The drawbacks of summer break

This is what summer has made of me: a paranoid dreamer.

Part of what I love about the job is the vacation time.  Sure, it's inflexible and probably reduces my overall salary, but I love it nonetheless.  I have extended time to work on pet projects, truly relax and explore books that I may or may not use in the classroom.  I ride my bike and catch up with friends.  I'm learning scales and modes on my guitar.  My legs are now tan and sand fly-bitten because I go to the beach; life is good to us.

But at the end of the day the clock strikes 9 and I find that I'm not all that tired.  I wait as long as possible to crawl into bed and still fall asleep quickly, as is the habit I've fallen into.  It's here that I've been experiencing many a deep remorse, as Mark Twain once put it, in my dreams.  Let me explain.

Because education and kids are two of the things our culture tells us we should feel an obligation to foster, teaching carries a certain amount of moral baggage.  I've been told all of the good teachers keep their eyes out for 'teachable material' in their spare time, take papers home to grade, give up weekend and evening time to tutor or coach or cheer on the kiddies. And so on.  So in that first week of my well earned (yet obligatory) vacation, I spent my time scrounging through second-hand book shops and libraries.  I took down ideas and names and addresses in small notebooks.  Granted, I treated myself to lunches out and some new summer clothes at the skads of sales I saw in every shop window.  This blending of personal and professional time was expected, as it usually takes me a bit to wind down from the frenetic pace of work.  

Skip ahead a few weeks.  I now lay in bed, awake, and the sky is the iridescent grey-blue that appears just before the birds begin to clamor.  The alarm hasn't gone off, but I am awake.  I was wakened by those things that teachers normally dream of during the school year: loosing student assignments, forgetting class on the first day, walking into a classroom to find that your students are not the age group you expected and worrying that "I wasn't trained for this."  Schedules were ruined, I had gum in my mouth when I shouldn't have, I was dressed for embarrassment, yaddah yaddah yaddah.  But it's summer, and I'm not at work.  Why the dreams?

My suspected reason: I'm spending my summer vacation researching the job shift from Auckland to any one of 5 locations in North America.  Most of the family knows by now that my lovely husband is shifting careers, and is applying for graduate schools.  This means that I'm making plans for job change come the middle of 2009.  This doesn't worry me too much because we're, for the most part, moving back to familiar territory.  I know the ropes of applying for work in the US, I've done an international move before and I know people in nearly all of the cities we're interested in moving to.  But a move means that I'll be having two first days of an academic year, and for some reason that is picking on my sub-conscience.  

So now that I have all of this time on my hands, I have time to worry about the future.  My nightmares (they wake me up from sleep, so that's what they technically have become) almost always deal with first-sight sort of worries: first day of classes, first time meeting a department head, first time dealing with conflict in a new school.  I think most teachers have had a few classes that never quite get off on the right foot, and after having a few of those in 2007 I'm extremely paranoid about having to dodge this bullet twice in 2009.  

I guess I'll find out how long this dream pattern lasts.  It may go away once we pin down where we'll be.  It may ride right up to day one of classes in September.   Either way, I'd much rather be having nightmares about flesh-eating shrimps jumping off the barby than dreaming about gum gluing my mouth shut at a job interview that won't come for another 5 months.

I almost wish I had the eye twitch back. 

Highlights of the 2008 school year

12.  Having a 20 year veteran teacher with Specialist distinction come to me for advice.  On pedagogy, even.  Gosh.

11.  Finally getting it through to my Thai student, whom I taught last year as well, how to make subjects and verbs agree.  In only took a year and half to crack that nut.

10.  During a pre-exam fun quiz one student group named themselves Obama '08! after my bumper sticker.  They later confessed to seeking favour from the judge; they lost miserably.  I gave extra candies on their way out of class, though, for their gumption.

9.  - "Whoa, Miss, nice shoes!" (Indeed, I was wearing new shoes.)

     - "Thank you very much...who are you?"

     - "_____, Miss."

     - "Nice to meet you, _____."

8.  Tape a Co-worker's Personal Effects to the Ceiling Day.  There is still a Chupa Chup stuck to the ceiling 4 months on.

7.  After weeks of hearing, "Shut up, R!" shouted when I turned my back to the class (when in fact neither R. nor any other student was talking at all), I snapped.  

-T.: "Shut up, R.!"  

-Me, without taking my eyes off of what I was doing: "Shut up, T."  

-T.: "Touche, Miss."  

Satisfying, indeed.

6.  A very Catholic, golly-goshing Media Studies teacher sat in our shared office, along with me and a host of atheists, hard-out chain smokers and a flamboyantly gay teacher with a penchant for sparkly cuff links.  One day her "bring in a magazine" lesson during a print media unit yielded a skin mag thinly disguised as a car mag.  Not knowing what to do, she had taken it off of the student and brought it up to the office wondering if she should call the boy's mother or just throw it away.  The smoker, Mr. Cuff Links, and I raced over to her desk and had a hoot over the tawdry and airbrushed stuff.  Let's just say that jokes and comments were made, which were loud enough to be heard by the Head of Department one office over, and said HOD had to come in, take the magazine away and tell us to get back to work.  He never does this sort of thing, which leads us to believe that he still has the magazine.

5.  A young Russian-born man who struggled with syntax all year, waving from the doorway on the last day of class, shouting over the din, "Thanks for the class, Miss!"

4.  This same young man striding into my office the next week, only three days before the big exam, with four essays in hand.  He thrusts the essays at me with panic in his face.  "Will you give me some feedback on these?"  They were all awesome.

