong the witch died December 30^th.

That’s not the way it’s going down though. Dorothy is not coming home. In fact, Dorothy is getting shipped off to Iraq, because the Scarecrow is still trying to find his brain. Although, maybe that’s not entirely fair. The Scarecrow isn’t so much trying to find a brain as he’s just trying to come up with an idea. Or even a strategy if you will. A nugget would suffice in a pinch. At this point a good reason for being in Iraq would probably quiet quite a few people in the world and that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Amidst George W’s struggle for a nugget, the situation in Iraq continues to become harder to saturate with democracy.

Iraqi Prime Minister wants to resign

Nuri al-Maliki no longer has the heart to keep carrying out his duty as Iraqi Prime Minister. Not only has he declined a second term in office, but he has flat out said he wants to be done with his first term as soon as possible.

This should present a bit of concern to anyone interested in seeing a stable Iraq. Nuri al-Maliki was just sworn into office May of 2006. Less than a year into a four year term, in the first Iraqi government to follow the Transitional Government, Iraq’s leadership dissolves into a job at Burger King.

“This job sucks man. I can’t wait until I get another job so I can quit this one.”

On the positive side, I’m sure there is somebody waiting in the wings with a Colt .45 willing to take the leadership position off al-Maliki’s hands. On the downside, he really seemed to start out with some promise. Depending on your point of view.

Intelligence Briefing: Iraq Struggles to Form a Government (5/8/06)

Saddam death criticized

The security situation in Iraq is pretty bad, so it may be better that someone more rigid and less democratic take over there anyway. People took video of Saddam’s execution with camera phones and the world is in an uproar. Never mind that IUD’s go off every day and eviscerate thousands. Iraqi executioners taunted Saddam before he went.

Couldn’t they have allowed him a dignified death?

Why couldn’t they just allowed the rope to pull taut followed by a pant-load full of feces?

Dignity in death is an inalienable right (I think that’s in the Constitution somewhere) so it’s good that some of the U.S.’s top commanders in Iraq are distancing themselves from this execution.

Major General William Caldwell said, Americans didn’t have anything to do with the “facility where the execution took place.” Did you see that dump? Americans wouldn’t put a toilet in there, let alone kill a murderer of thousands.

However, Caldwell’s statement does leave open the possibility that Americans may have had something to do with Hussein being executed. It’s a drawn out logic, but starts with WMD’s and finishes with Bush’s latest idea and all the while you can only blame Bush for being a dreamer. It sure would be a good thing to spread peace.

It sure would be a good thing to spread peace and I wish someone could figure out how to do it.

It’s certainly reassuring to know that George W is still "in the process of making up [his] final decision as to what to recommend" this late the game though. If you can say anything about W: you can say, he is a problem-involver.

For better or worse this work came from the mind of W.D. Sargent.

What’s Wrong with a Corporation?

2011-10-13T02:58:03Z

BIAS

The folks in the Occupy Wall Street movement raise critical issues in the world today. Issues like, would the world be a better place if we all had a common agenda? Also, is it socially healthy when many artificial entities are worth as much money as countries in the world?

What kinds of power and deference should we reserve for artificial entities? The artificial entities I’m talking about are corporations. Corporation: (noun) a legal person present on paper.

Make no mistake.

A corporation is not the names of people listed on a paper, but a new person present only on paper. Walmart is a person with the right to defend itself in court. ExxonMobil can own and run a company. General Electric can donate money to political candidates and influence political decision making. So another issue presented by corporations is, what does a corporate agenda promote? The corporate model is relatively the same everywhere and the corporate form seems to promote a certain sameness everywhere it occupies.

Decisions being made in Washington appear, in the right light, to be decisions made by and for the benefit of these persons on paper (and their stockholders- the holders of paper.) This is not a new problem, but it is a problem difficult to critique in America because critiques against corporations are often associated with economic policy. Criticize a corporation today and receive the label communist or socialist.

However, the reality in our country is with time, money and the necessary paperwork; anyone can form a corporation for any reason. It wasn’t always so. At one time, the power of incorporation was granted by kings. If the corporation didn’t serve the interest of the king, then it didn’t exist. In this lineage of thought, corporations serve the ruler of the state. So the largest issue raised by Occupy Wall Street protests is to ask the question, who rules the United States of America?

