14 to 24 to 34
I was only 14 during the last census, so I don’t really remember much about it. Undoubtedly counted in my family household, I didn’t really participate. I do remember, though, reading through 2000 census data tables during college. There was a lot of information in those numbers, and so I’ve really enjoyed being a conscious citizen (and 24 years of age) during the most recent enumeration of our country’s population. I’ve also found it to be the perfect teaching opportunity. Just like the recent Presidential election, I had to take advantage of teaching the census since it doesn’t come around all that often.
And so I tied the census into my African American History curriculum and explained the relationship between representation and the 3/5th clause during slavery. I also got to bring in a guest speaker from the census, and copied my blank census form for the kids to fill out. They walked away with a good understanding of its purpose and history, and we had some fun with the same numbers I crunched in college. All in all, a good opportunity to think about the intersection between history and the real world.
Just last week, I found this great website by the Census Bureau that shows the participation rate at national and local levels. You can even zoom in on your county or neighborhood (they call it a tract) and see the percentage of people who have turned in their census. It even compares your neighborhood’s participation to the last census, and to the state and national average. Color-coded for ease of comparison, the colorful map can tell stories on its own. Scrolling through Philadelphia’s map, I can compare a wealthy neighborhood, like my neighborhood (58-67% submitted), to a low-income area, like the neighborhoods along Broad street (33-38% submitted). Take a gander and play around a bit. You’ll probably be surprised by how much fun the census can be.
It’s strange to think that the next time the census rolls around, I’ll be 34. And my students – the same ones who scream when someone farts – will be 24.
- Jeff
Extra curricular
My school’s elective program is kind of messy. Back in the fall, we were told a week before school started that every teacher would be in charge of teaching an elective of their choice. Every day. All year. Thankfully, it’s turned out better than I expected. Ungraded, under supervised and completely student focused, the electives program offers students a variety of extra curricular paths to follow and remain engaged with throughout the week. If they hate the academics of school, the idea goes, at least they’ll have something to invest themselves in at school. Despite the often-frantic planning, I think we’re lucky to have a program that allows students to spend part of their day learning about things that are as off-topic and non-traditional as German, Robotics, Drumming and Yoga. The list goes on, and every trimester, we get to shake things up and offer a new slew of classes.
My first elective was student government. It was a feeble attempt to relive the glory days of my own schooling and ended up being a disappointment. The only meaningful output was our school climate survey, which I wrote about before. This trimester, I chose to go with a topic that excited and enthused me – teaching American Sign Langauge. I took two years of ASL in college and have been looking for a way to stay in practice, so it just made sense.
Definitely obscure for my students, ASL was a popular choice and I ended up with a good group of kids that took on the language with intense interest and dedication. There are a few that can out-sign me at this point. Kind of embarrassing, I sometimes let them lead the class in whatever topic we explore.
And, as our culminating project for the trimester, a small group from the class interpreted a song in ASL and performed it for the school last month. I was so, so very proud of them. Check out a scaled down version of the performance below, which we’ve also posted to YouTube. Our goal is to reach 1,000 hits by the end of the year. So…watch as many times as you’d like. Enjoy!
- Jeff
Note: I have received the permission of all the participant’s guardians to publicly broadcast this performance. Just a disclaimer for those of you worried about my legal obligations.
My favorite day so far
I’m sitting at report card conferences right now. It’s day three, hour 4. And despite the pile of grades I’m sitting next to, I’d rather just pretend they don’t exist. I pride myself on never writing letter grades on my student’s work. In fact, I’ve never actually written a grade on any assignment – I feel like it’s too definitive and absolute. A percentage or a marking takes the focus away from the evaluation and opens up the assignment for review, reflection and maybe even a chance to learn from mistakes.
So I struggle to explain to parents what an A, B or C really means. It could be as insignificant as one missing assignment, a few points on a hard test, or a misplaced absence. When it comes down to it, the grade isn’t a very accurate reflection of who that student is, how much they’ve learned, or grown. It is, though, a relatively easy way to satisfy the question “how’s my kid doing?” And sadly it becomes the go-to measure of success for a lot of our kids.
