On the Reservation

Today was definitely a four-letter word morning. I woke up 28 minutes before I had to be at work. It's a 35 minute drive from Gallup to my school. I still needed to shower. And I had playground duty. (Luckily teachers have to arrive half an hour before school begins.)

But the most vexing of it all was that I had overslept dreaming about school. I even recall trying to stay asleep longer because I was in the middle of teaching a new word problem strategy. Apparently our new Big Goal for math problem solving had burrowed itself deep enough into my subconscious. I had been mulling over how to teach my kids to comprehend and calculate unit costs. In my dream, my students had reached that Aha! moment and understood how to calculate and compare the costs.

Hopefully this was a prophecy for things to come in fourth-period math class!

In the meantime, unfortunately, my students were running around under-supervised on the playground and I was 10 minutes late to work!

Posted by Jessica Shyu at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

UPDATE: Abstinence students still have sex at similar rates, recent study shows
Last week's Teacher Magazine poll on schools' approaches to sex education brought back bittersweet memories. Memories of giggling at fake ovaries and being mortified at all the places that hair could grow.

I learned much of my reproductive education not from my mother, a nurse who taught contraception courses in Taiwan in the early 1980s, but from the Montgomery County Public School system. As icky and super embarrassed as I felt about it in fifth grade, I was secretly relieved to have those weird things happening to my body demystified.

It was equally horrifying to sit through sex and health ed in the eighth and tenth grades, but once again, the frank conversations that the instructors engaged us in were enlightening. It made sex (and STDs) real (and totally, super gross). Although my parents sat my brother and I down separately for in-depth conversations about s-e-x, I never felt quite comfortable asking them whether it was true that Mountain Dew makes men shoot blanks. Luckily those myths, plus some slightly more important wonders of the human body, were debunked by the eighth grade gym teacher. We giggled. But we learned.

Sex and health are private matters. But it should be a national standard for all schools to offer the option of sex and health education. By not doing so, we're asking our children and families to face the risks of reality on their own. Many families don't have the full range of resources. Others are embarrassed by the subject. The least we can do as educators is offer the option of sex and health courses.

Today, my students are the same age I was when the weirdness of the human body (and boys) became real possibilities. I'm young enough to sympathize with them. But I'm old enough to see how much of a disadvantage we're putting them through by not offering sex and health education courses at school.

We don't teach sex or health classes at my school, but it doesn't stop my 13-year-olds from asking me about tattooing or condoms. And it won't stop kids from making out on the playground. And not talking about it will definitely not keep teenagers in inner-cities, rural communities or suburban sprawls from getting pregnant.

As a second-year middle school teacher, I've been around long enough to know that teenagers are still going to ask "inappropriate" questions and they're still going to do what they want to do. What we can do is educate them with the facts necessary to reconsider.

http://www.siecus.org/pubs/fact/fact0007.html

Posted by Jessica Shyu at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

More confessions:

My assistant and I eat 90 percent of the candy folks send to our students.

My boyfriend in Ukraine needs to call me almost every morning to wake me up for work.

And on bad days, I cheer up by reading blog comments. As a second-year teacher, there are still a lot of bad days. Luckily, there are a lot of comments.

Below are a few responses to comments. If anyone has any other questions (or comments), please feel free to leave a blog message or write me at teachfornm@gmail.com.

… I’m currently teaching English in Japan, but would like to begin teaching in schools when I return to the US. I have been interested in doing what you’re doing for a couple years. … if you can give me some information on other routes to an [alternative licensure track] in your area I would really appreciate it.

Schools in the Gallup area are always looking for eager teachers. Programs like Teach for America and Peace Corps Fellows are not the only alternative tracks to get into teaching. Teach New Mexico has many resources for people interested in learning more about alternative licensing. I also receive mentoring and financial support from Transition to Teaching and Educator Support Center. For local job openings, check out Gallup-McKinley County Schools and Office of Indian Education Programs.
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I was thrilled to read your entry about the piano lessons. Please keep us updated about this... will you teach the other kids? (as if you don't have enough to do!) Is there a music program at the school?

