Premonitions of Parenting

My baseball team has two games every week - on Tuesday's and Thursday's.  And then we have practice on Monday and Wednesday.  On Wednesday of this week, Drew Serratore, the new IRF (Instructional Reform Facilitator) at our school came down to the baseball field to check out the team.  It's the first time he's ever come down and seen our kids play.

Drew happens to be TFA '05, and has proven to be a great friend at work.  He's definitely no substitute for Scott, Sylvia and Mash from last year, but between Drew and Katey, my school support network is in place.  Anyhow, Drew came down while our kids were right in the middle of playing a game called "Coaches vs. Students".  The original idea for the game was that we'd split the students up into three teams: one team played outfield, one team played infield, and the other team would be up to bat.  The idea was that I would pitch full time, and Mr. Young would play catcher.  Unfortunately, it turns out that pitching up close at half speed is really difficult, especially if you haven't pitched for over 10 years, so I ended up walking a lot of kids, or when I was throwing strikes - they just never swung at them.  So I had one of the students pitch.

I'm going to call the student I called in to pitch Lewis.  Lewis is currently in my 7th grade math class, and I also taught him last year.  He is a bright young man, but he has the attention span of a flea.  There have been days where I pull in Lewis after class to follow up with him on some lesson that I don't feel like he fully comprehended, and even when it's just he and I in the classroom, he'll look me in the eye for about 5 seconds before I see his eyes begin to wander.  When we're in class, I'll have to call Lewis' name about 10 times before it seems to register in his brain that I am talking to him.  The point here is, that I think that Lewis has learned to completely tune my voice out.  

The first practice that Lewis expressed interest in pitching, I pulled him aside and we talked about a couple fundamental best practices for pitching.  Very simple things like push off with your legs, or lift your leg up to help build forward momentum, or drop your arm so you aren't throwing from the elbow.  Things like the different from throwing from the stretch and from the windup.  And so I practiced with him, we worked on these things, and I continually reminded him when he'd be throwing in a game when to throw from the stretch and when to throw from the windup.  

But just as in class, Lewis just didn't seem to retain any of the information I told him.  In our game on Tuesday, Lewis pitched the entire time, but he never once correctly identified the situations when he should be throwing from the windup or the stretch, even when I would YELL AT HIM TO THROW FROM THE STRETCH SO THE RUNNERS DON'T STEAL!  But he'd still go from the windup.  The umpire commented to me that this kid needs to learn to throw from the stretch, and I tell him that I've worked with him on it.  Many, many, many times.  But I decide it's worth talking to him AGAIN since the runners are just trampling him, and so I walk out to him on the mound and show him yet once again, what I mean when I say to throw from the stretch.  He looks at me with his wandering eyes, and I ask him if he gets it now, he says yes, I walk back to the dugout, and then he proceeds to throw from the windup.  It just feels like nothing sticks with this kid.

Back to Wednesday.  Lewis is on the mound pitching, and there are runners on the bases.  At this point, we've been playing baseball now for something like 4 or 5 weeks, and I'm just tired of telling him things that he doesn't listen to me about - like throwing from the stretch or dropping his arm when he throws.  Drew shows up to practice, and I notice him talking with Lewis in between innings as we're having the teams move around the field, and demonstrating a couple stances.  The next inning, I see Lewis throwing from the stretch when runners get on the bases, and I notice him more and more dropping his arm as he pitches.  Ok....

After practice is over, Lewis runs up to the other coach, Mr. Young and I overhear him say "Mr. Young!  Mr. Serratore (Drew) today showed me a couple new things that I noticed made a HUGE difference in my pitching!  He showed me how to throw from a stretch when runners are on the bases, and he told me that if I drop my arm when I pitch it'll help me throw the ball faster!  And I did it today and it really worked!"

In my head, I'm as furious as fire.  I want to scream at Lewis and ask him if he has even heard a single thing I've said to him this year - not only on the baseball field, but in class.  But I keep my cool, and mumble to Mr. Young "This most definitely is NOT new to him...." and so Mr. Young says to Lewis "Are you sure this is new?  Is this really the first time you've heard this?" 

Lewis stops for a moment, his eyes narrow, and then he gets this foolish grin on his face and says "Oh yeah... I guess I remember Mr. Woahn saying something about this a couple weeks ago."  

This must be what it's like to have children.  You tell a kid something a million times, but you're just "Dumb 'ol mom/dad".  But as soon as an AUTHORITY figure says something, well then, it must be LAW!  Good grief. Any insight as to why that is?

Numbers and Stuff

I went to Office Depot this week to pick up an ink cartridge for my printer.  My printer is an HP Photosmart Plus, which I've had for over a year now.  It's been a decent printer, but it always blows my mind at how quickly the ink runs out.  It seems that I print about 100 pages (in black and white, mostly) and it starts to tell me that I'm  out of ink.  In all the colors.  I have no idea how the magenta runs out on black and white, but that's another story.

When I get to Office Depot, I realize I'd forgotten to get the model number for the ink cartridge I needed, so I looked around the store, and found my printer on the floor.  I opened it up, and saw this cartridge. Now, any sensible, rational, reasonable, semi-intelligent person would look at this cartridge and think "Oh, I need to get model 564." and then go purchase it at the counter.

