Teaching journal 4/30 - 5/3

Found a new bathroom this week

Recap: I’m a teacher in San Diego. I teach English Language Development (ELD, the new term for ESL) to 9-12 grade newcomers to thRecap: I’m a teacher in San Diego. I teach English Language Development (ELD, the new term for ESL) to 9-12 grade newcomers to the country. On January 3, I was informed that my position would be eliminated next year. UPDATE: on March 12, I got a layoff notice. This journal is a chronicle of my current experience before it ends. Hope you enjoy. 

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 

I took Monday off due to my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad (and probably cursed) previous week. I mostly did yardwork, took a nap, and read. No one needed me for anything; nobody asked me to do anything.

I have about four paid sick/vacation days left (bundled under the category “personal necessity”), and there’s about a month of school remaining. It’s really tempting to turn the remaining weeks into four-day work weeks. If I had a job lined up for next year, I would save my personal necessity days, but as if now I don’t have a job waiting for me next year. Knowing my luck, the moment I use up my last personal necessity day is when they’ll rescind my layoff, and I’ll begin next year with zero paid sick days. 

If I was smart, I would wait until I know my layoff status for sure. But nobody has ever accused me of being smart before.

I came back to a very nice and easy Tuesday. We read the final story in the “Survival” unit of the textbook. I get the sense that the kids are a little tired of reading stories about plane crashes and people stranded in desperate situations. But I feel like they’re getting a lot of good vocabulary, and using vocabulary in the context of a story/narrative is such a better way to learn words than rote memorization. 

(Side note: I’m currently listening to the audiobook of Moby Dick and Melville sure loves the word “portentous” but now I know what that means. Vocabulary, baby). 

Students also seem to like when I pair any story with Pear Deck. They dig the interactivity. There’s an option that lets students to draw on the slide, and I used that feature a lot today. Asking students to illustrate the events in a narrative is a good way to monitor comprehension, and I have the ability to display their work on screen. In both classes, I have a few knuckleheads who always draw dicks in hopes that I’ll show them. 

Good to know the artistic rendering of dicks transcends cultures. 

There was a substitute today in Mrs. E’s class, so I tried my hand at teaching a math lesson. The students just started their final unit, which is geometry. I wouldn’t say I did a great job, but geometry is the one math that I was ever good at, so I was able to get students through the practice sheets, and some of them even finished. 

The substitute was this old white lady, and I usually get nervous when I see old white ladies substituting because they’re more prone to being mean to kids or they have some sort of savior complex and will say concerning things. But this woman was actually an ELD teacher and knew how to interact with the kids. We commiserated about the movement away from phonics and other shortfalls of American literacy education. 

Then, when I told her I had to assist a student with an IEP to their next class, the substitute asked what the student’s IEP was for, and when I told her, the sub responded: “You know, some ailments can be cured holistically,” and I was like, “Okay, I’m going to leave before you say something weirder.”

During third period, I was eager to see how the new seating chart worked out. It was a semi success! Of course, Dancing Girl and Disengaged Girl refused to sit in the seats. Even when I threatened to mark them tardy—which I did—they didn’t care.

There was another big soccer match today, and I let third period watch it for the final 20 minutes of class. I shifted things around, told them they’d have to do their IXL practice for homework. While the majority of the kids watched soccer, I was able to get together with Dancing Girl and Disengaged Girl and talk to them about the seating chart. 

The last thing I want is to have the seating chart itself become a battle. We made the seating chart to curb the daily behavioral battles, not to create more. But these girls are kind of immune to a lot of the consequences that the other students fear. I could threaten to call their parents, but we’ve been trying to schedule meetings with Dancing Girl’s mom all year with no luck. I have a feeling that mom is pretty absent in the student’s life. 

I could kick them out but...really? Over a seating chart? 

I figured maybe a compromise would be the best route. I said, “I know you don’t like where we placed you, but we can’t have you sitting next to each other, so where would you like to be?”

These two girls seemed happy to participate in the creation of their seating charts. I’m not confident that it will solve all the problems, but I think it will help.

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

We made it to May. In my mind, it has already been May for two weeks. The reason is because San Diego Unified School District keeps shifting the instructional days back so our school year aligns better with others in the district. Last year, our school didn’t get out until mid June, but this year we only have six days of June. And just that slight shift is messing up my capacity for how many shits I should be giving at this point in the year.

I posited the question to another teacher friend last year: At what point in May do you stop teaching new things? At what point do you lighten up on some of the rules? I do look forward to easing up on being a hardass about the phones, although I do feel like I’ve done a good job of being strict about phones. It was one of my non-negotiables this year, and I feel proud that I haven’t compromised it. 

I remember my guide teacher saying that after Memorial Day is when you can start easing up on some of the rules. But that was when there were 16 instructional days left in the school. Now it’s half that, so does that mean I can start lightning up sooner? 

It was a relatively easy day today. Actually, I crammed a lot into this short day, but they were all small activities. I started out with a Quizizz, and then I did a short comprehension quiz on the story we read yesterday. Finally, we did a phonics worksheet that reviewed long A and long E sounds. I feel good about the students’ understanding of short and long vowel sounds. Last year, I think a lot of students were still struggling with the vowels, even at this point in the year. This year, I could put a word up like “translate” and 80-90% of the students would know how to pronounce that second syllable.