I like to think differently. Real learning, and our evaluation of it, must be more holistic. Case in point: as part of our world history curriculum, I’ve been teaching world religions for the last three months. We’ve learned about the basic geography, principles and history of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism (I kept Christianity ’til the end, and we ran out of time…oops). I’ve tested them throughout the unit, and I can identify the objectives and topics they struggled with most. But when it comes down to it – the purpose of my teaching isn’t based on that basic content knowledge. I couldn’t care less if they remember the five pillars of Islam, or the name Siddhartha. What I really want is for my students to leave my classroom with a better understanding of the world, the people they will interact with, and their place within it. And that means having a sense of familiarity with other religions. I would guess 90% of my students are Christian, maybe 5% are Muslim. The rest, by self proclamation, question religion altogether.
In my own experience, I’ve found religion to be a powerful force in people’s lives, and in determining how they act, what they believe and how I interact with them. Beyond encounters of discrimination or difference, religion (or the lack thereof) can be a meaningful variable in any given relationship. And even though I’ve always tried to actively learn about other people’s beliefs, I myself don’t have many friends who aren’t Christian or Jewish. And those friends I do have who identify as Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu (or anything else) haven’t made their religion a part of our relationship. I’ve never been a mosque, a synagogue, a temple or anything in between. I’ve lived a Christian-centered childhood, and spent plenty of time in Catholic and Baptist churches. It’s all I’ve known, and as I came to find, all my students know, too.
So in order to make up for this lack of exposure and diversity, and to make some real-world connections to my teaching, I planned a one day field trip to visit a mosque, synagogue and Buddhist temple. The trip itself was hell to plan – contacting sites, setting up dates, ordering kosher food… the list goes on. But the preparations aside, this trip gave me a real sense of what my students had learned from me, and gave me some confidence that it was actually something meaningful. It’s hard to really measure a “good day” teaching, but this was, by far, my proudest day as a teacher. It wasn’t so much that I led a discussion or even facilitated their learning. It really had nothing to do with me. The learning was happening independent of a teacher, of a classroom, of a book. They were interacting with the world around them in a way they never
had before: asking questions to an Imam, making references to reincarnation in a synagogue, and meditating in a temple. Yes, 50 kids were sitting on a mediation pillow and reciting the “Om” in near silence. I had to ask myself several times throughout the day. “Is this real?”
It was, and it still is. The kids returned with a sense of accomplishment, and I’m sure a familiarity with people and places they previously had viewed as foreign and even dangerous. The mystery was demystified. The uncertain was made more certain. Religion was no longer just a Christian God and the Bible. There was the Torah, Moses, Muhammad, the Qur’an, and gongs. This trip served as a reminder of the teacher I want to be…as a foreshadowing of the kind of teacher I could one day be. If done right, at the right moment, with everything else in the right place, it works. The kids learn something that will stick with them forever.
But it sure as hell doesn’t make it to the report card.
- Jeff
Out in the open
A while back, I put together a list of micro reforms to implement by the end of this school year. Slow to start, I have been making some headway lately. I’ve written about homophobia at my school a few times here and there, but beyond the “no g- word in class” rule (which has been really effective), I haven’t taken steps to do anything about it on a large-scale. But I felt an increased sense of urgency when I started seeing administrators and teachers fall into the same habits as the kids. In its most frequent form, homophobia is used to change a student’s behavior (ie: “stop playing around in the hallway – people are gonna think you’re gay for each other.”) Shocking at first, it became all too familiar of a sight.
In order to best stem the issue, I needed to start at the top. As models of behavior, our teachers need to have positive mindsets that don’t exclude or denigrate. In addition, they need the tools to work with and support LGBT students or those with gender identity issues. We’ve got a 4th grader who wants to be a girl and several middle school boys and girls peeking out of the closet. It’s not an isolated problem – and I’m afraid no one has any idea of how to work with their students to create a safe and supportive classroom for these students.
I couldn’t do any of this myself, so I started looking for an outside organization that could start a constructive dialogue at my school. After a bit of research, I found the Bryson Institute. Part of the Attic Youth Center in Philadelphia, it was started after the murder of Matthew Shepard and works to educate people about LGBT issues in schools. Then I wrote a proposal and submitted it to my administration for approval and scheduling. That was in December.
And over the last three months, I’ve hounded and reminded and inquired what seems like 100 times. It was getting incessant, but I couldn’t go another year without these problems being addressed. I don’t think the word gay has ever been uttered in my school without a negative connotation. It was about time we learned how to use the word to identify and explain rather than incite fear and shame.