So I go to the ink section, and found this pack.  Now, I'm no whiz with numbers, but so far as I can tell, the numbers for these two ink cartridges match up - and when things match up, I usually take that at face value and run with it.  I purchase it at the counter (with the accompanied color cartridges as well, sold separately) and head back to the apartment.  As soon as I get back, I rip the box open and go to install the cartridge, where much to my surprise, I find that it doesn't fit!  So I double check the numbers, look back at the box, and that's when I see this on the box of the new black cartridge I just purchased.

In case you can't see it (the picture is a little blurry) it says "Not for use in HP PHOTOSMART PLUS printers", which is the printer that I have.  You have GOT to be kidding me!?  What in the world is this all about?  Who was the idiot who designed this organizational structure!  What this tells me is that although my printer uses the 564 ink cartridge, I didn't get the RIGHT ink cartridge.  

I have a really simple solution to this situation, that I personally think is quite brilliant.  If this is an ink cartridge that doesn't work with the HP Photosmart Plus printers, which actually use 564 cartridges, GIVE IT A DIFFERENT NUMBER!!!  

As if inkjet printer ink isn't expensive enough, now they've got to go and confuse the heck out of the customer base, and dupe us into purchasing ink cartridges that don't actually work for the printers that we thought we had.  I suppose one could ultimately say that this was my fault for not catching the smaller writing below the HUGE "564" that says it didn't work with my printer, but honestly, who reads the fine print anyhow?

I hope I have the receipt somewhere...

On an unrelated note, in one of my technical elective classes, I'm teaching my students how to start a blog.  I have created a new blog that I will be using explicitly for that class, and I will use it to post the videos, pictures, and whatnot of things that happen in that class.  It can be found at http://mrwoahn.wordpress.com.   I will also eventually have links from that link to my students blogs, so you can get a look into their lives.  The class has five girls and one boy, and they all expressed interest in learning about desktop publishing.  So we're starting with creating blogs for them, and then I'm going to use the blog to have them actually post the things that they create - whether they're photos, stories, pictures, artwork, presentations, etc. 

In the other period of technical elective that I teach, we have a lot more physics, science, and engineering taking place.  I'll use the blog to post videos and pictures of things that I do with them as well, however, those students won't be creating blogs.  I just don't see it as something that they'd be interested in pursuing.  The classes have a VERY different dynamic, and it's a lot of fun to work with.  

I've made the conscious decision to not show my students this blog, with the express purpose that word of its existence might spread to certain sources that I would prefer to maintain ignorant.  That would severely limit my ability to write honestly about things that happen at school, and truly - who wants that?

A Paradigm Shift

I just finished going for a run.  About the same time that I finished, there was another guy who was finishing up as well.  As soon as he got to the curb, he pulled out a cigarette, lit up, and started smoking.  Something felt amiss.

This week, I had a similar experience where afterwards, something felt amiss.  A little background first.  Almost exactly a year ago, I had just finished teaching one of my 7th grade classes, and that the lesson had gone horrendously, as they all had up to that point.  Nothing new.

As the class was leaving, one of the few students who weren't acting out, who paid attention and actually tried to participate amidst all of the madness, and turned out to be one of my stellar students that year, made a comment on his way out the door that I continued to think about for the rest of the  school year.  He said "Mr. Woahn, you deserve a better school than this."

And I truly felt that I did.  I thought about that comment over and over and over, and I honestly believed it - I thought "I'm an awesome teacher, and these students just don't care.  They will never see that... I really do deserve a better school."  And so many times throughout all the rest of the year after there would be lessons that I'd put TONS of thought and effort and preparation in to, and I just hoped that there were students that recognized that effort.  And maybe they could empathize with my situation, and realize how hard I tried.

Back to the present.  The ELA teacher quit this week, and as such, there was a substitute who has been coming in this week to cover the class until they find a full time replacement.  After school on his way out one day, he stopped by and told me about the horrible day he'd had.  He told me about how students had been talking back to him, cussing at him, throwing things at him, running around the classroom and fighting, and pretty much exhibiting standard behavior at my school.  So I told him I'd stop by the next day during my Prep Period.

The next day during my Prep Period, I arrived in his classroom, and noted that it was my little 7th graders.  They weren't doing anything horrendous, like I could imagine the 8th graders (7th graders from last year) doing, but the teacher was nonetheless having a tough time with them.  So I just walked around the classroom, helped convey instruction and get some of the students working on what the teacher had planned for them to do.

As I knelt down by the side of one of the students desk, I looked around the room at all of my students doing their various activities in class, looked up at the substitute, the complete disorganization of the classroom, and considered the events of the coming weeks.  At some point, they're going to have a new ELA teacher.  And when that teacher arrives, my my students will have to go through the new stress of starting a "new" class, getting to know a "new" teacher, and just basically start from square one.

It was at this point I recalled my experience from the last year, but this time I thought "These kids deserve a better school than this."

And truly, they do.  They're great kids, regardless of how reckless, chaotic, and hectic they may act at times.  They do the best they can in the environment they've been brought up in, and if I can help to improve that environment at all - I'll do it.