3.  After yet another discussion about why John Keats, and all Romantic poets for that matter, are fixated on booze, sex and the like, I heard a brief silence followed by about four kids simultaneously crying, "Aaaaahhhhh."  The dirty euphemisms had just gained substantial meaning and they realised that sex is more than a physical thing; it's often just a conduit for other more important ideas or relationships.  Therefore, all sniggering and fun was no longer allowed in class because it would make them look immature and stupid in the eyes of their peers.  I was witness to the death of innocence in some small part.

2.  Handing a student a battered copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest against his will, and then finding out through his speech project later that year that the book helped him better understand his relationship with religion.  He had realised not that he was an atheist, but why he was an atheist, and could articulate this for the first time.  I didn't expect this at all, seeing as Christian martyr imagery is so strong and (according to many) affirmative at the end of the book.  After his speech he thanked me for making him read the book.

1.  Hearing the guy who hired me tell me that he's awfully glad that he hired me.

How New Zealand high school works: the basic structure of schools

Introduction

One of the biggest challenges of taking up a new job, in your home country or abroad, is figuring out how you fit within a larger structure of the organization. As teachers, we have to take whole courses in our training programs about this topic. We study how the public education evolved, how schools are funded, various levels of governmental involvement, legal requirements at each level, etc. The US is unique in a lot of ways because of our highly stratified structure, from local up to federal levels and state-to-state variety. A lot of teachers choose to know the basics and then get down to the business of their work: giving content to students. These people have a knack for separating the wheat from the chaff and then getting on with their lives. They know how their jobs relate to politics, how their personal budgets depend on funding formulae and the rights that they and their students have within the system.  These basics are the issues that affect day to day operations in the class so most of us choose to know these and leave the rest to department heads and senior management.

And then there are people like me. We can't help but dig into details even if it means not doing anything meaningful or immediately necessary for hours on end. We're pickers of the worst kind: complete and unrelenting. We learn the basics and then can't help but learn the basics of other peoples' positions and responsibilities, as well. I've come to terms with this part of my psychology and have managed to get some use out of it. There are times, though, when I succeed in collecting nothing but mental junk that sits in my mind, the likes of which may or may not be usable in the future.

Before coming down to New Zealand I was working as a substitute teacher in my district's middle and high schools. If you or someone you know has been a substitute teacher you'll know that the work is sporadic and is prone to periods of unemployment not long enough to take on a second job. To fill in the time I decided to do a little background reading on New Zealand education. A little reading turned into a lot of reading, which turned into a full-blown quest for any and all information relating to NZ schools: I read the official information from the official sites and then dug into news article, school sites and newsletters, student projects I found on-line, and any articles on the web that included the terms "New Zealand" and "education".

One thing that I found during my search was that there really wasn't much out there for overseas trained teachers. The jargon was, honestly, pretty foreign despite the fact that New Zealand speaks English.  In addition to this, the education system had recently been revamped and included new vocabulary and names for those structures that remain the same throughout time (such as grade levels, subjects, certifications, exams, etc).  Older vocabulary was still commonly in use throughout most documents.  This meant that two different articles about the same topic could be using two different terms for the same thing. I was expecting a certain amount of new terminology but nothing to the extent at which I had just uncovered. Luckily I had the time to sift through it all and break it down. If I had been working full time I probably would have had to take the approach of the more prudent researcher and start looking for wheat amongst the chaff, and I can honestly say that that approach probably wouldn't have yielded much in the way of wheat.

This is the first in a series of posts titled "How NZ High School Works". My aim is to break down the structure of secondary education for those who grew up with the American education system. The information about New Zealand education that is published on the internet is confusing at best, indecipherable at worst, and there doesn't yet exist any information geared specifically toward an American audience. In this series I hope to explain some of the basics of the system and lay out what outsiders need to know to start their study of education in New Zealand.  The information presented here is simply what I've managed to glean from my forays into public documents and my few years of experience here.  Please forgive any misinformation that might slip into any article in the series.  I'll try to make sure that my information is as accurate as possible.

Part I: The Overall Structure

Students in New Zealand experience basically the same educational trajectory that American students experience. They go through a period of exploration and social growth at a very young age, then learn the basics of language and math with applications in social studies and science topics. They enter a period of enhanced freedom before high school where they are allowed to manage themeselves more independently while getting the support structures that they need from attentive teachers. In their final years they more or less take the reins of their own education and navigate a catalog of required and optional classes that will eventually lead them to a certification. With this certification they head off into whichever direction the magnatism of the Earth pulls them.

Within this general trajectory are subtle differences that ultimately give a New Zealand child a much different experience than that of an American child.

Children in New Zealand begin school at the age of 5. This means that on their 5th birthday they get to go to school. This could be late in the academic year or early in the year, but it happens on their birthday. According to law the NZ education system is required to provide all children ages 5-16 with 180 days of school per year.  This is changing and will soon expand to cover students aged 5-18 years.  Legally all of these students must be supervised or involved in a structured program during his/her school's operating hours.  

Most children have access to early childhood education (ECE) centres.  These are called Kindergarten and are the American equivalent of pre-school.  Many of these centres get federal funding and thus the staff who run them must hold certifications in ECE.  From what I've learned these certifications are as thorough and involved as those held by other teachers.  

From the age of 5 students then move from Kindy (another short-hand version of Kindergarten) to Primary school (Elementary School).  They are placed in a full day programme in Year 1 of the curriculum.  