Do tax payers fund a federal state system tasked with providing safety and general welfare in the most places possible? Or do we defund the federal system and allow economics dictate how people live their lives within the structure of a corporate America? An honest answer to either question should at least address the dichotomy between good business decisions and the public good. Who is the ruler? The People or Corporations? A good business decision is not often equivalent to what is good for the public. It’s given that incorporation is a process for accumulating wealth while limiting liability and little else.

Somehow an inherent, unspoken presumption that corporations ARE GOOD FOR EVERYONE pervades the speech of media channels and other dictators of public consciousness. Political obsession with stock market increases and declines has allowed the corporate form in America to become an insatiable spreader of banal strings of Wal-Marts, Home Depots and Applebee’s across the landscape.

Avarice controls the creation of better tomorrow’s through an intense desire expressed through corporations for continually increasing returns. The stock market is seemingly understood as a bet that will continually produce money through products developed and sold primarily by corporations. Is it truly possible that anything could continually increase without stopping? Yet, corporations seek continual growth against good reason and it becomes a mantra for everyday people. This need for perpetual growth causes inequity and injustice, however, it is not the only negative impact produced by corporations in the world.

U.S. cell phone corporations discovered in the 1990’s that a saturated consumer base leads to luring customers from competitors. Luring customers away from one corporation to the next, eventually whittles the market down to the few strongest competitors. Rather than spurring on competition and driving down prices, many c cell phone corporations simply formed, merged and disbanded until four now remain. On paper a bunch of people existed and disappeared as corporations but, in-the-world as the field narrowed to four many vacant jobs disappeared. For better or worse, the process of making the industry most efficient removes places for people to earn a living.

Fairly recent U.S. cell phone corporate history demonstrates a destabilizing path blazed toward market efficiency and maximization. In 2000, there were no fewer than ten national wireless companies in the U.S. (i.e. Verizon, MCI WorldCom, AT&T, Sprint, Bell South, Qwest, Cellular One, Voice Stream, SBC and Nextel.)

As jobs to be done in each organization declined, a sameness spread across the industry. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s the same. American workers must live within the vision of someone else or start their own business. Either choose the vision of wireless service imagined by Sprint, Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile; or, begin a very long uphill fight against industry leaders.

Arguments can be made that all the corporate mergers which got us to four national outlets were good for the consumer (e.g. cell phone service is cheaper now with more benefits than in 2000.) Arguments can also be made that the corporate mergers were bad for people (e.g. less innovative ideas to attract consumers because there are fewer companies to offer them.) The fact that these two reasons exist-in-the-world with each other doesn’t mean one needs to be wiped out and that is the problem with the corporate form. Corporations seek to control availability, price and kind of products available in-the-world.

It would seem our situation always deteriorates whenever we are left with few sources for anything. One source of political rule has been deemed a failure by history. One source of spiritual enlightenment has been commonly rejected by the masses.

Monopolistic business practices have judicially been discouraged with different degrees of verve for a long time in the United States of America. Monopoly, defined in economic or legal jargon, negatively affects the market by decreasing public prosperity. However, there is a psychological monopoly perpetuated by the corporate way-of-being-in-the-world. Winners and losers must be determined because the corporate form is a hierarchical system of people placed in degrees of authority to one another based, largely, on relationships rather than experience or expertise.

In this way, the corporation has minimized possibility in-the-world more than expanded possibilities and proven to be at odds with the interest of the people. The relatively recent history of professional wrestling is another example of how corporations have done a disservice for citizens of the United States of America.

HISTORY

Professional wrestling, as we know it in the United States today, started in late-nineteenth century carnivals and fairs. In 1948, the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) formed to bring a national structure to territorial professional wrestling companies. As if a franchise owner, the NWA offered many local wrestling promoters access to the World Heavyweight Champion in local markets in exchange for local market recognition of the World Heavyweight Champion.

A local market could draw big money and crowds with local heroes and villains while bring in a national name periodically to pop bigger crowds than usual. Drawing money at this time meant moving the public into seats in an arena by creating believable tension in the ring. Television introduced professional wrestling to an even larger audience than it already enjoyed in the 1950’s, but technology did not allow people in Philadelphia to watch wrestling television programs originating from St. Louis. The introduction of cable television first allowed wrestling promoters an opportunity to program for a national audience rather than just regional U.S. territories.

