Surpriiiise! Surpriiiise! Surpriiiiise!

our school's mock election results:

Overall school turnout – 57% (639)

Champaign States Attorney
Janie-Miller Jones (R) 17% (108)
Julia Reitz (D) 83% (528)

Illinois House of Representatives
Frank Calabrese (R) 16% (111)
Naomi Jakobsson (D) 84 % (555)

U.S. Congress 15th District
Timothy Johnson (R) 30% (197)
Steve Cox (D) 70% (471)

U.S. Senate
Larry Stafford (L) 3% (21)
Steve Sauerberg (R) 11% (72)
Kathy Cummings (G) 11% (75)
Richard Durbin (D) 75% (504)

U.S. President
Bob Barr (L) (L) 2% (12)
Cynthia McKinney (G) 2% (16)
John McCain (R) 10% (62)
Barack Obama (D) 86% (606)

Do you support a constitutional amendment to ban abortion?
Yes – 31% (211)
No – 69% (463)

Should the voting age be lowered from 18 to 17?
No - 42% (288)
Yes 58% (390)

Should intelligent design be taught as well as evolution in UHS science classrooms?
No - 49% (325)
Yes - 51% (338)

Should the U.S. President be elected by popular vote rather than by the Electoral College?
No - 24% (166)
Yes - 74% (513)

9th grade turnout – 41% (143/342)
10th grade turnout – 57% (177/309)
12th grade turnout – 66% (151/230)
11th grade turnout – 68% (168/248) Class of 2010 Rules!
Faculty Turnout – 55% (57/104)

The intelligent design results are interesting, although I do have this anecdote that could suggest that many students were confused by the question: As I was "election judging" during my lunch hour, one of my students started to walk away saying, "I quit!" I asked him if he needed help, and started explaining step-by-step how to use the ballot. When I explained to him what that question was asking, he remarked, "Nah, that sounds like more work for me!"

Um, what.

WTF. Check out this story, which was the main focus of the front page of the Daily Illini today: Abnormal student behavior could lead to meetings for help.

According to James Finkle, junior in LAS, a student sitting eight rows back near the isle caused a commotion. He said the student was carrying on a conversation with his Teddy bear.

"Somebody shouted something like, 'Oh, I love you Mr. Bear. How are you Mr. Bear? You went and saw roses with another bear? I thought I was your bear,'" Finkle said.

Kathryn Clancy, professor of anthropology and leader of the lecture, confirmed this report.

"I started hearing a student clearly talking to a Teddy bear," Clancy said. She said she made her way down the stage towards the student to deal with the situation.

"I wanted to encourage his performance to end sooner," Clancy said. "Clearly there was some sort of tryst between the student and the bear."

Finkle said he agreed.

So, if it's a student joke, then why is this news? Why is this front-page news? We're electing a new president in five days. There's no way this could be considered a slow news week. UHS' student newspaper just put out an extra edition, for Chrissake. If it's a student joke, the prof deals with it in office hours. It doesn't get campus-wide media coverage. I mean, why would it?

If it's not a joke, then the student in question probably has some kind of mental illness. So why are we gossiping about it in the DI. And if the student is mentally ill, then why the jocular lead, "Teddy bears never felt so hurt." Mental illness isn't funny.

There's also a weak attempt to link the incident to the threatening note found in the undergrad library earlier this month. I can kinda make that connection, but if I do, I still don't see what's funny.

And I mean, look at this accompanying photo. A reenactment? Seriously? How is that not meant to be funny? In the print version of the paper, it was the largest element on the front page. What. the. hell.

divine intervention

This note was attached to some student work that was left in my school mailbox by a student who was out on suspension.

good taste

My grammar school crush (whom I hope does not read this blog because I'm still embarrassed about how much unwanted attention I sent in his direction as an eighth grader) sent me this link today: http://www.joe-biden.ytmnd.com/

Oh my gosh.

role models

I invited Idris Goodwin to speak to some of our kids today, as he is spending this week on campus hosting various events each evening. He was really exciting; the kids seemed really interested in what he had to say. I'm really looking forward to processing some of it with them tomorrow.



One thing I don't want to process them tomorrow is Goodwin's response to the question, "How do you make a living writing poetry?" He answered that in this capitalist society, everybody's gotta sell what they can. When people call Kanye West a sell-out, he went on, that's unfair. Everybody's selling something. He goes around selling his type of hip-hop at poetry slams and at schools. Ms. Dahlke, he continued, comes to school to sell herself.

Yeah, he said that. And yeah, the kids got it.

"Is your question about what we're talking about right now?"

We're reading Night by Elie Wiesel in my classes. For some of my students, especially those with learning disabilities, it presents a challenge to their ability to connect what they know about the Holocaust (which is a lot) to the "hard" words in that text. So to help ease them into the story, we watched Oprah's interview with Wiesel in Auchwitz in class today.

