During a class discussion the other day the subject of alcoholism came up. I asked my 2nd period class, “How many people have, in their opinion, an alcoholic relative in their family?”

75% of the kids raised their hands.

“How many people in this room have seen a beer commercial?” (They are 9th graders, kids that are 14 for the most part.)

All hands went up.

“How many people in this room have seen over 10 beer commercials?”

75% of the hands went up.

“How many people in this room have seen over 50 beer commercials?”

A heck of a lot of hands went up. More boys at this juncture. (Watching sports on TV I am presume.) Remember, these are 14 year olds.

So we outlaw tobacco ads on tv and make the tobacco companies pay for their own “Don’t smoke” campaigns yet booze gets a complete and total pass when it comes to direct marketing to our kids? A marketing they do, mind you, with the highest hopes of turning our young people into future, lifelong customers.

Otherwise known as addicts. I mean, alcoholics. I mean, er, responsible drinkers.

Look, I find beer commercials funny and entertaining and even kinda innovative. But the damage that alcoholics do to themselves, their family and society? Not quite so Ha-Ha.

And why do I have a feeling that my kids could name more brands of beer than they could members of the Supreme Court, Congress and so on? Matter of fact, I bet Joe Biden would get pummeled by the suave Dos Equis guy in a face recognition contest.

Bottoms up.

So how did your kids spend their holiday break. Mine, let’s see.

–They slept.
–They ate.
–They watched tv.
–They played video games.
–They were bored.
–They “chilled”.
–They did “too much” homework.
–They did no homework.
–They went to the mall.
–They partied. (This is where my “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy comes into play).

A few of them travelled, some of them caught the flu and some of them went to the movies.

All in all, they got to be real people. Fine. Cool. Glad you enjoyed it. But after reading their papers (so sloppily written, I might add) and hearing their words, I am more determined than ever to “bring the heat”.

January is a time when there is so much good work that can be done but I also know that if I spend the first week back allowing a honeymoon mentality to sink in — as so many people often do — I am just wasting valuable class time.

Class time I desperately need.

Yep, we are up and running!

But what scares me is the knowledge that across this great country not every educator in the U.S. thinks this way.

Mentality matters… and it starts with the person at the front of the room.

While perusing the web, I ran across this article which claims studies prove that taking the SAT in a crowded room is a detriment to student scores and performance.

They call this the”the N-effect.” Basically, as the article says, the larger the “N”—the number of participants involved in a task—the worse the outcome for the individuals who are participating.

Hmm… really?

So if a 4 hour stretch of time in a crowded room is detrimental to test scores, WHAT ABOUT LEARNING IN CROWDED CLASSROOMS OVER THE COURSE OF AN ENTIRE YEAR?!

Kindergarten with 29 kids per class.
Middle schools with 38 kids per class.
High schools with 41 per class.

Does anyone care to do a study on this? Matter of fact, I am sure there are scores of them. But then again, isn’t this simply self-evident stuff? I mean teaching at 39 to 1 versus teaching at 22 to 1 is an immense difference… and one sure way to improve the quality of the educator is to reduce the amount of students on their roster.

A fair teacher is a better teacher with they are not forced to teach in impacted classrooms.
A good teacher is a better teacher with they are not forced to teach in impacted classrooms.
A great teacher is a better teacher with they are not forced to teach in impacted classrooms.

A bad teacher — well, even they are able to be less bad if they have less kids. Or at least they negatively affect less kids when they have less kids so there’s even some benefit in that, right?

Just remember, every time you hear the term “budget cuts” one thing that surely follows is larger class sizes… and that’s not good for anybody.

So how in the world can we affect the N-effect in our classrooms?

Our latest problem is that kids are coming to school with Gatorade bottles… filled with vodka drinks. Does every next generation of teen have to take the level of prior “defiance” of school rules and cultures to a new level? I mean once upon a time it was unheard of to chew gum in class. Now kids are swigging berry martinis in the middle of math class making a mockery of, oh… just about everything.

Of course pot has been an issue forever. The other day I joked to a colleague that I taught on Weed Hall. Then again, as TIME Magazine points out, smoking wacky tabacky is up. (Though cigarettes are down.)

We don’t even have the budget to do small things like hire a school nurse, staff a school librarian, and so on… and now we need people to screen through all their Jonas Brothers lunch boxes? (That’s a joke — Megadeath, Slipknot, The Game and so much more how my students roll — boy bands get very little play around here.)