In the 1980’s, many territorial wrestling companies ran sound business that turned a profit. During this time, two corporations began to take over the business of promoting professional wrestling. Turner Entertainment (owner of World Championship Wrestling- WCW) and Titan Sports (owner of the World Wrestling Federation- WWF) both created significant profits through their use of television, wrestlers and storylines. Prior to WWF and WCW dominating national airwaves, companies like Mid-South Wrestling, AWA, GCW, WCCW and Mid-Atlantic Wrestling broadcasted their own wrestling programs in Oklahoma, Minnesota, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina. The audiences were not allows as big as audiences drawn by the WWE today, but promoters were able to make money and wrestlers had a place to work.

The wrestlers at the time were not generally under contract, so many would travel from territory to territory collecting a paycheck when they could. Each promoter had their own style and each wrestler had another place they could travel to when things just weren’t working out in a territory. Small television markets meant wrestlers could work two shows as two totally different characters. In this time period, a wrestler’s character development arose from a need to feed the family, because no work meant no money. The public could love you or hate you, but they needed to care in order for you to get another paycheck in that market.

THE CRUX

The corporate take over of professional wrestling can be interpreted in the light of language itself. Kenneth Burke’s concept “terministic screen” might provide aid in understanding how a perceived semi-legitimate sports event became a cartoon with soap opera flourishes (more info on Burke's philosophy at: http://bradley.bradley.edu/~ell/burke2.html.)

Terministic screen refers to a belief that: people communicate from their place in the world and communication is how we know the world around us. If I’m a cop, then I see the world as a cop because I engage in “cop-like” communication. If I’m a mailman, I see the world as a mailman because again I’m engaged in “mailman-like” communication.

The world itself is not different for either person, but what they notice and talk about in the world is different as well as what they don’t talk about. In this way, it’s almost as if they are living in two different worlds. Terministic screen suggests that language is something that: selects a part of the world to reflect while deflecting another part of the world. It is beyond the ability of anyone’s language to escape their terministic screen in order to include the entire world in any of their communications. Understood this way, our inability to include the entire world is part of the human condition. This does not make us powerless and weak though because we can exchange terministic screens if we cannot be rid of them entirely.

This is where the impetus to act begins!

If we accept terministic screen as part of the human condition, then we must analyze the benefit of the organizations we promote as a society. Cop-like communication comes about because we like the security provided by the police. Mailman-like communication comes about when we like to physically send letters. Corporate-like communication comes about because people like making more money and positions of authority. Without an explicitly expressed public benefit, the corporate form, in effect, advocates for avarice without responsibility.

Today, corporations consciously reflect positive images of their paper persona while actively deflecting personal criticism. Within a corporation, accountability is the key to success. From the outside, accountability is pinned on the corporation rather than people who make up the corporation.

This mix up of communication increasingly affects our understandings of the world with technological evolutions in instant communication. Corporate-like communication reaches more people at an exponential rate and changes the way in which we react to one another. This process of social evolution creates tension. Resisting this tension is the right of any human being subjected to it, even when the tension itself is unexpressable in common language. However, this form of resistance is open to charges of ambiguity and frivolousness. Therefore, it is beneficial to first try to better understand the tension created between corporations and people.

The Corporate Take Over of Professional Wrestling

Corporate take over of professional wrestling in the United States impacted at least three areas of involved people’s lives. Corporations controlled television access which determined which product an audience was able to view. While corporations controlled which wrestlers were used; determining who had a job and who was unemployed. Corporate programming also determined which storylines people would be asked to perform and watch.

Corporations entered into the business of creating public events (largely played out in local arenas) and evolved it into a television program designed to move merchandise. Thanks to the medium of professional wrestling, the change caused by corporations is largely visual, spatial and emotional. This is a reflection corporate control over television, wrestlers and programming.

Television:

“[T]he terriorties died from Crockett and McMahon being selfish and going national” is an emotional response regarding the corporate take over from some pro wrestling fans. This is an emotional response; because, Jim Crockett, Ted Turner and Vince McMahon did not introduce corporations into professional wrestling.

