Tag Archives: At risk kids

Math, Middle-School Boys and Cookies

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I subbed math today at Dixon Middle School where my brothers, sisters and kids all went to middle school (I went to Tomlinson Junior High in Lawton, Oklahoma). I got to sub Math which is my second favorite subject to teach after English.

The first half of the day were the kids in main-line classes and the the second half was for resource and special-ed. The special-ed kids try super hard, but disabilities make learning hard. The resource-student, junior gang-bangers were trying to push buttons while I was trying to help those with disabilities, so I was getting frustrated. During forth period, twenty minutes before the lunch bell rung, I decided to mess with the rotten kids. I had already sent one to the office for threats, disruptions and profanity and I wanted to lower the stress level just a little.

I pulled out the pack of cookies I had set aside for lunch and started looking at them. These kids, especially the boys, were starving. I opened the package slowly. Smelled the cookies loudly. Picked one out and sniffed it as if it were a fine cigar. I acted like I was going to eat it, put it back, then quickly snatched it back and gobbled it down greedily. I then sighed loudly and drank from my bottle of Coke.

I then ate the entire pack except one. I held it up and addressing the one boy who looked like he was about to cry from lunch anticipation, I told him I was going to put it in my pocket and save it until I went home. This kid also happened to be the loudest and most abrasive, but he is a middle-school boy after all and his stomach is still more important than his homies, the girls or mathematics in particular.

Every once in a while before the bell rang I would pull it out and smell it again.

He was in agony.

Between classes during hall monitoring, I would pull the cookie out and show it to him whenever I saw him. He was funny about it, but his friends teased him a lot.

Finally at the end of the day as I was exiting the building, I passed him as he was waiting at the main entrance for his mom and ate the cookie right in front of him. I told him how it tasted, but he said he already knew what Triple Double Oreos tasted like with a grumble and a huff. He told me I was a punk, but I responded that every time I ate an Oreo from then on I would think of him.

Man, I love middle-school boys.

American Fork Junior High School: Resource English and Math

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Classes were so easy today. I team taught (crowd control) three classes and administered a test in the one class I taught today. The English teacher is recovering from back surgery, so I was her legs. I walked around poking kids who wouldn’t shut up and made sure they were focused. I also did some copies and other errands for her. In math, I walked around and did one on ones with students who did not get dividing fractions. I know a couple of cheats, so the students were way stoked to get those.

The test went well except I had to throw one of the students out. He was being an obstruction and a very loud distraction, so I sent him next door to the teacher I was team teaching math with. That teacher is way old school and made him stand with his nose in the corner. I’ve gotten pretty good at dealing with the attitude-disabled, but when it interferes with other kids taking a test, especially kids who need the quiet because of disabilities or unfamiliarity with academics (new immigrants from Mexico), I have a fairly low tolerance. I want them to succeed. I also wanted mister rotten-attitude to succeed, but he wasn’t having it.

Now to an interesting subject. Here in Utah and in many states, the federal government has required that all school lunches be reduced to less than 850 calories including the juice and milk. The kids hate it and hate that next year most schools will no longer carry pizza, corn-dogs and other fast food. American Fork and many other junior highs and middle schools give teachers and substitutes free lunch. I never pass up free food. On Friday, the lunch was not too bad. The ham was over done, but the salad and whole grain rolls were good. Today, the chicken nuggets were dry and salty, but the cooked mixed veggies and finger foods were very yummy. I don’t drink milk because milk hates me and the juice has always been grape, so I avoid it.

The portions are small, but the food is not too bad. I know the kids want more, but I think they will adjust to what they are getting and will stop complaining. The question is: does this address the adolescent, obesity epidemic? I don’t think so. Many of the kids, especially the target population, have back packs filled with candy, cookies and soda. While the lunch room is doing its part, parents and the kids are not. This is one area where many parents are failing their kids. Attitudes at home need to change.