Really, think about the kid that comes onto campus with a Tequila cocktail. Do you think they also have their homework? Do they also have an eye towards being well-prepared for the SAT?

Are they not an inevitable anchor on our school test scores so that when NCLB slams us for being an “underperforming high school”? When folks blame our campus teachers for being a bunch of lame-O’s are we allowed to say, “Well, I tried to teach to the difference between literal vs. figurative language but my student was too sloshed from the rum and coke they sucked down at lunch?”

If we caught any of the teachers drinking on campus, they’d be fired in a heartbeat, their professional reputation tainted terribly forever. But the kids? They just get a few days of slap-on-the-wrist suspension where they — I assume — just go home and drink.

I mean it ain’t like we expect them to be doing homework, right?

Students: we want them to take a deep drink FROM THE WELL OF KNOWLEDGE. Some are drinking, but they are missing the point.

What percentage of F’s in a class is it reasonable for a teacher to give? I mean what’s the dividing point between a teacher firmly drawing the line at demanding minimum competency and rigor, and a teacher who is simply not reaching their kids and flunking so many students that we clearly see that the educator is actually ineffective at their job?

If 80% of the kids in a class are failing a class, is the teacher not a part of the problem for the immense amount of failure in the room?

What about a teacher with a 12% failure rate?

A 45.6% failure rate?

Heck, NCLB takes graduation rate into account when it assigns us our AYP and API scores in California so if we do not graduate 100% of our kids, we, by nature, are penalizing ourselves.

Makes a nice case for grade inflation doesn’t it? Or going after teachers who flunk too many kids.

But some teachers are flunking too many kids. Or, I should say, “have too many kids flunking their class”.

So what’s the acceptable number? Is it zero? That seems unreasonable. Is it 79.9%? That seems excessive.

Is there anyone who can provide guidance on this type of thing?

A Bell Curve with 10% A’s, 15% B’s, 40% C’s, 15% D’s and 10% F’s is how they drew it up in the theory class I took once upon a time. But my own classes NEVER balance out like that. Not even close. (And seldom do any of the theory classes offer things that truly measure up where the rubber meets the road.)

So if we want to raise our AYP and API score, the method is simple — flunk less kids.

And don’t think that teachers aren’t having the screws turned to do so by admins who care more about “school ranking and scores” than student learning.

Because in the world of our current educational dysfunction right now, student learning and higher AYP and API scores are often at odds.

So, I ask again, how many F’s is a teacher allowed to reasonably give?

In a “what’s old is new again” type of teaching thrust, some schools are going old school and dividing kids by gender in the classroom. Here’s an article from the L.A. Times about an academy in our city that seems to be happy with the results of separating kids in this manner.

Me, I am not really sure how I feel about this.

Now first, let me say that I was able to teach an all-girls English class and and all-boys English class two years ago in an attempt to see if breaking kids into this type gender-based class alignment actually offered any benefits. (NOTE: we had a teacher that had been doing it for almost 30 years — a woman I greatly respected; an educator who swore by it — and she was retiring so I decided to take over the idea for just two of my sections.)

For me, it worked out really well… for the girls. That class blazed. Really, the girls were just on fire that year. It was amazing! I mean I never had so many kids do homework… so consistently.

And do the reading. WOW! We blazed through so many books it was remarkable. We did projects, had debates, almost NEVER had classroom management problems… the girls just tore it up.

The boys… not so much.

Now I am of the opinion that, in general, today’s girls are very often kicking the butt of today’s boys in school. I see it with my own eyes every day. More boys drop out. More girls go to college. More girls are at the top of the class whereby more boys seem to be barely scraping by. Of course, these are generalizations but if you’ll allow me to speak in generalizations, I’d say it’s pretty clear that the efforts of the women’s rights movement, feminism, birth control, call it what you want… have not only brought a healthier degree of equity to the role of gender in education, but the scales have actually been tipped in favor of the young ladies.

Girls today are leading the charge in our schools and personally, I have no problem with this. (BTW, this phenomenon is also part of the subplot of my book The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez. Having a proactive, strong female protagonist who valued her own schooling and was determined not to become “dependent” on a man plays a solid role in the novel and hits, I believe, a very true note with today’s teenage, girl readers.)