According to the wrestling history website kayfabememories.com corporations existed long before McMahon or Turner started their respective corporations.

“A long-standing member of the National Wrestling Alliance, the Gulas/Welch Wrestling Enterprises, Inc. (later Gulas Wrestling Enterprises, Inc.) was a successful but notoriously low-paying territory. By the mid-70's, a mutiny arose and wrestlers Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler jumped ship to form a new company, Jarrett Promotions, Inc., to run the Memphis wing of the Gulas circuit.”

Corporations in wrestling initially sought to dominate their market place in order to move people to buy a ticket the night of an event. Ticket sales drove the business and television was a way to get people to the arena. The tensions created by these corporations were fought and resolved at local levels, generally within a state or three and this allowed for one set of wrestlers, like the Road Warriors, to be packaged and displayed in various fashions on television.

Road Warriors promo AWA

As Scott Keith reports, “Up until the mid-80s, the players in the game that was wrestling were upstart Vince McMahon Jr’s WWF, Jim Crockett Jr’s steadfast WCW/Mid-Atlantic territory, and the reliable workhorse that was Verne Gagne’s AWA.”

Each of these promotions sought to define wrestling for a television audience at the expense of smaller promotions. However, during the mid-1980’s smaller promotions were still able to display a vision of professional wrestling for their audience. Charles Laffere describes one promotion which did particularly well with spreading their vision of televised wrestling.

“Television programming was an area of strength for Mid-South/UWF. Unlike other promotions which featured poor production values, squash matches and cartoonish, cliched interviews, Mid-South/UWF didn't waste a whole lot of time with talk and the matches were usually high energy. It was one of the few promotions in the country during that time that had a title match on TV almost every week. Often, several defenses would be made on one show. Mid-South/UWF seemed to be a promotion that pioneered the concept that TV was an important place to set up angles and that action usually spoke louder than words. During this time, even the WWF was featuring lots of matches involving their job squad of Mario Mancini, Johnny K-9, the Brooklyn Brawler, etc.”

The way in which the wrestling was presented was defined by promoters like Bill Watts who ran Mid-South/UWF wrestling.

Road Warriors promo Mid South Wrestling

However, promoters like Bill Watts were not rewarded with more business because of their production innovations and financial risks. By means of securing exclusive national television deals and signing wrestlers to long term contracts, the WWF and WCW were able to promote dying interest in local promotions by taking top talent and limiting exposure to larger audiences. These actions were not taken in the name of public good but rather marked by a desire for maximizing profits for a corporation.

Charles Laffere wrote of Mid-South/UWF wrestling’s demise,

“Even though the promotion went through a name change, the UWF remained a regional promotion. Watts could not compete with the WWF's media blitz and celebrity glitz or Crockett's cable saturation on TBS. Another factor was Watts himself. By many accounts, Watts was difficult to deal with.”

As the story would be told, continued doggedness and epic competition thrust the WWF and WCW into the national wrestling spotlight. The part of the story that went largely untold was the narrowing of: places for a wrestler to earn a paycheck; visions for how wrestling could be expressed; and programs for audiences to support.

Road Warriors promo WCW

This story continues into the eventual triumph of the WWE regarding national wrestling promotion on television, until the relatively recent introduction of TNA wrestling on cable channel Spike. WWE, Inc. is ultimately considered the lone victor in the national competition to make a profit in the world of professional wrestling. That story might sing the praises of the tenacity and creativeness it took in order to crush opposition.

We might look to: improvements in television production; increased earnings made by wrestlers because of TV; or contemporary products offered to audiences on TV and with those selections build a story of corporate success benefiting both corporation and public through the medium of television. However, the impact of the professional wrestling corporate take over also impacted people’s ability to make a living.

Wrestlers:

The corporate take over of wrestling meant professional wrestlers had fewer and fewer places to earn a living.

Dusty Rhodes Mid-Atlantic Promo

Bill Camp suggests, “McMahon, Sr., like his son, was a fan of the flashier wrestlers, even if they possessed a lower quality of mat skills” This preference for flashier wrestlers largely expressed itself in conjunction with the mid-1980’s decline of territorial wrestling television programming. It was during this time Hulk Hogan signed a contract with the WWF and left the AWA.