American Fork Junior High School: Resource Math

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Resource math can be a lot of fun. Typically there are two teachers per class. Resource kids can just be a bit naughty. Fortunately the teacher I was working was a professional and the students respected him. I also had some of the kids in class from choir yesterday, so they already knew me and that sometimes I can be a little strict.

Today we were multiplying fractions. School is different than when I was a kid. I was was doing this in fourth grade, but that has nothing to do with the present. It is also possible that kids in mainstream classes are a bit ahead as well. Funny thing was when I started helping kids and then when the teacher called them up, the kids did the old school way I know and taught them. It was all about structuring the problem so it was easy to do mentally. The teacher laughed. He hadn’t seen fractions taught that way since he was in elementary school as well, but he said it was a very easy way to multiply fractions without using a calculator and if the students practiced, they would be faster than a calculator, too.

The final class was one I taught with a para-educator helping. This class was filled with behaviorally-disabled kids, kids on the autistic spectrum and kids newly arrived from Mexico. Fortunately, last year I taught this same population type at Orem Junior High quite often. They started testing the boundaries, but I cut them off and I pointed out the regular teacher had a solid plan for the day and that anyone acting up would get to spend the class in the disciplinarian’s office. One kids started to behavior, but when I pointed out that what he was doing was his choice and that I really didn’t care, he calmed down and did the class work. In this class we were doing simple division. This math was new to almost everyone and/or their disabilities messed with their ability to understand or perceive numbers.

I worked really slowly with them by wandering around and standing most of the time near mister act-out. The class went great. When we left for the day, they were all smiles and conversant. This is how junior high and middle-school is supposed to be. On Monday, I will be back with the exact same kids. I think I will write something specifically for them as a warm up for a repeat of the same lesson.

Dixon Middle School: English

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Finally, a class I can blog about. For the last six months or so, I’ve been subbing almost entirely with intellectually disabled students and it is quite illegal to blog about them. Middle school students? No one cares.

Dixon Middle School is where all my kids went to school as well as my brothers and sisters. When we moved from Oklahoma to Utah, I was already in high school, so I was the only person in my family who did not go to school at Dixon. Dixon is very old, but is in fairly good condition. It looks a lot like the school in Back to the Future. There is a little modernization, but it is easy to tell where that was added in with occasionally poorly placed wires, drill holes, sprinklers and computer cables. The class I was teaching in was originally a storage room for the neighboring biology class room and so was smaller than most of the English classes I’ve subbed in in newer buildings. Dixon is a Title I school where most students are minorities. This is the exception in very white-bread Utah County. Many of my students today asked if I could explain the lesson in Spanish. I answered in Korean and from that point on everyone spoke English.

We were learning how to do compare and contrast using Venn Diagrams. The text was Johnny Tremain comparing what Johnny was like before his accident and afterwards (when the forge cracked and spilled molten silver on his hand). The kids understood most of the physical problems, but many of the psychological/personality changes Johnny went through were lost on them. Fortunately, the teacher left a nicely designed, self-guided, fill in the black questionnaire to help them figure things out. The challenge came during the last fifteen minutes when I was required to spring a five paragraph essay on them that was due at the end of class. Ninety percent of the kids got it done with the remaining ten percent loudly complaining or saying they weren’t gonna do anything a sub told them they had to do. I taught seven periods and had the exact same reaction to the writing assignment.

Middle school! Loads of fun as always.

Donnie Darko

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This weekend while I was drawing the Sam the Eagle & Super-Grover comic, I was watching Donnie Darko. Yes, Another movie I have seen before. Interesting enough, Pete over at Delicate Adventures was having the same idea. Pete drew this awesome eggistration of Frank, the deranged rabbit. Pete really nails the character of Frank.

“Wake Up”

I was introduced to the movie right after it came out by my kids. I thought the title was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard from a movie company (and still do), so I put off watching the movie for two years after they told me about it. Andy finally bought a copy and I watched it.