After a lot of talking, it happened. Last Friday, at our all-day staff development, we spent a little over an hour discussing LGBT and gender concerns with an amazing facilitator from the Bryson Institute. We defined terms, talked about religion, and explored how our LGBT students might feel in an unsafe classroom. It was an hour well spent and I think most of our staff left with a better understanding of where I’ve been coming from all this time. And thankfully, I’m not alone. There’s a growing mass of people at my school that are already using positive language and are open to thinking about how to support these students. This workshop just finally brought us all together in one room to talk about a taboo issue that some of us just ignore or dismiss.
And for probably the first time, I didn’t cringe at the sound of the word “gay” in my school. I didn’t have to turn my head to deflect my disgust or reprimand a kid for their language. I got to just sit and listen and learn. It was a proud moment. And I love the feeling of checking off a to do list.
Next, sex.
- Jeff
Oh, yeah, I’m a teacher
March has been a bit hectic. I’ve neglected my posts for a reason – mostly because I needed to focus on being a teacher and stuff. Ironically enough, my lack of blog posts has stressed me out more than writing them. When I go without reflection for this long, I begin to sense that there is a teasing void that needs to be filled. So I’m filling it.
These past few months have presented me (and every other teacher in Philadelphia) with a bit of challenge. Interrupted by snow storms and holidays and constant field trips (my students will have gone on 5 this month alone), my curriculum has become nearly irrelevant. As a history teacher, I thrive off of connections from one lesson to the next. There is rarely an isolated moment in my teaching that doesn’t require some background from the previous week or unit. So, it’s been difficult to guide my students with any sense of continuity with our recent stop-and-go schedule.
Presented with a challenge, I have not capitulated, but rather, am rebounding – trying to take advantage of the clutter and make some sense out of it. If the usual and constant is order in my teaching, then I needed to do the opposite – create a little chaos…put things (carefully and thoughtfully) out of order…mix things up. And so I did.
My solution was not, in any way, revolutionary or innovative. But it has been effective. And it’s as simple as centers. By centers I mean isolated stations that allow groups of students to rotate practicing a variety of content-based skills.
The benefits of centers:
- student-focused and operated
- cater to diverse learning styles
- cover a broad scope of material
- can be evaluated in a variety of ways (quantitative/qualitative)
The drawbacks of centers:
- so much planning to prepare
- management can be a problem and add to chaos
- real learning can be avoided by determined students
With all this in mind, I gave it a serious try twice in the last two weeks. Both times the room was quiet with only the buzz of learning to be heard, and students engaged with the material on their own terms and at their own pace. In an effort to capture the beauty of it all, I shot this video:
We are studying Islam and the basic principles and practices of the religion. They had the chance to interact with religious artifacts like a prayer rug and Qur’an and were able to read, write, watch and listen at the five stations I had set up. Regardless of the true success (I’ll know once I grade their assessments and assignments), the experience gave me some motivation to keep thinking about ways to break up my teaching and put it into the hands of my students. That is, I think, where it belongs.
- Jeff
Using data better
If there’s anything lacking at my school (and most) it’s not tests. In a 9 month period, my students take dozens of tests, including those from their teachers and those mandated by the state. There are four levels of testing that most students endure throughout the school year. Just for fun, I adapted the Homeland Security Advisory System to fit with the four levels of testing. With each level, the stakes become higher.
Schools have become so driven by these tests that the most important of them all (high stakes) takes only two days of the whole year, yet determine most of the curriculum, cost the most money and demand the most energy. In Pennsylvania, it is called the PSSA – and has already taken over the daily grind in most schools. PSSA this, PSSA that. In the end, each school is usually aware of their student’s progress to date and ability to perform well on the state test. They measure this throughout the year on various tests that attempt to mimic the PSSA in word choice and content. These are the predictive tests that are administered 4 + times throughout the school year.
This year, my school decided to order an external testing service to measure our in-house progress from September through the PSSA in April. Unfortunately, we went on the cheap and didn’t order anything more than the tests themselves. That meant no scantron, no grade sheet and a lot of time deciphering our student’s data. We were given the test booklets and instructions to fill out a two-sided grid for each of our classes. The grid (seen below) was confusing, manually entered, unarchivable, and ultimately useless.
By counting the number of X’s in each question column, the naked eye must decide which questions and skills the most students struggled with. It was an imperfect system that gave me little information about my students’ performance, and took up way too much time. Multiply that across my school of teachers, and we are putting in tens of hours of work into creating hand-written grids that are hard to read and impossible to integrate into our teaching.