I will definitely update more about music soon. We don’t have art or music programs at our school, unfortunately, but the school is in the process of ordering keyboards for the dormitory. I hope to start giving group piano lessons by next month. I have taken up after-school tutoring and graduate school has started again, so that cuts deeply into my music time.

That said, watching “Mervin” calm down and practice on the piano is one of my quickest pick-me-ups. When I was turned down for a job last month, I was in a bum mood and wasn’t feeling up to teaching piano that afternoon. Yet I went. An hour later, I left the dorm beaming and relaxed. I may have been rejected by a job, but I was embraced by a kid who has hardly anything. That puts priorities back in perspective.

I wish you well in your career in special education. This is my 40th year in education, of which 39 has been in special education as teacher and Director of Special Education. I am retiring at the end of this year. Although I still get great pleasure out of my career, I feel the need to turn it over to new young teachers such as yourself. Would you be interested in having your students and my students exchange pen pal letters?

I would love to start pen pals with students at other schools! I teach resource classes, so I don’t have too many students, but I think many children would be interested in having pen pals if I open it up to the whole school. If you’re interested in starting a pen pal exchange with students at my school, please e-mail me at teachfornm@gmail.com.

Anything that your "audience" can do to help or send? I have a few recent news magazines that might be fun or enrichment in a classroom...

As a teacher, I don’t think I’m allowed to refuse free stuff for my kids. The kindness of friends, family and strangers has yielded hundreds, if not thousands, of reading books for my students and the entire school. My next goal is to help build the dormitory library. If you have books, magazines or other materials that you’re interested in giving away, please feel free to e-mail me at teachfornm@gmail.com.

Good job! I was wondering though, how the older Native Americans treated you and thought of you.

I’m Asian American, I’m under-30 and I don’t have kids. I smile politely and nod knowingly during staff meetings conducted partly in Navajo. Some staff members still don’t know my name. I’m most definitely an outsider around here. But after a year and a half at this school, I am beginning to build a network of friends.

I turned 24 yesterday and my Navajo colleagues in the Special Education department threw me a surprise birthday party complete with cake, cards and gifts. When I grinned and told them that this was my first birthday away from family, they scoffed at me. “What are you talking about? This is Dad, this is Mom 1, she’s Mom 2, I’m Mom 3 and she’s Mom 4. We’re your family.”

Posted by Jessica Shyu at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I lie. I cheat. And yeah, I steal.

At least when it comes to my students.

I admit, when my Teach for America program director comes to check my teaching, I tell the kids that she's there to observe their behavior. And sure, I drag my kids in after school to finish their assignments for general ed classes. And when I'm low on supplies, I'm not above nabbing a ream of white paper from the front office when no one is watching.

So is it so bad that I bribe children? I had never been one for extrinsic rewards, believing that students must learn and appreciate the intrinsic value of education. But lately, as I've come to work with students with more severe negative behavior issues, I have found myself adding bribery to my list of sins.

With Corey, I began bartering fruit for appropriate behaviors. With my English class, I've agreed to serve hot cocoa on Fridays if they work properly until the end of the week. And now, I find myself setting up a new mini math goal for our students that ultimately revolves around bribery.

After analyzing their mid-year assessment results, I noticed that while most of my students had made considerable gains in reading, writing and math computation, we still had major difficulty in making improvements in math word problems. I needed to refocus our class. We need to raise these skills and scores. I was especially troubled because math problem solving skills are at the cornerstone of everyday life skills. These deficits are the primary reasons why my students are cheated out of their change at Wal-Mart and why they are afraid to order food at McDonald's.

So what's my strategy for solving this problem? Bribe 'em. This is our new mini math goal: Students who improve by at least one grade level in math problem solving by the next quarter will earn the opportunity to eat out in Gallup. It'll be a restaurant voted on by the class. We'll spend an afternoon in town eating out on the school's dime. Not too shabby. They bought into it. We're revved up once again to practice word problems. Bribery works. (At least to a certain extent.)

But you know what? As guilty as I feel about bribing my students to do work they need to do to begin with, I still sleep just fine at night. Because little do they realize, menu ordering, restaurant budgeting and tip calculating are all part of life skills. And life skills are really about being able to solve problems.

Posted by Jessica Shyu at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)