New Zealand refers to class levels as years, so Kindergarten in the US is the same thing as Year 1 in New Zealand.  First Grade is Year 2, Second Grade is Year 3 and so on up the line.  These students have a school day that begins around 9 am and goes until 3 pm.  They get a 20 minute break in the morning and a 30-40 minute lunch break at around 1 pm.  These students learn the basics of reading, writing and math within the context of larger units, much in the same manner of US students.  The vast majority of these schools are uniformed and nearly all are co-ed.  They learn all of their subjects from one teacher and stay in one classroom for the full day.  They get PE regularly and rotate through optional subjects like art as the school sees fit.  Very few of these primary schools offer music; there is no such thing as a Primary or General Music teacher.

Once students reach Years 7 and 8 they enter what is called Intermediate School.  Unlike American middle schools or junior high schools, these students do not adopt the traditional high school bell schedule.  Intermediate school looks, for the most part, just like primary school.  Students are still taught by one teacher all day and stay in one classroom within a co-ed context.  They go through math hour, then a regiment of punctuation and grammar and handwriting before morning tea (New Zealand's equivalent of recess) at 10:30.  Students then come back for practice with reading or some other sort of science-based activity.  At this level they begin to study Maori language and culture in more depth and are expected to work on larger projects that take days to complete.  This is where they begin to learn independence in academics.  They don't learn time management skills at the same level as American students, however; Kiwi intermediate students work in one classroom all day and don't have to plan out which books to prepare, when to be at a different location, etc.  The social structure of the groups looks very much like upper-elementary groupings, with most students opting to spend time with others of their same gender.  Little teasing between genders is seen in the classroom, but lots of mixed-gender project work is generated from seating arrangements (also controlled by the teacher and not the students).

In Year 9 students make the jump to secondary education model.  This jump involves adjusting to bells, class schedules and the levels of responsibility and accountability that most American students learn in middle school.  Most secondary schools are uniformed and nearly half of the New Zealand secondary schools are single sex.  Students can progress through Year 13 before leaving for University, although some leave in Year 12 to pursue apprenticeships or two-year degree programmes at trade schools.  

A note here on terminology is needed for clarity's sake.  The old secondary system, Bursary, referred to Years as Forms.  Beginning at the current Year 7 age, students were categorised as Form 1 (Year 7) up through Form 7 (Year 13).  Many schools still use the Form label when referring to a students level of academic study in secondary school.  I prefer to use the Year label as it seems to be the direction many schools and teachers are heading in their choice of lingo.  It also clears up my daily interactions with other teachers surrounding one period of the day called Form Period.  This is America's version of home room and is a short period of the day dedicated to reading out notices, passing out forms, homework checks and so on.

High school is divided into two phases: Junior school and Senior school.  Junior school comprises Years 9 and 10 and covers basic academic skills in English, math, science, social studies, PE, and a rotating elective line.  This is loosely termed "technology" and can include anything from drama to media to wood working to music to food technology.  The aim of this block is to give students a sound knowledge of the basics before allowing them to specialise in Senior school.  Senior school covers Years 11-13 and is the period in which students begin to explore their options for their lives after high school.  All students have to take English, maths and a science of some variety.  Depending on their post-secondary aspirations they pick and choose which courses will get them the proper certification.  

Senior school is also where students begin taking NCEA or Cambridge classes.  Not every school offers both, but all except one offers NCEA.  The school I teach in offers both, but restricts who may enter which pathway.  These are two different curricula that give students access to a secondary certification similar to a High School Diploma.  

NCEA is a New Zealand developed system that is designed to work with local tertiary programs.  The Cambridge curriculum is based on the UK secondary curriculum and is targeted at those students wanting to study abroad after high school.  Both deliver the same basic skills, but Cambridge eventually narrows to just four core subjects (English, math, science, history) as a means of preparing students for highly academic tertiary programmes.  NCEA offers a wider range of courses including hard and soft materials, hospitality, health and physical education, business studies, economics, accounting, te reo Maori, and a host of others.  In both NCEA and Cambridge systems, students must pass certain classes in order to earn a certificate.  NCEA students earn credits and can earn a variety of certificates based on how many credits they earn at the three levels of NCEA study: Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3.  Cambridge is an all-or-nothing system like the US's: you must take a series of courses to the end of the line, and only then will you earn your degree.  In both systems, social promotion as an accepted practice and course content is catered to both the academic and social needs of the student group.  I will post other articles in the future further detailing the nuances of the NCEA and Cambridge systems.

The school day for secondary school is very similar to that of the younger Kiwi students.  High schools generally begin at 8:45 am and end at 3:10.  Many students come to school before classes or stay late to practice sports, music or other group activities.  For the most part sports teams do not train five days per week as in the US.  Top teams usually train 2-3 days per week and compete on weekends.  Very few competitions occur during the week, with most taking place on Saturday.

About half of New Zealand males leave school by the end of Year 12 to attend two-year programs in trade schools, or take up apprenticeships.  The other half have their eyes set on a four-year diploma through one of New Zealand's universities.  This is a well established trend that has been strengthened over the last few years by feedback from the business sector.  Most employers claim that they do not prefer employees with university degrees, but instead competent workers with a sound work ethic and some relevant experience, be it in the classroom or the workplace.  As opposed to US employers, who seem firmly acclimated to a workforce flush with degrees and diplomas in every subject under the sun, New Zealanders still very much see work and life experience as equally valuable as advanced education.  

There is one thing that Year 13 students have in common with the American high school senior; most view their last year of high school as a significant accomplishment and relish the last year of what they come to regard as their childhood.  While some here stay on just long enough to finish out their last Rugby season and then sign out, most attempt to enjoy their friends and school community as much as they can...before they have to leave.

