11/30

I must be brief, I need sleep.

The song that I'm conducting in HS Choir requires the use of kazoos, which we handed out today.  That was a riot.  We have very few rehearsals left until our concert, and we still have a lot to do.

I brought out guitars today.  Oy.

I also wrote out my first and second detention slips today (to be delivered to students tomorrow).  Mrs. D was proud, and I really needed the opportunity and guts to deliver such a punishment.  This "teacher detention" is more old-fashioned than I thought schools tried to be.  In a week, each of these students will stay after school in my classroom and I get to tell them what to do (within reasonable and legal limits, of course).  One student left a mess on the floor and is also consistently disruptive; I plan on having him pick up floor trash and then (maybe) have him write a note to the janitorial staff...or just sit.  The other one seriously owes himself some time to reflect on his uncontrolled and bullying behavior, so I will provide him that time.  Of course, I still have a week to think about this.  I really dislike punishing kids, but in these cases I slightly enjoy the "that oughta teach 'em a lesson!" feeling.


Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin
Communication Breakdown - Led Zeppelin

11/19

We started a viewing of Les Choristes in Theory today.



We watched Michel Lauzière in General Music.



I also submitted my first discipline referral at the end of the day.  I was presented with more bullying activity today than all previous days combined.  In one class, a boy bullied two people with some incredibly harsh words and intimidation, while in another class a boy incites class laughter directed at a classmate (the one who tends to do unusual things for a variety of reasons).  The first received the referral, the second one got a personal lecture from me.

10/27

My favorite thing to do in the morning is resist responding to political ravings from a full-time and more-important-than-me co-worker.  Lucky me, I got to do that today.

I love my Theory kids, and they like me too.  Otherwise, they wouldn't yell (without hesitation), "Who talks like that?!?!" after hearing me say something like, "Some points of confusion were..."  When, in response, I told them that my peers also make fun of me for how I talk, they laughed uproariously at my decision to use the word "peer."  There is always some snickering when I use big/uncommon words (they learned "penultimate" today), but today was the most dramatic.  It was all very funny.

During the next marking period I will approach this GM composition idea from a different angle.  I played most of them today and had to BS my way through many that completely didn't follow the guidelines that I gave.

We had some visitors at the MS today; actors and authors from a recent movie about bullying.  The leading lady played a girl who was 13-16, but she is actually 21.  I heard that there was a pretty lady close to my age visiting (the boys were freaking out about her), so I went to visit her in the cafeteria.  She really looked 14 though, so I just felt too weird trying to strike up a conversation with her in school, and didn't.

Oh, right, this is a blog about pedagogy, not date-ology.  The real take-away from this is that all of the students were very distracted by the event, but there seems to be great potential for anti-bullying benefit from all that went on.

Bullying

A friend of mine vented her frustration about some recent bullying news and asked me what my thoughts were.  I gave some consideration to my answer and think it is worth posting here...


Think of how many variables affect child behavior.  The number is effectively infinite.  I'm no expert, not even a veteran teacher, but in my experience so far I've learned that the best way to prevent bad behavior from recurring is to respond immediately and sternly.  The absolute best antidote to bullying is to help a perpetrator discover, ethically, why doing harm to others is bad.  I do not think that this can be done through inflicting physical pain, because even though it seems logical to think that it will teach them about the harm they've done to others, it instead further entrenches the idea that certain people are bigger and better than others.  They [usually] will only try harder.

I caution everyone to be careful where they direct their anger or place their blame.  Some schools do a great job.  Some, like the one in that article that even botched their record-keeping, do a terrible job.  Ultimately, our entire culture needs to break habits that encourage bullying, which can only be done by deeply implanting ethics of equality.


So if you are a reader of the news or our blogs that really wants to make a difference and try to prevent bullying in the future, the best thing you can do is act according to reasoned ethics.  Ask yourself why it's bad to hurt others for personal gain (with bullying, this gain is either attention, power, or a misguided sense of confidence), and come up with an answer.  If you are ever presented with the opportunity to help convince someone else that they've done something wrong, you will have an answer in your head.  This answer, I think, will be based on equality of people, their feelings, their rights, et cetera, so the next thing to do is always treat people as equals to you.  Yes, this is my derivation of the golden rule.  Make it happen, and you will play a part in changing our culture to stop rewarding excessively selfish attention- or power-seeking behavior.

9/23

Those girls were hardly better in the front row.  It's bothering the entire choir.  Two of them did homework and ignored us completely, the others were just disruptive.  I'd give some more genuine reflection on this if I weren't tired and making a late post...I'm just getting angry thinking of seeing them again tomorrow.

Hmm...today was perhaps the first not-so-crazy day.  Theory went well, GM classes went well.

Oh, walk-out girl got revenge on me today.  I left the room to go make copies before class started and she walked out a moment later to yell, "Hey, teacher!  Come back, we need you!"  She was laughing as she did this, but when another student poked his head out and said, "Yeah, we need you to come back," I went back.  Then I discovered it was pure retaliation.  Well-played, team Theory.

We got the pleasure today of an assembly on electronic communication.  This essentially was focused on cyber bullying and sexting.  Well...assemblies are inherently dull, but the woman giving this speech was pretty good; not in an entertaining way, but just in the way she argued, "Don't do ______ because you'll get caught (electronic communication records don't go away) and this is what the school does and this is what state law does (it isn't pretty and can be unfair)," as opposed to, "Don't do ______ because it's immoral!"  Then we had a faculty assembly, with the same speaker, on the topic of Facebook!  That was just silly.  It was silly that there were a few people who were so worried about the internet that they had questions at the end, and it was silly that the rest of us have heard it all before and had to hear it all again.

I should only post when awake.


Noise Brigade - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones