Space simulation

Spending the last two days of this week taking my students to a nearby “space station” where they can conduct mock NASA missions.

Each field trip lasts half a day, and is tailored to just about perfectly fit the attention span of my middle-schoolers.

So far, the students have enjoyed the trip, although the state’s standards have changed and 8th grade no longer includes any topics involving space. Apparently it is faster to change the state’s science standards than it is to schedule a field trip to this center.

But my first independent job as a student teacher was to escort a similar field trip two years ago …  and being there makes me thing often and fondly of a former teaching colleague now an astronaut for NASA.

Rollie Pollies

Last week the students began working on one of my favorite labs.

Students test for color preference among pill bugs.

I provide the pill bugs and they come up with the experiments. And I am thankful for having the wisdom to corral a few dozen from the garden before it got really cold this winter. Judging by the signs of molting I found today in our classroom habitat, they seem to be doing just fine and growing almost as fast as my students.

So how do darkness, magnets, Lady Gaga and Gatorade affect the little crustaceans?

We are about to find out.

One group even wants to see whether, when placed on a sloping Hot Wheels track, whether a Rollie Pollie might use its ability to roll into a ball as a means of locomotion.

Counter moves

A lucky break, some lunch detentions and a message home seem to be gaining me ground in my worst-behaved class.

The most disruptive student has been removed — no doubt a bad outcome for the student but a good one for other children trying to learn — as a result of poor behavior in another class.

Two students have lunch detention, two more have come within a whisker of it and I’ve sent one negative and one positive message home. Meanwhile, I continue to modify the lesson for that class every day, building in more adjustments to what I teach to ensure all the students have the opportunity to be successful if they try.

I wouldn’t say the outcome is certain, but it feels a little more like the initiative shifted back into my court. Now I just have to keep the press on.

Naturally, I have had a new student added to the class who brings a new set of challenges.

And so it goes.

Small unit tactics

Once again I find myself fighting to gain the upper hand in one of my classes and, in the face of what feels like daunting odds, I inevitably frame the situation with classic Marine thinking.

One way to win on the battlefield is to get inside the “reaction loop” of the foe. That means doing what you want to do before the enemy has a chance to realize it and react. Ideally, if you pull that off once you can build on the success with growing speed and impact, leaving the enemy paralyzed and confused (read defeated) as you continually move in faster and increasingly unexpected ways.

Right now, I’ve got a pack of 8th-graders who have gotten inside my reaction loop. They are coming up with new ways to draw attention to themselves and disrupt my teaching faster than I have been able to respond. That means I am locked in a race to check their tactics, devise and execute new plans and gin up alternatives for the unexpected — a race I have 23 hours to complete, before we convene again.

They have numbers on their side, and frankly, experience. They’ve spent longer wrecking lessons than I have been teaching. And unlike the Marines, I don’t have massive firepower on my side.

Just determination.

Beyond the grasp of the state?

A run-in with an old colleague from my days at The Star lent some insight into the thinking among Indiana officials when it comes to taking over schools.

First, of course, is the idea that, well, if they take over a school they have to have results. What’s the point of all the hassle if all you get is more of the same?

So when the state seeks out organizations to put in charge of schools, officials look for an outfit with a real shot at making a difference.

And this journalist let me know that Hoosier officials are finding far fewer of those than they had hoped. So far, only three have been handed the job of running schools in Gary and Indianapolis. The original list of schools likely to be taken over was longer than the final list of those that actually were, and one reason may be that there were too few strong groups coming forward for the work.

This school year, those three firms are sizing up the situation to develop their plans to take over next fall. That means the state will be considering adding more schools (like mine) to the list before any contractor has actually tried running one — another reason officials might move slowly before expanding the number of schools under state control.

State takeover may or may not be the way to improve the very worst schools, but one thing is certain: it’s a method the state can’t afford to fail at … which may mean those of us in the on-deck circle have a little room to breathe.

High school tour

Thursday we took the students over to the high school for a tour and lunch.

Because the high school is split into several smaller learning “communities,” it is an important morning for the kids to get a feel for where they might like to spend the next four years. They’ll have some say in whether they end up in the computer-intense school or the arts-focused one, for example.

It was fun to see teachers I had worked with back when I started the program but hard to imagine I once taught students this age … and ones without much of a dress code. They seem so hardened and mature compared to my little 8th-graders.

Raking muck

Reporter Heather Gillers impressed me with her many talents in our time together at The Star, but what stood out from the start was her keen instinct for spotting wrongdoing and her doggedness in reporting it.