The problem with being international

We've been having some very frank discussions about finances at our school lately.  This isn't unusual.  Every school has a financial crunch that forces tough choices on which services to keep and which to pitch.  As a wealthier school, however, most of our discussions historically revolve around how to make ends meet on the multi-million dollar mortgage we took out on a new auditorium a few years back.  That and how to get more money for an already wealthy rowing team.  I keep my face shut about the appalling lack of computer labs (we have 4, count 'em, 4 labs available for non-computing classes in our school of 2,100 students), or the fact that all of my classes are kicked into the library for a "reading period" as a way to free up classroom space for other classes.  ("But Silent Sustained Reading is a good thing for young kids.  Why not continue that practice into the upper reaches of high school?)

This year, however, we've learned that only 51% of our operating costs come from the government.  Yep, as a public school only half of our funding (outside of salary) comes from the government.  How are we making ends meet?  We bill the families of our students directly.

A number of our students come from overseas.  This phenomenon isn't new to the teachers at my school.  We've seen these students in our classrooms for years, and are all thoroughly acclimated to hearing Korean, Chinese, Thai and other Asian languages spoken around school grounds.  While most of these students have immigrated with their families intact and now have resident status, some students are sent to us by parents who continue to live and earn money in their mother countries.  This latter class of student students are charged an arm and a leg to attend our school.  International student fees this year are $12,000NZ but you won't find that price tag anywhere on the school website.  We're able to get away with this because, well, we have to.  If the Ministry of Education isn't going to pay for more classrooms to accommodate our bulging population, and the "suggested donation" of roughly $400 asked of families isn't cutting it, how else do we raise funds?  Pull out a loan?

It certainly doesn't lessen the temptation to charge parents when the families of international students often times have the money to send their kids abroad.  Market forces are driving this little problem: foreign families want top-quality language instruction for their children to help them compete in a highly-competitive business field, while we scratch our heads and wonder how to pay the bills.  As a staff we've decided that this needs to stop.  We shouldn't be forced to look at students as merely a revenue stream.  At the moment, we, along with a number of other schools in our area, are pressuring the Ministry of Education to fix the situation.  These foreign families are already dealing the pressure of sacrificing their living arrangements for their childrens' education.  We're getting stonewalled by the ministry, of course, and are being told that according to funding formulae we are getting more than enough to keep things running.  So it goes.

This article in the New York Times sums up the trend of the Korean pre-brain drain very well. Essentially, South Koreans are becoming disillusioned with their high pressure education system, particularly access to English education that is perceived to be severely lacking.  Mothers are taking their children to New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the US in droves, leaving the fathers behind to work and pay for this on-sight English training.  The goal is to get the kids into top tier universities in South Korea and the US.  The side effect is, unfortunately, stressed parents and youngsters who are left trying to make sense of the value of this "trade-off."

It's hard to watch human-scale effect of this globally-scaled trend. We just finished with our first big round of parent-teacher interview nights. I have yet to meet an international student's father at one of these evenings. We have translators on staff to help us communicate with the mothers who frequently don't have the vocabulary to ask me questions.  Many of my students act as translators, and I tell most of them to tell their mothers that I say that they are doing a superb job.  The boys always get embarrassed and the moms always get a little misty eyed.  It's never easy assuring these lone mothers that their sons are doing one helluva job balancing the gift that their parents are giving them with the pressures of growing up, even if that isn't necessarily reflected in their exam scores.

Making Children Cry

This isn't something that most teachers brag about but today I feel rather proud of doing this to one of my students.

We are working on an important piece of creative writing that involves explaining memories in terms of symbols.  The students are asked to choose an object that can be said to represent a memory, and describe it in such a way that it becomes both a jumping off point for autobiography and also a symbol of who they are as a person.  It's a challenging task and one that they've been struggling to wrap their heads around for a few days now.  

Today we focussed on how to describe these objects in detail using sensory descriptions and specific, varied adjectives.  They warmed up with a paragraph detailing an object using their senses of smell, touch, taste, hearing, etc.  I asked them to pick an object that they plan on using for this particular creative writing assignment.  Most struggled to pin down their thoughts.  I heard a lot of comments like, "how would you describe..." and, "so I just write down the memory or event as it happened?"  Frustrated with the group-approach to something that is essentially an individual task (one person, one brain/memory, one pen, one piece of paper), I pulled out the big guns.

And made a young man shed tears.

I opened a jar of pickled jalapenos and a bag of after dinner mints.  Upon the recommendation of a fellow teacher these foods were chosen for their ability to dig strong reactions out of kids.  I told each student that they HAD to eat one of each; if they chickened out they would have to stay in at lunch and eat ALL of the leftover jalapenos.  Never ones to back down from a challenge the boys rushed forward and dug in.  After some coughing and groaning and one instance of choking (on jalapeno juice gone down the wrong pipe), they boys actually got down to writing how the foods affected their body.  While they wrote I congratulated the them on their bravery.  After all, not many people have the guts to each a plain chilli pepper.  Some of the boys then took the liberty to finger one student who didn't actually join the rush on the jalapeno jar.  He's a good student, and since he was steadily writing away I figured that he had wolfed down his sample and had just gotten on with the task.  After some ribbing from the other boys this kid decided that he was not only going to eat one, but two of the largest slices he could find.  

He came up to the front of the class, fished them out of the jar and then returned to his seat to the sound of applause.  After a few minutes we went on to compare their descriptions of their memory objects to their descriptions of the food.  A motion from one student distracted me from the discussion: out of the corner of my eye I notice this singularly brave student crying.  Big crocodile tears fell down his face as he sniffed and wiped at his cheeks with one hand, the other hand still writing quickly.  My pause caused the other students to take note of this crying boy.  A classmates tried to give him crap for crying but the others defended him, mentioning that the he ate more than anyone else in the class.