Hulk Hogan WWF Promo

Hulk Hogan helped the WWF narrow the vision for what wrestling should be along with a few people hiding behind the corporation (at this time Vince McMahon continued to pretend to be just an announcer for the WWF rather than present himself as the owner.) With Hogan, McMahon signed away top money drawing wrestlers from territorial promotions. There was no sudden burst of corporate creativity or enlightenment. Rather, a corporation facillitated the signing of wrestlers to contract from other territories without the audience really understanding who was responsible. In the end, Vince McMahon was able to hire away the top wrestlers from everybody else.

“[I]f you look at the WWF in the 80's, waves of new talent came every other year or so. In 1983, it was Piper, Valentine, Tito and Hogan. In 1985, it was Savage, Bundy, Steamboat and JYD. In 1987, it was DiBiase, Duggan, Rude and Warrior. Finally 1988/1989 saw Boss Man, Earthquake, Brainbusters and Bushwackers.”

WWF talent raids of other wrestling promotions are fairly well documented. Tony D reports, “The Midnight Rockers in the Central States area…lost the belts to Badd Company, Paul Diamond and Pat Tanaka in Las Vegas on March 19, 1988. They went to the WWF as The Rockers and won the WWF World Tag Team Titles from The Hart Foundation in 1990.”

It has been suggested that the WWF may have encouraged wrestlers to leave in the middle of territorial programs without much notice causing disruption to television programs being planned in the territories. Taking the wrestler is one thing, but promoting the demise of your competition at the same time is something characteristic of corporate take over.

Jason Hess notes that when wrestlers left promotions to work at the WWF they didn’t always do so in the most professional manner. “[In 1984] JYD left Mid-South with no notice, and a string of no-shows to enter the WWF.” Scott Keith suggests WWF owner Vince McMahon actively sought to destroy rival to the national spotlight AWA by consistently signing AWA wrestlers to contract with the WWF.

“Indeed, the AWA was rapidly becoming Vince McMahon’s personal wrestler shopping center. From 1986-1991, Vince took, practically at will, every major (and minor) star developed or signed by Gagne until finally entire title reigns were being dictated by the whims of the WWF and how soon they were likely to sign away the champions at a given time. Curt Hennig left in 1988, The Rockers followed soon after, along with Ron Garvin, Rick Martel, Sherri Martell, Boris Zhukov, Baron Von Rashke, Bobby Heenan, Ken Patera and anyone else that the WWF felt like signing away to a big money deal. Buddy Rose was even claimed for no conceivable reason other than to rub it in Verne’s face.”

As with the decline of Mid-South wrestling, the AWA also disappeared. Along with the disappearance of these territorial wrestling promotions, places for wrestlers to work and television programs for people to watch disappeared as well. The 1980’s wrestling situation quickly degenerated into significant wrestlers of the 1990’s working for either corporate WWF or WCW. The wrestlers who had the opportunity to entertain crowds without massive corporate exposure declined as well.

Kevin Von Erich/ Michael Hayes WCCW Promo

Today’s dominant success of WWE, Inc. has in reality meant the loss of jobs for wrestlers and a narrowing of the vision of what wrestling can be for the public through the focused elimination of competition. By reflecting on this part of the corporate take over of wrestling, corporations benefited at the expense of the public good.

Programming:

Not only has the corporate take over of professional wrestling resulted in a drop in demand of workplace and outlets, but it has also resulted in the performance of outrageous programming decisions with no clear alternative left for the consumer. Take, for instance, the ridiculous WWE, Inc. Katie Vick campaign to create tension between wrestlers HHH and Kane in 2002 after the demise of WCW. In this program, HHH pretended to be Kane having sex with a dead body.

HHH and Katie Vick

The Katie Vick episode left many people scratching their heads wondering what this had to do with professional wrestling. But, there was no other place to go. The WWF was the only national wrestling promotion on television at the time and stupidity seemed to reign as long as money was coming in. The programming became stagnant with fewer minds applied to the problem of how to draw an audience to a wrestling event. Creative programming in professional wrestling seemed stunted and it seems shock was the last recourse of a corporation with no more competitors from which to borrow ideas.