Yet, I didn’t teach all boys/girls classes again the next year. And why? I think it’s because I discovered that the boys needed the girls… much more so than the girls needed the boys. I mean we are definitely having “issues” with boys in our schools today — especially in Title 1 schools like mine — so for all the benefits I found the girls were getting, well… a part of it felt like they were coming at the expense of the boys. The boys found a pecking order. There were leaders, there were followers and there were wallflowers… and for sure there was a bit of the Lord of the Flies aspect to their interactions. But most troubling was that boys, once they found their pecking order, didn’t seem to feel any drive to break out of their roles once they had settled into them. It was as if once they all became socialized to a certain means of operating, they stayed within those confines no matter what I did to shake it up.

The girls perpetually pushed one another… and they supported one another (for the most part) as well. But the boys… well, like I said. The class was kind of like a kite that never really took off and flew the way I had hoped and the reason why – at least to me it seemed, the reason why was, in part, due to an absence of girls in the class.

Maybe it makes sense to divide kids up by gender? Maybe there is a bunch more I need to learn about teaching in a single-sex class? Either way, it’ll be interesting to see if this type of gender-based classroom assignment will catch on more in the future, that’s for sure.

So when I read a story like this, about how students who have repeatedly struggled with a “core class at school” (i.e. they didn’t pass) being able to use computers for credit recovery so that they can graduate, I like the idea.

And I do believe that there is a place and space in public education to address this need in this type of way.

But I also gotta question one basic thing: How do they know the student doing the work online is the student who is getting the credit? I mean, why not just cheat?

Have your brother do it, your sister do it, a cool aunt or uncle. I mean if we are talking about the difference between a relative being able to earn a high school diploma or not, blood’s a little thicker than water on the “please help me front”.

And kids can barter. 10 car washes for an Algebra Class. 6 wash-the-dishes for an English paper. 8 let-me-borrow-your-car for some academic love on the American History front.

Really, where are the safeguards? And though I am sure they are in place to some small extent, let’s be honest, huh? I mean I use online banking but come on, in the back of all our minds we all know that each time we log in we might discover that every freakin’ penny to our name has been absconded with by some Russian hacker with laptop and a bottle of vodka.

If Chase, Bank of America and CitiBank struggle with online deception — as they mightily do, pouring miliions into it every year, fending off thousands of attacks every month — you don’t think America’s alternative high schools and credit recovery departments aren’t going to see a wee bit of fraud?

Of course, the girl in the article certainly seems like she did her work and benefitted from an online learning opportunity. This is no way meant to disparage her. Like I said, for some kids, this is gonna be good stuff.

But at what point does it simply cost a kid 7 “mow-the-lawns” for an Algebra I credit in this country?

Is there such a thing as an English class that doesn’t read a single, real, whole book over the course of the year? I mean I know there is. Some places — WAY TOO MANY in fact — have the The Lords of District Oversight that Ban the Reading of Novels in English Class

That’s right, they mandate that NO NOVELS be taught.

It’s all excerpts, pieces taken from anthologies, worksheets, scripted programming and… biggest of all, practice tests to prepare for the real tests.

Am I the only one who thinks this is nuts?

Every good English teacher I know uses real books in the classroom. From Crime and Punishment to The Outsiders to The Skin I’m In to Old Yeller to Hatchet to The Great Gatsby to The Pearl to The Lord of the Flies to Animal Farm to To Kill a Mockingbird and on and on and on, real books are part of the fabric of what makes for, in my estimation, the essential, core constitution of a real and effective and meaningful ELA class.

When exactly did that stop? (Don’t worry, I know. It’s rhetorical.)

So the question is, forgetting even my own prejudice towards the use of real books (prejudice because 1) I love them and 2) years and years of experience tell me that they work as my BEST tool for accomplishing all the literacy goals both I and my school district have for our students) am I the only one who believes we need to re-double our efforts to start fighting for primary source authentic literature (i.e. real books) in the classroom?

Because real books are under assault from the bean/bubble counters.

Could you teach an entire year as an ELA educator without being able to use one real novel? And if so, do you think that by doing so this would be a methodology that best serve the needs of your kids?

The Lords of District Oversight that Ban the Reading of Novels in English Class are a menace to the very fabric of our discipline… and isn’t it time that someone stood up to them and explained how the emperor has no clothes?