After sympathising that "those pack a punch", and his assurance that he loves spicy food, we got on with the task.  Wouldn't you know it, their descriptions of their food experience were much more detailed and vivid than their earlier attempts at descriptive writing.

The kids asked if they could have a few more peppers on their way out of class at the end of the period.  I consented and turned my back to gather my things.  Two minutes later I was alone in the room with two jalapeno slices bobbing in a jar of brine.  I think the lesson went over well. 

My educator footprint

The media buzzes with news of our carbon footprints as drivers, eaters, consumers, Americans, etc.. This is merely the lastest sphere in which we humans are beginning to realise our impact on our surroundings. Our impact begs to be qualified as good or bad, desirable or undesirable, permanent or temporary, unavoidable or frivolous. We argue until blue in the face and watch the data roll in from countless surveys and studies. Once it's all in, we argue some more about whether it's fair and accurate, and then we get down to the business of doing something about it.

I'm told by many credible sources that I will change the lives of young people if I work as an educator. I'm going to assume that this is true. During those moments when things just don't seem to get through to my students or when I'm feeling completely ineffectual at work, I have my doubts.  Mostly, though, I hope that they can take something of use from the lesson even if only that school is a safe place and that reading can be enjoyable. With any luck my educator footprint will be sustainable and positive. We all remember the good teacher we had growing up, but we also remember the bad teachers, the ones that squelched our interest in certain subjects or possibly even school in general.

As my second year of teaching unfolds I find myself keenly aware of what sort of impact I will have on students. At the end of my first year I spent some time jotting down notes on how the year went and how many goals for the year I achieved. My main goals were to 1) learn to manage my students behaviour effectively and 2) produce exam scores on par with more experienced teachers. I figured that if I could pin these down in the first year the other things would fall into place.

At the end of last year I could not speak for my second goal, as the exam scores for half of my students wouldn't arrive until the beginning of the following year. Classroom management is basically an immediate feedback cycle, though. At the end of the year I realized that I hadn't done as well as I would have liked. In fact, I didn't do nearly as well as the other first year teachers in my department with one of my classes. Student reviews of my class were fairly negative of my management style, and by the last few months of the year I had completely lost control of this group. Homework return rates sunk through the floor, a core of about 8 students in the class routinely challenged my authority during lessons as a group, and looming exams added stress to those students who were doing their best to behave and get down to business. Because I had such a difficult time reigning in this small group of rebels, the rest of the class lost respect of me. Peer pressure kicked in and before I knew it things were beyond my control. My only option was to remove students from class to other classrooms, dole out detentions for the smallest infractions and rule the class with an iron fist. The fun end-of-year unit wasn't nearly as fun because I couldn't trust them to work in groups. No teacher wants to end the year on that kind of note.

I realised that this was my educator footprint for this group of students. My reputation with them is one of a pushover who cannot earn the respect of students. I let a small group of students ruin the class for the majority. Other teachers knew this group of students and confirmed that they behave poorly in other classes, particurlarly with female teachers, but that doesn't erase the other students' perceptions of me.

After reflecting and discussing and resolving to the best of my ability, I thought I had finally come to a point where I felt comfortable with my mistakes and knew what to do should the situation arise in the future. These things happen and I can't control the attitudes of my students, right? This acceptance went completely out the window during the last period of the day a few weeks ago. I was assigned to fill in for another teacher and when I got to the class I noticed that many of the students in this Core 8 were in this class. I walked into the classroom and set my things on front desk to a chorus of loud complaining, grousing and laughing. Once again, they pulled the rest of the class into their game: get the teacher's ire up, distract the group from the beginning of the lesson and then watch others play up and talk back to the teacher in a one-upsmanship game of sorts.  After some time and a few tricks learned last year, I managed to get this Core 8 on task and making good progress on their graphing work.  The other boys, though, had taken this hooting and hollering to mean that the other students were up for a show.  There are leaders and followers in boys schools, and in this case the leaders (read Core 8) decided to wind up their classmates and set them loose on me after backing out of the way.

I'm fine with the idea that these boys didn't enjoy my class last year.  It happens.  The thought that they may be harbouring negative opinions of English as a subject because of last year, though, is what really bothers me.  It's surprising to see how the other half lives on this topic: could those teachers that I really didn't get along with recognise that they turned me off to a subject?  And did they manage to pick up that I really didn't care about it at the time?  I think I saw a few of those faces on that day and it bugs me.   

First Day Jitters

We just had our first week of school at WBHS. It was a short and odd week that started on Tuesday with a teacher-only day. I spent most of that day either in meetings or in front of the copy machine. On Wednesday we met with our form classes (the equivalent of homeroom) for a full day of geting-to-know-you style games and activities. This year we have a different setup this year that required a full day of teaching the kids the new ropes. Instead of having a form class made of students of the same age, we have a mix of students aged 13 to 18 years old. This is meant to mix the students up and introduce them to other students that they may not ordinarily meet. It also takes a bit of the load off of me, as I will be placing the older students in leadership roles. During our thrice weekly meetings the olders students will help out the younger and new students when it comes time to exams and studying and other sorts of things. They'll be able to get help on their homework from other student that took that course the year before or from other students who are just good at that subject. The kids seem to like this new system. It was really cool to watch them trading tips and offering information about different parts of school life like I've never seen at this school before. I think this was a highlight of the week for a lot of the kids, espectially the younger ones. We took about an hour break in the middle of the day to play some team-building games. We had chair races and even a few games of Bullrush. Even the too-cool-for-school types (which I can now spot a mile away) let their hair down and joined in on the fun.

