Two Dishes But To One Table

Passing Notes

Yesterday in my 7th Period Biology class, students passed a really, really nasty note across the class, tossing it ultimately onto the desk of a bullied freshman.  It wasn't addressed to him, or to anybody.  It was full of awful words and when I grabbed it it I was frustrated:  I couldn't tell who wrote it, whether it was a direct threat.   I really felt I let some kid down.

Well, today, I saw  notes crossing the room again, first one then another, every kid wrote a line and then passed it along.  While we watched part of a film ("Gattaca") I watched the kids sidelong.   They knew I was mad about yesterday's note.  And as they passed a note, I felt I had to do something.  So I did.  Here's what I confiscated from them today (click for larger):

Whispering Campaign

New York City Public Schools are a mecca for cheating.

A how-to-cheat primer for the uninitiated would include practicing the three most common cheating methods:
1) Brazen staring at their neighbor's paper.  In the same way that one can sometimes sneak past a movie usher or stadium guard by confidently walking past them without showing any ticket or badge, the students in NYC avoid furtive shady sideway glances, looking across the row with a calm gaze like a king on a mountain assessing his lands.  Lesson from the streets: don't act like a thief, especially if you intend to be a thief.

2) Tapping signals/ hand signals.   If the answer to #3 is "(2)" a charitable student might do a TAP-TAP-TAP  followed by TAP-TAP.

3)Whispering.    My hearing is so bad, apparently, that entire exchanges can occur.  On last week's DNA quiz, question #9 asked my biology students "Name two things that can cause DNA mutations."  One of the possible correct answers should have been  Ultraviolet / the sun / UV radiation, something like that.  Instead, I got a girl in the 3rd row writing, correctly "sunlight" but the girl sitting right in front of her, straining to hear the whispered answer,  writing for an answer "salate".   

Special mention to the semi-bold technique of pocketing the blank quiz [to give to your friends at lunchtime] and then saying "Hey, I didn't get a quiz."

Two techniques popular in other schools but noticeably absent in Board of Ed student culture:
1)  crib notes/ arm tatoo/ post-It note on your neighbor's back.   This level of preparation is so laborious that kids here would throw their hands up and just study, I think.

2) Text or notes on floor to flip open and closed with your feet.   

3) Taking advantage of accidently present chalkboard information or reference posters left visible during the test.

4)  snatching the answer key.  More than one NYC teacher has told me "I would welcome that level of initiative."

Coal Chute Good for Something

I won the pie eating contest.
You Tube link is here. 
An audience of 550 witnessed it in the school assembly Friday morning
A trashbag protected me
The cherry filling encouraged me.

My advantage was I ever have conceptualized my mouth and esophagus as little but a coal chute.

I theatrically brandished a big goldfish bowl for a vomitorium but the prophesy ironically self-fulfilled in early waves of initial gagging which luckily I was able to eat right through.

Maybe my secret weapon was a big breakfast:  a 12" submarine sandwich eaten just minutes before, walking up Bedford Ave from the subway.

Happily no post-victory nausea ensued.  After eating the entire pie in about 70 seconds, I felt nothing but a pleasant sugar rush for the rest of the morning.

Spreading Their Version of The Word

The Creationists are very creative in spreading their word. They're wrong, dead wrong, but I admire the subtle persuasiveness of listing the so-called 100 Greatest Creation Scientists.   Maybe I should start a slick looking parallel site promoting some similar hooey -- maybe "100 Great Biblical Arguments in favor of Human Enslavement" for example.

Look at their graphic suggesting that Faith/Belief and Science are somehow an overlapping Venn Diagram:

 

In biology class I repeatedly emphasize that the beauty of both Faith and Science are that they approach things by completely different methods and are completely different tools.

Another Internet/Science incident where the Creationists won:  Last week, one Bio teacher I know  accidentally xeroxed a bunch of Creationist stuff and gave it out as homework.   

It was an article about cells that concluded with the line "Sperm are the smallest human cells and eggs the largest.  Coincidence?  Or Design?!"    (This is a subtle reference from the Creationists to the concept of Intelligent Design, i.e. that life cannot arise by merely natural forces.)  It's not even a correct statistic though.  There are single neurons that reach up to two feet in length.   

In further distressing anti-science, here is the IceCap report.  It looks so good, so authoritative that one could imagine that the web page was designed by a Fortune 500 Company (like, say, Exxon perhaps?)  raising the question of who payed for it and tempting me to ask "Coincidence?  Or Design?!"  The beautiful  design of IceCap seems to imply that IceCap is an authoritative place to learn about Global Warming.

2007 NYC School Ratings

Parents and students interested in the best schools in New York City will be interested in this years public school ratings.  Mayor Bloomberg went with a report card format and gave a letter grade to each high school and elementary school. 

The Board of Ed tried to be objective, basing the letter grades A  through F  on a mix of

• standardized tests
• improvement in standardized tests
• and hallway conditions

One odd aspect is the predicament of a school where scores are already high.  What does one do to create improvement?  My school is not in the report because we are a public-private hybrid (a charter school).