Donnie Darko is still a dumb movie title and a corny character name, but the movie is watchable–sorta. When I watched the movie this time, I did so with headphones and I was able to hear all the mumbled, inaudible bits, which there are way too many of. The movie is not subtle or informed at all in its explanation of time travel and time paradoxes. The foreshadowing is like being stabbed in the eye repeatedly and is horribly executed. The foreshadowing generally happens in all the mumbling, so I missed it until this time through. I liked when I couldn’t hear it, and thought something significant was being said. Nothing was.

I do identify with the movie, however. I grew up in the eighties and so many of the themes were common to my youth. I like many of the pop-culture references from the eighties, like the Smurfs and Tony Robbins. The Tony Robbins character is very real for me. When I was fifteen and had just moved into my neighborhood here in Provo, Utah, I and another boy who just moved in (he from New Jersey) tried to get our mormon ecclesiastical lay minister (bishop) to give us permission to play Dungeons and Dragons in the church. The bishops of both the churches we attended before moving to Utah allowed this. The Utah bishop thought Dungeons and Dragons involved devil-worship and so sent us off to watch a Tony Robbins, brainwashing-deprogrammer type who claimed to know how to remove the evil influences of Dungeons and Dragons, Heavy Metal and Atari Home Video Games. We played Dungeons and Dragons at school instead (BTW: I do value that bishop. He was a hard working, honorable man who before retiring was a uranium prospector out in the Utah desert. He was just too old for Dungeons and Dragons).

For me the best part of the movie is the music. I own the soundtrack and love every song on it. The great music does not make up for the pitiful performances. The acting is boring, stiff, amateurish and not engaging in the least. The dialogue is not very interesting and the important stuff is mumbled.

The big problem for the movie is that I could never suspend my disbelief and get involved in the movie. I know a bit about how time-paradoxes and time-travel work and found the movie’s premise worse than anything from Star Trek.

If you want to watch a movie about teenage angst (what the 80s is famous for) and listen to great music, then this is for you. If you are at all a Sci-Fi/science fan, don’t bother. Donnie Darko is a big let down. Maybe if you dodn’t watch it with headphones and thus couldn’t understand what was being said most of the time, it might then become passable or even a cult classic.

Spring is Here . . . yay

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(Sharpies, Photo Manipulation & PSe)

I’m tired of reading about children killing themselves because of crap they read on Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my Facebook account. I just wish Facebook would do something about the hate flying about their site. Here is the latest article I came across regarding suicide because of bullying conducted over Facebook (…). In this article, the program is focusing on the school the girls went to. What about Facebook and other social media that facilitates hate/intimidation speech?

Substitute Teaching: Assembly (CUE)

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I apologize for not posting about my last three weeks at Central Utah Enterprises, but there is a reason. It is not because I don’t like to post or have gotten lazy. My art takes longer than prose. We had a staff meeting the day after my last substitute teaching report and a legal representative from the Provo School District came by to talk about posting information on-line about individuals with special needs. Essentially, it is a complete no-no. I have been breaking the law for a while. I am such a bandito.

The biggest violators are people posting stuff on Facebook. The lawyer did mention blogs, forums and letters-to-the editor. The nice thing is today is the last day of my long term assignment and I’ll be posting about other assignments as they come up.

See, I can post all I want about mainstream students (within reason–nothing that would feed a stalker) and not get in trouble as long as I don’t post photographs of them, “friend” them or post links to their pages or pictures (or get creepy about them in a regular post). With special-needs adults and children of any stripe, the restrictions are gigantic. There are lobbies advocating on behalf of the handicapped, but not on behalf of moronic high school and middle school students.

The second I heard about this restriction, I stopped posting. The logic does make sense, but since there is no way to truly delete anything from the internet, I left my past posts where they are. If they decide to hang me, off to the gallows I go.

I wish I could tell you some of the wonderful stories and heartbreaking tales of the last three weeks. There is one I will be telling, but that is going to be in an eight to ten page, graphic, short story. This story I have in mind did not occur at CUE and is so beautiful, I doubt there will be any objectors.

For those of you who started following me because of my tales detailing the joy and horror substitute teaching, thanks for being patient. I wish I could have posted, but since I don’t like prison law-suits or lawyers, I’m glad I didn’t.