Thursday was the big day of the week for me, though. This was the day that I met my English students for the first time. I barely slept the night before. Yes, I came down with a case of the first day jitters. I kept thinking about what the students would be like, and how I was going to introduce expectations to avoid some of the problems I had last year (a bad start to the year caused major year-long issues in two of my classes last year). I knew that I would have a few of my students from last year and I found myself wondering how they were going to act in class this year. Would they try to buck the rules because the already knew me? Would they assume that they could behave like they did last year because they are in my class again? As I lay in the dark I wondered how many students were awake at that point thinking about school, just like I was.

I had nothing to worry about, though, because the day went very smoothly. The prep work that I had done paid off and my students seem pretty nice. I even threw some homework at them on the first day and got a really good return on Friday. Most kids are pretty good on the first day, though, so I know it doesn't mean much. I am glad that I don't have many larger-than-life personalities. Those guys can be a bit hard to manage in a room of 30 boys.

The first week finished off with a staff competition afternoon on Friday in which we had to compete against other staff members for a House Cup. As mentioned in my previous posts my school has initiated a House system in which every student and staff member belongs to a "house." These are akin to the houses in the Harry Potter books and are a very British invention. Each house has a name, emblem and colour that we wear during competitions. The Staff House competition pitted house against house in a variety of team building exercises. We went to a sport complex off school grounds and had to do a variety of tasks for points. I was expecting the worst going into it. Most people have to endure this type of thing in private sector jobs. These events typically involve making a structure out of office supplies or mastering trivial trivia pulled from teammates like so many wisdom teeth. Our team day didn't turn out to be that bad but did drag on a bit. We mostly got to hang out in the sun and do the silly stuff that teachers tend to do, except that we were able to be silly with the staff of other departments. Most people at our school are really friendly but we're such a numerous lot that we don't get to really meet many people outside of our own departments. This was very good thing. The last event of the day - market a product (soap powder) with a presentation - was particularly fun. Most people decided to take the piss out of some aspect of the school. My team came up the the idea to poke fun at racist attitudes that can pop up in New Zealand and in the South African community we have on staff. One group even composed a full satire on the TV interview our Headmaster did just that morning on a controvercial initiative our school has put in place this year. The whole event was quite entertaining and let us all make complete asses of ourselves. Where else but in New Zealand?

Next week the real work starts. Fun and games aside, I now face the task of collecting writing samples from each of my students and figuring out where they stand. I'm also teaching completely new curricula this year. I'll be able to recycle some of the units I did last year, but not many. I'm basically building up 200% more original content than I did last year, and I say that with no exaggeration. Whereas last year I taught a nuber of groups in Form 4 and Level 1 (9th and 10th grade in the US), I'm teaching four other age/level groups this time around. It'll be challenging, but after this week I know that I have a lot of good students and staff to help make the job enjoyable.

R-Day

I recently read an interesting article in my cousin's blog about teaching high school math in California. She wrote about how teachers' successes and failures are inextricably linked to the successes and failures of their students. There's much in the US news these days about reward/punishment schemes that use student scores on standardized tests as a means of measuring teacher efficacy. Whether this is effective, advisable, necessary, welcome or The Coming of the Apocolypse is not for me to speculate on in this space. The most interesting thing about this particular blog post was the sentiment that teachers often have to face up to their failures when exam time rolls around: when the results comes in, teachers need to acknowledge that something went right or wrong somewhere along the line, be it in their classroom or somewhere else during the students' life experience. There are a number of students in classrooms across the world who have negligible negative outside influences. These students have relatively stable lives and come to school regularly. It is these students agains whom we test our mettle. If we can help these students succeed, or at least gain reasonably ground in a push to catch up to grade-level literacy, then we've done our jobs. But what if these students fail?

I'm facing this same issue at the moment here in Auckland. We start school tomorrow and we'll face R-Day i.e. Resluts Day: we'll finding out who passed English last year and who will have to resit the year. These results mainly show how the students fared on their big end of year exam last year. These exams where extrenally graded, meaning I didn't give them out and, when finished, the exams were sent out to someone else for grading. So bright and early Tuesday I'll get a full breakdown of how my students from last year scored. As Geetha mentioned in her blog I'll have to take the results as hard evidence of how well I matched my activities and lessons up with my students' needs. Which failures will I have to bear as my responsibility? How many external factors contributed to these failures and which, if any, of them were more influential than me? I can only speculate at this point and feel nervous for my students all over again. The day they went into their test I took a stroll past the testing site and chatted with a few students before they went in. After the exam, word on the street was that the exam was fair and students overall felt pretty good about it. This made me feel better at the time but the aprehension is coming back to me today.

I do know the fate of a few of my students. From looking at the class rosters, I have a few students from the Level 1 class I taught last year on the roster for my Level 2 class this year. For the most part I wasn't worried about these guys and I'm actually looking forward to having them in class again. They were all pretty on top of their game and turned in thoughtful, interesting essays. I'm really excited to get to work with them again next year.

One student was a complete and pleasant surprise, though. This young man struggled all year, and I mean really struggled. The ideas in his head fly at Mach 2 and when you talk to him he'll often end one sentence half way through it in order to start another. Following conversation with the guy is a real challenge. It's no surprise, then, that he has a hard time slowing his brain down enough to organize thoughts in longer pieces of writing. When I saw him on my list for this year, my first thought was "holy shit, he did it." I say this because he put in a herculean effort during the last month of class to identify gaps in his essay writing skills. He knew that if he didn't pass with x% on the exam he wouldn't make it into Level 2. He asked me one day how he could improve and I told him to write practice essays at home on any of the essay topics that were on the mid year exam. The best thing he could do was timed writings, I said, so write a full essay in 40 minutes and then stop when the timer goes. The end result would give him what he had actually turned into long-term writing and thinking habits. I told him to bring in anything he wrote and I'd give him feedback. So he wrote practice essays. He practically shoved essay after essay at me, asking, "could you look this over for me? I'm not sure how to get past the third paragraph." This was at least twice a week for a full month. I was a bit worried because his skills still lagged behind the rest of the class, even with this extra work. Evidently it was enough, though, because I'll get to work with him again next year. He'll be a challenge again this year, to be sure, and I'm wondering if he'll be able to keep his momentum up. He's a very pleasant student, though, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he produces this year.