The NY Times article is the easiest summary.
NY Times also created a searchable database of the report.

A Really Good Mission Statement

I am really proud of the people behind the scenes at the school where I work.

There's frequently a high B.S. factor when some school tries to dress up their brochure with a paragraph  about how "every kid is special" or "we teach respect".   The blather drives me up the wall.   It's obvious where many school creeds originate.  Someone at the  top notices a gaping hole in the promo literature and then an assistant  or, worse, a committee of teachers, has to write something to make the school literature look good.  These mini essays inevitably sound made up, insincere, and insulting to whatever true, warm, beautiful, honest humanity drives the place. 

So I read the WCS codification of our values and almost shed a tear because it shows how lucid and clear our founders are and I have to say, in Year Four of the school, the staff pretty much reflects every word in the statement. Morals and direction weren't an afterthought here, they were hardwired in, part of the ground up design of the organization.  Because of that, all the people in our building, from freshman to faculty explicitly know the points of this creed.   I'm really really happy. 

Green Day *cough*

I am pretty damn old compared to my students so trying to remember what it feels like to be them is nearly impossible.  That me died 20 years ago.  Once in awhile teen rage in a movie or song sweeps me up and gives me the punch-in-the-gut return to how bad it can feel to be that age.

Green Day’s Jesus of Suburbia did it to me today, made me cry even.   I need that more often, a view into their emotional landscape.  Exact same thing happened 5 years ago, crying, sitting behind a museum in Taiwan,  listening on headphones to Modest Mouse ‘Trailer Trash’, crying because it washed over me in a wave of sympathy for some of the guys that sat in the back of my class, failing. 

I’d quote some JoS lyrics but it would seem dead and cold in print.  To cry to you should:
1.    Listen to the American Idiot album for a year or so
2.    Get curious about the lyrics,
3.    Look them up while you copy them to the Lyrics folder on your iPod, singing along, and crying.

I listened to the 9 minute JoS 3x just now...

On a lighter note, I think I am the first person on the internet to notice that there is a great big cough in Jesus of Suburbia.  Someone in Green Day coughs at the 4:19 time mark during  tom tom rolls.  It's clearly audible on headphones.  It is totally a smoker’s cough and I’m guessing the drum mic picked it up.  You heard it hear first! 

Watching Flowers

1. No students have complained yet this year about sketching.
They will eventually.
My students draw a lot more natural things than those in an average biology class.
Biology is about looking and even if someone is not an artist, a sincere drawing forces observation.
Drawing an Echinacea blossom is a nice way to contemplate what it is.
Just as writing forces you to clean up your logic, drawing forces you to clean up your observational skills.

2. Someone else who advocates observation of an Echinacea:  the Sara Arts jigsaw page, invites us to spend a few minutes moving around nature puzzle pieces online.  Writes Sara, "As you work the puzzle you have chosen, hopefully you will make some discoveries about the subtleties of natural color." [Tip: re-set the change cut to 12 piece zig zag to boost your puzzle solving self-esteem.]

3. My mom sketched the echinacea flowers above with india ink in her backyard a couple years ago.   She was going to toss it out (!).  She has more drawings than a front yard has leaves in autumn and she doesn't realize how precious each one is to me sometimes, so last time I was home I rescued it and hung it in my home here in Brooklyn.  She likes to make these into watercolors but I like them almost more as just lines on paper because I can more directly see her hand in it.   To quote my dad (an artist too)  "Your mom never draws straight lines and that's the only thing I can draw."

Your Teacher is a Computer

Who would think this is possible? 
A program that reads essays for you!
It grades them on organization, sentence fluency, ideas...
If you ever felt sensitive to criticism from the red pen of your condescending (but later much-appreciated) English teacher, think how it feels to get judged by a robot.
[Personal confession: my most hated was the most helpful: 11th Grade, Avondale High School, Mr. Welty.  As a human, he meant little, as a builder of writing skill, he helped a lot.]
The computer grades kids' essays and then gives them up to five more chances to edit and re-submit.
Maybe this drilling on the mechanics can get them halfway and then a real human being can coach them in some style.
Here is a sample screen from the Write To Learn software.

Frog Insider

Chatting to a stranger on a barstool after work. 
About four sentences into the conversation comes the expected question:  “Forgive me for saying this,” starts the German, “ because I respect that you are a biology teacher, but in our country we find it hard to understand why American schools find it necessary to dissect frogs.  Europeans see it as a ridiculous example of America’s tendency toward violence.”

This is the second time in two weeks some German has asked me this.

My kids love the idea though.  At  least five students on their own have demanded that we add dissecting to the curriculum (we don't currently do it -- for lack of supplies).   

The German, Matthias, continued, adding that the week wasted on frog guts could be spent learning more important stuff.  He had met an American girl who didn't know that camels come in either two hump or one hump varieties.  "Can you believe it?" he asked, "she didn't know what a dromedary was.  All because she was busy dissecting frogs in tenth grade."