One of my students (A hilarious kid: he does all his thinking aloud, which, as you can imagine, is pretty distracting for his classmates. One day I made him keep a tally of all the times he caught himself doing it and he got up to six in that one class period. He showed me the tally marks with this big, shit-eating grin. And somehow I found it completely adorable.) raised his hand, and whispered to me, "How did Hitler die?" I told him that I was pretty sure he shot himself, but that I would look it up. I checked it out real quick on my classroom computer, and went over to let him know. The student seemed pretty satisfied to know that he shot himself and swallowed cyanide simultaneously.

So when he raised his hand and silently beckoned me across the room to him a few minutes later, I was expecting some kind of similarly tangentially related question. This time, he asked, "You know that dude who got a picture of the Lock Ness Monster? Didn't he say that it was fake before he died?"

Here in Champaign County,

we operate on an eye-for-an-eye justice system. (Or ear-for-an-ear, I guess, in this case?)

An Illinois judge has sentenced a man to listen to 20 hours of classical music as punishment for playing hip-hop music too loudly out of his car stereo. The judge offered to reduce Andrew Vactor's $150 fine down to $35 if Vactor agreed to spend 20 hours listening to works by Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin and other classical composers.

Champaign County Municipal Court Judge Susan Fornof-Lippencott claimed that her decision did not imply that listening to classical music qualilfies as punishment, but by making Vactor to listen to music he might not prefer, he would feel the same way the public did when he blasted rap music from his car stereo.

Um, what. Say it ain't so.

I love having uber-smart friends.

As I was walking down the street on campus today, I ran into a guy I met last year when I was considering the Peace Corps. He was the recruiter then, and now he's a full-time grad student in journalism. We got to talking: he was asking me why I didn't go; I was telling him about my job. Then he wanted to know what kinds of things UHS was up to in terms of NCLB. Blah. blah, blah. He asked, "So what do you think of what the candidates are saying about education?" And I was thinking, "How much time do you have?"

Anyway, I should have referred him to Susan's latest post:

Tonight, one of the debate questions was about education reform, and I happen to be a professional in the field (still a bit weird) so I thought I'd make a list of reforms I find to be most pressing to the educational world (and ps John McCain- your claim that we have reached equality in education is bs. I'm calling you out on that).

1. Better continued professional development support for teachers: Education is a fast changing field as far as our understanding of what the students need, but a slow-changing reality in the classroom. A lot of this has to do with the continued professional support for teachers. Yes, there are people who are just bad and need to get out, but a lot of teachers were good and can be good again, they just need the updated training. I may be a good teacher now, but without continual support to get better, I can easily become a bad teacher.

2. A strategic plan for closing the achievement gap through early education and culturally relevant programs: The fact that there is an achievement gap makes me sick to my stomach. The fact that people ignore it makes me sicker. We need a specific plan for how we can close that and I think increasing early education to get kids the same opportunities from the start and culturally relevant so students can pick up the tools they need to learn any culture are two of the most important ways. (getting better measurements of achievement is another...)

3. A careful examination of the assessment tools used to measure standards in American children and the research about assessment: Standardized tests are not a valid measure of what our students know. Time and again this gets proven and then ignored. Pay attention people. Other countries have come up with much more valid measures to test a child's achievement.

4. Easily available grants for teachers trying to get resources: I can understand people's fuss about money being wasted. I don't agree with the way money gets pulled from schools that are failing, but I get this want for accountability. How about instead the government offers a website like donorschoose that allows teachers to apply for resources they need to fix their classroom? I just talked to a middle school librarian tonight whose students are going to massacre him because the circulation in the library has doubled but there aren't enough books for the kids to read. That is a person trying to make a difference for good with his hands tied because of the wonderful backwards way our schools get funding.

5. Mandate a larger amount of school funding be state-wide and more of it be nationwide: I know schools have traditionally been locally run, but if we are held responsible to anyone outside of the local than someone outside of the local should be paying up. This one I am particular about since a local referendum failed at my high school. Schools in Illinois are funding by property taxes (many states are this way) since property values are linked to the quality of schools and keep the control city wide. The problem is we have Ethel here on a fixed income who owns some property. If she's on a fixed income she can't pay any more on her property just to keep the property value up- her income is FIXED. Make it an income tax and you are taxing the money people have to be able to give and are more likely to give it. This also closes the gap between the haves and have nots. Just because the city doesn't have a lot of money doesn't mean the students should suffer. It's already hard enough convincing students who live in down and out towns that they should take pride in where they came from.

6. Valid teacher accountability: If you don't perform on any job you get fired. For some reason teaching has gotten exempt from this rule. I get the purpose of this in colleges, so professors can calm down from the cutthroat competition and focus on more important issues, but in high school I should be held accountable for what I'm doing. Things such as evaluations, standards of continuing education, better national requirements are ways of holding teachers accountable. Comparing students' test scores is not.