I know I don't speak for just myself when I say that teachers take the failure of their students almost as hard as the students. There are those teachers out there who genuinely believe that they did everything they could and that a failing grade is the result of a mish-mash of controllable and uncontrollable factors, if not simply laziness on the student's part. How many of these untouchable teachers actually exist, I can't say. Personally, I can't silence the little voice in my head when I look over results sheets and question-by-question scoring breakdowns. The voice frequently whispers questions like, "why didn't that work" and "what was so difficult about that section for these students?" Like good scientists, good teachers are trained to be sceptical. We're told that there is always something more to be done, always another way to get the point across to one more student. There are laws on the books that imply that when our students fail they have "fallen behind" because of poor leadership by their teachers. How can I keep my morale up on R-Day when there is no possible satisfying R-Day in sight? If there is always something more to be done, there is no peg on which to hang my hat at the end of the day. This is an ultimately exhausting proposition for many of us but is enough to keep some of us going. I wonder how long I'll be able to last.

Uniforms and Individuality

This weekend I rummaged through my hard drive in an attempt to find any unfinished pieces of creative or non-fiction writing. The process wasn't entirely unlike rummaging through those boxes that hide at the back of your closet or shed or storage facility. I found heaps of unfinished and promising ideas (along with a fair amount of crap), much of which I had been thinking about for a while. Below is a piece that I found in a finished state. I wrote it written during my first week of teaching at my current school, when things were new and overwhealming and I was a one year less Kiwi. Surprisingly, it still applies to how I feel about uniform policies.

***

I’ve been carrying aspects of American culture with me without consciously deciding to do so. This week, as I began my first week of work at my new school, has been a crash course in confronting this baggage. The large, uniformed all-boys school I work at is a very different environment from your average American public school. Listening to senior staff members and reading through the various school documents that introduce the school's policies, I realised that the uniform thing is a pretty big change. My first reaction to the requirement that I strictly enforce proper wearing of the uniform was, "c'mon, give the kids some room for expression. Does it really matter if their hair touches their collar?" But that was my previous reaction to T-shirt slogan banning in high schools and length requirements on shorts and skirts. Those clothing requirements of yesteryear seemed intrusive to individual expression at the time, and I tended to look at this school’s uniforms in that same light.

That outlook changed slightly this week when I met a fellow English teacher in my department. Also a first year teacher, he and I attended a number of meetings together. After the usual getting-to-know-you banter he mentioned that he had spent a year in high school abroad; in Michigan, to be precise. He said one of the biggest differences he saw between the school systems was the clothing. He felt overwhelmed by dress requirements, by how much what you wore influenced your social experience. He noted that while he was in the States he thought as frequently, if not more, about his clothing and social grouping as he did about academics. This co-worker of mine feels that uniforms take one variable out of an equation that is already too crowded with unknowns. In New Zealand, he noted, everyone wears the same thing to school; your personality is what sets you apart and draws you together, not the logo on your sneakers. There’s no need to scour the mall before classes start for the new wardrobe because you know that there is a set of clothing waiting for you to pick up at the school’s uniform shop for a nominal fee (which is somewhat less than retail clothing prices). This seemed a valid justification for uniforms in his eyes and I can't argue with the benefits one person personally experienced because of this. All things said, though, I'm inclined to chalk up any discomfort with the lack of uniforms to an unfimiliarity with the non-uniformed environment.

So the argument goes that uniforms are the great leveller in schools and foster a focus on personality. I see this uniformity producing exactly the opposite effect on these students. Instead of determining social groups according to personalities and interests, I see students excluding their peers for wider societal reasons. Those students who most vocally resent that they are not allowed to wear their preferred clothing to school find other ways to display their individuality. They grow their bangs out long so that they cover their eyes; pomade ensures that they can sweep the hair from their eyes enough that senior management at the school cannot claim that their hair prevents them from seeing the teacher or the board. These students are labelled “emos”, short for “emotionals”. This group is much like the Goths of the 90’s but the do not limit themselves to just dark emotions. They are, however, big fans of long bangs, black eye-makeup and thrasher music. They value their angst as every good teenager should and are vocal enough to keep things lively.

Other than this group, most other cliques tend to fall into the “culture kinship” class or the “hobbyist” class. Maori and Pacific Island student cut their hair in style that identifies them as a part of that group. Those students who would wear baggy pants pull their uniform trousers down low so that their shirts are just barely able to stay tucked in if posture is perfect and straight. Students from Korea and China never wear the shorts; white kids never wear the long trousers, even if it’s freezing cold. Rugby goons favour the mullet hair style; cricket players the close-cropped “Leave it to Beaver” side part and the knit cardigan top instead of the cotton sweatshirt.