The loss of competition not only affected a wrestler’s ability to work, or the audience’s ability to choose, but it affected outcomes. Jason Hess described how tag team the Fantastics couldn’t attract an audience for one company but another made them local stars. “[M]atch quality was not a problem. The problem was that they were either two years too late…..or too early. They failed to get over as well as many would have hoped, and left during the fall for World Class, where they would get over like gangbusters.”

The Fantastics were able to bankroll the success they established in WCCW and begin working in other territories as a money drawing team. With the corporate take over of wrestling, markets for developing programming alternatives have disappeared and wrestlers have a minimum number of visions to follow in order to achieve success. Some people suggest McMahon and Turner could only have been so successful in crushing their opposition because their competitors were weak.

However, Tim Dillis claims, “Despite what some may believe about the business of professional wrestling, it was alive and quite well in a number of territories in 1983. The revisionist history espoused by some about how the business of wrestling was breathing its final breath before the McMahon empire gave it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in 1984 should be taken with a grain of salt. Although changes were underfoot and some territories had fallen by the wayside, wrestling was doing well in the northeast, mid-west and south.”

Older wrestling fans generally love the wrestling from the territory they watched and that love stems as much from the programming as the wrestlers. Take, for example, Charles Laffere’s enthusiasm concerning Houston wrestling.

“Houston Wrestling was the best. I was raised on Channel 39 every Saturday night from 10:00 to 11:30 P.M…Paul Boesch was a promoter who would bring in just about any wrestler if the guy could draw money.”

In Memphis, Jerry Lawler entertained fans as the King for decades.

Jerry Lawler gets a haircut (hair vs. hair match) Memphis Wrestling

All of these different promotions had a touch of the outrageous which reflected the people from their area. In Philadelphia, ECW fans purported to intensely hate the cartoon variety of wrestling programmed by WWF and WCW.

Shane Douglas & “Doink” Matt Borne Promo ECW

When nothing but WWF (the proud owner of most defunct wrestling organization video libraries) and WCW remained, the public was left with severely limited options. The corporate take over of wrestling did not only impact businesses in a financial sense. The corporate take over of wrestling impacted how wrestling fans would view and interact with wrestling.

The corporate take over of wrestling also impacted a wrestler’s ability to seek employment. The take over changed the way wrestling will be viewed in the U.S. for a long time to come. Based upon this evidence, the good of a corporation does not equate to what’s good for the public. This corporate phenomenon can, and should, be judged without devolving into economic quibbles over the free market system and state run markets.

CONJECTURE

One interpretation of the effect a Corporation can have on American life is presented by the corporate take over of professional wrestling. When reflected upon from the question are corporations good for the public, an example like the WWE’s rise to dominance can be illustrative of how many ways a corporation functions in society. Starting as a single player in a field of many players, a corporation ultimately seeks to dictate how workers will perform services for the public. Corporation-like communication set single players in a market along the course of becoming the only player in a market. Just because it doesn’t always work out that one corporation can dominate a market; it doesn’t mean that it isn’t the corporate objective.

Maximization of returns through the process of fine tuning efficiencies in the system is a part of the current corporate structure of communication. Internal accountability without external culpability has seeped from corporate structures to pervade the way the public thinks about and understands being with one another in the world. As the single player takes control, jobs are shed from the economy in a move toward maximizing output performance with the lowest amount of financial input. What’s good for the corporation, therefore, is not inherently good for the public and although we might too often select financial winners to the feature in our stories, the story of the loser is just as valid as are their concerns.

The nameless people impacted by the evolution of corporation outnumber the nameless people who benefit from the evolution of corporation. As has been shown in this paper, a corporation can only exist within an already established orderly society. In a place without rules, there is no reason to acknowledge a person on paper. Therefore, the corporation owes its existence to the established order and should somehow be accountable to that order. As corporate conversation generally plays out today, harm is expressed as having been done in a physical, emotional or financial sort of way. The largest harm done by corporations, however, does not fit into any of these three qualities of life. Instead, a fourth area of harm needs to be considered when holding corporations accountable in society. Corporations have impacted our ability to relate and communicate with one another. This impact can be qualified as detrimental to our prospects for better tomorrows. This form of harm limits our collective possibilities together and shuts down possible solutions for our collective future.