And a tiny wanker, too.

Sorry, just had to get that last “little one” in. Get it? Little one?

So what is to be done when a student farts in class?

Hey, don’t laugh, this is a serious academic issue.

The way I see it, there are a coupla options.

1) Try to pretend it didn’t happen. Of course, if it’s stinky one, the boys sitting in and around the — let’s pretend I teach in a church — the boys sitting in and around the “pew” are gonna keep disrupting whatever progress you want to make in your lesson with commentary and insights about the aroma.

Of course, when you try to actually teach an ELA lesson on the need to use precise, descriptive, vibrant vocabulary in English class, you get papers back that lay flat and are filled with bland vanilla. But let a kid break wind and all of a sudden, the vocabulary being bandied about the room would make a lovelorn poet from the Romantic era proud of its richness and poignancy.

2) Scold the perpetrator. Now for me, this one would never work. First of all, I am still immature enough to find farts kinda funny so to actually try and castigate a kid would probably result in me cracking a smile in the middle of trying to keep a stern face. (Note: I think there is a fart joke in almost every book of young adult fiction I’ve yet written. And the new books that’ll be out next year, well… let’s just say it doesn’t look like the streak is in any danger of being broken right now.)

3) Pretend nothing actually happened and keep pressing on with the lesson. Probably the best route, when all is said and done, but meta-cognitively, an educator must know that for up to 180 seconds after student cheese-cutting, a teacher shouldn’t relay any truly valuable academic information — or else you will need to make a plan to re-teach it. After all, one good blasting of some backdoor breeze from a kid in class is enough to render even the most diligent of AP kids out of sorts for a while.

I guess the question I, as the teacher, have to really ask myself before I go down the road of condemnation for public flatulence is, to what end am I going to reprimand a student for this stuff? Am I going to send a kid to the Dean? Am I going to give the kid detention? Come on, let’s be honest, the more I keep the main subject of the classroom on student gas, the more tickled the kids are that we are 1) talking about this and 2) not talking about things like appositive phrases. I mean I have boys that would gladly engage in a 20 minute analysis on the type of wind currents able to be generated through the human digestive tract — the tone, the pitch, the pungency, the types of foods best suited to achieve optimum results — and if I were to give fart homework, I have a feeling my some of my most reluctant students would suddenly turn into verifiable scholars.

You want student engagement in the classroom? Try a Socratic Seminar on bottom blasts from the big brown horn. Guaranteed participation from all kinds of kids.

You want to teach vocabulary? Use farts. They’ll never forget the definition of turgidity again.

And not to be sexist, but how come I’ve never once had a freshman interrupt class with the declaration, “Ew, Kimberly farted!”

I get, “Ew, Michael farted!”
I get, “Ew, Joesph farted!”
I get, “Ew, both Michael and Joseph farted!”

But never the girls. Hmmm… worth more investigation.

The Conundrum of Student Farts… in my opinion, it’s an issue that needs more high level discussion.

Here’s a little true tale I’ll call The custodian and the ditcher.

Walking back to class during my planning period I just spied a student being read the riot act… by the school’s custodian. It was an African American man speaking to an African American teen telling him about how “he needed to get to class, grab onto this chance for school” while giving him a heads up as to how there are just a whole “mess of people that want to simply turn kids like him into little gang bangers that’ll end up doin’ time — cause there’s a whole lot of folks that make good money off of that in this country, both the gangs and the government.”

I had to smile. I mean how often is it that we devalue what it is that our “non-teaching” adults on campus can bring to the table when it comes to the quest of educating kids? For years I have said that the security guards, the school lunch personnel and so on would love to be asked to do more than merely clean the garbage or scoop out the corn kernels and plop them on lunch trays.

Yet we don’t ask. And we don’t empower. And we don’t trust. The fact is, school employees, for the most part, LIKE KIDS (at least as much as teachers do, LOL) and would love to lend their wisdom and insights if only they were empowered to do so.

My feeling is that it’s a great waste of our natural resources that we do not ask more of the people who would be quite willing to do more. Just because a person is a school custodian is no reason not to believe that this person can’t also be an educational ally.

And when it comes right down to it, don’t you think that the conversation I just heard came from a man who had a small degree of credibility to speak about the matter? Heck, maybe even more so than myself.