On a purely anecdotal level I can honestly say that I see major drawbacks with school uniforms. To the staff at these school, uniforms represent an opportunity for a British moral and social education that does not reflect the modern and diverse New Zealand. Every student is subjected to the same rules which are enforced with a draconian even handedness by staff who are responsible for upholding the “respect thy elders-or else” status quo. Teachers are dominant and can demonstrate this very easily by telling a student to pull his socks up or to tuck in his shirt. Any teacher can give a detention to a student if his hair is too long, and even demand that the student get a hair cut that afternoon if he doesn’t want to get another detention on top of it. Jewellery is forbidden outside of culturally important pieces such as Maori pendants. Wrist watches and Medic Alert bracelets are acceptable. Hair colours of an unnatural colour and earrings are not allowed. Make-up, even for girls, is forbidden.

What of those students who choose to dress outside of school hours in styles that the school does not endorse? They are ostracised by the students who accept the mainstream dress codes of the school community. Think back to those hard-rocking Emos. If a student is seen wearing black clothing, leather, eye make-up, or studs outside of school, he can be sure that the other students will still see that image of him when he comes to school the following day. “I saw him wearing that crap,” a student might say, “at the cinema. He’s such a fucking Emo.” The judgement having been passed, the social relationship developed outside the school will go on inside the classroom as if the uniform did not exist.

Meanwhile, the differences in skin colour are enhanced in a society that is experiencing major diversification shock. Think back to the shorts versus long trousers boundary that occurs at this school. This choice of clothing is based purely on skin colour. If uniforms are meant to be the great equaliser, then this most disgusting and damaging form of other-ness shouldn’t happen. Xenophobia can’t be hidden under polo shirts and knee-high socks. If New Zealand wants to find a way to keep cliques and racism to a minimum they’re going to have to come up with a more original and holistic plan.

When all is said and done the only benefit I see in uniforms are that they provide parents and students with cheaper prices in clothing. And what is so bad about that, you may ask? This scenario is what’s so bad about the situation: I have students who refuse to wear adequate clothing in the winter because it’s “uncool”, the only "cool" option being inadequate to the climate. These students sit shivering in poorly-heated classrooms for half of their school year, unable to relax and thereby focus on the lesson, while I get to wear my own personal jacket and choice of clothing that is appropriate to the weather. On those few “mufti” days when students actually get to wear clothing of their choice to school they are much more focussed during class time because they are properly insulated and are physically comfortable. I will grant that there is a bit more chatter than usual because of the novelty of the day, but it really isn’t hard to redirect that verbal energy into some sort of fun group project that fits with the unit at hand.

Is the money saved by subsidised clothing worth the cost of unproductive lessons and a segregated school community? I say no.

Summer Perks

"I wish I got summer vacation off." I hear this all of the time from non-teaching fellow citizens. On rare occasions it's prefaced with some comment about how easy the job must be if you don't do it for a few months each year. I try not to feel too slighted when I hear that some people out there are equating the energy levels required to do the job with how much vacation time you get. The statement implies that the more time away from a job you have, the less you have to do in any 12 month period. If I weren't in the teaching field I'd probably think the same thing. When I then tell these people that I work 50-55 hour weeks on a regular basis they simply say, "oh", and drop the conversation thread. Quietly, though, I still imagine that these people wish they had my job simply based on the "off" time.

I've found that these comments are rare here in New Zealand. This is either due to the national reverence Kiwis have for vacation time or that people here value teachers enough to think that we deserve all of that time off for jobs well done. While I'd like to attribute the absence of derisive vacation comments to the latter, I am pretty sure that the real reason is more than likely the former. Most of the strangers I talk to, upon learning that I'm a teacher, immediately ask how I'm enjoying the holiday. No comments about teachers being lazy or questions about whether we get paid during our off months. I don't hear, "I wish I were a teacher" comments mumbled at the pavement. I do get lots of questions about where I'm going and what I'm getting to do now that I have some time off.

This is a pretty interesting thing for me. After hearing all of the griping about teachers working short days and working as "glorified babysitters" back in the States, I was expecting to hear more griping about vacation time here. Being in New Zealand, though, I think I have the support of a country that mandates a minimum of 4 weeks of holiday time per employee in the labour laws. New Zealanders truly value holiday time for spending with family and recharging the batteries, especially at the beach. Literally sitting on the beach for hours on end. They don't necessarily have to do much beyond take the occasional dip into the water, throw a ball around, and bring snacks to enjoy during a full day out. Most of the country takes a few weeks off between Xmas and New Years, which means that a not insignificant portion of the businesses here are closed for that period of time. Relaxation is a keen passtime for many Kiwis and I think that teachers' holiday time is more respected for this reason.

It's nearing the end of my holiday now. I've had about 5 weeks off from school at this point. Next week I go back to the school and start hacking out syllabi and introductory activities and the other formalities that go along with the beginning of the year. So what have I been doing with myself these long, lonely five weeks?

I've been reading. A lot. Mostly I've been exploring authors that I might be able to use in my classes. Jotting down ideas for activities, notes, grammar integration blah blah blah takes up at least an hour of each day. I've also had time to chew on some weightier "personal reading list" books that I don't have the mental energy to attempt during the school year. I just finished American Pastoral by Phillip Roth. It took me a mammoth three weeks to finish simply because I wasn't used reading non-plot driven novels. It was fantastic, though, and a recommended read for those pondering the American condition. Chuck Palanhiuk has been a wonderful summer friend, as has Chinua Achebe and Fiona Kidman. Now that the academic year is closing in I'll be diving into Harper Lee (it's been so long I can barely remember the plot) and our IGCSE anthology for this year. I'll get to revisit Maya Angelou, which will be damn fun, and all in the name of sharing books and poems with teenagers. After having time to just enjoy books I'm remembering just what it is that I love about my job.

And of course I've been visiting the beach during the day. I don't swim or get much done but I think that means that I'm still learning how to be a kiwi. There's a ways to go, though.