It is this form of harm which the corporate structure mostly heinously inflicts on the world today. This spread of sameness across the globe damages our species and enables our children in being less sophisticated thinkers. Although no one person can be blamed, I suggest, the corporation in its current form narrows our future by elevating base values to exalted positions. The desire to be number one has perverted into a desire to be the only one. That is a dangerous way to think about the world. For this reason, the future of corporations in the world should be reevaluated by all people for how they benefit the public good.

For better or worse this work came from the mind of W.D. Sargent.

Buddy Roemer for President

2011-10-09T00:08:09Z

Wouldn’t it be a kick in the pants if Buddy Roemer could secure the Republican nomination to run against Barack Obama?

I first saw him speak on The Daily Show a couple of weeks ago. He has a grandfatherly quality to him and he focuses on issues that matter.

He’s right about the corrosive effect money has on politics. Why is the government dysfunctional from the perspective of an average citizen? It's because the government functions quite well from a different perspective.

When I vote in the primaries, I’m currently split between Ron Paul and Buddy Roemer. I feel like I’m leaning more toward Roemer for President in 2012 though.

For better or worse this work came from the mind of W.D. Sargent.

from Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

2011-10-08T15:21:20Z

"What in the world are Wisconsin shingles?" asked Yossarian.

"That's just what the doctors wanted to know!" blurted out the chaplain proudly, and burst into laughter. No one had ever seen him so waggish, or so happy. "There's no such thing as Wisconsin shingles. Don't you understand? I lied. I made a deal with the doctors. I promised that I would let them know when my Wisconsin shingles went away if they would promise not to do anything to cure them. I never told a lie before. Isn't it wonderful?"

The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character. With effervescent agility the chaplain ran through the whole gamut of orthodox immoralities, while Nately sat up in bed with flushed elation, astounded by the mad gang of companions of which he found himself the nucleus. He was flattered and apprehensive, certain that some severe official would soon appear and throw the whole lot of them out like a pack of bums. No one bothered them. In the evening they all trooped exuberantly out to see a lousy Hollywood extravaganza in Technicolor, and when they trooped exuberantly back in after the lousy Hollywood extravaganza, the soldier in white was there, and Dunbar screamed and went to pieces.

"He's back!" Dunbar screamed. "He's back! He's back!"

Yossarian froze in his tracks, paralyzed as much by the eerie shrillness in Dunbar's voice as by the familiar, white, morbid sight of the soldier in white covered from head to toe in plaster and gauze. A strange, quavering, involuntary noise came bubbling from Yossarian's throat.

"He's back!" Dunbar screamed again.

"He's back!" a patient delirious with fever echoed in automatic terror.

All at once the ward erupted into bedlam. Mobs of sick and injured men began ranting incoherently and running and jumping in the aisle as though the building were on fire. A patient with one foot and one crutch was hopping back and forth swiftly in panic crying, "What is it? What is it? Are we burning? Are we burning?"

"He's back!" someone shouted at him. "Didn't you hear him! He's back! He's back!"

"Who's back?" shouted someone else. "Who is it?"

"What does it mean? What should we do?"

"Are we on fire?"

"Get up and run, damn it! Everybody get up and run!"

For better or worse this work came from the mind of W.D. Sargent.

Teacher Notebook: Preparation is Everything!

2011-10-05T01:21:29Z

Last week we wrapped up three weeks of reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck. This was my second time reading the book and very enjoyable for me. Steinbeck is my favorite author in pure number of books written that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.

The Pearl was good for reading in class because it is a pretty straightforward story. Poor people find great wealth and society tries to scheme them out of it. It is set in Mexico during the Spanish colonization. I placed it 1800’s ish for the kids. It is very emotionally compelling near the end and offers a satisfying (if not sad) conclusion that justifies the parts where it might drag for students. If they hang with it, they’ll have a hard time saying it wasn’t worth it.

We read three days a week for the first two weeks then four days the final week. We discussed style and folklore during our read. We frequently paused checking for understanding and using active reading strategies in groups (e.g. visualization, summarizing or connecting it to something else.) We studied ten vocabulary words per week from the reading.

Vocabulary in my class consists of introduction on the first day of the week. I create a Power Point presentation over the weekend with each word getting its own slide. On the slide, the vocabulary word is printed largest. Next largest is the definition with word part (i.e. noun, verb, adjective or adverb.) Then I select a picture to represent some aspect of the word. When appropriate I make references to root words, prefixes and suffixes as well.