For the comprehension quiz, I’ve been trying this new thing where I make it open and allow students to collaborate and use translation devices. When it comes to comprehension, I’d much rather have kids discussing it than having them rely on memorization. I’ve actually been inspired by hosting a monthly trivia night at Nate’s Garden Grill (the next one is May 16 at 6 p.m. btw), and watching how teams talk through and co-construct their answers. Just a cool way to learn something new, imo. 

And because I said it was an easy day, I should mention that I have a girl in my third period, who is probably the most thoughtful and warm person in any of my classes. In fact, I’m just gonna call her Caring Girl. And every day, Caring Girl asks if it’ll be an easy day in my class. “Easy day today, Mr. Bradford?” I think with any other kid, it would annoy me, but I kind of think it’s endearing when she does it.

The new seating chart has improved the classroom environment somewhat. Of course, Disengaged Girl did not sit where we had agreed-upon the day before, but I didn’t mind too much because Dancing Girl was absent for most of the period, and therefore did not instigate her usual chaos. But then she did show up during the last 30 minutes and immediately got her friends riled up.

But I will say this about Dancing Girl: She secretly may have more manners thanall the other kids. If she borrows a pencil, she’ll give it back and say thank you. She is also the only student who will push her chair in at the end of class. At the end of every class, students act like they’ve been loaded with firecrackers and just explode outward from their seats. I always spend a few minutes after each class pushing chairs back in and rearranging everything to make it look nice for the next students. But Dancing Girl will push in her chair, and she will push in everybody else’s chair. 

One of the Haitian boys in my first period—I think I’ve mentioned him before, Fashionable Boy—he said that he’s not going to do any work today. 

“So it’s no different than any other day?” I joked. He kind of laughed, but then took the translator and told me that today was Agricultural Festival Day in Haiti, which is a national holiday. Similar to our Labor Day.  

Throughout the day I went around wishing all the Haitian kids happy holiday, and they looked surprised and happy that I knew that. Although one girl said that May 18th—which is Haiti’s Flag Day—is actually a better holiday.

Thursday, May 2, 2024

Karaoke day. 

I’ve said before, but these days are my favorite.

I couldn’t be more proud of my students. “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen is an extremely difficult song, even for English speakers, and most of the students completely nailed it. 

Every time I do karaoke, it quickly becomes obvious who hasn’t practiced and who hasn’t even been paying attention in class. But I didn’t get that sense with any of the students today. I think there was enough enthusiasm for this song and an eagerness to tackle the challenge of it. 

There’s a girl in my first period class who’s been pretty low, proficiency-wise, throughout the year, so today when I called her up and she chose to read the song at regular speed, I was a little surprised.

The song started, and I could tell that she was desperately trying to keep up. It sounded like she was just on the cusp of losing it during the verses. I’m sure she was nervous; I was nervous for her. But then when the chorus arrived, she landed it big time, and I practically cheered. Afterwards, I asked her if she had practiced a lot, and she looked so proud of herself when she nodded.

During third period I invited two friends/colleagues from the Multilingual Education Department, Alyssa and Melissa (hi friends!) into the class to show how I do karaoke because they’ve expressed interest in it. 

When you’re a teacher, you spend a lot of time thinking about whether your practices or strategies are effective, but unless you’re being actively observed by someone else, you kind of have to go with your gut. I mean, I love karaoke days, but I often wonder if it’s actually beneficial, or if it’s just a fun activity that satisfies my own interest in karaoke. But both Alyssa and Melissa said really nice things about what they observed, and that made me feel good.

Always nice to know you’re semi-competent at your job!

Friday, May 3, 2024

Today, we just finished up the last of the karaoke presentations. There were only a few kids who needed to go. Mostly new students. 

All these students are definitely going to have to repeat ELD 1/2 next year, so I’m not really concerned with them being able to sing along to a song. I did want to see what their decoding skills were, though. Whenever we get a new student, I try to carve out 15 minutes of class to do a one-on-one reading assessment with them to see their proficiency. But with so many new arrivals, I really haven’t had the time and opportunity. So having them read lyrics seemed like an adequate alternative for the assessment. 

The newest kids—Bad Impression Boy and his cousin—are much lower proficiency-wise than I originally thought. Like, they don’t even know the sounds of the alphabet, and I’m just like “What do I even do with these kids for a month?” 

But I also found out that one of the new girls—who seemed way lower—has some decent decoding skills. So that was a nice surprise.

I didn’t really wanna tempt bad luck because this week has been so much better than last week, so after karaoke, I kept it easy: just went over the vocabulary crossword puzzle from yesterday and practiced with a few more fill-in-the-blank style sentences. Afterwards, we had about 15 minutes left and I told them they could have free time, and they reacted as if I had each given them $100.

I also found a new bathroom today. Our school is so big that there are still regions and areas that I am not familiar with even after working there for two years. It’s always like unlocking a new world in Zelda or something. So when I found that single-occupancy bathroom today, I did a little twirl, held up my figurative sword, and celebrated that new achievement.