So, with the help of my amazing roommate and friend Becca, I created this:
An electronic form of the grid, this spreadsheet format now gives us the ability to quickly and easily enter the data into the grid and instantly receive information about our students’ performance by breaking the questions into skills, color coding each question item for its total correct score, and providing a PSSA equivalent category for individual students. From here, you can create graphs of student performance by class, group (special education, for example) or grade. With a few clicks of the mouse, the information can be manipulated and turned into something useful. It took about 5 hours to put together, and without Becca – would have been far more primitive. But I did it – and the results have been amazing. I gave a short workshop session to all the teaching staff and now everyone is on board.
It has been one of my more tangible accomplishments this year – and something that really excited me. I like the feeling of creating something to make my school more efficient and my colleagues better teachers. Next year, I’ll be advising my school to purchase everything with the tests – not just the test books. And I really don’t mind that the testing scantron machine will make my electronic grid obsolete. I don’t really care how we do it, I just want us to use our data better. If we’re gonna force these kids to take tests, the results better be damn useful.
- Jeff
The jig is up
Kyle has been vying for my attention for some time now. His moods vary greatly throughout the day and seem to depend on the amount of face time I’m able to give him. During homeroom in the morning, he follows me like a shadow and creeps in and out of my room throughout the day during passing periods. Totally innocent, Kyle is craving some male attention – and not just mine. He has developed a good raport with other men in the building but seems to be especially attached to me. I’ve taken him on as a helper in the classroom, conversed with him about every subject imaginable and even made a special handshake that just the two of us know.
And in the back of my mind, I can’t help but see a little of myself in him. Now, I come to this conclusion without any evidence or curiosity – I haven’t pursued this information or confirmed it. It’s just kind of there. So when Kyle told me that he had googled my name a few weeks ago, I immediately put up a wall. I could tell where this was heading, and I didn’t need anything more on my plate. Obviously searching for someone to talk to, or at least look to, Kyle had discovered my little secret.
While I don’t consider being gay a secret anymore, it’s certainly not common knowledge among my students. When they ask me questions about my girlfriend or if I’m getting married, I usually laugh, tell them “I can’t” or refer to my long-standing on-again, off-again fake relationship with my co-worker Ms. Teune. But once I knew he had looked me up online, the jig was up. There’s simply no tip-toeing around this:
Practically every link is related to something LGBT I did in college. The inevitable question came this past Monday.
“Mr. Manassero – is everything online about you true?”
“Well, Kyle, yes – I don’t think there are any lies on there about me.”
“Then what does LGBT mean?”
“It means Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Gay?”
I wasn’t going to lie – the question was there, and Kyle was just waiting – clinging to the hope that I would just say it out loud – that maybe he was actually in the midst of someone like him. I’m making a lot of assumptions here, but I can’t help it. I was in his shoes not too long ago, and I know the feeling. I remember having a similar conversation with one of my high school teachers. I was searching for a figure (anyone, really) who I could identify with in that way – looking for someone who could show me that everything would be alright – that being gay didn’t mean what some people wanted me to believe.
For those reasons, and my comittment to being open about who I am, I told him.
“Actually, Kyle, yes – I am gay.”
From there, we had a short conversation about who knew and that it really isn’t a big deal. I also made clear my desire for him not to tell anyone on his own. I know he left my classroom a bit lighter, less anxious and more sure of himself. I’m eager to see what happens next. But for now, I’m just sort of relieved. I always knew this day would come – and the best part is that it feels completely right – totally organic and sort of anticlimactic. Just the way it should be.
- Jeff
Note: I attempt to shield my students’ identities by not attributing specific actions and characteristics to particular students at my school. All names I use in this blog to identify students are pseudonyms. Since this post deals with sensitive content, I wanted to make this clear.
Be like me
I’ve been failing at male relationships my whole life. And what I mean by that is…I’ve never really been able to connect with other men in the same way I connect with women. Ever since I was a kid, I preferred my female friends. I was doing flips on the playground bars and made breakfast in bed for my sister’s friends when they had sleep overs. On the weekends, I made sure I got to go shopping at Ross with my mom when my dad was doing yard work. Women became my go-to, and somewhere in the mix, my ability to bond with men was weakened. The few male friends I had in school either turned out to be gay or are out of touch. And still today, I find my relationships with women far outnumber and outflank those with men.