My students have a vocabulary notebook they need to bring to class every day. On Mondays, they write the vocabulary words with word part and definition into their vocabulary notebook. This routine consists of: first having them say the word to a partner, so they have an opportunity to practice first and hear it said back to them. Then I call on a student to say the word out loud (I have a tally sheet with all of their names on it, so I track when I ask them to do something.)

While this is taking place they are all writing the word and definition in their notebook. At the same time, I call on someone to read the word part and definition. I track it. We then get a couple thirty seconds to briefly discuss the picture with a neighbor and how it relates to the word. Finally, I’ll call on a couple of people to share their conversation.

That’s the first touch with the vocabulary. The second day of the week, I give them a crossword puzzle with the definitions as clues to solve the puzzle. The ten words in the puzzle are the spelling test on Friday. The words for the spelling test can come from any words we’ve already written in our book.

In theory, a student wanting to do well (I’ve explained this to them) will complete the vocabulary puzzle Tuesday night and then take the words out of the puzzle putting them into a list. Study the list five minutes Wednesday and Thursday. Bring the list with you on Friday, so you can study it ten minutes before the test (a time when I get the greatest amount of engagement because so many students haven’t studied.)

Still I get students failing these tests with a 30% or less. Those not wanting to do well, I try to encourage but unfortunately this year I’ve got students whose sole goal in my classroom seems to be taking us off track. Friday’s spelling test is pretty traditional really. I say the word giving a definition and the word part. Then they write the word.

During the last three weeks, we also read about ten pages of The Pearl each Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I record myself reading the previous weekend and then bring in a CD to play while the students read along. It really engages students. Kids that don’t read suddenly are willing to read quietly, so that everyone is able to read without distraction.

I’ve used the audio many times in the last two-plus years. What I haven’t used before was a novel in class. The pacing is much different than reading short stories and articles that may only be ten pages long. Due to my teaching blocks being only 50 minutes long (as opposed to the two-and-a-half hours to all day atmosphere I had the last two years) I didn’t adjust my use of classroom time as effectively as I could of. The other problem was my students don’t all have a copy of the book since I’ve only got a class set. Don’t get me wrong. It is fantastic that I have enough books for each student, but it means I have felt limited in having him or her read outside of class in preparation.

I will solve this problem with reflection and time. This week is a testing week though and in my experience that means nightmare. Kids get out of their routine and start to lose their minds. I’ve set up a very routine environment in my classroom. That takes care of a lot of behavior issues. Kids know what to do when they walk through my door on a Friday. They know what to expect on Monday, except when it is testing week.

Yesterday, kids were apeshit in my class. My third period turned into a bunch of terrorists blowing up my lesson plans. In thirty minutes time, we got absolutely nothing accomplished! I sentenced two kids to writing 100 times “I will follow direction.” One brought it in today. The other didn’t and tried to tell me he didn’t understand. I explained it to him today and told him I expect it tomorrow or he’ll have after school detention. He said he understood and we shook hands.

Yesterday, I was tired and unprepared. I didn’t prepare myself and let things slide. Important things like my seating chart. Today, seating chart was in full enforcement in each one of my classes. It was better. My third period tried to take us off track again, but I reined them in. We are covering mythology and I had a pretty cool presentation I put together, last Sunday, giving some general details about Norse mythology. The movie “Thor” certainly helped getting some of the engagement and for some of the students the similarities to Christianity also engaged. Very few questioned whether or not the stories were true, but I did get an eighth-grader or two asking if this really happened.

Is Jormungard really a serpent encircling the Earth with his tail in his mouth waiting to release and bring on our impending doom?

These are good questions I think, because they show an engagement with the material and when kids are engaged they don’t really tend to misbehave as much. Plus they’re making connections. The rest of the week will be even more interesting. Tomorrow is another testing day. Thursday is a half day where I’ll only see my first three periods. Friday is a half day where I’ll see my last two periods. Then it is fall break for one full week. Getting out of the week will be interesting, but when we come back I’ll be prepared to press them back into the security of a routine.

For better or worse this work came from the mind of W.D. Sargent.