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unbalanced literacy skip to main skip to sidebar unbalanced literacy living proof that it s possible to invest twelve years in an inner city middle school without ending up on the front page of the daily news so far 09 september 2009 day 2 i am already exhausted and achy i m not old not even middle aged but i feel my age right now there was a time when i could lug boxes and stretch to hang banners and hop on and off chairs and while i can still do those things i feel it the next day clearly i am not 25 anymore if i had time i d start going to yoga again choosing not to loop with my former students might be the best decision i ve made recently i passed the classrooms of my old students and saw one whole class already being reprimanded by the assistant principal with a few knuckleheads already removed pending parent contact my new students on the other hand were very good and while i know that we re in the honeymoon phase i get a very different vibe that makes me feel optimistic and it s almost thursday already despite my low level euphoria i can t wait for the weekend i am worn posted by msmalarkey at wednesday september 09 2009 9 comments 08 september 2009 day one post 100 this will be nothing significant but i want to get into the habit again of at least writing something even if it s not worth reading sorry today was pretty productive for the first time ever i was very organized in how i put my materials and other stuff away and it paid off i also knew exactly how i wanted to organize everything and even made a floorplan so i was able to get a lot done there is still work to be done but the room looks great maybe even the best i ve ever done in gulp thirteen years the little tweaks will come in time somehow we got an a on our progress report i told mister that i hate to knock good results and i hate to knock our school but i don t think i m impressed i think we were helped by the fact that the people who graded our tests were asleep at the wheel you know kids who can barely read getting 2s and even 3s we re apparently in the top 20 of the city or something like that but i still wouldn t send beany here i am looking forward to seeing how my incoming kids compare on my assessments to their state assessments i m looking forward to meeting the kids but tomorrow s going to come too quickly posted by msmalarkey at tuesday september 08 2009 3 comments 27 august 2009 updates on various in brief since project runway is on in 13 minutes and it s about the only show i watch anymore and thanks to schoolgal for thinking of me again i wonder if anyone s even reading anymore i hate that i let this blog get so neglected summer i can t believe it s almost over but it s been wonderful mister beany and i took several short trips and packed a lot into our time spent locally as well it s been great to not have any real pressure on us beyond cleaning laundry raising a kid all which are relatively a breeze beany she is amazing i can t believe that she s almost two and a half already she s not a baby any more she s a little girl i am happy and sad about this school i think this past year may have been one of my worst ever usually i want to move up with my kids from sixth grade to seventh and eighth though i swore after 07 08 that i would never loop from six to eight again i thought that staying with the same kids from sixth to seventh might be nice but not these kids i was happy to see them go i never had kids who were so rude entitled unwilling to follow rules and policies mean to each other unmotivated and i have always and only worked in the south bronx so it s not like i left the burbs for the city all of a sudden in almost every other year most of the kids were nice put in some effort were respectful and adhered to expectations this year or i guess i should say last year i found that the diligent nice respectful kids were in the minority in my homeroom there were maybe ten kids who didn t make me want to rip out my fingernails one by one i had one really good month and then it went downhill quickly other i told mister that i was going to give this one more year if things don t improve i don t know what i will do i think about quitting though and fantasizing about working in borders where i will have a 15 minute commute and the chance to be around books all day of course there s no better time to plan a career change than when the economy s in the shitter and that s all for now posted by msmalarkey at thursday august 27 2009 7 comments 15 january 2009 who says kids lack manners and grammar skills alternate title ewwwwwwwwww dear ms i have to tell you something private there was a condom on the back door nob and you touched it so i think you should wash you should wash your hands or do something that is why nobody goes through the back door sorry from girl 1 and girl 2 p s you are welcome posted by msmalarkey at thursday january 15 2009 9 comments labels kids 17 december 2008 findings my new incentive system has worked well in one class and not so well in the other i wish that i d kept some data of the before and after because i don t have enough data to deal with already because this data would actually mean something to me i do know that at least three kids who got fifty fives in the first marking period now have averages of 75 to 80 because they have been doing all of their homework and classwork i have fewer kids coming late there are only a couple of holdouts and i haven t had to give out a pen or pencil that situation was really making me want to tear my hair out from frustration i am not a fan of teaching after lunch usually it would take me ten minutes to get the kids quiet at least then they would be so hyped up that it was hard to get anything done now it s like walking into a different room most of the kids have books out and are reading and it s actually quiet i began throwing bonus points at the groups who did this on their own because they took it upon themselves to make sure that they all had books and began to read as soon as the previous teacher left and the behavior is also significantly better usually the noise would be coming from all over the place making it hard to pin down which kids were actually talking now i have entire groups that are completely silent while other groups are noisy so those noisy groups don t get their conduct point it s been interesting to see which kids have thrived and which kids haven t done as well as i d hoped some of the kids are really stepping up leading organizing supporting the others and that s really gratifying to see that they are getting something out of this that might actually be useful in the real world it s not perfect but it s made a huge difference in the other class where the idea was less than successful the math teacher and i had grouped the kids by ability there are about six kids who are really strong academically and they are well behaved so they were sitting together there is one group of kids who are seriously behind and we wanted them together to facilitate differentiation but when i tried to move to the new system only the strongest group did well the others were a mess i think they d been better behaved before the math teacher gave them new seats which are slightly better i m doing the reward a field trip to see the tale of despereaux and lunch with those kids on an individual basis