And so it was a challenge when I decided to take up the task of leading my school’s boys mentoring group, Boys II Men. I’ve documented this before when we made our first visit to the local jail. Since then, we’ve collected toys for families during the holiday and volunteered at a church. This month, I wanted something tangible for them to walk away about a topic I know many of them have encountered (or will) in their own lives: domestic violence. I found a local organization that does outreach in the public schools and set up a workshop for the boys after school. A month in the making, the workshop took place this afternoon.
Within the first 10 minutes, I was back in my place – awkwardly trying to feel them out as they were creating ruckus in my room. The guest had arrived, and none of the boys were listening to my pleas to sit down and get settled. Not being quiet, I knew they had heard me. I knew they were ignoring me. In that moment, it felt like the wind was knocked out of me – I needed to catch my breathe. At the surface, I was just plain frustrated with the situation at hand. But deep down, I was being reminded (in a very explicit way) of my own insecurities. I feel trapped between doing what feels right, and altering my approach to fit their idea of masculinity and authority. If there was a class about how to be a male role model, I’d consider paying a hefty fee. While I acknowledge the fact that you can’t learn this stuff, I still feel like I need some help understanding where I fit into all this. Because, right now, I feel like that last puzzle piece that fell under the couch – obviously important but just not in the right place.
Most of these boys just don’t respect me as a male role model. Their actions show a complete disregard for my intentions and are an assault on my alternative approach to discipline and relationships. They view me as weak, emotional and – ultimately – irrelevant. I’m not like their fathers or their cousins or their neighbors. And I’m certainly not like some of the other men I work with – who have my student’s instant respect upon entering the room. Unlike them, I have a quieter voice, a less aggressive demeanor, am far more patient and understanding, and have lighter skin. I am a foreigner. When it comes down to it, I don’t think too many of these young boys want to be like me. And that’s kind of a hard pill to swallow.
- Jeff
P.S. I really don’t need a slew of reassuring comments to follow – just had to get this off my mind.
One of those days
In the magical world that is my school, things aren’t always rainbows and unicorns. There are days, like today, when I shutter to imagine life at some of the schools where my friends and roommates work. The constant interruptions, talking and glaring apathy – these are the banes of my classroom. In comparison to the violent outbursts and biting rhetoric of other students, my classroom management problems are often low-key. Today was different. And by that logic, I guess today was high-key.
It started out innocent enough. My principal had requested a lesson about Haiti, its history and the current challenges it faces in the wake of this month’s earthquake. I obliged, and put together something pretty good, I thought. From the looks of the kids in my audience, you would think I was forcing them to re-learn the alphabet. Bored and disengaged, they fought with me constantly. They seemed to feel entitled to an easy day, as if Fridays were just thrown in for good measure. And it just got worse, and worse and worse. Until my homeroom returned at the end of the day.
There was an assembly downstairs, and so their usual elective was cancelled and replaced with homeroom. To them, it was free time. For me, it was time to learn. Am I stubborn? Perhaps. But I wasn’t going to give slack to a class that hadn’t earned it. In times like these, I wrestle with a feeling pettiness, wondering if my application of consequences to one class or student is really warranted or not. It can come down to just a few kids – the difference between my tolerance of disruptions and a complete meltdown. And this was a meltdown. It got to the point that I could barely finish a sentence without someone laughing or shouting. I paused. Remained calm. And went for help. Now, this isn’t my usual response, but I was tired and it was Friday. After the lecture by my principal, the detention list was finalized, and I just sat down at my desk and stopped teaching, well aware of the fact that they were no longer learning.
Days like this don’t come often (I’m thankful for this), but they hold value in at least making clear my limits. And I hope, rather than seem like I gave up on them, my students realize I expect more and won’t settle for less. Most likely they’ll completely have forgotten by Monday. I’m sure it was to them, as it was to me, just one of those days.
- Jeff
Awards & honors
Congratulations are in order. I found this on my desk at the end of a long, hard day. And I didn’t even know I was nominated. Despite its lack of objectiveness and legitimacy, that it’s written on scratch paper horizontally and my name is spelled wrong, I’m considering listing it on my resume. Someone might believe it. She apparently does.
It’s strange how sentimental things like this can make my day. Too easy to please? Maybe. But if your looking to cheer me up, take a cue from Jazmine.
- Jeff
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