7. Create more cross-curricular learning: Do you know how many times you have to hear a word before you learn it? I have it written down from some Dressman lecture, but it's a lot. And we want our teaching to be relevant to the students, but how often do you sit down outside of school and say I'm going to do some history and then some english and maybe a little chemistry experiment? We mold all of these into all of these fields. Math people write, and English people do math. Some of the most interesting work is in the fusion of various fields where we can really get to the crux of the problem from multiple angles. (And for the love of god- math and science are not the only fields in the world)

8. Stop trying to fix things in some schools rather than all schools: Sure we can bus a kid to another school, but what about the 1000 kids left at the school who don't want to get bussed because they won't know anyone anywhere else? Charter schools may work and vouchers may be turning around the system in DC, but those aren't solutions for my school that still has students who need to learn.

9. Class size nationally mandated: You want a positive mandate coming at the national level then make the class size a nationally mandated level at 25. I know the research shows that class size doesn't matter past a certain age, but it does matter when you are trying to create universal design and have to worry about 40 kids. 25 allows you personal time with all students. It's for the teachers' sake as much as anything.

10. This one isn't so much a policy change as a mind-set change: Recognizing that every student has the potential to change the world in a positive way, and our teachers have one of the greatest chances of influincing that as long as we can change the idea that education is for wimps and only bad things happen in our schools. (two different sides of the fence there, but equally damning.)

Can I get a "TRUE THAT!"?

Autumn has arrived in Illinois!

The leaves are falling, and the children are in school. I made rubbings, just like in the days of my youth, for evidence. The first is of a leaf from my front yard; the second is of an artistic use of glue I found on a desk in my classroom.

feeling very adult

This piece of mail arrived in my mailbox this weekend:

two of these people are not like the others

Who: many college students and alum and two children
What: toy rifles
Where: Murphy's Pub
When: 9:30 pm, Friday night, homecoming weekend
Why: that's what I want to know

cultural divide

One of my cousins in Dublin sent me a message via bebo this morning that read:

i'm thinking about coming over for a few months, i cant get a job for my placement n i think im gonna start lookin over there!!!

Hit me back...

So I responded:

you have to!

when would you come? (that's what she said)

And she wrote back:

thats what who said??? what are u talkin about??

Since I don't really believe that Americans actually get the perks that we so often broadcast about ourselves (i.e. all are created equal, land of opportunity, the American Dream), at least I can get excited about this perk of being an American: that's what [s]he said jokes.

but back to the no-cell phone rule

I posted about this when I was student-teaching, too, but I'm wondering how long it's going to be until cell phones are allowed in schools. Like, seriously.

Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher published an article in the July 2008 edition of English Journal called "Do the Right Thing with Technology." I like them. They gave an overview of their school's technolgy policy, one that focuses on "courtesy" and not "prohibition." They write:

"We asked our students, 60 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and every one of them had at least one of these devices ["cell phones, iPods, cameras and the like"] on their person every day. Our colleagues were frustrated with the amount of time they spent asking students to put cell phones and MP3 players away. The administrators were frustrated at the increased time they had to spend disciplining repeat offenders. And some parents weren't happy when their children had these expensive devices taken away from them in school. We realized that prohibition alone wasn't working and that we weren't teaching students appropriate uses of technology. We also realized that were missing out on an excellent opportunity to integrate technology into our school curriculum." (38)

My Mom always says, "Choose your battles." And honestly, part of the reason I'm anti-cell-phone-prohibition is that I just really don't feel like fighting that battle with my students. Another major part of why I'm A-C-P-P is that I think that there might be some tappable educational value in allowing students to have their cells in school. Some anecdotal evidence: One of my favorite students (yeah, I for sure have favorites) from when I student-taught here is in Sydney's class. We were subbed out of our morning classes today for instructional sharing time with other members of the English department, and while we were gone, said favorite student texted to Sydney's email:

Omg.we don't know what to do the sub aint making what we doing
understanding........

I mean, this is a kid who I practically had to beg to keep his head off the desk for the first few weeks of my student-teaching placement. And this is not the first, but the second time he's texted her about class. Trust me, there's no way in hell this student is going to ever say, "You know, Ms. Azzi, I had a question about that essay were supposed to be drafting. Any chance you can stay after school so we can talk about it?" But if he sees her as easily accessible via his phone, he can still ask those questions.


All I'm saying is, why not capitalize on that shit!? They're going to being their cells anyway. So I hear by call for the 21st admendment of the UHS student handbook.

haha

Here's my sophomore picture. The resemblance is uncanny. I think my clothing here is more grown-up than in my new one. Thanks, Mom!

break-through

After a little bit of investigation, I have just successfully tracked down the real, working phone number for the parent of one of my students who's desperately in need of some super-in-his-face parent-teacher teaming. Words cannot express my excitement.

this student's low expectations for himself: OUT
this student's high expectations for himself, or else: IN

this lady right here: teacher of high school sophomores or high school sophomore herself?

I should have seriously reconsidered the striped shirt on picture day.