this allows me to exclude the girl who made a point to say loudly mr science is the only cool teacher because she knew that i am now emotionally mortally wounded over not being the cool teacher tomorrow during lunch i am going to hurl myself dramatically off the roof for all to see if i survive then next month i am going to make another attempt with that class to implement my system of course it s not perfect interestingly i noticed that the two groups who so far have the most points are single gender one group is all girls and the other group is all boys there are two mixed gender groups who have both had multiple meetings with me at their request and at the heart of the problem in both was boy girl conflict so i m thinking about doing something i ve never done before grouping by gender i am going to keep the successful groups intact but make some changes to the others overall i do feel really good about the results it s helped me stay more on top of grading because the kids are very eager to know how many points they got as soon as i have a prep i check all the classwork and homework and it s not hanging over my head and a couple of kids in particular have really amazed me i think that they really don t want the other members of their groups to be upset with them and that s motivating them to do for themselves knowing that they are helping the others if only i could stay in my much improved bubble all the time posted by msmalarkey at wednesday december 17 2008 4 comments labels kids professional issues middle school logic in the last two days i ve confiscated an ipod because the girl put it away when asked but then took ten steps away from me and took it out again and a phone from a girl who was texting during my class i learned something very important when you take something from a student it automatically belongs to someone else thus it is expected that you will return the item immediately to the guilty party because the person you took it from was not the owner of course this is the mindset of the middle schooler naturally i laughed the laugh of the evil not cool teacher and walked away posted by msmalarkey at wednesday december 17 2008 0 comments labels kids random snark 05 december 2008 is diagnosing teacher burnout like determining recession two christmas vacations from now will i be on a long awaited child free vacation with my husband drunk on daquiris and realize that i ve been living burnout for most of the last decade supporting detail one i ve been misspelling simple things as an english teacher and an often maligned city teacher i m always very mindful of using language correctly and i m a good speller by nature so when i make these errors i know that i m in need of serious rest the test prep books that were chosen by someone else who doesn t even use them of course really suck so i printed all the old ela exams for my grade from the state website i m using them for practice and assessment and after i labeled one of the sections i realized that i d written assment instead of assessment though i can t say for sure if i can attribute that error to tiredness or if it reflected my real feelings about testing supporting detail two during seventh period today the only day and time of the week that i believe in satan i found myself wondering if i fall out the window accidentally is that considered an on the job injury supporting detail three now that i ve been able to log on to acuity i actually find it useful this is the weakest example of the three because i still have lots of valid reason to bitch about acuity tgif posted by msmalarkey at friday december 05 2008 3 comments labels bitching random snark 01 december 2008 a post just for the hell of it my new reward system went into effect today it worked better with my morning class than my afternoon class but that s typical teaching in the afternoon is nearly impossible i had fewer late students this morning which was also a positive but it s also occured to me that it s ridiculous that i have to jump through all these hoops to get the kids to do the things that they are supposed to do i ve been a good little soldier and have been attempting to use more data of course it took me about three weeks to be able to log on to acuity no one could figure out why but then i realized that my old doe e mail account is somehow lost in cyberspace replaced with a newer one i had no idea about with both my maiden and married names in the meantime i still haven t been able to log on to aris i suppose that the millions the tweedians coughed up for these programs wasn t enough more importantly i wish i knew when i was supposed to have time to look at all this data while i don t think it s the be all end all that the brainwashed educrats think it is i do think it can be useful but we get no time to look at it or think about what it says other than the fact that johnny can t read because he doesn t come to school have the time and does nothing when he s there each week i m tempted to boycott our weekly common conferences it s wasted time really there hasn t been a concrete agenda in weeks and the programs were done in such a way that not all the teachers on a grade are at the meetings because many of them are teaching last year as difficult as it was i found solace in the other teachers on my team we all taught the same kids and while a focus on instruction would have been more beneficial at least we were able to discuss the kids who were challenging us the most and come up with ideas and solutions we were truly a team i don t have that this year even though i am fortunate to have a great working relationship with the math teacher for the grade we re a team of two at least otherwise i feel like i am totally on my own the curriculum guidance is non existent and we re always being hammered on using the data and using technology without any real conversations about how to implement these things today i started my full blown hard core test prep it bores the shit out of me but at least i don t have to think quite so much so maybe this month i will be able to figure out aris if of course i m able to log on posted by msmalarkey at monday december 01 2008 2 comments labels bitching random older posts home subscribe to posts atom education blogs education notes online election mania mamdani wins big uft loses bigger the state of dsa in the uft under assault teaching in nyc moron clown sycophant maybe all 3 iceuft blog a betrayal of public trust why new york s retirees will ultimately prevail nyc educator vote no on the uft contract here is why gothamschools kindergarten acceptance letters are out and fewer students are getting waitlisted it s not all flowers and sausages i ve moved the chancellor s new clothes surrender have a gneiss day gateway eduwonkette eduwonkette hangs up her cape teach for america debunking the propaganda blog archive blog archive september 2 august 1 january 1 december 4 november 6 october 2 september 10 august 5 may 1 december 6 november 5 october 3 july 1 june 3 january 1 november 2 october 3 september 3 august 2 july 2 june 6 may 5 april 2 march 6 february 5 about me msmalarkey i am a veteran nyc teacher i write this crap because it makes me feel smarter than i am even though it likely makes me look like i don t know what the hell i am talking about view my complete profile subscribe to posts atom posts all comments atom all comments