She’s had two back-to-back Sunday stories that have been absolutely top shelf, the kind of work newspapers once did with great frequency and without rival.

Here’s the paragraph that got me in today’s piece about a massive coal mine:

“Indiana has the highest amount to toxic discharges of bodies of water among all states, according to a review of 2007 federal data … Indiana released 27 million pounds of toxic waste into its waterways that year — 49 percent more than the next highest state and more than 11 percent of the nation’s total.”

This is a nice chunk of information to twin with data on carbon emissions, which also lead the nation.

Just the kind of info one might include when their 8th-graders get ready to study the human impact on the environment this spring!

Still this appeal

There are moments when you realize what a weird and ridiculous gig it is to be a teacher, the kind of realization you just have to try to suppress most of the time.

Like today, walking down the empty halls after the end of classes, whistling “Love Will Tear Us Apart” thinking less about my exposed failings as I am about resentment running high…

The resentment part is inescapable since I teach young adolescents who require constant reminding that burping loudly, standing on lab stools and throwing books (among other things) are not OK. They tend to, well, resent those little corrections.

And the failings exposed every day before my students seemed a little less glaring after a couple of good days and the conversation in a meeting to set up an observation by an administrator. The administrator asked, among other smart questions, what area I might need help with and I said classroom management.

That surprises me, the person said. I’ve been in your classroom some and outside in the halls even more often. Doesn’t seem like much of an issue …

Well, there’s nothing like being in the thick of it to test that theory, so we’ll see if that mind gets changed. But even if misplaced, it was buoying to hear someone had a positive view of my classroom environment.

A long-awaited treat

You grow up with certain literary figures and it’s almost natural to imagine them in a movie … for example, “Matthew Looney,” of course … but I had long ago given up hope that the most cinematic of them all would make his way to the big screen.

I’m thinking of a young Belgian journalist who survived adventures around the globe, thanks to the help of his talking dog, an opera singer, a zany scientist, twin detectives and a sea captain with a vocabulary that could blister paint.

It was a treat to read one of my big brother’s copies of his comic books — and even more exciting when at the age of 4 I got my very own.

But I’d long ago given up imagining Tintin would ever make it to the movies. He is after all a superstar of international — but not American — fame.

When news of a movie started bubbling a couple years ago, I gave them no credence.

So Friday’s premier may be the high point of winter vacation.

Just to be clear, we’re talking about a guy who owns a pair of Tintin socks and who named the stray cat we adopted in Morocco Tintin. I have an official Tintin pencil box and a Tintin T-shirt from Vietnam.

You can tell it was only natural, then, when I brought a few of my Tintin books in to share with my students before break began. They were mildly interested, even a little concerned when they saw my editions in Dutch and French.

Around the house we’ve been looking for time to reread “Secret of the Unicorn” and “Red Rackham’s Treasure” before we see the movie. My sharpest memories are of the Thompson twins trying chewing tobacco at sea and Professor Calculus’ first shark-shaped sub collapsing in the middle of the lab, so there are a lot of blanks to fill in before Friday.

And some big questions to answer about a movie I thought I’d never see made: Imax? 3-D? Or watch in a regular old theater?

Big district under big pressure

An education think tank just released a report on what the city’s central school district needs to do to turn things around. The Star’s initial story is here.

A key finding: the central office needs to be dismantled and replaced with a much smaller organization.

That’s not an altogether new idea. No one may have put it so radically before, but there have been efforts — just none that have been successful. The received wisdom is that the last superintendent who tried to overhaul the central administration of the district lasted less than three years.

Which I always read to mean there are people inside that building who have a lot of political pull. Will it be enough to survive another effort to streamline things?

The plan also calls on district control to shift from a school board to the mayor. So far, the mayor has been carefully crawfishing away from the proposal. Whether he is waiting to see what kind of support the plan will garner or is opposed to it remains unclear. He may want to use his political capital on other issues … it was his opponent, after all, who campaigned on the idea that the mayor should be more involved in education. That view didn’t usher her into office, so Mayor Greg Ballard may be reluctant to embrace it.

For now, the plan is just that – a plan. How political leaders respond will make all the difference. State lawmakers would have to be involved in eliminating the school board, for example.

Which means what lies ahead for Indianapolis schools remains mostly a list of unknowns: what flaws are wrapped into that 160-page plan? Are the basic ideas solid — such as creating a network of “choice’” schools with a high degree of autonomy? Who, if anyone, will try to bring it into action? Can the district pre-empt outside action by more internal reforms?

For all those uncertainties, though, the unveiling of any top-to-bottom plan to fix that struggling institution has to be seen as a welcome ray of light.